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PREFACE
As a Mech Warrior, you have had access to the ultimate in military technology, and at times on the battlefield it's seemed like all that really matters is raw, unabashed firepower. It's pretty hard to argue with that, once you've found yourself at the end of a King Crab's punishing AC20s, or suffered agonizing defeat at the hands of an entire company's worth of focused pulse lasers.
"Such armament requires no skill," you tell yourself, "there has to be more to it than that." Yet each combat drop proves that fact irrelevant. With dismay, you slump back in your seat, open up your web browser, and navigate to metamechs.com.
While irrelevant, it is by no means a false claim. There IS more to this fight! But when you're armed to the teeth with so many powerful weapons, it's much easier to push straight to the enemy and alpha the first mech you see. Tactics be damned.
What if there was a way to experience all else that Mech combat has to offer... and improve your skill at the same time!
Well, there is. Simply put, you have to test yourself, and in order to test yourself you have to limit yourself. That pretty much sums it up, but it's more complicated than that in practice. Tests have rules, restrictions, and grades. This is essentially what my challenge is, a test. Set by yourself.
Initially, I came up with this idea as I was testing myself. The goal of testing myself was to reconsider experimental loadouts I had never used before, either because they didn't play into my comfortable playstyle, or I really thought they were ****. I wasn't really successful, I still think the majority of them are ****. What I did notice was a completely unintended product. I increased my piloting skill.
"Yea, great deduction Sherlock, who woulda thought you'd get better at a game by using a handicap, great story." I know you're probably thinking something along those lines and yea, I wasn't surprised that I got a bit better at the game. What was surprising was HOW MUCH BETTER I got at the game. I significantly upped my game. Piloting crap builds and pretending like you're getting something out of it is one thing, but when I started CONSISTENTLY scoring 600+ damage in a Nova armed with 1 uac2, 1 er ppc, and 1 srm6, I really started to question the definitive meta widespread in this game.
I'm really not trying to brag here. I really want to clarify that this is a very recent development for me, I would have previously been lucky to do half that damage in a Dire Wolf on a regular day. I am by no means a pro player, I haven't even broken Tier2 yet! (though that is changing quickly) I'm also not trying to downplay meta either, it exists for a reason. You use it, they use it, I use it too.. while I'm not training myself.
There are a large number of elements in play during a match other than heavy firepower and hardpoint location. Heat generation, armor spread, weapon burntime, enemy specs, tactical execution, predictability, intimidation, information warfare, tactical drop placement, and C3 comms mix with a variety of maps, each containing obstacles, lines of sight, killzones, optimal reconnaisance locations and a playbook of strategies and counter-tactics. All this combines into a package full of information you can interpret and act upon quickly in the heat of battle! It's really hard to see any of that while you're using a meta build. Each meta comes with a painfully small and predictable set of battle tactics. There's no need for tactical prowess because it just works.
So, in order to get better fast at this game, you have to throw meta out the window, because it significantly limits your growth as a pilot.
This guide serves two purposes, the first being to help struggling players in their attempt to up their game by trying what worked for me. It may not work for everyone. Heck, it may not work for anyone, and I'll come out of this looking like a tool. But, if while reading this, you've felt a small flame of curiosity swell from within you, then I invite you to try this out.
The second purpose is a bit of a longshot, but I'm hoping that this might result in a sort of 'Renaissance Movement' in tactical play. There's been a lot of stagnancy in this aspect for quite some time, and it's caused a lot of complaints, a lot of salt, and it's probably both inhibited the game's growth and retention of a stable player base. I stress that last point, because THAT'S NOT FREAKING GOOD AT ALL! I feel that this stagnancy is a large part the fault and responsibility of us players. Yes, there have been some questionable development decisions at times, but I would argue that there has been an equal amount of self-entitled MechWarrior and Battletech fans running this game into the ground with unwarranted negative reviews because their birthday cake wasn't perfect. Aww, cupcake.
I view this tactical stagnancy like a match of DOTA, where every player moves their hero to mid, clicks on an enemy, and spams attack until one team is dead. If you've played that game, you know there's a lot more to attacking an enemy than that, and the developers of that game would have never intended for that to happen. I'm sort of arguing the same for MWO: that there's more to spamming alphastrike, and PGI knows it, and most of the players don't realize it.
I'm gonna stop this wall of text before I write a book... here's the guide.
RULES
- Don't talk about fight club.
- Once you start this training, you're not allowed to stop until you're without a doubt significantly better. It's pointless otherwise.
- Don't use TeamSpeak or any other 3rd Party software in tandem with MWO for team communication or otherwise while training.
