426 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

Fleeb the Mad, on 24 February 2018 - 04:12 PM, said:

I'm not actually finding many people being against LRMs becoming better in a direct-fire mode where the shooter has and maintains LOS on the target. That may actually be something there is a consensus about.

Most people, myself included, are against blanket buffing of LRMs in their current form because indirect fire doesn't need to be better. Indirect fire is anathema to good gameplay.

You're just proving my point.

[MischiefSC]

YueFei, on 22 February 2018 - 11:38 PM, said:

Look, we're quibbling over semantics of an analogy. The point is that you have weapons/utility in a competitive FPS which can be deployed without line-of-sight, and it doesn't break balance.

To say that we can't have LRM IDF because it would dominate everything is an overly-simple unsupportable assertion. We obviously already have LRM IDF, and it doesn't break the game. Hell, even with IDF, LRMs are underperforming.

Hence, this is not a binary discussion, it's a matter of degrees, which is a good thing. That means it can be tuned to be balanced, whether thru simple stat edits or mechanics changes. Although I think simple stat edits are insufficient to truly make LRMs interesting.

In terms of mechanics changes which I've suggested, many of these raise the skill ceiling for LRM use, provide multiple options for the shooter, and give the shooter the possibility of direct control over the impact area of his missile salvo.

Imagine being able to launch immediately without first having a lock, and then providing guidance mid-flight to bring the missiles toward an enemy, stutter-stepping / wiggling defensively as the missiles are in mid-flight, then making a last moment correction to pin your reticule to the enemy's left torso to get your salvo to hit that area (spread can be tuned as needed for balance).

Except it is a binary.

Better than/worse than.

It's not a matter of degrees specifically because they don't function on the same format. IDF is shooting people who can't shoot you back - this is inherently superior to shooting people who can shoot you back. This is currently offset by making LRMs so terrible that even with that advantage they're easy to nullify.

There is no 'equal to' with direct fire. It's like trying to balance TAG vs a medium laser. Yes, they're both 1 ton but they do something completely different. If you can effectively use IDF vs direct fire IDF will, on average, be superior because the ability to fire from little/no exposure beats shooting from exposure.

Hence poptarting, hill humping et al.

Beyond which you have locking weapon vs accuracy based weapon.

Brain Cancer, on 22 February 2018 - 04:41 PM, said:

Mixed loadouts? Seriously? C'mon, you know this game better than that- viable weapons are boated, because if it's good, it's better with more.

You mean like PPC+Gauss, replaced by laser + gauss?

Mixed loadout is *great* with synergy.

If LRMs are going to hit no matter what or where I'm aiming so long as I have a lock then they instantly have synergy with any direct fire weapon - so long as they're arriving in a reasonable amount of time. This really doesn't exist at mid-long range currently because of the PPC/gauss nerfs - those used to be the go-to for mid-long specifically because where you aim with one, the other hits, plus they had heat synergy.

You make LRMs fast enough to be useful especially at longer ranges and hit due to lock and give them a reasonably quick cooldown and reasonable heat and you've got the same principle - especially alongside weapons like the AC5, which are cool running, have good velocity and range and are more DPS than poke oriented. The lack of velocity synergy with AC5s and anything else is why you don't see them as anything but boated.

If I can stack 2xAC5s with 2xLRM15s and get 40 pts on a target consistently at 500-800m with a heat sustainability better than laservomit and DPS in the 16+ range, suddenly you've got some serious **** even with spread damage. Aside from boated AC2s, which is insanely heavy and spreads way too much, there is no currently viable DPS range build to compete with laser/gauss poke builds in that environment.

You make LRMs more of a long range missile DPS weapon with reasonable heat. You'd need LRM15s at a DPS of 5 or so, as an example - plus, again, faster at longer range so while it's slower in the close range envelope of SRMs and MRMs it can project damage out to 1k as effectively as MRMs can do at 450m.

I can absolutely design LRMs as a great mid-long range missile weapon that doesn't replace other missiles. Boating is only a thing for the very reason that direct fire but locking LRMs would be good in mixed builds - synergy.

[Khobai]

Quote

It's not a matter of degrees specifically because they don't function on the same format. IDF is shooting people who can't shoot you back - this is inherently superior to shooting people who can shoot you back.

Nope. LRMs cannot indirect fire without a spotter with direct LoS. and if the spotter can see you, you can shoot the spotter.

Just shoot the spotter. why is that so hard.

[OmniFail]

Khobai, on 25 February 2018 - 12:44 AM, said:

Nope. LRMs cannot indirect fire without a spotter with direct LoS. and if the spotter can see you, you can shoot the spotter.

Just shoot the spotter. why is that so hard.

Iknowrite! They act like it's some magic voodoo targeting thingy.

[Ethanlol]

Khobai, on 25 February 2018 - 12:44 AM, said:

Just shoot the spotter. why is that so hard.

Are you trying to turn this game into a "thinking man's shooter" or something?

[Asym]

Ethanlol, on 25 February 2018 - 03:58 AM, said:

Are you trying to turn this game into a "thinking man's shooter" or something?

Oh God, you are really funny! We are soooooooo far from that. In fact, the stompy robot killers have won: faction play is dead; teams are dead; tactics are dead and you can read about that in several recent threads; and, SOLARIS is PGI's strategic goal and MW5 is the relief valve for anyone left...... MWO as it was is g.o.n.e.........until Solaris either fails or is wildly successful.

