56 replies to this topic

[Pxranger]

"I'm honestly not sure there's an easy fix to this - though restricting AMS to covering only the equipped chassis may be necessary. Ditto for a rework of LRMs to make them more effective as direct-fire weapons, and less reliable for indirect fire. I'm not rock-solid sure what all needs to be done, but the current state of the LRM/ATM balance ecology leaves something to be desired."

LRM's are designed to be indirect fire weapons. The direct fire versions are MRM's, SRM's, and ATM's to a certain extent.

AMS is basically fine as it is, if you have a Medium LRM mech, adjust your tactics to take advantage of your strengths, which is mobility (or should be anyway). You're not going to have the throw weight and/or the ammo supply to be very effective, so your role is more of harassment. When all you see is "Missile lock" on your screen you usually don't know if it's an 80 missile volley from a supernova or 10 or 20 missiles from a medium, so people tend to react by seeking cover to break lock.
That's all you can really hope for as a medium missile mech. a single skilled up AMS is going to basically counter any medium, so you need to learn to pick targets outside AMS coverage, unless you get terribly unlucky there will only be a few AMS systems in a drop at any one time.

[Void Angel]

Pxranger, on 17 September 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

AMS is basically fine as it is, if you have a Medium LRM mech, adjust your tactics to take advantage of your strengths, which is mobility (or should be anyway). You're not going to have the throw weight and/or the ammo supply to be very effective, so your role is more of harassment. When all you see is "Missile lock" on your screen you usually don't know if it's an 80 missile volley from a supernova or 10 or 20 missiles from a medium, so people tend to react by seeking cover to break lock.
That's all you can really hope for as a medium missile mech. a single skilled up AMS is going to basically counter any medium, so you need to learn to pick targets outside AMS coverage, unless you get terribly unlucky there will only be a few AMS systems in a drop at any one time. [emphasis added]

Erm, no. The bolded sections of your own post contradict each other - if a single ~1.5 ton AMS system can fully counter the weapons payload of a Medium Battlemech, it's broken and needs to be fixed. Think about it: if every skilled-up AMS can counter 5-10 tons of launcher (without Artemis,) 12 or more of them will yield almost complete immunity to missile fire if the team stays together. Even if you only get 4 AMS' worth of coverage against a given target, you're looking at what, 7-8 missiles for each, with skill node? That works out to a huge amount of damage reduction, even if you're looking at an LRM-80 massed battery of missile fire.

This is actually just what I was talking about with a rework: the scaling of AMS means that LRMs produce increasing returns with larger throw weights against that counter-system. So if my AMS is killing 5 missiles a volley, I've got a 100% damage reduction against 5 LRMS, a 50% reduction vs. 10 LRMs, a 25% reduction against LRM20s, and so forth. You can run the math yourself if you want, but it should be obvious that an LRM user is getting more per ton out of his weapon system the more launchers he can pile on. This phenomenon is called increasing returns, and it's never good for balance.

Thus my suggestion that a rework of LRMs is probably in order. If PGI's engineers could get the game to differentiate flight speeds and trajectories for non-locked and locked launches, for example, it might be beneficial to adjust the effectiveness (flight speed, tracking, and/or spread) of lock-on fire in exchange for benefits (e.g. flight speed) when dumb-firing the missiles. This might well reduce the frustration for players who have difficulty dealing with LRM rain, while potentially increasing the reliability of the weapon system in higher-level play. Or, it could be technically unfeasible, or have unintended consequences and be a bad idea - but since we're stuck with a bad idea anyway, I'd still like to see something change.

[Pxranger]

".......This phenomenon is called increasing returns, and it's never good for balance."

I honestly don't see why this is a problem, you can't guarantee your mech will have an effective weapons loadout for every single situation. the day your catapult with 2xLRM 20's shows up and no-one has AMS or ECM on Polar is balanced by the times the enemy has a couple of Kit foxes and Hellbringers running around. Same thing happens when you bring a laser vomit build on a hot map, you do your best and deal with it.


