219 replies to this topic

[Training Instructor]

If you can't do anything because the enemy team has ecm, it means you forgot to bring a TAG, which means you didn't build a very good missile boat.

[NextGame]

Tag's nowhere near as useful as some people seem to think it is. You dont poke your face out and shine a cat toy in the enemies face if you are the only one doing so, unless you enjoy being instagibbed by the enemy blob.

Goes back to team effort being the actual problem.

[spectralthundr]

Kilo 40, on 10 August 2014 - 10:20 PM, said:

I'f a light NARCs an assault, and an LRM boat then attacks that mech, even from behind cover, causing high damage or a kill, THAT is the very definition of team work.

If an assault starts brawling with another assault, and the pilot has the foresight to make sure he targets the mech he's fighting with, and then a LRM pilot is paying attention to his mini map and sees the targeted mech is circling a friendly so he changes targets to that mech to help his teammate, that too is the very definition of team work. yes...even if the LRM boat is behind cover and can't see them.

or everyone pushes over a ridge and teh RLM pilot starts lobbing missile that he knows won't hit but will cause the enemy to duck and take cover while his team pushes....well there you go, that's team work too.

I'm talking about the LRM pilots that go sit in the same spot, never relocate to get a better angle on a fight, and don't pay enough attention to see if their spam is actually even hitting to begin with. And there's PLENTY of them.

[Escef]

Voidcrafter, on 11 August 2014 - 12:11 AM, said:

What disgusted me the more is the fact I actually was starting to like this playstyle

I'm respectable with an LRM boat myself, and I prefer to not play them. The playstyle isn't as interesting, and lacks a certain visceralness that I prefer. In fact, this morning I had a few BLR vs. BLR duels that were quite rewarding, all of them decided by the winner's team mates coming in and tipping the odds. But gods, lasers and SRMs everywhere!

[MischiefSC]

Bishop Steiner, on 10 August 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

I always think...if I could get every mech on the team to carry a single LRM10 (especially Clan MEchs, for all of 2.5 tons) then you would have the equivalent of 2-3 LRMboats, without actually having the dead weight that 2-3 dedicated LRMboats can become with just a little ECM on the OpFor.

I used to roxxor boxxors in tabletop with a full company of Centurions, especially in urban settings. Everyone has a LRM 10, AC10 and 2MLs. Any combat round that anyone had LOS on an enemy that SOB caught 12 launches of LRMs, so in addition to the brawling Cents do well in I'd splatter 40 pts on one specific SOB every round.

Low BV, cheap to field, effective in a lot of environments, good mix of weapons and solid armor for a medium. With the BV for it I'd load up with 9Ds.

It makes me cry on the inside, what MW:O did to my Centurions.

As to LRM boats...

In the PUG queue you need to be a mid-range LRM boat or you're not that useful. You luck out and drop on Caustic or Alpine then great. Otherwise you're probably mostly wasted tonnage.

If you're pugging with LRMs drop 5 or 10 tubes and stack on some MLs, LLs or what have you and your own effing TAG. Stick at 500-600 and try to stay near your teams Assaults *but not too close*. The ability to LURM down any light or striker medium who comes to hump your Dire Whales will make you a well loved addition to the team.

Don't hesitate to get up and help fight if your team is getting rolled. You need to draw fire or concentrated damage will eat all your teammates all the quicker.

Carry your share. That includes taking damage, not just giving it.

[Kilo 40]

spectralthundr, on 11 August 2014 - 12:20 AM, said:

I'm talking about the LRM pilots that go sit in the same spot, never relocate to get a better angle on a fight, and don't pay enough attention to see if their spam is actually even hitting to begin with. And there's PLENTY of them.

That may be what you meant, but it's not what you said.

Training Instructor, on 11 August 2014 - 12:12 AM, said:

If you can't do anything because the enemy team has ecm, it means you forgot to bring a TAG, which means you didn't build a very good missile boat.

Or you know TAG isn't very effective and decided to not bring it.

[Argent Usher]

Hmm i always thought the lrms are to soften up and to show me positions via enemy ams. My failure.

