404 replies to this topic

[Amsro]

kesmai, on 27 April 2017 - 08:11 AM, said:

will it ever end???

Racism? LRM hate? Both?

Not as long as someone can get offended no. The Victim will always exist as long as they feel wronged. Very few take the high ground.





Gotta learn to use the higher mind, the spiritual Ego. Something that all young people are born with and taught to ignore as they grow.

Edited by Amsro, 27 April 2017 - 09:26 AM.

[Ced Riggs]

Amsro, on 27 April 2017 - 09:24 AM, said:

Not as long as someone can get offended, no.

I am not sure what to make of your spiritual, motivational animal pictures, but I think I like you.

[MischiefSC]

I_AM_ZUUL, on 27 April 2017 - 01:44 AM, said:

You are exiting towards E4 hence what makes it the E4 door, then you flank either Right or Left depending on which side of the map you spawned on. Once you turn the corner you have at least Level 4 Walls if not Level 5 that provide 90m to 120m from the base of the wall that can not be shot down from the top of... so you advanced Under Cover and then have Walls that elevate the enemy too high to be able to fire upon you, therefore you can complete the full evolution without being fired upon and get re-situated for the push around the corner of either side towards F5 or D5. Many times you will catch 1 or 2 mechs standing there that can be rolled over, just like pushing under in the first place can accomplish... keeping your team together while the other team naturally shotguns themselves across the map with absolutely no cohesion. Keeping movement and cohesion is the most important part of a PUG match, as long as you can keep 8 people together then you will win 90% of your matches... trying to make a team do a maneuver that does not have them being shot in the front once they are already moving forward as a group at speed will fall apart way more than it works, even under ideal conditions you are going to have them fall apart 25% to 33% of the time. The fact you keep yammering on about LRMs only being "good" against bad players is because you have no real experience with good players using them... that is your lack of experience because I have had teams utterly wreck in Group & CW back when I was doing that kind of stuff. I do not dispute that there are clear advantages to using the D5 door but they are vastly outweighed by the disadvantages in Solo to Group Queue... since we were in Solo not Group then those are the pertinent ones to be used as factors.

So, again, where are these magical good teams with LRMs that never play any league play or any FW or any group queue? Because I've been in good teams that played against 'good' teams using LRMs and destroyed them. Put together your 'good' LRM team and I'll put together a 'good' direct fire team and we'll have them play. I'll put up some mech packs as rewards if you will to the other side if I lose. Happy to.

As to you being absolutely wrong about HPG, I'll go ahead and take the time to show you with pictures. That you literally don't understand why you're wrong about that is also part of why you don't understand why you're wrong about LRMs - you've got some stuff in your head you want to believe is correct without actually looking at the math and reality involved and what actually happens. I'll make another post here about HPG after I get you some screen shots and pictures. It's a good thing for people to see; it's the strategy of what actually works in the game and why vs someones armchair theorizing because they read a book on military strategy one time in band camp.

[MischiefSC]

Kroete, on 27 April 2017 - 07:01 AM, said:

A team of lrm only is bad,
you know it, we know it.
But you still try to use it as argument?

LRMs however you want. A few on each mech, only 2 people with LRMs, however you want. Offer still stands. One team with just direct fire and good players, the other team mixed direct fire and LRMs or all LRMs or whatever. You pick team size, tonnage/weight class values, however you want. Happy to offer you all the choices to make your best possible scenario. You can pick the map too.

Again, I'll put up some mech packs as a reward to the LRM team if they win and you'll offer the same to the direct fire team. Whatever you can afford or are willing to put up or nothing at all save bragging rights. I'll put my money where my mouth is however, no question. Just depends what you're comfortable risking.

[MischiefSC]

Okay. About the best tactical approach to get out from under HPG and why the E4 (west) exit is the worst possible option and D5 is the best possible option but in fact E6 and F5 are both superior to E4.

Here's the map.


It's about 270m from underneath with your back to the 4 central 'walls' until you get to the corner where you have the only sort of cover available on the E4 exit. That's 16 seconds at 80kph, of that almost exactly 10 seconds is exposed to fire. Because the channel is wider more of it is exposed to fire; mechs don't deflect that far up or down but the high positioning over the channel and its width means that the whole distance is totally exposed. However, suppose you make it. Great! That puts you here Where the crosshairs are pointing.



The enemy has corners to shoot you from both from front and back. You are absolutely exposed on 3 sides. You have 1, count them 1, corner to run to, directly forward. You can go another 170m, another 9 seconds, across that totally exposed ground to the left to then spend another 3 seconds with your back facing the entire enemy team to get behind the large wall to the left. Even the other team is all lost, confused and high as a kite and doesn't gun your whole team down like fish in a barrel you end up with only 4 corners from which to shoot from cover against the enemy. If you go up and around either left or right you're on an exposed ramp with no cover against enemies up top and to both sides with cover.

Yes, it's the shortest exit but it leads to the worst possible position to be in that the map offers without standing in the bottom of one of the craters surrounded by enemies.

The exit out of the D5 is a narrow channel. This significantly reduces the lanes of fire for people up top due to inferior weapon deflection. To move into positions on the middle ledge to have a better angle of fire leaves them completely exposed to fire from your whole team.

The total run, including corners, is 18 seconds. 2 seconds longer. However due to obstructions in the middle of it you spend 50% sheltered from fire from one side and 50% from the other. Here's a pic of the lane from up top to see what I'm talking about.



The positions from top center up top, where the hanging cockpit hook is, only have a view of you for the first half - which is the steepest deflection for which only arm weapons can shoot. The position I'm taking the shot from for example I can only shoot torso weapons for the first few meters of their exit, after that it's arms only and I'm 100% exposed to return fire and a couple seconds into their approach they are under angle of fire.

When you get down the channel, that's the critical part - you're here.



You've got multiple points of cover to take on both sides of the exit with literally enough corners for your whole team to take. The enemy has to stay at brawling range to fight you and their approach to your position there is through choke points, meaning they have to feed 1 or 2 at a time into your whole team that is protected from fire by the people up top by the walls. You advance a tiny bit up the ramp to left or right and here's your view, from cover, of the position the enemy was in.


you have teammates in covered positions to your left and right, the enemy has to either completely run and abandon their position (which is a long walk around the ramps for mechs without JJs) while under fire from you in protected positions or they have to drop down into the approach you just left - however you're now already at the lanes exit, leaving them no good choice but... to go under.

Both the other exits are not as good as D5 but better than E4 because they have covered positions to take at the end of their lanes. All are within 1 or 2 seconds travel time to each other.

Good team vs bad, pug vs premade, that's irrelevant. The question is 'which exit is the best'. That's determined by where the exit takes you and what your options are after you get there.

You're mistaking 2 seconds less travel time to get into a terrible position superior than 2 seconds more travel time but with cover 50% of the way that leads to the best positions on the map from which to engage the enemy in the top position. You're not looking at the reality of the situation, just taking 1 or 2 data points and ignoring the rest. It's a terrible tactical decision.

Yes. The absolute best exit is always the one the enemy isn't at. However if the enemy is at D5, the best exit is actually F5; the path to the exit underneath is faster than trying to cross the distance up top as everyone on the middle tier has to either go around or ramp up and over, which leaves them jammed up on the top level or split into 2 sides without overlapping fire and exposed to a push one direction or the other.

Same thing with LRMs. You want to think LRMs are good 'if someone good is using them' but there's absolutely no demonstrated game history to prove that other than your anecdotal experience. All league play, all FW play, all repeatedly tested gameplay environments (again, leagues and FW) show the top performers absolutely never use LRMs. The reason for that is flat out obvious by the weapon design and performance. It's like comparing an LBX with a 90% speed reduction but some tracking mechanics vs an ERPPC. The scattered, slow, unreliable damage is only going to work when you've got someone stupid enough to be exposed to it. The ERPPC is going to zap him for full damage even if he's exposed for 0.5 seconds and it'll hit where you want if you have the skill. LRMs work if the enemy is bad, direct fire works if your skill is good. That's it. You not wanting to get that and ignoring all the proven examples from years of league play and every environment where player skill level is normalized and accounted for is your failing, the math is the math. The testing has been done. You're just not wanting to accept that the world isn't flat or that diseases are not caused by foul humors or that the earth orbits the sun. You want to prove otherwise then you need to prove it.

