43 replies to this topic

[ShiverMeRivets]

The main issue with LRMs are not the weapon itself as much as how it is played. The exception being some situations where getting NARCed or a UAV mean quick death to indirect fire with you being completely powerless to stop it. It is not the common case, but it happens.

Regarding hate towards LRM boats by their own teams - If you build an assult mech as a LRM boat, it can be effective - it is not like you cannot contribute anything to the team. The problem is that your tonnage and potential firepower as an assault are MUCH more valuable up at the front. A medium or a heavy can perform the job of a second line lurm boat just as well if not better, compensating fewer tubes with better positioning and the ability to hold their own locks, and freeing that Charlie lance spot to be filled by a front-liner assult.

Back line LRM boats give a warm fuzzy feeling to some players because they tend to end the match with higher damage numbers and surviving longer than they do with other builds. It does not matter that this damage is motly to irrelevant components and only a small fraction of it lands where it is needed, and it does not matter that longevity was achieved by staying out of direct combat and letting the team mates take the damage first - on the end-game score panel it looks as if you did really well.

Btw, this largely applies to sniper types as well, except that they do not achieve the high damage numbers. Still, from their point of view it looks like their useless team collapsed, while they are the last to remain standing to make the brave last stand before they too are overrun. So they feel good. In practice their contribution to the team is almost the equivalent of a disconnected player.

Sniping and lurming are good and valid, just like bringing a non meta build to QP. Just try not to overdue it.

[Kroete]

If you have high damage, your are padding you damage,
If you have high kills, you are holding back and vulturing open enemys,
if you don not have high damage or kills you did nothing.

But maybe the three above were working together?
The narc raven and the lrm boat and the light-vulture ...

The stats we have are dont tell much, no kmmd, mixed group and single stats.

[The6thMessenger]

Kroete, on 03 March 2019 - 02:13 AM, said:

The stats we have are dont tell much, no kmmd, mixed group and single stats.

There's WLR. It's an overall measure of your impact.

It seems random, but remember that it's operating on consistent errors which everyone is subjected to, which is Systematic Error that is acceptable. Overtime, your impact compounds with enough games, cause statistics.

Personally, I don't care much for low KDR, even sub 1 KDR. I pride myself with at least positive WLR. I have low standards like that.

ShiverMeRivets, on 03 March 2019 - 01:32 AM, said:

Sniping and lurming are good and valid, just like bringing a non meta build to QP. Just try not to overdue it.

It's valid, up to the point that your team loses.

Sure, we don't exactly expect much health from lights, but if you're an assault and you are at the back of the line, you're wasting your armor. And if your team falls short, it will be on you - Rhetorical "You" by the way - because it's that wasted potential that could have won the game, instead squandered for background lurming.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 03 March 2019 - 03:28 AM.

[Asym]

Angel of Annihilation, on 02 March 2019 - 10:26 PM, said:

The problem with LURMs is the way people build to use them. Generally speaking they go all in on them bringing absolutely nothing else to the table. They really need to be set up as a mixed build of LRMs supported by a fair amount of short range weapons, enough to either push the enemy back into LRM range or at least give you a decent chance of defending yourself if some one does get in under 180m. The mixed build also lets you function in the 2nd line where you can be sharing armor, helping to push a corner and/or get your own locks.

For example my Supernova A mounts 2xLRM20 w/Artemis, 2xSRM6 w/Artemis and 4xMPL. That gives me a 50 point short range alpha while still allowing for significant weight of LRMs to provide Indirect support. I can also pretty much guarantee you I am out damging LRM80 builds that sit way back lobbing LRMs at things they can't see. If more people built their LRM boats like this, they might actually find themselves winning more battles.

Balanced load outs can go or play any map.... Many of us do that and yet, are always included in the hate this or hate that threads and in game.

