146 replies to this topic

[Kjudoon]

You don't remember the LRMfauxpocalypse last year when they buffed the speed to only 185m/s IIRC. The freakout was incredible.

The 'reintroduction' of the bug is the idea of more difficult targeting. I just used he bug as shorthand.

To buff all LRM speed to 200 is to have max range flight time be 5 seconds, not the current 7ish. I'd rather see 250, but even then the change may be too much to bear. What I did learn from that experience was my short LOS game improved dramatically because I could easilly get munitions on target without the need of help. But my long game suffered. Why? Because lost locks were never reacquired at the last aim readjustment. (Btw, did you know that LRMs have only 4 adjustment points equidistant on its flight path? If you wait till after the last point to dodge, you can do it easy.)

LRMs could be worth more for their crit slots but not compared to the favorite sons of the FLPPD set. Why? Too many barriers and difficulty using them and lack of precision. They're not efficient because they are easily countered and imprecise. If we eliminate convergence for DF weapons, suddenly LRMs would be balanced, since those massive 60pt alphas will not hit the same spot with any precision or regularity just like LRMs.

So your choice is a simple one. Buff lrms into proper alignment or nerf all the meta into balance. Nerfing is more appropriate because it minimizes power creep and this is becoming a problem in MWO. I don't care either way, just balance it.




Btw, jax

You do realize that this also proves the point that LRMs are the hardest to use weapon in the game, right?

[Alistair Winter]

JaxRiot, on 18 March 2015 - 07:02 PM, said:

I don't know whats with all the LRM hate.

LRMs are junk outside of pugs. None of the competitive units will allow them because they are already far too easily countered and even outfitting spotters with things like NARCs and TAGs are not worth the crit slots to help LRMs because their damage is so crappy and even with assistance they can still be avoided.

You just answered your own question. I, and many others, find it unfortunate that a whole weapon system is considered a complete waste at higher levels of play. And it's not just LRM20's, for example. It's not a single weapon. It's every LRM in the game. Imagine if every ballistic weapon was considered a joke among competitive players. That would suck!

Ideally, all weapons should be fun and viable at all levels of gameplay, not just against bad players.

[CaptainScumBa11s]

For the all the people with the "you have to aim at the target LULZ." Most people do that anyways it was the random dropping of the lock that would come and go between games. It was painful when it came at the wrong moment when you dump 40 missles into the ass of a mech infront of you cause the lock decided it didnt want to be on this earth anymore. i honestly would like to see some serious changes to lrms to make them anything worthwhile.

[JaxRiot]

Kjudoon, on 18 March 2015 - 10:04 PM, said:

Btw, jax

You do realize that this also proves the point that LRMs are the hardest to use weapon in the game, right?

Youre not allowed to say such things here on these forums. You must be punished. Go to your room.

Alistair Winter, on 18 March 2015 - 10:22 PM, said:

You just answered your own question. I, and many others, find it unfortunate that a whole weapon system is considered a complete waste at higher levels of play. And it's not just LRM20's, for example. It's not a single weapon. It's every LRM in the game. Imagine if every ballistic weapon was considered a joke among competitive players. That would suck!

Ideally, all weapons should be fun and viable at all levels of gameplay, not just against bad players.

Then why all the talk about LRMs being easy mode? So easy a caveman could to it?

Ive been using LRMs for a while now and I feel Im pretty good with them, and I dont think its all that easy mode.

My effeciency is 3 fold. I have to get the locks, Keep the locks, and Track the locks to be effective. Plus I have to have clear line of fire and if the target is fast enough, they can avoid the LRMs all together regardless of how well I fired.

Im constantly struggling with ECM, Radar Derps, Lock drops (so many times Ive got a lock and the second I fire the lock drops sending my missiles into the ground) , and Line of fire. Im constantly shuffling and shifting to not only find target locks (many times on my own using TAG) but also clear line of fire. Just because I can lock it, doesnt mean I can hit it.

I have to try to keep my distance and say near the back of the pack because LRMs are useless within 180m, but yet I cant zone out and get left behind or I'll end up alone and one of those spun out super chicken mechs will come up behind me and ruin my day.

These are all things that I dont have to deal with in say my Raven, or Nova or Cata. If I can see it and its in range, I can hit it. I just point and fire and move on.

