Stormbringer13, on 07 June 2016 - 02:53 PM, said:
I've already mentioned the shortcomings of the Forums search function, so what, exactly, should I be learning?
You should be learning that LRMs suck. Duh!
Okay, but seriously...
A lot of folks whine that they're no-skill weapons, and that's true. A lot of folks bring up the VERY good point that they reinforce BAD habits that will lead to disappointment as you try to manage direct-fire mechs. VERY true. But mostly...
People hate getting LRMs rained on them. I can blame ME if I gave an enemy line-of-sight to me to hit me with Gauss or ERLL or whatever. But there's something helpless about that whole getting-lurmed-to-death-in-concealed-positions thing. It sucks. And that suck translates to hate for those doing the lurming.
Never mind that there ARE folks out there, tier 1 hotshots, who are plenty capable of putting up 1100+ damage in a HBK-4J with nothing but LRMs. Not naming names, but I've got this teammate at QQ ...
Anyhoo. They have their place, and the haters have learned to compromise a little bit. That compromise says, "GET YOUR OWN LOCKS NEWB!" Not very polite, is it? BUT, there's some great truth at the center of that pearl.
For instance, Artemis IV FCS only works for you if YOU, the FIRER, have line-of-sight to the target. If someone else is spotting for you, then your A4FCS is a waste of 1 ton and 1 critical slot per launcher. So, short of boating LRM-5s (really only sorta-doable in a CPLT-A1 or MDD, for proper effect, and MAYBE the ARC-5W), you WANT Artemis. For it to be worthwhile, you WANT to get your own locks, and to have direct LoS to your target. And that means ...
Get CLOSER to the target. There's a point, in terms of range to target, at which LRMs take a higher arcing flight path from launcher to target. And don't forget that missiles have a speed, hence a flight time that gets longer and longer the further you are from the target. That's more time that the target is getting that "INCOMING MISSILES" warning, and can react appropriately. That's more opportunity for the enemy to thwart your effort to kill him. And while LRMs DO have that minimum arming distance (180m), at one meter beyond that they do FULL damage. That's pretty close. They're just as damaging to the enemy's paint job at 181 meters as they are at 999. Just easier to hit with up-close. Most folks will tell you that 300-550, give or take, is your ideal range bracket for LRMs. I don't disagree. And getting closer lets you ...
SHARE ARMOR. Look, 9/10 times if you're sitting in the rear with fresh armor, your teammates are gonna get clobbered for being 1 mech down (yes, 1/12 makes a BIG difference in MWO), and then the 8-10 enemy mechs that survived clobbering your shorthanded teammates are gonna follow the pretty smoke trails back to your LRM boat and toast you like a Subway sandwich (too soon for a Jared joke?). So get up there with them. No, you can't generally BRAWL with LRMs. But being in the near end of the mid-range fight is pretty reasonable for a good LRM boat. You can still rotate into and out of enemy LoS with your teammates (sharing armor), and if you brought along an active probe (any good LRMer should) then you're also helping them bust the nearest ECM. BONUS! And you can target enemy UAVs with it, too! But anyhow...
And you'll likely want backup weapons of some sort for short-range work. Consider the CPLT-A1(C), for instance. Designed by the community here. Carries not JUST LRMs, but also SRMs. Why? Because sometimes you gotta fight within 180m, and LRMs don't cut it there. The C1 and C4 also have E hard points, so you can mount backup lasers (AND a TAG) on them as well as your missiles. And the forthcoming Butterbee hero mech will 4 each (as far as we know) E and M hard points, the best of both the C1 and C4. Smooth. MDD has options to accompany the missiles with E or B weapons, too. And so on. 3/4 Archers have E hard points. The HBK-4J has some Es on it. And so on. That's valuable not just as a deterrent to some hungry light with an appetite for LRM boat flesh, but also as a way for you to contribute in the short- and mid-range fight with your teammates while armor-sharing.
Thing is, while this advice is liberally slathered all over this forum (both NPH and the Guides/Strats, at least, and probably thrice a day in GD as a salt topic), it seems all but inaccessible to new players, who are naturally drawn to 'I'm a long-range support pilot" B. S. by the intimidating learning curve of the brawl. Sure. G'head and take a break from that, and huck hateful lurms at the emeny. It's cool.
But most new folks DON'T heed that advice, whether they've heard/read it or not, and thus induce the rage of their teammates in any given match. We've seen it SO many times.
One last thing. In the current state of the game, being able to pinpoint your damage output to a particular component of a target mech is (IS) the difference between life and death. It's what the best players do SO VERY WELL, along with other things, that makes them the best. You can't DO that with LRMs. Just like with Streak SRMs, and to a lesser extent the LB-X autocannons and MGs, it's sandblasting. The LRMs hit where they hit, and that's that. You can pick the target, and you can pick your nose, but you CAN'T pick your component with LRMs like you can with LPLs or Gauss. Sorry. That's the rules. Even standard SRMs (preferably with Artemis) allow the firer some considerable degree of accuracy in this, that Streak and LRM firers just don't have. You'll likely notice, if the stats page ever gets un-borked, that you have a much MUCH higher ration of damage:kills with LRM boats than with direct-fire mechs, especially once you've gotten good at the latter. That's not a good thing. It's inefficient, in a game where efficiency in killing is SO very valuable...
In short, that's why people hate on LRM boaters.
But play your game, player. Make the experience what YOU want it to be. Someone gets salty, BLOCK 'em. Go right on playing it how YOU want to play it. There's nothing at stake. You're not going to lose the house or the wife because your faction failed to capture Planet X today. You're not going to make a million bucks if they do. It doesn't matter, except in that you have a good time playing. So do what puts a smile on your face, and f**k anyone who has a problem with that...
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