84 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

I am usually able to restrain myself to only screaming "FIGHT, COWARDS!" in the privacy of my own home. Well, semi-privacy. I can be quite loud.

[JigglyMoobs]

So here are are three games illustrating a couple of the tatctics and strategies in play here.

In the first game the opposing team and our team enter into a stalemate on Alpine, with both teams forming strong firing lines and maneuvering to gain advantageous position around the margins. Mechs that break the line and move too far forward are isolated and killed. This goes on until, by design or accident, at the 6:30 mark, one of our team mates take a swan dive off the cliff into the enemy rear. This caused the enemy team to turn and attack him. At this point I gave my main contribution to the team, which was to type in chat for the team to "Advance! Attack!". Others joined the chorus and the team moved in a line to attack the enemy who were now clustered and turned the wrong way. The match was over in about 30 seconds.



In the second game, Verci and his lance on the opposing team realize that they are facing two good premades on ours. They decide to take a valiant gamble by flank us to the rear very early in the match.

Unfortunately for them, their PUGs do not push forward to support their flank As a result, we were able to rapidly counter-flank, isolate, and kill their lance with the minimal loss of two mechs (I mean, Jiggly isn't all that valuable to the team anyways ). With the strongest lance gone, the rest of the PUGs were left at our team's mercy. Mechs were isolated and killed at leisure. If the PUGs had pushed up to support their flank, things could have gone very badly for us, and the game may have been much much closer.



In this third game, by some cruel twist of fate, MM puts us up against, not one, not two, but three high level premades on River City in a skirmish match. Yea, FML. XD

We start trying to flank the enemy team and end up doing the wheel of death around Citadel. Unfortunately for us, every lance on that team knew exactly what to do. The mechs to our front used cover to do an organized retreat in front of our push, slowing our progress and killing any over eager PUGs running too far ahead of the team. Meanwhile, their strongest lance sped ahead to our rear, and rolled up and devoured our PUGs to the rear like little mech burritos. Having done this our lance is caught in a perfect pincer, and we die in a hale of PPC and AC fire. Yes, we were doomed from the start, but they also used tactics and maneuver to maximize their advantages and counter our attacks perfectly. They surged where we were weak, they strung us out by the nose so we faced them without focused fire power, and ground us to a halt using an economy of force where we needed to push quickly. Consequently we were squished by their awesome mech-fu.



PS - those are my team mates talking on the chat. You can't hear my voice speaking to them because Shadowplay did not record from my mic correctly.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 17 January 2014 - 12:57 AM.

[Ghostchips Condensate I and II]

mogs01gt, on 16 January 2014 - 10:30 AM, said:

Its a combination of map design and mech design. Mechs with low hanging weapons have issues over anything but smooth terrain.

IMO the map design in MWO is horrendous. Maps are way too small, not enough flanking points and give mechs with high mounted ballistics and energy weapons too much of an advantage.

i designed a map in my head, with no center (the terrain would be too steep there) lots of forest and a complex cave system, hot & cold areas. It would probably make peoples computers run slowly however if it existed in game. Maybe one day they will make a map with no center and some annoyingly spaced open areas where cover to cover distance is just a little more than weapons range, like it was in MW4 and you had to lure the dumbest Ai players out & use other tactics to get at the smart ones.

Edited by Trashforged, 17 January 2014 - 01:03 AM.

[Doctor Proctor]

Trashforged, on 17 January 2014 - 01:01 AM, said:

i designed a map in my head, with no center (the terrain would be too steep there) lots of forest and a complex cave system, hot & cold areas. It would probably make peoples computers run slowly however if it existed in game. Maybe one day they will make a map with no center and some annoyingly spaced open areas where cover to cover distance is just a little more than weapons range, like it was in MW4 and you had to lure the dumbest Ai players out & use other tactics to get at the smart ones.

The problem is which weapons range? Medium Lasers? That would fairly compact since their optimum range is only 270m. Or LRM's? Then you'd have a 1000m gauntlet to run while getting pelted with massive volleys of LRM fire. AC/2? Well, with an optimum range of 720m IIRC, and a total range of over 2km, that would be some pretty widely spaced cover...

