33 replies to this topic

[northunmunky]

So been playing MWO for about a week now and am really enjoying it. I like to think I've got the basic covered but I can't seem to be able to score more than 100-200 per game regardless of the tactics I seem to use.I've tried staying with a group and have tried co-operating with my lance but no joy. I see some people getting 600-700 per game and can't seem to fathom how to get there.

I'm using a DRG-1C with 2 er-lasers and 2 med pulse lasers. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[Arnold J Rimmer]

With the Dragon, make sure you're in a good flanking position - that huge CT makes it easy to focus fire and kill it. Keeping speed high with a nice big engine helps there.

With regards to the lasers, you have to keep them on target for the entire duration of the beam - 1 second for the ERLL and 0.6 seconds for the MPL. They won't do their full damage otherwise. Try and pick targets that are already dealing with something else - they're less likely to notice a few more lasers when they're already under a barrage.

Keep moving, stick with the group, and keep plugging away. It should add up nicely.

[Koniving]

This is totally convenient.

It so happens that I recently uploaded a match with Dragons. One is a modified Ghoulsby rig that I got sloppy with playing. The other, Verrick, is using his own personal hard-hitting rig. Once I die, watch Verrick. This should help you significantly.

[Doctor Proctor]

There are basically 2 ways to increase yourdamage: Increase damage output, or last longer in the match.

Increasing Damage Output: You have some fairly damaging weapons in your loadout, but what about your heat? If you're shut down you're not doing damage, except to yourself, so having a relatively heat efficient build will bring up your damage. Also, how accurate are you? With an all laser loadout you need to make sure you're painting your target for the full duration to maximize output. Range is another consideration. Effective range on MPLS is 180 meters, which means at long range (360) you're doing almost no damage. So, if you alpha all your weapons at 350m you're generating a lot of waste heat from those MPLS and getting negligible damage in return. Using your ranges effectively will increase your damage per shot, which will raise your overall damage.

Lasting Longer in a Match: The longer you're alive, the more potential shots you can fire, and the more potential damage you can do. Dragons have massive CT's, which means they get cord easily under direct fire. Use a big engine to give you the speed to close distance and bring all your weapons to bear, or to escape engagements where you're outgunned. A bigger engine will also give you more torso twist speed, letting you twist to protect your vulnerable CT or spread damage to multiple body sections rather than allowing the enemy to focus just one section. Also, learn how to use cover and terrain, especially against LRM's. Out in the open a few large volleys can take you down, but using speed, line of sight and cover can cause an opponent to waste hundreds of missiles that do almost no damage. AMS is also quite useful to reduce the damage on the ones that do get through. Lastly, make sure you have full, or near full, armor. Stock mechs are often missing s lot of armor to cut weight, but this isn't really effective in MWO. Generally speaking, you should have full armor everywhere, and only shave off a half ton to a full ton off of the legs if you need the extra weight. Pay with the front to back ratio as well. Some mechs do well to have 80% or more of their armor up front, other mechs (especially ones that can twist quickly to spread damage) might do better with about 66% of their armor in the front. But you'll need to pay with it to find what suits your mech and your playstyle.

[northunmunky]

Blimey, cheers for the swift reply's guys. I do like to attempt flanking positions but by doing so always seem to end up on my own which isn't ideal. I'm getting more accurate with my lasers but maybe need to try a more scavenging tactic and engage others who are already under the kosh a bit. Would you recommend swapping out the er lasers for large pulse lasers? get the damage done quicker?

I'll look into the engine thing. I find getting into trouble quick enough, just not enough poke to get me out again swiftly and in piece! I'm looking at getting an XL engine so I can shoehorn a AC10 in there somewhere. Maybe ill save a little longer and upsize the block too.

[Johnny Marek Summers]

Are you using the Trial Dragon by any chance? If you are you will not be able to change the loadout.

Okay, stupid question, the C confused me.

Looking at the weapon's stats in Smurfy, you probably should stick to the 500-600m range and use you ERLL. Save the med pulse for the little guys who will get in your face.

