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Situational awareness
This is fundamental to playing MWO and has to be at the top of the list. Build up a picture of where your team is and where they are moving to, and where the OPFOR (opposing force, the other team) is and where they are moving to. Only once you have this information can you make the right decisions. Should you push forward, or pull back, or fight from your current location? Is it safe to separate from your team mates at this point in the match, or should you stay close to them? You can't make those decisions without building and maintaining an overall picture of the battlefield.
The biggest thing you can practice to improve your situational awareness is to use your eyes to look for the other team. This might seem obvious but apparently a lot of players equate their radar with "seeing". The radar in MWO is based on LOS (line of sight). It only shows OPFOR targets that either you or one of your team mates can see (usually - a UAV also gives LOS). If you don't have a LOS into an area, such as over a hill or around a corner, you don't know how many OPFOR are there. You might have no radar contacts but the entire opposition team might be there out of LOS. You might have just one radar contact but that one radar contact might have 11 friends out of LOS. The absence of radar contacts does not mean absence of the OPFOR.
The classic example here is ECM. Have you ever played a PUG game where apparently your team spends most of the match not knowing where the other team is because they are under ECM? Another good example is the seismic sensor module. When it was first implemented it gave us an "always on" radar with 400m range which greatly enhanced situational awareness for everybody.
Be aware of your teams movements and OPFOR movements by using your eyes. Don't rely on your radar. Use that information to make decisions about where to move and what to engage. Be very careful about moving into an area where you don't have a LOS such as over a hill or around a corner. It's common to see players without situational awareness die early because they have moved around a corner or over a hill completely unaware the entire enemy team are there.
Positioning, or shoot without being shot
This is another one of the fundamentals when playing MWO. Watch a good player and you'll see they don't attack head on but look for an angle of attack from a wide position, or move around even further for a full flank. Have you ever been pecked to death by a 2ERLL Raven or a 2PPC Cicada that has got on your flank, or behind you? That's positioning. By putting yourself on a flank you will be able to shoot enemies in their side whilst their attention is elsewhere, and you'll be out of their forward firing arc. Be aware of where their attention lies, at some point they will turn to deal with you, you'll take incoming fire and you should reposition.
Another aspect of positioning is looking for single targets to fire on. If you push too far forward, or too far around a corner, you can find yourself in view of multiple enemies, and you'll get focus fired out of the match. Move cautiously until you have a single enemy to fire on, that's far enough. If multiple enemies move into view, retreat and reposition.
Practice positioning yourself in this way and you'll become someone that is difficult to play against that chooses their battles, as opposed to someone who is slugging it out on the front lines. Play the percentages and engage when it's favourable for you, don't take risks.
Fast 'mechs are powerful because they can reposition quickly, and often.
Spread damage, or tank damage
If you are going to die, use up as much of your armour as possible before going down. Make the other team work for your death. You need to absorb damage on every part of your mech so that if you do go down your health is at a low %. This way you stay alive for longer, can output more damage, and you'll get more kills. Some builds are asymmetrical, or sword and shield type builds, such as a HGN-733C with PPC and UAC5. With those builds use one half of your 'mech as a shield and the other as a sword. Whatever your build, be aware of where you are most heavily damaged. As the match progresses start to protect your most damaged areas, or in other words, start to use up armour on your least damaged areas. If you have an open LT, protect it, and absorb damage on your RT and other parts of your 'mech.
A good exception to this is a destroyed leg. If you have been legged consider using the destroyed leg as a shield. If you take hits on a destroyed leg those hits will get transferred to a torso but damage is reduced by 50%, and if your torso is destroyed the damage transfers again to the CT with a further 50% reduction. A destroyed leg is a damage sink, usually (there are exceptions). This same damage transfer mechanic can also be leveraged with other 'mechs such as the Centurion, where hits to its massive arm sockets reduce incoming damage by 50%.
Be a tank, whatever 'mech you are in. Don't go down easily. Use your armour as a currency, spend it all.
