23 replies to this topic

[Gorgo7]

Alas! SRM's move with such rapidity that the 0.5 sec lock on time for AMS means that the damn things usually hit (or miss) before this wonderful defensive system gets a chance to fire.
It urks me that I have multiple mechs that can mount AMS yet they are worthless in scouting missions and any that involve SRM's.
What gives?

G7

edit spelling

Edited by Gorgo7, 19 May 2016 - 02:40 PM.

[Bilbo]

Well, they are mainly for use against LRM's. If you make them powerful enough to be of any real use against SRMs they would make LRMs useless at all levels of play.

[Gorgo7]

What do you mean "they are mostly" for use against LRMS' what does that even mean? They are for use against ALL missiles.
LR missiles and SR missiles.

Bilbo, on 19 May 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

Well, they are mainly for use against LRM's. If you make them powerful enough to be of any real use against SRMs they would make LRMs useless at all levels of play.

Could you expand on that please? I am wondering how SRM's being shot down by AMS weakens LRM's.

[Bilbo]

Gorgo7, on 19 May 2016 - 02:55 PM, said:

What do you mean "they are mostly" for use against LRMS' what does that even mean? They are for use against ALL missiles.
LR missiles and SR missiles.

You speak as if AMS has ever been useful against SRMs. They have not, nor are they likely ever to be. They have limited use against Streaks if you happen to be running away, if that makes you feel better.

[Alistair Winter]

AMS is currently a very rare sight on the battlefield.

http://mwomercs.com/...echs-carry-ams/

I agree 100% that they need to be more effective against SRMs. A Kit Fox with triple AMS should be very well protected against SRMs, in my opinion.

MWO is in dire need of more valuable equipment in general, I think. It's far too rare to see people bringing maximum number of jump jets, AMS, CASE, BAP, targeting computers, command console, etc. Most of the builds I see are all about having lots of weapons, a big engine, and as many DHS as you can cram in there.

Bilbo, on 19 May 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

Well, they are mainly for use against LRM's. If you make them powerful enough to be of any real use against SRMs they would make LRMs useless at all levels of play.

Couldn't you balance this by tuning health of different missile types tho? SRMs are generally fired from very close range, so the SRMs would need to have low health to make AMS effective against them. LRMs are fired from far away, so they would have more health to compensate.

[Bilbo]

Alistair Winter, on 19 May 2016 - 03:02 PM, said:

AMS is currently a very rare sight on the battlefield.

http://mwomercs.com/...echs-carry-ams/

I agree 100% that they need to be more effective against SRMs. A Kit Fox with triple AMS should be very well protected against SRMs, in my opinion.

MWO is in dire need of more valuable equipment in general, I think. It's far too rare to see people bringing maximum number of jump jets, AMS, CASE, BAP, targeting computers, command console, etc. Most of the builds I see are all about having lots of weapons, a big engine, and as many DHS as you can cram in there.


Couldn't you balance this by tuning health of different missile types tho? SRMs are generally fired from very close range, so the SRMs would need to have low health to make AMS effective against them. LRMs are fired from far away, so they would have more health to compensate.

You could, but you then weaken SRMs against every mech in game. Let's face it, if you make AMS effective against SRMs, everyone will be using it or you will eliminate it as a brawling weapon. I suppose if either are your goal it's a feasible solution.

[Elendil]

I stopped carrying any AMS, because I started playing LRM boats and realized that they're pretty useless at stopping missiles (even Clan LRMs).

Even with multi-AMS defenses, enough of the missiles get through that it's usually still worth my time to keep firing them.

[Gorgo7]

Nonsense. The only balancing act is to have AMS fire immediately instead of waiting for 0.5 seconds before firing. In addition the should not have a travel time to target. The current velocity is 100 m per second! HAHAHA! Utterly hopeless as an Anti Missle System instantaneous max range would be much more useful and make taking the system profitable.
Otherwise I would recommend making the AMS slot duel purpose...say, allowing Energy to be slotted here or Ballistics or both.

[Pjwned]

Bilbo, on 19 May 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

Well, they are mainly for use against LRM's. If you make them powerful enough to be of any real use against SRMs they would make LRMs useless at all levels of play.

