167 replies to this topic

[One of Little Harmony]

This is the best LRM boat: http://mwo.smurfy-ne...90516d66f6de360

The LRM15s have artemis, so they core out mechs really hard, and there's 2160 lrms (aka potential damage score!) looking for a home! You have TWO tags, because atlases have this problem with tagging mechs with its low slung arms getting stuck on obstacles. For close in defense you have an AC/20, which is the most POWERFUL close-in weapon. Also, your back armor is really high so you don't have to worry about light mechs coring you out from the back. And don't forget the command console...so you can like command or something.

G'luck!

[Richter Kerensky]

One of Little Harmony, on 08 April 2015 - 02:27 PM, said:

This is the best LRM boat: http://mwo.smurfy-ne...90516d66f6de360

The LRM15s have artemis, so they core out mechs really hard, and there's 2160 lrms (aka potential damage score!) looking for a home! You have TWO tags, because atlases have this problem with tagging mechs with its low slung arms getting stuck on obstacles. For close in defense you have an AC/20, which is the most POWERFUL close-in weapon. Also, your back armor is really high so you don't have to worry about light mechs coring you out from the back. And don't forget the command console...so you can like command or something.

G'luck!

the missing ecm is the piece d'resistance, thank you

[Johny Rocket]

Richter Kerensky, on 08 April 2015 - 02:27 PM, said:

Unless your team was going to stomp the enemy team anyway without your help, you'd be much better off running a direct fire build, ANY direct fire build, as an assault mech. In the case where the enemy team lets you fire off trillions of LRMs that all connect because they're not very bright and don't know how to deal with it, sure, you can get high damage numbers and rake in some sick nasty c-bills because the game scales rewards based on "kill most damage dealt".

Against a team that knows what they're doing you're a liability and I've lost count of the number of times the last person alive on a team, allied or enemy, is piloting a totally undamaged LRM Timberwolf/Atlas/Mad Dog/Stalker/<insert heavy or assault here> who starts griping about people not holding locks in all chat.

I've heard plenty of claims from Marik players that there's some ancient secret to the LRM boat that only they've mastered and have been thoroughly unimpressed with them when it came time to actually fight them. One time I fought a clan team in CW that ran 6+ LRM boats per wave with multiple tag lasers, UAVs and NARCs, probably the single best coordinated attempt to make the LRM a viable weapon in a game of MWO, and even though it was really annoying to have your screen shaking constantly from three different LRM lockons all firing at once, we still won handily because LRMs are inferior to every other option you have for dealing damage and lose to trades with anything that isn't a flamer or machine gun. They're a bad weapon.

If it were just your opinion that lrms are bad, Id walk away because I think to many bad boaters on a team is bad. You make the assumption all boaters are low skilled and only engage from a distance. In the Kintaro I love to be right behind my assaults working what ever I can for cover and destroying anything I can peep or they lock. If I didn't use my tag I would'nt trade a medium laser for it to counter ecm, which is exactly what I did in the cw comp, I also ran the 4N as my first drop. If baps didn't get me my own spots and locks faster I wouldn't waste the tonnage. The fact this is how my mechs are equipped shows I engage the enemy, directly, often enough to sacrifice for this gear. I am a member of a unit that does nothing, I pug and am proud of it so what competitive teams do is irrelevant to me. What I do works where I play and your insistence I am no help to my team is your opinion based on pure assumption.

YCSLiesmith, on 08 April 2015 - 01:58 PM, said:

look dude no one says you're not getting what seem to be high numbers (except for that last one, eew 500 damage) but look at the actual harm you caused. you've got one kill. you know what that says to me? you did moderate damage to every mech on the field, spread out across their whole body. it says you were stood at the back taking shots at targets your team were shooting at, contributing very little to the actual kills. you probably had perfect health in all those matches because i can tell just looking at the assist/kill ratio you're not getting your own locks. so you're putting an entire team in yellow, MAYBE some orange, you're not tanking any fire for your unit (which means your unit is dying faster) and you're looking at the scoreboard afterwards and saying to yourself 'yep, great carry Tractor Joe.'