My challenge stands. Let's do a test. You make a team, I'll make a team, we'll see how it plays out.

[Erronius]

I'm gonna need some Cliff Notes over here

[MischiefSC]

Erronius, on 27 April 2017 - 08:02 PM, said:

I'm gonna need some Cliff Notes over here

Some people think LRMs have a higher skill cap than direct fire and take more skill to use.

Some people think LRMs work just fine you just have to use them right and every single member of all the top performing teams in the game from FW to competitive league play just don't get how amazing they are.

Other people pointed out that they're wrong and that's silly.

Rage ensues. Pointing out that LRMs are bad compared to direct fire is equated to racism.

Challenges were made to test LRMs vs direct fire in 1 v 1 or group v group or whatever criteria was deemed fair to show that LRMs were just as viable as direct fire even when the opposite team wasn't potatoes. This was studiously ignored.

[kesmai]

So there is race called lrm.
Got it.
Well, my immigration laws are keeping them at the front door.
Although i'm open to concepts like the races of lasers, ppc's and ballistic offer and a open trade agreement with those races exist, i want those lurmers rather infront of me than behind...








Kek

Edited by kesmai, 28 April 2017 - 12:29 AM.

[Vellron2005]

Erronius, on 27 April 2017 - 03:23 AM, said:

If you're going to make the conscious decision to not share armor, then maybe you should also make the conscious decision to not take an assault mech so that all of that armor is essentially wasted.

Why would the armor be wasted?

Why do you just assume that somebody in a LRM assault is not giving you something you deserve?

It's not YOUR armor, you don't have a right to it.. nor it is the team's armor, unless we're 12man premade (in which case we play like a well-balanced team)

Why do you think the armor is wasted? It's not.. its protecting a whole bunch of LRM launchers that are used to deadly effect!

The notion of "sharing armor" in QP is completely ridiculous, where every man plays for himself. Cose' if that was not so, than one could also call out a player of an Arctic Cheeta with ECM for "not sharing it's ECM" or the player of a kitfox for not sharing its AMS and many other such examples..

You people just look at the math, but the math is irrelevant.. Its all situational, with skill and sheer dumb luck being the deciding factor.

Cose' if sharing the armor was so bloody important, than why are PPC or Gauss snipers not getting the same hate LRM's get? Tell me that double Gauss Direwolf stalking me from half a map away is sharing armor?

Please.. you people are just bullying LRM users..

P.S.

Also, the best LRM boats are usually heavys anyway..

[I_AM_ZUUL]

MischiefSC, on 27 April 2017 - 11:05 AM, said:

Okay. About the best tactical approach to get out from under HPG and why the E4 (west) exit is the worst possible option and D5 is the best possible option but in fact E6 and F5 are both superior to E4.

There is so much wrong with your assessment of E4 I had no idea where to start, so I am chucking it in its entirety because that is a fair response to it. Let me explain it to you...


Legend:
Red- Level 4
Yellow- Level 0
Blue- Level 0-2
Black Outline- Area that Level 4 CAN NOT shoot at Level 0

Your entire argument against E4 is that you are in the open which is supposing the enemy team being in a position in force they will NEVER be in, and is actually one of the benefits of the E4 when a few mechs which is the most that will ever be there get rolled over during the maneuver. They are going to be on Top/Middle Levels in force 98% of the time, meaning that they are quite literally not able to shoot you while you complete this maneuver. So you can Flank Left or Right through the Blue zones which you do not start to even be able to come under fire from till the ends of where the Level changes makes it possible.