Trade damage well, or know your weapon ranges
This section is about taking more armour off the OPFOR than you are losing yourself. Learn the weapon ranges. Learn their range (e.g. PPC 540m, AC2 720m), their maximum range (e.g. PPC 1080m, AC2 2160m), as well as the range at which they do 50% damage (e.g. PPC 810m, AC2 1480m). Use that information to compare your weapons with the weapons that the OPFOR has, and choose a range that allows you to trade damage well. For example you find yourself on Tourmaline in an AC2 boat, and you are engaging a target that has PPCs. If you engage at 540m you are both doing full damage, so you are not trading damage well. If you engage at 810m you are doing close to full damage whereas the PPCs are doing 50% damage, which is a much better damage trade. Even at 1000m the AC2 is doing a high percentage of its damage (75%?) so if you can keep a range of around 800m - 1000m with your AC2s against PPCs you are maximising the damage you put out, and minimising the damage you take, by dictating the range that you engage it.
Conversely the opposite is true. If you have the PPCs and there is a target 800m away think before exposing yourself to incoming fire to take shots. If the target is a brawler go ahead. If the target has AC2, GR or ERPPC you will be in danger of taking more damage than you put out. In that case you are outranged and your only choice is to not engage at all, or to move to within 540m of your target where you can do full damage.
Good movement
Use lateral (sideways) movement. There is a reason your torso can point in a different direction to your legs. Move in one direction, shoot in another. Whatever you are doing, whether it's jump-sniping, brawling, hill-humping, peeking around cover, shooting from open ground, it should all be based on lateral movement. This makes you harder to hit, because whoever is shooting at you will have to lead their shots, and if they do hit you (e.g. with lasers, or they've lead correctly) there's more change the damage will get spread over different parts of your 'mech. This is especially true if you are also jumping. Now, whoever is shooting at you will have to lead in two dimensions. If you move straight towards an enemy, or straight away, you are easy to hit, like a boxer that moves forwards and backwards in straight lines and is easy to knock-out.
Another tip is to move from cover to cover. Generally, this game is played from behind cover. Not always, some successful tactics involve forcing a fight on open ground. However in PUG games generally using cover is vital. Before you move out of cover, decide which is the next piece of cover you are going to get behind, them move to that cover. If you are in a city, move from building to building taking a shot on the way.
Never turret. Even a firing line should be more dynamic than that.
Build a 'mech with survivability in mind
Build 'mechs that are survivors. Glass cannons are for the true artists that can get away with it. A primary consideration here is XL engines. There's a reason some players talk about "farming XLs". Building a good 'mech with an XL engine is easy because of all the tonnage they free up. Building a good 'mech with a standard engine is harder because they weigh so much more. However if you can create good builds with standard engines you'll survive longer, generally. There was a post on MWO recently that described a good set of rules for deciding whether you should consider an XL in a build. I'll paraphrase it here. If your build has 3 out of the following 4 an XL might be worthwhile:
- Long range weapons (the definition of long range can differ depending on who you talk to, I'd say in this context an important aspect is having more range than a good number of other 'mechs on the field)
- Skinnier than average side torsos
- A significant speed gain which itself can make you more survivable (speed is life), perhaps in relation to the other builds you'll come across in a 12 man scenario, otherwise in a PUG game generally
- A significant increase in outright fire power (or a weapon load out that is only doable with an XL) making the risk a worthwhile trade off for the guns
Another consideration is ammo placement. CASE doesn't work with an XL but with a standard engine that will prevent costly ammo explosions. If you can't use CASE or can't spare the tonnage, consider the head and the CT as good places to put ammo. If you're in a 'mech that gets legged a lot (e.g. a Centurion) try not to put it in the legs. Learn the order that ammo is consumed in.
Lastly consider armour placement. Front-loading armour can help you survive in a build that is primarily meant to be used whilst facing the OPFOR. For example, a ranged build, as opposed to a brawler which is more likely to get shot in the back (although lights delight in getting behind ranged builds and blowing out their torsos so be careful how low you go).
If you've read this far, congratulations! Do you have any advice to add?
Edited by warner2, 30 January 2014 - 05:00 AM.
