16 replies to this topic

[BWS2K]

Tourmaline Assault. I'm in an MLX-G. Blues move out. We get a couple hits on radar but nothing... nothing... nothing. I pair up with another Lynx and I think a Mad Dog to take a quick peek - they're all just standing at the Red Base. We wait for our buddies and right as we start to push, you guessed it, our base starts getting capped. I shout out "I'll go back, you all stay here and fight." I travel back and find... another MLX-G just standing on our base. We duel, I win narrowly (I think only because I got the drop on him) and then find myself facing a Raven, which I also take down. By the time I make it back to the frontline, which is still where I left it, we've got a badly beaten up Urbie and an Assault and myself - yellow legs and missing an arm. We YOLO like crazy to charge on the remaining two (relatively fresh) 'mechs. I saw off a Marauder's arm and core out a Nova, turn and finish off the Marauder. 4 kills for me but that's not the point - I've never seen this strategy before and I have almost a thousand hours combined gametime. Maybe it's a FP thing, I don't know. It was a fantastic match though and I'm super impressed to see some originality. Great drop!

Just had to mention it here. One of those adrenaline-pumping games, you know? lol

[Lykaon]

Back in closed beta this was a fairly common strategy on Caustic and Tourmaline.

Caustic because you could make a realatively straight run for the enemy base while remaining concealed in cover for most of it and Tourmaline because it was THE big map back then and delaying tactics worked because of it.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Adrenaline pumping? Nice.

This PvP needs such happenings to help keep the action fresh. So nice to read about from time to time.

I can see flashes in my head from previous drops, as Commandos were a class I focused on a lot in the old days and lights in general even recently (between a hiatus granted, but meh life happens). So I can relate to this experience quite easily.

[El Bandito]

BWS2K, on 01 June 2018 - 10:24 PM, said:

Just had to mention it here. One of those adrenaline-pumping games, you know? lol

Yeah those matches are fun. I rarely have adrenaline fueling QP games anymore, so I stick to Solaris, or FP. Knowing that a single loss can take away 29 points keep me on my edge better than anything in game.

[Asym]

Several of us have "suggested" defending versus attacking. In two modes, you have a base! In the many times we have convinced pilots to play along, we've had some intense and brutal fights because one team is established defensively and the other usually is moving en masse...

Defenders will win most of the time; especially, with high walls and defensive turrets and small entrances... that stealth mech can and often does make it to the other base......not too many people actually count the icons when the radar comes on or, count the icons if it's an assault mode....

Try it in QP and see if you like it !

Edited by Asym, 02 June 2018 - 11:26 AM.

[tortcat]

you should try river city where EVERYONE on one team gets into the little bowl like area on the sw side of the map in the mountains....as long as everyone does it the other team is forced to come to you ( depending upon game mode of course)...serious choke point there

[VitriolicViolet]

yeah i had a fantastic one last night running a Panther 10P, 450 damage and 5 kills, god it was intense i was shaking afterwards.
nothing like running at 128kph with only a LB10. The 10P has crazy ballistic cooldown, with skilltree it fires once evey 1.4 seconds, faster than an AC5

Edited: had another great game where i was hunting down other lights, Terra Therma match devloved into a horrible brawl where i spent a while right behind a commando chasing it for a bit, hammering it with the LB. Hunting lights is fun with tis build

Edited by VitriolicViolet, 02 June 2018 - 02:54 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Somebody called that drop, I'm sure.

[AEgg]

Lykaon, on 01 June 2018 - 10:33 PM, said:

Back in closed beta this was a fairly common strategy on Caustic and Tourmaline.

Caustic because you could make a realatively straight run for the enemy base while remaining concealed in cover for most of it and Tourmaline because it was THE big map back then and delaying tactics worked because of it.

While capping as a distraction did happen sometimes (gausscats loved camping on mountains), what I remember most about caustic was how often each team picked a different side of the crater, and the match ended in a cap race with zero shots fired...

[Angel of Annihilation]

Yeah I love it when the match deviates from the normal, typical NASCAR that usually occurs. Couple of fun matches I had were first on Forest Colony. Instead of the enemy rushing forward and fighting us are the same old same old cliffs, they decided to hang way back near the spawn. My team was so completely out of sorts by this unexpected development, we didn't know what to do. We kind of slowly kept moving forward like a curious cat creeping in on some unexpected movement it caught out of the corner of its eye then....WHAM...all hell breaks loose and we are all caught totally out of position. We lost semi-badly but it was a glorious and fun fight. The second time was on River City. instead of rushing across the water to the citadel we decided to hang way back for the River hiding in the city. Kind of like we did on the first map, the enemy eventually crept forward trying to figure out what was going on. We moved up just in time to catch them out about half way across the river and lit them up. They didn't have anywhere else to go so they just bummed rushed in on us and we ended up having one of the most disorganized, crazy street to street brawls I have every had. It was amazing.

