2028 replies to this topic

[40oz to Freedom]

I read a lot of posts saying "ECM isn't overpowered, it just requires teamwork to counter?" That's very nice, but it doesn't require teamwork to ECM, I don't understand how one team of PUGs is suddenly suppose to become so coordinated when facing 1 guy with ECM running around in circles until he's finally killed. This usually does happen, the entire team runs back to base and pursues the ECM guy to the edge of the world in the meantime the other team is picking us off 1 by 1. So while the ECM guy and his team are just derp derp, my team is expected to be top notch instant teamwork.

ECM does not inspire teamwork nor has it made this "a thinking man's shooter" so much as it has inspired a bunch of people to buy ECM mechs. I mean, a few posts back someone mentioned that 8v8 has become a standard team of 5 ECM atlas's and 3 ECM ravens. End of conversation, you can't argue against that, if you do you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. When you introduce a feature in a game which rules out the use of anything but that feature your game is broken. I don't understand how the devs could possibly not know that. I don't recall a single mechwarrior game where ECM was featured/used this way, if I had I probably would not have played it.

ECM being a complete and total counter to LRMs and Streak SRMs is also extremely lame. You expect me to believe that a futuristic high technology society would continue to manufacture variants of mechs which did not feature ECM as a standard component once it was invented and behaved this way? Since the invention of the stealth aircraft every new jet our country has endeavored to build has included some form of stealth technology. The 8v8 evolution to all ECM mechs has proved this.

If you (the devs) are so in love with your ECM as is fine, allow LRMs to fire at ground targets and streaks to dumb fire. I'm sure in the future real targeting systems would be developed to counter ECMs in this way instead of just "well, don't have a target, can't fire, sorry." It'd be more like I can't target the ECM mech, but I can target that bush he's about to walk over or that rock behind him. Also you need to add collision and knockdown, if some ECM mech is about to run through me, I should be able to knock his *** down and blast him while he's on the ground instead of flailing wildly trying to lock my sites on a mech which can run a circle around me faster than I can turn my mech in place.

[StalaggtIKE]

[Garagano]

tag negate the magic ecm field? wow, that is news to me.

[ICEFANG13]

Haha that Willy Wonka face is lulzy for ECM balance thread.

[StalaggtIKE]

Garagano, on 16 December 2012 - 04:38 PM, said:

tag negate the magic ecm field? wow, that is news to me.

Yes, as long as you stay out of 180m of ECM. If you are within ECM aoe, then your TAG is negated.

[Abivard]

hey lazy ones, do your own reading,
Stop asking for handouts, get some pride in yourself.

I owe not a single one of you any training. I prefer that most of you that are trolls remain ignorant to be honest about it.

Counter is not stacking just right, when 3 + ecm platforms on each team are in a common ECM bubble, counter does not seem to be 1 for 1. This is very difficult to actually quantify as these situations are highly fluid and a great deal of uncertainty exists as to what each ecm platform mode was enabled at any given moment as well as the spatial relationships of the various platforms during each time period.


Let the devs look into it, don't bombast them with;

'You must change everything to suit each individuals view this second, and it better be perfect! but when we say individual, that means just people who totally agree with me.' type posts.

[CoreHunter]

I belive ECM does too much. More importantly is the **** poor introduction of electronic warfare equipment without all the checks and balances in place. If you intended ato make counters and such for ECM why did they not wait till the entire Electronic Warfare package was complete prior to releasing it instead of just blindly throwing bits and peices out.

[steelblueskies]

because i said i would after the point came up in here
http://mwomercs.com/...and-nv-visible/

for the automatic decal or affectation visible in nv and thermal as well as normal vision modes indicating team A or B.