LRM's usage is no different than the Laser boats that forego heat sinks ! Gun boats that have limited ammo ! An alpha and the mech shuts down and are piece milled or killed.... Are we going to change that? I doubt it. Nor, the fact that a reticle for a laser boat just needs to "touch" anywhere on the target and you get damage; while, LRM reticles: 1) need a lock that is incredibility difficult or even impossible to obtain and requires all sorts of skill tree nodes to be efficient; 2) even with the lock, the enemy has three levels of defensive capabilities to counter that hard to aim weapons system !!! Good grief. There is no defense for laser fire.... So, think about this. One of the weakest weapons in the game has three, direct, counter LRM systems to use and we are wanting even more..........what a joke. Laser have only enhancements on the skill tree. Hmmmm?

The real issue with LRM's is that they can make the game harder for the players that only want melee combat.... That only want to brawl and we see that every game we play. Rush to where the enemy is and brawl. Brawling maps after brawling map..... The elite players either getting match scores above 400 or below 100..... Last night, saw this over and over again because MM is creating disproportionately skilled teams That veteran player having one match score of 82; and, blamed the team; and, the next match, 320: same mech, same tactics, same salt.... And, we're worried about or even discussing LRM's?

OP. LRM's are part of the combined arms theories many Armies use in reality and are part of lore. It is funny though, I don't see Solaris being even really used? Here, PGI created an entire game mode for brawlers and they just don't use it? I wonder why.....................?

[Ghost Paladin117]

Lurms get a bad rep. They are also infuriating to fight against when a team uses them in conjunction with Narc-ers.

Asym, on 03 March 2019 - 06:34 AM, said:

Balanced load outs can go or play any map.... Many of us do that and yet, are always included in the hate this or hate that threads and in game.

LRM's usage is no different than the Laser boats that forego heat sinks ! Gun boats that have limited ammo ! An alpha and the mech shuts down and are piece milled or killed.... Are we going to change that? I doubt it. Nor, the fact that a reticle for a laser boat just needs to "touch" anywhere on the target and you get damage; while, LRM reticles: 1) need a lock that is incredibility difficult or even impossible to obtain and requires all sorts of skill tree nodes to be efficient; 2) even with the lock, the enemy has three levels of defensive capabilities to counter that hard to aim weapons system !!! Good grief. There is no defense for laser fire.... So, think about this. One of the weakest weapons in the game has three, direct, counter LRM systems to use and we are wanting even more..........what a joke. Laser have only enhancements on the skill tree. Hmmmm?

The real issue with LRM's is that they can make the game harder for the players that only want melee combat.... That only want to brawl and we see that every game we play. Rush to where the enemy is and brawl. Brawling maps after brawling map..... The elite players either getting match scores above 400 or below 100..... Last night, saw this over and over again because MM is creating disproportionately skilled teams That veteran player having one match score of 82; and, blamed the team; and, the next match, 320: same mech, same tactics, same salt.... And, we're worried about or even discussing LRM's?

OP. LRM's are part of the combined arms theories many Armies use in reality and are part of lore. It is funny though, I don't see Solaris being even really used? Here, PGI created an entire game mode for brawlers and they just don't use it? I wonder why.....................?

People do play Solaris. Brawling is not the only way to fight even in that game mode.

[Xiphias]

Asym, on 03 March 2019 - 06:34 AM, said:

Nor, the fact that a reticle for a laser boat just needs to "touch" anywhere on the target and you get damage; while, LRM reticles:

You conflate two different ideas here, doing any damage and doing significant damage. Sure, it's easier to do some amount of damage with lasers, however to do any significant amount of damage the reticle needs to be held on the target, and the more precisely the better/more effective it will be. With LRMs the reticle needs to be vaguely held over the mech and the missiles will hit the target, it doesn't matter how precisely you hold the lock, the damage is the same. It takes less aiming skill to max out LRM performance than it does to max out laser performance.

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1) need a lock that is incredibility difficult or even impossible to obtain and requires all sorts of skill tree nodes to be efficient;

You lose any credibility you might have had with this statement. LRM locks are not hard to obtain or to hold. In a few specific cases (e.g. stealth armor) they might be hard/impossible to get, but in generally it is incredibly easy to get locks and requires minimal skill to do so.

