8 replies to this topic

[Xoco]

I think my ability to sneak behind the enemy's firing line has improved considerably during my time here. The problem now is what to do once I get there?

Do I just stare at the enemy so I cab keep the red doritos on our minimap?
Should I try to go after specific target? (If I see isolated LRM or assaults I usually go for those)
Should I try to break the enemy's line? (Shooting them a few times get them to turn and focus on me while exposing their backs to the rest of the team)
And if I shoot them, which part to target? I play Pirate's Bane locust mostly, so my damage os severely low. I find that I cant eat through enemy's back armor, and no one else on the team can shoot it, so the damage becomes wasted. Lately I have been going for the arm in order to at least take out some weapons.

Any advices from the veterans out there?

[Stormie]

if you aren't yet comfortable that you can take on a mech 1 on 1 and be reasonably confident of winning you have options.
1. stop running off behind the enemy's lines, stick with your team and help as best you can there - you'll usually be one of the lowest priority target in a melee
2. Equip a tag - this really depends on your tier, but in the lower tiers the 'plz get moar locks' brigade will love you. usually will get at least 1 friendly running lurms, you will need to coordinate with him/her though.

p.s. keep in mind the weapons that have minimum range (IS LRMS, PPC) or long reload times (Gauss) when picking a mech to engage. in the lower tiers you'll occasionally find a lone Catapult/Awesome/Trebuchet that doesn't bring backup weapons for his LRMs meaning you get close and he cant hurt you. thus use that time before you engage to choose which enemy you have the best chance of taking down.

Edited by Stormie, 01 November 2015 - 07:08 PM.

[Acierocolotl]

Lots of options are available to you, but it depends on weapons and so forth.

You should consider making a UAV beacon a high priority once you're (discretely) behind the enemy lines. If they see you coming, they'll expect a UAV to arrive as well, as that's a common light pilot tactic. If you're sneaky, you'll get more time out of your UAV.

I'll take back shots if I can, because very few enemies put much armour on the backs. That said, I use striker lights, with as many light pulse lasers as I can shoehorn in there, so I'm good for 24 to 30 damage per alpha--that can down an enemy in just a few blasts from behind. Your Pirate's Bane doesn't pack nearly as much firepower but you can still do some damage. The key is patience and timing.

If you've locked onto an enemy, he's likely going to come under fire. If you can wait 'til cannon or missile fire is striking your target (or failing that, large beam blasts), you're much less likely to get detected when you add your fire as well. With all the shaking and rattling, the subtle burn of your lasers can be easily missed 'til your target gets the "critical damage!" warning. Don't use MGs at the sneaky stage, as they do feeble damage per shot and they have a distinct clattering noise on your target.

Secondarily, ECM can also give your position away at close range. Your targets get a "weak signal" notice when they're in your ECM bubble and more alert pilots will start casting about for you. Consider switching from disrupt to counter mode when you're creeping directly behind your prey for a shot; it makes you more visible but you won't be giving yourself away passively, at least.

And don't be afraid to run away! If somebody's starting to turn your way, get out of there! Run away a few hundred meters, loop back from a different angle and go back to harrassing. If they have to pay more attention to their seismic sensors, that's less attention focussed on your allies.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Depends on how tightly balled up / engaged / alert the enemies are.

If you managed to sneak up on a straggler, by all means assassinate him.

If you found an enemy deathball, and you haven't been spotted yet (radar dep works wonders here for identifying if you have/have not been spotted), and your buddies haven't engaged, keep staring at them. Don't fire at them, unless your objective is to attack them and make them chase a squirrel (you).

If your team is boating lurms, keep staring at them and try your best to avoid switching targets.

Breaking the enemy's line as a short-range locust (i.e. other than ERLL LCT-1V) is nearly suicide before your team has hard engaged. If your team has enough guts to actually hard engage and go into brawling mode, by all means pile into the brawl from the rear. As usual, target LRM boats first. Avoid SRM/SSRM; be careful of IS SPL / IS MPL.

Clan lasers are not too much of a threat to you at close range because of the greatly increased burn durations, which means that you can dodge and spread most of the damage while they overheat. In the absence of LRM boats, assassinating LL or clan laser boats is a viable target too.

As for what part to target; this comes with great experience. The Locust, played as an assassin, needs a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of mech weights, equipment weights and likely loadouts. There are a few ways of 'killing' a vehicle in armored combat:

• Mobility kill. This is where you cripple a vehicle; in MWO, this is legging. Leg a mech, and it's mostly useless for the rest of the match, or at least much easier to kill. Against lights, I'd consider your mission complete once this is done. Leave the more heavily armed buddies to finish off the cripple lights, because your armor is pretty poor yourself and you can't afford damage.
  
  
  Best done against lights (except for ACH, which has more effective hitpoints in one leg than its CT and nearly as much as both STs combined), and some faster mediums.
  
• Catastrophic kill. This is the classic MWO kill. The one that actually lands you a kill, because their mech exploded. You will want to target the softest possible target to achieve this kill.
  
  
  On all mechs, of course the cockpit will be the softest target to hit, but it's always the smallest; so unless you can bait the enemy to overheat, forget about a headshot.
  
  The next best solution is to target CT. On standard max-armor loadouts on trial mechs, the armor is distributed 2:1 between front and rear CT, but on min-maxed meta builds, this is usually 4-8 points max. Even a 4 SPL alpha will cut the rear CT armor, allowing your MGs to chew through internals. This is best done against clan assaults and slower heavies. Keep in mind that you will still need to pay attention to where your victim is facing as your burst dps is not the best in a LCT-PB.
  
  After this comes the choice of ST destruction. STs usually have much lower armor and hitpoints, so they're also much easier to destroy than the CT. Lights are generally fair game for this, as most light pilots will pack the biggest XL engine they can (speed is love...speed is life). Some mediums and heavies are also fair game, especially if they appear to be packing a lot more heat than their tonnage suggests. Assaults generally don't pack XLs, so ST destruction is more for disarmament than for killing.
  
  You do, however, get a big advantage in that you've just added another 180 degrees of safe angles if you destroy a ST on a mech, even if you don't destroy it.

• Disarming. This isn't a kill per se, but a disarmed mech is one that can't shoot you, and therefore poses little to no harm to your team (aside from vision). This is also the hardest form of 'killing' a mech, because it requires you to remember exactly where the hardpoints on every single mech go! Best done against mechs with asymmetrical weapon loadouts. Examples are:
  
  
  vs Clan mechs: Go for the arms. Especially true for non-ACH lights, Novas, and to a lesser extent the SCR.
  vs HBK (asymmetric models): Right torso, rear.

Hope this helps you out! Locusts forever!

Edited by ArcturusWolf, 01 November 2015 - 07:17 PM.

[Xoco]

Thank you for the advices.
I'm pretty low tier so enemy's awareness isn't much of an issue yet.
I have never used UAVs so far, but I should try that. I am at a point where I think I can afford them pretty easily now.

Another question-should I bother doing this if I am running non ECM mech? It feels that if enemies can lock on to me, getting caught would be instant death.
Also I need a radar derp module.

[Fox With A Shotgun]

Xoco, on 01 November 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

I'm pretty low tier so enemy's awareness isn't much of an issue yet.
I have never used UAVs so far, but I should try that. I am at a point where I think I can afford them pretty easily now.

If enemy awareness isn't much of an issue, then it's in your interest to maximise your team's advantage by doing so. A UAV is not only useful for yourself, it's also useful for when you're trying to duel against heavier/bigger mechs before you have seismic sensor. A win will almost always compensate for the cost of a UAV, so I figure you might as well maximise your chances of winning by letting your teammates get more shots on target.

Xoco, on 01 November 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

Another question-should I bother doing this if I am running non ECM mech? It feels that if enemies can lock on to me, getting caught would be instant death.
Also I need a radar derp module.

I run a LCT-1E most of the time, and that thing has next to no quirks at all for protection. No ECM, not enough tonnage for AMS. Radar deprivation, situational awareness, map knowledge and seismic sensor keeps your mech alive. ECM helps with survival, but at the end of the day, you can only rely on making smart choices about where/how/what you attack in order to survive. If you rely purely on ECM to stay hidden, when enemies start bringing BAP/CAP and streakboats, you're going to have a very bad day.

If you haven't gotten your modules yet, I suggest hoarding GXP for radar derp and adv seismic sensor. Seismic sensor is pretty useful for checking enemy positions through walls, over hills or in tunnels, around corners etc. I cannot stress how useful these two are for surviving in a lolcust.

Edited by ArcturusWolf, 02 November 2015 - 01:20 AM.

[Acierocolotl]

Xoco, on 01 November 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

Thank you for the advices.
I'm pretty low tier so enemy's awareness isn't much of an issue yet.
I have never used UAVs so far, but I should try that. I am at a point where I think I can afford them pretty easily now.

Another question-should I bother doing this if I am running non ECM mech? It feels that if enemies can lock on to me, getting caught would be instant death.
Also I need a radar derp module.

A. Wolf's covered most of it. I admit that at the time I was skilling up my Locusts I hadn't learned the art of patience in this game AND it was also pre-quirks, so using Locusts on my part was an act of profound masochism. I persevered and I have some fine scars to show for it, but I'm not that anxious to go back.

But yes, not only can you do this in a non-ECM mech, it's actually still pretty good! It's not just if they lock on to you, they have to also be able to hit you. So don't let them hit you, get obstacles between you and them ASAP. This will also shield you from LRM retaliation. As Radar Deprivation only works if you can break line of sight with all your opponents, this is the exact tactic you'd be doing anyway. So this is also a fancier way of saying: don't stray out in the open too much, keep an escape route nearby.