This is why i recommend not starting with LRMs. YOu become this guy. Tractor Joe doesn't seem like a mean guy, and i dont mean to grind down on him with this, but he clearly thinks he's having a much greater impact on the game than he is, and his team pays the price. He'll never want to move to lasers because he'll see his numbers go down to like 2-300 for a while and that will hurt him in his heart after seeing 1000+ in the past. The fact is, though, that this is the limit that LRMs can take you to. 10 assists, 1 kill. 8 assists, 1 kill. his highest kills coincide with his lowest damage, because those were kill steals. someone else did the leg work on that.

with direct fire damage, you can poke a guy right in his weak spot, do no damage, and take him right out. or you can bore through armor if you have to, always hitting the same place, until he is cored out and dies. you can work with your whole unit to pick on one guy's left leg. LRMs simply cannot do that.


dude no one runs from LRMs. You move toward LRMs in cover until you are within their minimum range. then they die. You might say 'haha but i denied you those open spaces that you werent gonna march through anyway because you might get hit by gauss rifles' and sure. you did that. great work. I killed you anyway though.

You make the same assumptions about players not a particular weapon. You run for cover just like everyone else and if you don't I wreck you, most of the time blinding you to bad to get to cover. The only boats that die from you sneaking up on them are lowed skilled or you get lucky once in a while. Stop connecting a weapon choice with skill.
Your argument of how damage is spread is completely baseless, 1009 points of damage is 1009 and points of damage to the enemy.

Edited by Tractor Joe, 08 April 2015 - 03:26 PM.

[Richter Kerensky]

The OP was asking what LRM boat was good and I can honestly say that such a thing doesn't exist and as a new player he should be focusing his energies elsewhere. Everyone has screw-around matches, look at everyone piloting urbanmechs right now, but it's another thing to mislead new players into thinking something is good when it isn't. A bunch of us have given explanations as to why LRMs aren't good, and saying "that's just your opinion", while technically true, doesn't invalidate what we're saying.

"1009 damage is 1009 damage" isn't much of an argument when it's spread across 12 mechs. If you evenly spread it across all of the mechs and across several components you're looking at, what, 15 damage to every component? You turned everyone's armor yellow, even the lights'. If you managed to do 1009 damage to every mech and it was all focused on their CT, you would have killed all of the lights and mediums on the enemy team. It's much more effective to remove mechs from play than it is to spread damage around because the dead mechs can't shoot back at you! Your 1009 damage was also in an ideal scenario where you weren't denied sustained LRM usage by a team that knew how to use cover to block LRM fire, to scan the sky for UAVs, or by one that used ECM to protect themselves from LRMs, all easy and straightforward counters that almost completely shut down LRMs. You know what doesn't have a counter? Getting shot by a large laser.

Edited by Richter Kerensky, 08 April 2015 - 04:03 PM.

[Bigbacon]

nothing wrong with wanting to be a LRM machine.. play the game how you want to play it. unless you are in tryhard unit playing in the group queue, LRMs are useful. Just learn to use them effectively. Tag/narc your own targets, don't LRM at 600+ meters away, don't alpha unless you know you can hit.

never take just LRMs...make sure you have at least 2 back ups, even if it just 2 MLs

Edited by Bigbacon, 08 April 2015 - 04:38 PM.

[Richter Kerensky]

Show me anywhere where I called the OP an idiot or insulted Tractor Joe, or did anything but explain why LRMs aren't a good weapon and you shouldn't be using them. I'm giving him practical advice by saying the LRM should generally be avoided because there are better options in basically every scenario.

Also, I wouldn't call shooting at someone with a Gauss Rifle or ER Large Laser at 700+ meters 'brawling' in any sense of the word, but they're both superior options to the LRM. At closer ranges, the Gauss Rifle is still viable, and you can start bringing things like AC/5s, medium lasers and medium pulse lasers into the picture and at close range SRMs start being good as well.

