A PPC, if it crits, will deal 10 damage to whatever it hits (there's a small chance to hit up to 3 internal components), and all internal components aside from the Gauss Rifle and engine currently have 10 hp.
That's pretty much what I've been finding. Part of the fun of the Dakkaphract is that not only does it do a ton of damage, all those AC/5s going off at once gives you a good chance to crit and they absolutely wreck internals when they do.
Well, I think the game is still rolling separately for each hit even if they're simultaneous, so you still need two AC/5 criticals to land on the same item to incapacitate it.
A 5-damage weapon is logically the next best thing to a 10-damage weapon, though, so I can see why you'd experience a lot of criticals using that as well.
+1
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
One of the things I don't like about the current crit system is that it's a not-insigificant part of what's making SRMs stupidly overpowered. High per-shot damage, low weapon weight, brute-force power, effectiveness against armor and internals, an assload of chances to hit, and the addition of crit multipliers just does not make for a balanced weapon system. If MGs are set to be crap against armor but good for dealing crits, then SRMs should have the reverse be true: good against armor, and then garbage against internals.
Just doesn't make any sense for this to be in the year 3050 and the mechs with a shitload of dumbfire rockets are the ones best at killing anything up close because they're best at any kind of destruction.
I'm not sure what how you're arriving at that conclusion. SRMs are pretty poor against internals relative to armor. At 2.5 damage per missile, you're going to spread damage out quite a bit.
Just goes to show that even with a massive tonnage disparity (3 Atlas' WTF) you can still win the game by playing smart
We ran into you guys later and recognized not a single name. Are you the Bizarro Oosiks?
[Edit: Heh, and if I remember that match correctly, we won. What did the five PPCs say to the face?]
Tell that to my brain dead team. Had we just a small bit more of IQ on my team your PPC's would be useless when im 10M from you, let me know how well you can track a 112 KPH Dragon. Lucky for me, 2 MLAS/Guass/2 SRM6's don't really care about close range. It's a cute build i'll give you that, but practically speaking anything above pubs knows how to deal with that.
I think I understand the term "pubbie rage" now. I solo dropped in an Assault game on Forest Colony with what was obviously a premade of 4 Raven-3Ls who immediately charged through the tunnel towards the enemy base, a somewhat useful Hunchback-4SP, as well as an Atlas-D-DC with Streaks and Machine Guns and a useless Awesome, both of which spent half the match dicking around at our spawn point. After the Ravens got themselves all killed against the heavy enemy team, the hunchback and me were blown up in what amounted to a 2 vs. 8, before the two assaults finally decided to start marching towards the enemy. Needless to say, we lost.
Just goes to show that even with a massive tonnage disparity (3 Atlas' WTF) you can still win the game by playing smart
We ran into you guys later and recognized not a single name. Are you the Bizarro Oosiks?
[Edit: Heh, and if I remember that match correctly, we won. What did the five PPCs say to the face?]
Yeah we couldn't do much that game, we took points and killed two guys and then looked at the scoreboard and saw you guys had killed our entire team
Still I dropped two more of your teams TBT's before you could take me down in my CDA
Delphinidaes on
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I have seen a lot of lights recently who seem to have not realized that they are no longer Rambo, and consequently charge into the enemy team and explode.
Just goes to show that even with a massive tonnage disparity (3 Atlas' WTF) you can still win the game by playing smart
We ran into you guys later and recognized not a single name. Are you the Bizarro Oosiks?
[Edit: Heh, and if I remember that match correctly, we won. What did the five PPCs say to the face?]
Tell that to my brain dead team. Had we just a small bit more of IQ on my team your PPC's would be useless when im 10M from you, let me know how well you can track a 112 KPH Dragon. Lucky for me, 2 MLAS/Guass/2 SRM6's don't really care about close range. It's a cute build i'll give you that, but practically speaking anything above pubs knows how to deal with that.
I can track a 112 kph Dragon just fine. My defense against guys who get in close is to scream like a little girl on Vent and let the Atlases/Hunchbacks handle it.
tl;dr: my dad can beat up your dad, neener neener neener.
Yeah we couldn't do much that game, we took points and killed two guys and then looked at the scoreboard and saw you guys had killed our entire team
Still I dropped two more of your teams TBT's before you could take me down in my CDA
Yeah, we ground up your team's heavier stuff in the middle of the map and then realized you had fast 'mechs remaining while we had slow ones, so we went to sit on cap points while our remaining pubbies trickled in to their doom.
The whole balance of when to fight vs. when to head for a cap point is really hard for pubbies to grasp for some reason.
I'm pretty hopeful that they can figure out a way to balance it better without neutering it.
im kinda torn on ECM. while it can be overpowering at times, but it seems LRMs are still a scourge in mass.
they really just need to make streak srms function as regular srm2s when in the ecm bubble... but we may see rise of the streak cat again. which leads to an argument that streaks need fixed, yadda, yadda... LRMs are now overpowered again, why did ECM get nerfed, yadda, yadda... which takes us down the damage per missile patch, blah blah blah...
I definitely do not like the current binary "LRMs are useless" vs. "Every 'mech on the field is immediately alpha'd" that seems to happen depending on your ECM status. I couldn't tell you what the solution is, but I hope they find one.
The problem with ECM is not one that can be changed with small fixes or singular changes. They need to take that thing back to the shop for a complete overhaul, taking into account ALL connected systems: as missile locks, target acquisition, target broadcasting, TAG, NARC, direct and indirect targeting, BAP - and then come up with a design for information warfare that offers both interesting gameplay choices and is balanced.
