248 replies to this topic

[Luminis]

Xavori, on 02 March 2016 - 12:19 AM, said:

Let me begin by saying if you don't like playing LRM mechs, great. Don't play them. Play what you enjoy. But if you think they're useless or bad...well...you're wrong. And this is why...

I actually think your post highlights some of the issues a lot of players have with LRMs and people bringing LRMs, or, more specifically, boating LRMs.

You're loading enough ammo to deal 2520 damage, you're expecting two thirds to miss and to actually land 840 damage, an expectation you're seemingly falling short of. In essence, you're dedicating tonnage to that much weaponry and you're actually getting about one fifth of the possible damage out of it. By comparison, my WHM-6R (which has yet to be elited), loads five tons of AC10 ammo and averages just under 500 damage a match as well. That's pin-point damage, mind you, not damage that spreads all over the target(s) I'm shooting. It takes components down much more reliably and is much more efficient at using its ammo.

Being more weight efficient also means that you get to do similar damage numbers (in pin-point form, mind you) with lighter 'Mechs. You could dish out similar damage but take down more components or 'Mechs, even, with 'Mechs that are ten to twenty tons lighter than a Stalker.

Lastly, whether you're the kind of LRM boat that stays away from the fight entirely or one of the (imho, better) LURMers that actually sticks with the team and gets in there to a certain extend, you won't be front lining. Which, then, removes a considerable amount of armour from your own team's front line, especially if we're talking about assaults running LRMs. The same is obviously true for the sort of super long range sniper that tries to get involved as little as possible, but then again, I haven't seen as many people defending that sort of playstyle as there are people defending LRM boating

Now, that's not to say that one can't make LRMs work for you. I'm not saying a team can't win with LRM boats on their side or that a player can't do well with them. My impression, though, is that you're doing well / your team's winning despite there being LRM boats, not because of them.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

nah, LRM boats definitely help, they just work differently, require a different skillset and require different usage than most weapons

as i keep repeating over and over and yet again over again like a broken record - do not "directly" compare weapon systems that work differently

yes, LRM spreads damage more, and yes, some of them will always miss - but LRM fires almost the entire match, continuously, indirectly, with no face time "necessary", volley after volley, constantly either hitting someone or at least keeping their head down

you get MORE damage which will be not as focused - the degree you can focus your damage to partially depends on usage and the operator's skill - a ALRM 5 machine gun running around tagging people and constantly pouring out fire will have much tighter damage focus than a boat with standard LRM 15 or 20 firing blobs of missiles at targets further away, especially if it attempts to conserve ammo and not cooperating with a NARC/TAG... the successful LRM pilot's job is to get best of both worlds whenever possible

you can totally carry matches with LRM as an individual as long as you positition yourself correctly and use all the tools at your disposal (and you dont carry "only" LRMs, backup weaponry is important)
you can also totally carry matches as a small group if you have dedicated scouts with NARC and/or TAG, especially if they also work as harassers, and you support them from afar to devastate whatever they tie up

LRM is highly teamwork dependant - and it can make a well oiled team shine... but it can also nuke a crap team by "having less bodies in the front" if the team relies on brute strength over tactics to win

are they perfect? hell no, LRMs have a lot of issues... but its far from being a hinderance on the team, except a BAD team

Edited by Thunderbird Anthares, 04 March 2016 - 03:54 AM.

[McHoshi]

Xavori, on 02 March 2016 - 12:19 AM, said:

Now ask yourself how often you do 840 damage in a match?

That makes my day

[SQW]

If LRMs are any more powerful, my narc raven would be banned in pub queue. =)

[JigglyMoobs]

I have no problem with people bringing lrms if they stand right up front and face tank for people who:

A. actually need to aim
B. actually do the killing
C. actually do the halting of the enemy team

Since my lrm carrying teammates seem to almost never do this except by mistake, I've learned to be content with lrm boats that stand just behind me, providing extra fire and a few fractions of seconds of hesitation on the other team w.r. t. who to shoot.