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2) even with the lock, the enemy has three levels of defensive capabilities to counter that hard to aim weapons system !!! Good grief.

What three levels of defense are you referring to? Obviously AMS, after that cover and ECM/stealth or radar dep? I'd argue that the latter two apply to locks more so than a defensive capability (i.e. they make locks harder to get and maintain).

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There is no defense for laser fire....

There absolutely is, it's called cover. Break direct line of sight and lasers can't hurt you. LRMs on the other hand can still hurt targets without direct line of sight which is one of the reasons they have additional counters. Ignoring that is disingenuous.

Quote

So, think about this. One of the weakest weapons in the game has three, direct, counter LRM systems to use and we are wanting even more..........what a joke. Laser have only enhancements on the skill tree. Hmmmm?

Or how about this, the only weapon system that is capable of indirect fire (and also requires the least precision aiming to be effective) is the only weapon system that has specific counters? It's almost like indirect fire and homing need a balancing component to avoid making them overpowered. Lasers have significantly lower damage per heat than LRMs and most of them are also more range limited than missiles. FYI AMS does also affect SRMs, albeit to a lesser extent than LRMs due to distance and speed.

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The real issue with LRM's is that they can make the game harder for the players that only want melee combat....

No, this is just you projecting your ideas onto the rest of the community. Personally, I just get tired of having to jump back into cover every 10s because someone saw a blip of red for a second and decided to lob some missiles that way. It's not hard, it's just annoying and slows down the game. Also, as a light the ability to get instantly crippled or killed by one salvo by making a single poor choice isn't ideal. The same thing can happen with Gauss or other high alpha builds, but usually you can at least use piloting to try to dodge.

At the end of the day players dislike LRMs for some combination of two reasons, 1) they aren't helping their team or are taking advantage of their team (this applies to other non LRM builds too like ERLL spam at extreme range) and/or 2) they take control away from players (if you get out traded there was something you could have done better, if it's a MG light you might have been able to kill it by aiming/piloting better, if you got backstabbed you could have been more situationally aware. If you got narced by a Commando on Polar and died to LRMs in the next 30s there is very little you could have done to avoid the situation. Even if you kill the Commando you're still going to die.) Player's don't like dying for situations outside of their control, this is why long tom in FP was a terrible idea, why people complain about NASCAR (even though it usually is in their control and they just don't realize it), and one of the reasons that LRMs generally aren't fun to play against (either they aren't useful as in 1 or they are too effective and individual players can't do much about it).

Quote

That only want to brawl and we see that every game we play. Rush to where the enemy is and brawl. Brawling maps after brawling map..... The elite players either getting match scores above 400 or below 100..... Last night, saw this over and over again because MM is creating disproportionately skilled teams That veteran player having one match score of 82; and, blamed the team; and, the next match, 320: same mech, same tactics, same salt.... And, we're worried about or even discussing LRM's?

Anyone who is regularly getting match scores below 100 is not an elite player. It might occasionally happen, but regardless of how poorly your team plays a sub 100 MS means you messed up somewhere. People whining about the team are usually bad players.

Quote

OP. LRM's are part of the combined arms theories many Armies use in reality and are part of lore. It is funny though, I don't see Solaris being even really used? Here, PGI created an entire game mode for brawlers and they just don't use it? I wonder why.....................?

Real combined theories of arms have no bearing on this game. What's most effective and what's most fun are two entirely different things. Getting killed from over the horizon (or shot down in the dropship) might be realistic, but wouldn't make for a fun game.

Solaris does get used, albeit by a small percentage of the population. People just aren't good at admitting their own shortcomings and would rather have a team to blame. Also, brawling isn't the only viable strat in Solaris, some ranged trading/poke builds can actually be quite successful.

[Prototelis]

^ On Solaris; trading is hella effective against ac2 boats. Iv4 can puke out 60-80 damage before an anh can do 24.

