FupDup, on 29 April 2016 - 09:14 AM, said:
For a second I thought this thread was going to be about redesigning the lock-on mechanism so that it accounts for aiming at specific different hitboxes rather than counting the enemy mech as just a single gigantic target.
I am disappoint.
I am disappoint.
Unfortunately, that idea would be broken before it was even implemented.
Consider ... a weapon that you can aim at specific components that CAN NOT miss. Unless you were planning on removing the entire point of streak missiles in that they are fire and forget and will hit the target unless terrain intervenes.
SSRM and LRMs are both lock on weapons. The downside is that damage allocation is random since you don't control what part of the target you hit.
SRMs, LBX and MGs on the other hand have a random spread that distributes damage (or misses entirely).
Pretty much everything else is pinpoint either with or without duration (damage over time).
The problem with clan and IS weapons is that the starting point used by PGI is table top where the clan weapons are STRICTLY BETTER than any IS equivalent. However, PGI then has this mandate to make clans and IS more or less equal in effectiveness. For the most part this has devolved into leaving some clan weapon advantages while giving IS mechs durability
and maneuverability quirks to make them a bit harder to kill.
So ... I agree with the OP .. the IS SSRM2 is not as good as the clan one. Not by a mile. However, in THEORY this clan advantage is being balanced by IS durability quirks such that the IS mechs are a bit harder to kill.
With that said, if PGI wanted to nerf clan weapons then one approach would be to simply limit the number of each that can be fired simultaneously ... so they could be prevented from firing more than 2 CSSRM6 at once ... or ghost heat limits could be reduced. If the issue the OP is trying to address is the effectiveness of clan SSRM alpha strikes then it isn't addressed by buffing the IS SSRM2. There isn't much that can be done to make the IS SSRM2 comparable to clan SSRMs.