769 replies to this topic

[Zyllos]

After reading countless threads regarding LRMs, I think their spread and increase from 1.7 to 1.8 in the next patch should make them quite viable.

But, I think there is one, personal opinion, issue still with LRMs and it is hard to see why this effects their potential. It is their velocity.

Velocity increases their accuracy by allowing more LRMs to land instead of hitting the ground or not reaching their target before you lose a lock on them.

So I am thinking their velocity should be increased.

[Deonmag]

DN about all other aspects like speed or damage, but for LRM Artemis upgrade steeper trajectory must be returned to make them worth anything compared to simple LRM's.

[Aesthetech]

LRMs are fine in term of their mechanics at the moment. Can do a very high amount of damage with very little risk with both Artemis and non Artemis. I play boats with both and have no damage with kills/damage or CB/XP rewards, especially given how little risk I usually suffer to do so.

However, they are ridiculously expensive to rearm at the moment relative to what they do. Their current effectiveness is very balanced but the ammo costs absolutely are not.

[Laoks]

Ok I had no problem with nerfing LRM's, But like SOE you went over board, Making them all but usless, now my lrm boat ( 4xlrm15 with art ) hit an atlas in open ( I watched him walk up on me ) with 900 rounds of lrm's and didnt even make him red anywhere, Like i said he was in the open the whole way started at 1045 m till he got to 150 m. I wasnt against lrm nerf but i beleave they went a little over board. I have sence pulled out my ams systems and hace noticed that lrms or no threat at all, I did same thing to a lrm cat 2x20 and 2 cats with 2x15 each got to them and killed all three in my atlas without a AMS, yep they over nerfed them. I posting this here because I hope they read this and try it, they'll see that lrms or pointless at this time. Buffing the dmg is not the answer. Frankly i do not know what is, but leaving them as is is pointless. May be making then ( with art ) fly the old high path and with out the first way they where, before the add of art. But leaving them the way they are might as well remove them from the game.

Edited by Laoks, 17 November 2012 - 05:30 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

Yeah, they're going to bump the damage up by .1...

So that, if you were to fire 100 missles, you'll get 10 more whole damge...

OOOOOOOooooooooooo!!!!

They are overwhelming us with their mediocrity.

[SGT Unther]

First off, try to use complete words when complaining. You might understand it but some of us have trouble trying to figure out what the heck you are saying.

Now in there from what I can read is that you were firing at a target that was over 1000m, LRMs explode the second they hit 1000m. The second part that people seem to miss is that without a spotter LRMs have a range of about 630m if the devs haven't changed that part.

Also in honestly people were spoiled rotten when they put LRM damage to 2, when I started beta damage was at tabletop value of 1. It was awesome that they put the damage up to 1.6 back then and honestly that made LRM actually viable. Also when most mechs can be severearly damaged by only a couple of volleys of LRM fire, it really takes some fun elements out of the game. The devs have to make the game fun for everyone, not just you.

[Dimento Graven]

SGT Unther, on 17 November 2012 - 07:12 PM, said:

First off, try to use complete words when complaining. You might understand it but some of us have trouble trying to figure out what the heck you are saying.

Now in there from what I can read is that you were firing at a target that was over 1000m, LRMs explode the second they hit 1000m. The second part that people seem to miss is that without a spotter LRMs have a range of about 630m if the devs haven't changed that part.

Also in honestly people were spoiled rotten when they put LRM damage to 2, when I started beta damage was at tabletop value of 1. It was awesome that they put the damage up to 1.6 back then and honestly that made LRM actually viable. Also when most mechs can be severearly damaged by only a couple of volleys of LRM fire, it really takes some fun elements out of the game. The devs have to make the game fun for everyone, not just you.

If a target starts running at you from beyond 1000m, as long as he gets within 1000m before the missles do, he'll get hit. Yes, if I see a target running at me from 1100m away, I'll start firing LRMs because by the time the missles get to him, he'll be around 900m in, and the missles will hit.

Here's the problem, if you've been paying attention, we've seen the decline of the LRM carrier to levels well below that BEFORE artemis was introduced. If they don't balance this so that LRMs have some real level of lethality, LRM carriers will go the way of the dodo, all you'll have are gausapaults, streak cats, and laser boats, with a few random assaults and superfast lights tossed in.