[Asym]

Xiphias, on 03 March 2019 - 12:13 PM, said:

You conflate two different ideas here, doing any damage and doing significant damage et al.....

OK, we agree to disagree. Have fun and good luck ! This is just a game and to be honest, I like it even though it is a real mess. And, I volunteered to stay after everyone else I know left......a rear area scouting mission......in case there is a significant change and a reason to return....... Miracles happen I've been told......

There's no point in going point by point again. We gain nothing. Good hunting and maybe, one say, we'll meet out there in a random and you can show me the true path to MWO enlightenment.....

[Horseman]

CUTE PUPPY LUV, on 02 March 2019 - 06:17 PM, said:

What do you think?

The problem never really was with the LRMs, it was with the tendency of a certain portion of the playerbase to gravitate towards the "LRM event horizon" and forever remain there due to false impression of "effectiveness" of the weapon system (while applying it wrong), as their actual ability to play the game progressively declined.

[Prototelis]

Thats part of the problem, the other part is that auto-aim weapons disrupt core mechanics.

[Xiphias]

Asym, on 03 March 2019 - 02:40 PM, said:

OK, we agree to disagree. Have fun and good luck ! This is just a game and to be honest, I like it even though it is a real mess. And, I volunteered to stay after everyone else I know left......a rear area scouting mission......in case there is a significant change and a reason to return....... Miracles happen I've been told......

There's no point in going point by point again. We gain nothing. Good hunting and maybe, one say, we'll meet out there in a random and you can show me the true path to MWO enlightenment.....

In general, I think most (though not necessarily all) of your ideas/opinions for the game are bad and that they would make the game worse. That said, that comes from my views on what I think is fun/good about the game. I don't have anything against you personally, just that I strongly disagree with your opinions.

It's obvious that we aren't going to move forward in a discussion so I'm willing to leave it be.

At OP:
All of the positives that you've mentioned about LRMs can be said about direct fire weapons, a Guass + PPC alpha will also usually send mechs scurrying and has the benefit of likely damaging or even killing the mech it hits, where LRMs will often do no damage. A good firing line of direct fire weapons is far better than LRMs at area denial. That said, good firing lines are rare in solo queue.

At the end of the day it comes down to this, direct fire weapons are almost always better than LRMs when in the hands of a skilled player, however your average pug is not a skilled player. There are many players that will be able to contribute more to the team in an LRM boat than they would in a direct fire mech. While I'd rather they simply get better at direct fire weapons I understand that's not realistic. They should however at least try to help the team as much as possible (e.g. sharing armor, staying close) instead of leaching.

Helpful to the team or not, I personally think LRMs make the game less fun and while I don't advocate for their removal or nerfs I'd be perfectly happy if they got removed from the game entirely.

[Lykaon]

ShiverMeRivets, on 03 March 2019 - 01:32 AM, said:

Regarding hate towards LRM boats by their own teams - If you build an assult mech as a LRM boat, it can be effective - it is not like you cannot contribute anything to the team. The problem is that your tonnage and potential firepower as an assault are MUCH more valuable up at the front. A medium or a heavy can perform the job of a second line lurm boat just as well if not better, compensating fewer tubes with better positioning and the ability to hold their own locks, and freeing that Charlie lance spot to be filled by a front-liner assult.

These days the only mech I drop in that uses LRMs is a Cougar.

2x LRM15 w/5.5 tons ammo
TAG
2 x ER Medium lasers (sometimes heavy mediums)
ECM
12 DHS
Head armor shaved down to 10

Advantages...

I don't use an assault heavy or even a medium mech slot
Light mechs do not have the same stigma attached for not sharing armor (they don't got much to share)
An ECM Cougar is frequently over looked so getting your own locks is easy
Even as slow as the Cougar is it's still faster than a LURM assault so you can be where you are needed more often.
I'm bringing ECM to the game so the Cougar is also counter LRM capable.
I use the hero chassis so it prints money for me.
Usually end a losing match without losing PSR even when my solo queue team derps it hard.

Disadvantages...

