77 replies to this topic

[LordNothing]

so i was reskilling one of my grand dragons, which was set up as a ppc boat with a couple rl10s stuffed up its nose. after re-applying the skills i had a few nodes left over. none of the missile nodes were enabled. i noticed the missile rack nodes, and a moment of inspiration later i had an idea. what if these skills gave you an extra shot or two?

it requires a lot fewer changes than my other plan to turn them into rapid fire serial launched rack of single missiles and then buff the living hell out of them. extra shots should be a lot more straight forward to implement. i dont think it would be op given the rl spread and min range limits, and you would be required to commit all 6 nodes to it to get them to be at least somewhat usable in an rl boat.

Edited by LordNothing, 08 June 2022 - 11:12 PM.

[caravann]

If you reduce spread enough it becomes a ball of iron.
If we reduce the range and remove the limit it becomes a melee weapon.
The reason why rocket launcher is nerfed is the purpose it's in the game.
Rockets were introduced as a buff for light mech to backstab.
They're considered cheap tactic and has been removed of all purpose.
A single shot who kills the opponent but leaves them dead.
They're removed because in duels one mech is able to defeat the other with brute force.
The range limit make it impractical to rush an opponent or in any try to run around them.
Rocket launchers is a new weapon in the timeline and anything that progress the timeline
makes the old weapons obsolete and would harm assault pilots that their mech isn't the predator.
The spread make each rocket equal of 10,15,20 damage and you need to aim at an angle of up or down
to increase the chance of hitting with all missiles. Increasing ammo would make it possible to defeat assault
by brute force spamming the rockets until the assault is defeated. Trade for a light mech to kill an assault is great.
It be even easier to reduce the spread without meddling with the skill points.

[feeWAIVER]

The only thing I would suggest for rockets is to allow them to be chain fired 5 at a time.
IE, a single rocket 10 could give you two shots, and a single rocket 20 could give you four.

[LordNothing]

feeWAIVER, on 09 June 2022 - 06:41 AM, said:

The only thing I would suggest for rockets is to allow them to be chain fired 5 at a time.
IE, a single rocket 10 could give you two shots, and a single rocket 20 could give you four.

how about we do that and each node represents an extra +5 volley?

[TheCaptainJZ]

I kinda like that idea--make all rocket launchers have 5 tubes but a rocket launcher 10 can shoot twice and so on. Clicking the fire button only launches one volley and there is a cooldown. Then balance damage and range from that. You may no longer need a minimum range because you can't boat them so much.

[LordNothing]

figuring what the damage and heat would be for a couple notable troll mechs with the 5-volly concept.

arc-5w
jvn-10p

firing 5 missiles at a time, the archer would still top 90 damage (first 3 shots, the 4th will only be 80 as one launcher is an rl15). compared with current, which would crank out a whopping 350 damage.

the javelin would do 60, as opposed to the 240 in its current situation.

figuring heat requires some assumptions. for simplicity im just going to use the existing gh tables on mechdb. lets also say we keep the heat per missile constant. that means the salvo heat for the rl 10/15/20 are 1.5/1.33/1.25. the javelin would put out 9.875 heat with penalties in this case instead of the 39.6 it currently does. the archer was harder to figure due to the rl15 (and its more of an estimate really) but it does 56 heat for its salvo, compared to the obviously lethal 215 it does now. the javelin hardly notices, and the archer is pretty toasty.

alternately we can also keep the heat where it is this means. a salvo of 5 would be as hot as firing all the missiles is now. but it does completely nerf troll potential into the dirt. not to mention the weapon performance along with it. however this is a lot more fertile ground for further enhancements.

one enhancement might be making the spreads tight and reducing/eliminating the min range. or maybe go up to 3-damage a missile as an is answer to the clan atm and to boost the abysmal damage/ton for the weapons (perhaps with a lesser spread buff and keeping the min range as is). i like the idea of using it to strip armor from mechs via hit and run tactics to soften them up for other mechs or your backups if you have any.

Edited by LordNothing, 09 June 2022 - 11:02 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

I'd rather they just make it a non-reloadable weapon that you have 10/15/20 individual shots from, or mayhaps able to fire a volley of 5 each trigger-pull, with 2/3/4 trigger-pulls total, dealing 150 damage total.

40 damage/ton ain't just a good deal TBH, not when it's competition is at 258-301/ton.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 10 June 2022 - 11:24 PM.

[Nightbird]

The6thMessenger, on 10 June 2022 - 11:23 PM, said:

40 damage/ton ain't just a good deal TBH, not when it's competition is at 258-301/ton.

Only if you don't include the weight of the gun, which you should.

