190 replies to this topic

[Kaeb Odellas]

Prototelis, on 26 March 2019 - 08:32 AM, said:

Equip tag. Put tag laser in streak group. Hold fire button. Fires as soon as you have the lock, gg light mech.

Is there even a point to bringing TAG for streak boats? They don't speed up lock on unless you're outside LOS, so all it's doing for you is helping friendly LRM boats hit them. That's not really a factor when you're trying to one-shot the things.

[Maddermax]

Ghost Paladin117, on 26 March 2019 - 05:04 PM, said:

I like the lore and all but MWO is a competitive shooter. Not only that but what do you mean single launchers? If multiple mechs bring AMS a lot of your missiles deserve to be shot down. Why is this controversial with some people over this patch??? Some missile boats have different weapon combinations so they don't rely on just missiles of have narc in addition to the missiles. In fact the only mech that comes to mind that leaves itself completely vulnerable is one of the catapult variants. Mixed weaponry does well in MWO too depending on how good you are.

Mixed missiles doesn’t do well, because 15-20 missiles vs AMS is useless, so those wanting to take LRMs take assault boats with 60-90 tubes to plow through the defences. The way AMS works encourages boating essentially, and leads to assault mechs with nothing else but LRMs and ammo, firing from cover because you’re too slow to get your own locks. A mixed build can be effective, much easier to do with lighter clan weapons though, but sometimes just gets shut down by AMS, and it’s wasted tonnage. I’m kind of a fan of the idea of AMS shooting down a percentage of missiles rather than being all consuming, but that’s a conversation for the other thread about it.

Kaeb Odellas, on 26 March 2019 - 05:36 PM, said:

Is there even a point to bringing TAG for streak boats? They don't speed up lock on unless you're outside LOS, so all it's doing for you is helping friendly LRM boats hit them. That's not really a factor when you're trying to one-shot the things.

Technically, it could allow you to shoot stealth mechs, but given they have un-jammable ECM while in stealth, you have a narrow 120-270 range where it makes any difference, and a canny light pilot will jump behind cover as soon as they see the TAG beam, or just get into 120m and jam. As such, TAG probably isn’t worth it with streaks any more, but a light PPC might be handy if you have the weight.

[Prototelis]

Kaeb Odellas, on 26 March 2019 - 05:36 PM, said:

Is there even a point to bringing TAG for streak boats? They don't speed up lock on unless you're outside LOS, so all it's doing for you is helping friendly LRM boats hit them. That's not really a factor when you're trying to one-shot the things.

Lets you lock a stealth mech.

[Monkey Lover]

Prototelis, on 26 March 2019 - 06:38 PM, said:

Lets you lock a stealth mech.

What from like 90 to 180m haha

How many stealth lights stand out of this range for you?

Edited by Monkey Lover, 26 March 2019 - 07:42 PM.

[Prototelis]

Monkey Lover, on 26 March 2019 - 07:36 PM, said:

What from like 90 to 180m haha

How many stealth lights stand out of this range for you?

I don't use auto aim, and I play stealth lights regularly and can usually guess what they're up to.

[PhoenixFire55]

Monkey Lover, on 26 March 2019 - 07:36 PM, said:

What from like 90 to 180m haha

How many stealth lights stand out of this range for you?

Its 120m to max range of whatever lock-on you are using actually.

And the point here is not how many of them "stand" in that range for you, but rather whether you choose to have a chance to shoot them, or whether you choose to not even have a chance and just come b**ch on the forum about "waa waa nerf stealth armor" afterwards. I, for one, as a stealth light, am very happy to see a streak boat without tag, since I know I can just ignore it alltogether and leave it for sweet sweet dessert. So yeah, don't bring a tag please and allow your entire mech to be hard countered.

[Vellron2005]

Skrapiron, on 26 March 2019 - 06:26 AM, said:

Congratulations, PGI. You've effectively rendered lock on weapons completely irrelevant to the game.

The intent was to de-emphasize the potent ability of LRM boating, but in the attempt to re-balance the game, they ruined it for anybody using lock-on weapons.

I switched out to SSRMs instead of LRMs. Even with full sensor quirks, I still cannot get a lock - even with LOS. Making matters worse, the missile nerf and AMS buff meant the entire alpha of SSRM-6 were eaten up before they left the launcher.

The worst is the ECM buff. If two or three ECM shielded mechs are standing in formation, they might as well be considered stealth mechs. You can't target them and since you can't target them, you can't shoot them with SSRM.

