Ways to help your team when you find yourself weaponless
Intended Audience: New(er) players
Updated: 7/22/2014. See changelog at end of guide for details
It has happened to everyone at least once. You're in an engagement, find yourself in a bad place and you eat a crap-load of damage. Somehow you survive; Betty is screaming at you that this-or-that has "critical damage" and this-or-that "is destroyed." After breathing a sigh of relief, you then look to your weapons display and come to the horrifying realization that...
...all of your weapons have been destroyed.
What do you do? This can be a difficult pill to swallow. Some players will try to hide their mech somewhere and shut down to preserve their K/D ratio (pro-tip: it doesn't affect anything but your e-peen, and the enemy will probably find you anyway so don't do it). Others wander about in a dazed and confused manner. This guide is written to give you some tactics that you can use when you find yourself in this situation; tactics that will help you continue be an asset to the team in your weaponless state and possibly make some cash to boot!
Information Warfare
Whether you realize it or not, every enemy that's currently showing up as a target on your screen means generally one of three things happening:
1) A UAV is above their head broadcasting their position
2) They have been NARCed and the beacon is broadcasting their position
3) Someone on your team has line-of-sight to them
It's the third case we're interested in here. Every mech has a 120 degree wide sensor cone coming from the cockpit. Each enemy mech that is within that cone and isn't blocked by an obstacle will show up on the sensor map for all of his allies to target.
This is where you come in. As a weaponless mech, you can act as a spotter for the rest of your team. In this role, your job is to move about and try to stay undetected. Flank the enemy position, keeping out of sight until you know you're well behind where they are likely to look. Then, just poke your head out of cover, press R to target an enemy, and watch the fun. Your team will now be able to see what you see, which is a massive advantage. Also, you might earn some cash for your efforts. Many new players aren't aware of the Spotting Bonus and how it's earned. Here's how it works: if you are the closest friendly mech targeting an enemy mech (that is, you've used R to select them) and an ally uses your lock to fire missiles at your target, you've earned a spotting bonus! Simple as that.
Knowing where the enemy team is and how many there are can easily be the difference between a win or a loss. It should be important to note that the enemy may be under an ECM umbrella. If this is the case, your sensors are useless... all except one system: your eyes! Team chat (Y by default) is extremely powerful in that there is no means for the enemy to counter what you say. Type furiously, and let you allies know exactly what you are seeing. I guarantee although they might not respond, at least someone will benefit from the information you provide.
Now, when you are sneaking around doing your super-sleuth spotting, it's likely that an enemy will turn around at some point. When they do, they are also likely to see you sneaking around behind their group. When this happens, you can either try to evade and continue spotting, or move on to the next tactic.
Bait
Yes, bait. This one won't earn you any cash or XP, but it may turn the game around if you are losing. More than likely, once that enemy mech has turned around and seen you spotting for your team, half the enemy team will turn around too.
You see, to them all they realize is that a red enemy mech indicator has popped up right behind them. They don't know anything about your mech or the condition you're in (yet). Fearing being flanked by an enemy lance and/or one shotted from behind, many of the enemy team will turn towards you. When this happens, your team suddenly has two things going for them: they are facing significantly less firepower, and they suddenly have a number of juicy mech backsides to fire into. The less firepower thing is really important. If you've noticed, games tend to finish quickly when one team is up by three or four mechs. This is because of the damage output difference per team. There are a number or good posts on these forums explaining the mechanics of that, so I won't go into detail here.
Anyway, you're almost guaranteed to draw a number of mechs away to chase after you. Even when they realize you aren't a direct threat, oftentimes players will see you as an easy kill (kill = $$$) so they'll chase you anyway. Encourage this! Run, zig and zag staying always in sight but difficult to shoot. The longer you can pull this off and the more enemy mechs you draw away, the more of an advantage you give your team. This tactic isn't conducive to long life, but as long as your team is even a little on-the-ball, you'll help to pull a win. The third tactic I'm going to talk about is more useful in a brawl, and more useful in a "scarier" mech as they have a tendency to draw more fire...
