769 replies to this topic

[Khell3770]

Dimento Graven, on 08 November 2012 - 11:46 PM, said:

Ok... Ok... Wait a minute here... You say it's acceptable that a weapon can kill a 'mech WITHOUT EVEN BOTHERING TO ACQUIRE A LOCK, just because that 'mech happens to "stand still" for 3 or 4 consecutive shots (read 60 to 80 points of damage)?

But, in the same breath, it's NOT ok for a 'mech to have to wait for a lock to be acquired, fire, hope that he can maintain the lock for the duration of the flight of the missles, get through any potential AMS that might be near by, and any remaining missles that do hit get spread over multiple locations, OH and let's not forget about the HARD SET 1000m or less range limit this poor "unskilled' person has to endure that the previously mentioned person DOES NOT HAVE TO BOTHER WITH...

If your gauss firing butt is sitting still while 1000m or less away from me, yeah you deserve to die after 2 or 3 flights of LRM15x3 (read 90 to 135 points of potential damage) come at you. Just like you say the person standing still,1500m away from you deserves to die from your "skilled" shot...

Did you read my post, or just scan it then go rage post? I stated that "if you zoom in and have a stationary target, then yes, you can hit at longer ranges, but to hit a moving target at that long of a range is extremely unlikely due to lead needed and flight time" at that long of a range the only way I can see a hit is on a stationary target while being stationary myself. I have hit at some long ranges with gauss, but never what was talked about, about 1000m is max for me, and then I only get in about 2 shots, maybe 3 b4 the target has begun moving. at 1000m hitting a moving target (in this I refer to someone moving in an erratic manner, even within a small area like a hill top) with a gauss is a combination of skill and some luck. holding your target lock can be accomplished by a scout for an LRM boat, there is no scout that can aim a gauss, there is no computer assist that calculates lead and flight time to allow for that shot. And about your statement that if I'm standing still within 1000m that I should die after 2-3 volleys from your 3xLRM15's. for starters, as soon as I see incoming missles, I'm moving to help minimize damage, I don't run a gauss cat, I run a centurion with a single gauss, I normally use it at long range as a support weapon. I have never gotten a kill at over 1000m with it, I have gotten 1 kill at 950m with it, but the cat was already critical and was stationary. if you take a gauss round and stay still for 2 or 3 cycles, yeah, your not thinking and you pay the penalty. A gauss at long range is rarely a kill weapon, it's normally a suppression weapon. put a few heavy hitting rounds in LRM boats to make them fall back, then cycle to a closer target that can be brawled. I am not saying that it's ok for a gauss to kill at range, but not for a LRM boat, what I'm saying is that the extreme long range kills with Gauss are normally cause the target doesn't react when engaged, or that it was already critical, or it's luck. The ability to hit at range with a Gauss is much less then with a scout. I also commented on having a friendly holding a target for you. it is impossible to stand behind a hill and fire a single round at anything with a gauss, not so with a LRM launcher. there are + and - to both, but at range a LRM has the advantage in getting more rounds on target and a huge advantage in hitting a moving target at range. with a spotter a LRM can hit a target without line of sight and it's easier to get that shot off while moving yourself. the reticle doesn't have to be directly on the target, just in the box. If you think it's a cake walk to snipe 1000m+ with a gauss, hop out of your LRM and jump in a gauss cat and try it. As someone who has used LRM's and Gauss, LRM's are allot easier to hit with at range then a Gauss, no comparison. In the end it comes down to this. standing still to line up a shot is fine, standing still while under direct fire from either snipers or LRM's is a good way to die. I have to wonder why he stood still for 15 seconds while under fire, why not rotate your torso, hit jump jets, reverse, throttle forward, turn and strafe, do something. take a stopwatch and click it and watch it for 15 seconds and think of all the ways you can move a mech or at least rotate around to spread the damage around. In combat 15 seconds is a LONG TIME.