Not necessarily true, AMS could simply lock onto missiles faster without it being devastating to LRM volleys, or alternatively SRM missiles could have their health reduced so that they're easier to shoot down.

There's various other values to tweak too in case it got complicated somehow.

Bilbo, on 19 May 2016 - 03:08 PM, said:

You could, but you then weaken SRMs against every mech in game. Let's face it, if you make AMS effective against SRMs, everyone will be using it or you will eliminate it as a brawling weapon. I suppose if either are your goal it's a feasible solution.

AMS shouldn't obliterate SRM volleys, particularly if the SRMs are fired from very close range, but it should also be reasonably effective.

This would also be a good reason to bump SRM damage back up to at least 2.5 per missile like they should be.

Edited by Pjwned, 19 May 2016 - 03:25 PM.

[Alistair Winter]

Bilbo, on 19 May 2016 - 03:08 PM, said:

You could, but you then weaken SRMs against every mech in game. Let's face it, if you make AMS effective against SRMs, everyone will be using it or you will eliminate it as a brawling weapon. I suppose if either are your goal it's a feasible solution.

As I see it, your argument is only valid if you assume that PGI is incompetent when it comes to balance. Which isn't a completely baseless perspective, but it's rather unconstructive for a discussion about balancing.

I don't see it as completely binary conditions. AMS won't necessarily go from being practically universally rejected to suddenly being universally considered mandatory. The idea is to make tiny, repeated buffs to AMS untill you get a balance where some people use it, some don't. Better yet, what if AMS became a standard defense for certain roles (e.g. light mech and medium brawlers who are vulnerable to streaks and SRMs), but less popular for other roles (e.g. long range fire support mechs who depend more on cover than AMS).

Jump jets used to be in a good place, where you would would either bring one jump jet, or several, or the maximum amount, depending on what you needed them for. They were never so good that all non-jumping mechs were rendered obsolete (although poptarts were very popular at some point). This is very much unlike AMS, where most people will only equip AMS if they can bring 2 or 3, and maybe not even then. Unlike jump jets, you never see anyone bring anything other than zero or the maximum number. This, to me, suggests that they are not properly balanced.

Ah, imagine if AMS was hugely popular among light/medium brawlers. Imagine if people actually cared that there were a few light mechs, like the the Firestarter, Wolfhound and Locust, that can carry 2xAMS. Or if people cared that the Nova can carry 3xAMS. It would be grand.

[DAYLEET]

Bilbo, on 19 May 2016 - 02:46 PM, said:

If you make them powerful enough to be of any real use against SRMs they would make LRMs useless at all levels of play.

eh, all it would do is incentive people to bringing AMS and those spreading lrm5 all over the place to farm damage would have to play smarter. Right now, no one bring AMS because it's not worth it.

[Roadkill]

AMS is primarily useful against LRMs because reasons, and aren't even all that great against LRMs unless boated (by the entire team).

LRMs are basically a bad weapon with limited corner-case usefulness, so if you're smart you don't really need AMS to avoid LRMs.

Ergo, AMS is basically useless and a waste of tonnage.

1. Fix LRMs. By far the most important step. LRMs need to be useful at all levels, not just against bads.

2. Balance AMS against the new LRMs. LRMs should be powerful enough that you want to carry AMS, which in turn means that AMS needs to be good enough to be useful against boats but not so useful that it (1.5 tons for AMS+ammo) totally negates a single LRM-20 (11+ tons for launcher+ammo).

3. Fine-tune the AMS effect against other missiles (SRMs, NARC, etc).

[Mystere]

Alistair Winter, on 19 May 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

Jump jets used to be in a good place, where you would would either bring one jump jet, or several, or the maximum amount, depending on what you needed them for. They were never so good that all non-jumping mechs were rendered obsolete (although poptarts were very popular at some point).

Ahem!

Jump jets are pitiful today partly because quite a number of people complained that it was absolutely unfair to non-JJ Mechs.

