677 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

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This was reduced also for balance, but the minimum range was left in as a consideration toward lore and as a compromise of not having to switch between ammo types

except if atms had the ability to switch between ammo types they could always switch to an ammo type with no min range in CQC.

which is why atms should have no min range without ammo switching. because theyd have no min range with ammo switching.

However with no min range and no ammo switching, they should have their damage lowered to 2 per missile

ATMs also need 50% more health to survive AMS better

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I still feel that the best approach (which could even be applied to Rockets even for the sake of balance) is the same damage drop off as CLRMs currently have

The best approach is that ATMs should have no min range. And they should do 2 damage per missile at all ranges. And they should have lower max range than LRMs and lower velocity than LRMs (LRMs should have the faster velocity because theyre long range missiles). And ATMs should have 50% more health to help them against AMS.

ATMs should not be punished by having a min range just because PGI cant code in ammo types. That is crap.

Because if we had ammo types we wouldnt have to worry about a min range because we could just switch to the short range ammo type that has no min range.

ATMs having a min range goes completely against the spirit of the weapon. ATMs are supposed to be a versatile weapon thats good but not great at all ranges. It should do less damage than the more specialized weapon systems, but more versatile than those specialized weapons too.

Edited by Khobai, 13 November 2017 - 03:39 AM.

[The6thMessenger]

Khobai, on 13 November 2017 - 03:23 AM, said:

The best approach is that ATMs should have no min range. And they should do 2 damage per missile at all ranges.

2.4/2.0/1.6 at 270m/540m/1150m.

[Khobai]

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2.4/2.0/1.6 at 270m/540m/1150m.

could work but at 2.4 youd have to significantly slow down the rate of fire of ATMs then

otherwise they would be vastly superior to SRMs

ATMs shouldnt make SRMs completely obsolete

Edited by Khobai, 13 November 2017 - 12:10 PM.

[Tesunie]

Khobai, on 13 November 2017 - 12:08 PM, said:

could work but at 2.4 youd have to significantly slow down the rate of fire of ATMs then

otherwise they would be vastly superior to SRMs

ATMs shouldnt make SRMs completely obsolete

There are many things to consider here. Rate of fire, damage, range, heat, cooldown... Many of these could be adjusted to make it so that SRMs nor LRMs are made obsolete. Not to mention missile health... as you mentioned before I believe...

[The6thMessenger]

Khobai, on 13 November 2017 - 12:08 PM, said:

could work but at 2.4 youd have to significantly slow down the rate of fire of ATMs then

otherwise they would be vastly superior to SRMs

ATMs shouldnt make SRMs completely obsolete

Again stream-fire, lock-fire, need of retained lock. It won't make SRMs obsolete anymore than other weapons outranging them would make them obsolete.

[Khobai]

you can dumbfire ATMs they dont need a retained lock

[Tesunie]

Khobai, on 18 November 2017 - 07:07 PM, said:

you can dumbfire ATMs they dont need a retained lock

True. But you can do so with LRMs as well...

[The6thMessenger]

Tesunie, on 18 November 2017 - 07:28 PM, said:

True. But you can do so with LRMs as well...

Yeah, and it's not like LRMs working between 180m - 270m means it's far better than SRMs.

[Tesunie]

The6thMessenger, on 18 November 2017 - 08:40 PM, said:

Yeah, and it's not like LRMs working between 180m - 270m means it's far better than SRMs.

Khobai does have a bit of a point. If ATMs had no minimum range, than the argument that they can be dumb fired makes them start to threaten to take over SRMs.

I don't think it would, as you have to consider weight, crit slots taken, heat produced, weapon cooldown... I believe that even if ATMs had no minimum range (or at least no hard minimum and instead a soft minimum range) that SRMs would still hold a strong place. SRMs take up less crits, weigh less, and recycle faster with less heat produced (last I recalled). Give ATMs a soft minimum range would even re-enforce this, making them deal less damage as you got closer. (This isn't even considering spread of the weapons yet, nor susceptibility to AMS...)

[The6thMessenger]

Tesunie, on 18 November 2017 - 09:02 PM, said:

Khobai does have a bit of a point. If ATMs had no minimum range, than the argument that they can be dumb fired makes them start to threaten to take over SRMs.

I don't think it would, as you have to consider weight, crit slots taken, heat produced, weapon cooldown... I believe that even if ATMs had no minimum range (or at least no hard minimum and instead a soft minimum range) that SRMs would still hold a strong place. SRMs take up less crits, weigh less, and recycle faster with less heat produced (last I recalled). Give ATMs a soft minimum range would even re-enforce this, making them deal less damage as you got closer. (This isn't even considering spread of the weapons yet, nor susceptibility to AMS...)

Sure, i agree that Khobai has a point. But as you pointed out, ATMs have a lot of other hurdles that wouldn't make it better for SRMs at close range. Low velocity coupled with stream-fire, compare to volley fire and high velocity. Being stream-fire, and not MRMs, that means you cannot just direct the stream. It will go to where you launched it, and you can't adjust it to lead the missiles. Not to mention better weight.

I prefer to look at it role-wise, that weapons fill a roles. Not all weapons need to be good at a band of range, it just so happens that SRMs would be the best at it's narrow band of range -- but just sucks at everything else. But it's not like weapons couldn't be specialized. It's pointless to make a weapon compete with a weapon that has vastly different role because they are supposed to do different things, the only thing we could do is make the role in which they do a bit more of a choice to take. Unfortunately close-range isn't really that meta.

Needless to say, if you wouldn't brawl with ATMs, why would it be better than SRMs?

Edited by The6thMessenger, 19 November 2017 - 01:37 AM.

