Curccu, on 05 September 2017 - 05:32 AM, said:
LRms are fine....
...If you only use it when you get polar highlands and actually know how to play those against fast'ish brawly opponents.
Polar Highlands is not a flat, featureless plane.
I can close to 180m while exposing myself only briefly, not enough for you to do any significant damage. Then I'll kill you with 0 effort.
Beyond that you're letting us play 4 v 3 against your teammates. We have 350 armor/mech, so 1400 armor in that fight. We have alphas that do about 45 damage alpha (average of 40-50 pts) to selected locations each exchange. 4 of us, that's 180 damage/exchange.
Your teammates only have 1050 armor in that fight because the guy with LRMs is off hiding and shooting from cover.
Your teammates are doing 135 damage (45x3) + your scattered, inaccurate LRM damage to wherever it hits.
So in the first exchange we will absolutely kill 1 of them. Now it's 180 damage vs 90 damage + 1 inaccurate splattering of LRMs.
Do you see how that works?
LRMs are not artillery support. They do not kill tons of enemies with every salvo, they don't obliterate targets and everything close by every time they fire, which makes them useful as a support weapon.
LRMs do about the same damage (or less) per ton devoted to them but do it inaccurately compared to every other weapon.
The only thing LRMs do well is let you shoot while hiding. So you're doing less useful damage and less accurately, but in return you get to force your teammates to fight with 1 less mechs worth of armor to soak up enemy return fire.
LRMs are always bad. Always. Every situation, every map, every mode. They are inherently inferior as a choice to direct fire. Always, no exceptions. There is no 'except when'.
The only time LRMs are viable is when the player has physical disabilities that leave them unable to aim accurately or they're playing on a potato that has such terrible sub-30 fps that they literally can't effectively aim. In that instance LRMs may be their most viable choice because they literally can't use direct fire.
The problem isn't that LRMs are bad for scouting. It's that scouting is only 4 v 4, so each player is a more critical piece of their teams performance and so it highlights how absolutely always 100% terrible LRMs are compared to direct fire.
There is no map, no situation, no reason