19 replies to this topic

[MSGSapper]

After playing for intensively for about a month now I a curious why real world armor tactics are seldom used here based on what I have observed?

While granted not everything translates well to this game it would seem that concepts like the formation, "kill zone", over watch and bounding over watch would work well here among others. Here is a very good primer on the subject for those not familiar with how real world U.S. Armor tactics work:

http://www.globalsec...3-21-91/c03.htm

With just a few exceptions I have observed that most players in MWO tend to rush off and are usually killed quickly because they take the "warrior" part of MechWarrior just a little to seriously instead of fighting as part of a team. The Romans long ago provided that assuming all else is equal a team will always beat a warrior. Just ask the Celts if you don't believe that. :-)

Given the very random nature of those assigned with you for any given match (Quick play or faction) it might be a little to much to expect any kind of unit cohesiveness at all I suppose. I have however noted several units that have observed good unit tactics but these seem to be few and far between in matches and I only see them very sporadically. The few times I have run into such teams they have usually beat the crap out of the side I was on that was formed out of random individuals for the most part.

Just getting my fellow players to use terrain to mask their approach or not "sky lining" themselves constantly would be a major improvement just by itself in each game match. For those who don't know already, sky lining is where you stand on top of an elevated point and have the sky behind you. Sky lining is considered a major screw up among professional real world soldiers in the field in combat conditions. Doing that makes you standout for everyone to easily see you. I have observed many cases where sky lined mechs have died very quickly in the matches I have been part of.

Bob

[Wildstreak]

Because some people here have demanded the mentality that only the following are valid tactics:

• PUSH like you are giving birth, there may even be Lamaze classes on it with mandatory breathing exercises.
  
• Partial sniping at the beginning of some matches, aka Trading.
  
• LRMs can only be used around 1000+ meters, sometimes further.
  
• If you are in a small space, you MUST pack as many team members in it like clowns getting into a VW Bug. After dying, either be confused why it did not work or blame everyone but you.
  
• Quietly lone wolfing the team in an area, dying early then blame the team for not having mutant telepathy like Charles Xavier to back you up.

The following are NOT considered tactics:

• Using LRMs within 400-700 meters.
  
• Scouting.
  
• Flanking.
  
• Pincer and other combat maneuvers.
  
• Not shooting teammates in the back to get the enemy.

The following are NOT considered tactics and people will report you for them:

• Shutting down/hiding to ambush enemies, always assumed to be cowardice according to some unwritten Code of Honor.
  
• Refusing the fire your weapons after being dropped and damaging your allies.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

Wildstreak, on 20 March 2017 - 07:24 AM, said:

• Refusing the fire your weapons after being dropped and damaging your allies.

MWO etiquette: Once you finally found a game, stop [Redacted]posting on forums and use the alpha strike key to tab back into the mwo window.

Edited by draiocht, 20 March 2017 - 03:06 PM.
inappropriate language

[Dark Wooki33 IIC]

Real life tactics focus on survival ...
and this game is about shooting virtual stuff.

[B L O O D W I T C H]

Dark Wooki33 IIC, on 20 March 2017 - 09:44 AM, said:

Real life tactics focus on survival ...
and this game is about shooting virtual stuff.

Wait... you tellin' me that those robots aren't real?!

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

Toha Heavy Industries, on 20 March 2017 - 12:49 PM, said:

Wait... you tellin' me that those robots aren't real?!

Nah bro! Don't listen to him!

We actually dive into real robots and control them remotely in the comfort of our own man caves and decide the fate of the universe!

[Tarl Cabot]

Used formations in MPBT Solaris all the time. IS mechs are stock (3025 era), slower and terrain was flat with a few hills and a mountain in a corner and 4vs4. And MPBT Solaris/3025 both GEnie/EA had CoC for the Houses which flowed down to the units, both house and mercs.

For MWO, IS side have too many mechs going at different speeds, very few military-style units Clan or IS. There are competitive units who will follow a pattern, bringing mechs that are in synergy with each other, and usually based on Clan mechs (durable cXL vs glass cannon isXL, etc).

The other side of the coin is that PGI never really set MWO to have multiple chatrooms, lobbies, staging areas that would allow people to communicate in-game between battles, to co-op and drop together. Instead those who want to drop with other like minded players will hit up the Faction/House/Clan TS to get into that type of drop, especially for Faction Play. But more so than not, people do not go that extra step and drop as a solo pug, letting chance decide their fate. It is likely that many do not really care what House/Clan they are part of, or they will make their own merc unit of one and drop as is.

