384 replies to this topic

[Dirkdaring]

Laservomit.

It's getting old already, you noobs need to come up with a new catchphrase already.

[Ragtag soldier]

Dirkdaring, on 30 May 2015 - 06:32 AM, said:

Laservomit.

It's getting old already, you noobs need to come up with a new catchphrase already.

noobbeaming! all i see is clan 'mechs noobbeaming anymore....yeah, i can use this.

[Moomtazz]

My biggest problem with LRMs is indirect fire and the fact that mutliple LRM mechs can assist the same target even if they do not have LOS on it.

Other than that, OP lumps FPS shooter "manual" skills in with positioning and tactical skills. I think they are different things. All weapon systems take positioning and tactics to use,and the better you are at it, the more "skillful" you are in that sense. Being skilled in a "manual dexterity FPS" sense is something LRMs do not require but all other weapon systems do. Targeting a component while both parties are moving takes "skill".

I guess it is really all a matter of semantics. From Webster:


^"2skill

noun

: the ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice
Full Definition of SKILL


1
obsolete : cause, reason

2
a : the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance
b : dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks
3
: a learned power of doing something competently : a developed aptitude or ability <language skills> "

So by definition LRM noobs can be skilled! I will have to adjust my ingame criticism to say " no-skill(2b) LRM nubs"

[Satan n stuff]

Ragtag soldier, on 30 May 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:

noobbeaming! all i see is clan 'mechs noobbeaming anymore....yeah, i can use this.

[Rule34 image of an Atlas getting beamed by a Timberwolf]

[Johny Rocket]

Kyynele, on 30 May 2015 - 06:17 AM, said:

The problem with LRMs is that they're very unreliable against good players,

Prove this with something other than opinion or conjecture. I don't claim to be a highly skilled player, I get owned by lrms fairly regularly. There are several situations where you have to expose yourself to the risk of being hit by them, or you are doing exactly what most lament lrms for, hiding in the back.

[Joseph Mallan]

Moomtazz, on 30 May 2015 - 06:34 AM, said:

My biggest problem with LRMs is indirect fire and the fact that mutliple LRM mechs can assist the same target even if they do not have LOS on it.

Other than that, OP lumps FPS shooter "manual" skills in with positioning and tactical skills. I think they are different things. All weapon systems take positioning and tactics to use,and the better you are at it, the more "skillful" you are in that sense. Being skilled in a "manual dexterity FPS" sense is something LRMs do not require but all other weapon systems do. Targeting a component while both parties are moving takes "skill".

I guess it is really all a matter of semantics. From Webster:


^"2skill

noun

: the ability to do something that comes from training, experience, or practice
Full Definition of SKILL


1
obsolete : cause, reason

2
a : the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance
b : dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks
3
: a learned power of doing something competently : a developed aptitude or ability <language skills> "

So by definition LRM noobs can be skilled! I will have to adjust my ingame criticism to say " no-skill(2b) LRM nubs"

Indirect fire

[Bishop Steiner]

Aresye Kerensky, on 30 May 2015 - 12:37 AM, said:

Skill exists.

It's why players like TwinkieOverlord, Heimdelight, and JagerXII manage to outperform everybody else.

Players like them were the top when dual gauss K2s were the meta, they were the top when PPCs/AC5s were the meta, and they are STILL at the top now that lasers are the meta.

If all these metas are always "no-skill," and, "easy to do," then why are the same players always at the top? Why do they always win matches? Why do they always do absurd damage and kills?

After the most recent nerf patch, guess who the top players are now? SAME ONES!

People need to seriously stop complaining. These players are just flat out better than you, and even if you devolved the game all the way down to nothing but flamers, they would STILL kick your butts. All you end up doing is making the game more frustrating for everybody else.

Skill, indeed, exists.

Not sure what the rest of your post has to do with the topic, but we can agree, that skill does exist. Likely we disagree about the specifics that constitute skill, though.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 30 May 2015 - 06:50 AM.

[ztac]

LRM are exactly what PGI want, An easy no skill required entry level weapon. Laser vomit as you call it requires a lot more skill and exposes you to direct fire. Lasers are in no way anywhere near the most OP weapons in the game and require management, unlike the joke that is LRM.....

