3 replies to this topic

[StormFrog]

Heavy Lasers:

These don't have anything they excel at. They're made irrelevant by a combination of:

• Excessive beam duration
  
• Low range
  
• Poor heat efficiency
  
• Mediocre DPS
  
• Cycle times that don't sync with other weapons

You could argue that that the niche they provide is high damage per ton but the beam duration breaks that. Any damage done after about 1.1 seconds of laser duration is essentially "splash damage." It gets wasted by mechs twisting or moving back into cover.

Low range weapons typically need to have low face-time (so you can twist off damage), high heat efficiency (you can't really exit a close range brawl to cool off), or DPS high enough that it doesn't matter that you have high face-time and bad heat efficiency. Heavy lasers have none of those qualities.

Suggestion: pick a role for heavy lasers to excel at and buff that aspect accordingly. Their low range, awkward cycle time, and extra crit slots will keep them balanced.

• Should they be the most pinpoint Clan lasers? Reduce their duration and leave their heat efficiency and DPS low.
  
• Should they be the most heat efficient Clan lasers? Buff heat efficiency and keep duration and DPS poor.
  
• Should they be the highest DPS Clan lasers? Lower cooldown, keep bad duration and heat efficiency, etc.

Medium Range Missiles:

These need to be usable at medium range without performing better than SRMs at close range. They're currently pretty bad at filling a medium range role. A combination of low velocity and high spread makes it hard to hit things past SRM range and unrewarding when you do.

MRMs also seem to only fire in the direction you first point them. The first and last missiles go in the same direction, even if you turn while firing. I assume this is a bug.

Suggestions:

• Buff their velocity significantly (double the current value, at least)
  
• Extend their maximum range to roughly 550m
  
• Reduce their spread significantly
  
• Increase the time it takes for an MRM to stream out all its missiles significantly

The above changes would make MRMs a good medium range weapon that requires maintaining a steady lead on a target to avoid spreading damage. The increased face-time of a longer missile stream would also prevent it from outperforming SRMs at close range.


Advanced Tactical Missiles

These have the same problem MRMs do, they need to be useful without invalidating all the other missile options. I'd suggest they just get converted to be the Clan version of MRMs, direct fire mid range SRMs, but I doubt the developers would want to scrap their lock-on mechanics entirely. (Maybe they could be usable direct fire weapons that only track Tagged and NARC'd targets?)

Suggestions:

• No minimum range. This kills the weapon.
  
• Reduce the max range to around 600m or 700m. There's no reason they should overlap with LRMs as much as they do.
  
• Increase missile velocity
  
• Be willing to break Battle Tech lore to find a niche for ATMs
  
• Consider making them dumb/direct fire weapons. There's no design space for lock-on weapons between Streaks and LRMs

[Toddasaurus]

Clan heavy lasers are SUPPOSED to run very hot, to the point of being inefficient. They also are technically supposed to disrupt the targeting system when fired. IF those drawbacks are BOTH in place, I agree that they should have a shorter duration. Perhaps somewhere between an equivalent ER and pulse laser. (ie heavy large duration should be less than ER Large, but longer than large pulse laser, but the heat needs to be high and the targeting overlay should get all fuzzy/cutout while firing).

That is, if we really want to stick to actual lore...

[Gentleman Reaper]

Toddasaurus, on 29 June 2017 - 07:33 PM, said:

Clan heavy lasers are SUPPOSED to run very hot, to the point of being inefficient. They also are technically supposed to disrupt the targeting system when fired. IF those drawbacks are BOTH in place, I agree that they should have a shorter duration. Perhaps somewhere between an equivalent ER and pulse laser. (ie heavy large duration should be less than ER Large, but longer than large pulse laser, but the heat needs to be high and the targeting overlay should get all fuzzy/cutout while firing).

That is, if we really want to stick to actual lore...

EM interference is a gimmick that will simply discourage mixed builds using HLs, with the heat alone the HLL can go down to 1.4s duration, even lower if you increase the heat to 18 (its TT value). Damage and duration should be the focus points of HLs, with heat and duration being the primary limiters.

[Monkey Lover]

I find the duration on the heavy lasers to be almost worthless too. I would like to see the damage come down and duration to match.

Heavy laser for example drop the heat,dmg and duration down 20%

It will now be 3tons 13dmg, 13.5heat and 1.36 seconds.

This would keep it inline with two er mediums with about the same range but a little hotter.
It would still be better taking two er medium unless you only have room for 1 weapon. This would be its niche.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 29 June 2017 - 08:09 PM.