13 replies to this topic

[Tesunie]

This is being written for CW as it stood on 12/11/2014.

So far, after only about 5 matches of CW, I can tell you a few simple things already. It's not going to play as your typical PUG/Group matches of old. There is a challenge and a tactic behind CW matches.

To start off, the first thing you should know and realize is reinforcements/respawns. This means that, after a death, you can bring in another mech from your 4 mech roster, also commonly called a Drop Deck. This is good for you as it means if you die you aren't completely out of the fight. However, this doesn't mean you have infinite lives either. You got 4 lives to live.

With only 4 respawns, this means that you have to make each of your lives count for as much as you can. Rushing in and dieing and then repawning to do the same thing again is not optimal. If you are going to die, do so in as tactical a manner as possible.

This respawn also means several changes in tactics. Breaching a gate is only a first step, but breaching the gate and then excepting a quick run to the objective is not going to work. Consider that your opponent's also have 4 respawn/mechs to use. Killing an enemy reduces them of a mech, but they will be back for the most part. Plan on their reinforcement. A breach can quickly become a route if you are not careful.


I also find that Range weapons rain supreme. The more damage you can cause to the enemy without counter fire, the better you are. Charging in for a "good old brawl" will probably leave to a flanked and quick death. It's okay to brawl, but I'm finding more balanced builds between range and close punch seems even more vital now than ever before.


A straight forward attack also is often not a good thing. Unimaginative attack plans, such as always charging the same gate, tends to be easily countered. Open up other gates. Switch which gate you are going to be going through at any given time. Sometimes, just one mech attacking from behind/beside can ease another gate through.

There are also different strategies between attack and defense. Attack has to breach the gates, fight through turrets and defenders alike, and kill their objective. The defense though only has to grind their opponents slowly, stop them from getting to the objective, a just deny the final objective from being achieved. They can sacrifice themselves to do so as well if needed. The attackers can't do so without paying the price later.


Another point to look at is the mechs you choose for your drop deck, and also what order to drop your mechs in. Is it wise to throw your best assault mech into the fray early? Or maybe a scout would be better served? Attack and defense will, once again, change up what you may or may not want to do.

Selecting your mechs is also a consideration. With only 240 tons total to work with, it can leave you rather strapped. Do you sacrifice two slots to Locusts and take two 100 ton mechs in return? Do you take more medium mechs and aim for a more balanced performance? I can't answer this question, but do consider what mechs, and their builds, you are bringing into a match.


Another point I'd like to mention is that those turrets have LLs. I suspect ERLLs. They can hurt, so don't ignore them and be careful around them.


A final point I'd like to mention is, never forget your ultimate objective. If you are defending, you goal, no matter what it costs, is to protect that station for 30 minutes. Run down the timer. Force your opponents to fight through your turrets. Stuff them with a wall of bodies at the gates if you have to. Whatever it takes to stop them. As the attackers, you are to destroy that orbital cannon. It only takes a single mech to do so. Sneaking one through unnoticed may work. Rushing together as a wave of bodies like a flock of birds or a school of fish may work. Drop those defenders and get the target. Everything is lost if you don't do so in 30 minutes. Hanging back too much can be costly. Charging too recklessly can also spell a quick doom.


No matter what. Work together and be a team. You fail or succeed based on your performance as a whole. In this case, one mechwarrior can not carry a team.

[Tesunie]

I'll refine this post father tomorrow, but some quick concepts I wish to cover:

For defenders, consider a few points.
- Aim to disable and leg opponents. A legged attacker is less likely to be able to get to their target. If you can, force the enemy to eject out of a nearly perfect mech. Maim their speed and ignore.
- at start, aim to keep the enemy's heads down. They have to go up a ramp to attack the gate generators. Keep suppression fire on those ramps. Keep the generators around longer.
- think delaying actions. Slow them down.
- DO NOT RUSH FORWARDS. Let them come to you. You, as defenders, have no objectives on the other side of that gate. Don't give chase. Don't hunt down a kill. Aim for winning the match.
- use every ridge possible as cover. Distract. Show them down. Time is on your side.
- let them come to you. You have turrets. Even if your entire team gets wiped, I believe that the match continues (need testing). Sell your lives dearly. Leave opponents damaged as much as possible.


