167 replies to this topic

[Stingray Productions]

YCSLiesmith, on 08 April 2015 - 10:09 AM, said:

this is the only reasonable argument for LRMs. if you're on some ancient pentium 2 from the 90s with AOL dial up, and you absolutely must play Mechwarrior, then sure, LRMs are your best option.

ha ha, i had a crappy computer at work with 10-14 fps. LRMS were the only weapons I could hit things with.

[Repasy Cooper]

YCSLiesmith, on 08 April 2015 - 09:49 AM, said:

I'm sorry you think that thoughtful advice from experienced players is trolling. it isn't at all. LRMs are bad for new players, leading you to learn the wrong habits and capping your skill at a fairly low level. they do not make matches fun, the matches would be just as fun if everyone used actual good weapons. what they do is separate people into victims and predators, and while that's fun for the newbie predator, it's the kind of thing that frustrates new players. [Redacted]

I completely disagree. Missiles are a part of this game whether you like it or not. As such, it would be WISE for new players to learn the mechanics of the weapon and how to counter effectively. If anything, laser boats are more trollish right now than lrm boats lmao, where have you been? But frankly I've got nothing against boating ANY weapon type. It's an effective build!

What is UNWISE is completely relying on missiles AND not knowing anything else. However, that can be said for ANY weapon type. The most important thing in this game is knowing all of your options, and then either combining a variety of weapon types into a build to let you fill multiple roles OR investing in a single weapon type (missile boat, laser boat, whatever) and knowing which situations to capitalize on or avoid.

I totally despise the general hatred towards missiles. People bash lrm boats either because they themselves can't figure out how to use them effectively, or they've been ripped apart by them constantly and can't figure out how to torso-twist and use cover effectively. It's all just noobish whining.

So to the OP I say this: Don't let other people's personal opinion affect yours. Missile boats are both tactically and strategically effective, so by all means capitalize on lrms if you want to! Haters gonna hate. So all the power to you.

EDIT:

To add one last note however (for OP), strongly consider the use of tag when boating missiles. You may decide you don't need it, and that's fine. Personally, I think it really boosts the effectiveness of your own missiles if you carry one yourself and don't leave it to others to bother to take some narc or tag. Biggest mistake missile-boaters make is assuming they won't ever have to spot for their own fire.

Edited by GM Patience, 09 April 2015 - 03:27 PM.

[Richter Kerensky]

Ironically, torso twisting is almost completely ineffective against LRMs since they're usually flying at you from above and always spread out to hit several components anyway. This doesn't make LRMs actually good, but using 'you aren't torso twisting' as a reason for why a player who claims LRMs are garbage because they don't do anything useful and every other weapon is better is secretly being constantly destroyed by them is like three different levels of stupid.

[InRev]

Repasy, on 08 April 2015 - 10:13 AM, said:

I totally despise the general hatred towards missiles. People bash lrm boats either because they themselves can't figure out how to use them effectively, or they've been ripped apart by them constantly and can't figure out how to torso-twist and use cover effectively. It's all just noobish whining.

People bash LRM boats because they're useless against players with half a brain. Their slow speed means their travel time is stupidly long at range, making LRM boats utterly worthless against gauss or lasers, and their huge minimum range makes them useless against brawlers entirely. They are best at medium range, but are still worthless because you have to stare at your target in order to maintain lock. Any competent player will utterly obliterate your CT while you stare at them, sandblasting away with ineffective LRMs and turning their entire paperdoll yellow.

Did I also mention ECM and Radar Derp? Congrats, you now also have to add extra tonnage to your boat in the form of tag or NARC to even get the bare minimum out of your mech.

Anyone who gets "ripped apart" by LRMs is either: a) very new and lacks map awareness and knowledge of mech and weapon capabilities; b ) a joystick-using underhive-dweller.

Repasy, on 08 April 2015 - 10:13 AM, said:

So to the OP I say this: Don't let other people's personal opinion affect yours. Missile boats are both tactically and strategically effective, so by all means capitalize on lrms if you want to! Haters gonna hate. So all the power to you.

They are not tactically effective, and since this game is an arena shooter, there is no strategically effective. For any weapon. Period. Strategy applies to a level beyond the tactical and operational, something this game lacks.

The people in this thread who are bashing LRMs are doing so because they actually understand the game at all levels of play. I, personally, want LRMs to not be wasted tonnage but that would require an incredible revamp of the way they work, they way they interact with ECM and the way they provide indirect fire.

