I dunno. The only instance of teamkilling I've witnessed was a Commando lag-colliding with a Jenner and exploding the Jenner. I was driving the Commando. Whups. But as for botting? Bigger problem. Sure, a lot of afks and disconnects are system crashes, but there are names you see over and over, spawning in and either immediately disconnecting or overheating and exploding. In fact, the bots are getting more aggressive. One of those guys I recognize (hell, why not say the name of the account here? -- Kevin Anchor) I see every couple of days. Used to be, he just spawned in and discoed .Now he spawns in, fires off and overheats, and then to add insult to injury the bot spams out the url to purchase and download the bot from before disconnecting.
LRMs have never in any MW game had the kind of projectile velocity that would make me feel comfortable trying to dumbfire them.
Do we have a Steam group for this game, by any chance? I've just jumped in, and it would be great to play with you guys sometime. :)
Goddammit. I keep coming back to this game after patches because I really want to like it, but I need to admit that the game just kind of sucks. In large part because their netcode appears to be brutally incompetent compared to any other game I can play, the matchmaking is still retarded and I've had more 8-0 stomps than ever before, and the maps are crappy and boring, which is especially noticable when there's only like three of the goddamn things. I have also had this Kevin Anchor guy pop up on my team a couple of times, and he just immediately self-destructs at the start of the match.
I play 2 or 3 games every patch and have similar experiences. I want to like it because, fucking a, mechwarrior, but it just doesn't deliver.
Yeah, I keep reading this thread, and I do like the idea of being able to fiddle with mechs and customization. But, wow bleah. For some reason after a couple of games, my framerate goes to shit. I also had my UI get stuck in the overloaded state, even though i wasn't, and could run around and fire. The new voice stuff is okay, it doesn't add any new information, so I mostly found it just annoying, like, "target acquired" is the most unnecessary addition. They're still way behind on giving the player decent information, too often I feel like I shoot someone, and I don't know if the game even recorded the hit or not. The paperdoll is definitely not descriptive enough, and the shades of orange thing is awful. I'd also love a way to just turn off the extraneous cockpit UI, heck, they could even keep the actual cockpit, just turn off the half on the screen useless HUD info.
Machine guns are worse than nothing. They do almost zero damage, only do that damage at point-blank range, and their ammo is a deathtrap. More armor or another heatsink would almost certainly be a better use for that weight.
I was teamkilled last night when I ran my near-death Jenner between an enemy and a buddy who was plinking away with two machineguns. So there you go, they're not completely worthless after all.
The framerate thing stems from a memory leak I suspect, and seems to hit most players if you play for long enough straight. Takes quite a few matches for my machine to hit it, but if you have less ram or a smaller gpu it might hit you earlier. Sucks when it happens, but restarting the client from time to time prevents it. Makes sense to me that it's hard to read opposing damage, and I like that they don't simply list armor left as a number. You can generally tell if you hit because their armor readout will flash (less helpful if other people are shooting at the same moment), and from the graphical effect (laser burns, ballistic sparks, etc). And yeah the only worthwhile voice comments are for damage taken, missile lock, high heat, and low ammo. The others are dubious.
Armour maxed. I would just put in two more tons of ammo if anything. However what I did instead is port the fit over to the CN9-AL instead, where I put 2 medium lasers in the arm. Works even better!
The problem being that, because of the wonky netcode, those graphical effects are unreliable. I'd love to see some more debug/numbers spew just to ensure that shit is actually working as expected.
Ah, right. Good point. The armor readout flashes are definitely more reliable. I've taken to (well, sometimes) spending 1.5 tons on BAP for long range mechs and stacking it with the sensor upgrade module for target readouts over 1000m, just so that I can be sure whether I'm hitting those fuzzy little heat signatures in the disance. Another trick is to use lasers and watch the armor readout flash to judge how much lead you need to give fast targets. You can also use TAG for this, as it turns your crosshairs red when it hits.
It takes 3 machine guns to match the dps of a single small laser, so while it does damage, it's so small that it's worthless. On top of that, your machine gun ammo is just as volatile as LRM or AC ammo, which means when it's hit your mech goes boom. Other weapons you should not use: Flamer: It heats you up more than it heats the enemy up. Small Pulse Laser: It's a big weight increase over a normal small laser for the same damage and heat. Mediums and Larges also have an increase in weight for the same damage and heat as their respective normal lasers, but the weight increase is smaller by percentage. I would advise against all of them but medium and large pulses aren't nearly as bad as the small. PPC: Has a minimum range requirement and does the same damage as an AC10 (I think) and a lot more heat. ER Large Laser: The heat on this thing is really bad. It takes 29 heat sinks to fire a single ERLL continuously without overheating.