[Creepi Jim]

@Long Draw: I am a Scout, don't tell me about kill shots. It's just pointless being a Scout if you only have to peep around the corner and wait for the LRMs to kill everything being locked on. What do I need TAG and NARC for (when they work as expected) when LRMs are all you need to win?

Sorry mate, but you are a supporter, you do damage for others to finish off the softened Mech. Welcome to the game. This is all about TEAMPLAY not LRM boats.

Thanks.

[Karl Streiger]

Did i got anything wrong? All they did was to reduce damage for LRMs by 0.3 dmg per missile - and they fixed the broken trajectory of the LRMs.

Long Draw, on 09 November 2012 - 12:35 AM, said:

Give up LRM heavy builds. Shoot! I'm not going to even bother dropping in a single match until some of the damage from the patch AND hotfix is reversed. No point in wasting my time or any further money on this game in the meantime.

Skye Ranger though you are a elite regiment...maybe i'm wrong

Edited by Karl Streiger, 09 November 2012 - 12:40 AM.

[Rumrunner2]

LRM-only builds are pretty useless now, and thats good.

Well guys, MWO is a bit more than climbing next hill and spamming LRMs.

[Creepi Jim]

Damage is 1.7, look into the config. Was 2.0, should be 1.0 as per rules. With doubled armor it is a compromise just like DHS not being DHS.

Edited by SurgeonPredator, 09 November 2012 - 12:43 AM.

[ChaosKitten]

So, I played last night's patch, and...

THANK YOU, PGI!

The reduced LRM damage and wider spread gives my small mech a chance to survive! An LRM boat left unchecked is still a game-changer, but now it's possible to apply some tactics to give it something to do other than shoot missiles.

Now fix groups and I'll be happy to play again.

[Varrin Coursca]

Long Draw, on 09 November 2012 - 12:35 AM, said:

Give up LRM heavy builds. Shoot! I'm not going to even bother dropping in a single match until some of the damage from the patch AND hotfix is reversed. No point in wasting my time or any further money on this game in the meantime.

Hey, that's your choice. You may get a slight damage increase in the coming weeks as they dial in the balance, but I doubt you'll see the damage outputs from before.

And to reiterate: if you're an LRM boat, you are a support 'Mech -- not the primary damage dealer. Its a vital--yet underappreciated--role on the battlefield, which is why I hope we don't see LRM boaters give up LRM boating because of this hotfix.

[ZefNinja]

Karl Streiger, on 09 November 2012 - 12:30 AM, said:

Well no problem at this...there are still PPCs, SRM, Laser, ACs....and much more
A good warrior is never bound to a single weapon system on a mech

Could not have said it better myself. I'm looking forward to them implementing some post-dmg interaction with e-systems for PPC's in the near future that will just be epic.

But I digress, LRM's LRM's LRM's

Edited by ZefNinja, 09 November 2012 - 12:50 AM.

[EnigmaNL]

Long Draw, on 09 November 2012 - 12:35 AM, said:

Give up LRM heavy builds. Shoot! I'm not going to even bother dropping in a single match until some of the damage from the patch AND hotfix is reversed. No point in wasting my time or any further money on this game in the meantime.

I agree, the damaged is too low now. They say it dropped from 2.0 to 1.7 but it feels morel ike from 2.0 to 1.0.

[Ashnod]

Silkfire, on 08 November 2012 - 08:26 PM, said:

I am not exactly sure what the damage is, but the LRMs were never meant to be a kill weapon, in any BT/MW/Mechcommander game. In all games previous, they were a support weapon, for softening up enemies. In TT, you usually only hit with 60% of them, and AMS would usually take out another 50% of those. Artemis and such would usually counter the AMS to some degree, and narc and tag would help as well, but in the end, they were not destroyer weapons typically. I have played several matches tonight and they feel about right where they should be, I did get killed a couple times from LRMs in large salvos, which is to be expected. Yes, i intentionally did not take cover, to see what they would do.

LRMs feel just about right at this point, not an end all be all weapon, but not something to be ignored either. Good job Devs.