You can still push missiles through a heavy AMS enviroment, I've done it, and watched it done to me, I play a 3x AMS kitfox a lot, and try to cover the assaults, who usually have 2 or 3 AMS themselves. A couple of Missile boats still push LRM's through especially if they are IS, a volley of 160 or so LRM's from a pair of stalkers will punch through and hammer a mech if you don't take additional steps to protect it. (ECM and cover, suppressing the LRM boats) you have to remember, LRM's are always a system that has a net positive damage trade for the firing mech, even if only relatively small percentage of missiles hit, it's still a net gain for the LRM mech, it takes 0 damage if it is firing indirect. THAT is why people hate LRM boats. This is assuming the LRM's are being used in an effective manner. firing a volley over an entire formation just ensures the AMS eats the entire volley. A single medium mech throwing 40 missiles should NOT be effective in this situation, a defense that is well organized, with massive AMS support should have the ability to stop such a small number of missiles cold.


Realistically, your not going to see anything change. the system does work, you CAN use mediums as long as you use LRM's against suitable targets, that is, fire at targets that minimize your exposure to counter missile fire which you should be doing anyway. and LRM's are not "Meta" and are basically little used at certain levels of play. (competitive)

[Brain Cancer]

Pxranger, on 17 September 2017 - 09:25 AM, said:

You can still push missiles through a heavy AMS enviroment, I've done it, and watched it done to me, I play a 3x AMS kitfox a lot, and try to cover the assaults, who usually have 2 or 3 AMS themselves. A couple of Missile boats still push LRM's through especially if they are IS, a volley of 160 or so LRM's from a pair of stalkers will punch through and hammer a mech if you don't take additional steps to protect it.

Let's just consider the fact that you're saying it takes the full, undiluted firepower of two assault 'Mechs to even remotely punch through that kind of AMS net.

Now, change that to "lasers" or "autocannons".

Quote

(ECM and cover, suppressing the LRM boats) you have to remember, LRM's are always a system that has a net positive damage trade for the firing mech, even if only relatively small percentage of missiles hit, it's still a net gain for the LRM mech, it takes 0 damage if it is firing indirect. THAT is why people hate LRM boats. This is assuming the LRM's are being used in an effective manner. firing a volley over an entire formation just ensures the AMS eats the entire volley. A single medium mech throwing 40 missiles should NOT be effective in this situation, a defense that is well organized, with massive AMS support should have the ability to stop such a small number of missiles cold.

It's actually a sacrifice. You're trading team health for IDF mode- someone generally has to be taking fire to lob those missiles on a parasitic lock.

If you're dumping 44 tons of launcher (yep, that's LRM 80) for single-digit damage, the trade is horribly in favor of the guys with AMS going. Even that medium with 20 tons of launcher (LRM 40) is basically locked out of contributing at that point. Heck, I've got a Kitoolboxfox myself. In a deathball, I can frequently cover the entire team in missile-melting flak, and as long as I can, I'm negating the enemy missile boat from as equally a safe position as he's lobbing from.

But seriously. You just said it's good that 7 tons or so of defensive gear takes 80 tons of guns to get past effectively. It wouldn't be so bad if AMS protected it's owner alone like in TT. It wouldn't even be so bad if AMS had a flat debuff on missile salvos rather than being able to obliterate them entirely.

But right now, even moderate AMS can cancel ATMs entirely and shoves LRMs towards the heavy/assault tube counts only. That's kinda wrong, isn't it?

Meanwhile the same medium with twenty tons of energy/ballistics is contributing just fine. (Note: ATM users are even worse off, and that's a direct fire launcher, while MRMs generally can flood out AMS and get higher velocity to boot)

[Pxranger]

soooo, your solution is to nerf AMS to the point where it's ineffective? Because that's what it sounds like to me. we must be playing different games, I have no problem using ATM's. if I do my part, I do my fair share of damage. even when AMS is around. you just don't see that many AMS systems in an average game.

"It's actually a sacrifice. You're trading team health for IDF mode- someone generally has to be taking fire to lob those missiles on a parasitic lock."

This right here, you can't have it both ways. A Medium mech has no business up face tanking anyway. SOMEONE is going to take fire, so use their locks! Use LRM's gain the benefit of indirect fire and the counters that go with it or dump them and carry MRM's or just use an autocannon. A Medium mech doing 200 to 400 damage in a match, with low risk of death is hardly a sacrifice, that's what I've been getting with a Stormcrow with 2xLRM 15's witrh Artemis, TAG and active probe, plus 8 micro pulse lasers for defense. If things were as bad as you imply, I might as well just leave that mech in the garage. IF I want to get aggressive, and increase my risk of damage, I can close and use direct fire LRM's to burn through the defense.

