211 replies to this topic

[Yiryi-Sa]

Wildstreak, on 06 February 2021 - 01:35 PM, said:

There are nodes for this.

Yep. Make it better without the nodes/quirks. I minimum, default range of 220m would be a nice default counter to ATMs sweet spot.

[FupDup]

Something I forgot to mention earlier about another downside of ammo reduction: It makes it harder for mechs with low tonnage to use the weapons, thus further constraining their loadout options than they already are. Meanwhile, something like a Vapor Eagle has tonnage for days so it can always find a way to mount more.

Ammo reduction is simple, yes, but simple isn't always good.

Edited by FupDup, 06 February 2021 - 01:38 PM.

[The pessimistic optimist]

FupDup, on 06 February 2021 - 01:37 PM, said:

Something I forgot to mention earlier about another downside of ammo reduction: It makes it harder for mechs with low tonnage to use the weapons, thus further constraining their loadout options than they already are. Meanwhile, something like a Vapor Eagle has tonnage for days so it can always find a way to mount more.

Ammo reduction is simple, yes, but simple isn't always good.

People were all are ready asked for ammo quirks or something to help those guys out. Pretty populate ask around here. Maybe just make ammo per ton more for lower tons

Edited by SirSmokes, 06 February 2021 - 01:44 PM.

[Swamp Butt]

I don't get it. People cry abut Lurms, and ATM's... Yeah, sometimes I get pissed off too... Then I've also run he Lurm Boats... Sometimes they are great and can rack in 1k damage without much thought. But, then there are games, that I can barely break 300... WHY??? Well, the loadouts of the opposing team, and the lack of locks on the friendly team. Hey, don't get me wrong, I will be more than happy to get my own locks, and I do...

If the opposing team is running, ECM, and a few AMS, like a MCII-B with a single AMS, and 1 ton of ammo for it, it does, and can wreck havoc on missiles. I can't say it enough. If a mech can equip an AMS, equip it, and a ton of ammo, and if there are enough friendlies with AMS, and ECM, Lurm boats become almost nullified! I've been nullified, so yes, I know it works.

[FupDup]

Swamp *** MkII, on 06 February 2021 - 05:22 PM, said:

I don't get it. People cry abut Lurms, and ATM's... Yeah, sometimes I get pissed off too... Then I've also run he Lurm Boats... Sometimes they are great and can rack in 1k damage without much thought. But, then there are games, that I can barely break 300... WHY??? Well, the loadouts of the opposing team, and the lack of locks on the friendly team. Hey, don't get me wrong, I will be more than happy to get my own locks, and I do...

If the opposing team is running, ECM, and a few AMS, like a MCII-B with a single AMS, and 1 ton of ammo for it, it does, and can wreck havoc on missiles. I can't say it enough. If a mech can equip an AMS, equip it, and a ton of ammo, and if there are enough friendlies with AMS, and ECM, Lurm boats become almost nullified! I've been nullified, so yes, I know it works.

The feast-or-famine aspect of lock-on weapons is likely a big source of the complaints. Most other weapons are just consistently good without having huge "feast" moments (or underpowered weapons are just consistently in famine mode).

[VonBruinwald]

FupDup, on 06 February 2021 - 05:24 PM, said:

The feast-or-famine aspect of lock-on weapons is likely a big source of the complaints. Most other weapons are just consistently good without having huge "feast" moments (or underpowered weapons are just consistently in famine mode).

So what it boils down to is:

"Wahhhh, under the right circumstances lrms can defeat my meta build. NOT FAIR!"

[Vellron2005]

SirSmokes, on 06 February 2021 - 05:05 AM, said:

I know some players here don't like LRMs and ATMs ability to spam loads of missiles. With mech loaded down with ungodly numbers of missiles. How about once you reach a certain amount in the mech you reach a threshold were if you get hit internally an ammo explosion is a guaranteed. It would make carrying huge amount of ammo a huge liability. If you carry too much ammo and take a lot hits you WILL blow up. It would encourage player to carry less ammo making them less spammy and make people little more careful with were and when they fire and if they want to spam loads they better be careful. Also it don't matter if you fire all the way down to a single ton left if that take internal hit it blows. Thoughts?

