12 replies to this topic

[DavidStarr]

I've had an extremely interesting and unconventional game on Crimson Straight yesterday. One guy picks up a mic and asks if he can show us something. We agreed (those three of us who know how to use comms, anyway). He told us to follow him, and surprisingly the whole team did.

Open this Crimson Straight map, if you will.

It was assault or skirmish game (doesn't matter which), we started at the red spawn (D8-E8). We went knees deep in the water along the shore line, below the coast - along C7-C6-B5 line. We stopped in the B4-C3 area and formed a nice and tight firing line. For the longest time the enemy had no idea where we are. I think the idea was that the red mechs will stumble onto us one by one, and wherever a mech will appear within our range, about 8 of of the 12 allied mechs will be able to fire at him almost immediately. Which is what happened. It wasn't 12-0, we lost some mechs, but it was an easy victory. This felt a lot like faction play - invasion, the defending side.

I have some questions about this move:
1. How often is it reasonable to expect this tactic to work in T3 PUG environment?
2. What is the proper counter-tactic? I'm thinking it's to form a ball of death out of brawlers, send fast snipers way out in the water to get line of sight on the enemy, and charge in with all brawlers at once.
3. When both teams play optimally, which side has an advantage in this situation?

P. S. Unfortunately, I can't remember our commander's name. If you're reading this, please chime in!

Edited by DavidStarr, 30 January 2017 - 12:20 AM.

[no one]

I wouldn't expect it to work that well often since you're giving the opposing team an elevation advantage and leaving them the city for cover while you have no cover. An enemy team with a significant number of high mounted weapon hard points or LRMs would rout you easily. The sea wall also prevents you from re-positioning if your flanked. The main advantage I can see for that position is that you have the map border to your rear, and it messes with people's heads. Well, plus the general advantage of a death-ball that has nothing breaking up their target focus and no means of retreat.

Hiding your entire team behind the buildings in e8-d8 and behind the f7 hill is also a fun way to ruin the day of overextending scouts.

[PhoenixFire55]

99% of the time PUGs are gonna fail ... at everything.

What you have descrbied is actually a very common way a competitive team with a ranged setup would play that map from that side, i.e. don't come near saddle and don't come near tunnel where a brawler team can get you at close-ish ranges. It used to be even better for ranged mechs around current B4 because more of the water surface was avaliable without Out-of-Bounds prior to map update and you could drag opposing team out into the kilometer long open area and retreat either towards B2 or C7 while easily maintaining a firing line.

My guess that guy either played comp at some point or simply actually had a clue, good thing your team listened.

[DavidStarr]

But we didn't draw the enemy out in the water, and we had all sorts of mechs, not just long range. I, for one, was in a pure LRM Cyclops 10Q with not a single backup weapon. We hugged the coastline, using the elevated shore for cover, and the enemy got tangled in the seaside buildings, too.

I took a lotta heat being on the frontline, tanking for my team, but still managed to expend all the ammo before going down having dealt 860 dmg. Fun times.

Edited by DavidStarr, 30 January 2017 - 02:55 AM.

[PFC Carsten]

DavidStarr, on 30 January 2017 - 12:18 AM, said:

P. S. Unfortunately, I can't remember our commander's name. If you're reading this, please chime in!

I was there as well, in that ERPPC-Nova, drawing the enemy towards us when we had set up. Was indeed an interesting tactic and worked - although I doubt it would work as good against a more coherent team, since our enemies made the beginners' error of running at us one by one. The first 2 might have been lured by me, thinking I was alone in that corner and be an easy kill.

If you want to, I can look up the drop callers name from my screenshots when I get back home.

Edited by PFC Carsten, 30 January 2017 - 02:19 AM.

[PhoenixFire55]

DavidStarr, on 30 January 2017 - 02:06 AM, said:

But we didn't draw the enemy out in the water, and we had all sorts of mechs, not just long range.

You don't necesserily do that every time. You advance with your main body along the coastline within the back row of buildings while your scouts survey the front row of buildings and either signal you to drop into the water and back off from close range team or give you a green light to advance into front row of buildings to form a firing line against a ranged team on the island or upper platform. Thats comp however, i.e. most if not all mechs are tuned to the same range. You had a mixed deck, but still could do the same based on what your enemy had, i.e. if they all went full brawl on you then you could have dropped back into the water and used long ranged weapons to focus them down 1 by 1 in the open terrain (brawler deck can't focus targets that are spread out). On the other hand if they all went full sniper you still had a solid position well in cover and plenty of time to think on your approach.

Anyway, PUGs tend to have the same behavior patterns, if you can break the pattern and do it as an entire team that usually leads to an easy win.