Unfortunately, my reduced expectations are also rarely met, so 90% of the time I go to my default mental state, which is to hope that

A. there will be but a few lrm boats on my team
B. that the other team is bad and scared of lrms

My expectations thus set I'm disappointed only about 50% of the time.

[Luminis]

@Thunderbird Anthares, repeating something won't make me agree with it.

First, do LRMs do more damage? Well, the OP averages no more than I do with considerably lighter 'Mechs using direct fire weaons. Make of that what you will, but it fits my experence with LRM boats on my team. I rarely see one of them dish out a remarkable amount of damage.

Second, the no face time thing. That's great for the LRM boat I'm sure, not so much for the poor sods that have to go out and actually face the opposing team and their weaponry. This is all good if you're in the group queue with your mates providing the support you need - you set up your group accordingly and you've got people with you who are willing to support your LRMs. Don't expect strangers to do the leg work for you in solo queue, though. They probably did not sign up to cover you, provide NARCs and TAGs and use them to up your damage.

In the end, the LRM boat captains I've met in solo queue don't give a fudge about support and team play - at least from my point of view. It seems to be about farming some safe damage and yelling at everyone else when they get killed with sub 300 damage because "LOL U NO HIT R YOU SO BAD". Good for you if you want to do it with your 12 men eam and everyone likes it. Entirely different thing from what's happening in solo queue which is where you get to told to GTFO and get your own locks and such

[GreenHell]

Well... I was hoping to put together a good post of some decent data to share, but people don't seem to be very forthcoming with their stats. :/ Comon guys, post some numbers so I can add to my averages and get some REAL numbers! I'll post what I've got so far (with only 5 people posting, and most not posting all of their stats...).

Weapon----%1--%2--%3--%4--%5----Avg (# collection points)
LRM5-------28---42---?----50----?-----40 (3)
LRM10 -----31---43---?----48----?-----41 (3)
LRM15 -----23---40---?----47----33----36 (4)
LRM20 hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
CLRM5 -----?---- ?---66----? ----? -----66 (1...)
CLRM10----?----52---50----?----?-----51 (2)
CLRM15----?----45---39----?----?---- 42 (2)
CLRM20----?----?----34-----?----?---- 34 (1...)
------------------------------------------------------
ML----------84----?----44----?----?----64 (2)
LL-----------83--- ?----49----?----?----66 (2)
LPL---------83----?----59----?----?----71 (2)
------------------------------------------------------
UAC5-------50----70----77--?----?----66 (3)
Gauss------66----71----?----?----? ---66 (2)
AC/20------ 62--- 72----49--?----?----61 (3)

-edit- I don't need your whole stats page, just these weapons will do (as they are the most popular choices)

Edited by GreenHell, 04 March 2016 - 07:24 AM.

[Lily from animove]

GreenHell, on 04 March 2016 - 07:23 AM, said:

Well... I was hoping to put together a good post of some decent data to share, but people don't seem to be very forthcoming with their stats. :/ Comon guys, post some numbers so I can add to my averages and get some REAL numbers! I'll post what I've got so far (with only 5 people posting, and most not posting all of their stats...).

Weapon----%1--%2--%3--%4--%5----Avg (# collection points)
LRM5-------28---42---?----50----?-----40 (3)
LRM10 -----31---43---?----48----?-----41 (3)
LRM15 -----23---40---?----47----33----36 (4)
LRM20 hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
CLRM5 -----?---- ?---66----? ----? -----66 (1...)
CLRM10----?----52---50----?----?-----51 (2)
CLRM15----?----45---39----?----?---- 42 (2)
CLRM20----?----?----34-----?----?---- 34 (1...)
------------------------------------------------------
ML----------84----?----44----?----?----64 (2)
LL-----------83--- ?----49----?----?----66 (2)
LPL---------83----?----59----?----?----71 (2)
------------------------------------------------------
UAC5-------50----70----77--?----?----66 (3)
Gauss------66----71----?----?----? ---66 (2)
AC/20------ 62--- 72----49--?----?----61 (3)