Extremely stupid idea..

Why?

Because a single LRM80 volley doesn't destroy half your target. It gets eaten away by a 4 AMS Corsair. You need 3-4 volleys to do any significant damage to a target. That's half a ton of ammo just like that.

Also, LRM and ATM are hard enough to play as it is.. stop dumping on those systems already, geez..

Unless you gonna treat AC, UAC, RAC, SRM, and LBX ammo the same way, then it's just a straight up NERF to ATM and LRM..

So why don't you think of something better..

BTW:..

6xAC2, 2 or 3 RAC2s... is just as spammy as LRM. With zero.. I repeat ZERO counters... and they normally hit from well beyond 900 meters that LRMs get..

So again..

Terrible direct nerf idea.

Edited by Vellron2005, 06 February 2021 - 06:01 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

Ammo Spamming is kind of baked into the system even in standard TT, even in HBS Battletech. I think LRMs are in a good spot right now, especially with the Dual-Arc system that made it much more useful. We could increase LRM damage to possibly 1.3/missile and retain damage /ammo-ton -- this will make the volleys more stronger that the LRM5s as LRM6.5s but is less forgiving if you miss,.

But people don't like almost-artillery where you could get your component stripped off quickly from IDF. I already asked people with that.

The ATMs are just too damn powerful because of the HE ranges. The ATMs were supposed to be able to have ammo-switching to be flexible, but PGI had this "brilliant" idea of just combining all 3 ammo in one.

The HE function of heavy damage is retained, but now it no longer has reduced ammunition count. Likewise the ER function of long range has reduced ammo-count which makes ATMs incredibly inefficient to use at long-ranges that you might as well get closer. And then the unfun mechanic of deadzone range, which negates the point of ATMs being supposed to be flexible.

Just reduce ATM damage, and remove minimum range.

VonBruinwald, on 06 February 2021 - 05:42 PM, said:

So what it boils down to is:

"Wahhhh, under the right circumstances lrms can defeat my meta build. NOT FAIR!"

It's a horrible experience to have your builds incredibly useless in a match, a stupid LRM boat or a bonafide poke-fade build. There's bound to be complaints with that.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 06 February 2021 - 06:04 PM.

[FupDup]

VonBruinwald, on 06 February 2021 - 05:42 PM, said:

So what it boils down to is:

"Wahhhh, under the right circumstances lrms can defeat my meta build. NOT FAIR!"

Their "meta" builds (and normal builds) are getting defeated by other weapon systems all the time, but those other weapon systems tend to attract far fewer complaints (literally everything has been complained about but some things get more complaints than others). By this logic, the outrage must therefore have other motivations.

As I said on the previous page, and has been said since beta, the mechanics are the issue at fault here. Lock-on weapons (Lurms, Streaks, ATMs) have had more drastic swings in viability from useless to OP to useless again than any other weapon systems.

There are plenty of counters out there, but have you analyzed why all of those counters were necessary in the first place? The biggest example of these is AMS and how literally EVERY SINGLE MECH other than the Cicada X-5 is capable of mounting it. Ideally AMS would be a restricted item like ECM, JJs, or MASC where you have to pick a specific chassis or variant to have access to it, but instead we can use it on 99.99% of all mechs. If we actually restricted it to only mechs that are supposed to have it stock then there could easily be another pendulum swing to missiles being too stronk again.

I don't think it's necessarily about IDF, because Streaks can't IDF and ATMs generally don't (there is a trick to get it but most of the time people direct-fire them). It's the lock-on mechanic effectively being an auto-aim system that creates this all-or-nothing nature.

It doesn't just suck for the person being shot at, it also sucks for the person using the weapon. If I aim my laser or autocannon at a leg, arm, head, or whatever, my laser is gonna hit what I want it to hit. If I aim my LRMs at the enemy head, they will hit center mass. If I aim at the arm, they will hit center mass. If I aim at the leg, they will hit center mass. My actions have less impact. It takes away agency from the player using them as well as the target.