----------------------------------------
i cannot speak to any other poster, but the more complete the picture painted by feedback, the more useful it *can* be.

i'd wager that feedback that presents a multitude of reasoning, impressions in various situations, and some research is more useful than "lulz itz op nerf plz" or "i kick butt with it leave it be", which while still useful, are only specifically so as quantified points on a binary statistical grid.

while i could agree with you abivard with regards to some of the snappy one lining or meme trolling, given some of the critically massive text walls i among others have layed out, i an also appreciate the need for a bit of color and/or humor from time to time, even if in somewhat poor taste(seemingly).

on the other point however, if one makes a claim it should generally be verifiable. example? when i said a cda3m is made even nastier due to survivabiity increases allowing even limited weapon hardpoints to hit near 1000point damage figures, i provided at least one screencap to back it up.

when people discuss problems with losing iff indicators we can simply say hit right shift+f11 and run in thermal mode, and it's fairly universal where the core of that issue begins, allowing one to skip the image or video.

when one says that the narrow band for ecm lock on between 180 and 200m is not communicated in game at all and that that hurts new players, it needs no screenshot. there's literally no visual indicator or data presented in game to let a player who knows no better know the band even exists.

when one references equipment availability across the stock/trial chassis' and the impact on new players, its readily verifiable.

however, you made a claim about a performance based methodology to accomplish a goal and work around the system, and were called to back it up. if you can not present your case in a clear and quantifiable fashion then really what do you expect?

we are after all to assume that one reason some people might benefit from third person view is because they have trouble grasping the leg vs torso vs arm movement mechanics without seeing it externally. to say that a tactical maneuver in combat might need some visual confirmation is not a stretch working from that point.

in any event, for trying to sort out the disrupt vs counter stacking. if you can derive some confirmation there, i am sure everyone who doesn't have to suffer it's bugginess will be glad for it, and in their stead i'll say thank you.

[Darjek]

Well I've read a few of the post's here and I agree that the Guardian ECM is a bit over powered but not buy much there are a few things that can be done to fine tune them but to say that extending the range of the tag to 700m or 750m range will be an effective counter to the ECM "LOL" Yeah Right just give me a sec to All chat that pesky lil'Raven/Mando/Cica that's moving 97k/ph-135k/ph to "Please slow down some so I can get a lock real quick thank you so much" um yeah I think that well work out great for a counter to ECM the only Mech that the TAG would work right on is the Atlas-D-DC because it's so slow.

But I think it feels so over powered because of the Mechs that can equip it, 3 of the 4 Mechs can have 2-3 Missile hard points oh that is a great idea to make Streak/LRM-Boats extremely less effective by giving fast moving Mechs protected by lag shield the ability to jam your Streaks/LRM's so they can **** you with theirs with out fear not the best of Ideas in my understanding.

Now to solve this Clearly Abusive Build on ECM Equiped Light Mechs such as the Raven-3L / Commando-2D is a simple one remove the ECM from them and place them on Light Mechs that have no Missile hard points but leave the Atlas-D-DC and Cica-3M with ECM ability. With the way it is now the Raven-3L and Mando-2D ARE over powered with the effects of the ECM.

Now in over all design the ECM ability is as at should be "In terms of MODES" Most ECM Devices has 2 modes "ECM (Electronic Counter Measure) and ECCM (Electronic Counter / Counter Measure)" and some that are just basic ECM, But the Guardian ECM's modes are just as they should be BUT as for the rest of it's abilities need to be fine tuned and tweaked like the avalable lock on range of 181m-200m "19m" C'mon that should be increased to 181m-350m/400m to give the player a chance to defend them self and the LoS needs to be tuned for it to work correctly inside the ECM bubble as well as the ECM's Bubble of 180m needs to be reduced to 100m-150m, But other than that the remaining effects are as they should be in a ECM or ECCM bubble.

[Mega Prawn]

I must admit I have not read through this whole thread (didn't fancy trudging through 93 pages), so I apologise if what I'm going to say has already been said (it probably already has).

I like the idea of ECM; stultifying the insta-pwn of streak-heavy loadouts was gorgeously satisfying, and there is now a pleasant hole where there were painful numbers of streak cats a couple of weeks ago. I rarely see any at all now, and when I do see them they do ok-but-not-great, whereas two weeks ago there would be *at least* 3-4 in every game and they would get pretty much all the kills.

