Design notes:  Compared to ballistic and most missile heat which often is applied in rapid spikes, lasers and volley type weapons see heat applied over their duration.  This has allowed coolshots to be utilized either preemptively right before you fire your weapons, immediately after a shot in order to avoid shutdowns or overrides that would normally apply to weapons with heat that apply in a single heat spike, or in reaction to an override to immediately get yourself out of an overridden state.  We feel that in addition to having more immediate value to certain weapon types over others, this also creates situations in which coolshots ended up being used as a reactionary ability to negate any punishments for poor heat management.  With this pass, we are tuning the initial 3 seconds to still allow the total coolshot heat dissipation to apply between most weapon's cooldown cycles provided the player uses it as a proactive way to set up a future weapon volley.

The past few months have brought with them a number of changes to the LRM system.  As we have stated in a recent podcast as well as the follow up forum thread, these changes have been implemented to make LRMs more effective at the core role we wish to see them occupy within the game.  While this did improve the base weapon as we wished to see, we also observed is that in its elevated baseline state, a number of force multipliers surrounding the LRM system compounded on one another to make the weapon system a bit too oppressive in certain situations.  In addition to a general ease of use that we felt needed tuning to be a bit more difficult to acquire and maintain targets. For this month, we will be hitting a number of force multipliers as well as provide a boost to ECM to help with coordinated counter-play against them. While we are focused on these force multipliers for this month, we still are closely observing LRM play and will consider further changes if we feel that it still does not put the weapon in a satisfactory state.

• Weapon lock assistance angle tightened by ~50%

Design notes: With the recently boosted LRM stats, we want to take a second look at the weapon lock assistance angle and tighten the system up. This is not only to make it more challenging to lock on with LRM's but with all lock on type weapons including ATMs and Streak Missiles, which we feel had previously been set a bit too generously to the detriment of lighter, faster 'Mechs for all systems linked to the weapon lock on system. 

Design notes: Unlike TAG or NARC that require either team work or direct line of sight to provide lock-on and Missile Tracking boosts, Artemis was often a raw-upgrade that applied to the other more risky boosts in a cumulative way that saw a massive performance gap between loadouts that centered on baseline LRM launchers and loadouts that took LRMs equipped with Artemis.  While we want Artemis to remain a worthwhile upgrade whose primary benefit is to boost Missile volley accuracy through tighter clustering, we do not want the upgrade to become a barrier to entry for effective LRMs use.  And the previous benefits simply resulted in too great a performance gap between baseline LRM launchers, and those that took Artemis.  Especially when the benefits of Artemis compounded on the benefits of TAG and NARC that require much more risk and exposure to fully benefit from. 

Additionally, the Artemis upgrade was also applying these benefits to ATM's and Streak Systems without any further cost investment to the base launchers.  This change will close the Artemis loophole on those systems, making their overall performance no longer dependent on any kind of hidden mechanic / upgrade.  ATM and Streak launchers will now behave identically to one another whether a 'Mech has an upgraded Artemis system or not. 

Design Notes: The previous ECM range was a bit too restrictive which often found ECM 'Mechs utilizing the system as a personal cloaking device with the team assistance / anchor position too restrictive.  We want to provide a small boost to the radius to reward ECM 'Mechs being utilized as team anchors in which they can be screened from incoming LRM fire. 

NARC

Design Notes: While we want NARC to be a powerful team play supplement, the previous tuning saw it be a bit to potent in too short a period of time.  Primarily when it came to isolating ECM 'Mechs, plus any potential escorts that may be screening them.  We often found that a NARC carrier would indiscriminately be able to launch pods at any enemy that crossed their path until they could get to their ECM carriers at which point, opposing LRM fire can rain down at an almost oppressive rate.  We want there to be a bit more natural risk at being able to negate and tag well screened ECM carriers, as well as allowing more time for opposing players being able to appropriately react to someone NARCing their team.  

Design Notes:  The weapon lock change coupled with the closing of the Artemis lock on boost loophole will directly affect the ATMs ability to lock onto a target.  We want to offset these system changes with a 10% baseline velocity increase to make the overall time from lock on + Missile travel time to remain somewhat consistent for those that can acquire and maintain locks within the more restrictive lock-on conditions.   

- Velocity increased to 280 (from 260) *this is to offset some of the changes coming through the changes to lock on weapons.

- Velocity increased to 260 (from 230) *this is to offset some of the changes coming through the changes to lock on weapons.

Design Notes: The weapon lock change coupled with the closing of the Artemis lock on boost loophole will directly affect Streak SRM's ability to both lock and maintain locks against a target.  Due to the short range nature of Streak Launchers, these changes will impact the streak system more than ATMs or LRMs.  Especially against smaller, highly evasive targets.  We did not want these changes to swing the dial on streaks too far into a negative direction, so we are providing an offsetting increase to their velocity so provided you can acquire and maintain locks with the more restrictive lock on system, it will provide similar times between starting the lock on sequence and hitting a target.  We do want to stress that this change is only to offset the incoming changes to Lock-on’s and the closing of the Artemis loophole we will be keeping a close eye on this particular change and will make amendments if we feel this offset is not needed. 

Spider

- Added a Heat dissipation 5% quirk

- Small Mobility increase across all attributes

- Small Mobility increase across all attributes

- Added a Target Retention Duration +1 quirk

- Added a Sensor Range +100 quirk

- Brand New Native 'Mech quirk added: Capture Acceleration +80%

- Energy Range quirk consolidated into a global Range 10% quirk. 

- Added Machine Gun Rate of fire +15% quirk

Design notes: The Spider line has always been focused towards a mobile harassment role, and with this patch, we want to provide a handful of boosts to augment this role.  When it came to the Spider 5V, with its heavily restricted hardpoint layout, we want to push it into an extreme specialist role focused on team support and objective play within a match. To that end we are providing it with a number of scouting and a new native capture acceleration quirk.  This quirk is tuned so that with full skill tree investment, this 'Mech will capture conquest points, bases, and Incursion energy points at double the rate of similar 'Mechs.  We want this 'Mech to be able to force pressure on an opposing team through map objectives that puts opposing teams in a position where they would have to either react before they normally would like to, or force resources to keep the Spider in check.

Centurion

- Added Heat Gen -5% quirk

- Ballistic Cooldown quirk increased to -15% (from -10%)

- Removed Missile Cooldown quirk

Design notes:  The CN9-A has dipped bellow the rest of the current centurion lineup.  We wanted to take the opportunity to provide it with a number of buffs that support a wider variety of loadouts as such, we have swapped the missile cool-down quirk for an added global heat gen quirk, as well as some further incentive to utilize its ballistic hardpoint. 

Quickdraw

- Moderate Mobility increase across all attributes

- Energy Cooldown -10% and Missile Cooldown -5% consolidated into a global Cooldown -10% quirk

- Energy Heat Gen - 5% and Missile Heat Gen -5% consolidated into a global Heat Gen - 5% quirk

- Moderate mobility increase across all attributes. 

- Energy Cooldown - 5% converted into a Global Cooldown -10% quirk

- Moderate mobility increase across all attributes

Jenner IIC

- All above listed Jenner IIC variants have received moderate increases to their mobility across all attributes. 

Design notes: Over time, the performance of the non-hero Jenner IIC's has dropped off.  We feel with the various tuning to Clan equipment, its time to allow the Clan Jenner to compete on a bit more of an even playing field to its Inner Sphere counterpart.