[Bishop Steiner]

ztac, on 30 May 2015 - 06:47 AM, said:

LRM are exactly what PGI want, An easy no skill required entry level weapon. Laser vomit as you call it requires a lot more skill and exposes you to direct fire. Lasers are in no way anywhere near the most OP weapons in the game and require management, unlike the joke that is LRM.....

I'm guessing you tell yourself that to feel better after LRMs kill you, yes?

[Ragtag soldier]

Moomtazz, on 30 May 2015 - 06:34 AM, said:

My biggest problem with LRMs is indirect fire and the fact that mutliple LRM mechs can assist the same target even if they do not have LOS on it.

so your biggest problem is you get suckered into a trap, like a noob does, and you want to blame the weapon for it instead of learning to spot when someone it pulling you into a trap with the promise of easy kills.

[Johny Rocket]

ztac, on 30 May 2015 - 06:47 AM, said:

LRM are exactly what PGI want, An easy no skill required entry level weapon. Laser vomit as you call it requires a lot more skill and exposes you to direct fire. Lasers are in no way anywhere near the most OP weapons in the game and require management, unlike the joke that is LRM.....

prove any of that in any quantifiable way. Also go back to page 7 watch the vid I post that invalidates your argument.

Edited by Tractor Joe, 30 May 2015 - 06:55 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Lord Scarlett Johan, on 30 May 2015 - 01:48 AM, said:

The difference is that the average player is spreading the damage all over the mech and into the air with lasers, same as with LRMs. While high skill players are melting holes through the same spot.

And highly skilled players can use LRMs very effectively, too. No, you can't fully control the location hit, but simply being able to maintain locks, break ecm, effectively use them, (ranged between 200-500 meters recommended), does indeed, take considerable skill. It's not the same skill as holding your pipper in place, and that is where the fallacy lies, that one skill is superior, on average, than the other. Or that to use either one effectively, somehow requires less skill.

Again, go check your accuracy. Lasers at at the top of % for a reason, just as LRMs are near or at the bottom of % for just about everyone, for a reason.

Anybody can puke missiles uselessly. Just as anyone can scribble in the sky with their litebrites. Not everyone can do what Jman5 can with missiles. That simple fact does indeed imply, SKILL.

[Bishop Steiner]

AEgg, on 30 May 2015 - 06:28 AM, said:

If you are using LRMs and relying on locks from other people, you're doing it wrong. Arguing that LRMs are easier because you can fire them from behind cover at a target an ally is holding is like arguing that lasers are easy because you can fire them at a building with an enemy behind it. Neither of the two things works.

LRMs are harder to use effectively because your aim (which just about everyone already has due to playing other FPS games) won't get you very far. If you just mindlessly amble toward your enemies with LRMs, you're dead before you can fire. If you try to peek and shoot like you can with lasers or ballistics, you won't get a lock and if you do you'll just hit terrain.

For lasers to be effective, all you have to do is aim, which isn't a difficult skill, and most of us already have it. For LRMs to be effective, you have to actually outplay your opponent. Hence why they're not good for high-level play, because two teams of roughly equivalent skill won't be able to outplay each other.

This.

Well, and that because the nature of high level play seems to cater to fast zerg rushes, and LRMs, between lock times and crappy projectiles speeds just can't match the DPS or PP-FLD alphas of other systems, in the blitzkrieg fights usually seen,, there.

The simple fact that they are a sub optimal weapon system because of their glaring weaknesses, is another indicator of just how much skill is involved to actually be consistently effective with them.

That said, in Team/CW drops, I rarely bring them myself (ok, actually, I have..2-3 mechs set up around them period, so even in Solo, I seldom bring them, and if I do it's probably my 4J) simply because they are too slow to counter that tactic. Only time I will is I do like to rotate my 6XLRM5 MDD into my Clan DropDeck. But that's more the effectiveness it has against 95% of teams you encounter. Against a true comp team, well, not so hot.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Thunder Child, on 29 May 2015 - 07:07 PM, said:

Incorrect. Sarna, and all the Battletech Master Rules both state that the reason Inner Sphere LRMs have a minimum range is due to them firing at a Ballistic Angle, resulting in reduced accuracy at short range. Clan LRMs do not have this flaw, because they were designed for honourable one on one duels, not engaging an enemy indirectly at long range.

