The locust is fast and small, and has excellent turning.
I recommend first playing in Commandos before running Locusts, and focusing on your piloting skills- because Commandos are just enough more forgiving of mistakes to let you stay in the game longer, but not so much tougher that you won't always realize you made a mistake.
Practice slaloming and switching directions mid-circle. These two elements of piloting a light 'mech are paramount when driving a locust, as you will often have to change directions without looking where you're going and so you need to know how to time your controls.
Learn the terrain. Nothing will ruin a Locust faster than accidentally slamming into a wall and then holding still while you turn to face away from it. Buildings in MWO are all modular-construction, so if you learn the sizes of the elements used to create that part of the terrain, you can learn to identify in under a second whether you have the right turning rate to circle a given building at full rotation or not, and whether you'll slam into the thing on the other side of the street in the process.
Learn the terrain. Locusts are the best hill climbers out of everything that has no jump jets and because of the way slopes work, Locusts can (while running full blast) ascend slopes that are completely untraversible by anyone else- so long as they are actual slopes and not vertical walls (like the sides of the various adamantium rocks in such maps as Canyon Network). Learn to identify which slopes you can scale on sight by the angle they're placed at, and you can literally climb your way out of someone's crosshairs.
Learn the terrain. Part of piloting a locust (with its amazing torso twist) is knowing where you can run via glances at your minimap, so you don't have to look where you're going and can twist to shoot back at people following you or make amazingly useful strafing runs. You can either do this by memorizing the maps (really really hard if you haven't got an amazing memory) or learning to identify the terrain at a glance so you can turn away from it and still know what you're doing (not as hard as memorizing the map if you haven't got an amazing memory, but still very difficult if you aren't so hot on keeping your focus wide. To understand what I mean, dig around until you find an explanation of 'white dot' and 'black dot' focus on the internet, I'm not so hot at describing that one.)
Stay calm. Even if you've been legged and surrounded by heavies and assaults, your size and the jouncy way your 'mech moves can protect you to a degree. Even if your face is full of flamer exhaust, your minimap and sensors are not being messed with. Even if something is chasing you, you can twist and shoot it, especially if you're slaloming. This is the biggest mistake I see light 'mech pilots make- panicking. If you just ran face-first into the entire enemy team, stopping and backing up
will get you killed. To do this, you have to slow down, stop, accelerate in reverse (to a lower top speed) and make your way back out. This is a bad move, don't do it. If you run face first into the enemy team, you have to make a snap judgement- duck through their legs, or veer off. DO NOT STOP AND REVERSE. Ignore the fact that bits of your machine are flying off every which way and focus on using the terrain and your speed to your advantage and shooting back. Because I do this, I have finished an uncountable number of matches with a still-functioning Locust or Commando when stopping and reversing or otherwise panicking (twisting like mad everywhere so I can't see what's going on, making no decision, etc.) would have left me instantly dead.
Learn how to use terrain. I mastered Commandos before the engine rating got boosted and the 'run backwards' buff was put in, even, and it wasn't that hard- a little tedious because of low XP per match (particularly since this was before spotter bonuses), but it wasn't hard. The biggest thing I learned to do was quickly run over the top of a hill- just far enough to see down the far side- and already be turning to run back across the top and out of field of view. Between the fact that I was already leaving as soon as I arrived and the fact that I never looked over the same point on the hill twice in a row, I avoided and survived more shots than most would think a light 'mech has a right to.
Maneuverability, terrain, <color=green>
DON'T PANIC</color>. This is how you use a light 'mech. And it takes lots of practice. But if you do it right- well, there's a reason there are
still people claiming the Spider's hitboxes are borked.
-QKD-CR0
Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 15 May 2014 - 02:11 PM.