179 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

Creovex, on 06 November 2014 - 08:37 AM, said:

@OP

I feel you pain regarding the slowness... HOWEVER... what says your team can't support the slowest player? (ie. ecm cover, AMS support, walking WITH them rather then rushing off, etc.)

I can't count the number of times I ran back for a lone Direwolf because it may be a weapons platform, but without support, it is a dead mech... HINT: It's a perfect reason "Lance in Formation" reward was put in... to support your teammates!

The problem is that in practice what this means is that you would wind up never moving after your initial set up spot. There is always someone who is perfectly content standing there the entire match. If you always moved only as fast as your slowest player, you would never be able to play offensively.

Believe me, no matter how slowly you push forward there is always going to be those guys who refuse to budge and eventually get overrun. And standing in the same spot all game is not only boring, but a recipe for failure. More often than not, you will get flanked and striked to death if all you do is play turret guardian.

[Jman5]

Rebas Kradd, on 06 November 2014 - 12:52 PM, said:

Escorting assault mechs is part of role warfare. *watches minds blow in every direction*

So if I am in an LRM assault mech and I decide to run to some far corner of the map to launch LRMs. Is it everyone's role to U-turn and escort me to that corner? Then wait there for me to move to another spot? What about if an assault player spawns and he isn't moving? Should I run there and wait?

I can't help but feel like some assault players don't want 11 teammates, but instead want 11 servants.

[Ursh]

People will say "Stupid assault you're too slow, why should I stick with you", and then they'll hug a DDC for it's ecm unless the pilot is clearly a special needs kid.

[Morpheousz]

Coming up with tactics and trying to get the team following them is great, especially before the countdown is over, as 8/10 matches have no team coordination to speak off (solo queue).

However, since at that point we cannot see where each lance has dropped, if you do not adapt your tactics to take into account where your slowest lance is, no matter if they are in dire's or awesomes, if you run off full bore ahead without them, that lance stands a good chance of getting torn to shreads by an aggressive team, even if all of them charge off right from the get go to follow you.

Take River City. More often than not, the tactics the team uses is the nascar race around, which is fine, but as has been said, this more often than not leaves that assault lance behind. So, instead of charging off clockwise when the assault lance spawns at the dropship, how about the team goes counter clockwise, by the time the enemy team would be catching up with the assault lance, your whole team has caught up with your assault lance and can take out a whole light/medium lance quickly, giving you an immediate advantage. You can then hold your ground (high ground is almost always good), or keep pushing. Either way, the assault lance gets to fulfill their role of being a dps soak and dps giver, with the rest of the team there supporting them.

Even something as simple as an ecm light or 2 who run back and support the assault lance while the rest charge on ahead can make the aggressive team hold off from picking them apart, giving you time to do your charge and them time to catch up to you.

When i pilot a raven 3L, I always, always run to the assault lance and escort them, which works quite well, though less so with the BAP range boost, still, works better than leaving them behind. Not to mention the appreciation I get from the assault lance... I actually think they get more confident/aggressive when I do this as they have to worry less about LRMs and light swarms and so will be more likely to not try to run from cover to cover slowly.

Team play means taking each lance's strengths / weakness and terrain into account and adapting tactics to promote the strengths of all.

I do acknowledge that there are a fair number of people, not just in assault lances, who sit there for a good 30s - 2 minutes before moving. Can't do anything about that....

[Gallowglas]

A few caveats before I say what I have to say on this issue:

1) I never, ever "flush" without first escorting or providing cover fire for assaults crossing the river from their spawn. If you provide this support, you will rarely...maybe never...have a problem since the faster enemy mechs aren't going to risk bogging down in a slugfest with superior firepower and risk getting flanked because they had to ignore what the rest of the team was doing for a protracted period of time.

2) I rarely pilot a Dire Wolf. When I say rarely, I mean to say I've driven my only Dire Wolf maybe 5 times in public matches.