Considering I don't actually believe in miracles, we're probably going to be stuck with the current trash implementation of LRMs, meaning no one who actually cares about new player experience should ever recommend them, especially on heavies or assaults. It is a far more humane thing to teach newbies how to use direct fire because it will serve them well as they get more experience, instead of saddling them a weapon system that actually becomes worse as they get better.

[Johny Rocket]

The guy above has an opinion. Some pilots do very well with LRMs. Awesome way to grind cbills because of the high bonus count.
Kintaro 18, or GB. The (c) version of the 18 comes with 5 lrm5s, doesn't sound impressive until you subtract the cooldown quirks and drop in a tier 5 cooldown module. Build the 18 out to the (c) specs drop the mpl and run a ml , BAPs and tag. You can now stalk ecm mechs with extra bonuses.
This will leave you 10 tons for ammo and have a heat of 1.55.
Work between 250-750m depending on the terrain. The missiles exit at a good angle so you can stand behind something with very little mech exposed while you spot for yourself and rain the pain in a way that makes them run from you.Seriously this thing is a missile hose.
With that much ammo you can do some area denial so your team can advance.
With out speed tweak the xl300 gets you 88.4kph so you can get into position and out of danger in a way that heavier mechs with this many missile hard points can only dream of.
This mech has good survivability and no one on your team will be mad because you aren't on the frontline playing meat shield for them.
The more aggressive you play the more this mech comes into its own. Its got great take off and stopping, especially with elite tier completely unlocked.
1 of my favorite tacticts at range is to use the speed and travel times of the lrms to maximize time in cover. I'll jump out lock a target fire of a good wad of missiles and duck back in for a sec and then back out to reestablish lock just as the missiles are just getting their. This is really bad news for fat assault mechs crossing open spaces.

Edited by Tractor Joe, 08 April 2015 - 11:42 AM.

[An Anime Princess]

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 11:28 AM, said:

The guy above has an opinion. Some pilots do very well with LRMs. Awesome way to grind cbills because of the high bonus count.
Kintaro 18, or GB. The (c) version of the 18 comes with 5 lrm5s, doesn't sound impressive until you subtract the cooldown quirks and drop in a tier 5 cooldown module. Build the 18 out to the (c) specs drop the mpl and run a ml , BAPs and tag. You can now stalk ecm mechs with extra bonuses.
This will leave you 10 tons for ammo and have a heat of 1.55.
Work between 250-750m depending on the terrain. The missiles exit at a good angle so you can stand behind something with very little mech exposed while you spot for yourself and rain the pain in a way that makes them run from you.Seriously this thing is a missile hose.
With that much ammo you can do some area denial so your team can advance.
With out speed tweak the xl300 gets you 88.4kph so you can get into position and out of danger in a way that heavier mechs with this many missile hard points can only dream of.
This mech has good survivability and no one on your team will be mad because you aren't on the frontline playing meat shield for them.
The more aggressive you play the more this mech comes into its own. Its got great take off and stopping, especially with elite tier completely unlocked.
1 of my favorite tacticts at range is to use the speed and travel times of the lrms to maximize time in cover. I'll jump out lock a target fire of a good wad of missiles and duck back in for a sec and then back out to reestablish lock just as the missiles are just getting their. This is really bad news for fat assault mechs crossing open spaces.

lrms are complete garbage and the best players in the game are all lining up to tell you that they're garbage. [Redacted]

they're a bad weapon and you could accomplish so much more if you learned to go wild with gauss.

[Johny Rocket]

My Stalker 5M calls BS on your opinion




My Kintaro concurs


Its math and skill.
Not every one who lrm boats stays 800m in the back. They are a cbill grinding phenomenon because unlike lasers you dont target 1 area for a low dmg kill, you have to wreck a mech completely which sometimes produces an annoying ammount of writing on the HUD.
If you go in with the decent minimum of 1800 lrms you can miss 70% still have 540 dmg, thats if you never fire your laser.
If you do a lot of fast flanking in something like a Kintaro with tag and baps you can do better than 30% hits.
I do use lasers as well on several builds, Half my mechs are laser only, KTO 19 has 2 erll and 4 lrm5s. So no Im not off in some Lrm fairytale.
What an lrm boat can do that you can not with lasers or guns is wreck someone who never saw you, doesn't matter if its from 1100m over 2 ridges or at 200m over a building, its a tactical advantage you get no other way.

Lrms are also far superior for holding enemies in choke points and denying them areas of the map.

Im only a moderate player with 6 months total playing the game and make no claim at being the best in the game (or having the best gaming rig) Boating worked in MW3-4 and in MWO.

[Richter Kerensky]

Self-selecting for matches where you do well in a bad mech doesn't make it a good mech. Case in point:



(Check out Sputty's damage, and what mech he was driving.)

[Richter Kerensky]

Also, "look at how much damage I did with my LRMs" is misleading because it's spread all over different components, which means you're not actually killing someone or even disabling them by destroying their components... notice that in two out of three of those matches you only have one kill despite dealing 1000 and 800 damage respectively. You yourself mention that LRMs, unlike lasers, don't kill people at low damage values, which means you have to shoot a LOT of LRMs to have a similar effect that shooting someone with lasers would. All LRMs really accomplish is making your scoreboard look good.

Edited by Richter Kerensky, 08 April 2015 - 01:21 PM.

[Stickjock]

Jumping in to remind everyone to stay on topic and if you are going to post, keep it helpful.

Carry on all.

[Harvey Batchall Kerensky at Law]

Richter Kerensky, on 08 April 2015 - 01:20 PM, said:

Also, "look at how much damage I did with my LRMs" is misleading because it's spread all over different components, which means you're not actually killing someone or even disabling them by destroying their components... notice that in two out of three of those matches you only have one kill despite dealing 1000 and 800 damage respectively. You yourself mention that LRMs, unlike lasers, don't kill people at low damage values, which means you have to shoot a LOT of LRMs to have a similar effect that shooting someone with lasers would. All LRMs really accomplish is making your scoreboard look good.

It's almost like his screenshot measuring proved the exact opposite point. Spreading 1000 damage all over a bunch of mechs isn't as effective as doing half that to one or two components and actually getting kills, which is how you win.

[Johny Rocket]

Richter Kerensky, on 08 April 2015 - 01:13 PM, said:

Self-selecting for matches where you do well in a bad mech doesn't make it a good mech. Case in point:



(Check out Sputty's damage, and what mech he was driving.)

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I have have high damage matches in what you consider a crap build with junk weapons, if it was junk I wouldn't have anything to show you.
I have a STK 4N with 6 LL and a STD 300 and can hill hump and heat manage with the best of them and have never came close to the 5M with 3 lrm5, 2lrm10 1 erll and tag with the stock STD 255.

[Richter Kerensky]

Again! High damage isn't an indicator of how well you're actually doing because LRMs spread damage everywhere and are poor at actually disabling or destroying mechs! Did you notice that you only had a single kill in the matches where you did 1000 and 800 damage? If you did that amount of damage in a mech that was using lasers or ballistics you'd almost certainly have three or four kills. You win the game by killing enemy mechs.

Edited by Richter Kerensky, 08 April 2015 - 01:32 PM.

[Harvey Batchall Kerensky at Law]

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 01:30 PM, said:

[Redacted]

No one is calling him a [Redacted], stop projecting. What you have is 6 pages of people either saying "dont use LRMs", people trying to defend a garbage weapon, and people calling out people for telling a new player to play with a subpar weapon system.

When someone is mindlessly clicking LRMs at me, I usually walk 10 feet from where I'm standing and become magically immune because terrain is magic. If they are actually looking at me, I just shoot them with direct fire weapons that do more damage and walk at them until their super strategic weapon system bounces off of me for no damage.

Edited by GM Patience, 09 April 2015 - 03:39 PM.

[YCSLiesmith]

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 01:11 PM, said:

My Stalker 5M calls BS on your opinion

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.

Tractor Joe, on 08 April 2015 - 01:30 PM, said:

[Redacted]

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.

Stickjock, on 08 April 2015 - 01:26 PM, said:

Jumping in to remind everyone to stay on topic and if you are going to post, keep it helpful.

Carry on all.

I would think that everyone can agree that this whole discussion is positive and helpful, even the parts where people call one another trolls and noobs.

[Richter Kerensky]

Yeah if we're talking about area denial and punishing people for staying stationary behind cover, large lasers and gauss rifles do a much better job at the former and airstrikes do a much better job at the latter than LRMs. Airstrikes also have the benefit of not requiring a lock to deal damage to enemies behind obstacles.

[Johny Rocket]

Richter Kerensky, on 08 April 2015 - 01:31 PM, said:

Again! High damage isn't an indicator of how well you're actually doing because LRMs spread damage everywhere and are poor at actually disabling or destroying mechs! Did you notice that you only had a single kill in the matches where you did 1000 and 800 damage? If you did that amount of damage in a mech that was using lasers or ballistics you'd almost certainly have three or four kills. You win the game by killing enemy mechs.

The high damage to kill is the point not an issue. Its a bonus harvesting game, Kill most damage dealt and kill assist are both more profitable than a kill and the situation with spread damage leads to a lot of component destroyed bonuses. I don't aim to kill I aim to severely maim as many mechs as I can. My teammates can have the kill on mechs that are torn up, by the number of components destroyed I get most times thier missing things. I know how to read when Im hitting or not. I prioritize targets and ecm mechs and mechs engaging teammates aggressively are prime targets.