Yes.. but in table top the maximum salvo was 1 per 10 seconds.. ATM, your firing a lot more than just 1 salvo per 10 seconds, and it feels like the damage is absolutely awful atm, Honestly the damage pre-nerf was fine but artemis was making the missiles way to smart, specially without ECM in the game. (hell they did more damage when they were just at 1 per missile during closed beta)


Also when LRM's were at 2 damage per missile and taking double armor into factor they were dealing the same equivalent amount of damage as they did in TT.

Edited by Ashnod, 09 November 2012 - 12:57 AM.

[Long Draw]

Varrin Coursca, on 09 November 2012 - 12:49 AM, said:

Hey, that's your choice. You may get a slight damage increase in the coming weeks as they dial in the balance, but I doubt you'll see the damage outputs from before.

And to reiterate: if you're an LRM boat, you are a support 'Mech -- not the primary damage dealer. Its a vital--yet underappreciated--role on the battlefield, which is why I hope we don't see LRM boaters give up LRM boating because of this hotfix.

Last post for the night. If LRM damage is not increased to an acceptable level, not the 2.0 it was mind you, you won't see any serious LRM boaters returning to drop in matches. It is a lose lose proposition currently.

[Steinar Bergstol]

Meh. I'll probably still keep running my Awrcher (Awesome 8T modified to get as close to being an ARC-2R Archer as I could get it) no matter whether LRMs are increased or decreased in power? Why? Because I've always been fond of the Archer and I want to pilot one. 2 LRM-20s and 4 medium lasers for defense when I inevitably get engaged at close range.

That said I would like to some day see a Mechwarrior game try a different approach to LRMs than the "lock on" mechanic. This will not happen in MWO, naturally. Changing the basic mechanics of the weapon at this point is really not worth it for the amount of work it would require, but I'd like to see something like the following in some game at some point:

LRMs get 3 modes of fire the pilot can toggle between. Direct fire, indirect fire and area bombardment.

Direct fire would work basically like SRMs. A relatively flat flightpath directly at a target under the crosshairs in LOS and in range. Damage spread affected by stuff like TAG, Narc and Artemis FCS naturally.

Indirect fire would use targeting information on a target locked by a scout. This mode gives you a projected point where the target should be at its current heading and speed once the missiles arrive. Of course if those factors change in mid flight your salvo might well miss. Depending on terrain between you and the target you may have to manually adjust the angle of your firing arc (LRMs are, in-lore, dumbfire ballistic missiles which fire in an arc, after all). The targeting system projects your adjustments to the flightpath as an arched line on the HUD going from you and out to the point of impact. A steeper or shallower angle than optimal may increase or decrease maximum range, but may allow you to clear obstacles you otherwise would not. You need to put your crosshairs on the projected targeting point for the enemy mech and adjust the arc as necessary.

Area bombardment means you get a greater spread of missiles, covering a bigger area, and instead of using targeting info on a particular enemy from a scout with a lock you simply fire your missiles at some map coordinates (in LOS or not, and if not then you probably were told the coordinates over coms from one of your scouts). You adjust firing angle manually with the mouse wheel as before.and the computer tells you what coordinates your missiles will land on at your current angle and heading, taking into account any known obstacles between you and the target coordinates which may interfere with missile flight.

Okay, it's just a very basic idea right now, but I think you all get where I'm going with it. This is the sort of LRM system I'd like to see someone try to make sometime, just to see if it would be viable at least.

