49 replies to this topic

[Brizna]

Cauldron guys are nuts, with all the PPCs flying away if they wanted to give LAMS relevance what they had to do is make it shot down PPCs, because I tried to test PIR-A with 4 LAMS and I can testify they do 0 heat. (this is a joke)

[D A T A]

FupDup, on 21 April 2021 - 06:21 PM, said:

The game isn't purely IS vs. Clans. IS Lurmboats have to fight IS mechs and Clan Lurmboats have to fight Clan mechs. It's all one big ecosystem.

Also I did suggest letting Clan LAMS have a bit more range than IS LAMS. It's not like I suggested for CLAMS to be a straight downgrade.

Furthermore, with Clan DHS being more easily spammable than IS DHS, the heat would probably even out at the end of the day.

Ams and lams shoots through walls, we can not fix that.
Range increase would put more emphasis on that bug

"Clans have better heat management due to more dhs is a myth"
-Is has lots of heat quirks to compensate
-we will give heat quirks to IS 95/100 tonners (nightstar for example) who lack them, because really the lack of dhs is true only there. (Easy to build a black knight with 20 dhs and heat quirks on top)

-IS weapons have a better damage per heat ratio on lasers (they do more damage per single unit of heat consumed)

-IS has better heat nodes in skill tree


All these is a heat advantages are free, while clans actually have to pay tons for that dhs advantage



Actually...the solution could be buffing lams optimal range without touching max range

Edited by D A T A, 22 April 2021 - 04:20 AM.

[FupDup]

D A T A, on 22 April 2021 - 04:01 AM, said:

Ams and lams shoots through walls, we can not fix that.
Range increase would put more emphasis on that bug

One way to fix it might be to switch (L)AMS from hitscan to projectile (with very fast velocity), such that a solid object would block the projectile to prevent it from hitting missiles that they shouldn't be.

Honestly though I don't think it's that big of a deal most of the time.

D A T A, on 22 April 2021 - 04:01 AM, said:

"Clans have better heat management due to more dhs is a myth"
-Is has lots of heat quirks to compensate
-we will give heat quirks to IS 95/100 tonners (nightstar for example) who lack them, because really the lack of dhs is true only there. (Easy to build a black knight with 20 dhs and heat quirks on top)

-IS weapons have a better damage per heat ratio on lasers (they do more damage per single unit of heat consumed)

-IS has better heat nodes in skill tree

All these is a heat advantages are free, while clans actually have to pay tons for that dhs advantage

The IS heat quirks are generally for specific or generic weapon types. Only the most broad heat quirks apply to LAMS, which are usually only present from either the Skill Tree or on big IS assaults. Common stuff like Energy Heat doesn't affect LAMS (but IMO it should because LAMS is literally a laser).

As for weapons, they kind of need to have better heat efficiency because of the range and damage advantages that the Clans have (also note that the recent patch makes the heat and duration disadvantages much less burdensome than before). Also Clan mechs can get way more than 20 DHS quite easily.

Side note, I just looked at MechDB and the Clan ERML now has better DPH than the IS ERML (1.3 vs. 1.25). That seems to be the only one as far as I can see, provided that we're comparing weapons by their name and not their range bracket.

All of that being said I think we're getting a little too sidetracked here so let's get back to LAMS. IS LAMS has the burden of being 50% heavier and 100% bulkier than CLAMS, and I think that disparity deserves some compensation. Beyond that I also prefer for the two factions' equipment to be at least somewhat differentiated (I don't like them being exact mirrors of each other because it's boring).

D A T A, on 22 April 2021 - 04:01 AM, said:

Actually...the solution could be buffing lams optimal range without touching max range

Maybe. Other options may be to just make it shoot faster than AMS and/or do more damage per "bullet." I'm not super picky about the particulars so much as the general idea of LAMS shooting missiles better than AMS.

[Alexander of Macedon]

So long as they're filling identical roles you're going to be stuck with one being superior to the other.

As others have said, the route forward is to differentiate them in a key mechanical way.

In addition to some of the things already discussed (longer range or effective range, most prominently), what about this? Make standard AMS only target LRMs, MRMs, and ATMs. That creates a niche for LAMS in countering SRMs and SSRMs which can make the heat worthwhile because it's offset by allowing LAMS to do something that AMS cannot do.

