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So, new mechwarrior – you’ve dropped, you’ve gotten your own mech, you’ve kitted it out… and now you’re hoping to get more victories on the battlefield. I applaud your interest in furthering your career.
However, I want to show you a few things that everyone does wrong, and what it means for you – and, hopefully, convince you that you don’t want to do these very wrong things. Specifically, I want to focus on prevailing map strategies for a handful of maps, the ‘best’ PUG strategy, and what usually happens. The goal of this document is to offer you something similar to what beginning chess players have: opening strategies, why they work, and what their goals are, with a focus on the PUG and your part in it.
So, if you’re curious? This document should help you make better decisions, and lead others into better encounters. You’ll also start to see what the PUG does wrong (and why they do it), and I’ll try to offer some ‘counterstrategies’ for when the PUG makes a hash of it.
I won’t be looking at EVERY map in this installment – just the few most problematic ones. If there’s interest, I’ll come back and do the rest, or perhaps even add a ‘201’ version of this document to discuss more advanced strategies and ideas. Y’all will have to let me know.
Shall we get started?
General Concepts:
When two armies of equal size and capability fight, the usual outcome is a pyrrhic – the two armies annihilate each other. That’s as true in MWO as it is in the real world. If your goal is to win, then you’ve got to do something more than stand in long lines and shoot at each other – that’s just an exercise in tonnage and accuracy that’s not as much fun as it sounds.
The goal of your team, then, should be to create areas where you can bring all of your guns to bear on a single point of the opposing army, generally through superior positioning or mobility. If three of your mechs can shoot and be shot at by only one of theirs, you’ll (generally) keep all three and they’ll lose the one. Do this enough times and you create an unstoppable advantage.
Only logical, right?
That’s something to note, by the way: every time your team loses a mech (even billy-gung-ho CHARGE!-guy), your entire team gets significantly weaker. There is a tipping point (around a 4 mech advantage) where it becomes practically impossible to win without the other team blundering in some spectacular way, and another one (around a 6 mech advantage) where you’ll lose regardless of how the enemy blunders and the best you can do is eke out as much damage as you can before you’re run under.
The goal of your tactics, then, should be always to avoid these tipping points, to keep yourself alive as long as possible, and to ensure the enemy hits those tipping points as early as possible.
There are three tactics that can be used regardless of map – by individuals – to create these localized advantages. These may require specific equipment or forethought, but can turn an entire battle in your favor if applied correctly.
The ‘Squirrel’ – The False Feint
Earning its name from the movie Up, this tactic is all about providing the irresistible distraction to the enemy firing line. Generally requiring a very fast mech – an Inner Sphere light or Clan Medium, mostly – the squirrel flanks wide around the enemy, and then presents a tempting target to as many mechs as possible.
The goal is to have slower mechs turn to engage and ‘chase the squirrel’ on a fruitless hunt around the edge of the map. This removes their guns from the firing line, spreads out the enemy force, and causes those that pursue the squirrel to turn their backs (and the weaker rear armor of most mechs) to your team’s firing line.
It relies, of course, on the PUG’s tendency to chase red triangles in order of distance rather than threat. Teams like to kill the mech RIGHT THERE RIGHT NOW rather than focus on the much larger, much more vicious animal off in the distance vaguely spraying lasers your direction. Close combat excites something visceral in a way more distant engagements do not.
To stop the tactic? Never, ever, chase the squirrel. This is something most PUG teams simply cannot do.
To be successful, the squirrel needs to stay alive – being a squirrel is an art form, one that requires a serious notion of the terrain around you, how much fire you can take before you need to run, and just what you can get away with while you’re pushing your chassis to the limit.
The Flank –
The flank is a classic maneuver, taken from the days of cavalry and firing lines. The idea is that an enemy hit from an unexpected angle cannot bring its weapons to bear in an efficient fashion. If your flanking force is correctly assembled, you can simply overwhelm responders before they have a chance to reorganize and face your assault.
This is what Medium mechs are built for in this game – the ability to bring a startling amount of firepower to bear from an unexpected direction. Long flanks require fire discipline (you can’t shoot too early – you’ll alert the enemy before you’re in place, giving them the time they need to adjust to your attack), focus, and surprise.
When it works, however, it changes everything.
As a solo player, you can initiate a flank by simply starting the move yourself. If you move through friendlies on the way, you’ll usually pick up one or two to go with you. If YOU hold off on your fire, chances are that they will as well.
The Refused Flank –
A defensive tactic, the refused flank is the idea that you simply aren’t where the enemy expects you to be; you’ve repositioned your army in such a way that, should the enemy expect you to be in more typical positions, they will be hopelessly out of position for your counterattack.
This tactic is lovely on Alpine – NOT going to the sniper hill or sweeping everyone up to the comm tower are classic examples of it. A team that chooses to sweep in Terra Therma (instead of charge to the center) or one that avoids the central ‘cathedral’ in river city is doing much the same.
What makes a refused flank work isn’t just ‘not being there’, however, it’s setting up so that you can murder your opponents once they’ve charged blithely in to the spot where they expected you to be.
