To Trauglodyte:
LRMs do miss. Quite a bit in fact. Even on stationary targets with line of sight so long as you don't have Artemis you will have some misses. For an LRM-20 unaided on a stationary target, 1 to 3 missiles are destroyed by AMS, 2 to 4 more typically miss. With tag or with Artemis, the same circumstance would have 1 to 3 missiles destroyed by AMS, all others direct hit. Barely any miss when Tagged or Artemis fired. Distance: 200 to 230 meters give or take.
Moving targets, especially if the target moves to the side of the shooter and runs at the speed of your average Centurion (70 to 80 kph) and in this case without AMS, there's a strong chance that up to 10 missiles (usually between 5 and 7) out of an LRM 20 will go "around" and pass the target.
The above is simplified, data was actually collected in September/October on "AFK"/disconnected victims for stationary targets and moving targets ranged from non-ECM Commandos to Centurions. On average, launchers used were dual LRM-20s. Ratios were counted from various videos as Founder's Atlas-D and Founder's Catapult C1 (before ECM). Since a pair of LRMs were used, miss counts were cut in half for the above data. Miss ratio is significantly lower on heavier mechs.
LRMs are fairly easy to avoid -- included in the plans for a tutorial series I'm working on is an advanced control (trick) mini-series. On it I am including some of my old tricks from before both ECM and AMS. There are tricks to avoiding missiles without cover and in plain sight. It is a hit or miss tactic, but with a minimum of 600 meters range you can power down while running to the left or right of the missiles -- but BEFORE the missiles get out of sight of the corner of your eye -- can cause a target lock to break and missiles to miss. (Powering down anywhere breaks locks, but doing it while running perpendicular to the missiles and before they turn will cause them to slam into the space two or three steps behind you. Otherwise they continue right at you without lock.) The trick is powering off within no more than 2 seconds of their peak height (when they start tilting downward).
75 to 100% of them will miss even in the flat open spaces of Caustic Valley.
Without using that technique (due to brawling, unsafe range, etc) you have two options.
1) If you have a medium-speed mech turn 90 degrees left or right of the oncoming missiles and go full speed. Torso twist your least important side (or more armored) torwards the missiles as they will be directly behind you and you do not want them in your back. Arms are disposable.
2) If you have a fast mech, speed into the missiles. You'll only graze the bottom most missiles, leaving most to detonate behind you.
Nothing for slow mechs. Sorry. You're screwed.
For LRMs, with double armor to match them to table top (while counting for the double armor we've had since June -- no not ferro. Our actual armor has double the actual health), the LRMs would have to do a solid 2.0 damage. (1.0 table top to 1.0 ratio armor. 2.0 damage per missile for double armor). Right now they do 1.7 or 1.8 if I'm not mistaken so we're technically below table top already.
The speed of LRMs are about TT. Turns are taken in 10 second intervals. It takes about 8 seconds for the missiles to reach their maximum range. Add two seconds for lock on and explosion. Yes, we could want it to be faster. But then we wouldn't have the time to look up at them and go "Oh s---!!!!"
C'mon, in Star Trek 6, what fun would the ending of that battle be if that torpedo was actually fast? "To be... or not... to be."
If LRMs were faster even with lower damage, we'd have more complaints about LRMs being overpowered since they would become impossible to dodge. I think they are solid at the moment. You get just barely enough time to evade them with some skills while out of cover. Any faster and the only way to fight would be in cover. People don't want to have big stompy robots and hide in a corner, that's why everyone cried about LRMs in the first place and how we wound up with the botched ECM issues. Even PGI said they didn't want to release it so soon. But people insisted.
Now for short range missiles.
SRMs and Streaks travel at the same speed.