Edit to put it in another way, the only chat (type) interface when the game was in beta was only during combat. Any other type of communication was either done on the forums or 3rd party TS servers. In-game VOIP actually did not go live until Feb 17th, 2015, two months after Community Warfare, aka Faction Play, went live.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 20 March 2017 - 03:09 PM.

[MovinTarget]

Solo que = 24 cats with tails on fire

Group que = 24 cats, some duct taped together, others with tails on fire

[TKG]

I would also pose that strategically some of the player base does not know how to prioritize a threat. A light strafing a group of assaults with machine guns is NOT a bigger threat than the actual enemy line on the other side of the terrain feature you are using for cover.

[xX PUG Xx]

MSGSapper, on 20 March 2017 - 06:15 AM, said:

The Romans long ago provided that assuming all else is equal a team will always beat a warrior. Just ask the Celts if you don't believe that. :-)

Although I actually agree with a lot of what you have written, I can't "like" your post due to the above sentence. As a hot-blooded Scotsman of Norse and Celtic decent, I'm actually quite proud of the fact the Romans built not one but two walls to try and keep us out of Briton after failing to beat the "Northern Tribes" into submission...losing a full Legion in one battle.

[UrbanTarget]

xX PUG Xx, on 20 March 2017 - 03:39 PM, said:

Although I actually agree with a lot of what you have written, I can't "like" your post due to the above sentence. As a hot-blooded Scotsman of Norse and Celtic decent, I'm actually quite proud of the fact the Romans built not one but two walls to try and keep us out of Briton after failing to beat the "Northern Tribes" into submission...losing a full Legion in one battle.

And as we learned in one of the best scenes in "The Simpsons" when the school janitor has to extricate a pig from the vents...



okay completely unrelated, but it is my fav episode...

[justcallme A S H]

Wildstrike - by far the best post I've read on the forums to date in 2017. Absolutely 11/10 for hilarious (and, accuracy).


Anyway Units, generally, use half decent tactics. Using them leads to wins.

- Armour sharing/rotating
- Using terrain to approach/trade fire
- Focus firing the same mech

More advanced stuff some units do also:

- Calculating enemy heat, baiting with 1-2 mechs to draw a lot of heat from 4-5 and then going with an offensive push into hot laser vom teams (I've pulled this off a few times).
- Proper firing line setups to receive a push (or gen rush) - shoulder to shoulder etc.
- Aiming the same component on the same mech - Most units struggle with this, mine included.
- Knowing your enemy, experienced teams often know or can anticipate what other teams may do, add some scouting info in there, knowledge is power.
- Knowing when to take that extra shot and overheat(powerdown) or hit past 100% heat and take some dmg.


But if you think any of that is going to spill into QP or FP with solo drops, you can forget it. Most players have sub 150 match score avgs for a reason.

MSGSapper, on 20 March 2017 - 06:15 AM, said:

Sky lining is considered a major screw up among professional real world soldiers in the field in combat conditions.

Good thing we aren't in the real world and we play through 24" or bigger monitors, well, most of us

That said sometimes we will call for 1-2 people to present a target to throw the enemy off. Or, present 10 at once and steamroll into them. Many targets popping up at once and then focusing the first one they see - Usually leads to getting an upper hand pretty fast.

Edited by justcallme A S H, 20 March 2017 - 04:47 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

After playing for intensively for about a month now I a curious why real world armor tactics are seldom used here based on what I have observed?

because this isnt the real world and a lot of those tactics dont work.

[Fake News]

Everything in counter strike global offensive, call of duty, and mechassault works well here.

[Storyteller]

Playing MWO since the mid closed beta and doing droplead for most of that time, I am kinda experienced in this case. Especially because the 36th Dieron Regulars is NOT some kind of elite unit, who can gun down everything that moves from every given angle.

So we had to think of decent tactics from the start.

I was not in the military, but I know a thing or two about (team) tactics.
It's because I am reading a lot of military books, playing loads of turn based and realtime tactical games since the 1990s.
So I wanted to apply realworld tactics to MWO as well - with very limited success.

Why?

