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9 General Laws Of Combat And Command


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#21 loopala

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Posted 04 August 2014 - 07:02 PM

my comment on #9 was to add proof to the rule. yep we are on the same page.

now in the real world one of the great military virtues is to hold when all is lost. in history many a gallant last stand has been had. the 300, the Alamo, Battle of Camarón, Wake island. but all of those was for something, too slow the enemy down, to fight a holding action so a larger force could regroup or if nothing else to pin down an enemy force in one place.

now in the battle tech universe last stands were almost unheard of till the arrival of the clans or the 4th succession war, depending on your take on the subject, mostly due to the scarcity of battlemechs. ah for the good old carefree days of 3010 when a lance could hold a planet. border classes were with company or smaller units spread over a few worlds.

#22 Training Instructor

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 12:58 AM

Rules 1 and 2 are reversed.

In lone wolf matches, the biggest cowards often live the longest, right before they get rushed by the 8-10 remaining enemy mechs that they spent most of the match taking an occasional potshot at in between hiding behind rocks and leaving their more aggressive teammates high and dry.

Rule 5
Patience is good, but camping leads to defeat more often than it leads to victory. There are no fortress positions on MWO maps. Sitting in one spot for too long a period of time makes you vulnerable to a flank. Also, people who like to sit and wait often miss opportunities to pursue and kill isolated enemy mechs. I've observed enough players after I died to know that what they call patience, is often them camping a corner or sniper position that hasn't been relevant to the current battle for the past two minutes.

Rule 8
Nah, if your team has been playing like cowards, dropping an arty/air strike on their camp position before you go down is 40,000 cbills well spent.

#23 990Dreams

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 07:48 AM

View PostTraining Instructor, on 05 August 2014 - 12:58 AM, said:

Rules 1 and 2 are reversed.

In lone wolf matches, the biggest cowards often live the longest, right before they get rushed by the 8-10 remaining enemy mechs that they spent most of the match taking an occasional potshot at in between hiding behind rocks and leaving their more aggressive teammates high and dry.


I didn't say cowardly. I said stupid, weak, and lazy. And the implied rule was "in battle," not "hiding from battle."

View PostTraining Instructor, on 05 August 2014 - 12:58 AM, said:

Rule 5
Patience is good, but camping leads to defeat more often than it leads to victory. There are no fortress positions on MWO maps. Sitting in one spot for too long a period of time makes you vulnerable to a flank. Also, people who like to sit and wait often miss opportunities to pursue and kill isolated enemy mechs. I've observed enough players after I died to know that what they call patience, is often them camping a corner or sniper position that hasn't been relevant to the current battle for the past two minutes.


I played a match last night. Our team hid under the HPG station on Manifold. We won because we played it smart and didn't really move. Those who did move typically got punished (in the end we won 12-4).

View PostTraining Instructor, on 05 August 2014 - 12:58 AM, said:

Rule 8
Nah, if your team has been playing like cowards, dropping an arty/air strike on their camp position before you go down is 40,000 cbills well spent.


Not sure I understand your implications. I meant "don't quit in the middle of a battle like an idiot."

#24 DONTOR

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 08:13 AM

SMEAC

#25 IraqiWalker

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 08:34 AM

I am an ardent believer of rule no. 9. There are no bad mechs out there, just pilots who can't use them right. Which is not a negative on those pilots, it's quite possible that the style of play and the geometry of the mech doesn't fit their style. I cannot for the life of me use Jenners well. I've mastered them, but I don't pilot them half as well as I do my locusts.

#26 Jackplays17

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 08:49 AM

View PostTomcat0815, on 01 August 2014 - 07:00 AM, said:

Doesn't rule 3 contradict rule 9 in a way? In rule 9 you state there is no bad mech, in rule 3 you state that the Panzer V is worse than the Abrams. Applying that to MWO, there should be bad mechs I understand.


No, because an Abrams is w/out a doubt better than the panzer, BUT if the panzer commander is smarter than the abrams, and say, flanks the abrams, then the panzer is better. your mech is only as good as you command it.


MWO example: a jenner with little armor and one or 2 small lasers can take out an atlas decked out with loads of armor and large lasers if he/she is smart. they can run around and hit the atlas in the back, or take out his arms which have the lasers on them.

Edited by Jackplays17, 05 August 2014 - 08:50 AM.