You also might want to stick around after you get killed and spectate. If you can find a teammate who has a similar loadout and looks like he knows what he is doing you might get a good idea of how to use cover to extend your time on the battlefield in future engagements.

EDIT: Had to change post after I realized that the Dragons had a variant called the 1C and is not a champion.

Edited by Johnny Marek Summers, 13 October 2013 - 09:41 AM.

[Hexenhammer]

northunmunky, on 13 October 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

I see some people getting 600-700 per game and can't seem to fathom how to get there.

What makes for a 600-700 pt game? Ammo explosions! I'm not saying thats the only way to get big numbers, I'm just saying it helps.

In truth what it takes to hit the 500pt damage mark is a combination of you and your mech, the team you are with, and the enemy. So focus on what you could have done better in a match and now how much damage others are doing.

Edited by Hexenhammer, 13 October 2013 - 10:15 AM.

[northunmunky]

Johnny Marek Summers, on 13 October 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

Are you using the Trial Dragon by any chance? If you are you will not be able to change the loadout.

Okay, stupid question, the C confused me.

Looking at the weapon's stats in Smurfy, you probably should stick to the 500-600m range and use you ERLL. Save the med pulse for the little guys who will get in your face.

You also might want to stick around after you get killed and spectate. If you can find a teammate who has a similar loadout and looks like he knows what he is doing you might get a good idea of how to use cover to extend your time on the battlefield in future engagements.

EDIT: Had to change post after I realized that the Dragons had a variant called the 1C and is not a champion.

Hexenhammer, on 13 October 2013 - 10:14 AM, said:

What makes for a 600-700 pt game? Ammo explosions! I'm not saying thats the only way to get big numbers, I'm just saying it helps.

In truth what it takes to hit the 500pt damage mark is a combination of you and your mech, the team you are with, and the enemy. So focus on what you could have done better in a match and now how much damage others are doing.

Not a trial mech. Spent my own money on it lol! I seem to spend my time using the er's at 1000ish then switching to med lasers at 500. Maybe that's something to change. I do spectate after I die. It's interesting to see mainly lights still knocking around. Not too many dragons about.

Probably just more practise needed :-)

Edited by northunmunky, 13 October 2013 - 10:41 AM.

[Koniving]

northunmunky, on 13 October 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

Not a trial mech. Spent my own money on it lol! I seem to spend my time using the er's at 1000ish then switching to med lasers at 500. Maybe that's something to change. I do spectate after I die. It's interesting to see mainly lights still knocking around. Not too many dragons about.

Definitely. ER LL's max range (0 damage) 1,350.
MPL's max range (0 damage) is 360.

So, maximum reach of the MPL is 360 meters and it does 0 damage at 360.
ER LL's at 1,000 meters are doing in the 4 to 5 damage range for the full beam on target.

Use the ER LL at 675 or less to do 9 damage per laser. Use the MPL at 180 or less to do 6 damage per laser.

[Johnny Marek Summers]

Are you using your missile and Ballistic slots at all? Any damage potential is a good thing to bring to the battle. Of course you do have to use them.

Looking at Smurfy you have an AC/2 and an LRM/10... somewhere (hopefully your mechlab).

Learn your weapon ranges.

AC/2 is the longest ranged weapon you have, however it will only do 2 points of damage per hit, and really hard to group your shots at that distance. Optimal range is within 720m and it has a max range of 2,160m.

LRM/10 is a bit tricky in that it has a minimum and maximum range. Outside of its range it will do zero damage. Minimum range for LRMs is 180m and its maximum range is 1000m.

ER LL has an optimal range of 675m and a max range of 1,350m. I suggested 500 to 600m because it was well within the optimal range, meaning that you will do ALL your damage potential. Full damage depends on keeping the beam on the enemy for the full second it takes to deliver.

Medium pulse lasers have an optimal range of 180m and a max range of 360m. My guess is that you were doing little to no damage with your pulse lasers. However it takes less time to do full damage to your enemy.

Please note with 300 damage you are doing way more than I am with my Jenners.