[Brain Cancer]

MischiefSC, on 24 February 2018 - 09:10 PM, said:

Except it is a binary.

Better than/worse than.

It's not a matter of degrees specifically because they don't function on the same format. IDF is shooting people who can't shoot you back - this is inherently superior to shooting people who can shoot you back. This is currently offset by making LRMs so terrible that even with that advantage they're easy to nullify.

We're well below the point of "terrible" at this point when the equipment specifically put in to nullify it isn't used by anyone with a modicum of brain cells still functional. Good players don't need more than the usual cover to render LRMs mostly harmless. Even mediocre ones generally don't.

And newbie players are just stuck in Trials that don't have AMS, the gear literally designed to let you swat missiles without even knowing how to get out of the rain. LRMs are designed so badly, they're intended to only be challenging to players who cannot into INCOMING missiles. Seriously. It's not "worse than" direct fire, it's a dysfunctional weapon system.

Not to mention the number of times I've even been That Guy spotting. As the lurms rained down and the salt was sprinkled, I'm just sitting there. Adding in a few extra missiles with the ol' Kit Fox. Nobody bothers turning around, nobody shooting me, racking up the spotting bonuses because what didn't kill them is LRMs, it was the situational awareness of a root vegetable for what happened to be behind them. On the other hand, plenty of cases where someone DOES notice, turns around, rousts me out and even snipes my UAV for good measure. And then there's no rain, because there's no stable lock for the boats to piggyback on and you get the usual lithobraking missile salvos that would make a lake-sized crater if the game actually had destroyable terrain.

Quote

There is no 'equal to' with direct fire. It's like trying to balance TAG vs a medium laser. Yes, they're both 1 ton but they do something completely different. If you can effectively use IDF vs direct fire IDF will, on average, be superior because the ability to fire from little/no exposure beats shooting from exposure.

See above. Also, having missile boats under cover means TTK drops rapidly for the rest of your team, including spotters if your opponent actually has their Mark I eyeball sensors working. In fact, significant numbers of people playing the hiding game is a great way to disproportionately reduce your overall team lifespan by large amounts. You being hull down chucking missiles means you better be generating constant firepower, or the only thing you do is toss everyone else under the bus, followed by yourself.

You see those games all the time. Enemy collapses surprisingly fast, find a few lurmboats still behind hill, massacre ensues because being down two sets of armor is a significant disadvantage.

Quote

Hence poptarting, hill humping et al.

And this is what IDF would be good for, if it was even so-so. Every time I see that happening, my head's already plotting a ballistic arc to drop the shells in...but MWO doesn't have that option. The closest thing are LRMs, and they're bad to the point of ending up unable to reach the target before it returns to cover at this point.

Quote

Beyond which you have locking weapon vs accuracy based weapon.

You also have zero damage (or partial and signficant spread damage) vs. hitscan or PPFLD. MWO is massively favoring the two latter ones.

Quote

You mean like PPC+Gauss, replaced by laser + gauss?

Mixed loadout is *great* with synergy.

LRMs don't synergize anything, other than themselves and ATMs. Oddly enough, I think that's a good thing.

Quote

If I can stack 2xAC5s with 2xLRM15s and get 40 pts on a target consistently at 500-800m with a heat sustainability better than laservomit and DPS in the 16+ range, suddenly you've got some serious **** even with spread damage. Aside from boated AC2s, which is insanely heavy and spreads way too much, there is no currently viable DPS range build to compete with laser/gauss poke builds in that environment.

You make LRMs more of a long range missile DPS weapon with reasonable heat. You'd need LRM15s at a DPS of 5 or so, as an example - plus, again, faster at longer range so while it's slower in the close range envelope of SRMs and MRMs it can project damage out to 1k as effectively as MRMs can do at 450m.

I can absolutely design LRMs as a great mid-long range missile weapon that doesn't replace other missiles. Boating is only a thing for the very reason that direct fire but locking LRMs would be good in mixed builds - synergy.

And here's why. You've turned LRMs into an even more infuriating spam weapon than even the most LRMfiveriffic chainshooter would. LRMs in Battletech aren't fast spam weapons. They're the slowest firing missile type in the game. The simplest form of artillery. MWO's versions fire too fast, deal too little damage, are hideously inaccurate, and scatter missiles like a salt shaker of annoyance, and punish larger launchers with uneven reload times for good measure (unless you're using MRMs or ATMs, which for some intelligent reason ignore this almost completely).

I don't want another weapon spammed with everything else. I'd like a functional artillery-style missile system. MWO's basic concept has some real flaws in that regard.

LRMs should be slower, but normalize reload times. Six seconds for IS launchers- all of them. Yes, that means they're slower cycling than everything else. Clantech launchers go to 6.3 seconds. This means significantly more time between salvos, giving people more of a chance to avoid getting hit twice.

LRMs should hit harder. Restore the old 1.2 damage/missile. They're losing about 20% of their rate of fire anyway. Clantech can go to 1.1 if need be.

Normalize spread to LRM 10 levels across the board. Again, going bigger shouldn't be a disadvantage, and auto-missing missiles are illusionary "better".

