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[Pvt Dancer]

Been Beta testing since July, been on the forums for over a year so I think I have the experience and knowledge to make these suggestions.

Simple fact is this, Streaks do not work as they were intended to work in Table Top. They were NOT an auto-hit. They worked that all SRMs hit or, if you missed, it would not fire to save ammo and heat. The attempt to make Streaks what they are, while a clever solution, is a lazy solution (lets just code them they same as LRMs). You combine how streaks are fired now (a lock and thus auto-hit), specially with ECM, and you have a broken system.

You add onto this the ineffectiveness of energy weapons and MGs to damage high speed light mechs and you end up with the mech that can have the most streaks and ECM being the winner in a light mech dogfight. Thus 12-15 lights mechs will never get played (or will rarely be played) because they do not have ECM or missile slots. Streaks /should/ be in the game and changes have been made to make them better (balanced) to what they were (very unbalanced), but PGI still has a ways to go, IMO.

Solution...
I really can only come up with 3 solutions, none of them will be popular.

1) Re-code them
This will take a lot of time and effort by the staff, time and effort that should be going into maps and new mechs, much less polishing off bugs like the 4fps and crash bugs. I don't think PGI has the resources to do this anytime soon. You pretty much have to have a trigger response that /if/ the streaks will hit their target, all will hit without informing the pilot or having to go through the lock process. I don't know if this will be done, or if PGI wants to put the resources into it.

2) Remove them
It says it all, they are just to broken at this point to include into the game till they are properly done. Lets face it, Streaks make the equivalent missile system obsolete... who purposely puts SRM 2s on their mech when for a half ton more you can have streaks?

3) Re-do the Lock
This /might/ be the better way of doing this keeping the current code. What if you needed a period of time to lock to fire and the lock was broken after every shot? Having the lock be broken after every shot and forcing folk to re-establish the lock might balance it and still keep the Table Top feel for it. Then PGI can fine tune how long the lock takes to further balance it.

ECM
I am not sure ECM is really broken that badly, but it is very easy to abuse by a team of players. This may bring flashbacks to people who raged over pre-mades in the past. Anyway, here are a couple suggestions.

1) Limit/Balance ECM mechs
Really simple here, you have ECM mechs go 1 for 1 each side. That way no side has more than the other. You can also limit each team to 1-2 ECM mechs. Note I did not mention tonnage... I do not have a problem with 2 Light ECM mechs vs 2 Assault ECM mechs. I just have a problem of 5 ECM mechs vs 1 ECM mech. If this has already been addressed, I have not noticed it and thus disregard this suggestion.

2) Limit Disrupt range and boost Counter range
Drop it down to 10-30 meters. I mean really shrink it, but increase Counter range to 180-200+ meters. Right now ECM works on a 1 to 1 ratio and has equal range. Also, when a Light mech is using Counter, they are exposed to Streak fire. Since overlapping Disrupt ECM can over-ride a single Counter you punish the person trying to Counter ECM, as they are typically the attacker.

I feel the the combined changes of ECM and Streaks will make other light non-streak, non-ECM mechs playable again, or at least feel like an option that is competitive.

Flame on.