But it's typical of the player base. <smh>

[Alistair Winter]

Mystere, on 19 May 2016 - 03:36 PM, said:

Ahem!
Jump jets are pitiful today partly because quite a number of people complained that it was absolutely unfair to non-JJ Mechs.
But it's typical of the player base. <smh>

That's true. A lot of things are pitiful today because quite a number of people complained about them.

Doesn't mean they were actually in a bad place to begin with. The poptart situation was odd because PGI decided to nerf poptarts by basically nuking them from existence. Changing PPC and AC10 velocities, introduing jump jet shake, introducing gauss charge mechanic, nerfing jump jets into oblivion whilst adding forward momentum...

They basically went from "Hey, let's tweak this thing by 1%" to "NERF ALL THE THINGS!!!"

[Scout Derek]

/sigh

I've talked about this before, AMS is more for LRMs than AMS.

If anything, SRMs can't be shot down quick enough because their velocity is greater than LRMs.

Solution? You'd have to increase Missiles shot down by AMS, or risk degrading the speed of SRMs, or, a third solution, which would be the Speeds that AMS shoots down SRMs.

I'd also like to point out that AMS prioritizes locked missiles on you rather than ones in your direction.

[Elendil]

Scout Derek, on 19 May 2016 - 03:47 PM, said:

If anything, SRMs can't be shot down quick enough because their velocity is greater than LRMs.

Solution? You'd have to increase Missiles shot down by AMS, or risk degrading the speed of SRMs, or, a third solution, which would be the Speeds that AMS shoots down SRMs.

Or add a laser AMS that has a much shorter range, locks on more quickly, and has no travel time (but fires more slowly, is more expensive, and heavier).

So you could equip the LAMS for SRMs, or a standard AMS for LRMs. Choices are good, right?

Edited by Elendil, 19 May 2016 - 04:12 PM.

[Impyrium]

Scout Derek, on 19 May 2016 - 03:47 PM, said:

/sigh

I've talked about this before, AMS is more for LRMs than AMS.

If anything, SRMs can't be shot down quick enough because their velocity is greater than LRMs.

Solution? You'd have to increase Missiles shot down by AMS, or risk degrading the speed of SRMs, or, a third solution, which would be the Speeds that AMS shoots down SRMs.

I'd also like to point out that AMS prioritizes locked missiles on you rather than ones in your direction.

Let's be honest though, SRMs are silly-fast in this game. Everything in this game tends to be silly-fast.

I would not be adverse to AMS having better effect on SRMs. It's not exactly useful at this point anyway.

Edited by Dingo Red, 19 May 2016 - 04:22 PM.

[DAYLEET]

Roadkill, on 19 May 2016 - 03:32 PM, said:

1. Fix LRMs. By far the most important step. LRMs need to be useful at all levels, not just against bads.

LRM are useful at all level. Just not when they are boated in large numbers on Heavies and Assaults. Not because lrm arent good but because of many small factor that build up; A boat rely on the team to play in a particular way. Then You have the boat sitting in the back. Then You hope luck is on your side and your team did a great job and you can just mop the floor at the end. You lose precious mitigations armor and you lose quick direct fire to assist where needed.

Don't chain fire lrm5 and youll actually hurt people rather than let them pick and chose a place to hide while they spread the damage. A single or two LRM10 15 on a Med /heavy/assault can do the same job a boat can while being able to adjust to the battlefield/team and contribute better. Ive played boat with my BLR and AWS and they are the hardest mech to play effectively as you have to keep on the front line while being slow and staring at locks that arent always yours and taking your part of damage mitigation.

[Andi Nagasia]

AMS is most effective against Guided Missiles,
and though in lore that included SRMs(yes in lore SRMs are also Guided),
in MWO, an SRM mech us usually too close for AMS to Activate,

if AMS was able to be Effective Against SRMs, LRMs would need their Health Doubled,
as 1AMS would be able to Kill an Entire (IS)LRM20 Volley, which it should never do,

Saying that AMS should take them down SRMs in this State,
is almost Akin to saying they should be able to Shoot any Missile Weapon,
Including Mech Mortars, which Have a Limited Guidance and pass threw AMS Shields,

[Khobai]

AMS was sortve useful against SRMs till they jacked up the SRM projectile speed. Now theyre pretty useless vs SRMs.