Increase velocity. Tweak AMS to compensate: This also means AMS will become better versus SRM/MRMs, and that's not a bad thing. More than 300 is probably too much, but even that makes LRMs modestly accurate to 900m.

Eliminate the IS deadzone and replace it with a CLRM-style damage reduction, reducing LRM damage to 30-40% of full damage at point-blank range. Clantech LRMs get a similar tweak to their damage reduction system.

Unlocked missiles fire flat lines.

(And take a look at ATM performance when all's said and done.)

Edited by Brain Cancer, 25 February 2018 - 09:31 AM.

[MischiefSC]

Khobai, on 25 February 2018 - 12:44 AM, said:

Nope. LRMs cannot indirect fire without a spotter with direct LoS. and if the spotter can see you, you can shoot the spotter.

Just shoot the spotter. why is that so hard.

Okay, so if that's the case what's the point of even having IDF? I mean it's easy to just kill the spotter so you have to spot for yourself. Since LRMs have that big arc for IDF they're just a slow to deliver direct fire weapon, right?

Given that I belong to a team that has never, ever, in thousands and thousand of FW drops no few of them against 12man teams that ran as coordinated a LRM team as they possibly can, lost to LRMs I'm well aware of how to deal with LRMs. I know that LRMs are **** currently and have argued the point that they are **** a billion times.

Your argument is so dishonest it's impossible to take seriously. Either IDF is useful comparative to direct fire or it isn't. If it is buffed to be comparable to direct fire it replaces direct fire and every match becomes about exactly that - you have direct fire specifically to deal with LRM spotters and deployment/countering of LRMs becomes the match, which would be a horrible, horrible game that would struggle to consistently fill 12 v 12 matches. Doubt that and you can try to run it via private matches, lrm focused teams. See how many people show consistently.

Brain Cancer, on 25 February 2018 - 09:29 AM, said:

stuff

LRMs in tabletop spread damage and were terrible at doing damage. They were only useful for golden BB roles because you got multiple rolls her successful hit. They absolutely were/are (I still play tabletop BT) a spam weapon; you're not dropping missiles on people to get around cover or as 'artillery', they're nothing at all like 'artillery'. That's a 100% false comparison. Their weapon range, damage and scale is exactly in the same category as every other direct fire weapon. You're shooting LRMs every opening you get hoping for a lucky roll; they're not going to open up targets, they're broken into 5pt hits and half (or less) of the missiles end up on target.

LRMs in TT are in no way, shape or form about IDF. It's a ****** way to use them and you only do it if you've got an open shot and no need for the heat later since it's unlikely to land any damage due to poor accuracy. They're primarily a direct fire weapon like every other weapon in TT.

I would love for LRMs to be a useful weapon but threads like this are exactly why they never will be - a lot of lies, bad comparisons and the completely false premise that locking weapons with IDF have any real place in a PvP FPS game. They don't exist in any real capacity in a PvP FPS game specifically because it's a ****, broken mechanic. In that format there's no conceivable way that PGI for all the mistakes in balance they have ever made would do something that foolish.

So nothing changes, LRMs stay as a wasted weapon. Not, admittedly, that I would expect PGI to make any significant game changes at this point anyway but LRMs have always been **** for this very reason.

[OmniFail]

MischiefSC, on 25 February 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

Okay, so if that's the case what's the point of even having IDF? I mean it's easy to just kill the spotter so you have to spot for yourself. Since LRMs have that big arc for IDF they're just a slow to deliver direct fire weapon, right?

Your logic is just silly here. Lets apply it to DF.

What is the reason of having DF? You can just kill the person shooting at you.

MischiefSC, on 25 February 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

Given that I belong to a team that has never, ever, in thousands and thousand of FW drops no few of them against 12man teams that ran as coordinated a LRM team as they possibly can, lost to LRMs I'm well aware of how to deal with LRMs. I know that LRMs are **** currently and have argued the point that they are **** a billion times.

Seal clubbing is hard.

[BreakinStuff]

Current LRM builds are only really viable as a "Damage sprinkler for targets of opportunity" or if you dedicate 7-15 tons solely to ammunition.

Quantity is the quality of LRMs, and the only successes I have seen with the weapons involve loading enough ammunition to last an entire match of nonstop missile vomit. to date, only the Timber Wolf and Mad Dog really shine as sub-Assault missile boats, although I have seen some truly impressive cougar missile spam from players who know what they're doing. The Archer does Okay-ish but it runs out of ammunition 3-5 minutes faster than either the Mad Dog or the Timby. The problem isn't tonnage, it's the Endo-Steel is so bulky.

But unless you're carrying 1500-3000 individual LRMs in your ammo hoppers, it's utter trash.

But how many people really want to dedicate 7-12 tons of potential weaponry for enough ammunition to make the weapons semi-work?

[Brain Cancer]

MischiefSC, on 25 February 2018 - 11:25 AM, said:

Okay, so if that's the case what's the point of even having IDF? I mean it's easy to just kill the spotter so you have to spot for yourself. Since LRMs have that big arc for IDF they're just a slow to deliver direct fire weapon, right?

Given that I belong to a team that has never, ever, in thousands and thousand of FW drops no few of them against 12man teams that ran as coordinated a LRM team as they possibly can, lost to LRMs I'm well aware of how to deal with LRMs. I know that LRMs are **** currently and have argued the point that they are **** a billion times.