So if I was moving the pieces around myself on a Battletech board then D5 is the clear choice, as well as in a large Group who have High Trust relationships & Good Discipline to be able to keep moving forward as a whole even while being fired from above to the sides and rear then everything you say is true. But since we were in the Solo Queue which has Low Trust relationships & sketchy discipline at best... then the advantages you are talking about are moot in the face of the disadvantages, those being keeping cohesion while being shot from above on the sides and rear. A large chunk of the team is going to fragment and fall back when they come under fire the overwhelming percentage of the time, that is just a fact! AT which point you now have split a solid team of mechs into 2 smaller fragmented groups, one outside who finished the maneuver and another who broke by retreating back under. When that is going to the RESULT of the maneuver for practical purposes the overwhelmingly majority of time, then it is a FAILURE to even attempt. I know... I failed too many times trying to make it work because theoretically & under ideal conditions it is the best possible result. Always choosing E4 in PUG is the best result possible since that is a maneuver which is going to be successful the majority of the time... steady solid overall success rate should always be the choice over high risk high reward that usually fails.

So you seem like you have heard people tell you WHAT works in your Unit and you have retained the information quite well... unfortunately that did not teach you the WHY it works. There are fundamental issues that you breeze over promoting D5 for Solo Queue play & glaring problems that are not even possible that you have made up to use against E4 in your examples. This is symptomatic of how I can tell the difference between good Battletech players and good Mechwarrior players, Battletech players can adapt their thinking to what is existentially just a slightly different ruleset while Mechwarrior players lack the ingrained ruleset that gets burnt into your brain to be necessary to play without checking the rulebooks every 4 seconds to figure each little thing out as you play.

Edited by I_AM_ZUUL, 28 April 2017 - 02:05 AM.

[Ced Riggs]

Vellron2005, on 28 April 2017 - 12:33 AM, said:

Why would the armor be wasted? It's not YOUR armor, you don't have a right to it.. nor it is the team's armor, unless we're 12man premade (in which case we play like a well-balanced team) Why do you think the armor is wasted? It's not.. its protecting a whole bunch of LRM launchers that are used to deadly effect!

All of this is part of the reason why people think LRMs are bad and LRM players are bad. The fact that you don't understand or see this only emphasizes this. It is a nice look into the mindset of the LRM apologist, and explains why so many potatoes run LRMs and feel justified in doing so.

Yes, you armorshare in QP. Someone takes the charge, the rest follows and once that armor is expended, he falls back and a fresh mech takes the charge. You maximize facetime and firepower, cycling through protection so the enemy team needs to damage your team more to get a kill. You preserve firepower by taking turns tanking. It's a simple tactic that is very effective, and LRMs in the back, especially on assaults, effectively make a team more suspectible to kills, because they do not pay into the pot of armor.

Additionally, all that armor that could make the team more resilient (but doesn't) is protecting a weak weapon system with inflated, yet meaningless damage numbers to annoying, harassing effect that no one is scared of. LRMs are not deadly, they are easily avoided, negated, shot down or made impossible. LRMs not supported by LoS TAG cannot be fired, unless someone else does the locking for the LRM boat via NARC or holding the lock, which a brawler or a fast-moving firing line will not do, as they need to indentify weak components and take them out for shortest TTK - something LRMs cannot help with.

Vellron2005, on 28 April 2017 - 12:33 AM, said:

The notion of "sharing armor" in QP is completely ridiculous, where every man plays for himself. Cose' if that was not so, than one could also call out a player of an Arctic Cheeta with ECM for "not sharing it's ECM" or the player of a kitfox for not sharing its AMS and many other such examples.

If you play for yourself, fine. Meanwhile, other players do focusfire, do listen to drop calls, do move with the team, do communicate ("CT open", "Kodiak needs to go down, focus Bravo", etc.) and those players excell in QP. You won't. Yet again, your inability to understand and process this emphasizes the prior statement of LRM players being bad at MWO.

The Kitfox projects a 120m AMS bubble around himself and supports his team by shooting down incoming LRMs, LRMs flying past him, or LRMs flying over him on their way to a team mate. The Cheetah uses his ECM to circumvent, sneak by and harass the enemy and/or scout. Both systems may also protect the user themselves, but do provide implicit and explicit benefits to the team. Additionally, I've seen quite a few ECM carriers guarding direwhales, kingcrabs and other slow fatties. LRMs, on the other hand, provide mediocre, untargetted damage and most of the time, unshared armor, which might aswell be irrelevant for team success.