[northunmunky]

I haven't had much to do with ballistics up to now. I do fancy supplementing my current weaponry with an ac5 or something but having played around with my build I think an xl will be needed to save the weight. I not keen on the missleboat way of playing with the lrms, I'd much rather get up close and burn them with fire :-)

[Johnny Marek Summers]

Never underestimate the amount of damage you can do to an enemy from a distance.

If you do land a couple of shots on a bunch of enemies at distance, you will at least get some kill assists. However if you are able to close with those mechs, they will already be weakened, you can then take your shots and either get more assists or even kills.

[Arnold J Rimmer]

northunmunky, on 13 October 2013 - 09:20 AM, said:

Would you recommend swapping out the er lasers for large pulse lasers? get the damage done quicker?

I love my DUBguns, don't get me wrong.

But I also love reaching out and touching people from a mile away.

In balance, I think LPLs are a little too hot and a little too short, especially if all you're running are PLs. It adds up quickly if you fire as soon as your weapons cool down, especially in a brawl. If you ARE having heat issues, maybe swapping the ERLLs for LLs might help you, or the MPLs for MLs. The latter option not only saves you heat, but allows your 'short' range punch to reach to 540m.

With regards to engines... XLs are expensive, which would honestly be your biggest drawback. In a Dragon, the CT is so huge that damage rarely comes to your STs, so it's not as risky as using one in, say, a Jaegermech or Cataphract.

Edited by Arnold J Rimmer, 13 October 2013 - 01:02 PM.

[Bront]

Like a lot of ratings, score and damage hardly tell the whole story, nor do kills or assists.

Example: A light mech captures 4 points and only fires a few shots on the enemy, resulting in a very low score and damage totals, but the side wins because of his efforts. So, it's a good game.

Example 2: A assault mech does 850 damage and gets 3 assists and his team wins. With that much damage on so few targets, perhaps he could have shot better to focus damage more, so it's not as good of a game as it could have been.

Example 3: A light mech does 150 damage and collects 5 kills. He helped clean up the trash, which is valuable as it lets larger mechs use their firepower on higher priority targets, so was a very good game despite the low damage.

Knowing your role helps a lot in knowing how to rate damage. LRM mechs will have a large swing in damage, and mechs more suited for scouting might not do as much damage as they could. An assault mech with 0 kills but 10 assists and 1100 damage was likely neutralizing targets but not killing them and was useful, where as the assault with high damage and few targets needs to focus it's damage better (baring the LRM comment above). Score also gives you bonuses for blowing off limbs and spotting, and while spotting is useful it's random at times how it works, and limb desctruction may not always be useful (like the Cent's shield arm being blown off).

That said, how do you get better? Find tactics that work for you, your mech, and your loadout. Different loadouts and different mechs will do damage in different ways. Practice will help, but a good design in your mech that goes along with your stratergy will help even more.

[IllCaesar]

If you're interested in the ballistic slot, try this loadout. Requires you to pay for a bit of ammo and endo-steel structure, but ES is pretty valuable on most mechs anyways.

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...c0187d058e1056d

Heat efficiency is *****, and personally I'd drop one ERLL for more heatsinks ( http://mwo.smurfy-ne...17b027ae94e33ef ), but it can teach you to use to use Ballistics. Your Dragon might also benefit from Ferro-Fibrous armour, if you can afford it. ES > FF'

The AC2 doesn't do a lot of damage, but as long as you're not the focus of the enemy, you can keep pelting them, which makes it harder for them to pilot as well as causing a steady stream of damage. Since it has both a significantly faster fire rate and ammo/ton ratio, it can be useful for suppressing enemies and making them think twice before popping their heads out, giving a chance for your teammates to advance.

Also, I want to expand upon something:

Johnny Marek Summers, on 13 October 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

You also might want to stick around after you get killed and spectate. If you can find a teammate who has a similar loadout and looks like he knows what he is doing you might get a good idea of how to use cover to extend your time on the battlefield in future engagements.