The point is that right now, LRMs period aren't very rewarding to use unless you just want to damage as many parts of your opponent for as long as you can in order to farm damage. The bad stats, velocity included also hurt people wanting to use IDF: Slower missiles mean longer exposure for spotters. Better LRMs = more useful IDF.

Quote

Your argument is so dishonest it's impossible to take seriously. Either IDF is useful comparative to direct fire or it isn't. If it is buffed to be comparable to direct fire it replaces direct fire and every match becomes about exactly that - you have direct fire specifically to deal with LRM spotters and deployment/countering of LRMs becomes the match, which would be a horrible, horrible game that would struggle to consistently fill 12 v 12 matches. Doubt that and you can try to run it via private matches, lrm focused teams. See how many people show consistently.

IDF should be a risk/reward. You're burning your team's TTK down faster by not being out there to draw some shots. If you're not delivering sufficiently to even potentially make up for that, something is screwy in Lurmland. The "inflation" of lurmboating is a dead giveaway here- we've gone from people reasonably hurling 20-30 missiles at a time to 45-60 or more for less effectiveness than we got with the smaller tube counts. The worse LRMs get, the worse any payoff using them gets- and the negatives of an IDF setup have not gotten any lighter to make up for it- if they're bad for direct fire now, they're even worse off for indirect.

Quote

LRMs in tabletop spread damage and were terrible at doing damage. They were only useful for golden BB roles because you got multiple rolls her successful hit. They absolutely were/are (I still play tabletop BT) a spam weapon; you're not dropping missiles on people to get around cover or as 'artillery', they're nothing at all like 'artillery'. That's a 100% false comparison. Their weapon range, damage and scale is exactly in the same category as every other direct fire weapon. You're shooting LRMs every opening you get hoping for a lucky roll; they're not going to open up targets, they're broken into 5pt hits and half (or less) of the missiles end up on target.

I, too happen to play tabletop. Here's my sklll level:



Strangely enough, I was using an Archer-4M at the time. With those terrible LRMs, in a lance-level tournament. Even payed my Artemis tonnage tax.

LRMs fall between "can opener" and "critseeker" in tabletop, precisely because they get multiple 5-point hits: if you're firing a bunch of medium lasers at a target, the spread is exactly the same as a barrage of LRM hits- and five point hits in TT are like 10-point hits in MWO, thanks to the double armor rule. You're also off on the number of hits- the average missile hit % is about 60% (3 out of 5) on a cluster hit roll. With Artemis, it pushes 75%. LRMs are also far more focused damage in TT due to the 5-points-per-location hits, and weapons in general are less focused than MWO because, well, location hit charts not point-click-burn. MWO LRMs get another nerf in that they're more like LB-X with worse spread in this game, too.

Quote

LRMs in TT are in no way, shape or form about IDF. It's a ****** way to use them and you only do it if you've got an open shot and no need for the heat later since it's unlikely to land any damage due to poor accuracy. They're primarily a direct fire weapon like every other weapon in TT.

Strangely enough, one of the kills for that win was someone who cheerfully put themselves around a corner to shoot up a lancemate, thinking he was perfectly safe.

I stood there, in cover and dumped 40 LRMs into his back with IDF (well, 24 hit) and blew out his gyro because the mostly gunless Whitworth just decided to let my shots do the talking instead. These days of course he could have shot too, but 7 to hit on 2d6 was quite enough. And that's not even taking things like better Gunnery skills (hi, Clan base 3 vs IS 4) or alternative ammo types (Thunder minefield laying, smoke rounds to cover other friendlies) or combined arms (because nothing like having some infantry squads in the woods or a VTOL at long range to do the spotting for you, unless it's C3 networking). Plenty of uses for indirect fire, especially in combination with units that your proxied firepower is stronger than say, a half-dozen rifles or a machine gun or two.

Quote

I would love for LRMs to be a useful weapon but threads like this are exactly why they never will be - a lot of lies, bad comparisons and the completely false premise that locking weapons with IDF have any real place in a PvP FPS game. They don't exist in any real capacity in a PvP FPS game specifically because it's a ****, broken mechanic. In that format there's no conceivable way that PGI for all the mistakes in balance they have ever made would do something that foolish.

You mean like perfect convergence effectively cutting the damage most units can take by half or more thanks to laservomit/PPFLD? An incomplete heat system that is either "perfectly OK" or "I'm melting"? Attempting to 1:1 balance Clantech with IS tech?

Quote

So nothing changes, LRMs stay as a wasted weapon. Not, admittedly, that I would expect PGI to make any significant game changes at this point anyway but LRMs have always been **** for this very reason.

No, nothing will change, but that's because the balancer-in-chief is a poor MWO player that's even more afraid of being lurmed than you are of buffing them.

[MischiefSC]

OmniFail, on 25 February 2018 - 01:35 PM, said:

Your logic is just silly here. Lets apply it to DF.

What is the reason of having DF? You can just kill the person shooting at you.



Seal clubbing is hard.

With DF you can shoot at the people shooting you. With IDF, you can not - you can only shoot at the people spotting for you. So one person with LoS can allow 11 other people to shoot you. At that point the game becomes how best to spot/chase spotters. If missiles are not fast enough to effectively reach people before they get to cover they work like they do now. If they are fast enough to reach people before they get into cover then you can even spot for yourself, maximizing damage while minimizing exposure.

