25 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

Quote

Eh. I have no idea what other LRM users are talking about. Sure, it's annoying when you get an ECM light on your *** and can't get a lock to save your life, but that's kinda the danger when running a specialized build. You need rather specific circumstances to work.

Part of the problem is that LRMs are ineffective unless you boat them. That's why you almost never see mechs with only a single LRM launcher, even though that's quite common on stock designs.

Additionally PPC are a poor counter to ECM. If I'm providing ECM coverage for my team, and the enemy is slinging PPCs at me, I'm just going to duck behind cover so I can't be hit. My team will still benefit from ECM and no amount of PPCs is going to shoot through the rock im hiding behind.

[Vrekgar]

Jason Parker, on 21 February 2013 - 03:02 AM, said:

That's because most LRM boaters still are beginners or part of those complaining about ECM and thus stay WAY behind their own team and give themselves away by their anxious shooting at every 1 second lock they can get wasting half their ammo for no damage to be easily picked by 2Ds 3Ls and 3Ms. Those very same derpheads will also cry "maintain locks" at the start of every game.

Trust me LRMs are very viable and surely don't need such a direct fire mode to circumvent ECM.

So in effect an LRM toting mech, not a boat, should just waste a valuable Energy slot, run up into a brawl and do what exactly? They cant get locks from friendlies because friendlies arent locking one guy and focus firing at all, They also have to content with the brawl frequently featureing enemy ECM making any attempts at aiding their allies a loosing gamble at best.

The lights, and medium, you mention can kill any LRM boat with impunity, and most mechs that even just conservatively carry them are at a severe disadvantage because for 1.5 tons the ECM mech has invalidated 2-10 TONS of weaponry.

Your making my own point for me, LRM's arent really for Long range at all, they are for midrange or to just waste tonnage because you hate yourself as ECM turns them into dead weight.

Terran123rd, on 21 February 2013 - 03:16 AM, said:

Eh. I have no idea what other LRM users are talking about. Sure, it's annoying when you get an ECM light on your *** and can't get a lock to save your life, but that's kinda the danger when running a specialized build. You need rather specific circumstances to work.

Just sigh and take the time to breakdance in what's left of your cockpit when those circumstances go away. Trust me. It's fun. Or at least take the time to toss out a witty one-liner. Also good for laughs.

Running a specialized build? What other tonnage sink is completely worthless for 1.5 tons? You dont even need to boat them to feel the pain. Try a Treb with just a couple LRM5's and a couple tons of ammo backed up by anything else you can squeeze inside. How effective are the missiles? Not that much. Try a Catapult with a decent weapons mix like a C1. The Mech is mediocre without considering the missiles. The stock C1 cant be considered a specialized build, its stock and has twice the number of lasers!

With this kind of logic we should get UAV drones that disable Balistics and smoke trails that disable Lasers!

All the change I propose would do is give the users SOMETHING effective to do with all that tonage wasted while ECM jams them. It wouldnt require ECM to be nerfed and it improves the DUMBfire to be not as dumb.

[Lykaon]

Craftyman, on 21 February 2013 - 02:47 AM, said:

No they aren't they're friggin awful, first buff needs to be damage. they hardly do any because of the spread. Make them 2.5 per missile like SRMs and streaks it doesn't make any sense.

Wow..whatever you're smokin pass it around.

Quick MWo history lesson...

So way back when we had table top armor values.What happened with this 1:1 armor value was TTK (time to kill) was super fast.You got ganked in a blink of an eye.

Basicaly not very fun if you got hit once with an AC20 and died 2 minutes into a 15 minute match.

So the developers opted to double all armor values (2:1) so a player can last longer than 5 seconds in combat.Seriously it was like 5 seconds before BLAMMO dead time.

What happend,in effect was weapon's were reduced in damage potency by 50%.An AC20 hitting a 60 ton mech in the arm needed to hit it more than once to blast all the armor off previous armor values had 20 armor max on a 60 ton chassis's arm.

Now let's look at LRMs.

Table top damage values are 1 per missile.
Mechwarrior online LRM damage values are 1.8 per missile.

This means that a weapon like a gauss rifle or AC 20 had it's damage output cut in half by doubling armor while LRMs were reduced by 20% one half vs one fifth.LRMs are sitting pretty on the damage conversion as it is.

My opinion on an LRM "fix" is the following.

Reduce damage per missile.1.8 per missile is well out of the curve compared to all other weapons when converted to 2:1 armor value.

Increase Flight speed of LRM vollies.This will shorten the window of opertunity to evade an incomming flight resulting in more hits.

Increase cool down periods to compensate for faster volley speed.The rate of fire should try to remain similar to current levels based on a target distance of 600m+.

Tweak AMS engagment range or damage output or combination of the two to compensate for faster volley speeds of missiles in flight.

Remove ECM lock on jamming feature.Replace with a lock on delay feature.This will change ECM from an immunity cloak to a situational evasion enhancer lengthening lock on times for LRMs when the target is moving from cover point to cover point.The enhanced speed of LRMs will still be effective against an enemy covered by ECM that takes no active actions to evade LRMs.No longer will ECM be a passive missile shield it will require seizing the moments to find cover.

TAG will remove the ECM lock on delay.LRMs supported by TAG will lock on normaly.


P.S. Streaks have no business having 2.5 damage per missile.This increased damage was added to SRMs to compensate for the erratic spread of SRM vollies.Streaks do not share this issue so need not share the damage buff to compensate for an issue they do not suffer from.

Edited by Lykaon, 21 February 2013 - 03:45 AM.

[Yokaiko]

Vrekgar, on 21 February 2013 - 02:55 AM, said:

Tag only works if the launcher is not flocked by ECM himself. Every LRM launcher ive seen since it was introduced draws ECM to it like moths to a flame.

Yup, one ECM mech can shutdown two or three missile boats if they screw up cluster together

[KKRonkka]

1) use tag, works in most cases
2) team up with light mech(s) that can counter ECM
3) build lrm build to DC Atlas with ECM
4) profit

[Rooks]

Max Liao, on 21 February 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

I'd just make ECM work the way it is supposed to.

Stops (most) advanced equipment, doesn't prevent standard target acquisition.

Simple, effective, and no longer Capellan Confederation's Stealth Armor.

Yeah I do not understand why they decided to add something like the current ECM instead of fixing LRMS and SRMS.

If LRMS and SRMS were doing to much damage... how about put the damage values back to base values and have a greater spread on bigger racks. It really makes zero sense to increase damage and then say you need a hard counter in game for that weapon system.

Edited by Rooks, 21 February 2013 - 04:09 AM.