As attackers, you have a different set of tactics. I'm still devising some here.
- time is against you. You can't afford to just sit back and wait. But, you can't just rush in either. Balance between pushing and regrouping needs to be found.
- to start, take out as many gate generators as possible. The more avenues of attack open, the more diverse your tactics can be.
- on the sulphur map, it may be best to siege all the gates with a lance each. This will force your opponent to spread themselves thin. If you are lucky, they may not even realize what is happening until it is to late.
- the gates will become a meat grinder. Your objective should not necessarily be to push past the gates, but to drop as many enemies as possible as quickly as possible. Remember, they respawn just like you do. They respawn closer than you do.
- as attackers, it may be more beneficial to bring in heavies and assaults to start. Travel together. Save your speed for when the gates are down. You don't need speed to take out the gates. You need more speed to take out the gun. One mech is all you need to technically destroy the gun enplacement. A quick, clever and stealthy light may have a better chance.


I'll post more thoughts as they come.

[Tesunie]

Another tactic, that would require a coordinated effort, for the attacking team might be to make a dedicated push on one gate, and then have a light (particularly on the Sulfur map) run through a different gate and try not to become detected. Try this tactic a little later in the game, after you can clear out the turrets on one gate a bit.

The defenders aren't going to be keeping count of if a single player is not at the gate they are trying to hold. This might give the opportunity needed for the light mech to get to the generator. May take a couple of attempts, or slowly destroying turrets. Otherwise, those turrets hurt and can easily kill a rouge light without any issue.

Don't forget though, the enemy will respawn, so they will be making movements from their base back to the front lines. If you are this light mech and you have infiltrated the enemy base, be aware of these reinforcements walking by you. Try to remain hidden and unnoticed. You want to be able to make it to the gun emplacement. Not get spotted half way there and hunted down/destroyed.

[Tesunie]

I did a little testing on some of the attack strategies I had devised with a very good team who listened. For the most part, it seemed to seriously work! We ground the clans when we were counter attacking right at the gates. We ended up actually killing the entire enemy team before we really even pressed too far out of the gates too. We pushed out only when there was a clear advantage, and we actually managed to win that attack match.

Remember, you are a team. You either fail or succeed as a team. Alone, you are nothing.


By the way, Dropships hurt... My poor Dragon went from yellow armor CT to yellow Internals CT from a single drop ship flying overhead, shooting it's LLs into me, and then a barrage of med lasers afterwards all into my CT. Lost the mech before I even really saw combat... Tis was sad. (As I was right on the Omega too!)

[Tesunie]

New defense strategy to incorporate into your battle plans. I don't now why I'm posting this online... I'm sure it's going to bit me in the rear from someone else pulling these tactics on me later.

Use the hills and structures, particularly on the arctic map, to your advantage. They have to close and engage you. Don't push them. If possible, let the enemy come close enough for your turrets to do their deadly work, and hopefully those (nasty, horrible, I-hate-them) dropships to deliver not just their deadly payload of reinforcements, but also their just as impressive, never missing, array of combat weapons on them. I can tell you, they can strip a mech of a lot of armor, if not out right kill a mech. Get them close enough to the spawn, and those ships also have an impressive array of med lasers as well as those large laser batteries.

Remember, they only win if they can destroy the Omega generator, which is located behind the structure. Your drop sites are still far enough away to deny them access to that critical point, while adding possibly precious damage to your enemy.

[Tesunie]

After playing a match with my stock mech only account in CW, I have a strange tip to make. I find that a lot of common normal match builds don't work so well in CW, but I found I did amazingly well in my stock builds. If you find your mechs not performing very well in CW, consider looking and taking inspiration from a mechs stock build.

One example, LRMs on a Dragon. In small matches, they don't work so well. In CW matches, it seems to be a handy weapon system to have on it instead of SRMs.

Now, I'm not saying you need to go crazy like me and play only stock mechs, but maybe all that "crazy build concept" of some stock mechs had actual meaning and purpose... you may need to reconsider some of your mechs loadout designs for CW. It's a whole different beast of a game.

Ps: the one stock mech CW match I played my team lost defence to clan mechs. But, my Hunchback 4j did over 300 damage, my 4p did about the same, and my stock Orion k did only 150 before the game ended and was still alive. Centurion AH did not get to see that match. Mind all this was stock.

[Tesunie]

As of current, there seem to be two distinct prevailing, and successful, paths to attack or counter attack missions. Seen as attack mode is the one people seem to have the hardest time grasping, I shall cover this more than defense.

1. Zurg rush. Gather together in one large wave of bodies, and charge in TOGETHER.
High risk, low rewards though. But, it's chances of success seem to be fairly well.

2. The slow Grind. Breach the gate(s) and don't go out of them. Aim to kill as many of the enemy as possible as fast as possible. Hope there is enough time left afterwards to kill the Omega.
Low risk, high rewards. Chances of success... less than favorable...