Beating organized teams is seal clubbing? I get that you're trying to argue an unsupportable point but you're really reaching.

Brain Cancer, on 25 February 2018 - 01:53 PM, said:

The point is that right now, LRMs period aren't very rewarding to use unless you just want to damage as many parts of your opponent for as long as you can in order to farm damage. The bad stats, velocity included also hurt people wanting to use IDF: Slower missiles mean longer exposure for spotters. Better LRMs = more useful IDF.



IDF should be a risk/reward. You're burning your team's TTK down faster by not being out there to draw some shots. If you're not delivering sufficiently to even potentially make up for that, something is screwy in Lurmland. The "inflation" of lurmboating is a dead giveaway here- we've gone from people reasonably hurling 20-30 missiles at a time to 45-60 or more for less effectiveness than we got with the smaller tube counts. The worse LRMs get, the worse any payoff using them gets- and the negatives of an IDF setup have not gotten any lighter to make up for it- if they're bad for direct fire now, they're even worse off for indirect.



I, too happen to play tabletop. Here's my sklll level:



Strangely enough, I was using an Archer-4M at the time. With those terrible LRMs, in a lance-level tournament. Even payed my Artemis tonnage tax.

LRMs fall between "can opener" and "critseeker" in tabletop, precisely because they get multiple 5-point hits: if you're firing a bunch of medium lasers at a target, the spread is exactly the same as a barrage of LRM hits- and five point hits in TT are like 10-point hits in MWO, thanks to the double armor rule. You're also off on the number of hits- the average missile hit % is about 60% (3 out of 5) on a cluster hit roll. With Artemis, it pushes 75%. LRMs are also far more focused damage in TT due to the 5-points-per-location hits, and weapons in general are less focused than MWO because, well, location hit charts not point-click-burn. MWO LRMs get another nerf in that they're more like LB-X with worse spread in this game, too.



Strangely enough, one of the kills for that win was someone who cheerfully put themselves around a corner to shoot up a lancemate, thinking he was perfectly safe.

I stood there, in cover and dumped 40 LRMs into his back with IDF (well, 24 hit) and blew out his gyro because the mostly gunless Whitworth just decided to let my shots do the talking instead. These days of course he could have shot too, but 7 to hit on 2d6 was quite enough. And that's not even taking things like better Gunnery skills (hi, Clan base 3 vs IS 4) or alternative ammo types (Thunder minefield laying, smoke rounds to cover other friendlies) or combined arms (because nothing like having some infantry squads in the woods or a VTOL at long range to do the spotting for you, unless it's C3 networking). Plenty of uses for indirect fire, especially in combination with units that your proxied firepower is stronger than say, a half-dozen rifles or a machine gun or two.



You mean like perfect convergence effectively cutting the damage most units can take by half or more thanks to laservomit/PPFLD? An incomplete heat system that is either "perfectly OK" or "I'm melting"? Attempting to 1:1 balance Clantech with IS tech?



No, nothing will change, but that's because the balancer-in-chief is a poor MWO player that's even more afraid of being lurmed than you are of buffing them.

Always happy to speak to someone who's a big TT fan - for all the crazy stuff she did, throwing away all my BT stuff was the one I resent the most in the long-term. While I could largely replace it the first edition 3025 TRO and Battletech/Citytech source books with the 'unseen' in them I still really miss.

I can happily go over some 'one time in band-camp' examples of games I've played - it doesn't change how things actually regularly worked. As to how many missiles hit your LRM 15 (best launcher in TT too) is a 5 and a 4; less than 2 ML hits. For the tonnage it's a relatively poor choice. When AMS came out it sucked even more because 1 AMS at 2 tons (with 0.5 tons of ammo) would negate a lot of missile tonnage and more than offset the Artemis investment.

Winning a TT tournament in an Archer is great. Good on you, I hope it was fun - that you used IDF in the process, well, same thing. I have a deep love of Urbies because I've had a good friend win one in an Urbie; it was a team challenge, we were a guy short, he stepped in and we only had 30 tons left and he went with an AC20 Urbie. Urban match with a ton of shuffling; other team walks a Battlemaster into view and starts the main fight and he JJs the Urbie up onto a building and headshots the BLR with the AC20. It was a 4 v 4 v 4 game and he was last man standing with 4 kills - including a KO by DFA; the other guy fell, failed his consciousness check.

I have a million funny stories about one-off stuff in Battletech. We played a mercenary campaign and one of the NPC SRM infantry units the players had ended up with more mech kills than any of the players. I thought it was hilarious but a couple guys were pretty bitter over it. I still screw with them by saying 'Radar picks up enemy targets in the canyon - but don't worry Tony, it's not infantry.'

Clan tech was originally perfectly 1 to 1 balanced with IS - because Clans were supposed to come out with Star League tech but better base pilot/gunnery. The shift to stupid OP tech was done later and was an utter failure, but that's another argument.

I have no 'fear' of buffing LRMs - no more than I have of buffing any weapon. You want it to work better and be balanced with everything else. Locking IDF in a PvP FPS isn't that. I've been trying to get LRMs buffed to be useful for a long time. The problem is all the noise from people who don't want them buffed to be balanced but want to be able to beat direct fire aiming based weapons with indirect fire locking weapons even at a low skill level; which makes them utterly and completely broken at any higher skill level.