[Wildstreak]

Doctor Proctor, on 16 January 2014 - 11:11 AM, said:

On the other hand, some maps offer ideal defensive scenarios that most teams don't have the patience or wherewithal to use. For example, on Alpine if the team that starts at the small valley city (the one that usually moves to the radio tower) notices that the enemy went right to assault them using the 10/11 line, they can easily take advantage of the natural choke point at H10/I10 by defending from G10/G11. You have a height advantage and lots of short cover to break locks and avoid pop tarts. You may want to station one lance along the F10/G9 ridge to discourage the enemy from posting up on H10 to unleash long range ballistic fire from a high position. It will be difficult for them to achieve this anyway though, since most of the non-JJ mechs will need to take the slope at H10 in order to get up, which is right in the line of fire for the G10/G11 defensive line.

Adding something I have seen.
Enemy team groups in the J-K rows then, while coming through the 10-11 row pass up to H row, a few enemy snipers will climb to the high ground in H11 giving them an advantage too.

mogs01gt, on 16 January 2014 - 12:23 PM, said:

Or the cross fire that occurs....

Mott, on 16 January 2014 - 12:37 PM, said:

I got one-shotted by a teammate last night who nailed me with dual gauss rifles. And the worst part was i wasn't even in the crossfire, i was trying to work through our team to stop the 5 mechs who were coming up our backside and had been using the Jenner as a distraction.

*BAMM!* 2 gauss rounds right to my cockpit and i'm dead by teamkill before i've even fired a shot. Beauty.

mogs01gt, on 16 January 2014 - 01:10 PM, said:

That happened to me in my Spider last night while I was trying to get behind a Heavy!

Thankfully, when being a LRM boat, you have far less worries about TK'ing people and, if you watch your distance, being TK'd.

[a gaijin]

JigglyMoobs, on 15 January 2014 - 06:02 PM, said:

To be successful, a game needs to allow new players to be effective and climb the ladder rapidly, but it also needs to reward skill and depth. I feel like too many times, people are complaining about "balance" when what they are really saying is that they want easy and safe. Well, what's the fun in that?

Call me an idealist, or maybe something much worse but to be completely honest PGI shouldn't worry as much about concepts such as "balance" and should just spend more time making MWO an *accurate* MechWarrior/BattleTech game. A real sequel that shines out in the series the way MW2 and 3 did.
Assault mechs, Clan Tech, Lost Tech... It's OP for a reason. They should just follow the current (for this year in the Star League) BT Rules and make adjustments after they run out if Official BT universe content. And yes, I realize that it means a 10 year wait and I don't mind the wait in the slightest. If PGI are the great developers we think they are we will still be playing this in 10 years. We will never have stopped.
But sadly because this is a F2p game its got all the same problems all F2p games have: ppl who want not just free lunch, they want it made to order.
It reminds me of the time I gave a bum a hamburger and he complained that it wasn't well done. Ever since then I don't give food or money to homeless people. I wish game developers wouldn't give much thought to opinions of the non-paying players, especially the ones who aren't BattleTech Lore savvy.


//Signed//
An angry, old MechWarrior

[Edited to fix typos and errors. Thanks to Siri's wonderful auto-"correct" feature]

Edited by HeroForHire, 18 January 2014 - 01:05 AM.

[Void Angel]

You, sir, are off-topic. And likely clinically insane.

[JigglyMoobs]

Void Angel, on 18 January 2014 - 12:59 AM, said:

You, sir, are off-topic. And likely clinically insane.

I don't entire agree HeroForHIre but I think I can see where he's coming from. Also, I suspect that he makes really bad hamburgers.

[a gaijin]

Void Angel, on 18 January 2014 - 12:59 AM, said:

You, sir, are off-topic. And likely clinically insane.