-edit- I don't need your whole stats page, just these weapons will do (as they are the most popular choices)

these stats are rather irrelevant, if you would play on T5 many of your lrm's will hit, because you oppose lower threat opponents not able to hide correctly.

your stats kinda indicate this. See how people with high AC and LPL have good hit % but bad lrm hit %. thats because on higher skillevels you know how and when to shoot to hit stuff, but at the same time these players know how to avoid lrm's rather easily, so when they use them against players of their high skill level, or get shot by them, they know how to avoid the majority of incoming fire.

also the stats page is rather much borked and broken, it tries to tell me I have only 5 matches in CUAC5's and 5k damage within then, which means everytime I wielded an CUAC5 into a match I did at leats 1k damage. and this is both wrong, since I used them way more often and my average damage is not that high, nor would be the combined dmaage of all UAC5 matches.

Edited by Lily from animove, 04 March 2016 - 07:59 AM.

[GreenHell]

That's why I was trying to do an average

[Lily from animove]

GreenHell, on 04 March 2016 - 08:08 AM, said:

That's why I was trying to do an average

Thats the issue, the average is pointless when you want to knwo the usability of a wepon system. Thats like saying clubs are good weapon in war because for like 30k years mankind made good killing stats with clubs, Ok, the last 200 years they arent that good, but making the average of it, they are still great combat wepaons.

Thats not going to work, thats just a broken average that has no value of expression. If 80% of your survey would be really good gamers it would look entirely different comapred to the same survey of entirely T5 gamers. Beause LRM's are skillbiased wepaon and your statitsics do not analyse this on skill level.

Edited by Lily from animove, 04 March 2016 - 08:26 AM.

[GreenHell]

Doesn't matter either way. Nobody is posting stats.

[sycocys]

GreenHell, on 04 March 2016 - 08:36 AM, said:

Doesn't matter either way. Nobody is posting stats.

The stat's page only logs like 1 in 50 games for weapons anyhow, and even at that it records half the information incorrectly so you can have weapons it thinks you've used 10 times with 25% accuracy doing 4000 damage.

[Xavori]

Luminis, on 04 March 2016 - 07:13 AM, said:

@Thunderbird Anthares, repeating something won't make me agree with it.

First, do LRMs do more damage? Well, the OP averages no more than I do with considerably lighter 'Mechs using direct fire weaons. Make of that what you will, but it fits my experence with LRM boats on my team. I rarely see one of them dish out a remarkable amount of damage.

Second, the no face time thing. That's great for the LRM boat I'm sure, not so much for the poor sods that have to go out and actually face the opposing team and their weaponry. This is all good if you're in the group queue with your mates providing the support you need - you set up your group accordingly and you've got people with you who are willing to support your LRMs. Don't expect strangers to do the leg work for you in solo queue, though. They probably did not sign up to cover you, provide NARCs and TAGs and use them to up your damage.

In the end, the LRM boat captains I've met in solo queue don't give a fudge about support and team play - at least from my point of view. It seems to be about farming some safe damage and yelling at everyone else when they get killed with sub 300 damage because "LOL U NO HIT R YOU SO BAD". Good for you if you want to do it with your 12 men eam and everyone likes it. Entirely different thing from what's happening in solo queue which is where you get to told to GTFO and get your own locks and such

Actually, the OP plays lots of different mech tonnages, styles, etc. In fact, playing that many different ways is the primary reason I haven't gotten bored with the game.

Getting back to LRM's, I'm finding a lot of people who've played with bad LRM pilots and seem to think that equates to the weapon system, not the pilot. The other big thing is the magical ability of good players to completely negate LRM's through their special powers.

Now, I'm open to the idea that there are good players who can limit the damage they take from LRM's. After all, good players limit the damage they take from every other weapon as well. But in doing so, they're not pulverizing my teammates. I'd much rather have them hugging a wall waiting for the INCOMING MISSILE warning to go away than lining up a shot into a silly pugger on my team's backside.