Edit: I believe the Fallacy of Minimum Arming Distance came up in one of the novels, and has since become Fact. Much like "Stackpoling".

Huh thats new, I always read it was because the warheads dont arm till that range. Hence the point of hot loading the LRMs in the launcher

Bishop Steiner, on 30 May 2015 - 06:51 AM, said:

I'm guessing you tell yourself that to feel better after LRMs kill you, yes?

He definitely doesnt play them

[Unit47]

Tractor Joe, on 30 May 2015 - 06:36 AM, said:

Prove this with something other than opinion or conjecture. I don't claim to be a highly skilled player, I get owned by lrms fairly regularly. There are several situations where you have to expose yourself to the risk of being hit by them, or you are doing exactly what most lament lrms for, hiding in the back.

You may want to watch some RHOD/MRBC/general high level play footage.

[Kyynele]

Tractor Joe, on 30 May 2015 - 06:36 AM, said:

Prove this with something other than opinion or conjecture. I don't claim to be a highly skilled player, I get owned by lrms fairly regularly. There are several situations where you have to expose yourself to the risk of being hit by them, or you are doing exactly what most lament lrms for, hiding in the back.

In higher level play, you don't get to have practically any facetime with your enemies. If you're in the open, you will have about 5 guys shooting at you. And LRMs are the least of your problems at that point, when direct fire is tearing you to shreds before any possible LRMs could even reach you. The people know how to position themselves, and thus are shooting from positions that they can swiftly back to cover from. Everyone has Radar Deprivation, and when you have that, you don't even need ECM. If you get a missile warning, you take 2 steps back to cover, 1 step to the side, all LRMs whoosh by you, and you peek again to shoot at the enemies, this time with shorter facetime so that they don't get a lock again. Radar derp breaks the lock they're getting every time you get out of sight. You don't need any huge cover to get away from LRMs, you just have to get out of sight and out of the line they're coming in. It's easy, and it's really more of a hindrance than even an annoyance.

At this level, if people still get missile warning after they've backed back to cover, the first reaction is to look at the sky and shoot down that UAV. Typical UAVs don't last more than seconds anyway, and their main function isn't even to get locks for LRMers, it's just to quickly show everyone in your team where the enemies are. Information is valuable, easily worth that 40k if it leads to a win.

Hiding in the back is bad play. In all maps, you can advance using cover, and use direct fire to keep the opposition down while you're doing that. In these cases direct fire is always better than LRMs, it typically hits the target before LRMs even get a lock. Focused direct fire takes mechs down much faster than the same amount of damage dealt by LRM boats, so pushing against a team with LRM boats is generally always favorable even if you do get some losses in that. The LRM boats in the back will get some nice damage numbers while their team dies for them, but they won't win the match once their meatshield is down and enemies flood within their min range.

I trust that you can understand, that if each side only sees glimpses of the other while trading, the side that deals the damage right away will always win against the side that has to get a lock, then wait for the missiles to fly over to the enemy, and hope that the enemy is still in the same position you last saw him.

I'm not claiming to be one of the great players here, but I do think my unit is pretty decent, and I've gotten to play in several highish level comp matches. I personally have played over 1000 matches in solo queues with my LRM A1, and have no personal bias to say LRMs are bad. I often do bring wildcard builds to our practice matches, and each time LRMs just have lost against direct fire.

Also, before joining WDMC, I did manage to get my A1 KDR closer to 4.0, without any hiding when about to lose a match BS. I think I'm OK in playing LRMs. In fact, I used to write in the forums about LRMs not being that bad, back in those times. This morning, I decided I'd take the same old A1 for a spin to get the last of those 30 point matches for the event, and could average only less than 200 damage per match with it. (Edit: we won those matches, so it's not because I died and couldn't do more, I just didn't get many good locks, and when I got one, I could only get in a few hits before they were in cover.) I'm sorry, I did not take screenshots of those matches, since I thought I would prefer not to remember them at all. I can only suspect that my time playing in groups with WDMC has bumped my Elo up to a level where LRMs are no longer viable, practically at all. Even solo.

I'll admit that most of the LRMs I see nowadays are in CW, in which they are pretty plentiful. Out of the matches WDMC has lost in CW (not counting matches with less than 4 people), 0% have been against teams with any significant amounts of LRMs.