It really is just to bad than only about 20% of the map, the same 20% is all that is used for every battle and inevitably results in both teams NASCAR'ing for all its worth into that stupid death spiral of two snakes chasing each other eating each others tail in the process. So my less fun then the 999 other places and ways you could fight the battle.

[Dragonporn]

Don't mean to sound like an arse, but I see no tactic here at all... Just sounds like a usual QP mess where folks go all over the place without thinking. Sacrificing two Light mechs for half-arsed cap is not how it works, you send one (ultra-fast one), start capping, and when your spiders senses telling you that someone's coming, you bail to help out your team, most likely to the place where enemies have to turn around to take their attention from your own team, and constantly reposition, not to get jumped. If you seriously consider going for base cap, you need 4+ mechs, combat capable ones including at least one Heavy or some Mediums. When you do it with Light, it's only a distracting measure.

[BWS2K]

Dragonporn, on 03 June 2018 - 05:53 AM, said:

Don't mean to sound like an arse, but I see no tactic here at all... Just sounds like a usual QP mess where folks go all over the place without thinking. Sacrificing two Light mechs for half-arsed cap is not how it works, you send one (ultra-fast one), start capping, and when your spiders senses telling you that someone's coming, you bail to help out your team, most likely to the place where enemies have to turn around to take their attention from your own team, and constantly reposition, not to get jumped. If you seriously consider going for base cap, you need 4+ mechs, combat capable ones including at least one Heavy or some Mediums. When you do it with Light, it's only a distracting measure.

I don't disagree exactly but this used one or two brain cells instead of the usual zero and obviously meant an entire team listened to a single dropcaller, which makes it stand out as a glorious battle tactic that very nearly worked, lol

[Dee Eight]

Oh and here I thought this was going to be a thread about the guy in the LRM20 (and that only) Urbie running around on the double XP event...

[Kaeb Odellas]

Old Caustic Valley had a big hill you could hide behind right next to one of the bases. Had some fun matches with my unit in Closed Beta where we'd just hide behind the hill giggling and just utterly wreck the first couple of mechs to approach our base.

[TheCaptainJZ]

This kind of thing used to happen more often when teams were 8v8 and before the clans so you could make it across the map without the longer range of weapons that clans often have and fewer mechs to be spotted with. I would sometimes play with my brother and we would both cap just to split up the enemy team and hopefully turn the tide of war in our favor.

[Xetelian]

So far in the last couple months I have dropped with this guy in solo queue, I obviously wont share his name but he demands the team hide and play defense.

First time I bumped into him we were on river city, he said stay in the city way back where we spawned, 3 guys didn't listen and walked over the ledge to the citadel, I said "We better leave the city to save those mechs or we'll lose" and he disagreed and we sat around 3 guys died and then the enemy that out numbered us came and slaughtered us. Since we were hiding in the city and not at all poking at their approach over open water because 1 we were really far back and 2 we had buildings in our way so the enemy had more cover than we did. The fight went down like this, the enemy came up into the city, we were in a tight huddle and did as we were told, the enemy spread out and came at us from every angle and a few of the fights were 2+ on One mech and as we started moving we just kept getting into each other's firing lines and we killed 2 mechs.


The next time was on forest colony, and this time everyone listened. We hid at the base and waited for the enemy to come, the enemy came and was spread out and collapsed on us and we lost horribly.


This, I want to mention again, was in solo queue and if I see his name on my team I immediately tell people to move out and call a grid. If I do this fast enough I can dissuade the team from listening to this guy.



Sitting and hiding can work. I've seen it work, but the times I've seen it work are very very few.

It can work well if the enemy isn't 100% sure where you are and you have your team spread out in a firing line. I saw a team on polar do this in group queue and they won but they were also calling targets as far as I know and were spread out well enough to be firing next to each other without worrying about crossing the streams.

[Daggett]

Xetelian, on 06 June 2018 - 03:05 AM, said:

Sitting and hiding can work. I've seen it work, but the times I've seen it work are very very few.

It can work well if the enemy isn't 100% sure where you are and you have your team spread out in a firing line. I saw a team on polar do this in group queue and they won but they were also calling targets as far as I know and were spread out well enough to be firing next to each other without worrying about crossing the streams.

^This^

Defending can only work when all conditions are right: Teamwork, Location, Timing, ect.
Most 'lets defend' drop-callers have no idea on what makes a good defensive position and lead their team into a deathtrap like in your example.

Polar has lots of good spots for defensive positions while River City has almost none. Tall, unpassable cover like buildings and rocks are bad for defense, while elevated positions and wide cover like (snow-)dunes are great. For some reason however, players prefer buildings and rocks and are then wondering why it's so easy to surround/flank them... Probably the only exception is the base in incursion, because those turrets can make a difference.

The worst matches however are those assault ones on frozen where both teams have such a 'lets defend' caller and end up doing nothing until the timer passes the 5min remaining mark...

Edited by Daggett, 06 June 2018 - 07:46 AM.