18 replies to this topic

[Kaptain]

Trying to run a couple 10s on a raven to finish off cherry red mechs or exploit holes in armor and they feel next to worthless. I suppose they only weigh a ton but they don't even feel worth that.

[BearFlag]

Think I'm with you there. They are incredibly light balanced against one-shot.

I brought a Kintaro 18 in with two large lasers and launcher 95 total. It was fun to reimagine this mech. The low weight of rockets let me try a big laser build AND a bigger AND light engine. But the damage is so diffuse that only chain firing all five against one target made an impression. If it takes seven tons and 14 slots to make a small dent, I don't see the value.

Such light weapons can't be murderous, but they should do something other than scratch armor head to toe. As is, if I wanted a big laser KTO-18, (yeah, I know, it's a missile boat), I'd better use seven tons with two SRM 6's, one ton of ammo and missile racks. Potentially c. 260 damage and more focused.

One suggestion would be a nerf/buff of the weapon. The cross-hair bias seems to be at or near zero in the already huge spread. Try....

1) creating/improving the cross-hair hit bias
2) imposing ghost heat if >1 Rocket Launcher fires

OR...

Since players like aim, and like to hit what they aim at, change the weapon altogether. Make it accurate (flies to current cross-hair), but sequential. A stream weapon. All loaded Rocket Launchers act as a single, sequential firing system. An interval of .33 seconds would be DPS 5.25. This is a ballpark figure leaning to the high end of DPS. But a use-once weapon should be high DPS since it is expended at a cost of tonnage and slots. A higher figure is probably justified for an expendable weapon.

This latter proposal requires "face time", making it inherently dangerous. With accuracy comes risk. And sequential fire also allows counter-measure (move, twist).

Edited by BearFlag, 01 July 2017 - 11:41 PM.

[MithrilDragon]

Or better yet, don't add rocket launchers to the game.

[LordNothing]

they broke their intended use and troll builds are still possible, they just have to get closer.

Edited by LordNothing, 02 July 2017 - 01:01 AM.

[Cpt Caveman n son]

Rocket launchers should be a one shot use item, not a way to troll and use a light mech to core an Assault. Giving Ghost heat or making them have a wide spread doesn't stop that from happening.

Why not make them have a cool down where you can only fire one and then have to wait until you can fire any more. Same concept as a cool shot.

[The6thMessenger]

Cpt Caveman n son, on 02 July 2017 - 06:05 AM, said:

Rocket launchers should be a one shot use item, not a way to troll and use a light mech to core an Assault. Giving Ghost heat or making them have a wide spread doesn't stop that from happening.

Why not make them have a cool down where you can only fire one and then have to wait until you can fire any more. Same concept as a cool shot.

I say have Rockets only shoot one missile each use, at a maximum of 10/15/20, with each missile dealing 3 damage, and at recycle time of 0.36s.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 02 July 2017 - 06:14 AM.

[Damnedtroll]

Cpt Caveman n son, on 02 July 2017 - 06:05 AM, said:

Rocket launchers should be a one shot use item, not a way to troll and use a light mech to core an Assault. Giving Ghost heat or making them have a wide spread doesn't stop that from happening.

Why not make them have a cool down where you can only fire one and then have to wait until you can fire any more. Same concept as a cool shot.

Maybe one after each other like a fiery stream until you reach the end of the bar a little bit like the RAC, if you stop mid course of the bar just half of them launch and the bar stay still. You can shoot the rest later.

[LordNothing]

The6thMessenger, on 02 July 2017 - 06:11 AM, said:

I say have Rockets only shoot one missile each use, at a maximum of 10/15/20, with each missile dealing 3 damage, and at recycle time of 0.36s.

the fact that they are one use pretty much guarantees that ghost heat will have no effect on troll builds. worst case scenario it makes you explode, but thats after you've already fired. hard limits on the number of launchers is silly. lockouts and cds are wierd. i think going multi launch is the only real solution to the problem. this is the way modern rocket pods work. each tube is still one use, its just you dont fire them all at once.

