35 replies to this topic

[Chris Lowrey]

Metachanic, on 05 December 2018 - 12:49 PM, said:

Can you comment on whether those balancing factors would include reduced velocity or increased spread for indirectly-fired LRMs?

All I can say is that we do not currently have that functionality and we are currently focusing on the Direct vs. indirect trajectory that was mentioned at Mech_Con.

This does not mean that those options are off the table, but this is a change in which we need to see what can technically be accomplished without it having any knock-on effects that would negatively affect game play. If those options do become available to use, we will be sure to put them to good use, but we will not be able to commit to that line of balancing until we can internally sort out the technical difficulties that we mentioned at Mech_Con.

[NUMBERZero1032]

Additionally, I get that every mech in the game basically has C3 installed. But if you want lore, C3 never allowed for regular LRM's to lock on to enemy targets. There were only two missile types that got locks from C3. That was the Arrow IV and semi-guided LRM's. Semi-guided LRM's, the ammo, was THREE TIMES as pricy as regular LRM's. Probably because getting free locks from C3 and having a company of mechs firing all at once at the same target was OP as hell and it should be expensive to get such an advantage. But MWO has failed to emulate that. It's rampant now.

[NUMBERZero1032]

Chris Lowrey, on 05 December 2018 - 01:03 PM, said:

All I can say is that we do not currently have that functionality and we are currently focusing on the Direct vs. indirect trajectory that was mentioned at Mech_Con.

This does not mean that those options are off the table, but this is a change in which we need to see what can technically be accomplished without it having any knock-on effects that would negatively affect game play. If those options do become available to use, we will be sure to put them to good use, but we will not be able to commit to that line of balancing until we can internally sort out the technical difficulties that we mentioned at Mech_Con.

As I said, if you want to encourage more participation from LRM users and promote better team play, you gotta nerf the spread on indirect fire LRM's

[MechaBattler]

Well if the option does present itself. I wouldn't say nerf indirect LRMs. They're not that good on most maps, against competent players. But I would say that if you want direct fire LRM play to stand out. Giving it reduced spread would probably be the best way to encourage it. Although velocity would lend them more reliability. It makes sense that having direct LOS would give you faster and more accurate data for those missiles. ;3

[Kroete]

MechaBattler, on 05 December 2018 - 01:25 PM, said:

Well if the option does present itself. I wouldn't say nerf indirect LRMs. They're not that good on most maps, against competent players. But I would say that if you want direct fire LRM play to stand out. Giving it reduced spread would probably be the best way to encourage it. Although velocity would lend them more reliability. It makes sense that having direct LOS would give you faster and more accurate data for those missiles. ;3

Faster locks for artemis and narc, tag (need to stare for 3 seconds + flighttime is what kills direct fire lrms mostly, its enough to get 2 alphas from most mechs),
more spread for all lrms, but better spread reduction through artemis, tag and narc,
better lockarc or some other option to control the flightpath a little more, like we had with the old lockarc.

Balance lrms against 1,5 ams (1,5 per lance, 6 ams for a team) or tie the missilewarning to a working ams.

Edited by Kroete, 05 December 2018 - 02:10 PM.

[NUMBERZero1032]

Two things that would help AMS:

1. AMS fires when it has line of sight. Too often does it shoot into a building or in a tunnel.

2. AMS should prioritize fire at missiles above a certain altitude. Too often will you see AMS firing towards the knees of a mech at missiles that have already missed. Once the missiles pass below a certain altitude of the AMS, have it prioritize missiles at a higher altitude before firing on ones at a lower altitude. That way it has a better chance of shooting a missile that could potentially hit rather than one that has already missed.

[Vellron2005]

Since I wasn't at MechCon and didn't see what was talked about there.. can anyone fill me in on what exactly Cris and Paul are talking about here?

Is it:

1) Making LRM trajectory lower, like ATMs, all the time?

2) Making LRM trajectory lower like ATMs only when there is direct line of sight?

3) Making it lower only when the target is under cover?

