Posted 09 September 2015 - 09:59 AM

Missiles are the one weapon family that I firmly believe is where MWO took a backwards step from its predecessors.



I still firmly believe that as a whole, the entire way MW4 and the Battletech Firestorm Sim pods handle the Missile family is very supperior to what we have right now in the game.



There was so much depth in the system that was still accessible to the players.



SRM's still dumb fired when you didn't have the reticle over anything, but they allowed for "soft locks" to happen when you fired the weapon system where the reticle scored a direct hit scan hit on triggerpull.



Soft locking allowed SRM's to actually "home in" on their targets, but only corrected their coarse about 30-50 degrees, so at longer ranges, they became more useful, they spread the damage around the mechs more evenly because the spread adjusted when you where soft locked (but still remained tight if you dead fired.)



Streak SRM's where still valid despite soft locking because of the "safe fire" (didn't fire unless you where guaranteed a lock,) and they had infinite turn radius unlike the limited arcs of SRM's that where soft locked.



LRM's still funcitoned similarly to what you see in MWO, but they ALSO had a soft lock option, where if you pulled the trigger when the reticle is over the mech without a hard lock, the missiles would still "seek" the mech as long as you KEPT direct line of sight with the mech. If you broke LOS, your missiles would loose their lock with no chance of getting it back.



Hard locks where only really for a much higher chance of "guarnateed hits" even if the mechs sought cover behind terrain.



NARC's weren't some silly status, they where an actual beacon that attached to the mech. A mech that was narced had a PHYSICAL beacon on a mechs location. (blinked and everything.) It allowed faster hard lock times, and for soft locks, it granted soft locks to LRM's and SRM's with them only needing to have the reticle in the general vacinity of the narc beacon to get a lock, not physically on the model (Think the range you see the lock reticle on LRMs right now, but only for instant trigger pull ONLY when a mech was NARCed.)



ECM prevented hard locks just like in MWO, but the SOFT LOCK option was always there if you had direct line of sight, and if you had the SKILL to aim and fire at the precise moment your reticle is on the mech.



The MWO system for all their missile systems is so dull by comparison.



Small launchers are useless with their current stats, Large launchers are dead weight because of their spread, and the whole system itself while simple is SOO dependent on binary counters that it just makes the entire weapon family dull by comparison.



I REALLY wish they would integrate more of the depth you saw in the missile systems of the MW predecessors. Because right now, its a fairly dull system in comparison, and probably the only spot where I feel MWO has gone backwards in progress from what MW games have done before it.

