#141
Posted 29 November 2012 - 04:06 PM
To kill an LRM boat, you get up close and out manuaever it. Light Mech's are excellent for this. OR, you get a GaussCat to hit it from over 1K. OR you focus your missle boats on it.
To kill a light mech, you get something with Streaks on it. Like a StreakCat. (If you are in a light mech and you see a Streak Cat, YOU RUN and get your LRM boat to destroy it at range). OR you out pilot it with your light mech OR you drag it out into the open and let your LRM boats hopefully get it.
GaussCat problems...no worries. GaussCat's aren't very fast. learn how to pilot and get behind it, stay there and blow out it's back! OR drag it out into the open and let LRM boats kill it OR have your GaussCat just out shoot it.
So sick of hearing this is OP or that is OP. Learn how to play the game and instead of spending all your time on the boards ******** about how overpowered thigs are, learn how to beat them.
If something is really OP, it will be found out and taken out of the game. In the mean time quit you *******.
OH and in conclusion, everyone whinning about OP LRM's, here is my opinion on that. In real combat Artillery is the King of Battle. LRM's should be OP...just ask any soldier and he will tell you, you NEVER just walk out in the open when the enemy might be within range! If you are dumb enough to do that, then you deserve to be blown to bit.
#142
Posted 29 November 2012 - 04:20 PM
#143
Posted 29 November 2012 - 04:54 PM
Or when the enemy has only 3 mechs remaining, so I step in to cap their base, only to have a light mech make it back (spotting me) and the other two open up with 50 LRMs each to annihilate me before I have any chance to get to any decent cover.
I've never lost a leg or arm to LRMs, but lose torsos very often. It wouldn't be so bad if their damage was spread more evenly around the mech, but they always seem to home in on the torsos. When a center torso has twice the hp of an arm, but the center torso gets cored out by LRMs quite often while the arms are barely scratched on a regular basis = problem.
Round a corner and see an LRM boat 200m away. Before you can close the distance to under 160m in an assault mech, or back around cover, you've already been cored by 150 missiles. There isn't a single map that this scenario doesn't play out.
AC-20's and gauss rifles take longer to kill a mech than LRMs. Sorry, but that's a problem. Those are supposed to be the most feared weapons in the game, yet a quick torso twist can foil them. But twisting perpendicular to a missle strike still manages to core your center torso???
#144
Posted 29 November 2012 - 06:46 PM
Game 1 = 3 kills 4 assists
Game 2 = 6 kills 0 assists
Game 3 = 2 kills 5 assists
Game 4 = 5 kills 2 assists
I didn't take a single point of damage. The other team didn't live long enough to get close enough to fire at me. If I had been playing my other Awesome builds, I'd have been lucky to get 2 kills.
Edited by HarmAssassin, 29 November 2012 - 06:48 PM.
#145
Posted 29 November 2012 - 08:23 PM
HarmAssassin, on 29 November 2012 - 04:54 PM, said:
Or when the enemy has only 3 mechs remaining, so I step in to cap their base, only to have a light mech make it back (spotting me) and the other two open up with 50 LRMs each to annihilate me before I have any chance to get to any decent cover.
I've never lost a leg or arm to LRMs, but lose torsos very often. It wouldn't be so bad if their damage was spread more evenly around the mech, but they always seem to home in on the torsos. When a center torso has twice the hp of an arm, but the center torso gets cored out by LRMs quite often while the arms are barely scratched on a regular basis = problem.
Round a corner and see an LRM boat 200m away. Before you can close the distance to under 160m in an assault mech, or back around cover, you've already been cored by 150 missiles. There isn't a single map that this scenario doesn't play out.
AC-20's and gauss rifles take longer to kill a mech than LRMs. Sorry, but that's a problem. Those are supposed to be the most feared weapons in the game, yet a quick torso twist can foil them. But twisting perpendicular to a missle strike still manages to core your center torso???
I can understand your pain, and the awesome is particularly prone to having the centre knocked out since it is so big.
Being a not very good shot/having a low framerate, I tend to go for the centre of a mech rather than miss, and awesomes are far too easy to hit in the middle.
This is another example of something which is different from the tabletop version where damage is allocated randomly. Not only is damage not allocated by a dice roll spreading it around!, but the different mechs have different advantages due to their model shape and size.
