Things Not To Do As A Rookie Medium Mech Pilot

A bit about me: I’m not a great pilot, but I since May (when I started) I have managed to triple my damage output, and double or triple my kills per match as a solo dropper. I pilot mostly medium mechs and my favorite is the Yen-Lo-Wang, so some of this info is going to be biased based on my experience in the centurion mech. And all of this info is based on solo dropping.

I think that it is rather impossible to give good specific advice to new mechwarriors based on a class of mech, or even a specific mech chassis, due to the fact that every weapon/engine load out can play radically different. Instead the advice here are things that are easy to do, but will hold you back as a medium mech pilot.

1. Overly Aggressive Driving:
Yes, medium mechs can be fast, and they can be fairly maneuverable but they are generally pretty big and relatively easy to hit. They also tend to be fairly light on armor, so while they can take a few hits and be fine, one solid alpha can also neuter or kill a medium. So you need to be far more careful than the lights, heavies, and assaults when you charge an enemy emplacement. Keep an eye out for any cover between you and your target as well as from any firing lanes you will be crossing, and don’t hesitate to use it if you find you have bitten off more than you can chew. Always keep a mental tab on the firing lanes that you will be open to you when you make your charge, so that if you start taking damage from behind or one of the sides you know where to break if you need to and how that relates to your particular vulnerabilities. I drive a cent most often so I want to keep my right side as protected as possible, which matters greatly when I have to take cover from a flanker.

2. Tunnel Vision:
This specifically relates to the above, and is almost a perfect instance of overly aggressive driving in most cases. Always keep your mind on the surroundings, especially when pursuing a wounded enemy. Focus is important during an engagement, but if you single mindedly pursue a wounded mech, you are exposing yourself to both enemy and friendly fire. Worst of all is when you pursue the wounded mech around a corner and right into 4 or 5 of his buddies who then proceed to blow you to pieces. Also watch your team, particularly as a solo dropper, because there are times when ¼ to ½ of your team will go tunnel on a pesky light mech that is running around in their midst and not pay attention to the enemies peaking the hill behind them. Group TV also makes for a lot of friendly fire as many pilots have poor fire control. That said, there can be a time where TV works for you, for me it is generally when I go kamikaze on a particularly nasty enemy mech that is devastating my team.

3. Weapon and Data Ignorance:
This one is really two different issues. The first is weapons and by ignorance I really mean not knowing how a given weapon works and what its limitations are. A big one comes down to ranges, so many people do not understand the gaps in weapon ranges, and end up wasting ammo and generating heat for nothing. This is a big problem with new LRM and PPC users, not knowing that there is a minimum functioning range. Learn the weapons and how they work. This leads to the data part of this topic. Using the target info there is a readout of your targets weapons, you can use this to exploit weapon weaknesses. For example if you see a CAT-K2 with a pair of PPCs as its main weapons you can effectively neuter them by fighting inside the 90m min range of the PPCs. Same with LRMs which have a 180m min range. You can also tell what they have lost, so that atlas, while looking pretty intimidating may be down to some medium lasers and LRMs, so if you push under the 180m range it becomes a really well armored light mech. This is one I still have trouble with during the heat of battle, but if you can manage to keep on top of your enemies weapons as well as their condition it can make you a much better pilot.

4. Panic:
Sometimes you have to get out of dodge, or you are stuck in a place you can’t. Situational awareness prior to an engagement really helps to mitigate this, but bad things happen. When you run don’t just show them your back, give them your least necessary side if you can. Fire back if you can without too much risk, and find the closest cover you can. If you think you can’t get away, hit a blind corner and turn back on your pursuer as soon as they clear the corner. If you are outnumbered and can’t get away, focus fire on one mech (same is true if you get legged). I’ve actually been surrounded 3v1 while legged and managed to kill two of them before backup arrived and finished off the third.

5. Blindly Follow Your Team:
Staying close to your team is important, but it is also important to know when the leaders of the shindig are being foolish. Terra Therma is probably the best instance of this, when the team manages to line up on a single entry point to the caldera, and the front two or three stop in the entry way and try to trade sniping shots with enemies pouring out from two entrances on the other side. Or when your team rushes the water on Forest, or rushes Theta on River City, etc..
Learn the maps, read the situation, and if it looks like your team is rushing off a cliff like lemmings and they won’t respond to you tells, find another route and do your best.

6. Charge Off Alone:
On the flip side, running off alone is pretty dangerous even if you keep tabs on where your team is. Sometimes you run in to overwhelming firepower or mechs that are faster than yours. This is not a don’t do it kind of thing, flanking is a superb tactic for medium mechs, just be cautious about how you go about it.

There is actually a lot more that can be said here, but it's getting a bit long so I'll cut it here for now. I hope those of you who read this can profit from it. I think a lot of this actually works across weight classes, but isn't obvious for newer players. One last thing I would like to say, is that if you enjoy the game play, stick with it even if you feel that you aren't doing good. When I started I was having a hard time pushing 200 damage a match and was dying far more than I was killing and most of that had to do with how I was piloting the mech rather than any problem with medium mechs in general. For my last batch of 25 games, I had 17 that were over 350 damage, and my average of those 17 games was 501 damage, 2 kills and 5 assists per game. The things I laid out above were some of the biggest problems I was having with my piloting and when it finally clicked, it made all the difference in the world.

Errinovar, on 21 September 2013 - 03:51 AM, said:

6. Charge Off Alone:
On the flip side, running off alone is pretty dangerous even if you keep tabs on where your team is. Sometimes you run in to overwhelming firepower or mechs that are faster than yours. This is not a don’t do it kind of thing, flanking is a superb tactic for medium mechs, just be cautious about how you go about it.

As a fellow Yenlo lover (seriously considering the Crunchbacks to add to that playstyle

) ... this is what gets me killed more often than not.

When I drop I tend to do one of two things:

1: Hug an Atlas - be his bodyguard. Great way to survive BTW - someone has a guide called Follow the Freaking Atlas or something similar, and it covers very similar stuff to yours.

2: Realize I am the fastest on the team, and try to be the scout and die

Edit: Fought my lazyness:
http://mwomercs.com/...fracking-atlas/
By Void Angel

Edited by Shar Wolf, 21 September 2013 - 12:27 PM.

Things Not To Do As A Rookie Medium Mech Pilot

#1 Errinovar

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