If PGI intended for all of us to move to point and shoot missiles, they did a great job. The only options left are SRM and MRM, but even then, the AMS buff and missile nerf kills any chance of actually hitting the target.

Looks like I'm going back to laser vomit - until PGI nerfs that again...

TBH I did not try other lock-on weapons, but everything you said also goes for LRMs..

Lock-on weapons are way too nerfed now..

And it needs to be fixed.

[Maddermax]

PhoenixFire55, on 27 March 2019 - 01:02 AM, said:

Its 120m to max range of whatever lock-on you are using actually.

And the point here is not how many of them "stand" in that range for you, but rather whether you choose to have a chance to shoot them, or whether you choose to not even have a chance and just come b**ch on the forum about "waa waa nerf stealth armor" afterwards. I, for one, as a stealth light, am very happy to see a streak boat without tag, since I know I can just ignore it alltogether and leave it for sweet sweet dessert. So yeah, don't bring a tag please and allow your entire mech to be hard countered.

To be fair, due to the unblockable ECM, stealth lights hard counter Streaks with or without TAG involved, unless the light is compliant, and that’s why you should always have a mixed build anyway. Light TAG on clan builds still makes sense though, as they have long enough range to need to counter normal ECM, and it’s easier to find half a ton. Better to have a real laser on IS builds though (or double small lasers, or put a ton towards regular SRMs).

Edited by Maddermax, 27 March 2019 - 01:39 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Maddermax, on 27 March 2019 - 01:31 AM, said:

To be fair, due to the unblockable ECM, stealth lights hard counter Streaks with or without TAG involved, unless the light is compliant, and that’s why you should always have a mixed build anyway. Light TAG on clan builds still makes sense though, as they have long enough range to need to counter normal ECM, and it’s easier to find half a ton. Better to have a real laser on IS builds though (or double small lasers).

Hard counter, but only when you are inside 120m range. That is obviously not always possible outside of 1v1. A very likely scenario is a stealth light engaging an isolated assault and streak boat coming to help ... either being unable to do anything at all without a tag, or forcing a light to hug itself and thus de-hug the assault, making it easier for the assault to kill it, or outright disengage entirely.

[Ignatius Audene]

PhoenixFire55, on 27 March 2019 - 01:42 AM, said:

Hard counter, but only when you are inside 120m range. That is obviously not always possible outside of 1v1. A very likely scenario is a stealth light engaging an isolated assault and streak boat coming to help ... either being unable to do anything at all without a tag, or forcing a light to hug itself and thus de-hug the assault, making it easier for the assault to kill it, or outright disengage entirely.

I agree, but find my self switching to a single light ppc lately.

[BlueStrat]

One thing I've found that seems to help against AMS when piloting a clan mech is mounting mixed launchers, ie LRM+ATM. The AMS buff had pretty much shut down my EXE-CH Cherbi mounting either 2xcLRM15s or 2xATM9s. As an experiment I tried mounting an LRM15 and an ATM9, and it seems to help get missiles through the iron-dome AMS.

From what I could observe in-match, it appears that the two missile arcs often confuses AMS. Several times I saw the streams of AMS fire bouncing back and forth between the two simultaneously-incoming missile groups/streams. I imagine dividing the AMS fire in such a way must cut AMS efficiency/effectiveness.

As far as the other launchers, I haven't had a chance to try something like SRM/MRM or SSRM/SRM or other combos to test combat effectiveness vs AMS.

Might be worth a try if the AMS buffs are really cramping your play style. Personally I only have a couple of mechs that have anything more than one or two missile hardpoints, the vast majority of my mechs being direct-fire weapons platforms, so I can't really do anything resembling thorough tests.

Perhaps some of you here could do some testing with mixed launcher types and report back?

Edited by BlueStrat, 27 March 2019 - 02:26 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

Ignatius Audene, on 27 March 2019 - 01:53 AM, said:

I agree, but find my self switching to a single light ppc lately.

Which basically just reduces stealth safety bubble to 90m. Snub-nose makes more sense IMHO. And in terms of tonnage/heat investment the entire PPC family makes little sense at all in this scenario.

[BlueStrat]

PhoenixFire55, on 27 March 2019 - 02:36 AM, said:

Which basically just reduces stealth safety bubble to 90m. Snub-nose makes more sense IMHO. And in terms of tonnage/heat investment the entire PPC family makes little sense at all in this scenario.