In the case where the enemy is behind cover, a well-placed artillery or airstrike will do a lot more than LRMs will; if you don't have someone scouting, you can't target them with LRMs anyway, and if you do have someone scouting, you're probably putting them in unnecessary danger. How many times have you seen the 'scouting light' guy get obliterated when he walks into the entire enemy team at the start of the match?

Edited by Richter Kerensky, 08 April 2015 - 04:35 PM.

[Chef Kerensky]

Romeo Deluxe, on 08 April 2015 - 04:20 PM, said:

OP asked the question and some of us answered it. You came here and told him he's an idiot if he tries them. I don't care how you word it, this is what you are telling him. He has his game time to spend how he wishes, you have you're game time to spend how you wish. If he is going to try LRM's my hope is that he does it effectively.

No one here has mislead the OP telling him he will go out and pwon in his LRM boat. In fact nearly everyone giving advice have told him not to rely on just this weapon system and to try other things as well. This is you on you're personal crusade to display your superiority of MWO, a video game mind you, instead of giving the OP practical advice.

OP asked what the good LRM boats are. There are none.

OP can pilot LRM boats if he wants to regardless. The people in this thread told him that he will lose against good players if he does so. That sounds like constructive advice to me.

[Johny Rocket]

Richter Kerensky, on 08 April 2015 - 04:33 PM, said:

Show me anywhere where I called the OP an idiot or insulted Tractor Joe, or did anything but explain why LRMs aren't a good weapon and you shouldn't be using them. I'm giving him practical advice by saying the LRM should generally be avoided because there are better options in basically every scenario.

Also, I wouldn't call shooting at someone with a Gauss Rifle or ER Large Laser at 700+ meters 'brawling' in any sense of the word, but they're both superior options to the LRM. At closer ranges, the Gauss Rifle is still viable, and you can start bringing things like AC/5s, medium lasers and medium pulse lasers into the picture and at close range SRMs start being good as well.

In the case where the enemy is behind cover, a well-placed artillery or airstrike will do a lot more than LRMs will; if you don't have someone scouting, you can't target them with LRMs anyway, and if you do have someone scouting, you're probably putting them in unnecessary danger. How many times have you seen the 'scouting light' guy get obliterated when he walks into the entire enemy team at the start of the match?

Sorry more assumption and opinion. I have 3 Jenners and a Raven 3L, I often die doing low damage jobs like scouting and sniping from the flanks or giving my Assaults ecm coverage and scare away lights, while my teammates stomp me. 3 of those 4 I run all lasers. I don't like ballistics, not enough return for the weight compared to lasers. There's a lot can be said for a couple of medium lasers.
Some jobs need to be done for the team and I do the ones I enjoy.

A real solution for this problem is let pug have a drop deck like cw so people can pick the right mech for the drop.
Then zero queues have legit, "man wrong mech" fails. Everyone comes prepared and fun carnage ensues. Freemarket Darwinism decides what weapons work, where.

[Harvey Batchall Kerensky at Law]

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 04:53 PM, said:

Sorry more assumption and opinion. I have 3 Jenners and a Raven 3L, I often die doing low damage jobs like scouting and sniping from the flanks or giving my Assaults ecm coverage and scare away lights, while my teammates stomp me. 3 of those 4 I run all lasers. I don't like ballistics, not enough return for the weight compared to lasers. There's a lot can be said for a couple of medium lasers.
Some jobs need to be done for the team and I do the ones I enjoy.

A real solution for this problem is let pug have a drop deck like cw so people can pick the right mech for the drop.
Then zero queues have legit, "man wrong mech" fails. Everyone comes prepared and fun carnage ensues. Freemarket Darwinism decides what weapons work, where.