Other suggestions (like higher DPS) are basically just softer versions of that anyways, given the health buffs to SRMs.

[FupDup]

Alexander of Macedon, on 22 April 2021 - 03:16 PM, said:

So long as they're filling identical roles you're going to be stuck with one being superior to the other.

As others have said, the route forward is to differentiate them in a key mechanical way.

In addition to some of the things already discussed (longer range or effective range, most prominently), what about this? Make standard AMS only target LRMs, MRMs, and ATMs. That creates a niche for LAMS in countering SRMs and SSRMs which can make the heat worthwhile because it's offset by allowing LAMS to do something that AMS cannot do.

Other suggestions (like higher DPS) are basically just softer versions of that anyways, given the health buffs to SRMs.

I think making them outright ignore different missile types would just be ultra weird. If my previous ideas were insufficient, then maybe AMS could be turned into a flechette or shotgun kind of thing that is good against large simultaneous clusters, but with a slower firing rate so that streamed fire can overwhelm it more easily.

[VeeOt Dragon]

FupDup, on 21 April 2021 - 06:21 PM, said:

The game isn't purely IS vs. Clans. IS Lurmboats have to fight IS mechs and Clan Lurmboats have to fight Clan mechs. It's all one big ecosystem.

Also I did suggest letting Clan LAMS have a bit more range than IS LAMS. It's not like I suggested for CLAMS to be a straight downgrade.

Furthermore, with Clan DHS being more easily spammable than IS DHS, the heat would probably even out at the end of the day.

also if you think about it from a purely Lore/real world comparison the IS equipment would have been designed to counter IS missiles while Clan would counter Clan. remember before the Clan invasion both sides only fought amongst themselves. only later did the IS start to field equipment made to counter the superior Clan stuff while the Clans believing their equipment superior stagnated and didn't improve it much during the conflict.


even as someone who doesn't play Clan mechs often (FRR loyalist, so any clan mechs i have are salvage or stolen head cannon wise) i admit that there needs to be some difference in feel between the AMS/LAMS of the two factions as with all their equipment. though with the nature of the game you can't have them follow Lore to closely or the Clan stuff would just overpower the IS every time (a real problem for FP).

Edited by VeeOt Dragon, 22 April 2021 - 03:57 PM.

[LordNothing]

dario03, on 21 April 2021 - 07:44 PM, said:

AMS ammo no longer explodes.

well then lets kill lams even more then. without significant buffage or something to differentiate it from ams it is doomed!

Edited by LordNothing, 22 April 2021 - 04:22 PM.

[Heavy Money]

Making them do very different things won't work out well because then only mechs with multiple AMS points will be able to cover all their bases. AMS is already good on mechs that can run a lot of it, but is probably not desirable enough on mechs with only 1 hardpoint.

Ammo vs heat is a fine dynamic. It just needs to be balanced better.

[LordNothing]

Heavy Money, on 22 April 2021 - 05:33 PM, said:

Making them do very different things won't work out well because then only mechs with multiple AMS points will be able to cover all their bases. AMS is already good on mechs that can run a lot of it, but is probably not desirable enough on mechs with only 1 hardpoint.

Ammo vs heat is a fine dynamic. It just needs to be balanced better.

would be fine if they didnt take away many of the disadvantages of having ammo.

[Alexander of Macedon]

FupDup, on 22 April 2021 - 03:28 PM, said:

I think making them outright ignore different missile types would just be ultra weird. If my previous ideas were insufficient, then maybe AMS could be turned into a flechette or shotgun kind of thing that is good against large simultaneous clusters, but with a slower firing rate so that streamed fire can overwhelm it more easily.

Yeah, just spitballing to indicate the general idea of what to avoid (bumping heat/ammo values).

Something similar to that had crossed my mind, but as more of a pulse or burst that would deal enough damage to wipe all missiles in an area but have a decent cooldown. Something like, say, 3-4s cooldown but a large enough area to wipe an IS LRM20 volley and enough damage to one-tap SRMs. That would give it a distinct role vs. AMS (neutralizing single volleys vs. reducing all incoming fire) while also allowing counterplay (i.e. staggering fire). It would also help make cLRMs more relevant since they're virtually useless in the current AMS environment.