This is why I vastly prefer IS mechs for missiles; I've got MRMs which don't take my agency away. Clans only have regular SRMs for missiles that don't auto-aim, and they're certainly viable but I like to play outside of melee range. I would burn down a village for the ability to mount MRMs on a Clan mech. And I don't mean Clan MRMs that have reduced tonnage or anything. I mean just straight-up copy and pasted IS MRMs. This is why I want Mech Mortars; so Clans have a non-auto-aim missile that has some range.

I don't propose any nerfs to spread, cooldown, velocity, or whatever else to lock-on missiles because that can't fix the underlying mechanical issues. This is a design problem that can't be fixed with XML adjustments. Most XML changes to them lead to either a new Lurmageddon outbreak or the weapons being dumperstered completely.

Edited by FupDup, 06 February 2021 - 06:07 PM.

[Trucker Wifey]

Every round, every build, is all based on circumstances of the round itself... Example, last round I just got out of, my happy LRUM boats was nutered to all of 180 points of damage for the round. So yeah... **** happens....

[Heavy Money]

Missiles boats are easy to do badly and hard to do well. They aren't really a problem. It would be nice if it was more worthwhile to use missiles in mixed loadouts, like those common in the fluff. You can sort of do this with clan LRMs and ATMs, but usually you're better off just boating more lasers or ACs. For IS, it doesn't really work at all due to the weight of both LRMs and MRMs.

I'd like more of a reason to use these things as secondary weapons at midfield ranges. But any buff that makes them work in that role will break them when boated, so i'm not sure what can be done.

[FupDup]

Heavy Money, on 06 February 2021 - 06:19 PM, said:

Missiles boats are easy to do badly and hard to do well. They aren't really a problem. It would be nice if it was more worthwhile to use missiles in mixed loadouts, like those common in the fluff. You can sort of do this with clan LRMs and ATMs, but usually you're better off just boating more lasers or ACs. For IS, it doesn't really work at all due to the weight of both LRMs and MRMs.

I'd like more of a reason to use these things as secondary weapons at midfield ranges. But any buff that makes them work in that role will break them when boated, so i'm not sure what can be done.

I'm a weirdo who always takes some amount of lasers with my missiles. I don't know how people can live with having literally no means of self-defense for when an enemy mech gets within 180 meters (if they see no backups on your paper doll they WILL make more effort than usual to get up close, especially if they're a light mech). Usually if a light sees that you can track them accurately with lasers they try to look for someone else to pick on if someone else is available.

Besides self-defense it's also nice because it lets you have some element of precision damage for finishing off specific components and stuff instead of being a pure sandblaster.

Edited by FupDup, 06 February 2021 - 07:02 PM.

[Trucker Wifey]

Heavy Money, on 06 February 2021 - 06:19 PM, said:

Missiles boats are easy to do badly and hard to do well. They aren't really a problem. It would be nice if it was more worthwhile to use missiles in mixed loadouts, like those common in the fluff. You can sort of do this with clan LRMs and ATMs, but usually you're better off just boating more lasers or ACs. For IS, it doesn't really work at all due to the weight of both LRMs and MRMs.

I'd like more of a reason to use these things as secondary weapons at midfield ranges. But any buff that makes them work in that role will break them when boated, so i'm not sure what can be done.

I found something like MCII-1 LRM"s, Gauss, and ER Mediums. Though, the 4, not so much...

[Heavy Money]

Swamp ***, on 06 February 2021 - 07:17 PM, said:

I found something like MCII-1 LRM"s, Gauss, and ER Mediums. Though, the 4, not so much...

Yeah. You can also do Timber Wolf with ERMLs+LRM20's or MPLs+LRM15, or SunSpider with 2xLPL and 2xLRM20. These builds work, but aren't great. They could do with being a bit stronger on the missile side. IS Equivalents don't really work at all. (You can do IS mechs with primarily missiles and a couple lasers, but not primarily lasers with some missiles.)