Heck the last few matches I was in, the most common 'mech was the K2 carrying gauss or PPC's. I was the lone LRM carrier, and the enemy had an assault with a single LRM rack on it.

It's no where near balanced now.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 17 November 2012 - 07:25 PM.

[steelblueskies]

ammo bin hardpoints. cap the ammo by type on a per chassis basis. heck that's even relatively canon. instead we get....

lrms should hurt for "just a few volleys" but just a few volleys should be all most chassis have to throw.

bringing in a pure fire support chassis like an a1, should be the exception.


if the stock chassis and load, including ammo is a gimped piece of junk, the systemic changes are the number one place to look. a stock a1 with its 720 rounds and just two lrm launchers.. no sane person right now would use that.

[warp103]

Dimento Graven, on 17 November 2012 - 09:56 AM, said:

Oh yeah 'balance a little bit at a time' like when they 'quick fixed' LRMs nearly to oblivion...

lol i like that.they should have done the reverse. when it was op move down .1. ok if that did not work .2.etc the way it is know is will that 3 months to fix

[Smoove]

Was running with 6 or 7 tons of LRM ammo (not Artemis). I forget which, but it did not change between drops. After first drop, I had 80% left and rearm cost was $5k. Rearmed and after second drop, I had 90% left and rearm cost was $22k. Wha? I've also had 75% left with rearm costs of 500 or even 0.

[Smoove]

I know there was a hotfix for LRM damage on Nov 6, but I am still experiencing it periodically. i.e. on Nov 16, I had LOS on a lone Atlas (~400m) and watched 6 volleys of 6xLRM5-Artemis (alpha, not chain) hit the Atlas. Also fired at others in the open (did not actually watch hits) but my end of match damage was only 57.

Damage seemed closer to my usual tonight, although without Artemis tonight.

Edited by Smoove, 17 November 2012 - 10:42 PM.

[Dimento Graven]

warp103, on 17 November 2012 - 09:58 PM, said:

lol i like that.they should have done the reverse. when it was op move down .1. ok if that did not work .2.etc the way it is know is will that 3 months to fix

Or better yet, return LRMs to their original state, add in the firing arc. Determine if they like it
(by the way, the firing arc, really? The most OBVIOUS thing about LRMs, they missed THAT in their own alpha testing?!?!?!?!?! Really?!?!?!?!)
, then move on to the spread. Is THAT where we want it, yes/no
(also the SECOND most obvious thing in testing LRMs. Both the ARC and the SPREAD are VISUAL items, all it takes is ONE person with eyesight to go "Hey, does that arc look right to you? And what about that tight spread? Did we intend it that way?" No, there was NO excuse for this to be a 'bug' something they'd somehow missed. If you're adding crap to LRMs, you test LRMs, a lot. No, this was originally released as, "Working As Intended". I still believe that had ECM been released at the same time, as originally intended, this would have ended up being a lot less of a big deal than it ended up anyway....)

and move on to damge, and so on.

So instead of that, we ended up with this cluster, where they didn't even bother figuring out what was TRULY the problem, they just nerfed EVERYTHING about missle delivery. The only thing they didn't touch was lock timing and non-artemis LRMs missle speed, and range, and thank god for small favors...

Or better yet, they could have left it, as is, for two weeks and released ECM which, when released will probably end up nerfing missles even further despite the great big (sarcasm) .1 damage bump.

[Atheus]

Sometimes if you have left-over LRM ammo in your inventory from a prior mech or design that gets used to rearm your mech.

[Fane]

I have been playing MWO since close beta. When Gauss Cats first started showing up, poor players whined and complained about it and begged for a nerf. Good players just learned how to deal with them (pull them into the open and let lrm's kill them or get a light on it and spin it to death). It was the same with StreakCats and I am sure many other variations to come as people figure out better ways to load in weapons. Please people, just because you suck or have to short an attention span to learn how to deal with the newest configuration don't **** and moan about how this mech or that mech needs to be nerfed.