[Gully D]

Personally i like that there are more lurms in FP,

it has changed tactics and made ppl think more imo, in terms of adapting to new tactics. Whilst i understand the skill and enjoyment of direct fire there are lots of games that do that. (csgo etc) having someone narc and someone lurm is well Team Play and I think more team play dependent win tactics should be encouraged.
thanks all

[Chados]

Chris Lowrey, on 05 December 2018 - 01:03 PM, said:

All I can say is that we do not currently have that functionality and we are currently focusing on the Direct vs. indirect trajectory that was mentioned at Mech_Con.

This does not mean that those options are off the table, but this is a change in which we need to see what can technically be accomplished without it having any knock-on effects that would negatively affect game play. If those options do become available to use, we will be sure to put them to good use, but we will not be able to commit to that line of balancing until we can internally sort out the technical difficulties that we mentioned at Mech_Con.

In other words, more nerfs. Nice.

[LordNothing]

the problem with missiles is they aren't called hittles.

[Dimento Graven]

From the title I'm guessing this is another person trying to justify why a computer guided weapon system should be buffed to high heaven?

<sigh>

LEARN TO AIM BY YOURSELF ALREADY!!!

[JediPanther]

Dimento Graven, on 08 December 2018 - 09:13 AM, said:

From the title I'm guessing this is another person trying to justify why a computer guided weapon system should be buffed to high heaven?

<sigh>

LEARN TO AIM BY YOURSELF ALREADY!!!

TLDR: Lrms require a vast amount of equipment and skills to use properly but you'll always be better off and more effective with direct fire.

I second this. As a lrm user myself I never use a lrm focus-ed lrm build without the equipment to get my own locks and hold them long as possible. I almost always have bap,tag,narc plus ammo,uav( a great thing as it can be used like a distress-save-me-from-light-wolf pack) skill sensors for range, skill for longer sensor lock, skill for seismic,skill for as much missile damage/ammo as possible: and most importantly having back up weapons usually limited to a mere 2-4 mls or smalls depending on how much ammo I cram into the mech.

With the added weight from all or most of that on IS mechs I devote the vast amount of a mech to one single weapon system. One that has the lowest damage-to-kill ratio in the game. Add in the many hard and soft counters,constant cycle of buff/nerf, and is very team dependent you have for one crappy weapon. Even a heavy lrm supporter such as myself will readily admit you are far better off with any direct damage weapon than the lrms.

Without a good team and positioning lrm boats are mostly inferior to other mechs and builds. I've been playing for years as a lrm user and I love being a lrm boater but dam they suck for 50-60% of the time. I've been on both sides getting lrm-ed to death and being the one to lrm someone else to death. I've been in those ultra rare matches were a single or pair of lrm boats dictated a match simple because the enemy was denied movement as the gun and laser mechs closed distance and starting wrecking the enemy. i've been that support mech seeing a teammate in battle with an enemy, switched to it and bombed it, getting the teammate to destroy that enemy seeing him type in team chat his appreciation for help in killing the enemy.

As for lrms being so good I could post screen shots of triple damage numbers as any lrm user can. Maybe I'll have 3-4 kills. i'd have done much better with direct fire as my current lrm stats prove i have only a 30% successful hit rate despite all the extra tonnage devoted to and the skill tree nodes devoted to "improving" or "gitgud-er" my lrms.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Can't you make it such that LRMs that have direct visual sight take less time to lock on than indirect sight (getting locks with the help of teammates)?

[Zibmo]

razenWing, on 04 December 2018 - 07:05 PM, said:

Essentially missiles are the most devastating weapons of either ballistics or lasers.

You can hardly recreate the total energy from chemical projectile from kinetic projectile. In fact, you can modify missiles so that they can do both. (Which a lot of modern weapons are)

(Also, most missiles travel way faster than standard artillery rounds. There is that railgun, but come on... that railgun is like gajillion tons and not very mobile... and shoot in either a predictable line or arc.)

In MW3, it wasn't some crazy pinpoint laser that killed the Summoner. It was the legged Vulture with a final lock-on that finished the Summoner with LRM-20s. Missiles are hard to use, but it's especially effective in SP because AI are stupid and just walk straight into you. But the point is there, again ideal situational targets, they HURT by both incredibly large damage AND knockdown.