"But seriously. You just said it's good that 7 tons or so of defensive gear takes 80 tons of guns to get past effectively. It wouldn't be so bad if AMS protected it's owner alone like in TT. It wouldn't even be so bad if AMS had a flat debuff on missile salvos rather than being able to obliterate them entirely."

LRM's are the only weapon system if used properly that carry 0 risk to the firer, if you don't want the disadvantages, then don't use them. You going to be more effective with the equal weight of Autocannons anyway.

I think the only thing we can agree on is this:

"Meanwhile the same medium with twenty tons of energy/ballistics is contributing just fine."

[Mochyn Pupur]

AS far as efficiency goes, AMS imho isn't that far off. No system should be able to 100% knock everything out of the air, but given a limited number of targets (i.e. lrm5 / lrm10 atm 3 etc.), with a reasonable window of opportunity to shoot them down in an open area, then yes, all missiles should die. When you start getting higher numbers of missiles flying in, then tracking time drops and efficiency in taking them out will drop, however, by this time, AMS still appears to be godly when knocking out 30 or 40 missiles, so in this aspect, kind of overkill. Still, with ecm coverage and radar dep, it shouldn't be that difficult to reamin relatively protected from missiles.

Probably my only gripe would be the sheer amount of heat the laser AMS throws out! In one match where I was running a pure twin gauss Jager, I found that three times my mech shut down before I remembered I had laser rather than ballistic AMS mounted while running on Terra Therma - considering this was wasted ams fire going into the ground due to fubbared tracking, ended up really P'd off.

Ballistic AMS had a really good upgrade, more ammo per tonne, greater range, easily accessible higher rates of fire in the Skill Tree. Possibly some form of review of heat for the laser AMS and review of ammo tonnage/rnds may be in order? Don't get me wrong, I run a Kit Fox with 3 ballistic AMS quite often and carry around 14k rounds as a pure ecm/ams support and it's not unknown to be knocking down 4.5 to 5k lrm over the match - this however, is one heck of a lot of blocked damage and as a single 'mech, although I think it highly amusing, wonder if it's a slightly bit OP?

[Void Angel]

Pxranger, on 17 September 2017 - 09:25 AM, said:

".......This phenomenon is called increasing returns, and it's never good for balance."

It is always bad, in any game, when a stat stacks with increasing returns, particularly when players can choose to buy varying amounts of the stat. For example, consider if Cooldown Reduction gave increasing returns: Your formula would be "Base Cooldown Time(1-CDR%)" such that 10% CDR in an AC/10 would give you: 2.5(1-.10)= 4.44 DPS, and 11% increase. If you were to get up to, say 30%, you end up with a 43% increase in DPS - nearly four times the bonus for three times the stat. And guess what? That is exactly how MWO's CDR seems to work - apparently they used the wrong formula when they introduced quirks.

This makes balancing that stat against other stats impossible, even in aggregate - and it makes it impossible for players to tell where the balance point lies, even as they juggle myriad additional factors (such as the increased heat loading from that extra dps, or how valuable they expect Survival or Operations nodes to be after they go all in on those CDR nodes.) In order to be truly sure that a given skill build is superior to another, you would need to run them through computer simulation - anyone know if they make an MWO edition of Rawr?

AMS is just one part of the frustrating dynamics of lock-on weapons; there's a lot of factors about the LRM balance ecology that are problematic.

PS: Please use the Quote function to quote people. You don't have to quote the whole thing: just excerpting a statement like you did is fine. But people don't always stay subscribed to a topic if they feel the conversation has moved on (or isn't moving, as the case may be,) so responding to a direct quote without giving them a notice you've done so is bad forum etiquette.

Edited by Void Angel, 17 September 2017 - 09:09 PM.

[Thorqemada]

Pxranger, on 17 September 2017 - 09:25 AM, said:

".......This phenomenon is called increasing returns, and it's never good for balance."