On the tabletop 7 on 2d6 was centre torso when shooting from the front, giving it a 1/6 (16.7%) chance to hit there. Here in this game in a catapult or an awesome you're probably going to take most of your damage there since it's such a big target.
I think this is another huge balance problem just like the increased fire rates.
The aim of the human should still determine if you get a hit or not, but the underlying system was built around random hit allocation, not mechs where it is hard to *not* hit the centre torso, nor missiles that home in on it.
#146
Posted 29 November 2012 - 08:41 PM
MustrumRidcully, on 29 November 2012 - 01:44 PM, said:
Maybe it could be the indirect only fire mode. When you're using that, you're not really fighting something else, usually. I am all for making direct fire and indirect fire two different things. That will allow balancing weapons better. I think LRMs should be similar effective as direct-fire weapons when you shoot at targets in sight. (But not quite as effective, since they have also their indirect-fire ability).
I don't think they need to be two different modes, but I am in agreement that gameplay could be improved if LRMs behavior was modified to be more effective in direct fire and perhaps a smidge less in indirect.
There is already a way to sort of do this. I mount a TAG on my LRM boat, when I have LOS from 180-450, I can boost my LRM concentration a fair bit by application of skill (i.e. holding the tag laser on my target).
My preferred way to amplify this effect would be to change Artemis. It should give your LRMs a slightly better flight trajectory on every launch, making them desireable no matter if you are planning on doing much direct fire or indirect. The clurstering bonus that they give should be altered though, at least in terms of when it is applied. The thought here is that the missiles would only get the Artemis clustering bonus while you personally maintain LOS. This makes LRMs more effective at 'direct' fire, but a bit less effective at indirect fire. It may be justified to make the Artemis clustering bonus a smidge better if this is done, since now any mech that is getting its clustering bonus is risking itself to enemy fire as well.
Then mechs that want the Artemis cluster bonus and also want to personally apply their tag bonus (because nobody uses it in pugs) actually have to get LOS for themselves. But then of course, both of those bonuses together are going to make their LRMs none to friendly to endure. They still won't be quite as effective as direct fire setups of course, but I think it might smooth things out a bit if LRMs got a smidge better in direct-fire and a smidge worse at indirect.
Also, the Artemis cluster bonus might be limited to self-obtainable locks, so you might need LOS and personal radar lock, making the BAP a serious option for LRM boats as it would extend their effetive Artemis bonus range.
Overall, I think these changes would add some subtlety and variety to the LRM builds, strategy, and piloting.
#147
Posted 29 November 2012 - 09:38 PM
The goal of this proposal is to differentiate chasis in both a fluff and practical way.
Currently, when a mech is recieves a alpha-launch order for a batch of missiles, MWO does two things. It checks the location of launch which has a number of tubes available, and then fires every launcher in that section simultaneously with up to the number of tubes per launcher leaving in each wave, and with each wave seperated by around 0.15 seconds.
So for example, if you order a Centurion with 10 tubes in its torso to fire a pair of LRM15s both mounted there, it will spew 20 missiles in the first volley, then 10 more missiles after approximately 0.15 seconds.
There is currently no real incentive to play a mech with alot of missile tubes on its model as your actual missile boat. Only the number of hardpoints matters. This has the effect of making the C1 Catapult just as good for LRMs as the C4, as well as the SRM Hunchback being just as good as the LRM Hunchback.
Suggestion: change two things about how the missiles launch.
(1) Add a third step in the firing action that adds every launcher's fire request to a single missile que for that section. So now when a Centurion with two LRM 15s in its 10 tube torso are all ordered to fire, it will instead que up 30 missiles to that torso and then launch them in 3 volleys of 10 missiles. As each launch takes place, it removes missiles from the que, and as each new fire request is added to that section a new batch of missiles is added.
This does wonders for immersion as each mech's physical number of tubes handicaps its launch rate. One of the coolest 'random' features I found in MWO was that it actually checks the launch request to the number of tubes and will spew my C1's LRM20 as a 15/5 instead of just ignoring immersion/simulation/realism and pumping out 20 at once. Taking this one step further to account for all launchers would add to that excellent idea. Additionally, heat would be generated on a per launch bases using simple algebra. Currently the launchers already divide the heat you launch between split launches, this would just again need to be added to the que so that the heat could be properly applied on launch. And finally, shutting down would cancel all launch ques.
