159 replies to this topic

[wanderer]

One thing to note about missiles in Battletech was the development of munitions where a much larger portion of the missile is actually explosive material- that is, not only the warhead but the frame is actually made from a combination of a metal composite and explosive materials, greatly increasing yield to the point of getting four times the punch out of a given sized missile compared to earlier more conventional ones.

[wanderer]

While you're at it, things that would improve LRMs- instead of missiles flying in an arc when fired without a lock...launch them in a straight shot similar to SRM fire. Separate from any speed/spread changes whatsoever. Just do that.

Voila. No more watching your missiles be utterly useless in tunnels or under the Crimson Strait docks.

Edited by wanderer, 13 April 2016 - 11:02 PM.

[JaidenHaze]

I think this is a very funny topic, but id go a very different route to balance LRMs.

Basd on the TT rules, all LRM launcher should have the exact same spread and cooldown. In MWO, id base everything around the LRM 15 and 10. Non-Artemis LRM launcher have a spread of 5.2 meter, Artemis Launcher have 4.2 meter. Cooldown should be about 5.5 seconds, same as the current LRM 20 launcher.

One thing most people forget is that you have 10 second cooldown in the TT. If you ignore that basic rule, its not a suprise we see the insane LRM 5 boating from today. The launcher should be balanced around tonnage and heat.

Another very important thing: Leave the LRM speed. Its good right now and different weapon speeds are in my eyes a very big problem of MWO. Up to 600 m/s like some people wrote is just way to fast.

One last thing: You could make the Command Console a requirement for firing indirectly. If you dont have this equipped, your mech cant process LOS data from friendly mechs and you need a TAG or NARC to fire your LRMs that way. With 3 tons, its fairly heavy and you have to dedicate your mech to LRMs, unlike some builds you see now that feature a mix of weapons with 2 LRM20 or 10 launcher.

[RestosIII]

JaidenHaze, on 13 April 2016 - 11:38 PM, said:

I think this is a very funny topic, but id go a very different route to balance LRMs.

Basd on the TT rules, all LRM launcher should have the exact same spread and cooldown. In MWO, id base everything around the LRM 15 and 10. Non-Artemis LRM launcher have a spread of 5.2 meter, Artemis Launcher have 4.2 meter. Cooldown should be about 5.5 seconds, same as the current LRM 20 launcher.

One thing most people forget is that you have 10 second cooldown in the TT. If you ignore that basic rule, its not a suprise we see the insane LRM 5 boating from today. The launcher should be balanced around tonnage and heat.

Another very important thing: Leave the LRM speed. Its good right now and different weapon speeds are in my eyes a very big problem of MWO. Up to 600 m/s like some people wrote is just way to fast.

One last thing: You could make the Command Console a requirement for firing indirectly. If you dont have this equipped, your mech cant process LOS data from friendly mechs and you need a TAG or NARC to fire your LRMs that way. With 3 tons, its fairly heavy and you have to dedicate your mech to LRMs, unlike some builds you see now that feature a mix of weapons with 2 LRM20 or 10 launcher.

So, you want to kill LRMs off then? Every launcher having the cooldowns of a 20, same velocity, and needing CC for indirect fire would make LRMs equal in use to pre-buff flamer boats. I absolutely have no clue how you think gutting them like that would be a good idea, unless you're still sore about the REALLY old lurmaggedon.

[JaidenHaze]

I think, LRM are doing enough damage, especially if you reduce the spread of the bigger launcher.