[Khobai]

Well I think SRMs/SSRMs are too weak anyway. Id say just increase SRM/SSRM damage to 2.5 for IS and 2.3 for clans

Then ATMs cant really compete with them at short range

[The6thMessenger]

Khobai, on 19 November 2017 - 01:26 AM, said:

Well I think SRMs/SSRMs are too weak anyway. Id say just increase SRM/SSRM damage to 2.5 for IS and 2.3 for clans

Then ATMs cant really compete with them at short range

To be fair, they do deserve the extra damage in terms of availability for builds. The SRM6, doing 12 damage for 1.5 to 2.5 tons, while to match the same damage -- with 2.4 damage due to adjusted damage with removed minimum range needs 5 missiles to match it, but the closest is ATM6 that weighs 3.5 ton.

Take Traditional TBR Brawler - 4x SPL + 4x SRM6A [600] for example, the 4x SRM6A only took 10 tons, +6 tons of ammo, 7 tons of DHS, and 4 tons of 4x SPL.

Replacing those with equivalent stuff; ATM TBR 4x ERML + 2x ATM9, the ATM does 43.2 alpha with 7.2 DPS, while the SRM build does 48 alpha -- and with 12 DPS.

Now granted, the perk of the ATMs over SRMs is that they could boat higher amounts of missiles, like so; TBR ATM30, I guess that would defeat SRMs in terms of alpha, maximizing the hardpoints.

But then, so what? Would you still brawl with it? And with alloted 17 tons to the build, versus 10 tons of 4x SRM6A or just 6 tons without Artemis, wouldn't that justify the capability 72 alpha anyways? That's like 4.2353 Damage/ton, when the SRM6A does 4.8 damage/ton, and SRM6 does 8 damage/ton.

Sure, okay, people could be less likely to value SRMs because they still have good close-range damage, but none of the maximum range. But that sounds like they just didn't want close-range fights in the first place. If that's the case, i suppose SRMs being buffed is in order.

[GamerPro4000]

If there is no longer minimum range on ATMs, then there will no longer need for streaks for clans anymore. Streaks would be inferior in almost every way. Lowering the minimum to 90 makes more sense.

[Khobai]

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If there is no longer minimum range on ATMs, then there will no longer need for streaks for clans anymore. Streaks would be inferior in almost every way. Lowering the minimum to 90 makes more sense.

yeah but if ATMs could switch ammo, they would have no min range at all, because you could always switch to the ammo type with no min range when using ATMs at short range.

ATMs shouldnt be punished with a min range just because PGI couldnt properly code ammo switching. thats not really fair.

to address SRMs/SSRMs not competing with ATMs at 2 damage and no min range, I would just increase the damage on SRMs/SSRMs by about 15% (2.5 damage per missile for IS and 2.3 for clans). That should be enough to allow SRMs/SSRMs to keep an edge over ATMs.

SRMs should be brutal weapons. I mean theyre limited to 270m and they do spread damage. So SRMs should hurt a lot more than they currently do. SRMs should be scary weapons to justify the risk you take by getting close enough to use them. I think 2.5 damage per missile for IS would accomplish that (and 2.3 for clan srms)

Edited by Khobai, 19 November 2017 - 11:38 AM.

[Nightbird]

ATMs are already stronger than LRMs, no buffs forthcoming...

[The6thMessenger]

Nightbird, on 19 November 2017 - 12:49 PM, said:

ATMs are already stronger than LRMs, no buffs forthcoming...

What we're really looking for is rework, not another gimmicky LRM.

GamerPro4000, on 19 November 2017 - 09:47 AM, said:

If there is no longer minimum range on ATMs, then there will no longer need for streaks for clans anymore. Streaks would be inferior in almost every way. Lowering the minimum to 90 makes more sense.

I don't think ATMs are fire-and-forget. SSRMs would still have it's anti-light capacity, and single-volley launch.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 19 November 2017 - 08:48 PM.

[Tesunie]

The6thMessenger, on 19 November 2017 - 08:47 PM, said:

I don't think ATMs are fire-and-forget.

They are not. In that sense, they are a lot like LRMs. Best if you keep your lock for it's entire flight duration.

[The6thMessenger]

Tesunie, on 19 November 2017 - 09:04 PM, said:

They are not. In that sense, they are a lot like LRMs. Best if you keep your lock for it's entire flight duration.

That wouldn't serve poptarts of light-hunters well.

[Tesunie]

The6thMessenger, on 19 November 2017 - 11:41 PM, said:

That wouldn't serve poptarts of light-hunters well.

I'm presuming that you mean "Poptarts or light hunters"?

I'll make mention that I tend to do LRM jump shooting (with other direct fire weapons). I can do this with CLRMs as easily as I can IS LRMS. If I could get into using ATMs, I could use them there as well. Only problem I have is when the IS LRMs shoot out of a low tube count hard point, because it's slower than CLRM stream fire.

For the most part, ATMs currently in the game do decent against light mechs from my observations. One of the reasons is because they tend to (for some reason) aim and hit legs more than the rest of the mech, especially on more mobile targets.


Some of the reasons I've not been able to convince myself to change over and use ATMs over CLRMs has been weight, crit slots taken, heat produced, cooldown and hard minimum range. Overall, I've had very good luck with CLRMs, but haven't had much luck with ATMs as of yet (but I'll admit I haven't used them very much yet... I need to correct that). I just keep finding them too hot on the mechs I try them on. (I was trying for an ATM Kit Fox a short while ago with reasonable laser backups. It was too hot, something it didn't share with it's LRM counterpart test build.)

[The6thMessenger]

Tesunie, on 20 November 2017 - 09:26 AM, said:

I'm presuming that you mean "Poptarts or light hunters"?

Yes