38 replies to this topic

[Cassa Nova]

"The 1V2 Locust was a Periphery upgrade of the design introduced in 3066 for the Marian Hegemony. While still carrying the center-mounted medium laser it mounted four Rocket Launcher 10s in place of the machine guns."

This thing just screams fun to me running around at 160+kph before pumping 40-60 points of damage into someones *** before pulling back to mid range and poking with your near instaburn ML. Fully recreatable with the 3s variant and with endo you can up the launchers to 15s.

Sure they're single shot but they let you pack a decent missile punch while focusing on other weapons or if your starved for slots squeeze in a bit more damage into any free missile hardpoint.

And technically we should already have them, they're a 3050 weapon. So what harm would it be to add them in with the new thing coming in 3060?

[Y E O N N E]

I'm not going to run around in a Locust to maybe one-shot one target and then be useless for the rest of a match.

If PGI wants to throw lore to the wind and make them Lite SRMs with, like, half the range, then I would consider them

[FupDup]

I'm going to say no to adding them.

The reason is that since they have only one shot per match, it's going to be damn hard to balance them.

Being able to instantly wipe out a mech from full health with very low-tonnage weapons (RL20 is 1.5 tons) can easily swing the tide in your team's favor, since this is an attrition game with no respawns. On the other hand, if they don't maul people then nobody will want to invest weight in a weapon that only works one time in the entire match.

It also would be kind of cheesy and not fun to fight against.

Edited by FupDup, 18 January 2017 - 07:34 PM.

[Bombast]

I think promoting a weapon that front loads all of it's damage in the first minute of the match is only going to help the people who suicide by red team early so they can get another mech and start all over again.

Besides that... eh.

[Cassa Nova]

Obviously there are better mechs for it. But just like B33f's direstar the RL locust would be something you take out for the shear joy of it. The MAD-5D could take 2 20RLs while still bringing 3-4 LPL and enough heatsinks to keep at 1.3-1.5 efficiency.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Yeah...no.

Given the flexibility in this game about what you can shove into hardpoints, it's going to be a pure nightmare to balance.

I can see some cheese builds though. Imagine ARC-5W with 9x RL20. Direstar, move over.

[Cassa Nova]

Make it so RLs don't count towards the mandatory weapon requirement. Including them would also breath some form of life into a few forgotten mechs like the x5. You could even have them fire like clan LRMs to avoid dumping them into someone for the OHK.

It's possible to balance them just like how all the new tech is going to need balancing.

Edited by Cassa Nova, 18 January 2017 - 07:42 PM.

[RestosIII]

I'm definitely not a fan of 1-shot launchers of any kind. It would encourage bad play, with players either being incredibly conservative with their shots, or running out there and trying to get them off ASAP so they can get the match over with.

[Bishop Steiner]

Cassa Nova, on 18 January 2017 - 07:41 PM, said:

It's possible to balance them just like how all the new tech is going to need balancing.

perhaps you would care to provide an example of said balancing?

Assuming so does not make it so.

[Sigmar Sich]

I would love to see Rocket Launchers. Great option for mechs with unused missile hardpoints, to increase firepower for one special moment, for laughable weight.
For balance - do crazy spread, or/and streaming launch..

[Cassa Nova]

Bishop Steiner, on 18 January 2017 - 08:19 PM, said:

perhaps you would care to provide an example of said balancing?

Assuming so does not make it so.

Well the thing that immediately comes to mind is having them fire much like Clan LRMs.

Or treat them like AMS where having multiple stacks them up and you have a short delay between each launchers activation.

Have them them not count towards the minimum weapon requirement all mechs need.

Have them have a higher spread then even MRMs will.

tweak with the velocity.

Rocket launchers loose range as they get bigger much like ACs (TT Accurate)

Thats six things just off the top of my head. I'm sure people who minmax much harder then me or PGI themselves can come up with even more.

They aren't meant as a main weapon but a supplement if you have open slots and the tonnage to use them.

[Kangarad]

Cassa Nova, on 18 January 2017 - 08:31 PM, said:

Have them them not count towards the minimum weapon requirement all mechs need.

Theres a minimum weapon requirement?

you have me confused. or do tags count as weapons?

I once ran a single small laser 20 ton KGC

and had a 20ton Stalker with 6 Tags.

I don't think there even is a weapon requirement and if there is you just fit a small laser or a machine gun and you will be fine...

[Bombast]

Kangarad, on 18 January 2017 - 08:55 PM, said:

Theres a minimum weapon requirement?

you have me confused. or do tags count as weapons?

I once ran a single small laser 20 ton KGC

and had a 20ton Stalker with 6 Tags.

I don't think there even is a weapon requirement and if there is you just fit a small laser or a machine gun and you will be fine...

The minimum is one. TAG doesn't count as a weapon.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Make each rocket launcher fire a single rocket per shot. RL20 has 20 shots and so on. Have them do 2 damage per missile instead of only 1 since you can't double their ammo count and give them a super short cooldown (like, a few tenths of a second).

RL10 at half a ton gets you 20 damage over, say, 3 seconds (at 0.30s cooldown). RL15 and 20 scale up smoothly, to 30 over 4.5s and 40 over 6s respectively, assuming you hold down the trigger.

[Beaching Betty]

And then after you shoot your rocket launcher, you're just a dirty pest at 165kph?

Seems fun..

[El Bandito]

Don't need it. Got SRMs, and soon to be MRMs.

[Dogstar]

If you want rocket launchers they should be a consumable not a mounted weapon.

[NeoCodex]

Dogstar, on 19 January 2017 - 01:58 AM, said:

If you want rocket launchers they should be a consumable not a mounted weapon.

I think that's even a worse idea. It would be a must have and way more powerful than arty. Hell no.

The game is better of without them, not worth it.

Edited by NeoCodex, 19 January 2017 - 02:02 AM.

[ice trey]

They're doing a timejump to the Civil War / Jihad, whichever.
Rocket Launchers are in that time frame.
They already gave love to periphery players by including decals.

Don't strip the periphery fans of their one weapons system, though I'd REALLY like to see some faction-specific stuff being released RLs should be exclusive to faction play and to Periphery players.

If there are no periphery in faction play by the time of the time jump, fix that.

[Cassa Nova]

NeoCodex, on 19 January 2017 - 02:02 AM, said:

I think that's even a worse idea. It would be a must have and way more powerful than arty. Hell no.

The game is better of without them, not worth it.

I agree with you, consumables would be the absolute worst way they could be implemented. But I don't think that we'd be better off without them, weapons with much more devastating potential are coming in the 3060+ time skip. Clans are no doubt getting heavy lasers, the medium HL does 10 damage pinpoint for a single ton. You could easily load up an arctic cheetah and blap 80-90 points of pinpoint damage into someone before possibly overheating.