3) The experience of having a team around you to coordinate with crossing assaults is MASSIVELY different than the same happening with solo drops.

All that said, I think that if the three above situations are not in play, then it's still a fundamental problem. You can say that the Dire Wolf has no excuse if they get caught by the front lines of the enemy, but the truth is that it routinely happens even if movement is immediate. You can mitigate it, but if the enemy sees lone DWs in the water, they're going to school after them like a bunch of hungry piranha. Sure, you can cross more diagonally, but that just puts you in a valley where you can take even more shots and puts you in clear terrain for longer. Simply put, it's not optimal.

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 06 November 2014 - 12:32 PM, said:

There are two things that need to be considered, and it has less to do with Dire Wolves, but most certainly affects them...

1) When you spawn, move in a "useful direction" to your group for regrouping. Don't try to overthink your path to your team as the fastest route is a "straight line" to them. Yes, I know... basic math and geometry.

2) You can do all of the stuff you need to do (shoot weapons into thin air, assign weapon groups) AFTER you are moving, NOT BEFORE. You burn precious time you could have spent doing while you move anyways. Priorities people, priorities.

These things easily shave off 5-15 seconds of time spent that would get your mech killed if/when rushed by the opfor aggressively.

The people that do these simple things often times never have these issues.

Exactly. This has been my point as well through this thread.

I run direwolves and other ever slower assaults all the time in pugs (I primarily pug) and I just don't have these issues.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

The Boz, on 05 November 2014 - 11:26 PM, said:

OP leaves assaults behind and blames them from getting separated from the team?
OP is bad and should feel bad.

Jman is still QQ Mercs yes? I kind of get the feeling they arent as good as I thought if they cant get even this most basic thing down

[Screech]

No greater sign of an impending faceroll while puggin then when your team decides to run away from its 400 ton lance.

[warner2]

Perhaps the problem is still the spread out spawn positions.

I think PGI realised there was a lot of death balling going on and wanted to mix it up a little. Encourage a little lance on lance combat or whatever. Perhaps they wanted a MWO match to play out more like a WOT match or something. In WOT it pays to spread out because a light tank spotting an enemy tank can allow a heavy tank on his own team to take that tank out fast. That doesn't apply all that much to MWO where the death ball wins. You don't need map coverage in MWO.

Often, the solo queue come down to which team death balls the best which is to say which team ignores the spread out spawn positions, groups up, and depending on the map pushes towards where they hope to find isolated enemies who have not done the same. Basically, a team that spreads out doing what PGI tempts them to do with the spawn points does not do well.

Sometimes, a team death balls TOO MUCH and gets owned hard by a team that is more spread out with multiple firing angles but that is rarer given the state of the solo queue. This sometimes happens by camping the same corner of the caldera on caustic or rotating yourself into a corner on canyon.

It'd probably be best to put the spawn points back together or at least look at rebalancing them to bring in outliers.

[warner2]

Also, the problem with covering slow moving assaults is that if you do it you can bet other people on your team aren't. So by doing it you are almost contributing towards the problem of your team getting stretched out. It is a bit sad when the circling happens on River City but what are you supposed to do about it? You can't stop people doing it so you end up just going with it. After all if the whole team commits to doing it it does work well.

[Rebas Kradd]

Jman5, on 06 November 2014 - 01:05 PM, said:

So if I am in an LRM assault mech and I decide to run to some far corner of the map to launch LRMs. Is it everyone's role to U-turn and escort me to that corner? Then wait there for me to move to another spot? What about if an assault player spawns and he isn't moving? Should I run there and wait?

If an assault pilot does stupid things that make his escort vulnerable, he deserves no escort.

And you know that. You're just pulling BS arguments out of thin air right now.

[Sir Wulfrick]

Cion, on 05 November 2014 - 05:30 PM, said:

When direwhales complain about that on River City in the likes of "stupid team always leaves assaults behind (dead)" I kindly tell him that no one forces him to ride a Direwhale every game.

