9 replies to this topic

[Irishtoker]

https://www.google.c...113034660,d.cGc

That’s right. This here topic is intended to help fresh & experienced players alike from “stacking” or “piling up”; mostly referring to Choke/Bottleneck points where being too close to your allies can be a costly yet easily avoidable mistake.

Keeping an eye on your mini-map is vital. I try to maintain a 50-60 meter distance from any mech. Especially important when following assault/heavy mechs that need that space behind them to back up and avoid the brunt of incoming Alpha Strikes, etc…

Another point is to be aware of your surroundings/situation. In light mechs, you can hug walls and buildings without being impeded much if at all. Medium, Heavy, & Assault mechs are better off avoiding collisions with buildings and terrain altogether.


I’ll compile the helpful tidbits here in the first post.

I.T

[Not A Real RAbbi]

If you're filing down a relatively narrow passage (like the side passages near OMEGA on Hellebore Springs), at least stagger mechs side-to-side. First one stays to, say, the right. Second to the LEFT. Third to the RIGHT. And so on.

When you come OUT of a bottleneck and into an open area, unless you have very specific reason/guidance to do otherwise, SPREAD OUT. Again, like with that staggering, try to alternate left/right as you spill out into the open area. This clears firing lanes for those coming out behind you, AND spreads any enemy firer's attention further side-to-side.

IF you have Jump Jets, and another teammate moving with you does not, then all else being equal, it's better for him/her to go first. If you have to fire at his/her target, you can JUMP to do it (if unable to get a shot otherwise). You can see the friendly in front of you, and can turn away if you end your jump too soon. On the other hand, it may be harder for that friendly to swing that laser beam out of the way if your jumping is landing you IN their line of fire.

Before any PUSH, have a defined destination. "We push from here to ________. NO ONE stops short of there. Once there, we do _________." A lot of team damage comes from the confusion of not knowing where the push ends, and players just piling up where they ASSUME the DC meant for it to end. Harder to manage when you're cat-herding, sure. Nonetheless, CLEAR, STEP-BY-STEP guidance, can make a BIG difference.

Make sure, if you practice with others as a team, that maintaining clear lines of fire is a BIG priority for you. Think not only of finding a clear lane for yourself, but also of not hogging out the lane for a friendly by stepping in front of him/her. Have this in mind in all your practices and fun drops. Always be thinking to yourself, "Where can I fire RIGHT NOW without hitting or risking hitting a friendly, and is that where the enemy is or will be? Am I blocking the next friendly in line from shooting into where the enemy is or will be? How can I clear my buddy's lane AND keep a clear lane for me?"

And, maybe most important of all, and as stated above already, WATCH THAT MINIMAP! It's not the HIGHEST resolution, and I might like to be able to adjust the zoom level manually on it (or have it adjust dynamically based on my speed, or distance to a selected target, or something). But it will at least keep you up-to-date on the whereabouts of 99% of friendlies whose firing lanes you might block, or into whom you might back up, etc. So watch the thing.

[Irishtoker]

TheRAbbi, on 30 January 2016 - 10:44 PM, said:

If you're filing down a relatively narrow passage (like the side passages near OMEGA on Hellebore Springs), at least stagger mechs side-to-side. First one stays to, say, the right. Second to the LEFT. Third to the RIGHT. And so on.

When you come OUT of a bottleneck and into an open area, unless you have very specific reason/guidance to do otherwise, SPREAD OUT. Again, like with that staggering, try to alternate left/right as you spill out into the open area. This clears firing lanes for those coming out behind you, AND spreads any enemy firer's attention further side-to-side.

IF you have Jump Jets, and another teammate moving with you does not, then all else being equal, it's better for him/her to go first. If you have to fire at his/her target, you can JUMP to do it (if unable to get a shot otherwise). You can see the friendly in front of you, and can turn away if you end your jump too soon. On the other hand, it may be harder for that friendly to swing that laser beam out of the way if your jumping is landing you IN their line of fire.

Before any PUSH, have a defined destination. "We push from here to ________. NO ONE stops short of there. Once there, we do _________." A lot of team damage comes from the confusion of not knowing where the push ends, and players just piling up where they ASSUME the DC meant for it to end. Harder to manage when you're cat-herding, sure. Nonetheless, CLEAR, STEP-BY-STEP guidance, can make a BIG difference.