This is a problem that haunts all MWO Balancing since Day One!
This is why boating is so attractive, powerful, luctative.
This is why Clans have still the way upper Hand - they can boat/equip more of anything and get bigger returns form it.
(That is why the Clans cant await the changes to the cooling skilltree working with all Heatsinks i.e.)
This is why Mechs with many Hardpoints have the upper hand in general and a few special cases of Mechbuilding work.
PGI does not understand that balancing needs to be done along the rule of diminishnig return!

Edited by Thorqemada, 17 September 2017 - 11:18 PM.

[Lykaon]

Pxranger, on 17 September 2017 - 07:05 AM, said:

"I'm honestly not sure there's an easy fix to this - though restricting AMS to covering only the equipped chassis may be necessary. Ditto for a rework of LRMs to make them more effective as direct-fire weapons, and less reliable for indirect fire. I'm not rock-solid sure what all needs to be done, but the current state of the LRM/ATM balance ecology leaves something to be desired."

LRM's are designed to be indirect fire weapons. The direct fire versions are MRM's, SRM's, and ATM's to a certain extent.

AMS is basically fine as it is, if you have a Medium LRM mech, adjust your tactics to take advantage of your strengths, which is mobility (or should be anyway). You're not going to have the throw weight and/or the ammo supply to be very effective, so your role is more of harassment. When all you see is "Missile lock" on your screen you usually don't know if it's an 80 missile volley from a supernova or 10 or 20 missiles from a medium, so people tend to react by seeking cover to break lock.
That's all you can really hope for as a medium missile mech. a single skilled up AMS is going to basically counter any medium, so you need to learn to pick targets outside AMS coverage, unless you get terribly unlucky there will only be a few AMS systems in a drop at any one time.

I can not see how much more "less reliable" indirect fire could be. With the easy access to radar derp (at least to 60%) the very slow 160 mps missile velocity with missile launch warnings the numberous maps that severely hamper indirect fire,ECM and AMS and of course game modes that grant global "mega ECM" like Incursion and Escort. Indirect fire is spotty at best as it is. Add to that the increasing trend for quickplay solo queue "teams" to dig in and not actually dedicate to an face to face engagment the friendly locks needed for indirect fire never actually happen.

A single medium LRM platform is not countered by a single AMS. A fully skilled AMS is good for around 5 LRMs shot down.

There is actually a funny little quirk to LRMs being fired into AMS coverage and it has to do with understanding how an AMS works.

The AMS will engage ANY missile that enters 250m of it. The AMS will prioritise missile targeting the mech equiped with the AMS.

So, If you fire on a mech with AMS the AMS "bubble" is 250 to 1m out from the target. Now if you fire on a target behind the AMS the AMS bubble is 250m to 500m since the flight continues to travel through the 250m radios the exposure to AMS is doubled.

So the most effective AMS is ahead of the intended target by about 250m to maximize the amount of time the AMS is firing on the missile volley.

Conversely to what is expected in this situation the better target is the mech that is actually mounting the AMS because the AMS only has the 250m window of opertunity to fire instead of the up to 500 meters if your target is behind the AMS carrier.

Another means of exploiting weakness in AMS is using paired LRM carriers.Idealy one should be LRM5 chain fire while the other fires in group fire patterns with large volleys.

When a multi AMS mech is spotted ahead of an intended target the LRM5 chainfire engages the multi AMS mech. Since it's AMS will prioritise missiles targeting it the AMS will not target the second mechs volley as aggressivley. The second volley will reach the target nearly intact while the LRM5 chain fire will be severely hampered it will however keep the AMS engaged elsewhere and expend the least amount of ammo doing so.

This is very useful for keeping a priority target suppressed while doing some actual meaningful damage.

[Lykaon]

Pxranger, on 17 September 2017 - 12:43 PM, said:

soooo, your solution is to nerf AMS to the point where it's ineffective? Because that's what it sounds like to me. we must be playing different games, I have no problem using ATM's. if I do my part, I do my fair share of damage. even when AMS is around. you just don't see that many AMS systems in an average game.

"It's actually a sacrifice. You're trading team health for IDF mode- someone generally has to be taking fire to lob those missiles on a parasitic lock."