#27 990Dreams

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 08:53 AM

I see rule 9 & 8 are hot topics.

#28 Training Instructor

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 10:05 PM

View PostJackplays17, on 05 August 2014 - 08:49 AM, said:


No, because an Abrams is w/out a doubt better than the panzer, BUT if the panzer commander is smarter than the abrams, and say, flanks the abrams, then the panzer is better. your mech is only as good as you command it.


MWO example: a jenner with little armor and one or 2 small lasers can take out an atlas decked out with loads of armor and large lasers if he/she is smart. they can run around and hit the atlas in the back, or take out his arms which have the lasers on them.


If the Panzer can flank the Abrams, he gets to watch one shell do very little damage before he's dead. It's still a bad comparison, and there are mechs which are simply bad.

Any mech can dish out pain when you rely on inferior competition or for teammates to soak fire while you blast away. When facing equal competition though, those mechs show their inferiority in 9/10 matches.

#29 Training Instructor

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 10:13 PM

View PostDavidHurricane, on 05 August 2014 - 07:48 AM, said:


I didn't say cowardly. I said stupid, weak, and lazy. And the implied rule was "in battle," not "hiding from battle."



I played a match last night. Our team hid under the HPG station on Manifold. We won because we played it smart and didn't really move. Those who did move typically got punished (in the end we won 12-4).



Not sure I understand your implications. I meant "don't quit in the middle of a battle like an idiot."


Stupid, weak, and lazy can mean different things to different people. Also, regarding weak...strength is a reflection of tonnage/armor/alpha. If you're referring to a player being weak, are you referring to them being cowardly or unskilled?

Good job on hiding under the platform in HPG. In 12 mans that seems to be the default tactic these days for teams that go up 1 kill. Watching 7 mins of nothing happening the other day was a nice reminder to myself to not watch twitch streams.

In the middle of a battle you shouldn't give up, but when your team is getting rolled, it's perfectly acceptable to go find the cowards who haven't helped at all and drop an arty strike on them. When the match is lost, it's lost, there's little point in prolonging it. I know there's a bunch of light pilots who think they're going to kill those last 8 mechs with their spider, but they're really just wasting the time of 23 other people.

#30 Kjudoon

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 10:17 PM

View PostTraining Instructor, on 05 August 2014 - 10:05 PM, said:


If the Panzer can flank the Abrams, he gets to watch one shell do very little damage before he's dead. It's still a bad comparison, and there are mechs which are simply bad.

Any mech can dish out pain when you rely on inferior competition or for teammates to soak fire while you blast away. When facing equal competition though, those mechs show their inferiority in 9/10 matches.

Although some chassis are worse than others because of inescapable things like geometry or tonnage limits... stuff like that, loadouts matter more for what makes a mech suck. This can be mitigated with a skilled pilot, comfortable with his loadout, but only to a certain point. This is why mech combat value based on individual chassis and loadout should be a large part of how MM works. Not just W/L records by weight class as the primary mover.

Edited by Kjudoon, 05 August 2014 - 10:17 PM.


#31 Training Instructor

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Posted 05 August 2014 - 11:32 PM

View PostKjudoon, on 05 August 2014 - 10:17 PM, said:

Although some chassis are worse than others because of inescapable things like geometry or tonnage limits... stuff like that, loadouts matter more for what makes a mech suck. This can be mitigated with a skilled pilot, comfortable with his loadout, but only to a certain point. This is why mech combat value based on individual chassis and loadout should be a large part of how MM works. Not just W/L records by weight class as the primary mover.


Exactly, some mechs simply have better hardpoints or hardpoint locations than other mechs do which, when combined with pp fld insta-convergence, creates situations where one variant or chassis completely outperforms another variant or chassis, all things being equal.
Or you have the light mech category, where the low-end mechs weigh slightly more than half as much as the high-end mechs, yet aren't significantly faster. Between the 10 heatsink minimum rule and extremely low armor values, 20 ton mechs are always going to suck in MWO. Even when they implement weight limits for competitive matches, teams don't bring Locusts, they find the tonnage to bring a 30-35 ton light instead.

#32 IraqiWalker

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 07:09 AM

View PostTraining Instructor, on 05 August 2014 - 10:05 PM, said:


If the Panzer can flank the Abrams, he gets to watch one shell do very little damage before he's dead. It's still a bad comparison, and there are mechs which are simply bad.

