Mr. Huge's Scumbag's Guide to MWO
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Good, Good... Let The Hate Flow Through You!
Start every match with a mindset of utter resentment and disgust. Consider each and every one on the opposing team as a personal enemy and object of hatred, and your teammates at best as tools and disposable assets, and at worst as obstacles in your way. Psych yourself up; you have to
want not just to have a match, not just to roll over the opposition, but to stomp all over their faces when they're lying down. That's how you get the highest damage output to damage taken ratio. Consider every "cheap" tactic (oh, and naturally, you
don't use "cheap" tactics, wink wink, nudge nudge) on part of the enemy or mistake on part of your team as a personal insult, and use it to fuel your anger and as an incitement to either simply give them a beatdown as a reward or to one-up them. Always be ready to take it one step further. And if necessary and you're that kind of person, keep a spare keyboard around.
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Give Me The Specifics
Build your mech according to some very clean-cut pre-determined goals and standards, and try and focus on simplicity and a very focused combat role first. This will tend to give you some clear fundamental strengths which you can then abuse to the max in-game while exploring the facets of the build and what could possibly be done better. Practically, this means min-maxing your use of Quirks, keeping your weapons loadout as simple as possible and ammo-mixing to an absolute minimum, and squeezing everything you can out of every last slot and fraction of a ton in the garage. Don't slap on more jump jets than you certainly must, keep ammo tonnage to a minimum and possibly replace it with a laser for lower vulnerability, do not consider AMS a necessary for all mechs and do
not slap on Active Probes on anything that doesn't have missiles, etc.
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It's Dangerous To Go Unoptimized: Don't Take These
There are certain modules, particularly weapon modules and engines, that are especially good and come with particular perks, while others should be considered just so much clutter. For instance, a lot of XL engines are only so much garage scrap as they weigh precisely the same as the next step up. The XL300 should be considered a kind of "holy grail" of XL engines, as it marks the last engine where the ratings stop increasing in steady half-ton increments, as it is coincidentally the first engine which can mount double internal heatsinks, and it is capable of producing a fair turn of speed in a massive portion of all available chassis. Similarly, whenever you think of using an AC/10... don't. Not unless your mech has some insane quirks for it. The LB10-X is lighter, has more utility, gets the same amount of shots/ton and is just plainly a better weapon. The only time you ever want the AC/10 is to deal pinpoint damage outside of 400m. And with its shell speed, it might easily miss, and it reaches to 450m before damage starts to drop. See the point? Similarly, whenever possible, equip the UAC/5 instead of the standard AC/5. Adjust your tactics and rely on the greatly increased burst damage for hit-and-run action. If range is not a problem, use Small Pulse Lasers instead of MLs, as they will be able to hit smaller targets for more consistent damage and keep up a higher DPS. If you have a multitude of launchers and tubes, use many small ones to increase your reload time; even with Artemis tonnage, it's way better to have 2xLRM5 rather than a single LRM10, and without Artemis the tonnage-to-tubes ratio never catches up, making it 2 tons cheaper to have 4xLRM5s than a single LRM20. And do not underestimate the power of Streaks, which on IS mechs get ridiculous ammo economy and don't have to waste tonnage on Artemis.
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Modular Solution
In the current meta, the Radar Deprivation and Seismic Sensor modules are Gods. Unless you are going for a very particular build, always equip one of these. The Advanced Zoom module also grants you enormous utility, although not the same cash as the Seismic, and the Target Decay module is gold when someone has been fool enough not to equip Radar Deprivation. And always, always bring a UAV.
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It's Easy Being Green
Don't paint your mech like you let Liberace loose on it. There's no "camo value" here; mech camouflage is limited to texture color. If you paint your mech a glaring neon pink, you
will get spotted and Gaussed in the face first on your team. Buy some blacks and greens out of the military color palette and apply these to all your machines; statistically, given the mech textures, the maps and their color palettes, you are best off with going with "Camo Dark Green", "Camo Dark Brown" or "Phranken Black".
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Shun The Unfavored
There are certain chassis that are not only favored by the current meta with quirks, weapon types, etc. but that also have particular strong points and favorable models, such as the Centurion with its left shield arm, the Jagermech and Battlemaster with their high weapon mounts, the Hunchback with both high weapon mounts and insane cooldown quirks, etc. Specialize in these and use them to the max, and utterly disregard mechs that do not enjoy some very particular perks such as these. The Cataphract 4X comes to mind; low-slung weapon arms, broad torso, big cockpit, a max 255 engine rating on a 75-ton mech, and low-end quirks intended for AC/5s?
Get out!
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This Is Not Boxing
The last thing you want to be doing in MWO is fighting in your own weight class, and certainly not against someone in the same model of mech. Depending on your weapons loadout, you may be geared toward fighting some very specific targets or with some specific tactics, but as a rule you do not want to go toe-to-toe with a mech quite similar to your own. The balanced matchup will of course determine who is most skilled and manliest, but you'll likely be slugging it out for a long time and deal somewhere approaching equal damage to each other. Meaning that you'll have spent a whole lot of time and armor on fighting a costly battle of attrition for just one chancy kill. This is pointless; instead, seek out enemies that you have some marked advantage over, be it speed, weapon range envelope, alpha strike, etc. and then abuse that advantage to no end.
