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And yet! You will often see people die within the first two minutes of a round. Sometimes these people may be you. Sometimes this person is me! Not that often, but it still happens. What gives?
Broadly, these folks are not taking the correct steps to ensure that they live as long as possible. The good news is, most of these steps are easy to implement and can come to you easily with a little bit of practice.
In rough order:
- Look at the minimap. This applies to literally every part of the match from start to finish so I'm including it first. The minimap is an incredibly powerful tool because it gives you exact data on where your teammates are and partial data on where your enemies are. Constantly looking at the minimap can tell you when your team is pushing and prevent you from being left behind. It can tell you if you're about to push into one isolated enemy or an entire firing line. It can tell you if you're about to be flanked. The information it gives in regard to enemies is incomplete, but in time you will be able to kind of have a sense of what a brief blip on the radar means in terms of what's about to happen.
- Stay with your team. This follows directly from looking at the minimap. Lighter mechs and stealthy ones can and often do benefit from separating from the team to get information or flank or what have you, but in general you do not want to be isolated from the rest of your team. You will nearly always lose a 2v1 fight in any mech against any two enemy mechs, and odds are it will be way worse than a 2v1. Most lengthy flanks end in disaster no matter how many old History Channel specials you've watched about World War II or whatever. Now, if you can pull off a smaller flank which can get you a good angle on the other team and will let you pull back to numerical safety if need be, that's fantastic, but if you're lumbering around in your Dire Wolf 800 meters from the rest of the team then you're just asking to get mega-owned. Think of it this way: never, ever, ever be the only target the enemy team can see and shoot at. On the off chance you are unable to keep up with the rotation, pick a position with a lot of cover that will give you good shots on the other team, wait until they've engaged, and hit them in the back. You will still likely die but will do damage and draw their attention, which could win you the match.
- Don't overcommit. Most maps in this game have a central feature where the fight tends to take place. Hopefully this changes in the future but right now it's where we're at. You can figure out over time where these places are and when to expect contact with enemy mechs. Following on the first two points, once you know where these places are, don't YOLO into the killbox without considering your minimap and whether your team is able to support you. Talking to them in voice helps, much as some of us might not like it! Dying first while leading a push that displaces the enemy team and lets your team put out a lot of damage is fine and good. Dying first while getting off two alphas because you went alone is bad.
- Move! There's a lot of natural cover in this game, and you should always make sure you're within emergency distance of at least part of it. If you come under a lot of fire, you've already got a place to go so you don't even have to think about it. This also applies to when you're peeking -- if you get heavily punished in a trade, move around a bit and trade from a different position.
- Twist! Twisting -- in which you wiggle your mech's torso back and forth under fire so the enemy cannot isolate a single component -- is more of a foundational skill, but it's worth noting here that even if you're under fire and alone and isolated, the best possible thing you can do is make it difficult for the enemy to kill you. Like, say you're playing an assault and you got a bad spawn and now you're being set upon by two or three faster mechs. Many people in this situation will give up because they figure it's GG, but that is not the case at all. You may very well die, but every extra second you stay alive means the enemy has to expend heat, ammunition, and time in order to kill you. Staring straight at them while Eeyoring in chat about how you are punished and persecuted by your idiot teammates (I am guilty of this, it's very tempting) is way worse than actively twisting, denying them shots on key components, and in general being a pain in the *** to kill.
- Shoot! Pro-tip: people do not like being shot in this game. Whoever did the sound effects and animations for when a bunch of SRMs or gauss rounds slam into you did a bang-up job. Shooting the enemy is, broadly, the main way to win in this game, but oftentimes people forget to do this when they're under fire. This is bad for two reasons: first, it lets the enemy continue shooting you at their leisure, and second, you're not making them pay for it. If you get jumped, and this will definitely happen, pick out the easiest target of your attackers, hit the override button if you haven't already, and dump all your weapons into their CT (or side torso if they're probably XL, or legs if they're a light) until you're destroyed.