1. Mechs
Like already written above, especially IS mechs are too different in terms of speed and weaponry.

2. Terrain
Most of the terrain feels more like a human sized area. Like having many small gaps and narrow spaces.

3. Players
The majority of the players doesn't want to be drilled. For them it's just another ego shooter and they don't want to take things too serious. Just running around or camping and shooting/blowing up things. And only few have the tactical knowledge and situational awareness to apply the rules of warfare under fire. And even if the group does at one point, you have to constantly repeat those lessons - because people tend to get sloppy again after a while. Like in the real world. So it's basically all about training and repeating stuff, every once in a while.

Conclusion:
There are some basic rules like "don't block or stay behind when we're pushing", "focus fire on one target/location" and "stay together" which should be applied by all teams. And of course everyone should use good and heterogeneous mech builds. Even that is hard enough. Flanking, scouting, laying an ambush and so on must already be considered as advanced tactics for the most part of the player base. Everything beyond is expert level, which only a very small percentage of the players can reach.

Edited by Storyteller, 21 March 2017 - 07:05 AM.

[MSGSapper]

There are a number of armor tactics for a single vehicle that seem to work fairly well here based on my own in-game experiences. I mentioned some of them earlier. These are:

• Don't skyline. Resist the urge to go over hills. Go around them instead even if it takes trifle bit longer. Your less visible that way. A good many of my kills have been players who stand up on hills with the sky behind them where I can easily see them. Sky lined targets are great for air or artillery strikes.
  
• Use terrain to mask your approach to an intended goal or target. I am often amazed at how many players go across open ground even when gullies and other sheltering terrain features are very near and can be used instead.
  
• Hull or turret defilade works fairly well here depending on the type of terrain for that match. The defilade can protect your engine and center torso. See this link for more details: https://en.wikipedia...de_and_defilade

Bob

[SCHLIMMER BESTIMMER XXX]

Dark Wooki33 IIC, on 20 March 2017 - 09:44 AM, said:

Real life tactics focus on survival ...
and this game is about shooting virtual stuff.

there you have it MSG Sapper, you dont need to survive in this game, so screw all tactics (like VOIP).
Just roll in in waves banzai charging minions!

[TheMightySpin]

MSGSapper, on 20 March 2017 - 06:15 AM, said:

After playing for intensively for about a month now I a curious why real world armor tactics are seldom used here based on what I have observed?

While granted not everything translates well to this game it would seem that concepts like the formation, "kill zone", over watch and bounding over watch would work well here among others. Here is a very good primer on the subject for those not familiar with how real world U.S. Armor tactics work:

http://www.globalsec...3-21-91/c03.htm

With just a few exceptions I have observed that most players in MWO tend to rush off and are usually killed quickly because they take the "warrior" part of MechWarrior just a little to seriously instead of fighting as part of a team. The Romans long ago provided that assuming all else is equal a team will always beat a warrior. Just ask the Celts if you don't believe that. :-)

Given the very random nature of those assigned with you for any given match (Quick play or faction) it might be a little to much to expect any kind of unit cohesiveness at all I suppose. I have however noted several units that have observed good unit tactics but these seem to be few and far between in matches and I only see them very sporadically. The few times I have run into such teams they have usually beat the crap out of the side I was on that was formed out of random individuals for the most part.

Just getting my fellow players to use terrain to mask their approach or not "sky lining" themselves constantly would be a major improvement just by itself in each game match. For those who don't know already, sky lining is where you stand on top of an elevated point and have the sky behind you. Sky lining is considered a major screw up among professional real world soldiers in the field in combat conditions. Doing that makes you standout for everyone to easily see you. I have observed many cases where sky lined mechs have died very quickly in the matches I have been part of.

Bob

Because Call of Duty.

That is all.

[B0oN]

MWO playerbase and basic tactics ?
Pfffffff, buddy please ...

[Tesunie]

Wildstreak, on 20 March 2017 - 07:24 AM, said:

Because some people here have demanded the mentality that only the following are valid tactics:

• LRMs can only be used around 1000+ meters, sometimes further.

Because apparently LRMs only strength is indirect fire at "long ranges"... Oh, and boated too.

Wildstreak, on 20 March 2017 - 07:24 AM, said:

The following are NOT considered tactics:

• Using LRMs within 400-700 meters.

And of course they aren't useful at all closer to minimum ranges either... Don't even think about getting closer than 700m...



I wish to say, you've nailed everything on the head there Wild. Well done.