I'm aware that this isn't really proof either, and don't even know what I could do that could be considered strong enough. This is what happens in the matches I get. Best I can do. Think of it what you will. I play alt accounts every now and then, and am very aware that the gameplay balance is very different for players of different level.

So that you could perhaps even humor yourself with the thought that I might not be completely talking out of my arse here, I did take screenshots this morning after switching from the A1 to the easymode Streakdog to get those last 30 point matches in solo queue. I think some of those EmP, Lord, SJR and 228 guys are considered somewhat good in the game, which hopefully is an indication that I'm at least not at the absolute bottom of Elo:

http://i.imgur.com/qxoRbtd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/x4E8q3D.jpg

Might of course just be matchmaker running out of players to match. Who knows.

Edited by Kyynele, 30 May 2015 - 08:31 AM.

[Ragtag soldier]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 30 May 2015 - 08:02 AM, said:

Huh thats new, I always read it was because the warheads dont arm till that range. Hence the point of hot loading the LRMs in the launcher

you're both right. clan LRMs arm in the launcher because they're intended to be used directly while IS LRM racks let the missiles arm in the air to avoid the whole "i accidentally fired into the roof i was under and a chunk of ferrocrete caved in my cockpit" thing that otherwise happens when you're shifting around to keep a good ballistic angle while maintaining cover, since in tabletop using indirect fire to kill your enemies is a very good tactic if you're skilled enough to use it right.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 30 May 2015 - 08:02 AM, said:

Huh thats new, I always read it was because the warheads dont arm till that range. Hence the point of hot loading the LRMs in the launcher



He definitely doesnt play them

From TechManual:

Quote

Introduced: 2300 (Terran Hegemony)
Developed for reach, rather than punch, long-range missile racks
are capable of indirect fire and a more concentrated dispersal of
warheads. LRMs are typically mounted and launched in five-tube
groups, with up to 20 tubes in a single rack, though Clan ProtoMechs
may pack smaller sets. Standard LRM launchers are quite versatile, and
can be easily upgraded with Artemis IV systems and even make use of
a variety of special munitions. Inner Sphere launchers, which derive
their impressive range from a ballistic launch angle, are notoriously
less accurate close-in, especially when compared to their smaller and
more compact Clan rivals. Nevertheless, their fl exibility and solid reliability
at long distances has kept LRM models like Delta Dart, Holly,
Shigunga and Valiant in production for centuries.

So as of the latest ruleset's fluff. It is a baiilistic launch angle that gives LRMs their minimum range.

It would help me out when my missiles are supposed to go OVER a hill and not straight into it. When the target is 200m beyond the hill!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 30 May 2015 - 08:11 AM.

[Johny Rocket]

Unit47, on 30 May 2015 - 08:03 AM, said:

You may want to watch some RHOD/MRBC/general high level play footage.

I have and the matches I saw all ended in brawls and the particular way I play lrms I would have done some murder against these guys.

Kyynele, on 30 May 2015 - 08:09 AM, said:

Might of course just be matchmaker running out of players to match. Who knows.

I only left that bit because of space not discounting anything you said or focusing on this part.

For most of your points there is a counter, some pilots have skill with LRMs and adversity is the mother of invention. As the new meta shifted in and my elo rose I adapted and developed my tactics to match. Like how I use AMS against the guy carrying it. I just fire off some shots at nothing so we can pinpoint and move in on the guy with it. Want an argument against ams.
I don't play on a team other than some friends and unit mates dropping in LFG, my schedule prevents it being practical.

I prefer mediums to anything else for lrms, you don't get to just hide from me. Plus I always carry some type of large laser/s as well as lrms.
If my ELO is up after, say, bashing comp points with my Misery(easy mode fun), I just bring my 4xlrm5 1xERLL Griff 2N sporting JJs and ecm, use my 97.2 kph and ecm to counter players who are skilled at dodging.

The fact lrms are not used more in team comp is not evidence they are bad.

[Gut]

AEgg, on 30 May 2015 - 06:28 AM, said:

For lasers to be effective, all you have to do is aim, which isn't a difficult skill, and most of us already have it.

I call BS on this.

90% of the player base doesn't know crap about aiming.