Vellron2005, on 28 April 2017 - 12:33 AM, said:

You people just look at the math, but the math is irrelevant.. Its all situational, with skill and sheer dumb luck being the deciding factor. Cose' if sharing the armor was so bloody important, than why are PPC or Gauss snipers not getting the same hate LRM's get? Tell me that double Gauss Direwolf stalking me from half a map away is sharing armor? Please.. you people are just bullying LRM users..

That Dual Goose Direwhale is putting precise, hard-hitting damage into components and focusfires with the team to great effect, rather than showering the target with confetti sprinkles. The Quad PPC Warhawk can and does walk into medium range brawls, fights in tunnels and under overpasses, and can and does armor share. If their range of ~750m allows them to take shots that cannot be responded to, they are using their weapon systems, which deal precise, effective damage, to their potential. These builds can, and do, armor share and provide way more value to a team than any LRM carrier ever will.

Yes, LRM players are being bullied.

For a reason. For make the team more brittle, for dealing insignificant damage without precision, for being ineffective at long and short ranges, for being outright unable to add damage in various terrain geometry situations and for not only relying, but also demanding the team to do 50% of their work for them. Play a Hunchback with TAG and get your own locks. Learn to provide meaningful support. Learn to focusfire. Learn to aim and hit something. Stop being a baddie and defending being a baddie. Git gud. Then the bullying will stop.

Step 1: Understand that (and why) LRMs are bad weapons.

They aren't artillery. They are harassment weapons. And if you combine "harassment" with ASSAULT MECH, you are doing it wrong. An ASSAULT mech is predestined - and more than ready - to ASSAULT. If you want to play a harassment/support role, pick a harassment/support mech - Adder, LRM 10 Hunchie, Trebuchet, Catapult, etc. are all valid choices. Bring backup weapons, and learn to use them. Learn to fight in distance of 185m to 400m, learn to take a hit once in a while so your team lasts longer.

Step 2: Quit using LRMs altogether, because it is not about sheer dumb luck, or situations. It's about skill, creating situations yourself, and no weapon system is as passive and unable to project force as the LRM launchers. If you don't think it is about skill, and that RNG decides who lives and dies... well. You might be bad. Which brings us full circle:

If you don't think LRMs are bad, you are bad.

Edited by Ced Riggs, 28 April 2017 - 03:45 AM.

[Acehilator]

Ced Riggs, on 28 April 2017 - 03:35 AM, said:

[lots of semi-useless and useless babble]

Stop posting please, that stuff is embarassing. Read the thread first, instead of using the same old BS arguments again.

[TWIAFU]

Ced Riggs, on 28 April 2017 - 03:35 AM, said:

If you don't think LRMs are bad, you are bad.

LRMs, generally speaking, are a warm and comfy baby blanket. It/they are safe and protect you. Easy to aim and to fire, hell, I'll admit fun too. Stand away for the fight, most of the time someone else is doing the targetting for them and deal damage.

Like all weapons, they are situational but least of all, IMO, because to be most effective you need a teammate that is also equally effective at supporting/assisting. It is then that they become "good" or at least better then what we all see with "hold locks" and every other QP pug stigma associated with LRMs.

But back to the baby blanket analogy; eventually, most grow out of it. Time, experience, and overcoming 'fear' of other weapons/mechs takes time, and QP is where they go to learn, the hard way most of the time.

Any skilled pilot with the knowledge and experience with LRMs can drop in QP and easily make mashed potatoes and show how 'good' the weapon is.

[Ced Riggs]

Acehilator, on 28 April 2017 - 05:19 AM, said:

Stop posting please, that stuff is embarassing. Read the thread first, instead of using the same old BS arguments again.

I would respond here (further than this very post), but I read your signature and will heed your advice.

[Arctourus]

[Erronius]

Vellron2005, on 28 April 2017 - 12:33 AM, said:

Why would the armor be wasted?

Because if you're going to hide in the back, there's a pretty good chance that you'll take insignificant amounts of damage until the match has already been won or lost, at which point it's doubtful that an assault mech's armor is going to matter. Either it won't be enough armor to save you when it's only you left versus 5 enemy mechs that are hunting you down, or...it's your team that's hunting down the last enemy mech and your armor never came into play.