[Mordin Ashe]

ChaosKitten, I agree with your first post. I've been running LRM support for a long time and some of this changes would really improve the LRM environment. I don't agree with all your points, but really appreciate the tone your post has.
Lets be a bit more specific:
Higher spread: already done by hotfix. Actually most of my LRMs cripple 4-5x more enemies than kill, which is exactly the purpose of fire support. For kills we have the frontline Mechs. As for me, working as intended.
I agree with NARC and TAG. NARC should be buffed in some way though, it is absolutely useless now and TAG is the king.
Agreed that Artemis is wrongly implemented. I would love the effect this would have! To get the Artemis bonus, one would have to expose himself! this would totaly eliminate the LRM towers and would reward more mobile LRM support players, which is a good thing for gameplay reasons.
LRMs hotter: Agreed, +10-15% of heat would be deserved. The only reason to pack heat sinks on LRM boats is to keep backup lasers firing anyway ...
Less LRM per ton of ammo: Agreed, I propose 150 instead of 180.
Damage: 1.7 sounds actually quite good, I wouldn't go lower because of ECM. Heck, this may be needed to go higher to 2.0 again after ECM is introduced to make the LRMs competitive! But right now, 1.7 seems fair to me.

Your second set of proposals, though, I consider trolling.
Fast moving Mechs must be vulnerable. They already can avoid a huge portion of LRM damage! They can very fast move behind a cover, which causes a lost of track, which means 0 damage to him. this is very powerfull tool they have! Nowadays too many light Mechs just run in the open thinking they are invincible, which is a problem in the player mindset, not an LRM issue. Noone in the open should be invincible, and speed in the open should give you extra survivability. Which it does.
Hitting enemy backs, trolling? If the enemy SHOWS you his back, it is only logical that all shots at him will hit his back. Make LRMs allways hitting the front is also kind of crime against physics. Anyway, if a light Mech runs away without getting cover, again, it is problem in his mindset, not a problem of LRMs.
Delays: no more delays! You ahve to wait close to 10s to hit anything, that is dreadfull enough already.

TL; DR:
Constructive tone appreciated, you have some very good and some very bad ideas.

[Bad Andy]

if this is gonna be the way LRM's are in the future perhaps they could consider altering their cost so that it doesn't cost 150K to re arm a dedicated support unit.

[EnigmaNL]

SurgeonPredator, on 09 November 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Damage is 1.7, look into the config. Was 2.0, should be 1.0 as per rules. With doubled armor it is a compromise just like DHS not being DHS.

Which file can I see these values in?

Ingame it "feels" a lot less than 1.7, both from the sending and recieving end. I stood in my atlas firing large lasers at people while being bombarded with LRM's and the damage to my mech was hardly an issue. Also shooting people with my LRM's felt bad, they hardly got damaged.

Bad Andy, on 09 November 2012 - 01:13 AM, said:

if this is gonna be the way LRM's are in the future perhaps they could consider altering their cost so that it doesn't cost 150K to re arm a dedicated support unit.

Stick more LRM ammo on your mech and enter battle without rearming, you get 75% ammo free.

Edited by EnigmaNL, 09 November 2012 - 01:19 AM.

[Melcyna]

HC Harlequin, on 09 November 2012 - 12:13 AM, said:

The problem is.. shoot an Atlas with 6 salvos of 45 missiles.. and see it not even hit below 85%.. when it's just walking towards you..

It could be a commando for all we know and that wouldn't matter... because the part i am trying to put out here is that you can't say it does less than X damage when the parameter you used to calculate it is partially unknown.

unless if you can breakdown what exactly the average health percentage is and what it's number is composed of (so we can actually calculate how much damage translate to what in that number) then it means JACK all.

If you want to say that it's the delta that matters in an argument of how much damage the LRM is doing based on the initial percentage and final percentage then i'd ask the question of how much damage does the delta actually translates into and how it was calculated, or what does the initial percentage represent and what does the final percentage represent...

ie: how does one derive this percentage so we can reverse it and tell how much damage exactly we're doing to it from the hit.

i could care less if the mech being hit had it's overall HP percentage changed by 1% or 50% from the hit if i don't know how much does EACH 1% represent and how the change is derived when damage is inflicted.

[Varrin Coursca]

Long Draw, on 09 November 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

Last post for the night. If LRM damage is not increased to an acceptable level, not the 2.0 it was mind you, you won't see any serious LRM boaters returning to drop in matches. It is a lose lose proposition currently.