[PocketYoda]

Damnedtroll, on 06 February 2021 - 08:11 AM, said:

I don't see any problems with lrm or atm...

I see problems with teams that camp while getting rained upon for 10 minutes to get slaughtered... stop the camping madness and go knock them out. I'm sick of camping.

Its not so much the weapon, its how the weapons work in groups.. 12 mechs and say six or eight run them.. you either get stomped because they sit at the back randomly doing really nothing, or they massacre the enemy team en mass with just crazy amounts of missiles, used well those weapons literally have no counters.. ECM gets broken by lights way too easily, AMS even 4 times is a joke.. i had 4x AMS and 8000 tons on my corsair at polar and at the the end of the match it took out 498 missiles..

Tag makes matters worse as it goes through the cover and Narc lasts way to long.

As i said its how they are used.. Also good teams protect their lrm boats so the enemy team is screwed and no amount of death balling or sneaking you can get to them..

WE NEED DROP DECKS FOR QUICKPLAY!!! That would fix LRMs and ATMs over night.

Edited by Samial, 06 February 2021 - 07:56 PM.

[Aerei]

Bring ECM. Bring AMS. Bam. Problem solved.

Honestly even without those it's overwhelmingly rare for me to get killed by LRMs. They're only really rough if you're unbelievably slow and dumb enough to be out in the open.

Or if you get NARCed. But that's synergy.

[The pessimistic optimist]

Vellron2005, on 06 February 2021 - 05:59 PM, said:

Extremely stupid idea..

Why?

Because a single LRM80 volley doesn't destroy half your target. It gets eaten away by a 4 AMS Corsair. You need 3-4 volleys to do any significant damage to a target. That's half a ton of ammo just like that.

Also, LRM and ATM are hard enough to play as it is.. stop dumping on those systems already, geez..

Unless you gonna treat AC, UAC, RAC, SRM, and LBX ammo the same way, then it's just a straight up NERF to ATM and LRM..

So why don't you think of something better..

BTW:..

6xAC2, 2 or 3 RAC2s... is just as spammy as LRM. With zero.. I repeat ZERO counters... and they normally hit from well beyond 900 meters that LRMs get..

So again..

Terrible direct nerf idea.

Not dumping just trying find away to placate the people that cry about them all the time

[General Solo]

When the queue wasnt mixed it was less of a problem

[Kroete]

There was less ammo,
then the people moaned enough about lrms and the ammo count was increased with some other changes.

You wanted lrms changed and you got them changed,
no bending, no skill to hit people under roofs needed, more effective ams, better ecm
and more ammo and less heat for more spamming with these skill reducing changes and better counters.
Artemis got nerfed, 2 or 4 tons for more ammo or tubes are better now then artemis,
Tag dont decrease locktime anymore? No problem, its a ton of ammo for spamming now.

You wanted this!

All what was needed to make lrms ok was 10% flightspeed, but we got all that changes and that made them more spammy and less skillfull. But you wanted this!

I said this before the patches and now its even more true: No ams, no cry!

Edited by Kroete, 07 February 2021 - 03:49 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Samial, on 06 February 2021 - 07:53 PM, said:

AMS even 4 times is a joke.. i had 4x AMS and 8000 tons on my corsair at polar and at the the end of the match it took out 498 missiles..

AMS does work, but it isn't a hard counter. It's designed to mitigate damage not to prevent it completely. The biggest issue is people don't use it properly, they play selfishly and use it as a passive defence rather than an active one.

AMS has a range of ~200m when targeting you.
When you see someone getting lurmed, position yourself between them and the lurmer and your AMS gets 400m of missile chewing goodness!

A 4x AMS Corsair at the back is ok, a 4x AMS Corsair on the front is amazing. For reference I run a 2x LAMS Panther and regularly take out ~400 missiles per match with proper positioning and sufficient enemy LRMS. Last night I managed to shoot down 718 with a dual LAMS Firestarter (there's a trend here) and I only had one AMS node unlocked. Was a toasty match.

Active positioning is the key to maximum effectiveness.