I'm also very aware that there are some really poor pilots who think LRM boats are supposed to just find a nice place to camp and then toss missiles at whatever their teammates lock on. After all, I play light mechs too, and those are easy kills since they're easy to find what with those bright yellow and blue birds to backtrack.

But those pilots have nothing to do with whether or not LRM's are a solid weapon system or not. Of course, I've resigned myself to having to wait a couple months till I'm in Tier 1 and running my LRM boats against these magical unicorns before trying to convince all the naysayers again....at which point I'm sure the goal posts will be moved

[Moomtazz]

Lily from animove, on 04 March 2016 - 07:57 AM, said:

these stats are rather irrelevant, if you would play on T5 many of your lrm's will hit, because you oppose lower threat opponents not able to hide correctly.

your stats kinda indicate this. See how people with high AC and LPL have good hit % but bad lrm hit %. thats because on higher skillevels you know how and when to shoot to hit stuff, but at the same time these players know how to avoid lrm's rather easily, so when they use them against players of their high skill level, or get shot by them, they know how to avoid the majority of incoming fire.

also the stats page is rather much borked and broken, it tries to tell me I have only 5 matches in CUAC5's and 5k damage within then, which means everytime I wielded an CUAC5 into a match I did at leats 1k damage. and this is both wrong, since I used them way more often and my average damage is not that high, nor would be the combined dmaage of all UAC5 matches.

I'd like to know how the stats are calculated. I think the lower LRM accuracy numbers might be because each missile can hit or miss, while the usually much higher laser accuracy is based on calling it a "hit" when it hit with any of it's damage ticks during a single firing cycle.

If the laser part is true, those lasers with long beam duration should have the highest accuracy numbers That isn't true if the number of damage "tics" is the same regardless of beam duration.

Edited by Moomtazz, 04 March 2016 - 10:17 AM.

[InspectorG]

Xavori, on 04 March 2016 - 08:53 AM, said:

But those pilots have nothing to do with whether or not LRM's are a solid weapon system or not.

Just because some players can make ANY weapon work doesnt mean that weapon isnt any less bad.

Arguments of 'suppressing fire' cant hold to the fact that LRMs require more conditions to work and are betting on doing damage in the future in a game where instant damage over the smallest target area has the best returns on effort.

Want suppressing fire? Go watch the old vids from the jump sniping days.

The best 'suppression' in MWO is overwhelming firepower covering the smallest area. Basically the opposite of LRMing.
The other thing that gimps LRMs is the crit system. And the Radar/direct/indirect fire/map relationships.

If you really want to try it out vs high level players you dont need to wait till you get Tier 1 anyhow.(you would still be facing T3+ on average in Solo)

Go to the TeamSpeak hubs, ask to spar with the comp players FOR SCIENCE, they will likely oblige you.
Stream/Cap the footage and share.

[Xavori]

InspectorG, on 04 March 2016 - 10:32 AM, said:

Go to the TeamSpeak hubs, ask to spar with the comp players FOR SCIENCE, they will likely oblige you.
Stream/Cap the footage and share.

The problem with that is finding 23 other comp players who are willing to make an honest assessment of things because it has to be full team v full team.

Anything else would just be proving that LRM's can be made bad if enough people want it to look that way.

Kinda like I could make laservomit look bad if I were so inclined as to point out why it's subpar (it is, but it's also the easiest way to play, and against 90% of the playerbase, easy to use is all you need)

[InspectorG]

Xavori, on 04 March 2016 - 10:45 AM, said:

The problem with that is finding 23 other comp players who are willing to make an honest assessment of things because it has to be full team v full team.

Shouldnt be hard if you ask around. Try the FRR guys first, they seem to be game for anything.

[Thunderbird Anthares]

Luminis, on 04 March 2016 - 07:13 AM, said:

@Thunderbird Anthares, repeating something won't make me agree with it.