- You may use MWO's built-in C3 VOIP communication to your heart's content.
- Your first drop must be in Testing Grounds, random map. Destroy dummy mechs until there's none left or you're legit out of ammo...
- You may only group with other players that are doing the same training. Otherwise you drop alone.
- Never separate yourself from your lance. If your lance gets split up, stick with the closest member of your lance.
- If you end up separated from your lance because they're really dumb, or your lance is dead, stick with the closest remaining members of your company.
- Never run away. Tactical re-positioning and baiting, however, is fine.
- Never power down and hide, unless for tactical ambush, in which case do not power down for more than 30 seconds.
- When you see an enemy, you must fire your weapons at them when in range.
- At the start of each game, type allchat: "Lock 'n Load!"
RESTRICTIONS
- There are no restrictions on which chassis you use, but weapon restrictions will probably make many unfeasible.
- You may not change stock armor location, except when adding armor to fill up tonnage on IS Mechs. Do not even touch the armor on Clan Mechs! So shiny! So chrome!
- You may swap between Standard and XL engines, but they must be within 20 grade of the stock chassis's engine rating.
- Clan Mechs may swap up to two omnipods as they see fit, the rest must match the CT.
- Module Restrictions:
- All consumable modules are usable.
- The total value of all used modules must not exceed 15,000,000 C-bills.
- You may not use AMS Overload or Enhanced NARC.
- All consumable modules are usable.
- Armament Restrictions:
- You must make use of at least two of the three weapon types: Ballistic, Missile, Energy. TAG and NARC do not count towards these types.
- Maximum allowance for ballistics weapons is one. In the special case of machine guns, two may be used.
- Maximum allowance for missile launchers is up to 20 tubes of LRMs OR up to 6 tubes of Streaks/SRMs. Multiple launchers must fire the same type/amount of missiles.
- Maximum allowance for energy weapons is one. In the special case of small lasers, two may be used, but they must be the same type of laser.
- You may use CASE, TAG, AMS, NARC, Active Probe, ECM and Command Console as you see fit.
- You may use Targeting Computer up to Level III.
- Maximum total ammo allowance is 4 tons. Make it count!
- You may add/remove heatsinks as you see fit.
- You must make use of at least two of the three weapon types: Ballistic, Missile, Energy. TAG and NARC do not count towards these types.
- There are no restrictions on skill trees.
- Each weapon type must be bound exclusively to its own weapon group. TAG and NARC must also each be bound exclusively. Chain fire is ok.
- Do not use any weapon group macros!
GRADES
Grades are based on:
- Score
- Kills
- Assists
- Damage Dealt
- Team Won
- Ally Mechs Remaining
- Enemy Mechs Remaining
Formula:
Match Grade = Score + (5*Kills) + (10*Assists) + (0.2*Damage Dealt) + (20 if Team Won) + (5*Allies Remaining) + (10*Enemies Remaining)
Grades:
Grade 0: 200 points or less - MISTAKES WERE MADE!
Grade 1: 200pt benchmark - Mediocre!
Grade 2: 300pt benchmark - below average
Grade 3: 350pt benchmark - average lackey
Grade 4: 400pt benchmark - above average
Grade 5: 450pt benchmark - seasoned veteran
Grade 6: 500pt benchmark - nice moves!
Grade 7: 550pt benchmark - elite marksman
Grade 8: 600pt benchmark - so shiny! so chrome!
Grade 9: 650pt benchmark - Legendary MechWarrior!
Grade X: 700pt benchmark - YOU'RE A MONSTER!!!
Determine your starting point with ten games, and calculate your average score.
Record the score of every game you play, and calculate the average between every ten.
Keep track of how your score progresses. Don't give up and change your loadout until you've risen by one level! ...unless it's a really bad loadout, and you were drunk when you made it up.
Keep going! Try and see how high you can get your score before your averages level out.
If you can raise the grade of four mechs to level 5 or higher, you've officially passed Personal Trainer. Good Job!
//END
If you've decided to try out my trainer, feel free to post feedback, anything you learned, and any awesome stories of victory!
Here's a link to the NVA-C Mod1 that I use.
During one match I used peppering volleys of UAC and poptarting to intimidate a Dire Wolf and Thunderbolt backwards into the rest of my lance. I then swooped in from above and helped my lance finish them off quickly. I came up with the loadout while trying to find something similar to a Summoner that I pilot frequently.. I never thought I would have had any success with this type of sparse loadout, but it turned out to be very tactical and dangerous in combat!