This is difficult as a solo player, but can be done simply by leading a group to your chosen, new position. If it offers an advantage, it can be surprisingly effective.
The Charge!
This one’s important: it’s vital to remember that this is a game about huge machines of death, heavy metal stomping through the world to smash other heavy metal with giant guns.
There is absolutely a time when you must be willing to take damage, to charge into the thick of the enemy and create opportunities. When those times come, hiding behind a building, avoiding damage, not taking the hit – those are the things that will kill your entire team.
Do not be timid. Know what your mech can do, and, when you get that momentary advantage, when it’s two of you against one of them, charge in! Keep them from retreating, get in their face and melt it.
The team that hides the entire match is the team that invariably loses. Someone has to be first into the breach – that will, often, have to be you.
Terra Therma
No map gives me more of a growling, snarling bad night than this one – not because it’s hot (managing heat is a thing), but, rather, because – despite the massive possibilities inherent in the map, the PUG always does exactly the same, predictable thing.
This is the ‘heatmap’ from Smurfy’s, showing kills on the 7/24/2014 and both starting areas in assault (trust me when I say that both assault and skirmish killmaps look much the same):
What immediately leaps out is what every veteran would expect: see the red ring o’ death in the center – but, more importantly, the ‘red spiral arms of doom’ coming off of that center ring? If you’ve played this map at all, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
The heatmap looks like this because the PUG strategy is invariably the same: charge the center from the closest ramp. From there, it devolves into a winning and losing tactic:
The losing tactic is to bottleneck at the tops of the ramps:
In those purple circles, there. It’s hard to see – but if you look closely, you’ll see ‘really dark maroon’ spots under each of those circled areas – that’s the highest concentration of deaths in-game. Clustering at these chokepoints seems like a good idea, after all, there’s a commanding field of view of the caldera, you’ve got lots of cover, and missiles only have one avenue of fire that’s clean.
That’s all an illusion.
In truth, these ramp tops are natural chokepoints that prevent anyone behind you from shooting past you and offering their support. Stopping at the ramp tops just jams your entire team into a useless, milling mass behind you. You can’t retreat through it, they can’t get through you to help – and, in the end, your team dies, one at a time, from the people in the front to the people in the back.
On the other hand… there is a winning strategy, using these ramps. Head into the ring. Take your whole team there, and own the entire perimeter.
Simply, the team that takes the center ring has all of the advantages that hovering at the ramp tops deny you: your entire team naturally will focus-fire on the mechs it can see, you have the high ground for the follow-up attack, and the opposing pug’s crush of mechs will prevent the mechs you’re beating on from retreating.
Logically, then, the winning tactic is to get your entire team into the circle. Tough to do, but, given one or two mechs diving in, the rest usually follow.
There is, however, a better way to win Terra Therma: the sweeping assault. Take a look at this subtly different heatmap (kills, instead of deaths) for the same day:
See those purple circles? Those are the areas on the map NOT in the center of the ring that show an unusual concentration of kills.
Why?
Notice the marked path from the ‘red’ starting area in the northeast part of the map? These are the flanking paths from that side (you can imagine similar paths from the ‘blue’ starting area in the southwest corner). Assuming the other team dives into the center, swinging wide around the edges can put your heavy guns into some very pretty long firelanes up into the ramps. PUGs being PUGs, if the team doesn’t take the center, they’ll mass up, facing the wrong way up the ramp, opening themselves to concentrated fire from the areas noted, unable to respond in a meaningful fashion.
These flanks also break the team holding the center, as they file out one-by-one into your firelanes.
These two simple tactics show you how to create general advantages – how to improve your chances of winning. Try them yourself – encourage your PUG team to try them with you.
Advanced Terra Therma:
… one aside. If you have a really good PUG- exceedingly unlikely – there is a fantastic trick you can pull by simply refusing to engage the middle. Moving your team down into H8/G8 or into C3/B4 can put you into a position where, if you’re patient, you can literally simply wait for the opposing team to come to you… usually one light mech at a time.
If you’re in assault, move these positions to B5-B7 or E9 (red) or H5/h6 or G3/F3 (blue). This gives you a faster response time to return to your base in the event that it comes under enemy fire.
Choosing these spots actually changes the entire map – the enemy will spread out and scout for you, and, if you can ambush and destroy those scouts, you can create material advantages very early, spread out the enemy lines as they move to engage you, and simply annhialate the team as they advance on your position.
It’s also very nasty, on this map, to simply take your entire team, gather near the enemy base, and simply assault it.
Even if you do not take the base, or make no significant effort to do so beyond poking at the turrets, the enemy team, now in the map center, will have to run back to its defense. This creates tremendous opportunity for havoc and mayhem as their lines spread out, their fire discipline wavers, and your ambush teams carve them apart.
But.. these tactics are hard to do with a PUG that is impatient, that invariably starts its charge for the center. They work wonders in teamplay, however.
Edited by JonahGrimm, 23 July 2014 - 08:35 AM.