But ECM has hit LRMs too hard. In a sense, I am pleased that the game has moved on from the LRM-Online trench warfare sim it was a few weeks ago (with a friend of mine in an LRM atlas getting 4-6 skill-less kills a round), but now they are just next to useless. I have always played mostly as a brawler (hbk 4sp) and have noticed in the past week that - with the neutering of lock-on weps - brawler loadouts have become quite OP. Actually, the games have just turned into Brawl-Online and with no LRM threat from the enemy team, everyone in the game is just bolting straight into a huge pit-fight in the middle of the map.

Don't get me wrong: this is good news for me. But in the last few days even I am beginning to think it's just becoming stupid. I recently got an Atlas-RS and have medium pulses, srm6s and ac/20 - and this thing is consistently wiping the floor with everything I encounter. I really don't consider myself a particularly skilled player, but it's a bad match for me if I get less than 700 damage and 4 kills (I know it's an Atlas but come on); sometimes I'll go 10 rounds without even coming close to going down. As I said, I don't think that this is because I'm particularly good, I think it's because I can run around wherever the frack I like without *any* fear of the LRMs which would otherwise shred me in seconds.

Obviously, there is a sense in which this is nice, because lasers ACs and SRMs all take more skill to use than SSRMs or LRMs, but that doesn't mean that those weapons don't have a vital part to play in the game - a part that they are simply not playing at the moment.

There are already plenty of suggestions on how to alter ECM (with many of them being worthy of consideration) so I won't bother to suggest anything specific, but I am humbly arguing from my personal experience that LRMs need to be put back in this game to stop it turning into a binary baserush/deathmatch festival where mega-brawlers reign supreme.

Prawn.

[Ketzktl]

ECM is too binary. The team that has the most enjoys too many benefits:
Unrestricted use of streaks and lrms
Unrestricted coordination via being able to call out target letters
Superior situational awareness via being able to see the positions of everyone
Superior targetting as they are able to see mech damage

In contrast, the team with the least loses all of these benefits. They simply lose the ability to target weak spots on opponents, lose the ability to keep track of where everyone is and lose the ability to coordinate fire by simply calling out a letter. They also lose the ability to use streaks and lrms unless TAG is used which is a difficult proposition as the onus is on the TAG unit to keep the target painted and keep out of ECM range and stay alive.

A skilled team can over come these obsticals, but they are very substantial obsticals for a passive piece of equipment that requires no effort to use. This is self evident as skilled teams have chosen to adopt wholescale use of ECM instead of suffering the substantial penalties for not having it. It is a required item, not optional.

ECM should degrade performance, be a hindrance or annoyance, but it shouldn't simply shut down the other team's ability to use systems in the game while simultaneously allowing the ally's team to enjoy all the benefits of using these same systems. It should be nice to have, but not so incredibly detrimental to lack.

Edited by Ketzktl, 16 December 2012 - 06:16 PM.

[Cpt Jason McCarthy]

Move along nothing to see ! PGI will NEVER change the ECM NEVER ! As said by Lord Arrogant aka Paul Inouye !

Maybe asking for a macthmaking without ECM will work ! Good luck tryin'!

Edited by Shadowpunisher, 16 December 2012 - 06:35 PM.

[DeaconW]

Abivard, on 16 December 2012 - 05:28 PM, said:

I owe not a single one of you any training. I prefer that most of you that are trolls remain ignorant to be honest about it.

Oh yes, you do. You made outrageous claims and we called you on it and asked for proof. You failed to provide said proof therefore until you do your posts are irrelevant. Nice attempt at a sidestep tho'...you must be an awesome dancer. And no, we definitely don't want video of that...

Edited by DeaconW, 16 December 2012 - 06:40 PM.