IMHO there was not real problem with the damage of LRM's. There are deadly if you are stupid enough to stay in the open. As in real combat with things like artillery or MRLS they are brutal at long range, but they don't have any close quarter punch. Just get up close on a LRM boat and it's toast. However, at long range, as they should be, they were bad ***.

After playing my LRM boat this week, I can say, it is pretty much worthless. It does not have any teeth at long range and still has the weakness at short range. I tried t reconfigure with SRM's and they are just as bad. You will notice the skies are not longer filled with missles and they won't be until some punch is given back to missles.

Sadly, the combat balance of this game, seems to me, to have gotten worse since closed beta. So for my two cents to the Dev's, LRM's are suppose to be game changers at LONG RANGE. That is what they are suppose to do!

[Smoove]

Thanks, good to know. That may explain the 80% vs. 90% costs (it may have been after playing in mechlab) but I'm pretty sure the 75% being 0/500 was while using the same mech without any changes to any mech. I'll will watch more closely though to make sure.

[Snib]

The first 75% are free, so if you don't use more than 25% of your ammo after a rearm your rearm cost should be 0. Everything past that costs and adds up if you don't auto-rearm regardless of your ammo usage in future battles (i.e. while you get a free 75% refill each battle, this does not remove the ammo costs you already incurred).

Edited by Snib, 19 November 2012 - 07:37 AM.

[Xenok]

EtherDragon, on 15 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

I actuall disagree about AMS. It should not be a full counter to LRMs (by itself), at best it should be a partial counter - acting to reduce the number of missiles that hit. Now, how effective AMS should be could be a good discussion - but even in TT, AMS only removes 2-5 missiles.

LRMs did far less damage compared to other weapons in tabletop as well. I think that an AMS system should work well (and by this I mean block 4-5 out a LRM5 volley, 6-8 out of a LRM 10 volley, 8-12 from a 15 or 20 with a cap of 12 missiles per volley.) This would still leave the mech volnerable to 18 missiles from two LRM 15s fired simultaneously . The exact numbers should be tested but they are less effective than they should be today.

EtherDragon, on 15 November 2012 - 01:46 PM, said:

I also think that LRMs currently ability to fire from behind soft cover is fine. It's the only weapon that can. However, I think that this case should be handled more like indirect fire rules from TT. As long as the damage is alright given the other capabilities, we are good to go.

Soft cover is fine, but fire from behind a hill where there is no way a Direct fire weapon could hit them is not ok. I don't want the missiles to detonate on every leaf or tree branch, but they should have to fly out straight from the mech for the first xx distance in order to force an LRM platform to be exposed to LOS weapons for a moment when they fire, also if far enough behind a hill and the target is spotted and within 1000 meters I am fine with this. You are trading off greater range for say 180 meeter of clear area in front of the mech to let the missiles turn up and go hunting. It just needs to have a cost associated with the full cover behind a building or a hill.

[Child3k]

I think LRMs where quite fine right before the last big patch. But on the other hand - we moved from eight player premades to grps of 4. Maybe LRMs will play out differently on a fully coordinated team. I think we just have to wait for tomorrows patch and see what happens - and then think about upping LRM damage or reducing spread (probably not both) ...

... oh and I kinda like the idea of having a different LRM behavior dependant on wether you're spotting yourself or not.

Edited by Child3k, 19 November 2012 - 10:32 AM.

[Tiri]

Child3k, on 19 November 2012 - 10:27 AM, said:

I think LRMs where quite fine right before the last big patch. But on the other hand - we moved from eight player premades to grps of 4. Maybe LRMs will play out differently on a fully coordinated team. I think we just have to wait for tomorrows patch and see what happens - and then think about upping LRM damage or reducing spread (probably not both)

I agree with that.
They were fine before the game-breaking Artemis patch, and now they felt like they had to nerf them a lot in order to stop the whine.

Face it, LRM haters: they are easy to avoid if you know how to play with covers and how not to be spotted.
And if you don't care about having a light in your back spotting the hell out of you, or being out in the open without AMS, then the issue isn't about the LRMs, but about you.

[Arcaist]

The thing is: This whole discussion might be obsolete when ECM is being brought into the game.