You'll still see them; they were still there after the hotfix. You just aren't going to see a team of 4 LRM boats firing hundreds of missiles in the span of a minute, and that's a good thing. You aren't supposed to have that kind of composition bias in drops. That's good for the game in general, even if a 15% damage reduction is a bit jarring for the time being.

The issue--and I think you present a good example of this--is the perception that LRMs are supposed to be a tremendous source of primary damage. The simple response to this is "no, they aren't." The LRM is a tactical fire support weapon by its nature. Success with LRMs is notching assists on hard targets when your lance needs an extra punch. Otherwise, it wouldn't have a minimum range of 180 meters.

[Bad Andy]

I'm aware of the 75% free re arms but that isn't really a fair answer because no other combat role is required to do that in order to be viable. Currently in order to be able to afford 100% re arms after every game with LRM+artemis you would need to be on a premium account in a founder's mech.

[HC Harlequin]

Melcyna, on 09 November 2012 - 01:20 AM, said:

It could be a commando for all we know and that wouldn't matter... because the part i am trying to put out here is that you can't say it does less than X damage when the parameter you used to calculate it is partially unknown.

unless if you can breakdown what exactly the average health percentage is and what it's number is composed of (so we can actually calculate how much damage translate to what in that number) then it means JACK all.

If you want to say that it's the delta that matters in an argument of how much damage the LRM is doing based on the initial percentage and final percentage then i'd ask the question of how much damage does the delta actually translates into and how it was calculated, or what does the initial percentage represent and what does the final percentage represent...

ie: how does one derive this percentage so we can reverse it and tell how much damage exactly we're doing to it from the hit.

i could care less if the mech being hit had it's overall HP percentage changed by 1% or 50% from the hit if i don't know how much does EACH 1% represent and how the change is derived when damage is inflicted.

What? If you are hitting with 45 missiles.. that are supposedly doing 1.4 damage per... and you see the percentage drop 2% on the first salvo.. and down 5 % on the second salvo.. Then one salvo does around 2.5% That gives you the first reference.. 45 missiles=2.5%. If the % is just the armor then the max armor is 614 on an atlas. 2.5% of 614 is 15.35. If you round up to be generous to 3% then it's 18 points of damage. If the % is both armor and IS then it's 921. 3% of 921 is 27 damage. In either case at 1.4 damage that means 12 and 19 missiles hit. which means a hit rate of either 27% or 42%.. against a solo mech using TAG/Artemis. So in even the best case scenario you are missing with 60% of the missiles. With TAG and Artemis..

[Disbelief]

For me there seem to be to options aside from the system as it is now:

1: LRMs should do more damage.

Ofcourse this has to be balanced. LRMs should be made a medium to hard hitting long range weapon which come at the cost of fire rate.

This would lead to following things:

More mechs would equip LRMs for some extra firepower.
(Note: As it is now I feel having a LRM Launcher and only some tons of ammo more a waste. LRM boats are fine because you have more launchers and so more ammo is useful)

LRM boats are unable to do much damage. The damage vs. heat would be low. They would produce no heat at all because they fire too slow and need extra firepower from other weapons like laser or (S)SRMs.

What can we expect from that: Less boats more balanced mech builds.

You destroy the weapon as it is now and reintroduce it as something everyone can use as addition to his layout without the need of boating.

You would not need to carry thousands of rockets with you just to make one weapon useful. You would need to carry other weapons with you to make your mech useful again.

2: The tag-idea:

You got a hard hitting weapon with a high range. Now you have to have a scout to deliver the hard blow. This can be countered relatively easy. All you have to do is get out of LOS of the tag mech and hide.

I think this team depandend version would be wrong because you need someone with tag and there are few in random games. And even when you get one is there still a lrm launcher in your team?

My personal opinion is with the first variant introduced AND balanced it would be a better game.

Please feel free to correct things and develope them further if anything in my view isn't based on the reality. ;-) Thank you!