[DeaconW]

Ketzktl, on 16 December 2012 - 06:13 PM, said:

ECM is too binary. The team that has the most enjoys too many benefits:
Unrestricted use of streaks and lrms
Unrestricted coordination via being able to call out target letters
Superior situational awareness via being able to see the positions of everyone
Superior targetting as they are able to see mech damage

In contrast, the team with the least loses all of these benefits.

THIS^^^.

[ICEFANG13]

I wish he would post his stats and show his apparent awesomeness.

[StalaggtIKE]

Ketzktl, on 16 December 2012 - 06:13 PM, said:

ECM is too binary. The team that has the most enjoys too many benefits:
Unrestricted use of streaks and lrms
Unrestricted coordination via being able to call out target letters
Superior situational awareness via being able to see the positions of everyone
Superior targetting as they are able to see mech damage

In contrast, the team with the least loses all of these benefits. They simply lose the ability to target weak spots on opponents, lose the ability to keep track of where everyone is and lose the ability to coordinate fire by simply calling out a letter. They also lose the ability to use streaks and lrms unless TAG is used which is a difficult proposition as the onus is on the TAG unit to keep the target painted and keep out of ECM range and stay alive.

A skilled team can over come these obsticals, but they are very substantial obsticals for a passive piece of equipment that requires no effort to use. This is self evident as skilled teams have chosen to adopt wholescale use of ECM instead of suffering the substantial penalties for not having it. It is a required item, not optional.

ECM should degrade performance, be a hindrance or annoyance, but it shouldn't simply shut down the other team's ability to use systems in the game while simultaneously allowing the ally's team to enjoy all the benefits of using these same systems. It should be nice to have, but not so incredibly detrimental to lack.

This hits the nail on the head. I couldn't have said it better myself. May I use your quote on Reddit?

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 16 December 2012 - 06:50 PM.

[Abivard]

No such thing as a fair or equal fight exists. Please stop trying to force the world into that PC concept, it won't fit.

Simply having more ecm on a team does not negate the other teams ecm, the deployment and use of the ecm platforms varies from match to match as well as moment to moment in a game.

Simply stating TAG helps, experiment with it for yourself and see. Should be more than sufficient.
But, for once only will I go briefly into tactical applications;

btw, if your looking for hotshot solo tips move on.

more than one team mate has tag, no single mech pilot has to maintain constant lock, comm and co ordination are required to facilitate this. LRM platform MUST be mobile, and knowledgeable.

That's way more hints than anyone should give an enemy unit about tactics. I am not a hint and guidebook site.

BTW I love my LRM's so the joke has been on most of you that like to assume.

[Marcus Tanner]

CoreHunter, on 16 December 2012 - 05:39 PM, said:

If you intended to make counters and such for ECM why did they not wait till the entire Electronic Warfare package was complete prior to releasing it instead of just blindly throwing bits and peices out.

The great irony of this is that ECM was supposed to be effectively wasted space and tonnage against enemies without dedicated EW equipment.

ECM is the kill switch to keep EW from getting out of hand. Of course, now that it's not only the kill switch for other EW equipment but the most powerful piece of EW equipment available (by far), the whole dynamic is shot to pieces.

Darjek, on 16 December 2012 - 06:01 PM, said:

[...5 sentences in 4 paragraphs...]

More liberal use of periods would serve you well, my friend.

[Abivard]

ICEFANG13, on 16 December 2012 - 06:40 PM, said:

I wish he would post his stats and show his apparent awesomeness.

think this was aimed at me -shrugs-

never said I was awesome in game, I am however above average at this game as well as others, in real life I am awesome , done my bones, care less what you think, damn sure most couldn't come close

what is stopping you from looking at my stats? am told its easy to look at peoples stats. I don't bother with pouring over others stats, to easy to pad them which makes them rather meaningless for any real use.

e-peen length doesn't matter to me because that's not the one I use for fun;p

[ICEFANG13]

Yep you have no stats, just pretending to. I can't look, you'd have to link them.