Make sure, if you practice with others as a team, that maintaining clear lines of fire is a BIG priority for you. Think not only of finding a clear lane for yourself, but also of not hogging out the lane for a friendly by stepping in front of him/her. Have this in mind in all your practices and fun drops. Always be thinking to yourself, "Where can I fire RIGHT NOW without hitting or risking hitting a friendly, and is that where the enemy is or will be? Am I blocking the next friendly in line from shooting into where the enemy is or will be? How can I clear my buddy's lane AND keep a clear lane for me?"

And, maybe most important of all, and as stated above already, WATCH THAT MINIMAP! It's not the HIGHEST resolution, and I might like to be able to adjust the zoom level manually on it (or have it adjust dynamically based on my speed, or distance to a selected target, or something). But it will at least keep you up-to-date on the whereabouts of 99% of friendlies whose firing lanes you might block, or into whom you might back up, etc. So watch the thing.

Thank you, Rabbi

(always wanted to say that)

[vanillaBeanz]

thank you rabbi,

thats the best explanation ive heard on how to go thru the choke points on CW.
cant wait to try it out

cheers

[Fox With A Shotgun]

You will not tailgate a CAR.
You will not tailgate a BOAT.
You will not tailgate a MECH.

Save a mate's life. Slow down, give them some room.

Brought to you by the Battlemech Traffic Authority.

I approve of this post. The worst thing that can happen is if the person in front is a (slower) light mech, followed closely by a faster medium or heavy mech. No matter how fast a medium or heavy can decelerate, it's still bigger and will travel for further before stopping. Often this leaves a light exposed to massive amounts of fire, while frantically trying to reverse into a friendly mech who still hasn't even stopped yet. And in many matches, this other mech is also tailgated by yet another mech, causing a traffic pileup with an oncoming freight train of bullets at the poor mech in front.

So think twice before getting itchy about pressing that 100% throttle pedal. Is getting into that fight so you can dish out your one alpha worth killing a teammate over? It may not be you that shot the mech in front to pieces, but it may as well be given how you prevented it from reversing.

[Mad Porthos]

Excellent post and it applies beautifully to most situations, and is well explained by the Rabbi. Unfortunately, there is a rather heinous exception that is not going to be helped by this... to my dismay it is not practiced only by solo queue pugs, but sometimes guys who should know better in units. It's literally hiding in the skirts.

Without the first shot being fired, mechs pushing into an area don't just stop, but they deliberately start an advance then slide off to the side as soon as a little momentuum gets started. When you then as a group are going in, you start finding your armor flashing from behind, turn around and find it's not even weaponsfire, it's the nose of the ebon jaguar behind you doing rear damage. Advance some more, slow down to take a corner cautiously or simply be able to execute a reverse throttle... and flashing again on the back. Look around, annoyedly... same ebon jaguar RIGHT THERE. Now if at that moment, a dire perchance came round the corner around front of you, you'd want to be able to make that reverse throttle work and back/strafe to the side, but you can't do that when the thing you are stuck up on is the guy who's hiding in your skirts, who as soon as the dire shows, alphas through you to hit what is in his brackets, thinking his stuff won't converge but rather somehow pass around you.

Initially I thought it's just more inexperienced players... but they are not dropping in a tier setting that supports that and in these cases are names of people in units, who've posted in these forums and list as being tier 1 and 2. Now given that, I have to believe rather than incompetence - it's a tactic. Use another player as armor. Repeatedly. And since I first got annoyed by it, it has been hard to ignore and clearer that it can have a purpose. One of these cases I can guess was simply that the ebon jaguar pilot wanted a smouldering wreck to block fire from the direwolf, and to be able fire over and around, which his weapon mounts let him do past my smouldering Marauder corpse. Standing in the smoke cloud was great for him. Most of the time I'm sure it's easy to go with the logic, well it's a direwolf, it's going to paste the first guy, he's dead anyways... so I'll just use this guy as a pillar and pop out when the dire is on cooldown. I see the point... but it's a daft way to play. Not everyone will be so concerned with codes of conduct and if I had been able to manuver, it's concievable we both could have turned the dire and he could have had the kill anyways, in the nice soft down armored back that the direwolf often sports as well. But no, cause by the time I was taking fire from the dire, my rear was already cored, internals were orange and my final death was ignomiously intact yellow and orange FRONT armor. Damn alphas.