[DavidStarr]

PFC Carsten, on 30 January 2017 - 02:14 AM, said:

I was there as well, in that ERPPC-Nova, drawing the enemy towards us when we had set up.

Well done!
On a side note, I wasn't aware I can get matched with tier 1 players...

PFC Carsten, on 30 January 2017 - 02:14 AM, said:

If you want to, I can look up the drop callers name from my screenshots when I get back home.

It's no big deal, but I would like to shoot him a friend request. Maybe he'll agree to take me in on some drops so that I can learn more stuff from him

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

Well done!
On a side note, I wasn't aware I can get matched with tier 1 players..

Hai, as a T3 you can be matched from T1 to T5, the whole gambit..

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 30 January 2017 - 05:51 PM.

[The Basilisk]

DavidStarr, on 30 January 2017 - 12:18 AM, said:

I've had an extremely interesting and unconventional game on Crimson Straight yesterday. One guy picks up a mic and asks if he can show us something. We agreed (those three of us who know how to use comms, anyway). He told us to follow him, and surprisingly the whole team did.

Open this Crimson Straight map, if you will.

It was assault or skirmish game (doesn't matter which), we started at the red spawn (D8-E8). We went knees deep in the water along the shore line, below the coast - along C7-C6-B5 line. We stopped in the B4-C3 area and formed a nice and tight firing line. For the longest time the enemy had no idea where we are. I think the idea was that the red mechs will stumble onto us one by one, and wherever a mech will appear within our range, about 8 of of the 12 allied mechs will be able to fire at him almost immediately. Which is what happened. It wasn't 12-0, we lost some mechs, but it was an easy victory. This felt a lot like faction play - invasion, the defending side.

I have some questions about this move:
1. How often is it reasonable to expect this tactic to work in T3 PUG environment?
2. What is the proper counter-tactic? I'm thinking it's to form a ball of death out of brawlers, send fast snipers way out in the water to get line of sight on the enemy, and charge in with all brawlers at once.
3. When both teams play optimally, which side has an advantage in this situation?

P. S. Unfortunately, I can't remember our commander's name. If you're reading this, please chime in!

1. not at all normaly since the costline in the north is refered to as "Locust" lane, some fast scout will normaly try to sneak down the shore to get into your back

2. If this happened anyway I would use a sourround taktik from the northern most edge c4 b4 and d2 c2 since your movement as unit is greatly impared and you will hinder each other a lot

3.the other side since your ability to move and use ranged weapons is greatly impared down in the water at that shore line

The reason it worked is that your team worked coordinated and did something unexpected as well as moving together. With those three factors you could have done almost anything against a bunch of uncoordinated runarounds.

Edited by The Basilisk, 30 January 2017 - 05:38 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

That tactic is guarenteed to fail if you are playing any mode except skirmish, in domination yiu are outside the domination zone so will lose inside a minute, in conquest they will grab all the points and win, in assualy they will grab your Base, in escort they will ether kill or successful defend the VIP.

As for skirmish, if the enemy have competant scouts that will fail, if they work as a team it can easily fail, if they have seen that tavtic a few times it will fail. So it would likely work against prople a few times before people start to wise up, most likely it would work about 1 time in 3 on Crimson Skirmish for the first few months then drop to about 1 time in 10, in the other game modes it will probably never work

[Luscious Dan]

Honestly any reasonably intelligent form of coordination will give you an edge in a solo/QP environment. Running around like chickens with their heads cut off doesn't get you very far. I don't see any particular genius in the setup, but since your team listened and acted as a cohesive unit, it won the day.

In pugland, (almost) any plan is better than no plan at all.

[PFC Carsten]

DavidStarr, on 30 January 2017 - 04:34 AM, said:

Well done!
On a side note, I wasn't aware I can get matched with tier 1 players...

I'm not really a Tier 1 player, I just seem to play more than I should the average player.

DavidStarr, on 30 January 2017 - 04:34 AM, said:

It's no big deal, but I would like to shoot him a friend request. Maybe he'll agree to take me in on some drops so that I can learn more stuff from him

Apparently, it was not the same match since I could find neither you nor your Cyclops, but "my" game ran fairly similar to what you describe. But anyway, the guy's name is Mechwarrior3669191, Unit Tag JRTM. Good luck!

Edited by PFC Carsten, 30 January 2017 - 02:15 PM.

[Jingseng]

100 idiots make 100 idiotic plans.

99 of the plans fail as they ought.

A single plan succeeds by sheer coincidence, and the hundredth idiot immediately declares himself a genius.

Take a step back and consider all the angles.