Yes, a 100 tonner is SLOW. that's your choice to trade speed and maneuverability for extreme firepower. Either work to handle the weakness of the mech you take or choose another mech.

An assault complaining (in certain occasions) that he was abandoned is about the same as a Light complaining that he doesn't have enough firepower and exclaiming "Why did the team not fire at the target I was firing at??!"

Nope, false equivalence. Light mechs can be pure reconnaissance / scout mechs or they can be fast harassers. No light mech in existence is designed for massive firepower output. In a situation where a team are closely grouped they should absolutely be firing at the targets chosen by the light mechs - that's what they're for. When the team is more spread out light mechs should either be harassing and fading or gathering intel, in neither case should their targets draw the fire of the entire team.

The entire point of an assault mech is to output maximum possible firepower. If the team deliberately or negligently chooses not to make use of the advantage given by a lance of assault mechs then the team is doing it wrong.

While I have some sympathy for the position laid out by the OP, it is absolutely the case that on the largest maps such as Alpine, Tourmaline or mordor, in order to efficiently manoeuvre in to position the assault lance has to take such a drastic short cut that they are indeed very vulnerable to being overpowered by a majority of the enemy team (1 assault lance < 1 heavy lance + 1 medium/light lance). Don't take my word for it: look at the maps and do some time/distance calculations to see how much of a shorter route the assault lance has to take in order to 'keep up with the team.'

It's also the case that the vast majority of players have no earthly idea what "NASCARing" is actually supposed to be. It's NOT about chasing the enemy team. What the wilfully blind or not tactically-minded see as tail chasing is supposed to be pushing and turning one flank of the enemy team, same as the ancient Romans and Napoleon were so good at doing. Turning the enemy flank results in the enemy front line being caught in a cross-fire. Chasing the tail of the enemy is... Ineffective.

[Bishop Steiner]

Jman5, on 05 November 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

People who play with me, know I have very little patience for players who get "left behind" as the team pushes aggressively. Despite what many people say over and over, 9 times out of 10 players are not left behind. They stay behind either by stopping in their tracks while the rest of the team moves, or by taking round-about paths that make keeping up impossible.

You see this sort of blame-game coming from a lot of assaults particularly direwolves who would like you to believe that they are physically incapable of keeping up with a standard slow-push. I get told I simply don't get it since I play a hunchback, so let's load up the trial dire-wolf and look at a common situation of assault-angst: The River City Skirmish spawn by the Boat.



Spawning there let's see how long it takes to get to the citadel bend at d4 in a direwolf without speedtweak.



About 1 minute +/- 10 seconds in the slowest mech without speed tweak.

Let's look at where you typically see players that spawn by the boat at the 1 minute mark. This is a real world game where our banshee buddy is taking his first shot at the direwolf.



Wow, he's only gone about half the distance we did in our test and he probably has speed tweak too.

As you can see there can be a huge difference in distance covered by just moving a little more efficiently. Also never forget that you are an assault pilot weilding a ridiculous amount of firepower. Sure, I may be able to get a few shots on you, but you've got a 60 damage alpha to answer back as you move. Too often people seem to either stop and shoot, or just straight up die without firing a shot.

So next time you load up your big-bad-direwolf and you find yourself in a tricky spawn, don't just give up and say it's impossible. Think about how you can get to where you need to be faster.

And stop blaming your team for leaving you behind.

do agree with this, though will say, have seen teams flat out fly and leave the Assaults on top spawn near the dropship (which IMO is worse than the Boat) and be out in the water headed to the citadel before the DWFs can cross the water to the park. And the OpFor seems to always spawn a wolfpack really close to the dropship.

1 or two straggler assault do tend to get torn up by a wolfpack.

Guess I'm saying that I have seen both, where the Assault get's left because of his own stupidity, and where the team really does take off like a bat out of hell, and the DWF has ZERO chance of keeping up.