Even with LRMs as bad as they are now good teams can use them to crush anyone but other good teams and can do it consistently. Emp actually had an LRM deck for MWOWC for use in some maps. Funny, right? However because even with IDF and locking LRMs are bad enough that it's still better to expose yourself and take the risk of returned fire to use direct fire aimed weapons. The moment that isn't the case the ability to get the same results with less risk and effort (yes, I know people get butthurt when this gets pointed out but no. No, locking weapons don't require the same skill level as aimed weapons. You don't have to aim. This isn't rocket science. Yes, you have to position - you have to position with aimed weapons too.) then you've immediately broken balance.

[Mechteric]

I say they should require TAG, NARC or UAV only to indirectly fire LRMs, otherwise LRMs require direct LOS to lock on.

Then they could buff LRMs in some ways, maybe also AMS

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 25 February 2018 - 05:32 PM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Quote

I would love for LRMs to be a useful weapon but threads like this are exactly why they never will be - a lot of lies, bad comparisons and the completely false premise that locking weapons with IDF have any real place in a PvP FPS game. They don't exist in any real capacity in a PvP FPS game specifically because it's a ****, broken mechanic. In that format there's no conceivable way that PGI for all the mistakes in balance they have ever made would do something that foolish.

than never Play Battlefield without Infantry only ..and the TT ..in teh TT no Pilot aim ...all firing blind and the Dice say ..you hit that slow 12 m Big Target in 300m or not and which part of it ...for a real TT we must fight with covered Screens and deactivated Mause /Gamepad/Joystick...its like a Strategical game (Panzer Generakl for Example ) and War Thunder or WoT,,,ones only a very abstract system ...a Pen &Paper hase nothing to do with swordfight Game in Tekken Style and boths nothing to a real show Swordfight and all three nothing to a real medival battle ..all different levels of Abstraction....Welcome in the reality of War Gaming aside from Paperdolls and Dicebalance

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 25 February 2018 - 06:41 PM.

[Fleeb the Mad]

Khobai, on 25 February 2018 - 12:44 AM, said:

Nope. LRMs cannot indirect fire without a spotter with direct LoS. and if the spotter can see you, you can shoot the spotter.

Just shoot the spotter. why is that so hard.

You seem to be missing a fundamental point here. In MWO it allows people to focus fire in situations where they don't have LOS. That is the biggest strength, frustration and fault with it.

Spotting in MWO, if you can call it that, requires no effort. People throw this logic around like the spotter is actually sacrificing something to hold that target, such as not doing any damage while spotting, or needing special equipment like TAG or C3.

MWO teamplay has always been about focusing fire and unequal exchanges. That sort of thing makes indirect fire powerful. It leverages free damage on targets that friendlies are already engaging. It's not like MWO's implementation of artillery that just lands shells in a certain area at random. LRMs follow and hit any target that they can reach, even if people complain about their spread. That's also exactly why LRMs as indirect fire have to be fairly weak. If you make them too strong they become a powerful force multiplier in which every mech on mech engagement can end up as a multi-mech beatdown. Often one that the target can't see coming, because they'd have to know the entire enemy team's disposition in order to avoid it. Or just never stop hugging cover.

That sort of thing makes for terrible gameplay. MWO should be more run and gun than it already is and buffing indirect fire in any form limits map mobility and punishes people who take risks.

[Khobai]

Quote

You seem to be missing a fundamental point here. In MWO it allows people to focus fire in situations where they don't have LOS. That is the biggest strength, frustration and fault with it.

I never said the way sensor sharing works shouldnt be changed. For example, I would be fine with changing sensor sharing so spotters can only spot for one LRM boat at a time. I believe sensor sharing should work more like a limited radius network anyway instead of just automatically sharing sensor information with everyone on your team. And certain mechs like the Raven should be better at acting like routers for relaying sensor information.

I just said LRMs need to be better. They need to be more effective at long range (hence long range missiles). And they need to retain their ability to indirect fire because indirect fire is all theyre good for; they will never be able to compete as direct fire weapons.

Quote

Spotting in MWO, if you can call it that, requires no effort.

But it does still require risk. If you can spot someone, they can shoot you back. You shouldnt let lights spot for LRMs without punishing them for it.

Edited by Khobai, 25 February 2018 - 08:31 PM.

[BreakinStuff]

this is why I think any buffs to LRMs should be specific to any time the firing mech would otherwise qualify for the spotting bonus (you can see them, they can see you).

You wanna give them a flatter trajectory and more velocity? SURE! But you can't be firing IDF, you must have direct Line-Of-Sight to the target.

As long as you're not firing IDF. I think using the "Spotter" bonus reward coding as the impetus for the buff should allow for enhancing the performance of LRMs and leaving IDF as-is.

[Brain Cancer]

MischiefSC, on 25 February 2018 - 05:24 PM, said:

With DF you can shoot at the people shooting you. With IDF, you can not - you can only shoot at the people spotting for you. So one person with LoS can allow 11 other people to shoot you. At that point the game becomes how best to spot/chase spotters. If missiles are not fast enough to effectively reach people before they get to cover they work like they do now. If they are fast enough to reach people before they get into cover then you can even spot for yourself, maximizing damage while minimizing exposure.