[pwnface]

LRMs are so easily countered, in high level play they are largely unused. In solo queue direct fire is still better if you can aim at all. Asking for your teammates to hold locks is ridiculous, friendly mechs in close combat will naturally hold locks to kill enemy mechs. Generally snipers will not be able to hold locks if they are doing their job correctly, if they are holding locks on an enemy they are exposing themselves to enemy fire which is bad...

[Escef]

pwnface, on 11 August 2014 - 02:12 AM, said:

Asking for your teammates to hold locks is ridiculous, friendly mechs in close combat will naturally hold locks to kill enemy mechs.

Most will, but a very sizable minority do not. I blame 2 things. 1) Laziness. 2) If your last target is already dead or you haven't targeted anything yet, you will auto-lock to whatever you are firing at if it's in sensor range, and people become reliant on auto-locking so much that they develop the horrible habit of never manually locking a target.

[Wolfways]

Training Instructor, on 11 August 2014 - 12:12 AM, said:

If you can't do anything because the enemy team has ecm, it means you forgot to bring a TAG, which means you didn't build a very good missile boat.

Or you're in a stock mech, or a CPLT-A1.
(Actually it really means ECM is stupidly OP.)

[MechWarrior849305]

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky, on 10 August 2014 - 03:01 PM, said:

Most people don't understand that LRM users have hidden messages in their chat.

"LRM boat here, press R to hold locks"

Translated Subtitles: "I have LRMs equipped into my mech. Press R for me so I can hide safely behind this mountain and try to kill steal from you after you have almost cored your target, I'm sorry, I didn't want to waist tonnage on TAG because I don't like taking damage in my assault mech."

Brilliant post, Sir. Exactly what I meant in the second post in this thread. Also, "waste"

[pwnface]

Escef, on 11 August 2014 - 02:28 AM, said:

Most will, but a very sizable minority do not. I blame 2 things. 1) Laziness. 2) If your last target is already dead or you haven't targeted anything yet, you will auto-lock to whatever you are firing at if it's in sensor range, and people become reliant on auto-locking so much that they develop the horrible habit of never manually locking a target.

If a player isn't good enough to know locking on to an enemy mech will help improve their TTK, I have little hope they will have the brains to lock on for LRM support.

[Escef]

pwnface, on 11 August 2014 - 02:37 AM, said:

If a player isn't good enough to know locking on to an enemy mech will help improve their TTK, I have little hope they will have the brains to lock on for LRM support.

Which is why I, on those rare occasions when I use an LRM boat, open the match with:

get n hold locks for LRM support
lock on defaults to R

I'm not expecting people to take crazy risks to get me locks so I can vulture kills or any of that other paranoid BS that all of the wanna-be's and try-hards whine about. I'm trying to give simple instructions to people that don't know any better. And the "more l337 than thou" crowd assumes they're being talked down to, probably because they actually suck and someone should talk down to them.

Edited by Escef, 11 August 2014 - 02:48 AM.

[CyclonerM]

Someone may have already said it.. But when people do not even lock the targets in front of them (which is a huge advantages for them AND the rest of the company) well there is nothing else you can do..

[Scurry]

Aim64C, on 10 August 2014 - 10:07 PM, said:

Again, playing devil's advocate:



Did I lose the match, here?

Granted - I could have made some better decisions - but there were eleven other people on my team who weren't recording their intimate failures inside the cockpit.

I think it's kind of silly to make the argument that any one player or one build 'lost the match for the team.' It's always easy to pass the blame off onto others - when the reality is that most of the times a team fails is due to the team not working as a team.

Kilo 40, on 10 August 2014 - 10:13 PM, said:

how exactly is that losing the match?

EyesBurn, on 11 August 2014 - 12:00 AM, said:

I had yesterday a match where i scored over 1000 dmg with my awesome 8R,i lurmed the pants out of everyone,i was left out of ammo,score was around 5-5 or 3-3,i forgot. After i lost ammo i was only one left standing there,3 against one,off course we lost,i couldnt fight with two med lasers left,so it must be my fault that we lost or maybe that match wouldnt even be even if i didnt keep the enemy on distance whenever they popped their heads out,please tell me,i am in a real dilemma here !?
like i said earlier,in my previous two posts here,i take this game as a team effort,WE LOST,not just me,if i even took another assault that i am not bad with and has unlimited ammo,it still wouldnt matter,they were just better then US,i really wouldnt make over 1000 dmg with it ,maybe the score would be little different,but WE would still loose,because them ,all together were better then US!