If you keep ambient noises low, you'll know when they get locks on you, it makes this weird little electronic bleepy-chime. Keep your ears peeled for this sound, it'll let you know if you've been spotted.

While A. Wolf's used Locusts a lot, my preferred mech before the obvious Arctic Cheetah was a Jenner-F. I've got no ECM in any Jenner, just a really good burst of speed and jumpjets. The Jenner is bigger than a Locust, but it can take quite a lot more punishment, is almost as fast, and the jumpjets open up a lot of escape routes and high-speed turns. It's just to say that non-ECM-bearing aggressive lights are quite possible and really effective.

I had been refusing to use seismic sensors for the longest time in favour of a capture accelerator (because maybe I was a little bit griefy about base captures), but I've seen the wisdom of seismic since. It only works when you stand still for a moment (or after you land from a jump), but if you're not sure where the enemies are in a cluster of buildings, it can help avoid dashing into an unpleasant situation. It's not as critical, in my opinion, as Radar Deprivation unless you also mean to drive heavier mechs as well.

Something I should have added earlier: Experience with your victims will help in knowing when you should go for a leg. Some guys (hilltop snipers primarily, sometimes overzealous LRM boats at lower tiers) will be very sparing with leg armour and will also store ammo in there. They don't get shot in the legs often because the hills shield them.

So if you can afford a moment to get the full readout on your target and it looks like they have an absurd amount of guns or missiles, they probably have weak legs to save weight on armour. Shoot the leg! If it turns into a mobile brawl instead of an ambush, you can keep working on the leg from a lot of different angles, which you should really do if his legs are weak and you can't reliably get attacks on his back AND he isn't weaker anywhere else. It goes without saying that if his armour is opened up somewhere, just shoot there. Shoot off his bits, you'll probably take something good with it.

Later on, if you want to mix it up for fun and profit--consider bringing a NARC launcher. If your team has LRM boats, they'll enjoy 30 seconds of unlimited lockons with a bonus to missile precision! You'll get XP out the wazoo, and the enemy will panic hilariously. Plus it's really stealthy, too, the beacons make no impact sounds on your opponents, and there's just a little "NARC" light in a remote corner of their HUD that they'll probably miss. As an added bonus, you can use NARCs to knock down enemy ECM as well and gain more points for counter-ECM, so if you can creep up on an Atlas DDC or some other ECM user, slap a NARC on his fat butt, and get a pretty good mission score despite having done very little damage.

Drawbacks: If your team doesn't have LRM boats to fully exploit this opportunity, you're packing a number of tonnes of dead weight. This is also five tonnes (3 for the launcher, 2 tonnes of ammo) which is a crushing burden in a Locust. My go-to mechs for NARCing is the ECM Commando and Raven. But if you can convince a friend to bring LRMs and team up, you have an OP combination in lower tiers once you get the science of it down.

[Magna Canus]

I have a nice little trick that I use in this situation;
bring yourself into position and wait for your team to start firing on the enemy.
Try to shoot the same enemy they are, preferably at the same time. Shoot for components that could also have been hit from the front like shoulders, etc.
If done correctly you can eat away at them they wont notice you for a long while.

[Johny Rocket]

This has been mentioned but I will double/triple down on it. Switch your ecm to counter before you approach from behind or use strict discipline maintaining a 180m distance. Unless Im already eyeball to eyeball with an enemy, low signal is not tolerated, I will find and murder you. You can out run most of my mechs you can't out run any of my ordinance. Love a back shot on a Locust, easy kill.

When the Wolfhound is available for Cbills (I think it will be 1st) check out the WLF-1, max engine+elite 160.3kph in a 35t able to still boat 5 ML and decent number of dhs.

2 best tactics for flanking with a light are Sniper and Kinetic.

Sniper use an erll (out dps a ppc with higher chance of doing some damage as you can pull it over on them if you miss/ half the heat) Stay within 800m so you can get locks.

Kinetic, would be easier if I knew if you play War Thunder. Basically its the same idea as most of the American WWII era planes. Come in at full speed hit them at full speed go past their backside of their turn and get low and twisty going out. Get to cover as fast as possible. Keep doing figure 8s with them at the X.
Use slopes to approach if you are in front of them, the elevation change makes it harder to hit you and you exit behind them. Never run in a strait line when engaging or fleeing, always long arc and random jinks.


Go to training grounds and work on your piloting skills, practice fast running in cover like buildings until you can run thru without hang ups. Getting hung on corners gets you killed. Still happens to everyone once in awhile but practice practice...

Edited by Tractor Joe, 02 November 2015 - 04:35 PM.