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On The Down Low
The same rules apply for this game as for real-life personal weapons; if you're not an exceptional shot and also have setup time, keep your aim low. A bullet flying over someone's head is wasted, whereas a body shot may not be lethal but it's damn well likely to hurt like a female dog and cause some damage. If you have burst-fire ballistics or several fast-firing ones, don't be afraid to spray and pray. It's damage dealt, and a bit of shake to keep the enemy from firing back at your team.
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What Was That?
Even though it's often masked by other things going on, don't forget that there is another way to know if you're under threat or not; when an enemy locks you, there is a slight flash inside your cockpit and a very minute electronic whizzing noise, pitching up toward the end if you've been acquired and down if they've lost lock. Watch out for it and watch your map position to try and determine the enemy's location and angle of approach.
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Flicker Jabs Are Still Hits
Try to mount at least one laser or other weapon with hitscan or cluster-shot ability. Even the tiniest amount of damage dealt to an enemy mech will grant you an assist and possibly some flanking and hit-and-run points as well. Shamelessly exploit this by doing hit-and-run attacks on a multitude of targets. It may also help your team by acting as a distraction.
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The Bigger They Are, The Stupider They Look When They Trip
People aiming for the legs of Assault-class mechs are a rare sight; this is a sign of general stupidity. There are no mechs so vulnerable as Assaults when they have been rendered virtually immobile, as they tend not to have very good torso twisting capabilities and can easily get hacked to pieces from behind by crit-hunting fast Mediums and Lights. And Assault pilots are also nearly as likely as most others to store ammo in their legs. If given the slightest opportunity, try to cripple Battlemaster or Stalker missile boats this way.
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Don't Blink Or You'll Miss It
If you are a Light or fast Medium pilot, and it's the start of the game, make sure to lock onto one target and then track and hound them as utterly long as possible. You'll be giving all the LRM boats on your team a sure target, and simple-minded as they are they
will follow your trace and land all that fire on that one target. Use the time and impact shake distraction to line up a crit shot on exposed modules; your purpose isn't to give the boats the damage, but to eliminate that one mech to tilt the statistics in your favor.
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Mr. Beerbelly, Get These Mutts Away From Me
Similarly, if it's the start of the game, whatever you do, don't move out of the central clump of your team and absolutely do not get locked up by one of the aforementioned fast lights and mediums. They are opportunists and are never going to let you go, and since LRM spam rules the day, you'll get focused and stripped faster than a Merc on the wrong side of the tracks in Detroit.
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Expecting Local Showers, Bring Umbrella And Shotgun
Speaking of LRM spam, there is one thing you want to do regardless of what weight class you're in or what weapons you're packing; at every opportunity, lock up and try not to lose any LRM boats. Turn your attention to them, and try to direct your team to do the same, as their destruction must be given the highest priority, aside from extreme cases of targets of opportunity. LRM mechs are favored greatly by the current meta, and can easily project extreme firepower with accuracy over huge distances, and later avoid the steamroll of more powerful direct-fire mechs with support, making them very valuable in the long term. Also, the people playing them are invariably the sort who should be punished, making it a twofer.
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First To Flinch Loses
If you're standing and giving fire on an enemy, and a teammate decides to place himself between you and the target, then absolutely do not stop firing unless you yourself are taking severe damage and he is clearly trying to give you cover. This holds particularly true if the enemy in question has modules in the orange and red and you are about to get a kill, or when the teammate in question is walking around like a headless chicken. Currently, you only get penalized for teamkills, not team damage, and these people have to learn that you at least do not take their ****. Even should you happen to take him out, 10,000 c-bills is a cheap price for knowing you've done the world a small service and ruined the game for someone who clearly deserves it. A spaced-out firing line in the right situations distributes the effect of weapons which cluster, and lets all mechs fire on the same target; this is effective. Mechs lining up before you in order to steal a kill though, are effectively shielding the enemy and forcing their teammates to re-position and re-train their weapons; this is
not effective.
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Can't Take The Heat
Of course taking opportunity of someone who's overheated and doesn't understand the Override is a great idea, particularly if we're dealing with an Assault mech here. But this holds doubly true for when you're firing some heat-inducing weapon, such as flamers. By torching the shut-down enemy, you can keep heating him up and thus drag out the pain of that restart and leave him cooking hotter the moment he comes back up. Gather up and try and make him panic so that on restart he immediately lets rip another big alpha and promptly goes limp again.
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It's Not Retreat, It's Tactical Withdrawal
Kipling said "It's ruin to run from a fight". Well, there are no disciplinary actions or court martials here, so don't be afraid of turning if the fight goes against you. A good sense of map awareness helps if you're too slow to actually outrun the enemy, so you can rely on your armor and torso twisting while backing up and returning fire. Use teammates for cover, to spare you the damage and force them into the mix, particularly if they happen to be Assault mechs. Fall back to the next piece of cover, then start laying suppressive fire. And if you're last on your team and you're playing Assault, and you can't kill yourself, then draw them toward your base to be distracted by turrets while you find somewhere to lay down a big alpha. This is particularly important if you're being chased by crit-hunting light mechs; the turrets are generally a much bigger threat to them, and they tend to be the kind of scumbags who shouldn't survive the end of the match.
Edited by Mr Huge, 25 November 2014 - 05:49 AM.
10
LOL XD