From reading that thread, the consensus seems to be that it needs to be a meaningful decision whether or not to fit ECM - right now it's a no-brainer. It also seems agreed that ECM needs a proper counter that is not more ECM, which is the way it is now. The current design results in an "arms race" - more ECM wins. Instead, a rock-paper-scissors approach would make for much more interesting gameplay.
I think LRMs are fine. They are like any other weapon, would you toe to toe a splatcat or PPC stalker? No, you adjust your strategy accordingly. I think people don't do this enough with LRMs and just call them OP. I don't think they are OP they are about right.
ECM needs to be slightly tweaked, but streaks need to be fixed.
I really feel like the functions that ECM currently has need to be split up into separate modules. This could make chassis differentiation more interesting as well. If there was ECM function A, B, and C, you could specify which functions could be mounted on which chassis. You could put ECM on more mechs without allowing them to perform all the ECM functions.
I'm of a mind that damage per missile for both S and LRMs should probably be reduced.
As far as ECM is concerned, it would be a decent idea IMO to have BAP counter in some way.
Removing the ECM counter-mode stopping all disrupt was probably the dumbest move they made when trying to balance it.
Aside from ECM, the missile systems at a point now where something really needs to be done to curb their effectiveness and use in general. Not real happy with the current situation where your mech can go from "fine" to "critical" in a single salvo of a weapon that homes in on you thanks to ridiculous LRM boat builds. LRM boats should never be a legit thing, simply because the weapon system is inherently lopsided in favor of ease of use compared to damage. SRMs have the same issue, just at super-close range instead of super-long range: too much effectiveness, too little drawback. And streaks are either totally useless or OP, depending on whether or not you're carrying ECM.
Proportional effectiveness of AMS would go a long way to helping combat the current flood of LRM mechs. Make it so a big, fat glob or huge streams of missiles get shot down much more readily than smaller ones and you'll immediately see people having to regulate their fire or switch to smaller LRM launchers and more balanced loadouts. When a single-shot of LRM5 is able to hit a target and lose only a missile or two and a triple set of LRM15s loses 30-40 missiles from one salvo (while firing a single 20-missile salvo would only have 30-40% of the missiles shot down), then we'd start seeing some sanity with the current LRM craziness.
I am not sold on vanilla SRMs being overpowered. The worst case is probably the SRM catapult (i.e. "splatcat") and even those are typically manageable due to the vulnerability of the weapon mounts.
While boating SRMs should probably be discouraged, I don't see anything wrong with four on an Awesome or 3 on an Atlas (or even Centurion).
I think LRMs are fine. They are like any other weapon, would you toe to toe a splatcat or PPC stalker? No, you adjust your strategy accordingly. I think people don't do this enough with LRMs and just call them OP. I don't think they are OP they are about right.
ECM needs to be slightly tweaked, but streaks need to be fixed.
I disagree, most of the maps don't have enough cover spread over the avenues of attack to cover you from LRM fire, so you are generally forced to go down one path or get shat on by LRM's, so you can effectively be funneled into a killbox if the enemy team has one/two smart LRM boats.
+1
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
I think LRMs are fine. They are like any other weapon, would you toe to toe a splatcat or PPC stalker? No, you adjust your strategy accordingly. I think people don't do this enough with LRMs and just call them OP. I don't think they are OP they are about right.
ECM needs to be slightly tweaked, but streaks need to be fixed.
The problem with LRMs is that they're too binary.
If you have ECM and/or good cover, you don't give two shits about LRMs. (See: Most of River City)
If you don't have ECM and are in an open spot or you're in a brawl and have to move around to not die, kiss your ass goodbye from LRMs. (See: Alpine once actual fighting starts, most of Caustic, etc)
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Well, the splatcat is simply an OP build as it is; I don't get why PGI has such a hard time balancing the Cat variants decently. Drop a pair of the missile hardpoints, put a pair of energy hardpoints in the nose, and immediately you go from something that's broken to something vastly more reasonable.
But after spending so much time with SRMs on the Sprinturion, I definitely think that SRMs are too strong. An SRM6 deals as much damage as a gauss rifle with a fraction of the weight, crit space, or risk of losing the weapon to crit damage. 6 SRMs has the same damage output as 6 gauss rifles for less weight than a single gauss rifle, which is an insane amount of damage to spread over even 3-4 panels at once. Even "just" three SRMs is the equivalent of 3 gauss rifles at close ranges. And yes, SRM range encourages people to stand back and fight, but the weight of SRMs means that the user can slap on a bigass engine to carry that huge damage payload to a target without much difficulty. Not to mention that SRMs get a crit chance for every missile, as opposed to the once crit chance a gauss rifle gets, which is also crazy.
Either SRMs need a drop in damage or they need a severe cut in ammo per ton. If they became something people couldn't use almost exclusively just because of ammo concerns, that would be a big step towards balance. Getting obliterated by one or two 3-6 shot salvos of SRM6 is just not fun, especially when PGI has gone to such great lengths to try and keep combat from resolving too quickly to be enjoyed. When I can take a medium mech with full armor, take one huge SRM salvo in the back and immediately go into critical damage, turn around to face the enemy, and then he obliterates my front armor and kills me anyway with only one more salvo, that's just not good balance. Part of it is the splatcat, but if SRMs weren't OP, then the splatcat couldn't be OP either.
You seem not to understand how crits work. SRMs are weak at critting; getting many individual chances at a crit is worse than one 15-damage chance. An individual crit doesn't automatically destroy a component--applying enough damage (through one large crit or several smaller ones) does. A 15-damage SRM salvo will spread its (likely several) crits across whatever is in the target location, and is unlikely to destroy anything outright. A single Gauss slug has a 42% chance to score a crit, but if it does it will immediately destroy anything short of an AC/20 (which currently has 18 hp).