You will improve by doing this, you'll become more familiar with different mech chassis and weapons, and there's another benefit that went unmentioned - you get extra C-Bills and XP, even after you die, for kill assists and resources bonuses. You may be the first person on your team to die, but that doesn't mean you can't get up to twelve kill assists as long as you don't leave the match. You'll have a hard time getting C-Bills via component destruction and kills for a while, so these kill assists you earn will really improve your C-Bill earnings. Just try to avoid farming kill assists to the point that its detrimental to your team.

That being said, your Dragon isn't build for brawling in the first place, but rather hitting engaged targets from further away with those ERLLs, with having those MPLs as a backup for when a light mech comes in to chew you up.

Edited by MarsAtlas, 13 October 2013 - 02:00 PM.

[Lexx]

The Dragon almost always gets popped in that huge CT, so you can risk using an XL engine more than some other mechs. I think a good tactic with a mech like the DRG-1C is to stay at long range and snipe. Put on an advanced zoom module and keep at 500-1000 meters away, using a config something like this one... DRG-1C

That weapon config will do full damage out to 660 meters with a max range well over 1000. If you get a good position behind some cover and pop over and fire then back behind cover, you should be able to pump out some decent damage while taking little return fire. Just watch out for LRM mechs! If an enemy gets too close, or you have incoming missile fire, just use your speed to run behind cover, or fall back to a better sniping position.

Getting swarmed by light mechs might be a problem, so don't stray too far from the rest of your team. Having all your weapons in the arms should help you track lights better.

[Sadistic Savior]

northunmunky, on 13 October 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

So been playing MWO for about a week now and am really enjoying it. I like to think I've got the basic covered but I can't seem to be able to score more than 100-200 per game regardless of the tactics I seem to use.I've tried staying with a group and have tried co-operating with my lance but no joy. I see some people getting 600-700 per game and can't seem to fathom how to get there.

I'm using a DRG-1C with 2 er-lasers and 2 med pulse lasers. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Damage should not be your goal. Kills should be your goal. Damage is just a means to an end. You can get a lot of kills doing very little damage. Earlier this week I had a game where I got 3 kills with about 150 damage.

That being said, it damage totals are your thing I'd load up on missiles supplemented by lasers. That will rack up the points. But those weapons are not effective kill weapons, because they spread damage all over. Large bore ACs, Gauss, and PPCs are kill weapons.

[StarGeezer]

I respectfully disagree about kills being the main goal, SS. I've seen lights who run around just looking for mechs about to pop, and they wind up with <100 damage but 4-5 kills. It's one of the reasons I feel the KDR ranking system is flawed. It doesn't go far enough to take into account roles, playstyles, etc. Most of my matches are support roles; suppression fire, tagging, flanking, capping, etc. In any given match, it's not unusual for me to get 7-9 assists, but only do 200-300 damage and if I'm lucky maybe 1-2 kills (and often, no kills whatsoever.)

[IllCaesar]

StarGeezer, on 13 October 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

...KDR...

You're right about the K/D ratio as a means of examining an individual's merit, but that doesn't mean that kills still aren't the end-game. Its not kills-per-player, but kills-per-team. It is a team game, after all. A guy who does 1,200 damage with 0 kills and 9 kill assists and a guy who does 50 damage with six kills. They are both doing their job though, because it doesn't matter who gets the kill, as long as they get killed in the end. Roles are important, but the roles still come down to killing an enemy as effectively as possible. You're right about the score not being a good indicator, but since most matches come down to elimination of the other team, I'd say its wrong to say that killing enemies not being the main goal.

I almost wish that there were more actions that create scores. If anybody here has played, say, Battlefield 3, you'll know that score-per-minute is much more important than K/D because that game attaches a point value to just about every action in the game. If MW:O reworked spot assists so that you get points every time you so much as see a new mech that a teammates hasn't seen in thirty seconds, you'd see a lot more scouts. If there was an actual payoff for capping, you'd certainly see more of it.

Edited by MarsAtlas, 13 October 2013 - 02:52 PM.

[StarGeezer]

I'll go along with that Mars, so I'll reword my original statement. Kills aren't the individual goal...it is, as you pointed out, the team goal. And I would be very much in favor of them reworking the whole performance metric to take into account assists, spotting, tagging, capping, etc.