Smaller LRM launcher should only be fielded by smaller mechs. So they that harsh treatment.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

RestosIII, on 13 April 2016 - 11:44 PM, said:

So, you want to kill LRMs off then?

most ppl who want to "fix" them actually should sub "fix" for "kill"

[EurakaLi]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 13 April 2016 - 04:22 PM, said:

Theyre really not. Whats hard to balance are the people who dont understand that when you have a system like the lrm you cant stand out in the open with impunity, because you will get your *** handed to you. LRMs have a static, hard, counter built right into the game. Its called cover. The fact that the devs seem to want to put the combat zones into places where cover is non-existant then want to try to balance lrms is just crazy in my book (IE domination areas which on most maps are just highlighted killzones) Without that mechanic you would never get hits with lrms. Its hard enough NOW, WITH lock on to get hits at all because ppl expect the lrms to hold their own locks and refuse to lock targets (which is cutting off your nose to spite your face imo) And its still more powerful than TT as the TT guardian doesnt break missile lock - not even Streak. Click on the sarna link. I put it there for a
reason

actually the radar disk can shield LRM,the problem is stay under there will get hit by everything lol

Edited by EurakaLi, 14 April 2016 - 01:26 AM.

[Pjwned]

Void Angel, on 13 April 2016 - 04:13 PM, said:

AMS can't be looked at as a single system - you have to balance it against a team. Otherwise, AMS that protects one 'mech reasonably well will utterly dominate when grouped. So, you have to balance the system against a hypothetical, expected, number of available AMS - which is cool and all from an "encourage teamwork" mentality. Then again, maybe not so much when your player base doesn't see enough benefit to bringing the system and acts like a bunch of vacc-truthers. We might have to sacrifice that teamwork aspect and make AMS only affect the mounting 'mech in order to balance it better. Similarly, LRMs have to be balanced against their ability to focus fire targets without being exposed - to include the suppression effect of forcing people into cover and out of line of sight. Then there's interactions between NARC, ECM, and TAG, plus modules...

LRMs are fracking hard to balance.

All that being said, the weapon system does need some adjustment, if only to make it more intuitive when loading out a 'mech. All this mess about tube counts, for example; or the problem of effective damage v. total damage making larger launchers less attractive. The OP is absolutely right that you shouldn't be penalized for taking a larger missile rack: barring 'mech design constraints like having too little ammo, or too much heat, bigger should be better.

AMS already protects one mech reasonably well, it just won't do much against an LRM rainstorm but that shouldn't happen to any decent player anyways unless they're really bad and/or heavily outnumbered/outplayed.

People don't bring AMS often enough because "hurr hurr durr it doesn't protect me from 1,000 LRMs" and then they never know how useful it can be (and often is) even by itself (as long as you don't play like a scrub baddy scrublord), let alone grouped up with other teammates' AMS.

KING PRoCaT, on 12 April 2016 - 10:42 PM, said:

Oh look another thread trying to make lights unplayable garbage machines that have to spend all their weight on tons of AMS.

I feel the need to join wanderer in pointing out that you are a HUGE scrublord baddy if you have any serious trouble with LRMs in any reasonably fast light mech.

Edited by Pjwned, 14 April 2016 - 09:00 AM.

[Astrocanis]

Dingo Red, on 12 April 2016 - 04:53 PM, said:

I'd say the biggest issue with LRMs have never been whether they're good or not, but just the fact that they're fire-and-forget jesus christ kids, not fire-and-forget, just very binary and don't offer a lot of control for the player weapons. You can sit behind a rock and lob LRMs and I don't think anyone really likes how little interaction the player actually gets with firing them.

They're not fun to fire, at least IMO, and they're not very fun for the player getting shot at.

That's why I'd want LRMs at closer ranges to direct-fire. This would ensure that LRMs actually had to be at range to be fully support weapon, and in closer range require some amount more of skill and positioning in order to use them. Plus, you would certainly have more reasoning to buff them if they required more skill to bring to bear.

This would ensure that LRM boats would NEVER be right behind the front lines. If your concern is that boats tend to be largely immobile turrets firing at max range, this would practically guarantee that occurrence.

[Roadkill]

Pjwned, on 14 April 2016 - 08:55 AM, said:

I feel the need to join wanderer in pointing out that you are a HUGE scrublord baddy if you have any serious trouble with LRMs in any reasonably fast light mech.

FTFY.