Regarding your general argument: if you nerf SRMs so that the splatcat is balanced, they'll be too weak to be worth using in anything else. The Catapult has a bad hardpoint layout and has been a walking balance problem across several of its variants from the start.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
You seem not to understand how crits work. SRMs are weak at critting; getting many individual chances at a crit is worse than one 15-damage chance. An individual crit doesn't automatically destroy a component--applying enough damage (through one large crit or several smaller ones) does. A 15-damage SRM salvo will spread its (likely several) crits across whatever is in the target location, and is unlikely to destroy anything outright. A single Gauss slug has a 42% chance to score a crit, but if it does it will immediately destroy anything short of an AC/20 (which currently has 18 hp).
MATH. Yeah, it's likely that crits aren't working the way I think, then.
Regarding your general argument: if you nerf SRMs so that the splatcat is balanced, they'll be too weak to be worth using in anything else. The Catapult has a bad hardpoint layout and has been a walking balance problem across several of its variants from the start.
It's not a matter of balancing the splatcat, it's a matter of balancing the weapon system. Nobody gripes about the Lunchback with a shitload of MLASes because MLASes are balanced; just having a ton of them is not enough to make them really, really good. Conversely, SRMs start at "very powerful" and go way, way up from there as you stack them. They more or less violate the current system where something is light and does damage over time or something is big and heavy and does a bunch of damage at once; those two extremes, aside from the stupid K2 nonsense with big ballistic weapons, do a whole lot in preventing anybody from taking a bunch of something really heavy to deal a huge pinpoint alpha or in keeping somebody from obliterating you in a split-second with a bunch of light weapons.
SRMs, on the other hand, are small, light, extremely powerful, deal all their damage at once, and run very cool for all that damage. The only thing they don't have is range, but they allow SRM-heavy users to go very fast with a very powerful armament anyway thanks to the enormous weight savings. Unless the SRM user is very bad or very unlucky, using their excess speed to close to brawling range isn't particularly challenging.
SRMs being powerful made sense when the code made them harder to hit with, but now it's feasible to hit anything so they've got way too much of an edge.
The game needs something to punish long-range builds that get into a fight with a short-range 'mech. A few ranged weapons are already limited at close range (PPCs and LRMs), but others, like the absurdly popular large laser or the Gauss, are not. SRMs currently fill this niche as they are both efficient and powerful.
If your proposed SRM nerf went through, what reason would I have to keep my quad LLAS heavy out of melee range? Hardpoint limits prevent boating enough small lasers or medium lasers to fill the niche that SRMs currently fill. LLAS are more heat efficient than MLAS, have better range, better hardpoint efficiency, and only slightly worse weight efficiency. And again, you can't stack enough MLAS together to create anything substantially more damaging than quad LLAS to begin with.
You have to pay for that range somehow, and unless you want to slap a minimum range on everything (or worsen the efficiency of current long-range weapons like the LLAS or Gauss), that payment is going to come in the form of a vulnerability to something else that is more efficient at short range. Currently this niche is filled by SRMs.
The game needs something to punish long-range builds that get into a fight with a short-range 'mech. A few ranged weapons are already limited at close range (PPCs and LRMs), but others, like the absurdly popular large laser or the Gauss, are not. SRMs currently fill this niche as they are both efficient and powerful.
If your proposed SRM nerf went through, what reason would I have to keep my quad LLAS heavy out of melee range? Hardpoint limits prevent boating enough small lasers or medium lasers to fill the niche that SRMs currently fill. LLAS are more heat efficient than MLAS, have better range, better hardpoint efficiency, and only slightly worse weight efficiency. And again, you can't stack enough MLAS together to create anything substantially more damaging than quad LLAS to begin with.
You have to pay for that range somehow, and unless you want to slap a minimum range on everything (or worsen the efficiency of current long-range weapons like the LLAS or Gauss), that payment is going to come in the form of a vulnerability to something else that is more efficient at short range. Currently this niche is filled by SRMs.
My gripe is that SRMs shouldn't be the go-to weapon for brawling range, which is the way they are now. A stack of SRMs completely outdamages a pair of AC/20s, which are also intended for brawling. Even just two SRM6s outdamages an AC/20 by a wide margin, even though an AC/20 requires some serious sacrifices to fit. Much like MLASes are the workhorse weapon for everything, SRMs shouldn't be more than the workhorse weapon for brawling. Instead, they've got everything beat at the ranges the vast majority of combat in the game takes place at.
Not saying SRMs need to be crippled, but they definitely need some downward adjustment. Considering that ballistic weapons have very limited ammo-per-ton and missiles weapons have very generous ammo-per-ton (all ballistic weapons have only 150 damage per ton of ammo, while SRMs have 250 damage per ton), I think that simply adjusting that ammo count down to 60 missiles per ton (for 150 damage per ton) wouldn't be unreasonable at all (which would be the fix I would like to see). Then SRM mechs have to be just as concerned with their ammo as ballistic brawlers, which is currently not the case at all. A Dakkaphract has to be pretty dang careful with its shots to not run out of ammo and still be effective, whereas SRM mechs don't even have to worry about it.
If not that, then some sort of adjustment so that the combination of per-shot damage of SRMs and ammo per-ton is equivalent to ballistic weapon damage per ton, not a ludicrous 40% higher. I understand why we have that situation right this moment (because of the holdover from the closed beta of making SRMs combat effective), but SRMs are definitely not balanced as-is and need some tweaking.
There is no way these weapons are ever going to be balanced for your liking. LRM boats and snipers are dominant, unless you can get in cover. SRM boats are dominant unless you can kill them in the open. And without knowing just what your enemy is carrying, you dont know if you want to be engaging them from short range in cover, or get on top of the hill and kill them as they try to charge and close in on you.
This is where effective scouting should be coming in, but other than alpine/caustic the maps are so cramped and bogged with cover, there is no way for the scouts to get a clear view and report back without sniffing the enemy heatsink exhaust. And even that requires scouts that want to just spot and then report back, and not try to solo the enemy team by abusing lagshield, ECM, and lack of collision.
MWO: Adamski
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
The game needs something to punish long-range builds that get into a fight with a short-range 'mech. A few ranged weapons are already limited at close range (PPCs and LRMs), but others, like the absurdly popular large laser or the Gauss, are not. SRMs currently fill this niche as they are both efficient and powerful.
If your proposed SRM nerf went through, what reason would I have to keep my quad LLAS heavy out of melee range? Hardpoint limits prevent boating enough small lasers or medium lasers to fill the niche that SRMs currently fill. LLAS are more heat efficient than MLAS, have better range, better hardpoint efficiency, and only slightly worse weight efficiency. And again, you can't stack enough MLAS together to create anything substantially more damaging than quad LLAS to begin with.
You have to pay for that range somehow, and unless you want to slap a minimum range on everything (or worsen the efficiency of current long-range weapons like the LLAS or Gauss), that payment is going to come in the form of a vulnerability to something else that is more efficient at short range. Currently this niche is filled by SRMs.
My gripe is that SRMs shouldn't be the go-to weapon for brawling range, which is the way they are now. A stack of SRMs completely outdamages a pair of AC/20s, which are also intended for brawling. Even just two SRM6s outdamages an AC/20 by a wide margin, even though an AC/20 requires some serious sacrifices to fit. Much like MLASes are the workhorse weapon for everything, SRMs shouldn't be more than the workhorse weapon for brawling. Instead, they've got everything beat at the ranges the vast majority of combat in the game takes place at.
Not saying SRMs need to be crippled, but they definitely need some downward adjustment. Considering that ballistic weapons have very limited ammo-per-ton and missiles weapons have very generous ammo-per-ton (all ballistic weapons have only 150 damage per ton of ammo, while SRMs have 250 damage per ton), I think that simply adjusting that ammo count down to 60 missiles per ton (for 150 damage per ton) wouldn't be unreasonable at all (which would be the fix I would like to see). Then SRM mechs have to be just as concerned with their ammo as ballistic brawlers, which is currently not the case at all. A Dakkaphract has to be pretty dang careful with its shots to not run out of ammo and still be effective, whereas SRM mechs don't even have to worry about it.
If not that, then some sort of adjustment so that the combination of per-shot damage of SRMs and ammo per-ton is equivalent to ballistic weapon damage per ton, not a ludicrous 40% higher. I understand why we have that situation right this moment (because of the holdover from the closed beta of making SRMs combat effective), but SRMs are definitely not balanced as-is and need some tweaking.
Well...the AC/20 still has full effectiveness to 270 and is obviously usable to quite a bit further if you want to. The SRM are completely ineffective past 270 and their true effective range is only about 125 or so, anything beyond that you'll splash the entire mech if you hit anything at all.
SRMs probably need a bit of tuning, but it's a specialist weapon that happens to work very well on the smaller maps. By the same token, SRM boats on Alpine tend to completely do fuck all and SRM boats on Caustic can potentially do nothing also.
The game needs something to punish long-range builds that get into a fight with a short-range 'mech. A few ranged weapons are already limited at close range (PPCs and LRMs), but others, like the absurdly popular large laser or the Gauss, are not. SRMs currently fill this niche as they are both efficient and powerful.
If your proposed SRM nerf went through, what reason would I have to keep my quad LLAS heavy out of melee range? Hardpoint limits prevent boating enough small lasers or medium lasers to fill the niche that SRMs currently fill. LLAS are more heat efficient than MLAS, have better range, better hardpoint efficiency, and only slightly worse weight efficiency. And again, you can't stack enough MLAS together to create anything substantially more damaging than quad LLAS to begin with.
You have to pay for that range somehow, and unless you want to slap a minimum range on everything (or worsen the efficiency of current long-range weapons like the LLAS or Gauss), that payment is going to come in the form of a vulnerability to something else that is more efficient at short range. Currently this niche is filled by SRMs.
My gripe is that SRMs shouldn't be the go-to weapon for brawling range, which is the way they are now. A stack of SRMs completely outdamages a pair of AC/20s, which are also intended for brawling. Even just two SRM6s outdamages an AC/20 by a wide margin, even though an AC/20 requires some serious sacrifices to fit. Much like MLASes are the workhorse weapon for everything, SRMs shouldn't be more than the workhorse weapon for brawling. Instead, they've got everything beat at the ranges the vast majority of combat in the game takes place at.
What should be the go-to weapon for brawling range? The AC/20's role is alpha concentrated on one location--plus, it retains half effectiveness out to 500m. SRMs stop dead at 270. Besides, you can't really expect every brawler to carry an AC/20. What weapon besides SRMs would you suggest? Remember, it has to better at closer-range combat than a LLAS.
Not saying SRMs need to be crippled, but they definitely need some downward adjustment. Considering that ballistic weapons have very limited ammo-per-ton and missiles weapons have very generous ammo-per-ton (all ballistic weapons have only 150 damage per ton of ammo, while SRMs have 250 damage per ton), I think that simply adjusting that ammo count down to 60 missiles per ton (for 150 damage per ton) wouldn't be unreasonable at all (which would be the fix I would like to see). Then SRM mechs have to be just as concerned with their ammo as ballistic brawlers, which is currently not the case at all. A Dakkaphract has to be pretty dang careful with its shots to not run out of ammo and still be effective, whereas SRM mechs don't even have to worry about it.