(2) Increase the delay between launches from the same section. For the sake of example I will assume a new delay between launches from the same tubes to be placed at 1 second. This means that the Centurion from the first example will now fire 10 missiles, wait one second, fire 10 more, wait another second, then fire its last 10 missiles. Given LRM15s have a cycle time of 4.25 seconds, The centurion will wait another 2.25 seconds after the third volley before its launchers have recycled and are ready to fire again.
The gameplay advantage here is two-fold. The launched missiles are spread out by quite a bit. This gives enemy mechs an additional second per volley to get to cover, meaning that mechs whose models sport large numbers of tubes will be just a smidge harder to avoid as they will be able to launch far more missiles in less time. Additionally, the time spacing between the volleys will allow any AMS on enemy mechs much more time to engage the incoming missiles and shoot down more before they reach impact.
So again, our Centurion fires at a target now and it launches all of its missiles in 0.15 seconds, giving the enemy mechs no real chance to avoid just part of the volley, and the AMS on the target mech precisely 2.15 seconds to shoot down what it can (missiles travel at 100m/s and the AMS has a range of 200m).
But with the proposed system, that Centurion would take 2 full seconds to fire all of its missiles, giving the enemy mech a two second window where its dash for cover might succeed in blocking the last few. Also, its AMS will now have 4 full seconds to shoot down the incoming volley, making the AMS twice as effective against the 10 tube Centurion as it would be against the 30 tube Trebuchet of the same weight.
The Result: Increased realism and immersion from the queing method, increased value to mechs with high-tube counts promoting role warfare (mechs designed as LRM mechs in fluff actually become more suited to it in game), and the general believability factor of limiting missile launches based on number of tubes, just as several mech models now change based on what weapon type is mounted in the relevant location.
This suggestion does pertain to the balance of mechs with respect to each other, thus this thread seems just as appropriate as others (because I don't know how else to get people to drive a Trebuchet over a Huncback aside from novelty).
Furthermore, this thread has no direct bearing on the overall balance of LRMs, and is instead a way to promote certain chasis to the role without nullifying others.
#148
Posted 29 November 2012 - 09:54 PM
DTheSleepless, on 28 November 2012 - 05:51 PM, said:
This is my view of Mechwarrior. Everyone does what they do best. I'm a crappy brawler, but I'm good at fire support. I build a lot of mechs with LRMs, AC/2's, and LL's. (I'd use PPC's if they weren't junk.) I rely on my teammates to pilot the scouts to paint my targets and the brawlers to soak up the damage, and my gift to the team is a lot of accurate, concentrated damage to our biggest threat.
My role is no more or less important than any other, and the metagame of the economy should not encourage or discourage my or anyone else's chosen role. By that I mean the Jenner pilot should be making the same amount of money as the Atlas pilot. None of this "LRM's are expensive, so you shouldn't be using them" garbage.
PGI has said they want lights and mediums to be no less a force on the battlefield than the assault mechs, and they have accomplished this very well in terms of the actual game. A Jenner or Raven is a major force on the battlefield.
Balance is not achieved by keeping people from playing roles with an economic chokehold. Balance is achieved on the battlefield, and the game does that very well right now. It's just the economy metagame that's messed up.
PGI can tighten down the economy so we all have to pay money WITHOUT shaping people's in-game tactics due to a fear of losing cash. Make Artemis and XL engines a trade off IN GAME, due to their weight and vulnerability disadvantages (respectively). DON'T make them too risky to run for fear of getting cored.
Why does this matter? It matters because if Clan tech is introduced into the current environment MWO will become 100% P2W.
Today Artemis and XL engines make you more deadly, if you can afford to maintain them. I wouldn't call it "pay to win", but it's definitely "pay to gain an advantage". But when the clans come? HOLY CRAP. We're going to see half-weight LRM20's, SSRM6's, and U/AC20's. These weapons have high purchase and ammo costs and are dramatically more powerful than anything we have now.
If the current environment of "good tech costs a lot to maintain" is still en vogue when the invasion begins, the ONLY people who will be able to afford to run those mechs will be people throwing lots of money into MC points, and they will DOMINATE everyone. You think a Gausscat is bad? Wait until we see clan mechs with twin UAC20's with a few LRM's thrown in for backup. Howling about Streakcats? How does six SSRM6's sound?
WoT's golden bullets are NOTHING compared to clan tech in a "good tech costs money" economy.
MWO needs to balance gameplay in the game, not in the economy.