The PPC is fine on paper. It's half the weight of an AC/10. I am convinced 90% of the PPC's problems are it's wonky ballistics. Really it should be an instantaneous hitscan weapon. Of course that would make it horrendously good, but it's supposed to be the pinnacle of heavy energy weapons. Maybe just accelerate the projectile to AC/2 speeds (and for god sake fix the weird ballistic convergence problems). Actually I would be happy if they just made it a beam weapon with a very short duration, maybe less than a pulse laser. The projectile speed should logically be close to the speed of light anyway right? Or am I misunderstanding the theory behind particle weapons? That said once you learn to use them PPCs can be very effective.
PPCs kick ass in their niche. Like a ballistic that you're not afraid to spam at long range for fear of burning ammo. I think they're substantially better than AC 10s: - 5 less tons, even before counting ammo. - better range - better shot speed - heat isn't so much of a problem at your preferred range, as you can just duck into cover and cool down for a few seconds. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out, since they're both scheduled for a boost (AC: projectile speed, PPC: EMP effect). I definitely agree about the pulse lasers and don't like any of them, unless maybe I'm really hard up for hardpoints. I don't have enough trouble keeping my beams on people to really benefit from the shorter pulse, and the range loss hurts. ER Large Lasers are interesting and I want to like them, but all that extra heat... recently I do find myself sniping with Large Lasers beyond their 450m range though, so I'm thinking to try them again. With 4 LLs I can sustain a 3rd volley, but it's often moot as even slow targets will typically hide after the second volley, so perhaps 2 volleys of 4x ERLL would be better. Been thinking to try ER PPCs again too. I suspect I won't be happy with either though, as at least half the time you end up well inside of max range. Flamers and Machine Guns? Those may as well not exist they're so bad. Well, outside of kitting your entire team out with Flamer Hunchbacks!
One of the funny things is how much in-game properties change the effectiveness of weapons as compared to tabletop. IS pulse lasers were somewhat dubious, but Clan pulse lasers still had competitive range, and the accuracy bonus was actually huge because your to-hit number was often close to 7. In MW2 I thought pulse lasers were pretty cheesy (even IS pulse lasers, since it wasn't that hard to force a short-range battle if you wanted to), because they were basically the same as regular lasers with a machine gun rate of fire, meaning that putting a large pulse laser on a mech and then stuffing the rest of it full of double heat sinks was a perfectly viable build. To my knowledge, in all subsequent games, they've been pretty awful.
Yeah the to-hit bonus of pulse lasers is not well represented in MWO. I think maybe it would have been better if they had gone more with the traditional description of pulse lasers which is that they are rapid fire weapons, then give pulse lasers higher sustained dps and traditional lasers having high alpha. As it is I feel they have kinda turned the concept of pulse lasers on it's head, making THEM the high alpha weapon. In tabletop the best use of pulse lasers was in conjunction with a targetting computer ;) There were some fairly cheesy clan mech builds that would involve massed pulse lasers with a targetting computer, then just focus firing one section on enemy mechs. Clan tech really was broken in most ways.
I like small pulse, unless they changed the pulse duration, the .5 sec pulse makes it very easy to apply all the damage to one spot and keep moving.
I have to disagree about the pulse lasers. I think they're done pretty well with the to-hit bonus represented via shorter beam duration, so more damage done over a smaller time. It's easier to put more damage on the key sections of a moving mech, and much easier to put more damage on an evasive light mech. If you're only holding your beams on target for half a second before the jenner is around the corner and behind a building, i'd rather have the beams that kick out the damage more quickly.
Sure, all other things being equal shorter beam duration is nice, but pulse lasers simply pay too much for it in tonnage, heat, and range. Take Small Pulse Lasers for example, .5 duration is only marginally easier for me to stick than .75 (and often there is no difference) -- which is just not worth the cost of having 2/3rds the (heat constrained) sustained firepower of Small Lasers, and the SPLs weigh more to boot (typically meaning less heatsinks, and so even less sustained firepower). Medium and Large pulse lasers have a less bad sustained firepower ratio, but instead pay in terms of shorter range as well as beam duration mattering less at longer ranges. Longer range in particular I think is crucial in tighter matches against better players, as the initial "feeling out" phase lasts longer. Moreover if I did have trouble hitting with lasers I'd switch to Streaks rather than Pulse Lasers.