SRMs get more ammo per ton because, unlike an AC shell, the SRM doesn't go exactly where you point it. You are not going to hit with all of them, even in a well-aimed volley, unless you are at point-blank range. I've gone entire games without missing an AC/20 shot.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
SRMs get more ammo per ton because, unlike an AC shell, the SRM doesn't go exactly where you point it. You are not going to hit with all of them, even in a well-aimed volley, unless you are at point-blank range. I've gone entire games without missing an AC/20 shot.
Which is understandable, but how many times have you been one-shotted by an AC/20? I've been one-shotted by SRMs in varying circumstances plenty, which is just a huge pain in the ass because MWO isn't THAT type of game. I hate AC/20 Cats, but they've never, ever killed me in a single shot.
What should be the go-to weapon for brawling range? The AC/20's role is alpha concentrated on one location--plus, it retains half effectiveness out to 500m. SRMs stop dead at 270. Besides, you can't really expect every brawler to carry an AC/20. What weapon besides SRMs would you suggest? Remember, it has to better at closer-range combat than a LLAS.
The missile weapons are the only ones that have had their damage stats drastically increased due to the doubled armor values. That worked in the beginning because it used to be harder to hit with them; now it's pretty dang easy to be a great shot with SRMs, but they still have the over-inflated damage value. Their capacity to deal a big, fat wad of damage puts everything else to shame, and fits poorly with the rest of the game where careful, consistent aim is what puts you ahead. Even with scattering, putting 30-something damage on a panel with triple SRM6s isn't hard
What about adjusting their fire rate up and their damage value down to give them the same DPS? Or changing up the fire pattern so they aren't just wads of death? Or a bunch of other possibilities? I don't object to SRMs being good, I just don't like the way they are good, i.e., dealing a huge amount of damage in an extremely short time for little weight, heat, or crit space. There are ways to adjust their DPS payload so it isn't just huge chunks of damage that annihilate targets when all the other weapons are largely balanced to make combat take some time.
SRMs probably need a bit of tuning, but it's a specialist weapon that happens to work very well on the smaller maps. By the same token, SRM boats on Alpine tend to completely do fuck all and SRM boats on Caustic can potentially do nothing also.
They might sometimes do nothing on those maps. Alternatively, they can very easily get lucky enough to be missed until within SRM range, at which point they're as nasty as ever. I regularly tear the living hell out of mechs on Alpine with my Sprinturion, and its longest-range weapons are a pair of MPLASes. It's very easy to lose track of targets on those maps and then end up surprised by a mech on the other side of a ridge. And in general, I can't even keep track any more of how many Commandos/Spiders I've one-shotted with an alpha strike thanks to crazy powerful SRMs, which is just not fun at all for those players and there's nothing they can do about it except be lucky enough to not get shot.
One of the things that underlines how unbalanced SRMs are is the fact that, ignoring the current issue of streaks on ECM lights, a light with SRMs is going to wreck the hell out of a light with energy or ballistic weapons. The damage dump of SRMs is simply too great to allow for non-missile mechs to compete in the damage department, and you can't evade fast enough to avoid getting blasted by a good shot. A good Spider with triple MPLASes is meat for a good Commando with a pair of SRM4s and the two of them going at similar speeds; the Spider just can't deal enough damage quickly enough, whereas the Commando can put out the equivalent of an AC/20 hit when he lines up a good shot. There is simply nothing the Spider can equip to make it able to counter the Commando in combat, because it can't take a light, high-damage, high-DPS weapon like the Commando can.
Take any mech that can carry a load of SRMs and put it against an equivalent mech without them; the majority of the time, the SRM mech will come out ahead by a wide margin. It's basically silly not to take SRMs over anything else if you have the hardpoints, which isn't healthy balance for the game.
EDIT: I only mention the SRM issue because I see it as one of the "worst" balance issues right now, but it's only REALLY REALLY bad with splatcats. It's not something I see as game-quittingly horrible like the Age of Streaks was.
Ninja Snarl P on
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SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
SRMs probably need a bit of tuning, but it's a specialist weapon that happens to work very well on the smaller maps. By the same token, SRM boats on Alpine tend to completely do fuck all and SRM boats on Caustic can potentially do nothing also.
They might sometimes do nothing on those maps. Alternatively, they can very easily get lucky enough to be missed until within SRM range, at which point they're as nasty as ever. I regularly tear the living hell out of mechs on Alpine with my Sprinturion, and its longest-range weapons are a pair of MPLASes. It's very easy to lose track of targets on those maps and then end up surprised by a mech on the other side of a ridge. And in general, I can't even keep track any more of how many Commandos/Spiders I've one-shotted with an alpha strike thanks to crazy powerful SRMs, which is just not fun at all for those players and there's nothing they can do about it except be lucky enough to not get shot.
I would not call that luck, I would call that lack of skill on the enemy team or abundance of skill on the part of the SRM boating pilot. (Or perhaps lack of scouting.)
When I'm playing with my group, I don't think we are complaining about SRMs much. If an SRM heavy boat shows up, it gets called out, excepting massive ECM abuse, and is focused early on in fights.
SRMs are probably a hair powerful, but I've been on the opposite side of them enough recently to where I wasn't particularly threatened to say they're probably closer to balanced in more ways than you are giving them credit for. There's only a couple recent matches with SRMs dominating and that's due to me bloodlusting and charging into a brawl to try and rescue someone rather than just accepting they were going to die and sitting back.