Seriously, LRMs are easy to avoid, even in an Atlas or Dire Wolf. I rarely take more than trivial damage from LRMs regardless of what Mech I'm piloting. On those very rare occasions when I do actually get killed by LRMs, it's because I screwed up badly. And I pretty much know it, too, generally because I thought to myself "this is risky" when I started making the mistake.

[Pjwned]

Merit Lef, on 13 April 2016 - 08:19 PM, said:

A great side effect of the OP: With the chain fire built into the launching of the larger missiles systems it will also buff the effectiveness of AMS. Now AMS is firing at groups of 5 missiles and not at a swarm of LRMs. Giving AMS a bit more chance to fight off the rain. Its a fair trade off.

You shouldn't be getting rained on in the first place.

[Pjwned]

Roadkill, on 14 April 2016 - 09:08 AM, said:

FTFY.

Seriously, LRMs are easy to avoid, even in an Atlas or Dire Wolf. I rarely take more than trivial damage from LRMs regardless of what Mech I'm piloting. On those very rare occasions when I do actually get killed by LRMs, it's because I screwed up badly. And I pretty much know it, too, generally because I thought to myself "this is risky" when I started making the mistake.

Well, I don't have too much experience with really big, slow mechs (because I personally don't like them) so I just made a less broad statement based on personal experience, but you're probably right.

Not to say that you should expect to never take damage from LRMs ever in a light (or otherwise reasonably fast) mech, but if LRMs are a serious problem in said mech then you either have a horrible build or you're extremely bad (or both) because I can definitely say from personal experience that being fast is a very good defense against LRMs if you're not a scrub.

[Void Angel]

Roadkill, on 13 April 2016 - 08:06 PM, said:

There really isn't a difference until you hit Tier 1, and even that's fairly minimal. The only reason it's noticeable at Tier 1 is because Tier 1 cannot play Tier 4 or 5.

T2 and T3 can play anyone. T4 and T5 can play anyone but T1.

So the ramp up is pretty invisible until the T4s and T5s drop out when you hit T1.

Where did you find the second bit of information? I've not seen the devs say anything about tiers two and three being able to play anyone - only that Tier 1 is never matched against Tier 4 and 5. I'm pretty sure I read a dev post saying that there was a set range of acceptable matches (one up, one down, I think,) but I cannot find the post.

Pjwned, on 14 April 2016 - 08:55 AM, said:

AMS already protects one mech reasonably well, it just won't do much against an LRM rainstorm but that shouldn't happen to any decent player anyways unless they're really bad and/or heavily outnumbered/outplayed.

People don't bring AMS often enough because "hurr hurr durr it doesn't protect me from 1,000 LRMs" and then they never know how useful it can be (and often is) even by itself (as long as you don't play like a scrub baddy scrublord), let alone grouped up with other teammates' AMS.

That's actually very nearly my point, but I think you're underestimating of AMS's linear scaling v LRMs - it's one of the many factors making LRMs hard to balance. Because while an AMS system will protect you pretty well from a single LRM 5, your standard LRM boat is going to be sporting at least 20-25 tubes, and that's just for a shakeboat. For something like an LRM40 Stalker, that AMS system is just spitting in the wind.

Don't get me wrong! AMS is still absolutely worth the tonnage for what it does, but it doesn't feel that way, which is why so many people refuse to vaccinate their dang 'mechs, despite encountering (and complaining about) LRMs on a frequent basis in their matches. It's also not really enough of a counter to prevent LRMs from smashing you if you get caught by a spotter trying to cross into the open somewhere.

In any case, given that its inclusion is voluntary, and that many people who ought to know better just stamp their foot and scream, "no!" when it's suggested that they mount it... AMS systems (and thus LRMs) are very difficult to balance, just for the mercurial nature of players alone. Do you balance it so that one system provides noticeable protection from a missile boat? Well, now everyone takes them and LRMs are useless - so no one takes them and AMS is useless, so people take it off and LRMs make a partial comeback, and around and around. At what point in this process do you collate your data in order to make adjustments; how do you tell where balance actually lies? Do you just wait for the cycle to wear down into a kind of oscillation and split the difference?