Yeah I mainly only like the medium pulses myself. They are nice if you're on a chassis with limited energy hardpoints and want a little more punch in your hold out weapons against aggressive lights and mediums.
I think large pulse can be worth it also in a similar context of an inefficient weapon used to maximize damage on limited hardpoints. Small pulse lasers though, since they have to stack up against the ubiquitous medium laser, are just utterly worse in all regards.
So I completely forgot about this game for a while. Haven't played in quite some time. I remember reading somewhere that during open beta the founders club members would get their premium subscription time automatically activated or some such, and it would eventually reset. Has that come and gone? If I activate my premium time now, is that it for reals?
My very first game out of the gate with my Raven 3L (switched to standard engine, ripped out the narc and srm 6 and loaded 2 streaks) was a mismatched drop, only 5 on my team... However I ran into not one but two streakapults which died without being able to return fire. Very satisfying. Second game was a massive brawl in which I scored 4 kills. I think I will enjoy ECM.
Wait, ECM is completely blocking SSRM's? Is this intended? ECM should only disrupt artemis, c3 and narc.
ECM is brutal! They'll probably have to tone it down, but for the moment I'm enjoying abusing Streakapults and LRM mechs. Only problem now is that I have to play 2 non-ECM Cicadas to level up my ECM Cicada, and they are nowhere near as effective. Same goes for all Hunchback and Centurion models too, which is sad. I'm surprised anyone even risks playing Streakapults anymore but I still see a bunch of them -- must be frustrating as hell. Seems like if you want to run Streaks you'd better be packing either ECM or TAG.
So from what Jasper said, the lock-on range was reduced to 200m with ECM blocking any lock-ons within 180m of the carrying mech, so basically yes, unless you are capable of completely dictating the range of engagement, your streaks are near-completely blocked.
Well, except that you can use TAG to still get a lock withing 450m (which I've yet to try -- seems pretty difficult to maintain!), or have their ECM blocked with ECCM on your team, which is fairly common. But yeah, those counters aren't reliable and ECM is pretty rude.
The most reliable counter to ECM is ECM. TAG can be used but needs to be fired from outside the ECM radius, so it is not a counter that is useful for streak carriers. ECM is a hard counter to any mech that relies exclusively or mostly on guided weapons. I think this a reasonable nerf to streakapults without having to change the properties of streak or add some additional stacking mechanic like they were hinting at. Now if you want to use your streaks to full effect make sure you have an ECM carrying buddy in counter mode.
Even without the ability to block target lock ECM is too good for 1.5 tons. The only reason I don't put it on all my mechs is because only 4 mech variants are allowed to have it.
I agreed it should weigh more; however it needs to be usable by the lightest mechs so it can't be too prohibitive either. Anyway the chassis limitation serves well enough, I don't think they will depart from what are essentially the canon weight and effects too much. They are talking about extending tag range to 750m which will go a long way towards making tag a more useful counter to ECM. On a tangential subject, it would be cool if they had a 3025 only queue, where all the trial mechs would also queue. That way people who want to avoid the new tech stuff could play in that space, and it would make the new player/trial mech experience slightly less brutal. I like the game as it stands ow but I also miss a bit the 3025 balance where you had to make serious tradeoffs to move fast or to mount a lot of firepower. 3050 tech feels a bit like you need make no real sacrifices.
Yeah... 3025 is a more interesting setting too - a hopeless downward spiral, where ancient high-tech is its own fallen religion, and progress is a glimmer in the rear-view mirror. Looking forward to MW Tactics :)
Do they have any kind of UI confirmation for TAG? I remember trying it once, but wasn't really clear if it was working. Do other people see it on their screens or not? How do they know I've tagged someone? How do I know I need to re-tag someone?
Yup tagged targets have a little crosshair icon over them. Tag lasers need to be continuously aimed at the target, or at least be hitting the target at the time the misiles are hitting the target. Narc beacons last 15 seconds (might have a different icon I cant remember they are pretty useless).
Tag lasers last for a second or two after you hit with them, so you can easily maintain them by continuously sweeping them about so long as you keep LOS.