You are correct. SRMs can miss. I also agree with the statement that SRMs should technically be rockets. But I can see why they are called missiles. Rockets shoot in a straight path, which is what they appear to do if you have SRM-2's or SRMs with Artemis. Standard SRMs are much more 'guided' now than they were, particularly with their erratic flight pattern and tight return at the extent of 270 meters. They try to converge for your crosshair, and depending on the range set on your crosshair (seen below it in numbers), the missiles will try to unite at the exact range it's on when stationary (5 out of 6 will. The 6th always unites at the 270 range regardless unless it hits something beforehand. Not sure why). The chance of missing the distance indicated by the crosshair at the time you clicked increases when you or the target are moving.
It's hard to see that pattern with Artemis-enhanced ones since they fire much straighter and more like rockets.
(Also an interesting fact, SRM 4's fire faster than 6, 2's fire faster than 4's. You can fire the SRM 2 twice as fast as the SRM-6 and seemingly at a fourth of the heat. Pack 6 SRM-2's on an A1 and it's like having two extra powerful AC-2's and you have more room for both ammo and extra heat sinks).
You would think Streaks would have reduced damage. It seemed logical to me when you have to make room for a homing device and either have to sacrifice fuel or yield or make larger missiles (fewer per ton). So the original 2.0 damage per missile that streaks did were fine to me and justified the homing device advantage to me. The 2.5 made me gradually phase out of using them in large groups because it just felt wrong.
Streaks have an interesting issue in being able to actually rapidly turn 180 degrees upward and over a mech to hit a target BEHIND the firing mech with the 360 target retention module and when fired fast enough before target loss. (You can turn away quickly enough to fire while running away using the 180 zero turn radius jump-jet turn manuever. This was common by both streak cats and jenners before ECM. I'm told this still occurs but is much more rare now that Jenners have given up streaks).
When a streak missile is fired, if it does not directly hit the target but does not hit environment, it will behave like Javelins from BF3 that miss their target when not affected by flares or chaff. The streak missiles will circle the target as many as 5 times (though usually 2 or 3) before hitting the target. It honestly looks like a ferret running around inside the sweater of an anime girl. It clings THAT close.
Streaks, SRMs, and every other weapon are what strays from the TT in weapon recycle rates. But realistically how many hold off from the trigger for 10 seconds or want to wait that long? Admittedly I think they actually shoot too fast. Not the travel time, that's fine. But the recycle rates are a little rapid. Perhaps a .2 second longer delay between streak salvos. The other issue is that they travel within each other. They need not occupy the same space and actually come from different holes.
PPCs do not start at that rate, they accelerate up to that rate (hence the slow to fast effect when fired). It was an attempt to make PPCs useful. This has helped and I started to use them more, but while I can fire regular PPC's like machine guns, for every 2 and 1/2 shots of normal PPC, I can fire 1 ER PPC and get the same heat levels.
At the moment there are a lot of things that need work. However with the exception of streaks I find what's above to be fairly comfortable. Streaks seem a little bad when they have identical damage to SRMs, an equal firing rate to regular SRM-2's, and can glue to you and become ferrets under your mech's armor until they detonate.
My only issue with ECM is that it's become a cloaking device and is placed on only the most missile heavy variants of certain mechs (which can abuse it) instead of energy or ballistic heavy variants which can't abuse it. It should make my missiles very inaccurate. Not make them completely useless without tag when in table top you can fire on them without it.
That physics test I went off to do wasn't pleasant. But I can't argue with a 97 in college physics about projectiles, horizontal and vertical velocities and all that fun goodness. Especially since I haven't studied. Go through college when you're young. Once you get to my age, well, you have to juggle your time and so much gets missed.
All I could think about was how there's nil to virtually nil on bullet drop for MWO. Gauss Rifles wouldn't have to be made out of paper since at long range the bullets would drop requiring additional skill to aim and perhaps they will actually put in the proper table top 2 hex minimum range for Gauss Rifles. Remember that 1 hex = 30 meters.
Edited by Koniving, 01 January 2013 - 11:48 PM.
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Trauglodyte, on 01 January 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:
