Posted 09 January 2014 - 03:22 AM

Increase Clan LRM heat.



Give a 180m min range to Clan LRMS as well, but instead of cutting off damage to zero scale it exponentially from zero to full damage.



Increase the launcher weight.

Keep both varieties of LRMs useful.



Retain the absence of minimum range for Clan LRMs.



Do not break existing builds, i.e. don't touch launcher weights or crit slots.



Try to model differences compatible with BT lore.

LRM firing arcs

Clan LRM launch spread

Clan LRMs can only lock on with direct line of sight and lose lock very quickly.



Clan mechs do not share target info. You can only target enemy mechs in your own sensors' range.



Clan LRMs stagger fire (like suggested for Streaks) to give AMS more time to shoot them down and mechs more time to move to cover. One missile per salvo for LRM5s, two for LRM10s, three for LRM15s, four for LRM20s.

Being underwhelmed by the first concept for Clan LRMs presented by Paul I tried to find a different solution.The main issue brought up about Clan LRMs is that the absence of a minimum range would turn them into big Streak SRM launchers - while weighing considerably less and occupying less crit slots than IS LRMs. Those are valid concerns. Paul proposed three possible fixes:The heat increase is OK. Damage and heat values are two valid and easy tuning dials that are unlikely to break anything. The scaling damage, resembling old PPC mechanics, really puts me off. While it seemed possible to suspense one's disbelieve for a charged particle weapon, I can't grasp how a missile should do increasing damage the longer it flies. The payload stays the same. An explosion is an explosion. Yes, game mechanics are not real-life physics and they don't need to be, but some resemblence of logic would be nice - atleast for me personally. Finally, increasing the launcher weight seems a very problematic suggestion to me. Here we get into the territory of breaking existing standard mech builds. They didn't do that before and that was a good decision.To find a better balancing solution I set a number of design goals for myself:Thus, I came up with the following approach:The IS uses LRMs for direct and more importantly for indirect long range fire support. Clanners on the other hand favor honorable one-on-one combat (Zellbrigen). They also have a dislike for wastefulness which indirect fire undoubtedly provokes. My first balance suggestion would thus be to give Clan LRMs a much more shallow flight path which would make them close to useless for indirect fire. The illustration shows launch angles of 60° for IS vs. 30° for Clan. Those values are arbitrary and of course subject to testing and balancing.To avoid clan LRMs to be usable in a Streak SRM fashion without giving them a hard or soft minimum range my idea is to have them spread out (a lot) immediately after launch and converge to the level of IS LRMs at the min range of IS LRMs (180m). This would have a very similar effect to the damage scaling Paul proposed without individal missiles magically doing less damage before reaching 180m. The illustration shows a top down view comparison of the outer envelopes of LRM groups fired by each type of launcher. The Clan launcher fires its missiles at a maximum deflection of 45° to each side producing a 90° cone of fire that converges to the same missile grouping we currently have on IS LRMs launchers 180m out. Again the exact spread would have to be tuned and tested.I think combining these two mechanics with heat and damage tuning where necessary would create two distinct useful LRM systems that offer balanced gameplay while retaining Battletech flavor.[Edit:]Other ideas are coming up in this thread and elswhere that could be combined with these suggestions. I'll list them here:[Edit:]More good ideas

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 09 January 2014 - 09:26 PM, said:



To go along with the firing arc and spread behaviors you suggest, what if cLRMs had a faster movement speed but lower tracking capability? It would lessen the impact of defending AMS a bit, but make cover and maneuver more effective against them, while also promoting the flavor of cLRMs being intended more for straight-up fighting rather than mid-long fire support.



Also, I sort of like the idea of reducing their maximum range by 180m. This gives IS LRMs an edge at extreme ranges to compensate for cLRMs having no minimum. LRMs would still go to 1000m while cLRMs would air burst at 820m.





Edited by FiveDigits, 13 January 2014 - 11:56 PM.