Punching Bag
So, a gigantic brawl has opened up. Both teams have closed ranks and now it's tooth and nail fighting. Everyone is hurting and mechs are popping left and right. You are in your trial Atlas or other big bruiser and have no weapons. What can you do? Wade right on it and do your best to draw attention to yourself. This is what is going to happen: Someone is going to hit you with an AC20 or a barrage of SRMs or a Gauss Rifle shot to the face. You will die- BUT- that AC20 shot or barrage of SRMs that would have hit someone else on your team *who can still fire back* was just wasted on you. Also, while they are bothering to hit you in the face with their big nasty weapon, they are taking damage from your teammates. So congratulations, you may have just helped pull off a win!
As a sub-tactic to the Punching Bag, there may be times when the circumstances allow you to use your mech to help other teammates dish out a world of hurt. When you are in an enclosed space, or you see an enemy mech continally backing around cover, simply place your mech behind theirs. Suddenly they are unable to back up. When this happens, they either must turn around to deal with you (leaving juicy mech rear wide open for your teammates), attempt to move out of their position entirely, or be severly limited in how they can move. Any of these three actions they choose is an advantage for your team.
Capper
Playing Conquest or Assault? Well, there is certainly another way you can help your team in a weaponless mech: capping points. You can be an invaluable asset simply because the more mechs that are capping the point, the faster it gets capped. There are few things more frustrating than losing a Conquest or Assault game by a point or two. You can singlehandedly make sure that your team is the one that wins by that few points.
Another way to help as a capper in Conquest comes in the late game when there may only be a lance or so of mechs left on both teams. As a weaponless mech, you can separate from your group and run to a far cap point. If the game is close in your favor and the other team is moving as a single unit, they'll have a difficult choice to make. From their perspective, they will see that two separate points are being capped, and will have to make a decision as to which point to try and take back. Remember, they only know that two points are under attack and probably have no idea what forces are on what cap point. If they choose the one that you are capping and move en masse to you rather than the point the rest of your team is working on, you may be blown to bits but you have nearly assured a resource victory. This also works if they split their team, as they will be sending multiple mechs to deal with you and thereby lessen the firepower that is being sent to the rest of your team.
One point about capping in Assault: watch our for turrets. Seriously. If you try and cap the enemy base alone you either need to find a blind spot where you can't be fired upon or you need to have had a teammate make one for you. Do not take them lightly.
This last tactic I will discuss isn't generally effective. However I believe it should be mentioned in this guide...
Ramming
In MWO, if you contact another mech at speed both you and the mech you hit will take a small amount of damage. Now, this means that you can (in theory) kill an opponent by running into them. Will you? Not likely. More likely is you end up blocking clean shots your teammates are trying to take on the mech you're ramming, or just end up dying from your own ram attempt as you are probably critically damaged anyway. In short, unless you're just looking for lols, don't do it. There are better ways to help your team.
Summary
Just to wrap up it should be made clear that not all of the above tactics will work in every map or every situation. Also, it should be clear that the effectiveness of some of these tactics will drop significantly as you ELO rises. Better players will first be looking at the damage doll to see where best to hit you and may realize that you have no weapons immediately. This realization means you will draw less players when you act as Bait and some players will ignore you completely if you pull a Punching Bag. Information Warfare is always effective, however and should be your go-to tactic as a weaponless mech. One final note: no matter what you're doing, never forget to to use team chat to let your team know what you know and what you're up to. They may not respond, but communicating in match is always helpful!
I hope that this guide has, at the very least, given you some ideas as to how you can help your team even when you have no weapons and feel useless. There is always something you can do!
Please feel free to mention any mistakes I have made or tactics may missed I will update the guide
as soon as possible. I also welcome any and all feedback!
-DustySkunk
Changelog
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7/22/2014: Added Capper sections and mech blocking to the Punching Bag based on thread discussion. Thanks for the info, guys!
Edited by DustySkunk, 22 July 2014 - 10:14 AM.