62 replies to this topic

[Tim East]

Anassi, on 27 March 2015 - 12:04 AM, said:

if you want to live you might want to be behind the Atlas.

I actually find it far more beneficial to be about thirty meters to the right of the Atlas, usually. Not really sure why right seems to work better than left. Might have something to do with the way Atlas pilots take corners.

Anyway, I digress. Behind is bad. Using your buddy for cover might keep you alive longer, but he's just going to get focused and then a slew of fire will fly through his corpse into you. It's much better to use a sort of inverted V formation, with your flanks extending slightly forward so that your allies can engage enemies that turn to face one flank with a decent chance to target weak back armor. Some people prefer to think of it as a crescent. Whatever works for your visualization purposes.

Then again, being directly behind the Atlas can be good if it's part of a deliberate sacrifice play. If you all stack up and roll through a chokepoint and every enemy just HAS to take their shot at him and rack up heat, you can possibly gain a momentary advantage if you keep pushing over his dead body. It's still risky though. I'm a much bigger fan of the squirrel drawing attention away from your firing line with a crazy suicide flank/strafing run ploy. Everybody wants that cookie.

As far as blocking goes, if you're not going to attack, you shouldn't be in that close proximity to each other, you should be in a firing line/V/crescent/whatever. It makes you arty-bait. If you ARE going to attack, you want the slower people toward the front, if you can, so they don't get left behind and you all get strung out and killed as individuals. If you're going to be wrong, the least you can do is do it as a unit.

[Kjudoon]

Virgil Greyson, on 26 March 2015 - 08:51 PM, said:

Please do not penetrate my safe driving space.

If you can't see their feet on the ground, you're too close no matter what the speed or even fully stopped.

Edited by Kjudoon, 27 March 2015 - 01:22 AM.

[Pjwned]

Anassi, on 27 March 2015 - 12:04 AM, said:

Often times it's still the person in front who's at fault. I can't count the number of times where I was in a slow Assault (Atlas, King Crab, Dire Wolf), nearing a corner and someone in something way faster overtook me. He rounded the corner, saw red triangles and immediately slammed the reverse, of course backpeddaling into me. I'm still there, you know. I can't evaporate and I can't evade you. It's not my damn fault, if you want to live you might want to be behind the Atlas.

In most cases you could still wait a moment to see what happens there, especially because if there's a firing line looking right there then it's going to be the faster light mech that escapes a bad situation more easily.