Malzel, on 28 November 2012 - 12:42 PM, said:
"Sure, you can stack 2000 Artemis-equipped LRMs on that Catapult if you want to, but it'll cost you." That means you can have your fun for a few matches, but then you might have to step down off the pedestal of Godhood and slog through the mud with the rest of us once in a while.
The problem is that you don't pay for the performance, you just pay to play that role. An Artemis LRM cat performs just as well as a non-artemis SRM cat and a quadruple large laser K2 when you have average pilots on both the dealing and recieving ends. As the skill of the pilot decreases, the LRM boat becomes easier to use, but as the skill increases, the SRM cat and LL K2 actually become more effective combatants. Both because they can place damage better, and because there aren't a half dozen ways for competent opponents pilots to counter them.
I own every cat and do everything with them except dual gauss (because I have a conscience), and I can tell you that my LRM boat gets by far the least use. Not because I don't love LRMs, I do love them. But they just aren't as unilaterally effective as other builds because I can not do much in the way of skill to make them better, and competent opponents can negate me easily.
So back to your position. LRM boats aren't paying for Godhood. They're paying to use a different weapon system. One thats great at hosing noobs, sure, but for pros isn't all that fantastic (I'm not the best pilot in MWO by a long shot, but my K:D rarely drops below 2.5:1 either, and I PUG 90% or more of my matches).
So why is it that I have to pay 120,240 c-bills to fully re-arm my Artemis LRM cat (that doesn't include the repair cost), when I could just take my quad LL K2, do just as well or better, not have multiple Achile's Heels (minimum range, useless against lights, up to 10 seconds for opponents to use terrain to dodge, etc), and
never pay for re-arm?
The bigger picture here is that people are still trying to justify metagame balance with game balance. Very small doses of this
might be acceptable. Running an XL, ES, FF, pile of technology could conceivably reduce your net profit because it costs more to repair, with the benefit of it being more effective than the alternatives. OK. But ammo costs are way out of line with that philosophy. Changing roles is side-grading, not upgrading, yet we're getting hit with the absolute harshes metagame penalty there is. I pay
4 times as much money to fully rearm my LRM boat as I do to completely reconstruct it from scratch. I pay
2 times as much to rearm my non-artemis SRM cat as it does to fully repair it from scratch. That is what is absurd. Since when can you fix a totaled car for 1/4 the price of the fuel in the tank? And if real gas was that expensive, we'd all be driving electric cars within a year, end of story.
Solution:
Reduce gas prices. Increase repair costs to compensate so the economy remains stable overall (if necessary). Charge me for every shot I use in a ballistic/missile weapon, but make it the same percentage cost of repairing the mech (2% or less), and increase the costs of repairing lasers so that repairing a busted laser boat costs approximately as much as fixing a busted ammo boat + 2 rounds worth of ammo (averaging one win/survive and one loss/death).
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