The reason why I get lower scores with the Kintaro is because I kill to many of them to fast.

Besides the fact my play style is a bonus to my teammates I have goals set and I play to meet them, modules and engines are expensive. I have a few mechs that the modules are twice the value of the machine.

I don't understand the logic of claiming they are just crap when you can see matches where a couple of good lrm pilots hold it together for their team.
I really don't get the amount of vehemence for lrms. I understand if your problem was the number of bad lrm boaters, me to, means my lance mates usually can't be counted on if I need them.
Is it for everyone? No, because it is actually not easy to do right. Doing it right pays off in a lot of 150K+ cbill matches doing it wrong is a disaster. But thats the same for every weapon in the game.
Some people come to this game with this play style already, like me, distance combat is what I excel at. I play the KTO 19 with 4 lrm5s and 2 erll laser pretty well to, Adv zoom and just switch up roles as I need to at 97.2kph.

Edited by Tractor Joe, 08 April 2015 - 02:11 PM.

[Romeo Deluxe]

YCSLiesmith, on 08 April 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

That last paragraph is really disingenuous. You'll never see LRMs among the truly competitive players, and the people who say tehy are OP are universally the same people who talk about tryhards or include disclaimers about how they're noobs. You can speak for yourself and say you believe LRMs have their place but please lets not pretend that it is a hotly contested issue. It's not, the vast majority of actual good players will immediately dismiss anyone with LRMs as not on their level. And they'll be right.

your unit has some people who would like to be competitive someday. do they really use LRMs, or encourage anyone to use them?

as for liking to have lrms so you have something to do while you maneuver, this is simply a placebo. you're not going to be doing real damage with a couple of lrm tubes, you'll just feel like you are, it's a nice but ultimately empty pleasure because you believe you're contributing. I suspect you'll find your damage totals dont go up at all compared to the lrm-free version. in fact I'd bet that a stalker with a superfluous LRM would do LESS damage, since you've probably dropped a laser or heatsink for the weapon. Assault mechs take a while to march up to the enemy or the top of a ridge, but when they do they manage to put out massive hurt and drill holes in the enemy. it is the responsibility of lighter, faster mechs to pin their opponents in place and soften them up for the stalker beams or direwolf gauss to wipe them out. LRMs don't really have a place in that system, they just adulterate the power the Assault has.

Can we stop with the Elo-peening? I saw a post from someone analyzing this notion of competitive play and he concluded that at any given time there are only 8 - 10 competitive groups in the entire game. Most people will never join a unit just like in the last 15 years of MMO history most of the gamers will never join a guild let alone a self proclaimed competitive guild. How do you keep your units numbers low? Advertise you are a competitive guild.

Anyways, OP here are more thoughts on the subject of LRM's. Pay particular attention to the title of the post, it's very relevant.
IS Suppression LRM Mech

Before the ghost heat days I ran an AC2 suppression Jagger because I personally detested the AC40 easy win Jagger's. I can attest to the usefulness to a suppression build in PUG's. It's an overlooked role because it doesn't produce the kill counts but believe me you are helping the team win. Then AC2's and screen shake got nerfed/balanced, however it is still there and can be used on the enemy. If you can keep 4 opponents off a ridge while your team mops up you are playing at a high Elo level no matter what these misdirected Elo-peeners say.

Anyways, as stated in my first post I only goof off with LRM's as I prefer a different play-style. If you do choose them at least use them as effectively as possible.

Edited by Romeo Deluxe, 08 April 2015 - 02:26 PM.

[jss78]

MadWOPR, on 08 April 2015 - 10:32 AM, said:

[Redacted],

I have no issue with the argument that LRMs are a suboptimal weapon in competitive play, but I guess I do take issue with the spirit in which the previous point is being made here, as if it were some generally relevant or useful truth.

I have in my time played tons of computer games in lots of suboptimal or downright goofy ways. The simple truth is that it was the single best way to play the games. Why? Because it humoured me at the time. And as it's my spare time we're talking about, that's really -- really -- the only thing that makes the slightest bit of difference.

If competitive play with "meta" builds gives you pleasure, I'm not judging you at all. But please try to take a broad view and understand that your approach to the game is in no way at all superior to whatever it is that happens to please another person at a given time.

(On a personal note, I have never used LRMs.)

Edited by GM Patience, 09 April 2015 - 03:45 PM.

[Richter Kerensky]

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.