19 replies to this topic

[gooddragon2]

Just played 1 round of scouting and 1 round of invasion. Scouting was meh (and yep, there was a lot of splat going on IS and armor stripped on arms hunchback lbx). I brought ac20 3 er small urbie and managed to get some good damage numbers in (cored someone to red from behind) on caustic valley.

More importantly for invasion:

HPG manifold resource collection mission. Brought cravenmech, hereturbie, popo mcfuzz (5 er medium k9 urbie), and mr mcblasty dual ac20. We lost 16 to 48, but it wasn't an outright stomp. No one had a mic on our team and consumable use was more on point than I'm normally used to (they got me with arty strikes twice, not killed but hurt).

The key is (at least I think it is): General consolidation orders.

Pick an area where your team can converge where there isn't too much enemy activity and push from there. Which basically means murderball. Then mark targets with "Enemy spotted" so they know which ones are weak if you see it. Still loses to superior communication, but you get kills and get to the next match in 15 minutes while getting a nice return (imo anyways).

As strong as a coordinated enemy team may be, even they can't take on a murderball without taking losses.

The enemy team in this case only managed to push to our dropships on the last wave with about 3 mechs left I think.

Edited by gooddragon2, 08 January 2018 - 04:54 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Looks like I'll be sticking to Clan contracts for awhile.

[El Bandito]

Key to playing FP and having fun? Join a unit that actively drops in FP.

Dakota1000, on 08 January 2018 - 04:58 AM, said:

Looks like I'll be sticking to Clan contracts for awhile.

PLEASE stick to Clan contracts. Aside from a few notables, the rest of the FP veteran units have all switched to IS. Clan side is actually getting faster drops, as a result. Once Piranha drops though, Clan side is gonna swell a lot.

Edited by El Bandito, 08 January 2018 - 05:01 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

El Bandito, on 08 January 2018 - 04:58 AM, said:

PLEASE stick to Clan contracts. Aside from a few notables, the rest of the FP veteran units have all switched to IS. Clan side is actually getting faster drops, as a result.

Any reason they're on IS at the moment or just that time of the month again? Having low wait time sounds pretty nice.

[El Bandito]

Dakota1000, on 08 January 2018 - 05:02 AM, said:

Any reason they're on IS at the moment or just that time of the month again? Having low wait time sounds pretty nice.

A few reasons. (MS) switched to IS cause we were Clan for a month and a half and most of us reached rank 10 of Steel Vipers. Many other units switched to IS, cause EVIL switched to IS--they don't wanna get smashed by EVIL.

Our unit will most likely stay IS until Piranha craze dies down. Cause once Piranha drops, Clan queue is gonna become jammed.

Edited by El Bandito, 08 January 2018 - 05:06 AM.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

El Bandito, on 08 January 2018 - 05:03 AM, said:

A few reasons. (MS) switched to IS cause we were Clan for a month and a half. Many other units switched to IS, cause EVIL switched to IS--they don't wanna get smashed by EVIL.

I usually end up on whatever side that EVIL isn't on at the moment when I'm setting up my contracts. Who else to get farmed by but the best, I'll see how much of a dent I can put in their KDRs.

[Seranov]

El Bandito, on 08 January 2018 - 04:58 AM, said:

Key to playing FP and having fun? Join a unit that actively drops in FP.

100% this. The unit I joined did has a Scouting-focused subgroup, and messing around in Scouting with them is worlds better than PuGing it.

I absolutely abhor Invasion, so I just don't do it, and not-exaggerating-literally everyone is happier as a result.

[sycocys]

Key - join a group. A unit is a good next step, but at least consider doing what the warning at the start tells you and join a freaking group before you drop.

Then you can at least coordinate decks, and a general strategy rather than scrambling to figure everything out during the drop countdowns.

If you don't like the people in the first group you find, join a different group - heck actually make some friends and drop with them and FP will be a blast every time whether you win or not. And if you drop with 11 friends they are far more likely to play along with your uber niche poorly performing builds than dropping with 11 random people that expect you to at least carry your own weight.

[LordNothing]

i dont think ive ever enjoyed dropping with a group. sure i mean at least you end up with players that know what they are doing and thats 90% the way to having a fun match. right now we got a casual pug infestation due to the lootbag event. but those will leave when its over leaving only die hard puggernauts. then things will be fun again.

