2 replies to this topic

[Ilithi Dragon]

So, recently I've been seeing certain units going ultra-meta with double Light mech rushes, with unjustifiable success.

The attacking team swarms over the gates with a full company of JJ Light mechs and blitzes for the generators, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with this (I think it should remain a viable strategy), it is currently over-powered, because the Lights are able to move past the defenders, who are usually just getting to the areas they are going to set up in, and get back to the generators before the big mechs can resond. A single Light rush in the first wave can easily take out all three O-Generators, and inflict notable damage to Omega. A coordinated Light blitz can even inflict massive damage to Omega, and last night I was in a match where my team of 11 mixed units on TS and one PUG dropped a split-attack Light blitz in the first wave (that we had been planning the entire 20 minutes we were sitting in queue) and almost nuked Omega entirely in just the first wave! We threw our heavies at them the next two waves just to give them a fight, but we could have easily dropped in a second wave of Lights and fast Mediums, and finished off Omega in the second wave with barely any effort. Earlier in the night, I was on the receiving end of a coordinated 12-man team that threw two successive Light blitzes at my team and won, three matches in a row.

This is EXTREMELY difficult to defend against, and there is no reliable method of defending against this tactic. LRMs would work well enough, if you could get NARC, UAV and line-of-sight on the Lights, but a pack of 12 ECM Spiders makes LRMs all but useless without a chain of UAVs or 12 ECM Lights running around in Counter mode. Heavy brawlers would be effective, too, but they're generally slow, and its not hard for the Lights to just move elsewhere, or evade long enough to nuke a generator despite multiple brawler defenders, and then run away with enough of their mech intact to hit another generator.

My suggestion for balancing this is two-fold. First, boost the hitpoints of the generators. Boost the O-Gen hitpoints by 50%, and boost Omega's hitpoints by 100%. Lights have the advantage of mobility, but if they can't hang around in an area and fight for a protracted length of time, because they lack the endurance. Boost the hitpoints on the generators, and damage the Lights can inflict will be less significant, and the Lights will be less able to inflict damage, because they'll have to hang around each generator longer, giving the defenders more time to respond to them, and more time to blast through their weak armor.

Additionally, to specifically counter the all-ECM Spider blitz, as well as make all-Light blitzes less viable in general, I suggest giving the Turrets a line-of-sight UAV ability. This would make it harder to slip large groups of mechs into the generator areas without the defenders noticing, and also make the Light blitzes less effective. It wouldn't have a significant impact on the heavier assaults, as the Turrets don't have enough hitpoints to survive any length of time against even a handful of heavier mechs (a single alpha from 2-3 mechs would kill it), but it would significantly reduce the ability of Light blitzes to storm through unopposed, especially ECM Spider companies, as the LRM mechs would be able to hit them at range, and the area behind Omega, with its large number of defensive turrets, would be a complete ECM-counter zone until the turrets had all been knocked out.

To keep this from becoming an overwhelming defense when supported by LRMs, I suggest the Turrets be positioned, and their UAV range adjusted, so that there are gaps in the Turrets' UAV coverage, circuitous routes where a handful of Lights could slip through with a little maneuvering and terrain management.

Something will also need to be done to give the attackers more coverage coming through the gates, so that it is harder for the defenders to completely murder them with a coordinated firing line covering the gate bottlenecks, but that is less of a concern than the practically invincible Double Light Rush.

[Kuritaclan]

If you up the HP of Generators further (to prevent rushs) - the battletime needs to be upped in time.

Exhaustion the enemy in non premade teams is a fair way the attackers can't go, because time is to short. Since you need to kill the base and 48 mechs of the defenders 30 min is pretty much to short without massiv imbalance of premade vs randoms/small groups. Lets assume 48 mechs in 25 min (5min for the base) makes roughly two mechs to kill every min. This is hardly doable without premade greater than 6+ people.

So rush becomes the only option to win an attack. Rush will allways stay ahead of any warfare, when the attacking team isn't interessted in farming c-bills or is countered by the terrain.

A way to counter double light rush is generator/ orbital canon HP bound on defenders kill count. HP is multiplied with mechs not used. For example. Lets assume a generator has 500 base hp. If there are 48 defenders the Generator has a HP of 500x48. To destroy it you need to make 24000 damage. This is hardly doable with defenders alive and only light mechs. So this would lead to exhaust the defenders first and then if you are ahead you could try to rush, and or need to play it down till you have killed all/nearly all defenders.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 06 January 2015 - 12:56 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

In my experience the biggest problem with CW is that the defenders have a significant advantage over the attackers, the defenders can get into good positions before the attackers can open the gates, if the defenders are a well organized team the attackers will have often lost most of their first drop Mechs before even opening the gates. this means the attackers have perhaps a 12 Mech disadvantage by the time they enter the base, defenders will by then have the advantages of; positioning, numbers (having lost almost nothing for the attackers loss of their first wave), turrets and knowing the attackers have to kill the generators.

All the attackers can do to stand a chance (assuming they are of equal skill level and coordination) is rush or try to trick the defenders into giving up their advantages.

I have no problem with doing something to make a Light rush less effective, but both your ideas further improve the defenders chances of winning regardless of the tactics used by the attackers and as the odds are already on favour of the defenders I cannot support that.

A possibility to make Light rushes higher risk without harming other strategies would be to move the turrets so they are specifically positioned to defend the generators, and switch their weapons to e.g. 4SPLs and 2SSRM6s and BAP (to counter ECM), with turrets of that sort it would be high risk to rush the generators with Lights, and would hurt if you got within range with even an assault while the defenders would not get help from turrets when defending the gates or holding the rest of the base