Salty Madporthos, eh? Yes, in that case. But looking around, it went beyond that. Many of the roadblocks do open up as the first or second person push out, or even a third... but I see many of them not even given any room by others following them like little remorae eels. So seeing it happen, made me realize it wasn't just a few douchey instances it happened to me. It's still something a bunch of people do as a regular tactic - perhaps following a sort of logic that they can win through the sacrifice of others herded and blocked into tactically helpful forms of distraction and cover. Stormcrows hiding behind allies, getting streakboat locks and then popping out to fire... much of the streaks actually coming close to hitting the "cover". Clan LRM fire pelting our own team in the back panels, time and time again because one of these guys thinks the arc will be higher or some will still get through. Worse still, a few volleys of lrm5 or 10 at point blank actually can begin to hurt when it's clan lrm, even given their close range damage drop off.

I wish it wasn't so, but the "you will not" or "thou shalt not" on much of this will fall on deaf ears for this subset. This is how they play, apparently it seems effective, fun or convenient - or there was some occasion that using shutdown allies as cover has been interpreted as something that can work to block damage and enemy fire, even though generally an allied mech once destroyed more or less becomes immaterial at least in "destroyed" hit locations, meaning it really isn't blocking anything...just working as visual camoflague. These players seem to feel they are playing solo and take it one step further, what can the rest of you do for me since most of you are far less leet than I am... smoulder and burn so I can finish off each enemy mech hiding in your corpse. It's not really team killing, but it is the antithesis of team play.

Edited by Mad Porthos, 31 January 2016 - 09:26 PM.

[Natural Predator]

All one has to do is think of it it term of the Military. You don't see them stop in doors do you? A great example of this would be the Tunnel or Saddle. First mech comes out goes left and hugs the wall, Second mech goes right and hugs that wall, Now you have opened up 4 lanes of firing. Meaning your much more likely to live through the encounter. Plus you have created a situation where your opponents may accidentally split fire. Which means you will most likely kill them all,

[no one]

Those time's when you've taken position literally 90 meters from a dozen friendlies and a pair of mediums rush and kill you. You curse and flip over to see what your team was doing. . . and there's two wide loads sitting on the only path to your position, peeking and lobbing literal tons of LRMs at a light mech 900m away. And as those two mediums start peeling armor off their faces, damage indicators flash away they sit there still, lobbing LRMs. Lobbing LRMs. Lobbing LRMs.

But I love you all, really.

Edited by no one, 02 February 2016 - 05:25 PM.

[Crow Splat]

I'll admit I'm a noob and not anywhere near a top tier player, yet. But I wish more people would read threads like this one.

I've been running mostly Dire Wolf, and I do my best to stick with the team, relay enemy positions and support others. When someone says push, I try to be one of the first through the gap and go guns blazing. More often than not, when I cruise through the gap, the enemy team scatters because Dire Wolf, but what occasionally happens next, I can't even begin to explain the levels of disappointment I feel.

I will look at my mini map and see that the red arrows have collapsed behind me and my teammates threw it in reverse even though I'm opening up torsos and taking off arms left and right. And then I die. I mean all they had to do was follow me and fan out behind me and we win, and it was their idea in the first place.

For full disclosure, I take a "Ricky Bobby" stance when someone tells me to push. It's full throttle and staying just this side of heat shutdown until the other team falls back or I die. It works well for me and I've always believed in making things happen instead of waiting for them to happen.

I guess my point is, if you call a push, stick with it. As was mentioned before, push through the breach and fan out. If you all die running through, then better luck next time. But for all that is holy, don't hit the brakes at the choke point when you start taking fire. You basically halt the push right there and doom everyone in front of you to die. If you or your mech can't handle this then what the hell are doing pushing anyway?

[JigglyMoobs]

Like Rabbi said clear lanes of fire and maneuver are priorities. On some terrain you can get pretty close to your teammates without blocking each other. You just have to do a little thinking and problem solve. Eg, at 1 min in this game, -three- (there was a TDR next to me you don't see) large mechs on one smallish piece of real-estate, mutual covering fire without getting in each other's way. What made this work was that the little hill we are standing on had multiple terraces, so we could shoot around and over each other and maneuver in our own little lanes.

https://youtu.be/TfcT2vwhKmw?t=1m

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 07 February 2016 - 04:02 PM.