You talking to me? Cause I don't see anyone else here :-p




JigglyMoobs, I bought it at the convenient store he was panhandling outside of. You meet all kinds on this planet. I mean well... just look at me for example lol

Edited by HeroForHire, 18 January 2014 - 01:23 AM.

[Wrathful-Khan]

Early base capping attempts in a light are an equally futile strategy. You'll only get hunted down by the opposing lights and your whole run was for naught. Better to support your team by spotting positions, pushing flanks, sniping and generally being a nuisance until you know the enemy is fully committed. THEN you make a base run. Now the fully committed enemy has to withdraw some mechs from the engagement thereby giving your own team the initiative.

I facepalm every time I see a light go straight in at their base.

[Void Angel]

You can be effective early, too - it's just much harder, because you have to guess when to run. If you can pull their lights/mediums off, that'll give your team an advantage too. Just never sit on the cap until someone's actually shooting at you. =)

[Wrathful-Khan]

Void Angel, on 18 January 2014 - 05:33 AM, said:

You can be effective early, too - it's just much harder, because you have to guess when to run. If you can pull their lights/mediums off, that'll give your team an advantage too. Just never sit on the cap until someone's actually shooting at you. =)

Thats exactly what I mean though. It's in the timing - and it's meant as a distraction for the teams benefit. I was referring to the guys who run straight to the base shouting gleefully to themselves "BASE CAP FTW!!!". You can't expect ever to win on cap right from the go. As you say: if you are providing a well timed distraction that's a good thing - and as I'm saying: if the time's not right yet, find something useful to do.

[Doctor Proctor]

Indiandream, on 18 January 2014 - 08:58 AM, said:

Thats exactly what I mean though. It's in the timing - and it's meant as a distraction for the teams benefit. I was referring to the guys who run straight to the base shouting gleefully to themselves "BASE CAP FTW!!!". You can't expect ever to win on cap right from the go. As you say: if you are providing a well timed distraction that's a good thing - and as I'm saying: if the time's not right yet, find something useful to do.

Yes, I facepalm every time I see some Spider take the cave route on Frozen directly from our base at the start of the match. Inevitably, the enemy sees him on seismic, goes after him, he can't cap, and then he either dies or runs right at our line to get backup. In other words, he has done nothing to significantly distract the team and may have in fact hurt us since many times some other fool in a Medium mech will follow him into the caves, and lacking the speed to get away ends up buying it when the other team focuses him down. So not only was the enemy not distracted but now we're down one, possibly two, mechs.

If, as Indiandream stated, said Light was finding something useful to do for the first few minutes of the match such as spotting targets and scouting to ensure we know that they're attempting a flank, that would be more useful. Then once the enemy has committed to the fight and is fully engaged with our troops, the Light mech can start harassing their back side or tap their cap in order to split the enemy's attention. This is a much more effective strategy in the long run that the better Light pilots I've played with have used to quite effectively split teams and allow the rest of us to push at a weakened front and take down several mechs before they can react. At that point it is them who are now down one or two mechs, rather than us, which is always a better proposition.

Edited by Doctor Proctor, 20 January 2014 - 08:15 AM.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Doctor Proctor, on 16 January 2014 - 11:25 AM, said:

BTW, when PGI eventually impliments tonnage limits, I REALLY hope that they have the intelligence to make the tonnage ranges different for different game modes. Basically in a Skirmish > Assault > Conquest sort of sequence. This would help to differentiate the modes by pushing the mech mixes heavier or lighter. Skirmish would be where the big boys play and would gravitate towards a lot of Assaults and Heavies, like the current meta does. Assault could be pushes so that it would favor heavy Mediums and lighter Heavies. Conquest would favor Lights and Medium mechs, particularly in the Light hunter role. This might also help to mix up the tactics and perhaps break people out of Assault Syndrome.

Except a skirmish isn't usually a planned battle, it's two forces bumping into each other, often recon troops. So that would tend to favor lights. Assault would be the one where you would want the big guys so you can take the enemy base. As to Conquest, it's a matter of tactics. Lights can run around contesting bases, whereas bigger mechs can take and hold.

