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[TheFlyingScotsman]

Hello medium pilots. One of my friends asked me to lay down a few strategies for piloting mediums successfully, so I'll share my pointers and stories, though I only pilot JJ'd mechs exclusiely, with the exception of the CN9-AL, which is hands down the sturdiest medium currently in the game when you put an STD engine in it.

Obviously, this guide will be focused on the mechs I actually play. This guide assumes you will take my advice and begin to use JJs as much as possible, in every situation. It's harder to aim at first, and takes a lot of effort, but the result can be extreme survivability.

(Please see my guide to JJs in the Battlemech Guides general forum. )
http://mwomercs.com/...neuvers-manual/

TFS' rules of medium piloting.

1: The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. (If you said tesseract, give yourself a high five.) When you have JJ's, the vast majority of impassable terrain becomes little trouble to traverse with a carefully timed launch.

By piloting your mech over obstacles others have to go around, you can move to where they are going, rather than simply following, and catch faster targets. With a topspeed of 93kmh, this is especially useful for the BJ-1 and 3.

2: If it's landborne, STD. If it's airborne, XL. XL engines are always a risk in any mech, but on mediums, they can be a death sentence. This can be avoided by stacking armor forward rather than more evenly, and using jumpjet moves to run away while facing shield arms or more well protected front end (and guns) towards the enemy.

3: You are not a brawler. Mediums are too fragile for direct brawling, and should never face charge an enemy unless they can kill them within one shot. Instead, skirt around adn stay behind larger friends until the fighting starts. Then you can sneak around and shoot into people's backsides, killing them before they can react. Always focus fire on targets your friends are already attacking, as the target may turn to face you, redirecting fire and wasting time.

4: Always be willing to slow down or stop when shooting lights, or making a killing blow. Obviously, don't do this in front of a PPC boat or something that can deal a lot of damage, but a crippled mech will last longer if you miss.

5: Always be prepared to run away. There are many situations where a medium simply cannot survive alone, and you must be ready to escape. Typically, you should never wander too far from the group, and making buddies with an assault is mutually beneficial. Everyone needs a wingman.

With that being said, strategy. There are several key strategies to succeeding with the medium, and they all have to do with your mindset and approach.

1: Situational awareness is the most important tool in this game, second only to jumpjets. You must always be aware of where your, your team mates andy any enemies near you are at all times. Mediums are very unfriendly to piloting errors, and even a little extra damage can be a game changer. If you pilot a medium, you must expect to get instakilled or killed very quickly if you make mistakes.

2: Careful aim is more important than fast shots. This is self explanatory, as ammo is limited and so is your armor. Missing a shot from a 4sec cooldown weapon because you didn't take an extra second to aim wastes seven seconds and 15-20 damage. Always take your thumb off the space bar before taking a shot in mid air, or it will miss 90% of the time.

3: Your armor is limited, but torso twisting can spread out damage nicely. On the BJ-1, I turn my (more darkly painted) side torso towards the enemy for a smaller profile, and aim my guns down to cover my side torso with my shield arm. (Left Arm.) On the TBT I have to just spread it out and hope for the best, and on my AL I turn the shield arm towards the enemy and use CTRL to lock torso and fire my lasers over the shield arm.

4: Use your best judgement when engaging alone. Keep your weapons' ranges in mind in case you can outdistance them, or be ready to close the gap if they have LRMs or standard PPCs. Likewise, SSRMs are a big danger for medium mechs, and you should try to stay out of rangeof them when possible, or disable the ears on cats.

5: The most important rule in this guide is: Always use a balanced build. If your heat range is less than 1.50, you don't have enough heat sinks or you have too many guns. If you are too slow to be useful on alpine, you need a faster engine. If you can't get high enough to make important landings, you need more JJs. If you don't have enough penetration to kill, you need to reevaluate your weapons. (Or your aim.)

Let me know if I missed anything. I hope you find this guide useful, as mediums are too rare, but are great mechs. I'll expand as I remember tricks.