#149
Posted 29 November 2012 - 10:49 PM
Gauss cats would be less of a problem if the Guass had a MIN RANGE like it should
SSRM Cats are no slower than any other Heavy. Killer is 2LRM 15/20's and the rest are SSRM.... between 270 and 180 meters you are toast... IF you can close then you Might have a chance, but not by your self.
Jenners... still too bloody fast.
#150
Posted 30 November 2012 - 06:51 AM
#151
Posted 30 November 2012 - 07:00 AM
The "no damage under x meters" is a contrivance that doesn't work well in a real-time game, I think.
#152
Posted 30 November 2012 - 07:24 AM
BigMooingCow, on 29 November 2012 - 09:54 PM, said:
This is my view of Mechwarrior. Everyone does what they do best. I'm a crappy brawler, but I'm good at fire support. I build a lot of mechs with LRMs, AC/2's, and LL's. (I'd use PPC's if they weren't junk.) I rely on my teammates to pilot the scouts to paint my targets and the brawlers to soak up the damage, and my gift to the team is a lot of accurate, concentrated damage to our biggest threat.
My role is no more or less important than any other, and the metagame of the economy should not encourage or discourage my or anyone else's chosen role. By that I mean the Jenner pilot should be making the same amount of money as the Atlas pilot. None of this "LRM's are expensive, so you shouldn't be using them" garbage.
PGI has said they want lights and mediums to be no less a force on the battlefield than the assault mechs, and they have accomplished this very well in terms of the actual game. A Jenner or Raven is a major force on the battlefield.
Balance is not achieved by keeping people from playing roles with an economic chokehold. Balance is achieved on the battlefield, and the game does that very well right now. It's just the economy metagame that's messed up.
PGI can tighten down the economy so we all have to pay money WITHOUT shaping people's in-game tactics due to a fear of losing cash. Make Artemis and XL engines a trade off IN GAME, due to their weight and vulnerability disadvantages (respectively). DON'T make them too risky to run for fear of getting cored.
Why does this matter? It matters because if Clan tech is introduced into the current environment MWO will become 100% P2W.
Today Artemis and XL engines make you more deadly, if you can afford to maintain them. I wouldn't call it "pay to win", but it's definitely "pay to gain an advantage". But when the clans come? HOLY CRAP. We're going to see half-weight LRM20's, SSRM6's, and U/AC20's. These weapons have high purchase and ammo costs and are dramatically more powerful than anything we have now.
If the current environment of "good tech costs a lot to maintain" is still en vogue when the invasion begins, the ONLY people who will be able to afford to run those mechs will be people throwing lots of money into MC points, and they will DOMINATE everyone. You think a Gausscat is bad? Wait until we see clan mechs with twin UAC20's with a few LRM's thrown in for backup. Howling about Streakcats? How does six SSRM6's sound?
WoT's golden bullets are NOTHING compared to clan tech in a "good tech costs money" economy.
MWO needs to balance gameplay in the game, not in the economy.
You know, I hadn't even thought of what would happen once clan tech got involved. If I recall the executioner (aka Gladiator) has a variant that costs something insane like 80million C bills, which is more than 10x a high end inner sphere mech. If the repair bill scales similarly pay to win it is...
#153
Posted 30 November 2012 - 08:15 AM
#154
Posted 30 November 2012 - 08:20 AM
Butane9000, on 30 November 2012 - 08:15 AM, said:
Yeah, if UAC jams so much, I can only imagine how often the RACs will jam when it comes out in 3062! They would be unusable...
#155
Posted 30 November 2012 - 08:22 AM
Tolkien, on 30 November 2012 - 07:24 AM, said:
You know, I hadn't even thought of what would happen once clan tech got involved. If I recall the executioner (aka Gladiator) has a variant that costs something insane like 80million C bills, which is more than 10x a high end inner sphere mech. If the repair bill scales similarly pay to win it is...
80mil? Yikes, I didn't know that existed... Two lances of Atlases, or an Executioner? Choices, choices!
I WOULD be interested to see just how broken the game is with the Kraken...
10 UAC20's
14 tons ammo
Not enough heat sinks.
A 1000 meter 40 damage alpha strike with 0.5sec cooldown is game-breaking, even if you can only fire a few barrages before overheating. One mech could easily take out a scout in two seconds flat. The only thing more obscene will be the ammo bills.
