No replies to this topic

[Chryckan]

Lock-on weapons and LRMs in particular have been changed so as to focus more on direct fire and make it harder for a Lurmboat to just stand far off in the back and just lob missiles indirectly, instead forcing lurmboats to get more up into the action.
Which is all very good.

Except, the IS LRMs still have a minimum range of a whooping 180 meters. So even if an IS lurmboat would want to get into the action and help its brawling teammates, it has no choice but hang back at least 200 meters from the action because its weapons won't actually work if it gets up close to fire directly into the fight in support of its teammates.

So we basically have a lock-on mechanic that encouraged players to get up close for direct fire, while at the same time we have a weapon attribute that encourage players to hang back and fire indirectly.

That is both confusing and so counter-productive that I can only assume that the fact that minimum range on IS LRMs was not change at the same time the other changes to lock-on weapons was implemented was simply an oversight.

However, to correct that oversight I suggest the minimum range of IS LRMs should be reduced by at least half, making them comparable to the minimum range of PPCs. That would allow mechs armed with IS LRM actually fight in a much more direct and up close manner that the lock-on mechanic encourage, without IS LRMs becoming a brawling alternative thus competing for attention with MRMs and SRMs.

TL:DR: It doesn't makes sense to implement a lock-on game mechanic that encourage up close direct fire while still giving IS LRMs a whooping minimum range of 180 meters. Therefore, I suggest the minimum range for IS LRMs to be reduce by half, to 90 meters, to put them on parity of PPCs, yet still preventing them from becoming a brawling weapon.