And to top it all off, LRM damage isnt even that good

But yet I like it even with all those obstacles because it doesnt feel like Call of Duty run, aim, shoot, Headshot kind of play.

I dont know. Maybe Im just a caveman after all

Cheers

Jax

Edited by JaxRiot, 18 March 2015 - 11:18 PM.

[Loren Ward]

Artgathan, on 18 March 2015 - 09:22 AM, said:

It made LRMs even harder to use while maneuvering,

"even harder," LOL

If you have trouble maintaining LRM lock you are a pathetic player.

[GumbyC2C]

yet another LRM thread....

If LRMs are killing you often, you are either playing against a good team that coordinates well using spotters and TAG/NARC/UAV or you are too dumb to use cover/radar dep/ECM effectively.

LRMs are a waste of tonnage on your mech for pub play. OP is right, LRMs are a joke amongst the good players because LRMs are not an effective way to kill enemy mechs.

[Alistair Winter]

JaxRiot, on 18 March 2015 - 11:05 PM, said:

Then why all the talk about LRMs being easy mode? So easy a caveman could to it?

Because it's easy to use against bad players. To use LRMs against good players, you need a lot of positional awareness and good tactics, but to use it against bad players, you basically just have to wait for some dude to walk into the open with his 50 kph assault mech without cover. As long as you're within 1000 meters and someone else provides the target lock, you will probably do at least 200 dmg. Then another dude walks into the open, boom, another 200 dmg. At the end of the match, maybe you got 2 kills and 500 damage and feel like a pro because you scored more than anyone else on your team. But the reality is, you basically just picked off easy targets.

I don't know how many times it's been said in this thread already. This is probably the 10th or 20th time. LRMs are easy mode against bad players, hardcore mode against good players. That is unlike any other weapon in the game, as pretty much every other weapon is almost equally popular across the board, from lowest to highest Elo. Except for the weapons that nobody ever uses, like the flamer. This asymmetry is a clear sign that the game mechanic is fundamentally flawed.

And please, spare me the noobtube "balancing for skill" video by Extra Credits.

[Lynx7725]

Alistair Winter, on 18 March 2015 - 11:23 PM, said:

But the reality is, you basically just picked off easy targets.

I should get an award for scrubbing out the easy targets so that the team can concentrate on the harder targets. Instead, I get called names like "no-skill", "Lurm-losers", etc. etc. Don't respect the LRM Specialist, die by the LRM Specialist.

The easy targets are going to be dead either by LRMs or by direct fire. I just help speed things up a bit. Against harder targets, it's teamwork, and hell if I'm not going to help the team suppress/ constrain the targets so that they are easier to kill.

[TwentyOne]

Artgathan, on 18 March 2015 - 09:22 AM, said:

It made LRMs even harder to use while maneuvering, forcing you to keep more of your mech exposed to the enemy to maintain a lock. also bad.The instant lock-breaking against targets that run over a rock was also bad.

Perhaps it'd be OK if LRMs were fire and forget, but as it was, it just made using LRMs require way more effort than any other weapon system, as you'd need to maintain 'good' aim for the entire duration of the flight (whereas other weapons can just snap fire).

MW4 had a similar system for locking missiles, and look how good that game was!

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

I agree that LRMs are uneven in effectiveness at different levels of play. But I'm not sure this is actually a major problem. After all, the same is true for some chassis and components.

Further, too many suggestions of how to "fix" them really seem designed to just remove the things that actually make them distinctive and interesting in the first place (indirect fire and the whole ECM TAG BAP interaction), making them into just another direct-fire weapon. But this would dumb down the game into more of a a point - and - click shooter. No thanks, I want a game which has a bit more thinking and a bit less twitching.

[Kilo 40]

Alistair Winter, on 18 March 2015 - 11:23 PM, said:

Because it's easy to use against bad players.

every weapon is easy to use against bad players.

That's what makes them bad.

[Kjudoon]

Kilo 40, on 18 March 2015 - 11:41 PM, said:

every weapon is easy to use against bad players.

That's what makes them bad.

And it's easy to use every weapon badly.

[Kilo 40]

RocketDog, on 18 March 2015 - 11:39 PM, said:

Further, too many suggestions of how to "fix" them really seem designed to just remove the things that actually make them distinctive and interesting in the first place (indirect fire and the whole ECM TAG BAP interaction), making them into just another direct-fire weapon.