And if you look at more evidence lore wise, there is a reason why almost every single mech wants to have that random LRM 5 launcher. Because quite simply, missiles are just supposed to be better.

Now, I understand that is REALLY REALLY hard to replicate in video game without it just being the ultimate weapon. IMO the issue started when PGI decide to balance effectiveness of all weapons to be roughly the same. Which, even as of now, it's not really balanced, so... (though the skew is definitely dependent on who you talk to)

But the way I see it, is that we don't go that route of balance. Just straight up make LRM the best.

*dodge audience projectile

Now, I know what most of you are thinking. LRM good? Flame bait! But hear me out. Despite being vastly powerful, there should be a lot of good countermeasures AND increase the difficulty of LRM use.

That would be the balance. Basically, we create a weapon of extremes. It's either going to work out awesome for you, or not at all.

For one, in MW3, it took skill to shoot and hit someone with it cause, you can DODGE incoming LRMS with no countermeasures. So you can spam missiles and might hit absolutely nothing if the other pilot is an ace. I think that should be the starting point.

The missiles I hate the most is the MW4 LRMs. Your missiles act like spinning bees for absolutely no reason.

I have some ideas...

Direct fire - low arc fire, fastest way to hit enemy
Indirect fire - can be fired with mere red targeting, but missiles will only travel to last recorded positions
Direct support fire - if friends have NARC or direct site, see Direct fire.

However, direct fire can be changed to indirect fire if lock is lost during flight path.

TC Support Unlock
Direct Support Fire - will create stronger arc to move over obstacles.
Indirect fire - can fire on map coordinates directly like artilleries. However, you don't just click and fire, there's a 5 seconds flight path calculation based on every new location click. (thus if you click click click click click on 20 new locations, none of your missiles will fire)

Missiles deal 2x more damage as they do now.

Ton for Ton, LRM damage will be by far, the best weapon in the game. Even considering the missile spread, the 2x modifiers will more than have enough centralized damage to equate to essentially pinpoint direct fire EXCEPT you are also blowing other peripheries up.

But as the changes indicate, if you are someone that hid in the back and spam, you may hit absolutely nothing. It will change LRM mech behaviors... forces new interesting squad play (protect your artillery piece). More terrain consideration as herding enemy into a choke point for artillery fire is now a possibility.

But anyways, my idea is definitely not complete, but I feel it's a good starting point to starting matching IRL expectations with game mechanics balance.

Grats. LRMs have been nerfed and are being indirectly nerfed again on Tuesday. With the changes to stealth armor, you will never get a target lock on a Fafnir or any other ECM mech. No more streaks against Pirate Bane.

Sometimes I wonder if PGI knows what they are doing when they buff something so much. As it is, there are so many counters to LRMs now that they are difficult to use, particularly to use well. Now they just got another hit.

[Zibmo]

Nightbird, on 04 December 2018 - 08:21 PM, said:

I mean it's simple, the missile has to carry the fuel with it as it flies, in addition to guidance sensors, avionics, and finally the payload. The tank shell sends only the payload forward. If you want to talk about IRL, it's just physics. That been said, it's easy to build much larger missiles and therefore larger payloads. In battletech we see mostly small missiles because of AMS is common on the battlefield. A big missile just gets shot down 100% of the time when there's AMS.

Not to mention "man portable". And sabot rounds as opposed the HE are also at issue. Stingers are nice - most tanks have less armor on top than the front / rear / sides.

[Koniving]

razenWing, on 04 December 2018 - 08:13 PM, said:

I don't know... how much energy in a stinger missiles vs a tank round?

(also, that percentage can be dependent on range, but there is no velocity decrease for missiles across it's expected range)

Considerably less in terms of damage to armor. Of course one needs to put into consideration the kind of tank round, caliber, etc...

And also consider that while MWO is using large tank rounds... the source material used anti-aircraft autocannons. Actual tank-round firing weapons do exist in Battletech and they are called "Rifles." An 8 ton Heavy Rifle fires a 190mm tank round (that's a lot closer to a large howitzer shell) for 9 damage against structure and 6 damage against military grade armor.