[Mudhutwarrior]

When I drop in the Dire its always pretty much full throttle the second the match starts. It's mainly because the assault lance ends up dropping furthest away from the objective and the mediums want to fly around as fast as they can with the heavies chasing them. Sure many in assaults want to screw around and its their own damn fault but I can't count how many times I have been left behind (with Speed Tweak) even if I go into the open to cut that corner and intercept.

That's why now when you have dires on your team they are not following anymore. They expect the jokers to just launch ahead regardless.

Both my crab's and Atlas's can keep up but Dires are a special case. Useless more than helpful to a team that doesn't count them in.

[Bishop Steiner]

Wintersdark, on 05 November 2014 - 05:12 PM, said:

While I support this post entirely, I'll make a couple comments:

Comment The First: You used the smallest, easiest to navigate map as an example. A direwolf should NOT be "left behind" on this map unless the whole team is doing that horribly awful circle-racing game, in which case there's little you can do but take cover and engage about half way around. On Alpine, Being Left Behind on charlie spawn is a very real and potentially unavoidable issue.

HOWEVER! A caveat to the above is that since the Solo queue has been changed to spawn all the assaults+heaviest heavy together, you should be close to the slowest members of your team - move efficiently, and it's highly unlikely you'll be far from the other assaults unless you had the misfortune to spawn alongside a bunch of 80+kph assaults who tear off immediately.

Comment The Second: Absolutely in support of your overall point - The key is to understand your mech, it's limitations, and the situation.

Spawned at Charlie on Caustic? Yeah, you book ass immediately towards the bulk of your team. The most important point to keep in mind is this:

If you return fire against a lance peeking over the ridge near you, you will die. Fast mechs that spawn opposite you can and often will peek over that ridge. Due to the Direwolf's limited torso twist, in order to return fire against them you need to stop progress towards your teammates. Doing so ensures you'll be left behind.

You're in an assault mech, and they're lighter, faster mechs. You can take the pokes, just run to your team, THEN repay them for their impudence.

Ultimately, in 90% of circumstances:

If you got left behind, isolated and killed? It's your own damn fault; and not because you picked a slow mech.

Well, you could take those pokes if people stopped being totally naked on the backside, lol.

Glythe, on 05 November 2014 - 05:13 PM, said:

You won't get the very most backspawn unless you are in a real game. When you are the back DW in the bad spawn with some traffic then you will die if the enemy team rushes down on you (or you'll be so messed up you wish you could respawn in a new game).

Also I'd like to point out that Nascar isn't a valid tactic (aside from the point that camping in good terrain is always easier than assaulting). You are essentially gambling that your side will circle faster than the other side. In a pub game you have no idea if people are in trials or fully decked out monsters. If you're the fast crew it can be "exciting" to chase down heavier guys..... but what you are really doing is leaving your team's slowest guys to be eaten as well. That's just not nice. If there were no team kill penalty I'd shoot you in the back for trying to leave me as bait. I am not your pawn and I will not be used. If you refuse to play in a way where we can help each other then you can go to hell.


If you have ever seen the Kingdom of Heaven (and actually paid attention) you should realize that sometimes you should not attack the enemy no matter how tempting the opportunity might seem. The maps in this game generally feature terrain that vastly favors specific areas against an approach from any angle (other than out of bounds). If you are familiar with the phrase "crossing the T" then you will understand that it is better to defend than to attack.

which is why all the comp teams sure seem to LOVE playing defensive..... oh wait.....

[DAYLEET]

Jman5, on 05 November 2014 - 04:57 PM, said:

People who play with me, know I have very little patience for players who get "left behind" as the team pushes aggressively. Despite what many people say over and over, 9 times out of 10 players are not left behind. They stay behind either by stopping in their tracks while the rest of the team moves, or by taking round-about paths that make keeping up impossible.