To be fair, a SN-PPC is 6 tons, a L-PPC is only 3 tons with much lower heat and I believe (IIRC) a shorter cooldown, so there's that.

[Kroete]

BlueStrat, on 27 March 2019 - 02:24 AM, said:

Perhaps some of you here could do some testing with mixed launcher types and report back?

Theoretical AMS fires on the first missile in range, if its destroyed or explode to hit, the next one is selected.
Even if the system works abstracted, ams works on the first missiles first,
compare is-lrms with c-lrms agains ams to see the effect.

Just look at the velocitys of the missiles,
direct lrms are a little faster then streaks
and streaks are a little faster then atms.
Now add ghostheat for atms and lrms in it...

If you want to mask your streaks take some lrms,
if you want to mask your atms take some streaks,
This prevents ghostheat and also gives you better matching velocitys.

Your masking missiles should be a little faster but not to fast,
ams must still work on them until the real missiles arrive to give the masking effect.

Its a lot easier now, pre patch you needed to time your missiles manualy
(time lrms that are slower then atms/streaks to hit the enemy a little earlier then the atms/ssrms
and some people that just point&click still think missiles were easy ),
now you can just press one button to do this because better matching velocitys.

Edited by Kroete, 27 March 2019 - 03:19 AM.

[Curccu]

Monkey Lover, on 26 March 2019 - 07:36 PM, said:

What from like 90 to 180m haha

How many stealth lights stand out of this range for you?

Most, because most pirates bane pilots are terribad.

[Captain Caveman DE]

there's just too many half-truths in this thread.and quite a few plain lies.

since the patch I've tried every lock-on weapon, several instances. in QP. few times even in FW.
yes, builds and skilltree have to be adjusted A TINY BIT, but that's it.
everything works at least as good as before, while lurms work WAY better. even on (former) lurm unfriendly maps I pull my %numbers% on average now (kills and kmdds, dmg was more than fine, before).

sorry, but some people just have to try new things. like going to 300mtrs. sharing armor. direct fire. pressing W. not being leeches onto others... I could go on, but why? ;-)

Edited by Captain Caveman DE, 27 March 2019 - 04:46 AM.

[Ghost Paladin117]

Captain Caveman DE, on 27 March 2019 - 04:16 AM, said:

there's just too many half-truths in this thread.and quite a few plain lies.

since the patch I've tried every lock-on weapon, several instances. in QP. few times even in FW.
yes, builds and skilltree have to be adjusted A TINY BIT, but that's it.
everything works at least as good as before, while lurms work WAY better. even on (former) lurm unfriendly maps I pull my %numbers% on average now (kills and kmdds, dmg was more than fine, before).

sorry, but some people just have to try new things. like going to 300mtrs. sharing armor. direct fire. pressing W. not being leeches onto others... I could go on, but why? ;-)

You speak hard truths.... be silent lol

[thievingmagpi]

Yep.

The speed of LOS atms/lrms right now is really stupid. Really stupid


Keep pandering to the bads pgi.

[K O Z A K]

Captain Caveman DE, on 27 March 2019 - 04:16 AM, said:

there's just too many half-truths in this thread.and quite a few plain lies.

since the patch I've tried every lock-on weapon, several instances. in QP. few times even in FW.
yes, builds and skilltree have to be adjusted A TINY BIT, but that's it.
everything works at least as good as before, while lurms work WAY better. even on (former) lurm unfriendly maps I pull my %numbers% on average now (kills and kmdds, dmg was more than fine, before).

sorry, but some people just have to try new things. like going to 300mtrs. sharing armor. direct fire. pressing W. not being leeches onto others... I could go on, but why? ;-)

I wouldn't say lrms got stronger, but certainly more useful in different situations, and surprisingly more fun. Before despite all the talk of pushing with the team, etc the best way to play lrms was to sit behind your team and just mash the damage button (which is why all the specialists and aficianods did that). Making idf a little worse and df a lot better now you actually think of what you're doing and positioning comes into play, unlike playing a missile turret before. It's actually a really great change, for the first time in mwo I'm actually somewhat enjoying playing lrms

[Prototelis]

Vellron2005, on 27 March 2019 - 01:27 AM, said:

TBH I did not try other lock-on weapons, but everything you said also goes for LRMs..

Lock-on weapons are way too nerfed now..

And it needs to be fixed.

Translation; I can't farm from the back.