I suspect - unfortunately; I want stuff to be like tabletop whenever practicable - that we may need to buff AMS and make it self-only. Do that, increase (not decrease) spread to be the same for all launchers, and maybe think about buffing direct-fire mode (with possible adjustments to indirect,) and I think it'll at least be a lot easier to balance LRMs.

Edited by Void Angel, 14 April 2016 - 10:55 AM.

[wanderer]

Quote

Basd on the TT rules, all LRM launcher should have the exact same spread and cooldown. In MWO, id base everything around the LRM 15 and 10. Non-Artemis LRM launcher have a spread of 5.2 meter, Artemis Launcher have 4.2 meter. Cooldown should be about 5.5 seconds, same as the current LRM 20 launcher.

One thing most people forget is that you have 10 second cooldown in the TT. If you ignore that basic rule, its not a suprise we see the insane LRM 5 boating from today. The launcher should be balanced around tonnage and heat.

Incidentally, in 10-second scale ALL weapons have the same cooldown, from MGs to AC/20s. That's grossly simplified, however. Solaris VII has 2.5 second scale instead, and as you can see here:



"DI" on the chart is reload time in 2.5 second turns- which would actually mean the "real" reload time is between 2.6-5.0 seconds per launcher in tabletop terms.

Quote

Another very important thing: Leave the LRM speed. Its good right now and different weapon speeds are in my eyes a very big problem of MWO. Up to 600 m/s like some people wrote is just way to fast.

Six second travel time for any weapon in MWO is nowhere near "good". It's horrible.

600 velocity is too much though. What should amaze people is a 40-velocity buff would be a 25% improvement.

Seriously. Any other weapon you can think of adding 40 velocity to is a huge improvement?

Edited by wanderer, 14 April 2016 - 11:08 AM.

[Roadkill]

Void Angel, on 14 April 2016 - 10:52 AM, said:

Where did you find the second bit of information? I've not seen the devs say anything about tiers two and three being able to play anyone - only that Tier 1 is never matched against Tier 4 and 5. I'm pretty sure I read a dev post saying that there was a set range of acceptable matches (one up, one down, I think,) but I cannot find the post.

It's all from the same post.

What's the opposite of "T1 is never matched against T4 or T5?"

T5 can play anyone but T1.
T4 can play anyone but T1.
T3 can play anyone.
T2 can play anyone.
T1 can play anyone but T4 or T5.

That one post is the only definitive statement that anyone has been able to repost. A lot of people "have heard" that it's +/- 2 Tiers, but I've never seen a link with proof of that.

[Thunder Child]

I died on Polar Highlands in my KGC to LRMs.

By died, I mean the last thing to hit me was an LRM salvo after I was out of LoS, destroying my Cherry CT that I got from the Two Blackknight LPL Boats and MAD LPL boat that chewed me up while I was going DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA.

I think the LRMs may have been hitting me for a while, because I had a Narc beacon on me, but I wasn't really paying them any attention as I twisted to spread the minimal damage of a chain fired 15.

Until now, I hadn't realised just how truly ineffective a single LRM boat is. I thought I was doing so well when I ran my BLR-1S ALRM 50, with 1k damage numbers.

[dario03]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 13 April 2016 - 08:23 PM, said:

doesnt the psr slider also average upwards? Didnt the devs say something to that effect? So that over a long enough timeline pretty much everyone will be tier 1 eventually? Or has that changed?

Yeah they have said

"Anyone who has a slightly positive Win/Loss ratio should eventually end up in Tier 1 if they are consistent in their play and match performance."
"If we were to turn off new player registration/sign-up and just let the current player base play on forever, eventually everyone will bubble up to Tier 2 or Tier 1."

How long it takes everyone is of course different. And new players with a string of luck could get there very fast since

"we want to seed new players faster. Much like the cadet C-Bill bonus, we have a multiplier for the first few matches a new player plays. This multiplier degrades over a set number of matches until it drops to standard PSR point changes."

