50 replies to this topic

[BigScwerl]

Pain G0D, on 09 March 2018 - 01:08 PM, said:

I did a 1000 plus damage with my lurm catapult yesterday which made second highest score .

Thanks to some lone hero shooting narcs all over the place .

I logged in specifically to respond to this post....

...and shake my head in sadness and disappointment.

[Alexandra Hekmatyar]

BigScwerl, on 14 March 2018 - 05:09 PM, said:

I logged in specifically to respond to this post....

...and shake my head in sadness and disappointment.

I'm with you man.

[ARCcommand]

Okay so I'm a little confused (great...my first post ever is one of confusion). I'm only tier 4, (although I'm nearly halfway to 3, I do not profess to be a professional or an expert by any means), and I don't understand the hate for LRM's. I personally don't use them, I much prefer to brawl than to snipe. But I don't really see the problem with using them, sure not all maps warrant their use - but damage is damage, correct?

On open maps where you can't dodge them or use cover, they do great work at wearing down mechs and even causing a bit of panic and chaos among some players. Sure they splash the damage, but I target a mech and see the armor melting off of it from all the LRM's - how is it not effective? I completely agree that it's a really easy way to fight, there's no risk to it at all.

I guess I just don't understand the hate for the long range fire support role - indirect fire, very long range - sure I think LRM assaults are a bit of a waste of tonnage, but mediums or heavies?

Now I DO think boating is a bad idea - not only is it relying on everyone else completely for direct fire, but you risk being swamped with lights who close in and you're helpless.

So, to sum up, my question is: why is there such hate for even a more aggressive style of LRM play? Or is it just the boaters who sit in the back?

Edited by ARCcommand, 14 March 2018 - 06:25 PM.

[DarkFhoenix]

People like whine and moan and complain about things on this forum . Events , mech packages ......lurms . It makes them happy and fills a void in their boring sad lives .

I assume the reason is the same as playing in light mechs . Kills their fantasies They latch onto a half truth of it does minimal damage conveniently leaving out the maximum range or from safe cover part. They think it's unfair if they killed a mech at close range sustaining damage while their lurm buddy who helped soften it up for them took none . It does not matter if their pal is a glass cannon or 2 ton light mech he needs to share armour.

They want an armless weapon of mass destruction brawler approved by meta mechs .com . They want all the mechs to be 1 vs 1 duel fighters with 5 armour in the back and 90 armour in the front . 90 point alpha strike or back to mech lab.

Their special mech can't handle the concept of a one mech stuffed with narcs but cannot fight or a lurm boat that also cannot fight yet both working together to do hideous damage to enemies. They cannot turn around to use full speed because of 5 armour in their backs so they have to walk backwards at half speed .

Edited by DarkFhoenix, 15 March 2018 - 12:25 AM.

[r4zen]

DarkFhoenix, on 15 March 2018 - 12:10 AM, said:

(drivel)

show us on the paper doll where the direct fire 'mech touched you

edit: nevermind, it was everywhere

Edited by r4zen, 15 March 2018 - 01:39 AM.

[Fuerchtenichts]

ARCcommand, on 14 March 2018 - 06:24 PM, said:

So, to sum up, my question is: why is there such hate for even a more aggressive style of LRM play? Or is it just the boaters who sit in the back?

Speaking for myself, I feel no hate, but if I could chose the side the three LRM boats in the drop are on, I would prefer them to be on the opponents side.

1. If you want to play LRMs successfull you have to align your whole team on that tactic, which can only be done effectively in QP group queue or by a FP premade.

2. The number of "tanky" LRM boat players is quite limited in the game. So most LRMs don't share armor and try to keep out of short and mid fighting range. So the rest of your team has a great chance to be outnumbered in a dog fight and be more easily focused. This decreases the time to be killed which means your team mades combined will deal less high quality pin point damage, but you will deal more less quality splash damage. Damage is not damage, as you already pointed out yourself. In the end you will lose most of the games because you didn't manage to make proper use of your armor.

Edited by Fuerchtenichts, 15 March 2018 - 03:22 AM.

[Yondu Udonta]

DarkFhoenix, on 15 March 2018 - 12:10 AM, said:

They want an armless weapon of mass destruction brawler approved by meta mechs .com . They want all the mechs to be 1 vs 1 duel fighters with 5 armour in the back and 90 armour in the front . 90 point alpha strike or back to mech lab.

They cannot turn around to use full speed because of 5 armour in their backs so they have to walk backwards at half speed .

This explains why I am unable to delete lurm boats with a swift alpha strike to their rear CT, they have already anticipated me sneaking to their backlines and hence put more points in their rear CT! I have finally been enlightened by a lurm boat pilot, the only class of mechwarriors that I have looked down upon throughout my entire MWO life. Now I shall look up upon these pilots as the pinnacle of MWO. I will no longer expose myself by sniping with my ERLLs, or be at their mercy while brawling, I will be one of them, sitting at the backlines watching over the battlefield, ready to rain down a world of hurt on anyone who dares to cross the crosshairs of the lurm boats.

[Leone]

ARCcommand, on 14 March 2018 - 06:24 PM, said:

I guess I just don't understand the hate for the long range fire support role - indirect fire, very long range - sure I think LRM assaults are a bit of a waste of tonnage, but mediums or heavies?

All right, lemme start here. First off, Long Range Missiles, are not, in fact, long range. They're mid range. Large lasers, ac2s, and gauss can all outrange LRMs. So, for those who really like the long range, missiles are inferior.

Next, travel time. Even if you're in a murder ball, using your missiles is slower than direct fire. When a target gets called, the delay in getting lock and travel time means oft enough, at least half, if not all your missile's be too late to get damage in as the direct fire'll tear the mech apart first. Now granted, they have the benefit of being able to fire past the front lines, so you could tank the first volley, peel, and then move behind the team, but you're still waiting for your weapons to connect whilst everyone else is in a firing frenzy. It can work, but you're just not putting out damage as fast as your direct fire teammates.

Next indirect fire. Sure, can be useful, good deterrent and suppression weapon, could be great for supporting a spread out advance, but generally, you wanna stick together, so a direct fire build could support just as well, without the above issues. once you're looking at group on group coordinated action, a bit of area suppression and deterrent becomes less useful as pilots are willing to walk through the rain to get to the enemy, and if you don't need the indirect fire to support a disparate line, direct fire can be just as good a deterrent.

ARCcommand, on 14 March 2018 - 06:24 PM, said:

but damage is damage, correct?

As already mentioned, spread out damage is less useful than pinpoint. Sure it's still damage, but if I can kill an atlas with 200 damage, why use 500? Takes more time, means less focus fire and more living enemies for more of the match. It's a numbers game. You want less incoming fire as soon as possible. Skip stripped mechs, deal efficient damage and whittle down the team whilst keep as many of your own mechs functioning as possible.

ARCcommand, on 14 March 2018 - 06:24 PM, said:

So, to sum up, my question is: why is there such hate for even a more aggressive style of LRM play? Or is it just the boaters who sit in the back?

Mostly it's the ones sitting in the back, but even direct fire build'll do that, it's just the missile mechs can do it better, but even up front, leading the vanguard, the weapons have their downsides. I still love em, but I prefer MRMs now for ranged missilery.

~Leone, of Kell's Commandos.

[B0oN]

Throe, on 12 March 2018 - 02:28 PM, said:

Besides, we're making progress in the fight against Cancer every day in RL. The most recent development I've heard about is that fasting up to 48 hours before and 24 hours after chemotherapy treatments can reduce damage to host tissues by a significant margin.

Smoking the right herbs can do that too ...

[MischiefSC]

ARCcommand, on 14 March 2018 - 06:24 PM, said:

Okay so I'm a little confused (great...my first post ever is one of confusion). I'm only tier 4, (although I'm nearly halfway to 3, I do not profess to be a professional or an expert by any means), and I don't understand the hate for LRM's. I personally don't use them, I much prefer to brawl than to snipe. But I don't really see the problem with using them, sure not all maps warrant their use - but damage is damage, correct?

On open maps where you can't dodge them or use cover, they do great work at wearing down mechs and even causing a bit of panic and chaos among some players. Sure they splash the damage, but I target a mech and see the armor melting off of it from all the LRM's - how is it not effective? I completely agree that it's a really easy way to fight, there's no risk to it at all.

I guess I just don't understand the hate for the long range fire support role - indirect fire, very long range - sure I think LRM assaults are a bit of a waste of tonnage, but mediums or heavies?

Now I DO think boating is a bad idea - not only is it relying on everyone else completely for direct fire, but you risk being swamped with lights who close in and you're helpless.

So, to sum up, my question is: why is there such hate for even a more aggressive style of LRM play? Or is it just the boaters who sit in the back?

Welcome to the game! The forums can be a messy, confrontational place. The long running joke is that Forum Warfare has more consistent and more aggressive matches than Faction Warfare on any given day.

The 'hate' for LRMs isn't about hating LRMs. They're just sub-par weapons. The 'hate' is for the mentality of people who use and promote sub-par weapons and aggressively stick to being ignorant about the basic mechanics of the game which results in things like new players (like yourself) picking up bad habits and misinformation that make it harder for you to do well in the game.

This is an excellent, excellent guide to some basic strategy for the game. Also it's mostly pictures! I strongly recommend going over it.

You'll see people talking about armor-sharing, exposure and how 'effective' the damage you do is. At the crux of LRMs is that if you and I see each other at, say, 500m, and I've got laservomit and you have LRMs I can put 60-80 pts of damage on 1 or 2 locations on your mech over 1 second. You have to get a lock, then launch your slow missiles at me. I'll likely be back in cover before they arrive - but even if I just stand in the open the result is that you'll splatter 20-60 pts of damage (even if I'm stationary in the open some missiles will miss) over my mech in random places. More likely you'll put maybe 5-10 pts of damage spread over me while I move into cover while I just stripped your CT/ST or even killed you, at the least left you 1 shot from death while I'm nearly fresh.

If you're playing from the front you need direct fire because it does more damage with more precision more quickly. There is nothing LRMs do that direct fire weapons don't do better at the same range and same tonnage save for letting you hide in the back and shoot at mechs that your teammates are tanking for you. If you're not hiding in the back leeching damage then you need direct fire weapons, they'll do better across the board.

I know you *feel* you're being up front and playing aggressively but in reality LRMs don't teach you that. If you've got direct fire weapons you can't shoot unless you're exposing yourself a bit and jockeying with your teammates for a firing position. This is good! It means that in order to be involved you *have* to share armor and learn to position yourself with your team to shoot and how to shoot accurately.

That what people mean when they talk about habits. Every time you play you're building habits. LRMs teach you to be lazy, they don't require the same skill and effort to aim, they reward you for staying in the back while in reality they make your team play the match functionally a player down.

Nobody who wins consistently in the game from QP to FW to comp play will tell you that LRMs are comparable to direct fire. You can go to the leaderboard or Jarls List and sort by win/loss and almost nobody in the top 20% is going to say LRMs are viable compared to direct fire and absolutely nobody in the top 10% will and anyone in the top 1% will laugh at the idea.

That's where the 'hate' comes from. LRMs pad your stats while reducing your teams odds of winning. The players who are good at the game, who win consistently, know this and get frustrated over people taking them, making the team lose matches that should have been a win and then saying 'while I did X damage so I was fine' and refuse to understand that how they got that (largely scattered and useless) damage is why the team lost.

If you're going to play from the front and want to learn to be good at that, take direct fire. LRMs are only useful for playing badly or playing against bad players. Because of the nature of indirect fire, slow locks and inability to aim them they are useful relative to the skill of your opponent. Direct fire is useful relative to your skill. Better to learn to get skillful on your own.

[poopenshire]

[mod]

Yeah......

Not going there.

[/mod]