In addition, it would reduce the variety you would see. Skirmish is already leaning toward bring an Assault or don't come at all.

mogs01gt, on 16 January 2014 - 12:23 PM, said:

Or the cross fire that occurs....

One of my favorite parts of rushing into a mob. Zigzagging around to cause havoc

[Doctor Proctor]

Nick Makiaveli, on 20 January 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

Except a skirmish isn't usually a planned battle, it's two forces bumping into each other, often recon troops. So that would tend to favor lights. Assault would be the one where you would want the big guys so you can take the enemy base. As to Conquest, it's a matter of tactics. Lights can run around contesting bases, whereas bigger mechs can take and hold.

In addition, it would reduce the variety you would see. Skirmish is already leaning toward bring an Assault or don't come at all.



One of my favorite parts of rushing into a mob. Zigzagging around to cause havoc

No, that is the definition of the word "Skirmish" as you would find in a dictionary. In the context of the game, Skrirmish is a just a name that they picked and then applied to a specific ruleset. They could've called it "Bleezelgarb" and it wouldn't matter, as long as we understood that Bleezelgarb was the mode where there were no bases and the only win condition was to kill all the enemy. As such, saying that due to it's name it should be lighter units is meaningless, since it's very name is simply arbitrary.

As you noted, Skirmish is largely becoming "Bring an Assault or go home" all on it's own due to the lack of weight limits. This is because with no base to defend, people don't see a need to bring a faster mech and would therefore just prefer to throw as much armor and firepower at the enemy as they can. EVERY mode is becoming this to an extent though, Skirmish is just the worst offender. I frequently drop into Assault and Conquest matches where 6-8 members of my team are running Assault mechs, so the variety is already quite gone from the game.

I'm also not sure if you understand how the new weight system will work. It won't be "You must bring Assaults" or "You must bring Lights", it will be a weight range that your team must fall into. Let's say that for Conquest we get a range of 450-475 tons, for example. You wouldn't be able to field an entire team of Spiders since they're only 25 tons and that would equate to 12*25 or 300 tons. If you brought 2 Atlases then that would eat up 200 tons of your limit, meaning that the remaining10 members of your team would have to work within a range of 250-275 tons, or around 26 tons per mech on average.

So you could have 2 Atlases and 10 Spiders in that scenario, but those Atlases probably won't deal well with a Light swarm, so they're probaby not the most efficient use of tonnage. You can't go to the Light extreme, and taking the largest mechs can be a detriment to our team. If, on the other hand, you took a lance of Kintaros then that would be 4*55 or 220 tons, leaving you with as much as 255 tons remaining. So you could have a lance of heavy Mediums, with the rest of your team fielding small Lights to capture points. So now you've doubled the number of non-Spider mechs that you have, and in particular you've brought some of the heavy Medium mechs that can be built to make excellent Light hunters.

Or perhaps you instead field a lance of Cicadas, which would only be 4*40 or 160 tons. This leaves you with 315 tons max remaining, which you could use to mix in some Jenners with those Spiders so that you have have more range amongst your Lights. Or you could bring 2 Blackjacks, 2*45 or 90 tons, which would bring you up to 6 Mediums for 250 tons total, which is what the other team spent on their lance of Kintaros. Their team will now have more Lights, but you'll have a greater spread of firepower amongst your units (6 Mediums in this case, or half of your drop), which could lend you an advantage.

Now take everything I just said and apply to the other two modes, only with higher weight limits. Assault might be 650-675 tons, allowing more Mediums, a few Heavies, or even the introduction of an Assault mech or two. Whereas Skirmish might have it's weight range raised to 850-875, meaning you could almost take an entire team of Battlemasters! How does this decrease variety? Each mode will have a different feel and see different mixes of mechs. Due to the trial mech system we all have access to at least one mech of every class, so no one will ever be left out or punished because they haven't purchased any mechs in the appropriate weight ranges.