A Cougar is not a Piranha
Slow...painfully slow light
Sometimes the map is terrible for LRMs so damage output is reduced

[Vellron2005]

Kroete, on 03 March 2019 - 02:13 AM, said:

If you have high damage, your are padding you damage,
If you have high kills, you are holding back and vulturing open enemys,
if you don not have high damage or kills you did nothing.

But maybe the three above were working together?
The narc raven and the lrm boat and the light-vulture ...

The stats we have are dont tell much, no kmmd, mixed group and single stats.

I actually played with a group like this..

2 dedicated LRM boats
1 or 2 NARC-ers
1-2 "vulture" ATM smiters
And the rest str8 up brawlers..

In a team like that, we would win almost every match with a resounding stomp, and we kept winning until the group fell apart for the night..

Those were some great games..

I see a NARCed target killed literally in SECONDS... We worked together and won.. I've even seen some incredible matches and scores.. like 1000+ damage in a LRM boat on Solaris, or 1800 damage on a non-polar QP match..

Guys.. it really doesn't matter what you bring, what weapons you use..

It really is all about teamwork and making due with what you have.

[Maddermax]

Vellron2005, on 04 March 2019 - 02:17 AM, said:

I've even seen some incredible matches and scores..

like 1000+ damage in a LRM boat on Solaris, or 1800 damage on a non-polar QP match..

Guys.. it really doesn't matter what you bring, what weapons you use..

/Sorry, this just popped into my head reading that with dramatic pauses
//And I agree

Edited by Maddermax, 04 March 2019 - 03:03 AM.

[Gagis]

The trick is, you don't get teams like that in Quick Play. Lurms really do work much better in group queue or Faction Play, because they really do require a themed team to not be a detriment to those not in your LRM club.

[The6thMessenger]

Gagis, on 04 March 2019 - 04:20 AM, said:

The trick is, you don't get teams like that in Quick Play. Lurms really do work much better in group queue or Faction Play, because they really do require a themed team to not be a detriment to those not in your LRM club.

YES

[R Valentine]

I think it's just the laziness of how most people play LRMs that give it a bad rep. Most of the time the rage comes from the other side who are annoyed at being shot at while they can't fire back. As long as you stay with your teammates, fire at the right target, and actually obtain your own locks when the situation calls for it, LRMs are just fine. The problem is idiots who stand as far back as they can because they have to feel safe, whine for locks, just LRM whatever in spite of the fact that a primary target has both been called and locked, and go off on their own where they usually die in 10 seconds because no one is around to save them once the enemy gets under minimum range.

[Lily from animove]

well because it is the most inefficient weapon system in mwo next to ssrm's. because they spread and if shot indirectly they take AAAAAAAAAAAAAGES to travel in which every play not fallen asleep in front of his PC or not being a noob is already away from the place to get hit. most newbies don't know the maps well enough to seek cover properly or lack the awareness of where the missiles might come from and where to go to hide.

MWO is the first game that is truly a competitive iteration of Battletech when it comes to have a really wide audience. And it just is the competitive nature of it making weapons disappear in some skill brackets which are inferior. And lrm's are pretty inferior. The lrm's "best use" so far is firing them as a stream making the opponent being annoyingly interrupted by the cockpit shake.

[Mochyn Pupur]

So rare of me to try and use lrm outside of 500m range, not really noticed any difference. Any half decent lrm pilot finds their own targets, locks, TAG etc. and more importantly, gets into the 'fray to share armour - always funny watching the other team focus on the lrm boat while being stripped by direct fire themselves.

[JediPanther]

The real problem is those who were great with lrms as fire support long ago left the game due to the constant roller coaster of nerfs and buffs. If the lrms weren't directly nerf/buffed the equipment like bap and atemis was. Then clans increased the power creep along with the growing number of ecm mechs so your lrm 30-40 became less and less effective hence the current lrm boating on assault mechs to fire more lrms.

i'd teach you how to do lrm properly but I lack the hardware to run mwo for the foreseeable future.