First, do LRMs do more damage? Well, the OP averages no more than I do with considerably lighter 'Mechs using direct fire weaons. Make of that what you will, but it fits my experence with LRM boats on my team. I rarely see one of them dish out a remarkable amount of damage.

Second, the no face time thing. That's great for the LRM boat I'm sure, not so much for the poor sods that have to go out and actually face the opposing team and their weaponry. This is all good if you're in the group queue with your mates providing the support you need - you set up your group accordingly and you've got people with you who are willing to support your LRMs. Don't expect strangers to do the leg work for you in solo queue, though. They probably did not sign up to cover you, provide NARCs and TAGs and use them to up your damage.

In the end, the LRM boat captains I've met in solo queue don't give a fudge about support and team play - at least from my point of view. It seems to be about farming some safe damage and yelling at everyone else when they get killed with sub 300 damage because "LOL U NO HIT R YOU SO BAD". Good for you if you want to do it with your 12 men eam and everyone likes it. Entirely different thing from what's happening in solo queue which is where you get to told to GTFO and get your own locks and such

1) yes they do, and if you see an LRM boat that averages same or less damage than direct fire mechs... the LRM boat did not do its job... my experience is i consistently on average get significantly more "raw" damage numbers than direct fire mechs - by how much depends on exactly what kind of LRMs im running... the difference is not that obvious with more focused ALRM5+TAG as compared to someone spitting deathballs of standard LRM 20's which have much bigger spread

2) i said LRMs do not NEED face time - they can ride a friendly lock and keep firing from anywhere with a good angle - but if an LRM boat HAS face time, Artemis and his own TAG apply and the damage becomes a lot more focused and useful - so the LRM boat kind of SHOULD get some face time - please read what i write, not what you think i write because you hate my guts for using LRMs

3) there are bad pilots, and there are good pilots - im trying hard to be a good pilot with a more complex weapons system than just lasers and be a good support to my team both in face time and out of it, and i get crap all the time for just using it - dont you think you should maybe differentiate between the two?

Next time you see an LRM boat, especially an IS one since Clan ones are easymode, take notice of what he's doing... if he's just sitting there spitting largely ineffective sandpapering deathblobs or if he's maneuvering for angles and/or more precise TAG time with those little blobs - or if he has a friend NARCer and uses that to guide in at that point much more effective deathblobs... there are various ways to use LRM's - just like there are various flavors of kinetics.

edit: the frustrating part is - these people drive me nuts too, but even more so, because they paint me bad aswell

Edited by Thunderbird Anthares, 04 March 2016 - 11:36 AM.

[Roadkill]

Moomtazz, on 04 March 2016 - 10:14 AM, said:

I'd like to know how the stats are calculated. I think the lower LRM accuracy numbers might be because each missile can hit or miss, while the usually much higher laser accuracy is based on calling it a "hit" when it hit with any of it's damage ticks during a single firing cycle.

Both correct.

Which is why I posted how to compute "weapon efficiency" which takes it all into account. Basically what it computes is the % of max damage that you do per shot, regardless of whether or not that shot hits.

For missiles it is simply accuracy, because every individual missile that hits does max damage.

For lasers it's equal to accuracy multiplied by the percent of damage you do when you hit, which you can compute from your stats. Damage / (hits * max weapon damage).

According to my stats I average about 3 damage per hit with an IS medium laser, or roughly 60%. Multiply that by my accuracy and you get an overall efficiency of about 52%.

The only LRM I have that reaches that number is the Clan LRM-5 w/Artemis. (The IS LRM-5 is close.) All others are lower, some dramatically lower. (30-ish for the Clan LRM-20.)

LRMs just aren't efficient damage dealers. They have other characteristics that can still make them useful in certain circumstances, but they're not good primary weapons.

[Uncl Munkeh]

Xavori, on 02 March 2016 - 12:19 AM, said:

...and so on...all it takes is being open to the possibility and learning how to use your LRM's effectively.

Ok.

Play what you like and accept the consequences.

That's my motto.