The suggestions to "fix" LRMs are always worth a chuckle, and they always sound pretty similar.

"well. fixing them is easy. Just make them LOS only, increase lock on time, decrease speed, make triple AMS for all mechs, make the Radar dep module standard for all mechs, have AMS ammo be 6000 rounds per half ton, cut in half the amount of LRM ammo per ton, stream fire all launchers at I missile per half second, let lasers shoot them down, ECM should cause damage to any LRM boat within 360 meters, make them self detonate at 50m out if your mech is facing the firing mech, have all LRM boats(anything with more than a single LRM5) pulsate in neon pink lighting, and increase the weight of TAG and NARC by 5 tons.

I think that sounds reasonable."

[Madcap72]

wanderer, on 18 March 2015 - 03:53 PM, said:

Do you even comprehend how C3/C3i works in Battletech?

It renders everyone's accuracy equal to whoever has the best range-to-target. A C3 Master gets the ability to work like TAG for free.

It has nothing to do with LRM fire in TT otherwise, and someone else with LOS in MWO does not magically increase my missile velocity so a 600m shot hits in the time it'd have taken them to go the 60m the Raven hugging my target's backside instead.

See my previous post. It is actually harder to fire LRMs indirectly in MWO than in TT.

Nothing in MWO gives people "free C3i" or "free C3". This is a fallacy so bluntly wrong, I wish I could reach through the Internet and shake the stupid out of the people posting it. Not for LRMs, nor anything else. Even in double blind rules, a unit visible to one enemy unit is known to all of them, and that's all MWO does. Paints a dorito on the map showing enemies that are visible to someone's sensors.

Do you have aspergers, because I see a profound disconnect between your interpretations of things and other peoples.

You're applying strictly the game mechanic of C3 to the conversation. Not the purpose of C3 as conceptualized.

Straight from Sarna, " the C3 Command Unit, also known as C3 Master Computer, is the central hub of a C3 Network and allows linked units to share radar and targeting data on the lance or company levels."

Guess what we get in MWO? Anyone that targets an enemy, allows non-LOS players to target as well, and pull down location, and targeting data.

You can cite tabletop rules all you want to, but until MWO is turn based, they don't mean a whole lot.

"Nothing in MWO gives people "free C3i" or "free C3".

The radar and lock sharing method of locking target on the lance and company levels is the very deffinition of C3 both in the game, and in real life. (Well, more like C3ISTAR)

[delushin]

Eh for me the biggest thing that shits me is the ability missiles have to bend time and matter on Bog and teleport through trees to smash me in the ass, and my lasers fired in the same place hit an invisible wall.

[Kilo 40]

Madcap72, on 18 March 2015 - 11:52 PM, said:

C3

the entire concept is completely outdated and has no place in the game.

[Alistair Winter]

Kilo 40, on 18 March 2015 - 11:41 PM, said:

every weapon is easy to use against bad players.
That's what makes them bad.

I didn't think I actually had to explain myself in detail. Yes, bad players are easy to kill. But obviously there's a difference in the skills required to hit a target at 900 meters with LRMs versus the gauss rifle. With the LRMs, your reticule just has to be inside the giant red box for a certain period of time. If you lose the target lock for some reason, you can get it back. With the gauss rifle, you actually have to hold and release the button and try to calculate the trajectory and speed of the projectile compared to the speed and distance to your target.

I don't understand why other players are so touchy about LRMs being easy to use. I regularly play my CPLT-C1 and AWS-8R. I still recognise that hitting a target with LRMs is easy as hell. It's the reason I get bored with them so quickly. And the fact that they're woefully inferior against competent players with good aim and good use of cover.

[Alistair Winter]

Kilo 40, on 18 March 2015 - 11:52 PM, said:

The suggestions to "fix" LRMs are always worth a chuckle, and they always sound pretty similar.

"well. fixing them is easy. Just make them LOS only, increase lock on time, decrease speed, make triple AMS for all mechs, make the Radar dep module standard for all mechs, have AMS ammo be 6000 rounds per half ton, cut in half the amount of LRM ammo per ton, stream fire all launchers at I missile per half second, let lasers shoot them down, ECM should cause damage to any LRM boat within 360 meters, make them self detonate at 50m out if your mech is facing the firing mech, have all LRM boats(anything with more than a single LRM5) pulsate in neon pink lighting, and increase the weight of TAG and NARC by 5 tons.

I think that sounds reasonable."

You'll notice I actually suggested buffing LRM speed to compensate for harder target locks in the OP. Although I'm not sure if you actually missed it or if you deliberately just chose a meaningless strawman argument to lel @ lrm threads. Either way, you may want to reconsider the use of the word "always".

[wanderer]

Madcap72, on 18 March 2015 - 11:52 PM, said:

Do you have aspergers, because I see a profound disconnect between your interpretations of things and other peoples.

You're applying strictly the game mechanic of C3 to the conversation. Not the purpose of C3 as conceptualized.

Straight from Sarna, " the C3 Command Unit, also known as C3 Master Computer, is the central hub of a C3 Network and allows linked units to share radar and targeting data on the lance or company levels."

Guess what we get in MWO? Anyone that targets an enemy, allows non-LOS players to target as well, and pull down location, and targeting data.

Do you have the dumb, sir? C3/C3i in Battletech does something very specific.

As noted before, it renders all weapons fire by networked 'Mechs accurate as if the target was at the range of the nearest member of the network with LOS. That is, because one of my network is 3 hexes away, I fire my guns as if -I- were 3 hexes away.

As MWO 'Mechs don't magically get to shoot things that way, no MWO unit gets "free C3/C3i".

Quote

Guess what we get in MWO? Anyone that targets an enemy, allows non-LOS players to target as well, and pull down location, and targeting data.

Location, yes. Targeting data? See above for what C3 actually does in Battletech, not what you want to say it does. Maybe get a rulebook, so you can actually read the effects of such equipment. What IDF fire with LRMs (and mortars and other non-LOS guns in Battletech) requires has nothing to do with what C3 provides. All you need is a unit with LOS to the target and you NOT having LOS from the firer. Period. One guy with a walkie-talkie doesn't have magical free C3 equipment, but he'll do for bombing someone with LRMs. Or artillery. Or mortars.

We already had the joys of "BUUUUUUT LRMS DON'T HAVE GUIDANCE SYSTEMS" in this thread already. You're verging on the same spergfest with "BUUUUUUT C3 DOES THIS CAUSE I SAY SO!", when in fact, it doesn't do anything like what you say it does in TT OR MWO..

So either read a book, or stop interjecting with gems of ignorance. Please.

[Lynx7725]

Alistair Winter, on 18 March 2015 - 11:58 PM, said:

I didn't think I actually had to explain myself in detail. Yes, bad players are easy to kill. But obviously there's a difference in the skills required to hit a target at 900 meters with LRMs versus the gauss rifle.

Actually, that's not the point. Both needs skills, especially if you spec your build and modules correctly (i.e., have zoom, weapons module, etc. etc.)

The difference is really that the Gauss user has to expose himself to get at the target, and the LRM support doesn't have to so much. How do I know this? I was trying to grind my Grid Iron with a Gauss last night. I didn't do great, but I also know I'm out of touch and using the Grid Iron in the wrong places. It takes time for me to relearn the D/F skills needed to bring my abilities up to mark in the Grid Iron. Meanwhile, I'm not really helping my team to win.

Alistair Winter, on 18 March 2015 - 11:58 PM, said:

I don't understand why other players are so touchy about LRMs being easy to use. I regularly play my CPLT-C1 and AWS-8R. I still recognise that hitting a target with LRMs is easy as hell. It's the reason I get bored with them so quickly. And the fact that they're woefully inferior against competent players with good aim and good use of cover.

My emphasis: Hitting ONE target. My job as a LRM Specialist is not about hitting targets, especially not one. My job is to help the team win games.

Why are we irritated? Because the skills involved are from different schools and the LRM-haters keep trying to equate the two, which is bloody nonsense. LRMs are easy to release from their tubes, but I'm so busy supporting the entire team during games that I often lose track of who I've engaged. To the point where "Just who the heck is that I killed?" became a regular question in my EOM review.

If I am mean, and I feel like being mean now, LRM-haters equate skills with the personal ability to use a weapon well and score kills and damage. LRM Specialists equate skills with being able to support an entire team to win games. Telling the other side that their school is "no skill" is a waste of breath, talking about two different kettles of fish, and ultimately an insult.

Edited by Lynx7725, 19 March 2015 - 12:17 AM.