these are good numbers for that. you get 8.33 dps out of the launcher, the best in the game. the 10/15/20 is now worth 30/45/60 damage, increasing their value. this makes it a good high dps alternative to an srm2 and a half ton ammo. this is good for space strapped lights. ghost heat can now be directly applied to multi-launch. worst case troll archer can only do a 27 point alpha, and will probibly overheat in the attempt. the weapon then can be very accurate (sort of like narcs, makes me wish ammo types were possible because explosive pod) without being op.

it still fills the role of supplemental one use weapon. it gives you a dps surge which can be decisive in a brawl. it fills out sparse loadouts and those occasional one off missile hardpoints without being a waste of tonnage. it gives lights a low cost missile alternative. it just does everything we want rocket launchers to do and forbids everything we dont want them to do.

Edited by LordNothing, 02 July 2017 - 11:05 AM.

[Monkey Lover]

I really wish they will just add a cooldown allowing you only to fire one at time. Then buff them back to normal.

I dont see the use for them anymore.

[NiuqOteen]

These need to some how NOT be alpha weapons.

Its a Game and in this game, getting taken down in 10 seconds or less always feels like crap. ( it has happened to all of us dont lie)

Most of the time when that happens it is due terrible mistakes. Very rarely an amazing headshot or dual guass to the rear side torso. When i walk face first into an enemy firing line, i understand why i died. Headshot i was standing still, blind luck, or shutdown again all understandable.

Getting one shotted by pure alpha? feels absolutely terrible.

[Damnedtroll]

They are fun, but alpha crazy build are just pumping insane damage, works on 4 vs 4 but after that.... If we put them in a real 12vs12 game, after one shot the troll build is over and if he don't have good backup weapon, it's a dead weight for the rest of the team.

I find them to bulk up the volume of a lot of battlemech too, making them easier to hit.

[Tarl Cabot]

Kaptain, on 01 July 2017 - 09:05 PM, said:

Trying to run a couple 10s on a raven to finish off cherry red mechs or exploit holes in armor and they feel next to worthless. I suppose they only weigh a ton but they don't even feel worth that.

Are you running without Artemis enabled? Enable Artemis. It appears Chris was not aware that Artemis was not setup to allow missiles systems to be excluded so he has adjusted the attributes to reflect where he wants them to be with Artemis enabled for the most recent PTS patch. From his tweets, it is unsure if they will be able to exclude Artemis from specific missile systems, the same bug where Streaks benefits from Artemis.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 02 July 2017 - 01:59 PM.

[Xevius Von Morrigan]

BearFlag, on 01 July 2017 - 11:08 PM, said:

Think I'm with you there. They are incredibly light balanced against one-shot.

I brought a Kintaro 18 in with two large lasers and launcher 95 total. It was fun to reimagine this mech. The low weight of rockets let me try a big laser build AND a bigger AND light engine. But the damage is so diffuse that only chain firing all five against one target made an impression. If it takes seven tons and 14 slots to make a small dent, I don't see the value.

Such light weapons can't be murderous, but they should do something other than scratch armor head to toe. As is, if I wanted a big laser KTO-18, (yeah, I know, it's a missile boat), I'd better use seven tons with two SRM 6's, one ton of ammo and missile racks. Potentially c. 260 damage and more focused.

One suggestion would be a nerf/buff of the weapon. The cross-hair bias seems to be at or near zero in the already huge spread. Try....

1) creating/improving the cross-hair hit bias
2) imposing ghost heat if >1 Rocket Launcher fires

OR...

Since players like aim, and like to hit what they aim at, change the weapon altogether. Make it accurate (flies to current cross-hair), but sequential. A stream weapon. All loaded Rocket Launchers act as a single, sequential firing system. An interval of .33 seconds would be DPS 5.25. This is a ballpark figure leaning to the high end of DPS. But a use-once weapon should be high DPS since it is expended at a cost of tonnage and slots. A higher figure is probably justified for an expendable weapon.

This latter proposal requires "face time", making it inherently dangerous. With accuracy comes risk. And sequential fire also allows counter-measure (move, twist).