The best compromise between these two is to at first sit in for a short grind. Kill some of the enemy as fast as you can. Once your first wave or two have ground out a bit, then shift to a surprise zurg. This can give decent rewards, but decreases the chance you will be as successful with the charge, as you will have less chances to fail it. It's more balanced, but probably wouldn't have any great chance of success over a standard grind tactic.

[Dexter Herbivore]

[color=#959595]In CW, ignore mechs almost completely when attacking. Mechs aren't your target, target 1 are the gates, target 2 are the turrets, target 3 is the cannon. If you can get a shot on a turret, ignore the mech standing in front of you, walk past them and hit a turret instead. Obviously if you have no other immediate targets then feel free to use your firepower on the insignificant secondary targets. [/color]

[William Slayer]

Arty and Air. Both can be laid down to catch the Omega target. Try rushing the gat and having your lights and fast mediums hit Omega with Arty.

[William Slayer]

BTW, Does anyone have hard data on h ow many HP the Omega has?

[Jody Von Jedi]

William Slayer, on 15 December 2014 - 08:57 AM, said:

Arty and Air. Both can be laid down to catch the Omega target. Try rushing the gat and having your lights and fast mediums hit Omega with Arty.

I have ignored the Air and Arty content and have bashed players that chose to use it in the Skirmish, Assault, and Conquest game modes. It was a game mechanic I personally never took advantage of....until now.

Air and Arty now have a legitimate use other than spamming the opponent. I still refuse to use it in the standard game mode, but I do acknowledge it has a place in CW.

[Kraven Kor]

William Slayer, on 15 December 2014 - 08:57 AM, said:

Arty and Air. Both can be laid down to catch the Omega target. Try rushing the gat and having your lights and fast mediums hit Omega with Arty.

Neither do ANY damage to the cannon generator. Nor to a gate gen. They might damage turrets, dunno.

But, they can clear the road there, so to speak.

[Tesunie]

Kraven Kor, on 15 December 2014 - 01:29 PM, said:

Neither do ANY damage to the cannon generator. Nor to a gate gen. They might damage turrets, dunno.

But, they can clear the road there, so to speak.

Was beaten in saying this. I've seen no noticeable effect from any strikes on the Omega. Don't waste your C-bills on using them on the Omega, or any stationary target. I strongly believe that strikes do no damage to any generators. I also believe that it will do no damage to any stationary targets (turrets).

[Tesunie]

Another observation from me about CW:
For the entire attack phase, only the last 2 hours truly seem to matter. Actually, we could probably bring that down to the last 30 minutes if the world is heavily contested can change a planet.


Here is how this works and why it is this way:
- If there are already 12 man teams on each side (attack and defend), then a match starts every minute on a given planet. A planet can be completely turned in the last 30 minutes if a match is started every minute in that time. That would be 30 matches happening before the ceasefire. If one side or the other wins "30 perfect matches", a planet can quickly change hands just before the ceasefire.

- If there are not even player counts on a given world, and one side has more players than another, then it can take upwards of 10 minutes (use to be 5) for a given planet to launch a match. This would be those matches where you drop fighting only turrets. This means, if only attackers or defenders were at a given planet with none of the other present, only 3 matches for that world would be played within 30 minutes.

- Another problem leading to this issue/result is that we have a select number of territories on a given planet (use to be 11). When you attack/defend, you fight for a given territory of a planet. The percent number is the number of territories each side controls.

- The opening hours of an attack phase is just about wasted, as it really has little to no bearing on the end of the attack phase. If the planet conquest was determined by which team won the most matches on a given planet in a given attack phase, then the entire attack phase would be relevant. This would change it so that every match played on a given planet would have a lasting impact for the entire attack phase, instead of only the last few pieces of the attack phase.


Honestly, with this relevation, it's almost a waste (besides to try and direct the masses to cretain planets for attack/defense for the end of the attack phase) to participate with the opening moments of the attack phase. You are just better off only playing the last 2 hours of the attack phase under the current system.

I know that (and I mean no shame when I say this, as it's a brilliant tactical move) the Smoke Adder's unit has been timing their pushes for the last 2 hours of the attack phase for a while, and it was they who pushed the DC off of Turtle Bay with this very strategy. It was they, with this revelation revealed to first, that started to press the Smoke Jaguars out of their corner and into the outer rim of the Inner Sphere. (I applaud them of their cunning and tactical concepts.)


I feel that if CW is to be improved, the current system of planet capture is going to have to be adjusted. For now, make sure your last matches before the ceasefire really count, because they really do!