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As Paul said with the LRM design, it is balanced on the low levels of play than high levels of play, in which makes it a monster to noobs and potatoes, and a joke to experienced and veterans. Now i know that my efforts may be moot, as it may not change the minds of PGI, but I do have an idea of how it could be handled.
The Homing design coupled with Indirect-Fire capability, produces a feast-or-famine dichoctomy. This makes the success of the weapon less contingent to how the player launches the weapon, but the positioning of the user and the target, but with the target being less adept with positioning, the LRMs successes is usually being about the targets being bad pilots, than good LRMers being good pilots.
The aim of this change attempts to shift a chunk of skill from positioning, into how the LRMs are launched.
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Howitzers, these are field-artillery pieces in which the elevation could be changed -- to fire straight like a gun, or to fire at a steep angle to lob to targets and over obstacles.
Now applied to LRMs, this means that LRMs could now be direct-fired, but to be indirect-fired means the LRMs should be shot into the sky and then it will lob towards the target and clear the obstacle as indirect-fire. The sharper the angle is, the longer it takes for the LRMs to hit it's target.
This means that potatoes that haphazardly indirect-fires with little thought in their elevation by maximizing it would be minimizing their chances of hitting the target, while maximizing the travel time, time which could be used to get into cover. The entry-level players that aren't yet accustomed to aiming, would only shoot forward and is incapable of indirect fire yet, that prevents complete domination of entry-level.
This also means that the LRMs can be fired with straight trajectory, that gives it better direct-fire capability, and synergy with other direct-fire weapons. While to indirect-fire the LRMs also mean less synergy with direct-fire weapons, further relegating it to support role.
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Retained Missile Lock is no longer required, only Target Lock. So long as one of your team has Target Lock, the missiles will home on their targets. Weapons are individually locked and have to reacquire lock every shot, but they automatically lock as soon as the user (not ally) has a Target-Lock, you don't have to place the reticle at your enemy. This allows homing weapons to be fired like direct-fire weapons, but still homing.
This also allows other homing weapons to be balanced by their ability to lock quickly. This allows players to mix-and-match with Artemis and non-Artemis launchers like Artemis LRMs but with standard SRMs, and the streaks no longer piggy-backing on the lock-speed bonus Artemis.
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- Velocity: 240 (From 160)
- Damage/Missile: 1.5 (From 1)
- Cooldown: +50%
- Spread: Normalized to 4
- Ammo/Ton: 120 (From 180)
While the velocity seems to be very very high, actual travel-time is variable as travel-distance is lengthened. For example (assuming semi-circular trajectory), a distance of 400 meters, with an obstacle of 200 meters to clear, would mean the missile would travel 628.3185 meters, or extra 228.3185 meters.
The increase in both damage and cooldown makes the weapon a lot less spammable, in which players would be less acquainted in just shooting thoughtlessly.
tl;dr
- LRM Rework = players are in control of LRM's trajectory, allowing the LRMs to be direct-fire by shooting straight, or be indirect-fire by shooting in the sky, balanced by travel time
- Targetting Rework = semi-fire and forget, needing only target-lock by any one of allies or the player, no more retained missile lock.
- Targetting Rework = homing missile launchers (LRMs, ATMs, SSRMs) individually lock and needs to reacquire lock every shot, and locks automatically to any enemy with target lock of the player, and no longer needs reticle.
- Basic Stats boost, LRMs have more damage but with longer cooldown.
Edited by The6thMessenger, 29 March 2018 - 06:36 PM.