This right here, you can't have it both ways. A Medium mech has no business up face tanking anyway. SOMEONE is going to take fire, so use their locks! Use LRM's gain the benefit of indirect fire and the counters that go with it or dump them and carry MRM's or just use an autocannon. A Medium mech doing 200 to 400 damage in a match, with low risk of death is hardly a sacrifice, that's what I've been getting with a Stormcrow with 2xLRM 15's witrh Artemis, TAG and active probe, plus 8 micro pulse lasers for defense. If things were as bad as you imply, I might as well just leave that mech in the garage. IF I want to get aggressive, and increase my risk of damage, I can close and use direct fire LRM's to burn through the defense.

"But seriously. You just said it's good that 7 tons or so of defensive gear takes 80 tons of guns to get past effectively. It wouldn't be so bad if AMS protected it's owner alone like in TT. It wouldn't even be so bad if AMS had a flat debuff on missile salvos rather than being able to obliterate them entirely."

LRM's are the only weapon system if used properly that carry 0 risk to the firer, if you don't want the disadvantages, then don't use them. You going to be more effective with the equal weight of Autocannons anyway.

I think the only thing we can agree on is this:

"Meanwhile the same medium with twenty tons of energy/ballistics is contributing just fine."

I find the "term parasitic" lock to be a sign of lack of understanding and a great deal of assumption.

A pilot should ALWAYS lock a target they are openly engaging (or any target they conceivably hold ) The shared information is of value to the team not only for indirect fire missiles but general knowledge of what mech is what condition and using what weapons. Failure to do this is poor team work in my opinion. I am not saying hold locks and get pummeled for some Lurmer I am saying when you will already be exposed LOCK!

Now that we have the concept of why to lock now we get on to how "parasitic" is the wrong term "sybiotic" is a better reflection of what is actually happening. Now you could go 1 v 1 and not lock the target and expend your teams resources inefficently or LOCK and get a force multiplyer from LRM indirect fire support.

Remember rule one of trades "fair fights are for suckers" you always want the bad guys taking more damage than you receive because that is how you win an attrition exchange.

As for your Stormcrow build,do you have any Cougars? If you do or intend to look into making a Cougar LRM platform.

I use one with ECM,TAG,2 heavy medium lasers and 2 LRM15s w/6.5 tons ammo 12 DHS.

This mech will likely have a similar performance profile for you to your Stormcrow while using even less team tonnage to do it. As a Cougar you're and even lower priority target and even less expected by your team to be on the front line "sharing armor" and of course the added team support of being +1 ECM for them.

Edited by Lykaon, 18 September 2017 - 04:03 AM.

[Brain Cancer]

Nah. For bad missile boating, it -is- a parasitic lock. Generally, the locker in these cases gets very little for his efforts- especially if it's a backfield boater. The locker generally loses health at a rate far faster than the LRMs erode it, with long lag time between initial lock and damage received. This is the classic "give locks plz" guy.

Now, if the missile boater is in proper (600m or less) range, it can generate damage faster- and more importantly, the guy with the launchers is moving to get his own LOS so he can put more than LRMs downrange. The uneven "trade" starts quickly enough to inflict meaningful damage, especially on lighter targets- and once in LOS, you're on Artemis + secondary weapons and a full 2v1 situation happens. Congrats, you're actually fire support instead of a leech. LRMs let you tip exchanges faster thanks to IDF, but you still WANT to get them in your screen.

If it's NARC, it's much more "symbiotic" than parasitic, as the NARCer provides a target for minimal exposure and reaps the trade, plus it acts as a "LOOK HERE!".

Edited by Brain Cancer, 18 September 2017 - 12:18 PM.

[TheFallOfTheReaper]

Tldr the rage above^. to the op, simply put, I've seen many a match where people will outright say they will not present, and then the guys who scream locks pls from the back, sweet spot for lrms is sadly as close as 200m with clan lrms. Otherwise you'll lose the whole barrage to a trip ams cutefox, now on the other hand with massed fire or "throwaway" rainbows (lrm5x6 chained) an ams stands no chance, the counter to the ams heat using lams was discovered a few days into new tech, use just one lams, and one or two regulars, that way when they run dry you still have something left, also, side note to the 250-500 argument up there, range nodes affect ams. And lams. I've seen cutefoxes crush barrages before their ecm has a chance to even bother hiding friendlys :3, tbh out unit has a rule of thumb, you got an ams slot bring it, if you have the heat (dakka/good heat eff builds) bring a lams, even when they don't have lrms, it nerfs out narcs outright, mills out the majority of sprayed atms, some streaks and some srms, massed ams takes it further

[Void Angel]

Lykaon, on 18 September 2017 - 04:00 AM, said:

I find the "term parasitic" lock to be a sign of lack of understanding and a great deal of assumption.