I tested RL too. too much spread.
I like the idea of a stream of rockets (perhaps 5 at times)

[T3N5POT]

I'd prefer the old spread, but to see RL limited to 10 rockets pods. Remove RL 15, and turn the RL20 into a 10x2.(You get 2 shots for a single missile hardpoint)

The mechs that are boating 100+ tubes get nerfed significantly down to really ~60 tubes(Archer would be 90) That's a lot more reasonable of a hit a to the face.

As for the lights that are running Kamikaze, 40ish tubes limits their damage to 70 damage. While that's a huge backside alpha, it's not quite enough to one shot most assaults.In the best case scenario, only 60ish of that damage will realistically hit the ct. 5-10 back armor+50-65 structure means you'll most likely survive. If anything, it gives a reason to put just a bit more armor on your back CT.

[renegade666]

Actually, I have to disagree with the spread being too much, because several IS chassis have enough missile hardpoints to become kamikaze bombers - which is the core of my own recent experiments.

I just ran the final test on "that" ARC-5W, with several changes:

1) 15% missile critical damage enabled
2) Artemis enabled

As before, the 5% spread reduction was in effect. So that's a spread reduction of (33+5=38%), down to approximately 62% of their original firing spread.

It one-shotted a Mauler under battle conditions at about 150m.

Now, I have major concerns with this thing:

1) Artemis does not increase the weight of the rocket launchers at this point.
2) The sheer firepower available, even as a single-use weapon, is monstrous.

I sincerely hope people understand that I was not running the kamikaze build for trolling purposes. It was a serious, in-depth analysis of the rocket launchers and their viability as assault-killing weapons prior to release into Mechwarrior Online itself.

And now, my verdict: in their current form, unaffected by Artemis weight modifiers and with the same spread and critical boosts as any other missile weapon, rocket launchers are NOT in a servicable form for fair play.

Artemis weight modifiers MUST be implemented for rocket launchers before final release. Due to the low tonnage of rocket systems, I would imagine at least tripling their tonnage would be prudent as this would have a major impact on engine size. This would give the target's allies more time to destroy or disable the bomber mech before it can complete its mission.

Increasing ghost heat from rocket launchers would mean nothing to players using these builds - after all, once the rockets are launched the mech's as good as destroyed in most forms of play, with or without heat death.

Then there's the morale factor. First, in nearly all cases where I actually destroyed a target, my own lance won the match in question without another casualty other than my own mech.

Second, imagine you're a player new to MWO, perhaps not even a few games in, when suddenly you're destroyed by one of these... things. How would that feel?

Exactly.

So in short:

No, the spread increase is not too much
No, the rocket systems are not ready for release
No. Just... no.

Finally, since my tests are completed I will NOT be deploying Demolition Debbie ever again.

I imagine there are far worse builds waiting to be built with all this new equipment.

[ChapeL]

I don't know if it's been mentionned but what if they ripple fired ? ( like Clan LRMs )

[Admiral-Dan]

Damnedtroll, on 02 July 2017 - 11:56 AM, said:

They are fun, but alpha crazy build are just pumping insane damage, works on 4 vs 4 but after that.... If we put them in a real 12vs12 game, after one shot the troll build is over and if he don't have good backup weapon, it's a dead weight for the rest of the team.

That’s right in QP, in FP a light rush of 12 x 210 Alpha Javelin can easily destroy the Gen and the Omega and end the game in a few minutes, or can take out the first enemy wave of Assault and Heavy leaving the enemy with a huge tonnage disadvantage.

[Admiral-Dan]

Wrong Thread.

Edited by AlphaEtOmega, 03 July 2017 - 08:28 AM.

[Monkey Lover]

AlphaEtOmega, on 03 July 2017 - 08:07 AM, said:

That’s right in QP, in FP a light rush of 12 x 210 Alpha Javelin can easily destroy the Gen and the Omega and end the game in a few minutes, or can take out the first enemy wave of Assault and Heavy leaving the enemy with a huge tonnage disadvantage.

Good maybe it will finish off the mode so they can remake it into a real CW game.