Compare that to a 40 to 120mm Autocannon/5 that's 8 tons with identical range and at its highest caliber in Battletech lore, fires an "painstakingly slow" (for an AC) 3 shells per second at 120mm in order to net 5 damage.
Or to an 80 to 120mm AC/10 that's 12 tons, has reduced and manages just twice the firing rate of any given caliber of AC/5.

Also:
From Quora:
"The stinger missile warhead is neither a KEP nor a HEAT. ... so, even if, by some fluke of chance, you are able to shoot a stinger missile onto a tank, and even if (again, very unlikely) it would be able to hit said tank, it will never penetrate the armor and do any damage." So if this is true (I was 13-Mike and my specialty was MLRS, so I haven't as much tank/anti-tank experience as I'd like, but I can tell you the AT-4 was generally much thicker than a Stinger....and it had no guidance).

-----------

Missiles in Battletech sacrifice a lot of guidance capabilities in order to have more punch.


This is the 1980s fluff in regards to missiles. Here, they're effectively pretty dumb, and the overall reason is pretty simple.


While the source's canonicity changed in the late 2000s due to a new company, legal issues with the flamboyant use of Harmony Gold sensitive imagery, and numerous retcons made since then, it was canon for nearly thirty years. Furthermore, many articles in BattleTechnology are in Catalyst's Tech Manual, virtually word for word in terms of how mechs and some things work. There are notable changes. For examples minimum range after the Clan introduction for LRMs shifted from IS missiles were lobbed into the sky and Clan missiles were fired directly at you to a safety system that if used, Tech-Ops, means that if you fire under the min range the penalty to your accuracy is whether or not you shifted the arming range to something close enough to hit the enemy before it gets into your face. (What's neat about that, is the IS has the option to hot-load them which means they are armed in the tubes, and that if the launcher is hit they explode in the launcher... What makes this fair? The Clan missiles are always hotloaded, so any hit to the launcher automatically detonates any ammo currently loaded in the launcher).

PPC here also had a retcon, rather than it being attributed to "zomg PPCs are heavy and hard to swing around quickly" (as at the time all PPCs were either in the arm or held like a weapon in the hand, there were no torso PPCs at the time) to "they have a field inhibitor that will slow down its charge up in order to prevent damage, though you can switch it off to fire it immediately at your own risk".

In general, MWO missiles are FAR smarter, far more capable, and almost as deadly as they are in BT. They combine standard LRMs with Semi-Guided LRMs and NARC-enabled LRMs

Spoiler

Narc-Equipped Missile
Narc-equipped missiles gain a +2 modifier when rolling on the Cluster Hits Table, when fired on any unit hit by a friendly Narc-Equipped beacon. Friendly iNarc beacons also apply a –1 modifier to the to-hit roll for attacks using Narc-equipped missiles.
Weapon Type: Standard LRMs/SRMs
Technology Base: Clan or Inner Sphere

Its just that in MWO...everything else outclasses it with faster firing rates for full damage. In BT a single LRM-5 could pump up to 5 damage in an almost focused area of an enemy (4 out of 5 hit LT) where in MWO it spreads a bit, and you could get it for something like 2 tons plus a rack of ammo rather than 8 tons for an AC/5 or Heavy Rifle 1 ton plus more heat problems for a medium laser. It gave players an option against long range threats and it was imposing enough since your average light mech had somewhere around 8 to 16 units of armor on a leg instead of 32+.

Its just a fact of how MWO is. It sucks, I know. So many tactical options, so many ways they could have gone about gameplay. So many things they could have done to have a wide, expansive and varied set of weapons.
Even Harebrained Schemes' Battletech went the cheap road on variants. Rather than genuinely unique variants that feel different while fitting the class of weapon, they went the RPG route of "+2 damage" and such. I'm afraid MW5: Mercs will do much the same. I'm actually disgusted that like HS/BT it seems to be favoring big cannons as opposed to the canonical and much more practical fully automatic weapons they were.