It's almost as if mediums or lights that are aces for wrecking fast mobile types frequently used for spotting are useful in this brave new world of weapons that don't all travel in straight lines. Of course, if there's not even the hint of a threat of this tactic, that's one less thing for them to do...

Pardon the non-tabletoppers whilst I chat here.

Quote

I can happily go over some 'one time in band-camp' examples of games I've played - it doesn't change how things actually regularly worked. As to how many missiles hit your LRM 15 (best launcher in TT too) is a 5 and a 4; less than 2 ML hits. For the tonnage it's a relatively poor choice. When AMS came out it sucked even more because 1 AMS at 2 tons (with 0.5 tons of ammo) would negate a lot of missile tonnage and more than offset the Artemis investment.

Depends on your point of view. Twin 20's will usually stagger a target (20+ damage, since even without Artemis they're normally 24 damage), and a knockdown is often as much a crippling waiting to happen as it was in MWO. AMS is considerably better in TT nowadays, since it expends a single "shot" to give a single missile system -4 on cluster hits: it's effectiveness scales with launcher size, unlike MWOs where smaller launchers are disproportionately hosed by AMS. The "Artemis tax" was weakest against big launchers, so 15/20's in later tech levels had the advantage there, while DHS made it so spamming lots of LRM 5 launchers was a tonnage-saving tactic if you were going for quantity rather than quantity.

Quote

Winning a TT tournament in an Archer is great. Good on you, I hope it was fun - that you used IDF in the process, well, same thing. I have a deep love of Urbies because I've had a good friend win one in an Urbie; it was a team challenge, we were a guy short, he stepped in and we only had 30 tons left and he went with an AC20 Urbie. Urban match with a ton of shuffling; other team walks a Battlemaster into view and starts the main fight and he JJs the Urbie up onto a building and headshots the BLR with the AC20. It was a 4 v 4 v 4 game and he was last man standing with 4 kills - including a KO by DFA; the other guy fell, failed his consciousness check.

It just happened to be the "highest skill level" example. I've gotten kills in tournaments by pushing undamaged opponents who didn't check the map (off a cliff, landing headfirst and mashing the cockpit), Karate-Kidded people with a one leg standup and a small laser, and so on. It's Battletech. Ridiculous and glorious happen, as the old /tg/ comic with the one-armed Urbie shows. Indirect fire is useful in tabletop for much the same reason it should be useful in MWO- it allows for a missile equipped unit to contribute to a larger portion of the battlefield, (albeit with spread damage and no capacity to focus it's hits).

Quote

I have a million funny stories about one-off stuff in Battletech. We played a mercenary campaign and one of the NPC SRM infantry units the players had ended up with more mech kills than any of the players. I thought it was hilarious but a couple guys were pretty bitter over it. I still screw with them by saying 'Radar picks up enemy targets in the canyon - but don't worry Tony, it's not infantry.'

And that's how it should be. Most unit types end up having advantages against some other type, and in turn can be crippled by still others. Mech units optimized for killing other mechs often suffer horribly versus infantry/battle armor or even large formations of light vehicles. Artillery tends to be inefficient versus smaller mech formations but will shatter the same large formation that in turn will overwhelm that lance of mechs. Aerospace fighters will gut artillery. And so on, and so forth. It's chess with giant robots, but so many people only play with the knights and bishops and wonder why it's so easy to build a best strategy.

Quote

Clan tech was originally perfectly 1 to 1 balanced with IS - because Clans were supposed to come out with Star League tech but better base pilot/gunnery. The shift to stupid OP tech was done later and was an utter failure, but that's another argument.

I spent some quality time with Bryan Nystul on Origins. It's The Great Mistake, but yes that's another tale.

Quote

I have no 'fear' of buffing LRMs - no more than I have of buffing any weapon. You want it to work better and be balanced with everything else. Locking IDF in a PvP FPS isn't that. I've been trying to get LRMs buffed to be useful for a long time. The problem is all the noise from people who don't want them buffed to be balanced but want to be able to beat direct fire aiming based weapons with indirect fire locking weapons even at a low skill level; which makes them utterly and completely broken at any higher skill level.

That's why I want AMS being fitted on every Trial in the book here. We need a "worst case" baseline- unskilled players with automatic access to anti-LRM defenses that will function even if the player is trying to do donuts on Polar with his footprints while half the enemy team is shooting at him. In MWO, it's a "safety net", unlike tabletop where AMS only protects the user.

I firmly believe that given that baseline, we'll find LRMs have been hammered so far below direct fire weaponry at this point as to be ridiculous. That is, there is now an immense gap between direct fire and LRMs, and it's opened because people are so worried about another lurmageddon (which are the legacy of badly tested changes that turned it into a buggy death weapon).

Now the fears of a lurmageddon are "It'll kill the underhive players too hard if we made LRMs good enough to matter elsewhere." I say "Well, you didn't give the underhive any tools against LRMs, so of course they're better there."

Quote

Even with LRMs as bad as they are now good teams can use them to crush anyone but other good teams and can do it consistently. Emp actually had an LRM deck for MWOWC for use in some maps. Funny, right? However because even with IDF and locking LRMs are bad enough that it's still better to expose yourself and take the risk of returned fire to use direct fire aimed weapons. The moment that isn't the case the ability to get the same results with less risk and effort (yes, I know people get butthurt when this gets pointed out but no. No, locking weapons don't require the same skill level as aimed weapons. You don't have to aim. This isn't rocket science. Yes, you have to position - you have to position with aimed weapons too.) then you've immediately broken balance.

