Posted 30 September 2013 - 12:18 AM
"Your job is not to die for your country, but to make that other dumb ******* die for his" George Patton.
Screaming "blood for the blood god!" and seeing anything less than a banzai charge into enemy guns as cowardice is stupid. Makes me think of British and French generals throwing the lives of millions away to move their drinks cabinet a few meters closer to Berlin beause they never learned there is a time and place for that tactic. The dead have no glory, while the living can continue to fight.
But time and time again, I witness it.
I'm a firm advocate of play your role and play your mech. It was mentioned before but I think overlooked. If you build a brawler, go brawl, but be smart with it, and don't forget that you have others who can help you. There's a reason that since the Romans, archers, catapults and trebuchets were used to soften up the enemy even when under cover, so when the brawkers DID charge in, they were depleted. The LRM boats are your archers, and can save your bacon by giving you a chewed up Atlas or even blow up that pesky little Jenner that's been nipping at your butt. They get Kill Assists and you get easier kills.
If you're a scout and not targeting, backstabbing and caping, what the bleep good are you? You can't go toe to toe with a Heavy, generally, if they're an average shot. If you can shoot on the run (I can't yet) then get to work doing it. If you can't shoot, cap. If you can't cap, spot. If you built a sniper mech, then good golly! Get the to a place of cover and a lot of open space in front of you and have fun popping rounds into somebody to help out the brawlers that hopefully didn't rush into a gauntlet you can't help them with. These are the tactics of Mechwarrior since the days of the D6.
Full disclosure - I run LRM boats because I am a firm believer of having a mountain between me and my enemy and try to get kills without ever exposing myself to a chance for damage. When I run out of missiles, then I start looking for soft targets to hammer with my guns in a hopefully unscratched heavy mech.
There's nothing wrong with timidity if rightly placed. But it can turn to cowardice too. I've done more than a few games where I've seen the "Theta Death March" begin and gone "oh hell no!" and with a heavy mech gone cap hunting, or sat back and lobbed in LRMs because I don't enjoy dying 4 minutes then spending 9 spectating the Spider as it runs. Consider this old fact from the TT game: The team that won initiative went LAST. Why? Beause you got the tactical advantage of knowing where the enemy mechs were going! So instead of rushing off to Theta to die in a spectacular mess of bravado, take a second to see other options. Caution works.