Any implementation of that sort would lead into gameplay similar to predicting/baiting/trading fire while shielding open torsos. It'd also give an incentive to actually pay attention to toggling LAMS on or off since you could counter-counterplay by predicting when someone is going to do a bait launch vs. full launch. At higher levels of play, anyways, which would be nice since the general skill ceiling isn't all that high and mostly orients around gamesense and behavioral prediction already.

[Dani130]

Honestly, looking at what differentiates laser and ballistic missile defense in a real environment, I think a simple way to differentiate them would be to have LAMS fire more slowly, but guarantee hits with every shot whilst AMS unleashes a massive torrent of bullets that doesn't have every shot guarantee a hit, but is better at suppressing clusters of missiles as there'd be AMS bullets pretty much everywhere in that missile field.
That would make standard AMS more effective against the inner sphere's missiles, whilst LAMS would be more effective against clan missiles. In addition, it would both serve to make AMS more ammo-inefficient, which kind of curbs the lack of disadvantage of ammunition, and maybe allow to somewhat reduce LAMS heat generation, making it less of a "just pick standard AMS in every situation" kind of deal.

[DiatoicClaw166]

I don't know if I'm weird for this or not but I almost exclusively use L-AMS on all my mechs. Sometimes I'll even buy terrible mechs simply because they have multiple AMS hard points. My reasoning for doing it this way is like this. 1). AMS with a single ton of ammo weighs identically the same and occupies as much space as its LAMS counterpart. In order for the AMS to become more efficient for the mech, you'd drop the ton of ammo to a half ton, which then you only have 1500 rounds, which may help against 1-2 missile boats but on LRM highlands not so much. 2). LAMS is ammo free, meaning you can shoot it for days and provide yourself and nearby allies continuous missile mitigation. Yes, it generates heat instead, but with the reduction in heat the LAMS received, its significantly more friendly to use now. Now Im no metawarrior, so maybe thats why my mechs dont melt to death when my LAMS goes off for 3 minutes straight, but it works well for me and I highly encourage anyone and everyone to try out LAMS, even if the mech only has like 1 AMS hardpoint. Plus, friendlies will thank you for at least reducing the damage they take.

[Captain Caveman DE]

[MW Waldorf Statler]

im self never use LAMS or antimissle system (thats like a Red arrow above my Position),thats, im use Radar Depr. on Max,Speed and cover or very rare ECM and have nothing Problems with LRMs without spotter or NARC ...watch for UAVs and spotters and use Speed and not stands to long on a Position or run in open Fields.

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 15 February 2022 - 02:40 AM.

[PocketYoda]

D A T A, on 21 April 2021 - 08:00 AM, said:

Dhs dissipation = 0.22 each per second
Lams heat= 1.0 per second if active

You have 1.5 tons available, what do you do?

A.) 1ams with 3000 ammo
B.) 1 Lams and sh*t on your own heat sinks for no reasons at all.

Of course AMS is still better than LAMS in any scenario.
The lams buff we did was good: we should have pushed further to 0.6 or even 0.5 heat, but unfortunatelly i got outvoted inside the couldron.

In that case you would still prefear ams in quick play, but maybe in faction play you go LAMS

I never use Lams way to hot still.

Eh another necro. Couldn't a post be automatically locked after a year or something outside of a few rare cases..

Edited by Nomad Tech, 08 February 2022 - 06:11 PM.

[foamyesque]

C-LAMS is perfectly fine. I don't like it much on the Sphere side where it trades for a full ton of ammo and a ballistic AMS -- and with less crit flexibility on top of that -- but on the Clan side saving that extra half-ton and crit per AMS mount is very much worth the trade, particularly on mechs that are otherwise either very tight on tonnage or crit-hungry. It can impact your damage output, but in general AMSes aren't firing anywhere near constantly -- and if they are then I for one think that's a very good use of my heat.

But if you were really out to try and rebalance things to favour LAMS more, you could try cutting into the number of shots a given ton of ammo can provide, so that if you want the ice-cold ballistic AMS to consistently last to the end of a QP match, you need to carry more ammo than the equivalent weight/crits in LAMS would be -- basically the same tradeoff as exists for C-LAMS.

EDIT:

Also, to whomever said that generating heat turns off your sinks: That's not correct and you can see it easily with lasers, which generate heat continuously over their firing cycle. With sufficient sinks you can make your heat gauge never move from 0%.

Edited by foamyesque, 11 February 2022 - 08:16 PM.

