EHHHHH LONG TOMS?

[Friedrich Psitalon]

I find myself getting about ten seconds into a Temphage post and then get sick of being sworn and ragepoasted at, and immediately discarding it, despite what content - which might actually be of value - is contained therein.

Am I alone in this?

...and to remain on-topic:

The best suggestions I've seen so far to balance LTOM:

- Thicken base ceilings
- Increase time between shots
- Sharply increase friendly fire penalties
- Weaken LTOM armor
- Strip LTOM radar to sub-standard

All these would retain the LTOM's "finger of god" capability, but make it much harder to actually land it without proper prep: a C3 scouting platform, closeguard, and of course no more "fixed position, remember how the land looks and line it up" base hammering.

We DO NOT want "base LTOM defenses" - the last thing we need is to encourage people to basehuddle further.

[TheANIMAL]

Thickening base ceilings is an arseabout face way of doing things.

Longotms base raping from 1500m is just 1 more bug which needs squashing, not a design or balancing error.

[(TLL)CapperDeluxe]

I would think the damage could be halved or so and still be powerful enough to not appear like a major nerf.  Whereas right now 1 shot takes out a light/medium and 2 takes out heavy/assault, I could see it taking double that number of shots and still be a decent unit without being too overpowered. But obviously its going to be up to the devs to figure out what that balance point is.

As for me I'll just continue to do whatever I can in game to kill people when they take long toms, because its easy cash assuming you can break through the lines or flank it... oh and it helps my team

[Toth]

Would everyone please calm down? Directly to Temphage, please cool it. You keep using hyperbole like "everything" and "all", which is just silly. The LongTom is a new asset that needs some balancing. We will do it, but you can't then go back and whine about aerospace like TBolts and Firebombs to include them in your "everything" when the aerospace have clearly been hurt by the much stronger AA. This is why we have a beta, we can only do so much internally.

Specifically for the Longtom we will be doing the following:

1- Base defense AMS that bring down LongTom shells.
2- Long Toms needing to deploy before firing. This will limit their firing arc and make them even more immobile to incoming harassing forces.
3- Indicators on the map for incoming long tom firing.

Personally I will also look into the armor situation, AC10s taking 3% of the armor sounds wrong, and likely something is messed up in the armor values.

Once again please calm down, we certainly appreciate feedback, but becoming vitriolic about it 1 day after our new release doesn't exactly help when the team creating this is doing it purely as a volunteer effort.

[MaverickOriginal]

Raven + MASC + NARC still seems like a great way to take an LT out.

After I got past the ooo this game is sooo cool. I started getting away from the LRM Boats (Boat = one weapon system) and prefered mechs like the Vulture Prime that had 2x 20LRM, but also had 360degree rotation, ECM, and 2LPL+2MPL.

I would keep my speed at 100% and just keep circling in some ravine. Rarely I would be targeted for destruction. Aircraft might try once, but can't hit a heavy mech going 65km acurately enough. Light and medium mech's would try, but then I'd start walking towards base and obliterate them with the pulse lasers and good armor. My primary role was to stay alive and shoot off 40LRM every 6? seconds towards the friendly NARCs. Decent enough armor and pulse lasers that I could push back SCAT, PUMA, and ULER pushes.

[Kadreal]

Passive use to work decently to deal with Long toms. But now people are pairing up with C3 and BHP up in the field to give the LT MUCH improved spotting potential. You may be 1500 away from the longtom with ECM/passive and still get pegged. Probably because of that raven hiding behind a rock 900M away.

[AlienMind]

Posted by "Defender" on http://www.mektek.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=150115:
"We're also adding in a long-tom artillery tank to stop missile campers cold in their tracks by obliterating them where they camp so sitting in your base like a sissy won't be as viable of a tactic."

I just sat in a long tom.
You, Defender, Sir, as many people told before even seeing that modification, are.. umm... not so smart.

The In-Fighting is much more dynamic and personal now... with MRM's and all.. thanks.. at least if you don't get stopped by some longtom-camping-button-masher-with-sausages-ready-in-his-camper-wagon out of the enemy base.

[SquareSphere }12thVR{]

@ Toth most of us in the non super vocal crowd definitely appreciate the devs and have a firm understanding on what Beta means, so thanks again for all the hard work you guys put in. *hands out pancakes of happiness*

Temp overboard rages at everything he doesn't like, but sometimes in his fury induced posting he has some valid points if you wipe away all the bile.

Personally, I think this mod is really made for league play rather than internet pick up games.  Sure players can still have lots of fun, but to counter the mob/blob mentality it takes a level coordination that isn't normally apparent in said pick up games.

Thanks again for checking the boards to hear all of us air our concerns.

[Friedrich Psitalon]

Dear god, please no with base defenses for Long Tom. Find a hundred other fixes, but don't give people even more reason to never leave the base.

Put HUUUUGE walls up around the base higher than a pop-tarter can go, put a deadening field that weapons can't pass through in either direction, something:

but don't give people another reason to edge out of the hangar just far enough to lob weaponry and not get shot.