Welcome pilot to the new Mechwarrior Online OP. I understand that while some of you are seasoned veterans who know better, a decent lot of you think a futuristic, sci-fi, guided missile should be able to go further than a kilometer. Well rookie, I'm glad you're here because in this thread, common sense is lostech.
Anyhoo:
Aside from ECM, the missile systems at a point now where something really needs to be done to curb their effectiveness and use in general. Not real happy with the current situation where your mech can go from "fine" to "critical" in a single salvo of a weapon that homes in on you thanks to ridiculous LRM boat builds. LRM boats should never be a legit thing, simply because the weapon system is inherently lopsided in favor of ease of use compared to damage. SRMs have the same issue, just at super-close range instead of super-long range: too much effectiveness, too little drawback. And streaks are either totally useless or OP, depending on whether or not you're carrying ECM.
The solution is to do the exact same thing Mechwarrior 4 did: In MW4, missiles operate much like they do in real life, they don't launch all at once, they stream out. LRM 20s, for instace, shoot 4 individual LRM 5 shots while SRMs shoot out in a stream. MW4's non-streak SRMs are kinda awful, but the solution there is that instead of making them shoot out one by one just have them go out in groups of two. This causes them to go from being one gigantic alpha that obliterates whatever they hit to being far more manageable while still being dangerous. You don't want to sit in the open because you'll still take buckets of damage but you will at least have time to get to cover or at least twist around and spread the damage out. Meanwhile SRMs are still very potent weapons but aren't the most powerful shotgun ever that makes ballistics look retarded.
I've been advocating MWO rejiggering their missiles to work like this for a while and for some reason I never see anyone else bring it up.
TOGSolid on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I would not call that luck, I would call that lack of skill on the enemy team or abundance of skill on the part of the SRM boating pilot. (Or perhaps lack of scouting.)
I dunno how much you play faster mechs, but its possible to be amazingly tough to find on Alpine when flanking the enemy, and it isn't even hard. I've gone up to the big peak peak, scanned the whole map in thermal and especially certain areas favored by lights, and still missed the pair of lights that ran past me to cap our base. Alpine is actually so big that it's possible to lose mechs; the upcoming changes to thermal vision will make that problem a lot worse, too, since thermal won't work across the map any longer. It's entirely possible for someone to get lucky if you don't have a scout that thoroughly and exhaustively searches on Alpine, which is pretty dull. And Caustic isn't nearly big enough to prevent splatcats from getting into range unless they let themselves get singled out ahead of time; the crater and ridgelines on Caustic give plenty of cover for something like a splatcat to close swiftly under most circumstances.
I've been advocating MWO rejiggering their missiles to work like this for a while and for some reason I never see anyone else bring it up.
Probably because the current AMS system would eat those LRM streams for breakfast. Not saying it's a bad idea, but they'd have to fix both systems at once or else LRMs would become useless in the presence of ECM and AMS, which would basically be all the time.
Dang, those new vision modes do look way better. Night vision is entirely superfluous compared to thermal vision, though I will miss using thermal to recognize enemies at long-distance.
What is the setting for pop-in anyway? I think that 700m is like where it starts actually rendering mechs in normal mode for me. I definitely can't see mechs as far away as the alpine picture they showed
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A 5-damage weapon is logically the next best thing to a 10-damage weapon, though, so I can see why you'd experience a lot of criticals using that as well.
Just doesn't make any sense for this to be in the year 3050 and the mechs with a shitload of dumbfire rockets are the ones best at killing anything up close because they're best at any kind of destruction.
This a familiar, dangerous path.
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[Edit: Heh, and if I remember that match correctly, we won. What did the five PPCs say to the face?]
Tell that to my brain dead team. Had we just a small bit more of IQ on my team your PPC's would be useless when im 10M from you, let me know how well you can track a 112 KPH Dragon. Lucky for me, 2 MLAS/Guass/2 SRM6's don't really care about close range. It's a cute build i'll give you that, but practically speaking anything above pubs knows how to deal with that.
Unreal Engine 4 Developers Community.
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Yeah we couldn't do much that game, we took points and killed two guys and then looked at the scoreboard and saw you guys had killed our entire team
Still I dropped two more of your teams TBT's before you could take me down in my CDA
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I'm pretty hopeful that they can figure out a way to balance it better without neutering it.
tl;dr: my dad can beat up your dad, neener neener neener.
Yeah, we ground up your team's heavier stuff in the middle of the map and then realized you had fast 'mechs remaining while we had slow ones, so we went to sit on cap points while our remaining pubbies trickled in to their doom.
The whole balance of when to fight vs. when to head for a cap point is really hard for pubbies to grasp for some reason.
im kinda torn on ECM. while it can be overpowering at times, but it seems LRMs are still a scourge in mass.
they really just need to make streak srms function as regular srm2s when in the ecm bubble... but we may see rise of the streak cat again. which leads to an argument that streaks need fixed, yadda, yadda... LRMs are now overpowered again, why did ECM get nerfed, yadda, yadda... which takes us down the damage per missile patch, blah blah blah...
ugh.
From reading that thread, the consensus seems to be that it needs to be a meaningful decision whether or not to fit ECM - right now it's a no-brainer. It also seems agreed that ECM needs a proper counter that is not more ECM, which is the way it is now. The current design results in an "arms race" - more ECM wins. Instead, a rock-paper-scissors approach would make for much more interesting gameplay.
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I'm working on a cute little video game! Here's a link for you.
ECM needs to be slightly tweaked, but streaks need to be fixed.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
As far as ECM is concerned, it would be a decent idea IMO to have BAP counter in some way.