[w0qj]

Actually MWO/Cauldron April 2021 patch already greatly increased AMS ammo per ton.

https://mwomercs.com...400-20april2021
https://mwomercs.com...auldron-changes

For IS AMS mechs, I almost always use ballistic AMS + 0.5ton ammo (total 2x critical slots & weight total of 1ton AMS+ammo), and does not give off heat. Rarely run out AMS ammo with 0.5ton anyways. (Other players with 1ton AMS ammo say "almost always" have AMS ammo leftover by end of a QP game).

This is much better than IS Laser-AMS (LAMS), which is 2x critical slots & weight total of 1.5ton!

Thank you Cauldron for making this happen!

foamyesque, on 11 February 2022 - 08:15 PM, said:

C-LAMS is perfectly fine. I don't like it much on the Sphere side where it trades for a full ton of ammo and a ballistic AMS -- and with less crit flexibility on top of that -- but on the Clan side saving that extra half-ton and crit per AMS mount is very much worth the trade, particularly on mechs that are otherwise either very tight on tonnage or crit-hungry. It can impact your damage output, but in general AMSes aren't firing anywhere near constantly -- and if they are then I for one think that's a very good use of my heat.

But if you were really out to try and rebalance things to favour LAMS more, you could try cutting into the number of shots a given ton of ammo can provide, so that if you want the ice-cold ballistic AMS to consistently last to the end of a QP match, you need to carry more ammo than the equivalent weight/crits in LAMS would be -- basically the same tradeoff as exists for C-LAMS.

EDIT: Also, to whomever said that generating heat turns off your sinks: That's not correct and you can see it easily with lasers, which generate heat continuously over their firing cycle. With sufficient sinks you can make your heat gauge never move from 0%.

[foamyesque]

w0qj, on 11 February 2022 - 08:28 PM, said:

Actually MWO/Cauldron April 2021 patch already greatly increased AMS ammo per ton.

Yes, and I'm saying that if you want to make Sphere LAMS used more relative to Sphere AMS, that you should reduce the ammo per ton again. Much simpler than messing about with the relative ranges or damage outputs or arbitrary divisions of what they can or cannot shoot or whatever.

If I can manage it I run slightly less than 1t of ammo per launcher, but there's only a handful of mechs where that's really achievable. A half-ton is okay but runs out far too frequently for my taste, so you need multiple AMS to amortize the shaved ammo amongst. 3.5t for 4 AMS mounts, for example.

[caravann]

It be better if it was the same slot for ECM.

AMS competes with ECM.

There's no use in having AMS if you have ECM, if you get shot with ECM there's a use of using AMS

AMS ammo was made into not exploding which made some builds available but doesn't fit into the ammo bin explosion explanation.

ammo bins don't explode by being hit by a cannon. It was a myth created because the allies used petrol engines who was put on fire on ignition from fire and later on attributed by Hollywood. Likewise cars don't explode from petrol ignition. The petrol causes an explosion to make the car moving forward but it's not the same thing as ripping the car apart from the explosion since explosive materials works differently.

Then what causes machine gun ammo to explode? what exactly is not able to explode. why aren't energy weapons exploding on destruction when it is connected to the fusion engine. what happens with the energy if the energy weapon was destroyed before it made the shot. why are gauss exploding when they're charged up. shouldn't gauss be an energy weapon if it explode by being charged up.

Are AMS gauss cannons, is that the explanation?

AMS is considered a weapon in the game. When you try to add 17 weapons on a Nova you are told that you can only have 16 weapons .To make AMS vital, the cauldron already made AMS into gauss rifles. since the ammo is gauss bullets. the AMS could help the cauldron with light Mecha standing too close to their sensitive 100tons.

[foamyesque]

caravann, on 12 February 2022 - 12:28 AM, said:

It be better if it was the same slot for ECM.

AMS competes with ECM.

There's no use in having AMS if you have ECM, if you get shot with ECM there's a use of using AMS

I'm going to ignore the rest of the post because it's nonsense, but this I want to address: There's absolutely a point in carrying both AMS and ECM. One of the best anti-missile mechs in the game is the Kit Fox C (or other Kit Foxes using the Kit Fox C arm) specifically because it has both ECM and triple AMS, and they complement each other in protecting yourself and others from missile fire. The ECM also has the added benefit of, even with AMS adding more visual cues, still significantly reducing the amount of direct fire you and people around you receive.