[Xiphias]

gooddragon2, on 08 January 2018 - 04:53 AM, said:

Brought cravenmech, hereturbie, popo mcfuzz (5 er medium k9 urbie), and mr mcblasty dual ac20. We lost 16 to 48, but it wasn't an outright stomp.

To be clear, you brought a Raven, 2 Urban Mechs, and a Jager(?), for a total of 160 to just barely meet the tonnage limit as your dropdeck? I'm guessing you probably did less than 500 damage total?

That's what we call a loss in the mechlab. You need more tonnage in FP and the Urby is a fairly poor choice as well because it is slow. If you really want to be positively contributing in FP you need to bring a real dropdeck.

In generally you want to try and take up all the tonnage you can because that means more total firepower and armor for your team. I'd recommend a dropdeck of either (H/H/H/M), (A/H/H/L) or (A/A/M/L). For a newer player running heavies is probably best. If you don't have quite enough you can swap the medium to a light.

In building that drop deck you generally want to focus on more mid-long range builds instead of brawlers if you aren't running in a group. These let you be effective and put damage out regardless of what your team decides to bring or do. Things like laser vomit Warhammer and Grasshoppers are good. For hot maps, dakka mechs can be good. If you want to take a brawling mech like the 2xAC20 don't take more than one in your dropdeck.

Personally, for FP I would consider a 16-48 match to be a stomp in FP since you took out less than 2 waves of the enemies.

I'd recommend spending some more time in quick play to build up a proper (and skilled out) dropdeck before dropping in FP, otherwise you really are being an active detriment to your team.

Quote

As strong as a coordinated enemy team may be, even they can't take on a murderball without taking losses.

That's actually not true, a strong FP unit can smash a pug murderball pretty easy, particularly on maps like Boreal. Deathballing is still a good idea, but all the communication and coordination in the world isn't going to make up for poor dropdeck choices.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Xiphias, on 08 January 2018 - 07:52 AM, said:

To be clear, you brought a Raven, 2 Urban Mechs, and a Jager(?), for a total of 160 to just barely meet the tonnage limit as your dropdeck? I'm guessing you probably did less than 500 damage total?

To be more clear, he brought a Raven with the most mixed build ever, an Urbanmech running half or less armor, K9 with 5 ERMLs to its name, and his last mech is a King Crab with dual AC20s and at least 10 tons of ammo.

[Steelmesh]

The problem for me right now is finding a unit who's members won't be all like "yeah, you know, we appreciate your extreme skill with LRMs, and we will let you show it off in training drops, but when we play FP, we want you using SRMs"

It puts me off greatly when a drop commander attempts to tell me exactly what mech and build I should be using.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for team play.. but that is not team play.. that's one man playing with 48 mechs..

I've been in this game since closed beta, and know how things work.. I've led drops, I've cooperated in all kinds of tactics.. and let me tell you.. dropping 12 identical mechs / drop is just boring.

If anybody knows a unit that won't do that to me, I would be eager to join up, and even bring another similar player with me..

(Please PM on the forums or even better in-game if you have something like that to offer.. I'm EU timezone.)

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Steelmesh, on 09 January 2018 - 01:42 AM, said:

The problem for me right now is finding a unit who's members won't be all like "yeah, you know, we appreciate your extreme skill with LRMs, and we will let you show it off in training drops, but when we play FP, we want you using SRMs"

It puts me off greatly when a drop commander attempts to tell me exactly what mech and build I should be using.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for team play.. but that is not team play.. that's one man playing with 48 mechs..

I've been in this game since closed beta, and know how things work.. I've led drops, I've cooperated in all kinds of tactics.. and let me tell you.. dropping 12 identical mechs / drop is just boring.

If anybody knows a unit that won't do that to me, I would be eager to join up, and even bring another similar player with me..

(Please PM on the forums or even better in-game if you have something like that to offer.. I'm EU timezone.)

Dropping waves of completely identical mechs is just so aesthetic though.

Spoiler

It also offers some tactical benefits, such as your enemy losing track of who is who and ruining their focus fire. Take for example 12 Hellbringers with ECM all with the same paintjob, there's no letter indicator, you can't just call out "target the hellbringer" since that's all of them, and if one is damaged it can fall back and another replaces it. It actually helps a lot against focus fire. Having identical builds also means that if everyone sticks together they can all hit the same target at once since they have the same range profiles.

I can see why units would like to make use of that advantage.

[gooddragon2]

Steelmesh, on 09 January 2018 - 01:42 AM, said:

If anybody knows a unit that won't do that to me, I would be eager to join up, and even bring another similar player with me..

If you're willing to go clan I know of a unit like that which is quite formidable. I certainly wouldn't want to try anything against them. The Wu Tang Clan.

This is their clan symbol:

Edited by gooddragon2, 09 January 2018 - 02:15 AM.

[Bud Crue]

The key to having fun in FP?
THE KEY ?!!!

The Key is to not think about how crappy the mode is. Its to not think about the fact we have a single, planar bucket with two sides filled with all of those factions, and houses and clans and units with no function. Its not to think about the silly balance mechanism of using weight to balance the "disparity of skill" while encouraging the most skilled of mercs to populate only specific factions via high rewards bonuses. Its to not think about all the lost potential. Its to not think about the promises of old. Its to not think about Russ assertions that "the mode is fine" while your wait for a match approaches 20 minutes. Its to not think about his promise from back in January that 2017 was going to see PGI refocusing on FP development. Its to not think about all the friends and units who have left the mode and even the game because of it.

That's the key to having fun. Just don't think. Accept the mode for what it is and just try not to think about what it could have been or even what they said it was supposed to be. The key to playing is a lot harder as it involves suckering your unit mates to playing the mode at all, and that key is of course: group up and work together. But if you can manage those two things, the mode can be...Quick Play with respawns and on an occasional invasion map!

Sigh.

Just try not to think about it, that's the key.

[Bombast]

Steelmesh, on 09 January 2018 - 01:42 AM, said:

If anybody knows a unit that won't do that to me, I would be eager to join up, and even bring another similar player with me..

There are plenty of units that do FP that don't care what you bring, and are just there to play around and have fun.

If you're looking for a group that's serious enough to practice, and indifferent enough to drag a MechLab load into real matches... that'll be tougher to find. I'm afraid you'll likely have to pick one - Either a unit that's actually going to try, and thus expects you to try, or a unit that's not actually trying and doesn't care if you aren't either.

[Asym]

I still think "finding a unit" is an issue in MWO: for the reasons just described? Who actually trains for FP and still manages to have some degree of "fun" when getting slaughtered by EVIL or those freeborn scum, MS, who's mission is to FARM with impunity.......

(has El had a heart attack yet or has his head exploded yet?.........humor, El, humor....)

It would be neat if MWO had a list of units by what they do....

[C H E E K I E Z]

Asym, on 09 January 2018 - 09:30 AM, said:

It would be neat if MWO had a list of units by what they do....

You could ask some of the veterans of MWO, that could tell you the play-style for almost every unit.

[Asym]

C H E E K I E Z, on 09 January 2018 - 09:40 AM, said:

You could ask some of the veterans of MWO, that could tell you the play-style for almost every unit.

Actually, I have and EL, and a bunch of other forum pundits had great advice.... I'd like to see a Faction play pin explicitdly for teams that train for FP; teams that want drop-in guests and have their TS/DC addresses right in the post; and, teams that play FP and are looking for player who just want to have fun !

Something simple for new players use.

Edited by Asym, 09 January 2018 - 11:55 AM.

[C H E E K I E Z]

Asym, on 09 January 2018 - 11:54 AM, said:

Actually, I have and EL, and a bunch of other forum pundits had great advice.... I'd like to see a Faction play pin explicitdly for teams that train for FP; teams that want drop-in guests and have their TS/DC addresses right in the post; and, teams that play FP and are looking for player who just want to have fun !

Something simple for new players use.

If your looking for a training unit, if your new to FP, or even a slight veteran, I would 100% suggest MercStar, they will take anyone from a person on their first drop to comp players, Every single day they have at least 1 12 man, and a group of 5-6 doing QP, on busy nights they have 3-4 12 mans. They teach basic load-outs, basic strats and get you into your first 20-30 mechs pretty nice.

If your more experienced and know Cw and are semi-known in CW, K-Com, and BCMC usually take most pugs that know which end of the gun to use, and know the normal strats of CW.

There are many other teams out there that will 100% let you drop with them, i have about 14 different teamspeak servers that i have saved, and if Evil is not running (which is ******* rare) there are at least 15 other teams i know i can just go jump in a ts say hey and drop with.