Any mech can dish out pain when you rely on inferior competition or for teammates to soak fire while you blast away. When facing equal competition though, those mechs show their inferiority in 9/10 matches.


There are no mechs that are bad. The 5MLs on my LCT-3M are still just as effective as the 5MLs on your TDR. The problem is not the mech, it's how you use it.

I have a locust guide thread in my sig. You can go check it out, and see what people have done with that mech.

View PostKjudoon, on 05 August 2014 - 10:17 PM, said:

Although some chassis are worse than others because of inescapable things like geometry or tonnage limits... stuff like that, loadouts matter more for what makes a mech suck. This can be mitigated with a skilled pilot, comfortable with his loadout, but only to a certain point. This is why mech combat value based on individual chassis and loadout should be a large part of how MM works. Not just W/L records by weight class as the primary mover.

That's the problem though. We can't use the BV system, not without accounting for the player's skill. Which, with the current elo system is pretty fishy at best.

I still end up dropping against big name players every now and then, and I work HARD not to get up to higher elo. XP

#33 xeromynd

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 07:43 AM

Hey good list but you forgot #10, even the US Military knows this important one:


10.) There are no tactical reasons for PUGs to charge the middle pit on Terra Therma in any game mode other than conquest. There are no resources there worth taking, there are no structures of value, bonuses to be had, or secrets to be found, just a (usually) messy insta-battle with many possible areas to be flanked from, and barely any cover. The only quick escape is usually had by dropping down and heating the f**k up while damaging your legs.


But seriously, MWO seems to have this lets-rush-to-battle-as-quickly-as-possible syndrome. Both teams seem to go to areas where they will engage the enemy the fastest. The southeast corner of Alpine is hardly ever touched by teams, same with certain areas of Terra Therma, or corners of Caustic. I can only speak for the queues as they were before being segregated, and the current PUG queue, but the fact is, that the matches myself and most players on my team seem to enjoy the most, are the ones where we simply say "Hey let's try something...different!"

Edited by xeromynd, 06 August 2014 - 07:45 AM.


#34 Kjudoon

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 07:50 AM

View Postxeromynd, on 06 August 2014 - 07:43 AM, said:

Hey good list but you forgot #10, even the US Military knows this important one:


10.) There are no tactical reasons for PUGs to charge the middle pit on Terra Therma in any game mode other than conquest. There are no resources there worth taking, there are no structures of value, bonuses to be had, or secrets to be found, just a (usually) messy insta-battle with many possible areas to be flanked from, and barely any cover. The only quick escape is usually had by dropping down and heating the f**k up while damaging your legs.


But seriously, MWO seems to have this lets-rush-to-battle-as-quickly-as-possible syndrome. Both teams seem to go to areas where they will engage the enemy the fastest. The southeast corner of Alpine is hardly ever touched by teams, same with certain areas of Terra Therma, or corners of Caustic. I can only speak for the queues as they were before being segregated, and the current PUG queue, but the fact is, that the matches myself and most players on my team seem to enjoy the most, are the ones where we simply say "Hey let's try something...different!"


Rule 10 summed up by my constant refrain: STAY OUT OF THE PUG ZAPPER! YOU ARE NOT FRODO, THAT IS NOT MOUNT DOOM AND THE RING OF DUMM IS ALREADY THERE WAITING TO KILL YOU!

#35 DONTOR

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 07:51 AM

While I agree that there are no bad mechs OR weapons, I do believe a pilot that does well in what is considered a sub par chassis could indeed do better in a "superior" chassis, but chooses not to. Because they like a challenge, or find another playstyle more fun.

#36 IraqiWalker

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 08:07 AM

View Postxeromynd, on 06 August 2014 - 07:43 AM, said:

Hey good list but you forgot #10, even the US Military knows this important one:


10.) There are no tactical reasons for PUGs to charge the middle pit on Terra Therma in any game mode other than conquest. There are no resources there worth taking, there are no structures of value, bonuses to be had, or secrets to be found, just a (usually) messy insta-battle with many possible areas to be flanked from, and barely any cover. The only quick escape is usually had by dropping down and heating the f**k up while damaging your legs.


But seriously, MWO seems to have this lets-rush-to-battle-as-quickly-as-possible syndrome. Both teams seem to go to areas where they will engage the enemy the fastest. The southeast corner of Alpine is hardly ever touched by teams, same with certain areas of Terra Therma, or corners of Caustic. I can only speak for the queues as they were before being segregated, and the current PUG queue, but the fact is, that the matches myself and most players on my team seem to enjoy the most, are the ones where we simply say "Hey let's try something...different!"