Roadkill, on 14 April 2016 - 11:36 AM, said:

It's all from the same post.

What's the opposite of "T1 is never matched against T4 or T5?"

T5 can play anyone but T1.
T4 can play anyone but T1.
T3 can play anyone.
T2 can play anyone.
T1 can play anyone but T4 or T5.

That one post is the only definitive statement that anyone has been able to repost. A lot of people "have heard" that it's +/- 2 Tiers, but I've never seen a link with proof of that.

Same here, I'm pretty sure I've heard something official (most likely town hall if I did) it was +/-2 but never actually seen it written any where.
I've also never seen/heard anything official saying that after a while the valves are opened and T1 will play against T4/T5 and I see a lot of people claiming that happens.

Edited by dario03, 14 April 2016 - 12:00 PM.

[Void Angel]

Roadkill, on 14 April 2016 - 11:36 AM, said:

It's all from the same post.

What's the opposite of "T1 is never matched against T4 or T5?"

T5 can play anyone but T1.
T4 can play anyone but T1.
T3 can play anyone.
T2 can play anyone.
T1 can play anyone but T4 or T5.

That one post is the only definitive statement that anyone has been able to repost. A lot of people "have heard" that it's +/- 2 Tiers, but I've never seen a link with proof of that.

That's... wrong. You're committing a fallacy, here. Just because Tier 1 is never matched against Tier 4 or 5, it does not follow that everyone else must be able to play against each other. This is a false dichotomy. Like Dario, I cannot locate that +/- something reference, but I do recall seeing it somewhere in blue. If they only allow one step of difference, then tier 1 will only play Tier 1 and 2 players will only play with each other, Tier 2 players will play with Tiers 1 through 3, Tier 4 will play with 3 through 5, etc. The statement is satisfied, and with a much more reasonable system which matches the anecdotal evidence: players' recollection of Blue posts, and of seeing different names as they climbed the Tiers.

Edited by Void Angel, 15 April 2016 - 11:21 AM.

[Void Angel]

wanderer, on 14 April 2016 - 11:05 AM, said:

Incidentally, in 10-second scale ALL weapons have the same cooldown, from MGs to AC/20s. That's grossly simplified, however. Solaris VII has 2.5 second scale instead, and as you can see here:

THANK You! I was beginning to think I was the only one slapping book-wavers with Solaris VII. =) As an aside, on page 50 of that rulebook, you'll find optional rules for redline operation - pilots can override the delay and fire again, at the cost of extreme heat. Wow, that sounds like... nah, couldn't be.

[Void Angel]

dario03, on 14 April 2016 - 11:55 AM, said:

Yeah they have said

"Anyone who has a slightly positive Win/Loss ratio should eventually end up in Tier 1 if they are consistent in their play and match performance."
"If we were to turn off new player registration/sign-up and just let the current player base play on forever, eventually everyone will bubble up to Tier 2 or Tier 1."

How long it takes everyone is of course different. And new players with a string of luck could get there very fast since

"we want to seed new players faster. Much like the cadet C-Bill bonus, we have a multiplier for the first few matches a new player plays. This multiplier degrades over a set number of matches until it drops to standard PSR point changes."



Same here, I'm pretty sure I've heard something official (most likely town hall if I did) it was +/-2 but never actually seen it written any where.
I've also never seen/heard anything official saying that after a while the valves are opened and T1 will play against T4/T5 and I see a lot of people claiming that happens.

You've never seen anything official about release valves since August 18th, 2015, because "With the release of PSR, that system is now gone." People claim a lot of things - this is why anecdotal experiences (even mine!) aren't authoritative by themselves, though they can be used to pick from alternatives if multiple explanations are supported by the data. There's still a high degree of inaccuracy if you do that, so take anything people claim with a grain of salt; or a pound of salt, if "everyone says" it, but there's no verification from data. I can give you a ton of anectodal examples...

Edited by Void Angel, 15 April 2016 - 01:56 PM.