Anyway, this balance stuff really matters, and it needs to shift away from game balance via economic restrictions before the really high-dollar, high-power designs show up. Because if the balancing factor on the day of the Clan invasion is simply who has put more dollars into the game, there's going to be a long line of twelve-year-olds with dad's credit cards stomping through our ranks in Diashis with quad LRM20's and a dozen ERML's. The only defense will be a $20 bill.
#156
Posted 30 November 2012 - 08:32 AM
There'd probably even need to be separate economies for Clan and IS - maybe a "clan-bills" currency. If clan stuff is really that expensive, then the 60k I pay to rearm my artemis will be a joke. You'd end up having to jack up the economy for Clan to be affordable, which would make IS waaay too cheap.
Although clan stuff is what, a year down the road? I wouldn't worry about it just yet.
#157
Posted 30 November 2012 - 08:54 AM
sarkun, on 29 November 2012 - 01:40 AM, said:
THIS is the way it's supposed to be! If an ENTIRE TEAM focuses fire on your mech, you die. Period. Doesn't matter if they focus lasers, Acs or LRMs. This is the way the game is supposed to work.
If a lance of mechs with two LRM20's focus fire, 160 missiles (288 damage) should take just about anybody out. Granted.
Likewise, if a lance of Awesomes all let loose with three PPC's, the twelve shots (120 damage) should take out just abou......... er, wait!
288 damage vs 120 damage? And the 288 damage is GUIDED, while the 120 damage requires leading your 100kph target at 1KM?
At least the LRM boats are so severely limited by ammo that they can't fight more than one or two engagements without heading back for resuppl..... er, wait! We get reloads after each match in MWO, and an Atlas can easily carry enough ammo to spam missiles for the entire round, WHILE carrying backup weapons.
Sorry about the sarcasm there. I don't think LRM's are overpowered. And I agree that focus fire should dismantle a mech quickly. We're screwed if that's not the case when the Clans show up. BUT, I think direct fire support needs a boost. The only reason people are complaining about LRM's right now is because EVERYONE is using them... because energy weapons suck.
AC/2's are pretty well-balanced, I have to admit. I don't like how they're so hot to run, but if I swallow my TT pride, I have to say they're fun to use, they do decent damage, and they have a fun (and useful) benefit of annoying the crap out of people. Just like TT, they won't match LRMs for damage, but they have their use for sniping. (I will say that PGI should take every mech with a ballistic hardpoint and add 1-2 more in that spot, so more mechs can use AC2's effectively.)
Anyway, lets just pump up the big energy weapons so we get back the scissors in our rock/paper/scissors. The LPL, LL, ERLL, PPC, and ERPPC all need a boost. The goal IMHO should be to balance energy heat until the Awesome can do its signature three-three-two PPC barrage. Once the weapon heat is tweaked correctly so the big energy weapons are usable, balance the damage until the screams die down. But base the tweaks around making the PPC the dangerous weapon it should be, not the heat-spiking joke it is now.
#158
Posted 30 November 2012 - 09:16 AM
Now I will say that I agree that PPCs (and energy weapons as a whole) are hurt by the current heat system. I've been running a dual PPC K2 and a dual ALRM15 C1, and my C1 is hands down more effective. It is not, however, a killing machine. It is also worth mentioning that my C1 is decked out with tech - ES, DHS, and Artemis, where my K2 only has ES on it.
Edited by Buckminster, 30 November 2012 - 09:17 AM.
#159
Posted 30 November 2012 - 09:27 AM
Paying more "soft" currency (C-bills) to "win" is not "P2W"
Please stop saying that. Otherwise its like saying an Atlas is P2W compared to a Hunchback...
#160
Posted 30 November 2012 - 09:49 AM
XenomorphZZ, on 30 November 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:
Paying more "soft" currency (C-bills) to "win" is not "P2W"
Please stop saying that. Otherwise its like saying an Atlas is P2W compared to a Hunchback...
I agree with what you said about hard versus soft currencies being the difference between pay to win and not, but I disagree that cbills are a proper soft currency.
The reason is that in LOL you can't do anything except play games to earn the soft currency (IP), while in MWO you can buy MC, buy a mech with MC, then sell it for Cbills, thereby linking Cbills to dollars
If they removed that ability to sell mechs/parts then it would calm me down some.
P.S. While I disagree with what you said, I love your banner! Atlai stevensen - your ambassador for the future missile crisis!
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