1 reply to this topic

[Jor Jurgenson]

Thus far, there have been several posts on community warfare, but, few of them offering anything other than a continuous litany of complaints. The main issues and complaints, from my personal experience and those I have read, render down to a few topics.

From an overall perspective, the surest way to win as an attacker is to do the 'multiple zerg rush technique'. Namely, you stack at one of the open gates, run down a side taking pot shots at any targets of opportunity, but, you ignore everything except destroying a generator and/or the Gun. You do this for three or four rushes and you win. It is not fun for the attackers, who are basically playing the minions in 'MechWarrior: Tower Defense Edition!' as you trundle along the two roads of victory. It is not much fun for the defenders either, since it boils down to pumping as much damage into them as possible before the generator blows. There is some nuance to both sides of the coin, but, not much.

If the opposing (attacking) team does not follow this formula, you are pretty well certain of your victory. I have only seen one game as defenders where we lost because of total mech destruction. However, in that case, four defending pilots had disconnected at first drop. The rushing tactic is so necessary in large part to the design of the maps (especially the abortion which is Boreal). There is minimal cover from the dropships on approach to the objectives, and they can hit you at around 200 meters from the gate with a pinpoint Large Laser stream (10 damage to one component). While that doesn't sound like much, if someone slams an AC10 round into your shoulder (or anywhere for that matter) every 20/30 seconds, it makes for some problems. So, you just find a trench and run, hoping your shoulder doesn't pop before you hit the gen.

That, from what I have seen, is the current way the battles play out. If it does not sound all that fun or interesting... well... it really is not. The winning teams adopt that strategy and win (since most other tactics are largely doomed to failure) or they are slaughtered with much rage and gnashing of teeth.

My suggestion would be an small change in the design policy. The original premise is sound (guard the objective) and I think the turret/gen changes were necessary given the 'light zerg' problem. The problem, and reason an attacker cannot hold the base even if captured in unit/lance to lance battle, is that the game hot drops an entire team on you immediately... oh... and they shoot you with large laser batteries while doing so. In order to take the base and be able to have any chance of taking the objective in a rolling advance, we need to be able to push back their respawn points/dropzones. As of right now, they simply drop reinforcements on your head (while shooting you) and you can do nothing but take it until you can fire at the mechs. So, let us damage their dropships, let us push back their spawns or greatly increase the timer. Why not allow us to destroy the laser batteries on the dropship as well? At the very least, if we have secured the gates, why are we still dropped 2 clicks out?

Boreal...well...that map. The two gates are so close together that a competent unit can drop 8 to 12 mechs before the gates even open. Of course it is great when you are defending, your first mech can hit 1k damage easily if it is not a brawler. All you have to do is stand on that central hill, that has fantastic cover by the way, and melt your opponents. The door generators are also quite a bit lower than the ones on Sulphur. Perhaps that was intentional, but, it is much harder to drop the Boreal gate generators (in general) than the sulfur gate generators. In Boreal, you have to do the 'dump and drop', basically alpha and fall down the front of the slope like a kiddy slide. You don't have to do that on Sulphur, not even close. If you aren't moving fast while taking down the Boreal gate gens, even an average sniper will kill you. Perhaps someone could take a look at that. The improvements to the cover just beyond the gate (on both maps) is a big improvement. There were many times before when a group would just be stopped cold by a good sniper team. In general, the design changes are going in the right direction. Some minor systemic changes, as noted above or something along those lines, I believe would address a lot of problems with Boreal. As close as the gates are (from a sniper's perspective) they may as well be a single gate. That would be another good map change, either separate the gates by a greater degree or give us less of a sniper's perch worthy of Zeus.

Summing it up, the suicide rushes are the tactical response to some design flaws. We would all like to be able to win some other way, but, this works the best. Dropships and their ability to hot drop, while invulnerable themselves AND firing pinpoint large laser batteries makes trying to take the objectives in a more conventional way complete suicide. Being able to a.) damage or destroy dropships/laser batteries or b.)push back respawn points of defenders (would require a map redesign) or bring up the spawn points of attackers after gates are secured would make a conventional assault more viable. Boreal needs some more help. The recent design changes have helped, but, it still has problems with a.)strange door generator/hill placement and b.)an amazing sniper perch that has given me lots of kills/makes damaging the generators much more difficult than on Sulphur.

Would be interested to know what you all think.

[Savage Wolf]

I made some suggestions that might help in another thread
http://mwomercs.com/...ight-defenders/