And I can kill people with LRMs too. But generally, I know it's because I'm making up for a terrible weapon with skill (ha!) and trickery, because openly, I'd get rekt. Or that other people are doing more effective work than I am, leaving me to find spots in the firing line to exploit my one unique advantage or else.

And I don't want that. I will say that positioning skill is considerably more important for lock-on boaters, as there's a great number of "Checkmate" moves opponents can use that result in positions where LRMs deal zero accurate damage, and usually just plain zero. Having to keep track of your deadzone bubble being popped by a charge, opponents in cover that forces you to close into kilboxes or abandon the field, and so on. It really is a skill requirement unique to good missile boaters thanks to the horrors PGI inflicted on the system in the name of "balance" (but goodness knows, not fun).

Those skills don't exist in the underhive, positive or negative. AMS, however does and acts as a substitute (less efficient of course, because letting a rock soak up 100% of the LRMs is no tonnage, heat, or ammo while any given AMS only partially reduces damage + takes tonnage). Of course, if all Trials have AMS, then nobody's much ahead of tonnage as they're all using at least 1.5 tons for it.

I do want LRMs to get good enough that people consider AMS a potentially useful tradeoff. There are changes I want that are XML edit-tier stuff...but it won't happen until we get a world where newbie lurming is "missile boat versus AMS network". It'll raise the skill floor, which means in turn we can raise the skill celing.

[Elizander]

I don't think it will happen, but I am down to dropping a ton of ammo or a DHS on trials to get AMS + 1/2 ton AMS ammo.

I don't think it needs to affect trials that are already sold, but it might have to change the ones in the store for future sales or people might complain that they didn't get AMS with their purchase.

Edited by Elizander, 25 February 2018 - 11:03 PM.

[YueFei]

MischiefSC, on 24 February 2018 - 09:10 PM, said:

Except it is a binary.

Better than/worse than.

It's not a matter of degrees specifically because they don't function on the same format. IDF is shooting people who can't shoot you back - this is inherently superior to shooting people who can shoot you back. This is currently offset by making LRMs so terrible that even with that advantage they're easy to nullify.

Uh, you just contradicted yourself there. You claim IDF is "inherently superior", then in the next sentence admit that LRMs are still terrible.

Quote

There is no 'equal to' with direct fire. It's like trying to balance TAG vs a medium laser. Yes, they're both 1 ton but they do something completely different. If you can effectively use IDF vs direct fire IDF will, on average, be superior because the ability to fire from little/no exposure beats shooting from exposure.

Hence poptarting, hill humping et al.

Beyond which you have locking weapon vs accuracy based weapon.

At this point, I'm going to assume we're somehow talking completely past each other. You don't even address specifically the mechanics which I proposed. I never said I wanted LRM IDF to out-trade direct-fire.

I proposed a mechanic whereby LRM DF can trade well against direct-fire. I've proposed locking/guidance mechanics for LRMs based on how missiles actually behave in real life. I've proposed that LRM flight mechanics more closely mimic real life missiles, with an actual model of maneuverability and LATAX (energy budget).

Your last little bit about "locking weapon" vs "aimed weapon" shows that it doesn't even seem that you fully read my posts, or you'd have to seen that bit I said about having the shooter actually pick out a specific component to hit? That's an aimed weapon.

That doesn't mean we need to nuke any possibility of LRM IDF mode ever again, full stop. It can still retain IDF modes, and we could overhaul mechanics to allow for skillful IDF usage with the potential for counter-play on both sides. It just takes some imagination.

Simple examples: LRMs can IDF, but this is made possible by either:
1.) Proper C3I equipment (as opposed to the data-link we get "for free" as it is now), so that it comes with opportunity cost.
or:
2.) Firing "ballistically" at where you predict the enemy will be. Remove the ability to lock-on to an enemy that has broken line-of-sight. The only time the shooter guides the missiles is with direct line-of-sight to the target. Otherwise the missiles are on their own.

Also, LRMs in IDF mode could be so ammo inefficient in this mode (due to excess spread) that if you used IDF the entire game you'd run out of ammo before the enemy ran out of armor. That is, unless you've got a spotter with TAG guiding the missiles to the exact spot where his TAG is pointed, in which case the spotter has direct control over the missiles and the spread tightens up.

Another factor in balancing LRM IDF mode would be that it's so heat-inefficient in this mode (again due to excess spread making for a bad damage-to-heat ratio) that if you went into cyclic fire you'd heat cap for very little gain and be vulnerable to a push. Therefore you would still IDF, but it'd be measured, disciplined. Designed to inflict "chip damage" when possible.

And that's just ideas I came up with in just a few minutes. Change the mechanics, make the use of LRMs take skill, and make it so that bending "trick-shots" require some talent, and we'd have something amazing.

Tell me if you don't think the concept of shots like this are skillful or interesting:


Now if you're going to stick your fingers in your ears and let a lack of imagination overcome you, lemme know, then I can stop wasting my time debating this with you.

Edited by YueFei, 25 February 2018 - 11:56 PM.