In both scenarios you took an assault mech's worth of armor and essentially wasted it by placing it in a location where it's never used until the match has already been decided.

And odds are good that if you want to play a LRM mech, that there are better medium and heavy mechs you could use instead of wasting assault mech tonnage.

Vellron2005, on 28 April 2017 - 12:33 AM, said:

Why do you think the armor is wasted? It's not.. its protecting a whole bunch of LRM launchers that are used to deadly effect!

"deadly effect" is debatable, and that armor is 100% wasted if you spent the entire game hiding outside of LOS somewhere in the rear.

Vellron2005, on 28 April 2017 - 12:33 AM, said:

Cose' if sharing the armor was so bloody important, than why are PPC or Gauss snipers not getting the same hate LRM's get?

Probably because they still need LOS, at the very least.

I'm pretty sure that I've made posts in this thread where I've lumped Gauss/PPC assault mechs in with the LRM boat assaults, assuming that they all are hiding out in the extreme nether regions of the team's backfield. But at the same time it feels like many LRM users use LRMs specifically because they CAN hide 800m away and fire w/o LOS, meaning that as a weapon system it enables that exact type of gameplay. Gauss/PPC sniping...it still happens (speaking of assault boat builds here, spending the entire game 800m or more behind their team), but I'd be willing to bet that it happens to a lesser extent, as direct fire weapons are easier to use at mid to close range.

But to say it again (and I only speak for myself here), IDGAF if someone takes LRMs. I don't even really care if you take an LRM80 Scorch, though I will absolutely cringe when I see it. But if that mech stays up with the team? Then I think that myself, and others, really don't have much of an issue.

Edited by Erronius, 28 April 2017 - 08:54 PM.

[I_AM_ZUUL]

Erronius, on 28 April 2017 - 08:52 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure that I've made posts in this thread where I've lumped Gauss/PPC assault mechs in with the LRM boat assaults, assuming that they all are hiding out in the extreme nether regions of the team's backfield. But at the same time it feels like many LRM users use LRMs specifically because they CAN hide 800m away and fire w/o LOS, meaning that as a weapon system it enables that exact type of gameplay. Gauss/PPC sniping...it still happens (speaking of assault boat builds here, spending the entire game 800m or more behind their team), but I'd be willing to bet that it happens to a lesser extent, as direct fire weapons are easier to use at mid to close range.

It definitely happens A LOT... especially with the guys who bring up Stats/KDR/Leaderboard as the main thrust of their arguments, that is how they farm those up. Just like I know what certain Light players are always going to be in, I know Assault players for the very same reason. They are totally useless to achieving Victory but contribute so much to Defeat every single time... Win More mechs are just that, Win More. If the team can not Win the match without them then they will have absolutely no bearing on the outcome.

Edited by I_AM_ZUUL, 28 April 2017 - 09:31 PM.

[vandalhooch]

Amsro, on 27 April 2017 - 09:24 AM, said:

- snipped for space-

Those staged photos are one of the reasons why so many people have absolutely no idea how real ecosystems work.

Siberian tigers regularly kill and eat bears. Great horned owls regularly kill and eat foxes.

EDIT: Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy they espouse.

Edited by vandalhooch, 29 April 2017 - 07:10 AM.

[Amsro]

vandalhooch, on 29 April 2017 - 07:10 AM, said:

Those staged photos are one of the reasons why so many people have absolutely no idea how real ecosystems work.

Siberian tigers regularly kill and eat bears. Great horned owls regularly kill and eat foxes.

EDIT: Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy they espouse.

Heh no, we are guardians of the eco system, it reacts how we do. If we take care of it, it will do that same back.

But if you like to believe the propaganda have at it. You probably believe your ancestors were monkeys...

What you think you know about the plane(t) we live on and what your really know are 2 VERY different things. Welcome to zombieland america where brainwashing starts at grade 1.

[MischiefSC]

Okay. This thread went to crazy town. Both someone not understanding that 2 corners of cover < 8-10 and over 400m of exposed space to cross for useful cover < 260m with partial cover and then creationist woo.

Good luck y'all.