Whoa there, I'm talking about a certain specific case here - several times, in a close match, I've seen an LRM boat with no backup weaponry, and with very healthy armor, being the last one alive on the team, facing off against 1-3 enemy mechs with wide open torsi such that even a scratch would kill them. Then being picked to bits by backup weaponry that the other team had. That's incredibly frustrating. Honestly, even a single Small Laser would work, so that you're not totally non-functional after running out of ammo/forced into CQC.

[Mad Strike]

This is why i carry UAVs on my mech , so i can focus on my targets and waiting for some arrows to rain from 900m while i keep holding lock , which means facing enemy fire.

[Kilo 40]

Scurry, on 11 August 2014 - 02:57 AM, said:

Whoa there, I'm talking about a certain specific case here - several times, in a close match, I've seen an LRM boat with no backup weaponry, and with very healthy armor, being the last one alive on the team, facing off against 1-3 enemy mechs with wide open torsi such that even a scratch would kill them. Then being picked to bits by backup weaponry that the other team had. That's incredibly frustrating. Honestly, even a single Small Laser would work, so that you're not totally non-functional after running out of ammo/forced into CQC.

but he's the last one alive, he's still fighting, so why do you think he's the one who lost the match? If you were still alive you could have distracted them and he could have kept firing on them, and then won. so YOU lost the match(using your logic anyway).

[Evil Ed]

I doubt assaults boating LRMs are that successful in higher elo-brackets.To slow, can't benefit from artemis, long traveltime for the missiles, has to rely on scouting/people holding locks and most important: don't contribute to the damage soaking. Yes - the assault LRM-boat can do a lot of damage, but how about the much more important W/L-ratio?

I think ton-for-ton most effective LRM-boats are mediums and heavies that use artemis (maybe even stack with BAP/TAG) and support from medium range. But - doing midrange support with LRMs is much more demanding, for example doing jump-TAG-lock-fire-jump-TAG-relock is much more difficult then just hold the crosshairs over the target a fire...

And people should bring UAV. You get c-bills/XP when using it and it significantly increases chances of winning (=more c-bills). Bring it!

Edited by Evil Ed, 11 August 2014 - 03:16 AM.

[Madw0lf]

Bishop Steiner, on 10 August 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

I always think...if I could get every mech on the team to carry a single LRM10 (especially Clan MEchs, for all of 2.5 tons) then you would have the equivalent of 2-3 LRMboats, without actually having the dead weight that 2-3 dedicated LRMboats can become with just a little ECM on the OpFor.

But...but....that would require a varied load out! I agree with you honestly, and always try to fit some form of lrms on my 'Mechs if I have the space and weight

[ice trey]

I like running NARC and TAG builds a lot of the time, because I like supporting those LRM team mates. I'd rather be the supporting team-mate than obsess over kills.

The only problem is, the handful of LRM units seem to outright ignore those TAG and NARC markers a lot of the time.

Being a recon unit is pretty thankless. Maneuvering around to the enemy's six and hoping to hell that none of the 12 mechs in the deathball happen to notice you. Putting up UAVs, Popping targets with NARC, and pointing out the targets with TAG doesn't earn nearly as many C-bills as running a 'mech made for killing.

That, I think is part of why the Heavy and Assault cue is so glutted. The vast majority of people who still use lights is because a larger-than-average number pack ECM, so they can snipe from a distance without being noticed. The few other builds being used are harassers, able to deal lots of short ranged damage on a very mobile platform for hit-and-run or distracting the enemy team... but the role of Recon, finding out where the enemy is and/or spotting for teammates - though part of Battletech, is rendered all but useless in MWO's case, because the mechanics don't reward it. While a light or medium can deal damage, a heavy or assault can deal more damage, and fit more of the most destructive guns.

Edited by ice trey, 11 August 2014 - 03:27 AM.