Posted 17 July 2015 - 04:05 PM
So how many of you are willing to work on LRMs until they're directly competitive with Gauss rifles and ER lasers in direct-fire distance engagements, since you're all pulling so hard for indirect fire to be removed?
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to rework the system myself if I could, but most of the posts I've seen on the subject are "let's make LRMs massively more difficult to use, both direct and indirect, make indirect impossible altogether unless you have a spotter with TAG, NARC, and a UAV up. Oh, and I suppose we'll throw the damn dirty Lurmers a bone and give them a couple of insignificant buffs to missile velocity, like maybe 10%, so they feel a little better despite the weapons still actually being completely suicidal in a direct-fire engagement."
How 'bout this, instead (ignoring ECM for a moment, working purely on LRM mechanics):
-To fire LRMs, one must obtain a lock. One lock, one firing. To fire again, a second lock must be obtained. No more LRM-5 chainfire spam, or at least notably reduced LRM-5 chainfire spam. Overall refire rate of missile salvos is thus reduced.
-Once a lock has been obtained and missiles have been fired (and thusly the lock is lost), the missiles are locked on and cannot be unlocked. if the missile machine gets a bead on you for long enough to send a flight of missiles your way, you're either behind sufficient cover when they arrive or you're eating those missiles.
-LRM flight speed is doubled, LRM salvo spread is halved. if I get a lock on you and fire, and you get caught out by it, then you are taking damage. A lot of it. No natural-spread placing half the missiles over every single body part, and the other half of the missiles on the ground around you. If I have a thirty-missile salvo and send it your way, prepare to eat thirty damage. Sure, it'll spread around a few components, but you don't get to just shrug it off as being as inconsequential as single AC/2 fire.
-Artemis halves missile spread again and reduces lock time by 33%. If you have an Artemis launcher, you should see a significant improvement in your groupings. Furthermore, and on a semi-related tangent, the only way for you people to get what you want and have Piranha return G-ECM to its canonical role is if the electronic devices G-ECM is supposed to counter are worth countering. Artemis currently blows nuts, as do TAG and Active Probes outside their ECM-countering ability. Fix that, and you fix G-ECM not having a reason to exist without its sensor interference abilities. Anyways.
-Increase launcher cycle times, if necessary, to shift LRM machines from facederping spambuckets more towards a style involving carefully selected shots which are very powerful if landed. A Trebuchet playing Lurmisher behind your lines should be a Serious Gahdamn Problem, not a minor annoyance shrugged off while you focus on the pair of Locusts currently threatening you. Lock, fire, defensive twisting/retreat, and then repeat. Not lock, hold lock, and stare at opponent until launchers run dry. This also solves LRM machines needing to bring absolutely ludicrous amounts of ammunition to the table - nothing in this game needs ten tons of ammo, and if it does then it needs redone.
RESULTS: LRMs, in a system like this, would still, theoretically, be 'no-skill noobtastic lock guns!", but the need to reacquire locks after every shot slows down their use and removes their ability to snapshot folks, like everything else not named Gauss Rifle can. On the other hand, LRM machines gain the desperately needed ability to utilize defensive twisting or retreat behind cover after firing, like absolutely everything else gets, and furthermore having faster, drastically more accurate missiles means that a machine which spends thirty tons on LRM launchers and ammunition is as dangerous as a machine which spends thirty tons on autocannons and ammunition, or a machine which spends thirty tons on lasers and heat sinks. Smaller launchers in singleton counts are made significantly more viable (theoretically) - single LRM-5s are still not really a great idea, but a single LRM-10 might not be a completely awful notion. Faster, more accurate missiles means LRMs also better reflect the relative ammo counts other shell weapons exhibit - you no longer need four tons of missiles per five tubes of launcher because two thirds of your ammo misses even when you hit with it.
Do that, and we can start talking about ECM no longer affecting sensors in any way. Though frankly it's still dumb as hell to expect an electronic warfare system to not...y'know, interfere with electronics. I mean maybe that's just me, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what else it's supposed to be good for if it doesn't screw with an enemy's stuff.
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Hotthedd, on 17 July 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:
