22 replies to this topic

[LanXang]

I've been thinking about this after listening to the PTS podcast out of sheer boredom. Idea first, reasoning after.

Reduce the range at which shared locks provide lockon ability to LRM users, unless a TAG or NARC is used.

What I mean is, rather than having a command console TC7 Cyclops able to share its 1200m visual lock with a friendly SNV-A LRM boat on the other side of the map, only allow the SNV-A to use that lock if it is within X meters of the Cyclops (200-300m, I don't know).

Reasoning:

What do people hate in video games?

• Invisibitch snipers that one shot them (PS2)
  
• Spawn peaking machine pistol carrying defenders (R6 Siege)
  
• Invisibitch sword wielding OHK technoninjas (Dirtybomb)
  
• Nearly indestructible flying gatling gun drones (Ironsight)
  
• 1000 m LRM taters 4 hexes away (...)

What's common between all of these? Players who don't bring direct counters have limited ways of reducing their efficacy, and often times have no way of actually fighting back (or no chance to adjust a flawed tactic before dying instantly). That last parenthetical is important in MWO, because no respawns.


By reducing how far away you can be from a friendly mech to (ab)use their lock, you do a few things:

• You bring those kill stealing bags of LRMs closer into the fight where they share armor (happy team!).
  
• You give the enemy team a better chance of pushing through the front line to hit the second line, i.e. you give them back the chance to fight back (less salty enemy team!).
  
• The enemy team knows that the LRM boat is either close to its teammates, or they will see the TAG, or have some warning when the LRM boat attempts to poke to get a quick NARC off.

For those people who want to sit back and still be mostly useless, well, they can throw on a NARC and git gud at long range NARCing, take advantage of TAG bonuses, or hope they get a really annoying NARC raven on their side.


No matter what, it would seem to me that this would minimize a lot of the issues people have with LRMs (since they definitely should not be buffed, and probably won't be nerfed).

Finally before a LRM loving...lover asks, "But how do I know who to stand next to? This will require an entire GUI rewrite!".

A: IDGAF, go stand next to your teammates, you shouldn't be alone anyway you donut.

Edited by LanXang, 07 August 2018 - 10:47 PM.

[General Solo]

I agree secondary locks without tag or narc should be less rewarding.

[Horseman]

I would say even: remove lock sharing entirely unless TAG, NARC or a Target Spotted callout is in play. This also gives PGI something to do with C3 and C3i systems if they want to introduce them in the future.

[KursedVixen]

Horseman, on 08 August 2018 - 02:36 AM, said:

I would say even: remove lock sharing entirely unless TAG, NARC or a Target Spotted callout is in play. This also gives PGI something to do with C3 and C3i systems if they want to introduce them in the future.

but we already have C3i... our basic radar on both sides is basically C3i with line of sight.... personlaly i think default target decay needs to be decreased that is the time it takes for a target to dissapear from radar needs to be decreased without tag or narc...

Edited by KursedVixen, 08 August 2018 - 07:11 AM.

[Horseman]

KursedVixen, on 08 August 2018 - 07:11 AM, said:

but we already have C3i... our basic radar on both sides is basically C3i with line of sight....

Whereas in tabletop C3 and C3i are discrete equipment taking up tonnage and slots...

[Mystere]

I have one problem with this: targeting information is no different from voice communications. They are both "data". If the latter works, then the former should as well.

I leave you folks to figure out the rest.

[Horseman]

Mystere, on 08 August 2018 - 12:34 PM, said:

I have one problem with this: targeting information is no different from voice communications. They are both "data". If the latter works, then the former should as well.

I leave you folks to figure out the rest.

It is different - the latter depends on your teammate cooperating to relay what they observe, the former is automatic.

[Mystere]

Horseman, on 08 August 2018 - 01:21 PM, said:

It is different - the latter depends on your teammate cooperating to relay what they observe, the former is automatic.

The "sameness" is that both are just data that is automatically transmitted to teammates as it arrives (i.e. as the teammate gets the target info or speaks).

Edited by Mystere, 08 August 2018 - 01:31 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

Mystere, on 08 August 2018 - 01:30 PM, said:

The "sameness" is that both are just data that is automatically transmitted to teammates as it arrives (i.e. as the teammate gets the target info or speaks).

Yeah, but one is a human being, the other is a computer.

[Mystere]

The6thMessenger, on 08 August 2018 - 03:02 PM, said:

Yeah, but one is a human being, the other is a computer.

And?

[The6thMessenger]

Mystere, on 08 August 2018 - 03:38 PM, said:

And?

One's reliable, the other isn't.

[Horseman]

The6thMessenger, on 08 August 2018 - 04:17 PM, said:

One's reliable, the other isn't.

And one's immediate where the other isn't.

[KursedVixen]

Horseman, on 08 August 2018 - 07:54 AM, said:

Whereas in tabletop C3 and C3i are discrete equipment taking up tonnage and slots...

yet we all get C3i free... think about it how our basic 'radar' or whatever piece of crap PGI calls radar in MWo is essentially C3i with line of sight only.

Edited by KursedVixen, 09 August 2018 - 12:01 AM.

[Horseman]

KursedVixen, on 09 August 2018 - 12:00 AM, said:

yet we all get C3i free...

And my point is that if we didn't and indirect fire was impossible without an actual spotter, we'd see much less of it - and the bad habits it promotes - in matches.
Hence removing the "free C3" would be very much in order..

Edited by Horseman, 09 August 2018 - 01:17 AM.

[LanXang]

Horseman, on 09 August 2018 - 01:15 AM, said:

And my point is that if we didn't and indirect fire was impossible without an actual spotter, we'd see much less of it - and the bad habits it promotes - in matches.
Hence removing the "free C3" would be very much in order..

The thing is PGI will never do that, they want easy to use LRMs. That's why I think this idea would be the easiest fix ever, LRMs still work the exact same way, you just have to actually be near your team to abuse locks.

Having your enemy LRM boats only ~300 m behind their friendlies at least allows for some counter play vs. the current polar highlands meta where you've got a wide open ~800m to cross before you even have a chance of shooting a LRM potato (assuming you didn't bring a dangerphish).

[Generic Internetter]

I agree with the spirit and logic of this thread, but I must point something out that's been missed:
LRM boaters are already staying near teammates because otherwise they get backstabbed/circled easily.

My take on it:

For ballistic and laser weapons, the "force" is contained in the weapon into the beam/projectile, and the impact of that is what does the damage. You could argue that the "force" of ballistics is in the ammo, but in this specific context, their "force" is indeed in the delivery method because of the horrendous tonnage of the weapon in MWO terms (AC's/LBX's/UAC's).

LRMs do not follow the same pattern. Their "force" comes from the ammo itself, as the delivery system (weapon) is not much more than a series of tubes that outputs said "force" and the weight is comparatively tiny for the damage they do.

(Oh wow... I just re-read that and I really think I didn't explain that very well lol. Let me try again...)

How does an AC10 shell do 10 damage? It's fired from a huge 10-ton gun that pushes it out of a barrel at high speed (kinetic energy). The force is coming from the gun and the shell is just carrying the energy that the gun puts into it. If you fired an AC10 shell from an AC2 it would probably go 1/5th the velocity, thusly doing only 2 damage.

Conversely, how do 10 LRMs do 10 damage? Each one is launched from a tube and they explode on impact. The tube isn't the thing giving it the force - The LRM itself contains 1 dmg-worth of explosive inside it.

10 LRMs weigh around 0.05 tons, since 1 ton of LRM ammo has like 200. Those 10 LRMs do 10 damage.
An AC10 weapon weighs 10 tons, and also does 10 damage.

So in my convoluted, crazy, roundabout way of explaining things, what I'm getting at is that 0.05 tons of LRM does the same damage as a 10-ton gun. That's where the problem lies, in my opinion.

I think LRM weapons should weight more (similar to their ballistic counterparts), or LRM ammo should contain far less quantity (like 1/10th the amount).

Another way to think of this is to consider that an LRM10 weighs 3 tons and does 10 damamge, but an AC10 weighs 10 tons and also does 10 damage. (PPCs weigh 6 tons and do 10 damage, but the energy-ballistic tradeoff there is heat.)

Okay I hope that made sense in some way...

[KursedVixen]

Horseman, on 09 August 2018 - 01:15 AM, said:

And my point is that if we didn't and indirect fire was impossible without an actual spotter, we'd see much less of it - and the bad habits it promotes - in matches.
Hence removing the "free C3" would be very much in order..

i agree but what do we replace it with?

Edited by KursedVixen, 09 August 2018 - 09:35 AM.

[LanXang]

Generic Internetter, on 09 August 2018 - 08:49 AM, said:

I agree with the spirit and logic of this thread, but I must point something out that's been missed:
LRM boaters are already staying near teammates because otherwise they get backstabbed/circled easily.

Sometimes, not always, and the point of this is to basically force the issue, to take away the option of standing back 700 m from your own guys, and hitting enemies 200m in front of them with LRMs.

If PGI reduces the shared lock distance for LRMs to ~300 m, then LRM boats have to stay close to their team. It also makes it so that rather than being able to use their teammates as complete meat shields at 500-900m (you know that situation where you are in a brawler, and your friendly LRM boat is blasting you with LRMs because you've got a foolish enemy danger fish running in circles around you), they actually provide some form of covering fire further forward (because they have been forced to move "up").

[Horseman]

KursedVixen, on 09 August 2018 - 09:34 AM, said:

i agree but what do we replace it with?

Like I said - allow the "Target Spotted" callout to share the marked contact (so that every team has a tool to do so) and apply the same to TAG and NARC. Lurms can still use indirect if they can spot their own target in this fashion every so often, otherwise they have to focus on their team's designated target. Net result is that lurms become direct-fire weapons with an option for indirect fire if the team works together for it.

[Torage]

Maybe I am misunderstanding the concept here, but this seems very anti information warfare. Spoting and scouting and using LRMs to take advantage of the information gained from those actions is a core gameplay mechanic of mwo, and I am not convinced that somone should need speacial equipment pn thier mech to fully participate.

They tweak LRMs a lot and no mater what they change, a lot of people are upset that they are too weak or too strong. But I think that has more to do with players not being information warfare minded.

I can't think of the last time I died to LRMs where I thought that the LRM boat was being "cheap". Every time I can think back to where I went wrong and where I moved out of position, or didn't adress a scout in our back field.

That said, when I play my LRM mechs, I still manage to frequently rack up over a thousand damage before and after the patch in my TBT (I don't have any LRM assult mechs because of the deficit in aromor trading that creates for our team, so my LRM boat is usually my trebuchet with x2 LRM 15+A). I find myself almost baffled when playes remain in terrible positions for an extended period of time, and wo der why they ever thought that was a good position. I am tier 2, so my targets are experinced enough that you would think they would know better.

I don't think it is the weapon system that needs changes but players understanding of how the weapon system really works.