[LordNothing]

the gun is an array of fixed tubes with a rocket in each one. other weapon systems have reloaders and and feed belts and drive motors. the ammo is the weapon, the tubes are just packaging. we take a 1ton rl15 and if we generously assume that only half of that is ammo, then these things should be dumping 120 damage. the rl15 and rl20 have the equivalent of an eighth ton of ammo (the rl10 has a little more).

if we fire single missiles or salvos so ghost heat can work then we dont have to worry about the troll potential of the weapon. then we can buff it to a point where people use it. then going up to 3 or 4 damage a missile would be more practical.

Edited by LordNothing, 11 June 2022 - 08:07 AM.

[Curccu]

LordNothing, on 11 June 2022 - 07:58 AM, said:

if we fire single missiles or salvos so ghost heat can work then we dont have to worry about the troll potential of the weapon. then we can buff it to a point where people use it. then going up to 3 or 4 damage a missile would be more practical.

How doesn't for example javelin with almost 500 damage suicide alpha be troll potential?
Or Marauder II-4HP dishing almost 700 damage and it can have something like 4xLPL for backup weapons
Rocket launcher is just stupid weapon that is pretty much impossible to make good but not trollgood

[caravann]

Curccu, on 11 June 2022 - 10:43 AM, said:

How doesn't for example javelin with almost 500 damage suicide alpha be troll potential?
Or Marauder II-4HP dishing almost 700 damage and it can have something like 4xLPL for backup weapons
Rocket launcher is just stupid weapon that is pretty much impossible to make good but not trollgood

Try it out for yourself and see what happens.

[Escef]

I wasn't aware they needed "fixing".

[Curccu]

caravann, on 11 June 2022 - 12:33 PM, said:

Try it out for yourself and see what happens.

I can't because OPs buff suggestion isn't available to try.

[Curccu]

Escef, on 11 June 2022 - 01:15 PM, said:

I wasn't aware they needed "fixing".

Well they are simply bad.

[Escef]

Curccu, on 11 June 2022 - 09:57 PM, said:

Well they are simply bad.

They were never meant to be good. They're supposed to be one-shot filler weapons if you have limited tonnage/crit space left over and an unused missile hard point or two. E.g., your build concept is complete, but you have half a ton left over, so you slot in a RL10 for poops'n'giggles.

[Kanil]

Escef, on 11 June 2022 - 10:33 PM, said:

They were never meant to be good. They're supposed to be one-shot filler weapons if you have limited tonnage/crit space left over and an unused missile hard point or two. E.g., your build concept is complete, but you have half a ton left over, so you slot in a RL10 for poops'n'giggles.

They're pretty damn bad at even that. I'd rather a SRM-2 than a RL-20, the 15s and 10s are even more anemic.

Edit: Should probably add that I'm in favor of them firing in 5 rocket groups, or 1 rocket groups. This would make them more useful, and as an added bonus makes the meme rocket instagib less of a thing... although I don't really think it's a thing as-is.

Edited by Kanil, 11 June 2022 - 10:53 PM.

[Escef]

Kanil, on 11 June 2022 - 10:43 PM, said:

They're pretty damn bad at even that. I'd rather a SRM-2 than a RL-20, the 15s and 10s are even more anemic.

Edit: Should probably add that I'm in favor of them firing in 5 rocket groups, or 1 rocket groups. This would make them more useful, and as an added bonus makes the meme rocket instagib less of a thing... although I don't really think it's a thing as-is.

To each their own. I'm utterly ambivalent. I have no objection to the current implementation of RLs, though I also have no objection to the idea of a rework. As for the idea of RLs volley firing by 5s or whatever, I'm not a fan of the idea. All that would do is make them less usable.

[caravann]

A short range build can fire twice 60dmg , An assault can fire pin point 50dmg.
Three RL20 is pretty much a single shot. Piranha deals quick pinpoint 40dmg.
To make use of it you need a mech who is customized to use missiles and for some reason you don't want to use the multiple hard points you'll need to make it useful.

Neither does RL in any way replace weapons, you get one shot who cost 4,5ton.
That's 20 damage in lasers. In faction play you get 1-3 battles with each mech.
It's barely better with RL. The spread makes the actual damage of a RL20 only 20 dmg.

With all considered RL runs hot and only valid if you going to fire the guns 3 times in a game.

[caravann]

To compete with an AC20 you'll need nine RL20's and there's only one mech who does that.
But at 16 ton with 16 Ac20 bullets The RL's weight 24 ton.

This is why RL's are twice as heavy than what you get in power.

[Curccu]

Escef, on 11 June 2022 - 10:33 PM, said:

They were never meant to be good. They're supposed to be one-shot filler weapons if you have limited tonnage/crit space left over and an unused missile hard point or two. E.g., your build concept is complete, but you have half a ton left over, so you slot in a RL10 for poops'n'giggles.

I don't know if there are any so called complete builds that couldn't fit bit more armor, ammo, heatsink, bigger engine, extra JJ, bap, case, anything useful.

Edited by Curccu, 12 June 2022 - 05:57 AM.