The only reason every mode isn't "Go Assault mech or go home" currently is because you need a few lighter mechs in case the other team is outcapping you, but with at least 50% of every drop being composed of Assault mechs (and from what I hear, this gets even more skewed at higher Elo levels) it means that most matches in either of the two non-Skirmish game modes simply devolve into killing the other team. With proper weight limits they can stop that, but then it will just devolve into bringing the biggest mechs you can fit into that weight limit. Meaning that if we stuck with 850-875 tons for every game mode, then we would still see things like 4 Atlases and 2 Battlemasters (4*100 + 2*85, or 570 tons) with the other 6 mechs only making up the remaining 305 tons through perhaps a couple Mediums and mostly Lights. This wouldn't be all that different from most of the matches that I have now, except with perhaps a few less Heavies and a few more Mediums than the current meta.

If you scale your weight limits differently for different modes though, then you can give a place for Light pilots to go since they'll be heavily in demand for 450-475 ton Conquest games. Or people like me that primarily love Mediums can go play in 650-675 ton Assault matches since I now have more of a chance to contribute before getting my mech cored because an entire lance of Assault mechs fired PPCs and ACs at me simultaneously. Skirmish will still be a "Go Assault or go home" game mode, but that will be fine because we have alternatives now...plus, some people WANT to play those big stompy Atlases and just go pew pew without having to worry about cap points and such. Now they have a place to go that's been carved out for them and everyone knows the rules going in. No more games where your team is outweighed by 250 tons because the premade your team was assigned is all Lights, and the premade their team was assigned was a Steiner Scout Lance. Everyone will be on equal footing and can adapt accordingly.

Edited by Doctor Proctor, 20 January 2014 - 11:50 AM.

[LoneUnknown]

Ever play tic tac toe?

Controlling the center of the map is a generally effective strategy in just about every game ever designed.

[K1LLFR3AK]

I was just in a match where 5 of us stayed in the center while the rest of the team went to cap their base. 4 of the 5 held the line while the 5th, a light, ran around playing distraction. We won the match with a base cap very quickly. So! Different tactics DO work.

Edited by K1LLFR3AK, 29 January 2014 - 11:23 PM.

[Mott]

Ended up playing Terra Therma and Caustic Valley for 17 of my 23 matches last night (KILL ME!).

And this rush for the middle strategy was in full effect every time.

I was so bored after the 5th time on each map that i'd just sit back and not even get involved until after the first mech had dropped. By that point a few groups on both sides would be splintering off and the real game would begin.

[juxstapo]

mogs01gt, on 15 January 2014 - 11:04 AM, said:

Typcially I get behind the other team and its too late, by then its 8 kills for the opposing team.

By the time I make it to their base, 5 kills for their team.......

Same thing with Caustic Valley.


This game can be very frustrating...

1. Play better

2. Drag yourself out of that elo bracket

3. Profit



Seriously though, that many losses that quickly means you're loitering with the try-hards. The more time you put into it the better this will get.

Honestly you're gonna have to forget about win/loss right now and celebrate your own victories instead of your team's.
I've fell into the trap of getting frustratomehaggro at this game several times. Made myself shut it off, step back, sip on a chill . . . soda, and so forth. Didn't want my emotions to poison my favorite game to play with my friends.
Right now, in a Spider, with incompetent newbie teammates? Be Jack Sparrow, or Inspector Clouseua. Have muchos fun with it, goof off. Gauge your success by each encounter instead of each match. If you can goose the BAP equipped Streaktaro and get away with it, good job! Take a cannon off of a JagerBomb! You da bomb!

But the quickest way to ratchet up that bracket you're playing in will be to assemble a team of like-personality individual's.
Ransom's Corsairs hope to see you on the field soon.

Now, recite with me the Online Mechwarrior's Blessing:

May your ping be low,
Your teammates competent,
And your matches satisfying.
<Salute>

[Darth Futuza]

juxstapo, on 30 January 2014 - 01:04 PM, said:

May your ping be low,
Your teammates competent,
And your matches satisfying.
<Salute>

What about your fps? That is by far the most important feature for playing well.