You see this sort of blame-game coming from a lot of assaults particularly direwolves who would like you to believe that they are physically incapable of keeping up with a standard slow-push. I get told I simply don't get it since I play a hunchback, so let's load up the trial dire-wolf and look at a common situation of assault-angst: The River City Skirmish spawn by the Boat.

Spawning at D2 is fine but those on the other team who spawn at B4 are screwed, their teammate will mindlessly go nascar, engaging the enemy who greatly outnumbers them while leaving you behind to be eaten by anyone faster than 90kph, you can jump down damage your legs and get shot to hell before you make it to your team or go the long way around protecting you from the guys on the shore but the fast mech will eat you. Many maps are like that for one side and yet you guys persist going the same fkin way every time. , the team spawning B4 should always push D4.

Edited by DAYLEET, 06 June 2015 - 12:38 PM.

[Bishop Steiner]

DAYLEET, on 06 June 2015 - 12:36 PM, said:

Spawning at D2 is fine but those on the other team who spawn at B4 are screwed, their teammate will mindlessly go nascar, engaging the enemy who greatly outnumbers them while leaving you behind to be eaten by anyone faster than 90kph, you can jump down damage your legs and get shot to hell before you make it to your team or go the long way around protecting you from the guys on the shore but the fast mech will eat you. Many maps are like that for one side and yet you guys persist going the same fkin way every time. , the team spawning B4 should always push D4.

THIS.

If you get left behind at the D2 spawn point on RCN, you are an idiot and deserve to die. It's not even remotely a bad spawn point. B4 in Assaults though, is dang near a death sentence, unless the team turns on their brain, and goes anti NASCAR and heads up to B4 to support their fatties.

Ditto for the poor schmuck Assaults who spawn down in Jenner Alley (B6) on FC.
https://maptactic-pr...6d89db0d08b.jpg

[Aresye]

Whenever I get the crap spawn on River City in a Dire Wolf, I take the extra 10-15s to go further out in the water and cut left vs. going in a perfectly straight line towards the citadel.

Going in a straight line towards the citadel is the fastest, but chances are no matter what the enemy team is going to manage to get to the lower buildings overlooking water and get a few shots at you towards the end, most of them likely to hit your rear armor.

Most people aren't too keen on going for free shots when the Dire Wolf they hope to poke at can actually bring all its weapons to bear on them, and you can do that by pushing farther out and doing more of a box pattern.

The first image below shows the normal "straight across," approach, and an approximation of the field of fire you have in a Dire Wolf. The second image shows the box pattern, along with the better field of fire you get from it.

Edited by Aresye Kerensky, 06 June 2015 - 01:02 PM.

[Jman5]

I have been playing an assault lately and I can't tell you how frustrated I get when I see my light/medium lance run backward to "escort me". Instead of scouting ahead, or attacking the enemy, they sit there staring at me as any initial advantage they could have created with their speed/spawn position slips away. What makes it worse, is that most of the time these lights and mediums have short range weapons. Even if we got attacked the enemy is almost always doing it from outside their range.

I want my teammates out there doing stuff. Not standing around hoping for someone to carry him.

[Burktross]

Cygone, on 05 November 2014 - 06:01 PM, said:

Lets get one thing straight here. There is only ONE slow assault in this game (DWF) EVERY other assault should be doing a minimum of 60kph.

If your Mech' (not trail) is doing less than this; you have built your Mech' WRONG. There are no exceptions to this rule and no build that is even remotely competitive moves at those speeds.

If you want to take a slower Assault Mech' then you are not playing to be competitive, you are not playing to win. You are not helping your team by using a competitive build YOU DO NOT DESERVE the help of others as you are not helping them or yourself.

If you disagree with this, then that is fine, you just aren't good at MWO.

Edit: Grammer.

Watch out simpleton peasants, the God of Mechwarrior hath cometh to set your asses straight.