Removing the ECM counter-mode stopping all disrupt was probably the dumbest move they made when trying to balance it.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
Aside from ECM, the missile systems at a point now where something really needs to be done to curb their effectiveness and use in general. Not real happy with the current situation where your mech can go from "fine" to "critical" in a single salvo of a weapon that homes in on you thanks to ridiculous LRM boat builds. LRM boats should never be a legit thing, simply because the weapon system is inherently lopsided in favor of ease of use compared to damage. SRMs have the same issue, just at super-close range instead of super-long range: too much effectiveness, too little drawback. And streaks are either totally useless or OP, depending on whether or not you're carrying ECM.
Proportional effectiveness of AMS would go a long way to helping combat the current flood of LRM mechs. Make it so a big, fat glob or huge streams of missiles get shot down much more readily than smaller ones and you'll immediately see people having to regulate their fire or switch to smaller LRM launchers and more balanced loadouts. When a single-shot of LRM5 is able to hit a target and lose only a missile or two and a triple set of LRM15s loses 30-40 missiles from one salvo (while firing a single 20-missile salvo would only have 30-40% of the missiles shot down), then we'd start seeing some sanity with the current LRM craziness.
While boating SRMs should probably be discouraged, I don't see anything wrong with four on an Awesome or 3 on an Atlas (or even Centurion).
I disagree, most of the maps don't have enough cover spread over the avenues of attack to cover you from LRM fire, so you are generally forced to go down one path or get shat on by LRM's, so you can effectively be funneled into a killbox if the enemy team has one/two smart LRM boats.
If you have ECM and/or good cover, you don't give two shits about LRMs. (See: Most of River City)
If you don't have ECM and are in an open spot or you're in a brawl and have to move around to not die, kiss your ass goodbye from LRMs. (See: Alpine once actual fighting starts, most of Caustic, etc)
But after spending so much time with SRMs on the Sprinturion, I definitely think that SRMs are too strong. An SRM6 deals as much damage as a gauss rifle with a fraction of the weight, crit space, or risk of losing the weapon to crit damage. 6 SRMs has the same damage output as 6 gauss rifles for less weight than a single gauss rifle, which is an insane amount of damage to spread over even 3-4 panels at once. Even "just" three SRMs is the equivalent of 3 gauss rifles at close ranges. And yes, SRM range encourages people to stand back and fight, but the weight of SRMs means that the user can slap on a bigass engine to carry that huge damage payload to a target without much difficulty. Not to mention that SRMs get a crit chance for every missile, as opposed to the once crit chance a gauss rifle gets, which is also crazy.
Either SRMs need a drop in damage or they need a severe cut in ammo per ton. If they became something people couldn't use almost exclusively just because of ammo concerns, that would be a big step towards balance. Getting obliterated by one or two 3-6 shot salvos of SRM6 is just not fun, especially when PGI has gone to such great lengths to try and keep combat from resolving too quickly to be enjoyed. When I can take a medium mech with full armor, take one huge SRM salvo in the back and immediately go into critical damage, turn around to face the enemy, and then he obliterates my front armor and kills me anyway with only one more salvo, that's just not good balance. Part of it is the splatcat, but if SRMs weren't OP, then the splatcat couldn't be OP either.
Regarding your general argument: if you nerf SRMs so that the splatcat is balanced, they'll be too weak to be worth using in anything else. The Catapult has a bad hardpoint layout and has been a walking balance problem across several of its variants from the start.
It's not a matter of balancing the splatcat, it's a matter of balancing the weapon system. Nobody gripes about the Lunchback with a shitload of MLASes because MLASes are balanced; just having a ton of them is not enough to make them really, really good. Conversely, SRMs start at "very powerful" and go way, way up from there as you stack them. They more or less violate the current system where something is light and does damage over time or something is big and heavy and does a bunch of damage at once; those two extremes, aside from the stupid K2 nonsense with big ballistic weapons, do a whole lot in preventing anybody from taking a bunch of something really heavy to deal a huge pinpoint alpha or in keeping somebody from obliterating you in a split-second with a bunch of light weapons.
SRMs, on the other hand, are small, light, extremely powerful, deal all their damage at once, and run very cool for all that damage. The only thing they don't have is range, but they allow SRM-heavy users to go very fast with a very powerful armament anyway thanks to the enormous weight savings. Unless the SRM user is very bad or very unlucky, using their excess speed to close to brawling range isn't particularly challenging.
SRMs being powerful made sense when the code made them harder to hit with, but now it's feasible to hit anything so they've got way too much of an edge.
If your proposed SRM nerf went through, what reason would I have to keep my quad LLAS heavy out of melee range? Hardpoint limits prevent boating enough small lasers or medium lasers to fill the niche that SRMs currently fill. LLAS are more heat efficient than MLAS, have better range, better hardpoint efficiency, and only slightly worse weight efficiency. And again, you can't stack enough MLAS together to create anything substantially more damaging than quad LLAS to begin with.
You have to pay for that range somehow, and unless you want to slap a minimum range on everything (or worsen the efficiency of current long-range weapons like the LLAS or Gauss), that payment is going to come in the form of a vulnerability to something else that is more efficient at short range. Currently this niche is filled by SRMs.
My gripe is that SRMs shouldn't be the go-to weapon for brawling range, which is the way they are now. A stack of SRMs completely outdamages a pair of AC/20s, which are also intended for brawling. Even just two SRM6s outdamages an AC/20 by a wide margin, even though an AC/20 requires some serious sacrifices to fit. Much like MLASes are the workhorse weapon for everything, SRMs shouldn't be more than the workhorse weapon for brawling. Instead, they've got everything beat at the ranges the vast majority of combat in the game takes place at.