LRM Atlas Shrugged

[Richter Kerensky]

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 04:53 PM, said:

Sorry more assumption and opinion. I have 3 Jenners and a Raven 3L, I often die doing low damage jobs like scouting and sniping from the flanks or giving my Assaults ecm coverage and scare away lights, while my teammates stomp me. 3 of those 4 I run all lasers. I don't like ballistics, not enough return for the weight compared to lasers. There's a lot can be said for a couple of medium lasers.
Some jobs need to be done for the team and I do the ones I enjoy.

A real solution for this problem is let pug have a drop deck like cw so people can pick the right mech for the drop.
Then zero queues have legit, "man wrong mech" fails. Everyone comes prepared and fun carnage ensues. Freemarket Darwinism decides what weapons work, where.

All of the things I listed deal more damage to fewer components in a shorter amount of time than LRMs do in the open, and the only reason that they'd be inferior is if you weren't hitting your targets, something that the LRM admittedly removes from the equation.

[MechWarrior3671771]

Tractor Joe: "making the assumption all boaters are low skilled and only engage from a distance"

Yup. The more I read these "LRMs are gimping your team" posts, the more I see that the problem is these "leet" pilots don't know how to use LRMs effectively. Especially when they say things like: "the number of times the last person alive on a team, allied or enemy, is piloting a totally undamaged LRM Timberwolf/Atlas/Mad Dog/Stalker"

Sounds more like he tried LRM boats a few times, played them poorly and gave up. Sure, anyone can stand in the back and do it wrong. But that's like basing your opinion of brawler builds on the people that do a mad Leroy suicide-charge.



Kerensky: "This is why i recommend not starting with LRMs. You become this guy.... "as a new player he should be focusing his energies elsewhere."

You don't know what you are talking about. I started out (3 months ago btw) with LRMs to learn what they need from scout mechs. Running LRMs taught me a lot about maps, indirect fire and how to avoid it, how to break locks, how to move in my group, how to suppress, etc. Being in the 2nd line also kept me alive longer - the longer you live in game the more you learn.

Sure, I've moved on the laser boats, ac5 and gauss builds since then. But a lot of the things I learned piloting LRM boats transferred to all that and made my learning curve easier.

Ironically, because of this thread, I've dusted off my LRM boat for the last few days. I am routinely getting 700+ damage and 4-5 kills per match. And before you cite some ELO defense about the "noob" tier, I've been dropping with/against you. The pilots in your tier are not as elite as you pretend on the forums.

Which reminds me - your points seem reasonable here, but I'm remembering your name from a match a few days ago on River City where you died and then yelled at all of us for not pushing with you. No order to push was ever given, so I wondered who the frack you thought you were. You did the usual "deadman rant" about how we all stunk and deserved to lose. We ended up winning anyway, I did 750 damage and 4 kills in my LRM boat, and when I looked at your final stats, you had 191 damage and 0 kills in a Nova or something. Now I'm wishing I had taken a screen shot.

So while I agree that LRMs are suboptimal for the Elite tiers, I'm not taking your remarks here very seriously anymore.

Edited by Fenrisulvyn, 08 April 2015 - 05:29 PM.

[YCSLiesmith]

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 02:48 PM, said:

Your argument of how damage is spread is completely baseless, 1009 points of damage is 1009 and points of damage to the enemy.

This is simply wrong.

say your mech has 75 armor and 25 hit points in every part of its body. Now I shoot an LRM volley that will do 100 points of damage, spread across the top of the mech. that's 20 to left arm, 20 to left torso, 20 to center torso, 20 to right torso, 20 to right arm. your mech is now in yellow armor, with all your weapons still viable. I fire again. you're now orange. again. now deep orange. it will take me five shots, give or take, to kill you. realistically thats entire minutes spent killing a single mech

now lets say I fire a 50 damage laser. two shots and a component is gone, along with any weapons on it. four shots to the two side torsos, vs. a clanner, and he's dead. in two shots an IS guy is dead. that's maybe 10-13 seconds depending on the exact weapon.

but wait, I can keep going! in the two minutes of your LRMs raining on some crab, I'm killing the crab, his atlas friend, oneshotting a couple of irritating lights, and oh look at that the match is over and we won.

now lets use a more realistic scenario, multiple mechs. say we've got two 'meta' wolverines, and an LRM 80 crab. they're in a deadly fight with an urbanmech who has the 100 life, and in fact all the stats mentioned above apply.

You, in the crab, fire a missile at the urbanmech. a hit! you are contributing! two laser shots later, the urbie has lost his center torso. we're all a part of this team, you think to yourself proudly.

but wait, what if you weren't there? oh, that's right, it still would have taken two laser shots. looks like your 20 damage to whatever component ended up cored out was irrelevant in this situation. you got 100 damage racked up on the board and are immediately firing at your next target, secure in the belief that you're an important part of the team, but in actual fact you did nothing for anyone this round. Your success is an illusion. you're basically a ghost player, as productive as an AFK direwolf and just as irritating to your teammates.

[Tim East]

YCSLiesmith, on 08 April 2015 - 05:30 AM, said:

OP, I am going to tell you straight out: LRMs are a mistake. This game is not balanced so that every weapon has its place. there are multiple weapons that have limited or no use. LRMs are down there at the very bottom, right next to flamers. I implore you to ignore the people itt who say different.

LOL, I love it when you make that comparison. It literally never gets old. Or at least, it hasn't yet. LRMs are pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as flamers. I still run flamers more often though, because they have a much higher fun value for me.

Flamer: Minute damage and minor heat penalty at point-blank range.
LRMs: Decent sandblast damage at long range if you have a team that will support them, decent sandblast damage at medium range if you have to do it yourself.
Yeah, it's sandblast, and yeah, it's very inefficient, but due to getting paid in c-bills per damage unit raises them from absolute garbage to mediocre in my eyes in terms of usability. Also, I love it when people on my team have LRMs. It makes my BAP feel even more worthwhile when I duel an ECM mech and missiles abruptly start raining down for no reason at all.

MadWOPR, on 08 April 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:

terrain is magic

I really need to get un-lazy and do a "Teamwork is Magic" spoof of some sort. Get a blue Spider with 8 million jumpjets to play Rainbow Dash and other mechs for great teamwork justice.

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 02:48 PM, said:

The only boats that die from you sneaking up on them are lowed skilled or you get lucky once in a while. Stop connecting a weapon choice with skill.

That's a little bit disingenuous. You're kind of doing the same thing if you think about it, since the weapon he is using is just as much of a weapon choice as the one you are making. Example: if I am in a Locust, I can close to "safe" engagement range with a missile boat in a little under 17 seconds*. This is of course assuming that I am simply running in a straight line toward you across a plain with literally no cover. Due to the map design of this game, such a scenario is unlikely in the extreme, especially given that even were such a situation to occur, I would probably not attempt to engage from that distance if I had the slightest inkling that you were facing my way, which I would in a perfectly coverless scenario.

A far more probable occurrence would be that some cover exists between the hypothetical start positions of our mechs, which in conjunction with the ubiquitous radar deprivation module would cause you to lose lock on my mech at any time I broke line of sight betwixt us. If it takes missiles 1 second to lock on given perfect aim on your part (another improbability) I would have to break line of sight every 47 meters or so to avoid missile damage. However, this does not take into account the flight time of the missiles themselves, which means that at extended ranges I could have as much as an additional 8 seconds (if the projectile velocity value in the wiki is correct and in meters per second) to break contact, though this number goes down as I close the gap to a minimum value of 1.5 seconds at 180m as I enter the "safe" envelope.

Theory aside, I have found this to be an immensely easy thing to do on countless occasions. LRM-boats tend to be vulnerable to speed brawlers. I'm not saying that they're bad, but I will say that they have an Atlas's tonnage in downsides and should be used in conjunction with other weapons. Every time. All of them.

*calculated as (1000m-180m)/47m/s

MadWOPR, on 08 April 2015 - 05:06 PM, said:

LRM Atlas Shrugged

I should really get un-lazy and do an Atlas Shrugged battletech meme sometime. That'd be awesome.

[YCSLiesmith]

Fenrisulvyn, on 08 April 2015 - 05:30 PM, said:

And I killed dozens, even hundreds of brawler noobs who didn't know what they are doing. That doesn't make brawler builds gimpy.

Brawling is actually also a deeply suboptimal play, sorry friend

Tim East, on 08 April 2015 - 05:31 PM, said:

LOL, I love it when you make that comparison. It literally never gets old. Or at least, it hasn't yet. LRMs are pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as flamers. I still run flamers more often though, because they have a much higher fun value for me.

Flamers are only good in mechs with cockpit energy slots. wolverine breathing fire ftw

[Tim East]

YCSLiesmith, on 08 April 2015 - 05:34 PM, said:

Brawling is actually also a deeply suboptimal play, sorry friend

Doesn't stop me from loving every minute of it. Games exist for fun, and I get the most fun brawling. /argument

[Tim East]

YCSLiesmith, on 08 April 2015 - 05:39 PM, said:

also I wouldn't say 'i turned out fine' to a bunch of guys who are carefully avoiding calling you a noob because that's against the rules.

Hey now, no need to be rude. I've played with Fenris and he's fine. Let's stay on topic dudes. LRMs are not great, but hypothetical challenge scenario for you YCSLiesmith. You have to take an assault and you have to put at least 20 tubes of LRMs on it. Which one and why?

[Tim East]

You dudes are making me facepalm. Stop being petty just because you disagree and actually try and discuss the actual question asked by the OP.

alby910, on 05 April 2015 - 03:11 PM, said:

Hi

I would like to know which are the best MECH modules for an LRM Boat . Also which are the best Assault Mechs for an LRM boat . Catapults are fine however they can't carry much ammo

Thanks

Here it is in case you forgot. He's not asking for a discussion of LRM utility in general; he's asking what method is optimal for the use of that weapon in a given weight class. If you aren't going to be constructive, don't waste time with posting antagonistic nonsense.

[InRev]

Is this the part of the thread where I link screenshots of matches where I've killed 5+ people while doing comparatively small amounts of damage because I was able to use lasers/ballistics to dump all my damage into: side torsos for XL kills; CTs for assault kills; and legs for light kills?

Seriously, LRMs are bad because you can't use them like a scalpel to peel off or smash vital areas like you can with direct fire weapons. An individual can easily kill a heavy with around 100 damage using a proper weapon. Sandblasters like LRMs and Streaks will always be inferior to pinpoint weapons as player ability increases.

In other words, LRMs suffer from diminishing returns from skill. That is why we are trying to steer the newbies away from them. They're a dead-end weapon outside of the underhive.

[Stealth Fox]

InRev, on 08 April 2015 - 06:19 PM, said:

Seriously, LRMs are bad because you can't use them like a scalpel to peel off or smash vital areas like you can with direct fire weapons. An individual can easily kill a heavy with around 100 damage using a proper weapon. Sandblasters like LRMs and Streaks will always be inferior to pinpoint weapons as player ability increases.

I've actually found relatively decent softening efforts come from a Mad Dog and 6 lrm 5s, see what opens up on him and close in for the kill with Clan Lasers. Anything other then a 5 does to much spread and if they have AMS the 5 gets nullified even with in 150 feet. so .. still not amazing..

[Kilo 40]

my rule of thumb is, 1.5 tons of ammo for every 5 tubes.

so an lrm5 gets 1.5 tons of ammo. an lrm15 gets 4.5 tones. 2 lrm10s get 6 tons, 2 lrm15s get 9 tons, etc...

it's worked very very well for me. from lights to assaults.