It's a technical term - speaking of assumptions drawn from a lack of understanding. =]

[Void Angel]

Thorqemada, on 17 September 2017 - 11:17 PM, said:

This is a problem that haunts all MWO Balancing since Day One!
This is why boating is so attractive, powerful, lucrative.

Boating isn't a matter of increasing returns - it's just an artifact of how specialization beats generalization. For boating to be granting increased returns, you'd have to get more DPS/PPFLD per ton or per hardpoint when taking more of the system. This isn't the case, instead, absent artificial constraints in 'mech design and/or weapon use, players have found that doing one thing well is superior to doing many things with mediocrity.

With the heat scale system, boating is not unlimited for Omnimechs; in fact, there have been many Clanner tears shed over PGI's decision to start penalties after two Large Lasers. Certainly, with the Omnipod system the Clans can more easily boat a given weapon system (and some weapons do not have heat scale penalties,) but the Clan's advantages over the Inner Sphere stem more from the fact that their guns, upgrades and support equipment are lighter and smaller, with longer ranges - and that their XL engines are (still) as tough as a Light Fusion Engine for less weight.

[MW222]

El Bandito, on 14 September 2017 - 08:06 AM, said:

You are not entirely correct on cost effectiveness.

1. TAG only works up to 750 meters, costs an energy slot, and paints a big bullseye on the spotter. ECM has no such risks.

2. NARC costs twice as much tonnage, without including ammo, and requires one to get within 500 meters, and then hit the actual target.

3. BAP works only around 200 meters range. Sure, you can equip more than one of the equipment listed above, but the weight/slot cost will also increase.


However, this thread is about AMS--and I think OP's proposal regarding a 1 ton AMS to completely counter a dedicated LRM boat to be ridiculous.

Just a note here. Leaving your AMS enabled also gives away your location and if the LRM boat has 10, 11 toms of ammo and the ability to throw 30 40 or 60 LRMs or more a once you are better off moving to cover and disabling AMS and or shutting down to keep from giving away you're location as previously mentioned. If you are lucky the LRM boat will engage another target and lose interest in you and you can reposition. If the LRM boat has the patients/skill as soon as you're seen again it will re target you and if you have no cover or support you are going to get smacked. If the LRM boat has a buddy of equal or higher rate of fire you're toast. Shoot, scoot and be aware of cover even if you do it all right if you get caught out in the open you are going to get pasted.

A good LRM boat will alpha strike you with all their tubes and the go to chain fire to keep breaking off bits. If you are on a cold map and if their rate of fire is not an issue they will stay in full barrage mode, in a lot of cases three strikes (full barrage) will drop you down to 80 - 70% and it goes down hill from there.

Toggle AMS missile or laser off and on as needed, be mindful of the battle and shift to keep cover and reposition as needed. Lastly remember 'Target Decay/retention' if the LRM boat has skilled that up in full they will maintain a lock up to 3.5 seconds and if you are not fully terrain blocked they will continue to rain on you. There are other tips but I'm not going to give away everything.

Edited by MW222, 18 September 2017 - 04:30 PM.

[El Bandito]

MW222, on 18 September 2017 - 04:28 PM, said:

Just a note here. Leaving your AMS enabled also gives away your location and if the LRM boat has 10, 11 toms of ammo and the ability to throw 30 40 or 60 LRMs or more a once you are better off moving to cover and disabling AMS and or shutting down to keep from giving away you're location as previously mentioned.

AMS is not jsut for you, but also for the team. I am not gonna shut it off, as long as a teammate is around, without good cover.

[MW222]

El Bandito, on 18 September 2017 - 04:54 PM, said:

AMS is not jsut for you, but also for the team. I am not gonna shut it off, as long as a teammate is around, without good cover.

"Toggle AMS missile or laser off and on as needed, be mindful of the battle and shift to keep cover and reposition as needed."


No augment here but if you are trying an ECM covered flank and your AMS goes off while the LRMs are not directed at your group it's a waste as well as a dead give away.

It's all about situational awareness.

Edited by MW222, 19 September 2017 - 01:44 PM.