Not saying SRMs need to be crippled, but they definitely need some downward adjustment. Considering that ballistic weapons have very limited ammo-per-ton and missiles weapons have very generous ammo-per-ton (all ballistic weapons have only 150 damage per ton of ammo, while SRMs have 250 damage per ton), I think that simply adjusting that ammo count down to 60 missiles per ton (for 150 damage per ton) wouldn't be unreasonable at all (which would be the fix I would like to see). Then SRM mechs have to be just as concerned with their ammo as ballistic brawlers, which is currently not the case at all. A Dakkaphract has to be pretty dang careful with its shots to not run out of ammo and still be effective, whereas SRM mechs don't even have to worry about it.
If not that, then some sort of adjustment so that the combination of per-shot damage of SRMs and ammo per-ton is equivalent to ballistic weapon damage per ton, not a ludicrous 40% higher. I understand why we have that situation right this moment (because of the holdover from the closed beta of making SRMs combat effective), but SRMs are definitely not balanced as-is and need some tweaking.
This is where effective scouting should be coming in, but other than alpine/caustic the maps are so cramped and bogged with cover, there is no way for the scouts to get a clear view and report back without sniffing the enemy heatsink exhaust. And even that requires scouts that want to just spot and then report back, and not try to solo the enemy team by abusing lagshield, ECM, and lack of collision.
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SRMs probably need a bit of tuning, but it's a specialist weapon that happens to work very well on the smaller maps. By the same token, SRM boats on Alpine tend to completely do fuck all and SRM boats on Caustic can potentially do nothing also.
SRMs get more ammo per ton because, unlike an AC shell, the SRM doesn't go exactly where you point it. You are not going to hit with all of them, even in a well-aimed volley, unless you are at point-blank range. I've gone entire games without missing an AC/20 shot.
The missile weapons are the only ones that have had their damage stats drastically increased due to the doubled armor values. That worked in the beginning because it used to be harder to hit with them; now it's pretty dang easy to be a great shot with SRMs, but they still have the over-inflated damage value. Their capacity to deal a big, fat wad of damage puts everything else to shame, and fits poorly with the rest of the game where careful, consistent aim is what puts you ahead. Even with scattering, putting 30-something damage on a panel with triple SRM6s isn't hard
What about adjusting their fire rate up and their damage value down to give them the same DPS? Or changing up the fire pattern so they aren't just wads of death? Or a bunch of other possibilities? I don't object to SRMs being good, I just don't like the way they are good, i.e., dealing a huge amount of damage in an extremely short time for little weight, heat, or crit space. There are ways to adjust their DPS payload so it isn't just huge chunks of damage that annihilate targets when all the other weapons are largely balanced to make combat take some time.
They might sometimes do nothing on those maps. Alternatively, they can very easily get lucky enough to be missed until within SRM range, at which point they're as nasty as ever. I regularly tear the living hell out of mechs on Alpine with my Sprinturion, and its longest-range weapons are a pair of MPLASes. It's very easy to lose track of targets on those maps and then end up surprised by a mech on the other side of a ridge. And in general, I can't even keep track any more of how many Commandos/Spiders I've one-shotted with an alpha strike thanks to crazy powerful SRMs, which is just not fun at all for those players and there's nothing they can do about it except be lucky enough to not get shot.
One of the things that underlines how unbalanced SRMs are is the fact that, ignoring the current issue of streaks on ECM lights, a light with SRMs is going to wreck the hell out of a light with energy or ballistic weapons. The damage dump of SRMs is simply too great to allow for non-missile mechs to compete in the damage department, and you can't evade fast enough to avoid getting blasted by a good shot. A good Spider with triple MPLASes is meat for a good Commando with a pair of SRM4s and the two of them going at similar speeds; the Spider just can't deal enough damage quickly enough, whereas the Commando can put out the equivalent of an AC/20 hit when he lines up a good shot. There is simply nothing the Spider can equip to make it able to counter the Commando in combat, because it can't take a light, high-damage, high-DPS weapon like the Commando can.
Take any mech that can carry a load of SRMs and put it against an equivalent mech without them; the majority of the time, the SRM mech will come out ahead by a wide margin. It's basically silly not to take SRMs over anything else if you have the hardpoints, which isn't healthy balance for the game.
EDIT: I only mention the SRM issue because I see it as one of the "worst" balance issues right now, but it's only REALLY REALLY bad with splatcats. It's not something I see as game-quittingly horrible like the Age of Streaks was.
When I'm playing with my group, I don't think we are complaining about SRMs much. If an SRM heavy boat shows up, it gets called out, excepting massive ECM abuse, and is focused early on in fights.
SRMs are probably a hair powerful, but I've been on the opposite side of them enough recently to where I wasn't particularly threatened to say they're probably closer to balanced in more ways than you are giving them credit for. There's only a couple recent matches with SRMs dominating and that's due to me bloodlusting and charging into a brawl to try and rescue someone rather than just accepting they were going to die and sitting back.
From the OP:
Anyhoo: The solution is to do the exact same thing Mechwarrior 4 did: In MW4, missiles operate much like they do in real life, they don't launch all at once, they stream out. LRM 20s, for instace, shoot 4 individual LRM 5 shots while SRMs shoot out in a stream. MW4's non-streak SRMs are kinda awful, but the solution there is that instead of making them shoot out one by one just have them go out in groups of two. This causes them to go from being one gigantic alpha that obliterates whatever they hit to being far more manageable while still being dangerous. You don't want to sit in the open because you'll still take buckets of damage but you will at least have time to get to cover or at least twist around and spread the damage out. Meanwhile SRMs are still very potent weapons but aren't the most powerful shotgun ever that makes ballistics look retarded.
I've been advocating MWO rejiggering their missiles to work like this for a while and for some reason I never see anyone else bring it up.