All that accomplishes is to give Longtoms a super-secure location to lob rounds at the field from. It's the missile-jump-shoot-drop-behind-the-wall phenomenon with an even more dangerous platform. Too many games already turn into "one side rushing the other side hiding in the base." This just rewards the base-hiders even further.

Anything that encourages people to stay in base more is just a grave, grave mistake. Longtoms need more reasons to move OUT of the base - not stay in them with the added security that they can't be counter-TOMmed.

The rest of the changes, good - that change, horrible.

I like everything else and I like the Longtoms as they are - but my biggest peeve always is and will still be the extreme encouragement of basehugging - and this only exacerbates the problem.

[AlienMind]

they certainly discourage the sitting around and poptarting bullshit that plagued the previous release.

..by sitting around and poptarting bullshit in a long tom? are you out of your mind?

[Pytak]

I won't say anything new. But I'll say it.

Installed 0.2.0 and experienced my worst match ever on Marshes. It's like, you're peacefully walking around and y---BOOOOM LONGTOM!!!1

Seriously uncool. Other than that, the patch is a good job, and the longtoms are a good job too. It's the camping noobs that ruin it.

[AlienMind]

Longtoms need more reasons to move OUT of the base - not stay in them

and why would an artillery do that, exactly? long toms are as evil as airstrikes in a battlefield.
it seems to me we have 3 partys:

- some dev's who want just something out to show off in their job portfolio
- some noobs who want some cool looking casual game which they turn on one hour a week to feel good about, and do that in the most camping noob way possible.
- competitive/fanatic gamers who want something so good and balanced, it should occupy the most time of their current life. these are about gameplay first and are the ones keeping the server player count up to stay for ages to come.

it's time for the dev's to decide what game they want to make.

[Grimm]

My suggestions would be a more visible effect on Longtoms as well as a more audible effect so you can hear/see them coming, as well as less direct hit damage and more splash damage/radius to give it less of an indirect sniper role and more of a softening enemy formations role. Also, I'd consider making it more inaccurate over range. Also, perhaps either seeing the location of the Longtom for a short period after it fires, or visible trails that are indicative of their position are an option for consideration.

I like the idea of making it deploy to fire, but I'd like it to be a bit faster when undeployed if you do that, to make it less  viable to camp.

As for the base defense, I don't mind the idea of it, but I think it should have a small radius so that only the turrets/hangar/hangar exit are protected, so as to not encourage basecamping.

EDIT: @Alien, it's a Beta, i.e a work in progress, i.e shut the fapp up if you don't actually have some useful input and are just going to bitch and moan.

[Temphage]

Toth, it's true that aircraft are shredded by AAA (like they should've been from day 1 but whatever). That doesn't actually change the aero / mech relationship. The point of aero is, apparently to destroy mechs without them being able to fight back. Now we have a new unit, the point of which is also apparently to destroy mechs without them being able to fight back.

Mechs are now the secondary stars of this show. They aren't even a hard counter to aero anymore, thanks to a certain someone whining about Gauss Rifles. God forbid something that can't even aim more than 20 degrees up shoots down an air unit capable of flying in the stratosphere.

Mechs are supposed to be well armored. Solution? Implement weapons with absolutely batshit insane damage values that were never intended to work as they do.
Mechs are supposed to be well armed. Solution? Arbitrarily neuter their guns one-by-one with phantom 'damage modifiers'.

Mechs are the counter to mechs. This is becoming more and more irrelevant however, as you make inferior weapons platforms BETTER counters to mechs than other mechs are. I'm starting to see where those people complaining about mechs not being 'masters of the battlefield' are coming from.

As an example - when my mech is in a fight and takes about 40% damage, I start thinking about heading back for repairs, as it's unlikely I'll survive another fight without serious effort. Long Tom and VTOLs and Aero are apparently all designed to blow off my armor well before I even GET to the fight. So what do I do? Do I turn around and waste tons of time (and I'll only get shot at again anyway)? Or do I keep pressing on, face undamaged mechs, and get destroyed, because I was defeated by a foe I couldn't even see five minutes prior to them even showing up? This is what I mean, mechs are just become obsolete and irrelevant to the game.

So if nobody ever buys mechs any more, what does the game lose? What critical key is missing that's required to make the game work? We have our rock, our paper, and our scissors. Mechs are just the god damn Pen Missile.



NYERMMMM. PEN MISSILE!!!!

[Toth]

Longtoms need more reasons to move OUT of the base - not stay in them

and why would an artillery do that, exactly? long toms are as evil as airstrikes in a battlefield.
it seems to me we have 3 partys:

- some dev's who want just something out to show off in their job portfolio
- some noobs who want some cool looking casual game which they turn on one hour a week to feel good about, and do that in the most camping noob way possible.
- competitive/fanatic gamers who want something so good and balanced, it should occupy the most time of their current life. these are about gameplay first and are the ones keeping the server player count up to stay for ages to come.

it's time for the dev's to decide what game they want to make.

I can assure you that the long tom was not added to the game to pad anyone's portfolio. To make such a claim is inflammatory at best.

See my above post:
http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/forum/index.php/topic,7905.msg106714.html#msg106714