Try group drops. You'll see parts of maps you probably forgot even existed.

View PostDONTOR, on 06 August 2014 - 07:51 AM, said:

While I agree that there are no bad mechs OR weapons, I do believe a pilot that does well in what is considered a sub par chassis could indeed do better in a "superior" chassis, but chooses not to. Because they like a challenge, or find another playstyle more fun.


True, there is also the situation where sometimes the "superior" chassis just doesn't fit the bill for this pilot's play style.

#37 xeromynd

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 08:16 AM

View PostIraqiWalker, on 06 August 2014 - 08:07 AM, said:

Try group drops. You'll see parts of maps you probably forgot even existed.


Ain't got no group, not enough time to commit, and a sporadic schedule, For now, I'm a puggin man

#38 IraqiWalker

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 08:34 AM

View Postxeromynd, on 06 August 2014 - 08:16 AM, said:


Ain't got no group, not enough time to commit, and a sporadic schedule, For now, I'm a puggin man


Drop by some of the TS servers. They're mostly open and you can drop whenever, with whoever. No need to commit.

#39 990Dreams

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 09:11 AM

View Postxeromynd, on 06 August 2014 - 07:43 AM, said:

10.) There are no tactical reasons for PUGs to charge the middle pit on Terra Therma in any game mode other than conquest. There are no resources there worth taking, there are no structures of value, bonuses to be had, or secrets to be found, just a (usually) messy insta-battle with many possible areas to be flanked from, and barely any cover.


Wrong. Sometimes you need a resource your enemy has that you don't. Sometimes structures contain data you need. In MW:O this isn't (currently) the case. But when CW and resource warfare come around, suddenly you'll have factorie that make you money, mines that give you weapons, and gas pockets that give you fuel (if PGI is smart).

View PostWarWolfSW, on 06 August 2014 - 09:11 AM, said:

Surprisingly enough, I took the time to read through all the posts this time....and I noted a recurring theme: commitment: whether it be to a company, a lance, weight class, a role, a mech, a weapon, or yourself.

In games these days (and mostly due to how society generationally has changed) there is no "commitment" or "responsibility" how people interact with people, places, things. No sense of need or loss or "honor" for those around you.

There is of course loads of commitment to one's self and it is encouraged by the social media and how interaction is obtained and maintained throughout their stages of life.

If I'm getting too heavy here let me know...

In MW:O terms, and maybe I'm unique in this way of thinking, is when I my BattleMech steps onto the field, the loading screen drops, Betty let's me know that my hulk is ready to do battle with those across the field, I look to my left and my right.

Now unless there is a light that has boot, scoot, and boogied his/her way from the formation already, I take note of the warriors beside me and decide right then and there that I will get them off this field alive today if I can (and bring home the C-Bills). I commit to my lance first, the company second, and myself third.


Cut your post short for aesthetic reasons. You have a point. Dedication may not do much, but you better be ready to die by the creed you made to protect your faction when you enlisted in the militia of that faction. I've never fought a war. I've never shot someone. Never battled outside a video game. I can safely say that if/when I decide to fight for what I believe, I will fight to the death no matter how horrible the war. Not because I'm bluffing. But because when I make that decision, I make it knowing the horrors I might face.

That dove under the surface into my mentality. I'm not going to continue on with it at this time. But these 9 phrases aren't just for MW:O. I wrote them thinking about real battles lost and won, and real scenarios from Chess to computer games.

Edited by DavidHurricane, 06 August 2014 - 09:21 AM.


#40 xeromynd

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Posted 06 August 2014 - 09:16 AM

View PostDavidHurricane, on 06 August 2014 - 09:11 AM, said:


Wrong. Sometimes you need a resource your enemy has that you don't. Sometimes structures contain data you need. In MW:O this isn't (currently) the case. But when CW and resource warfare come around, suddenly you'll have factorie that make you money, mines that give you weapons, and gas pockets that give you fuel (if PGI is smart).


Yes, but I;m talking about the state of the game as it is now. The two ideas you mentioned are nice. But personally, I'm not holding my breath for anything other than a faction piechart that updates based upon certain factions winning and losing battles.





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