22 replies to this topic

[Picard90]

I'm still relatively a new player. I've been playing light mechs. It seems that I've come around to loving my Javelin, a loyalty variant, with 2 Medium ER-lasers, 3x HMGs and 3x MGs. I replaced two of my jump sets with AMS and its ammo, then beefed up my armor a bit (investing in survival & mobility skill trees really helped a lot as well).

I'm not the greatest player out there, I still die more often than not. I still need to improve my piloting skills.

Now to my question. I've often wondered is it stealing a kill from other players when I lurk behind the fight, waiting to swoop in and snap a kill when my targets are softened up by my teammates, allowing my machine guns to rip apart the internal structure? I usually try my best in practicing a bit of patience, letting my teammates do heavy work in softening up the targets, then go in to act as fire or flanking support.

Do other players ever feel like, "Hey! That pesky light mech stole my kill! I WANT to pad my stats!"?

[WrathOfDeadguy]

There is no such thing as stealing a kill in a team game. The faster enemies die, the better; it gets enemy guns off the field and clears up your heavier allies so they can turn their attention to the next target. A good light pilot always looks for enemies with exposed components, and prioritizes them over fresh targets, for exactly that reason. If being denied the killshot makes someone angry, then they should go play Solaris- the objective is to win, and personal scores are secondary to that.

That being said, there are still ways to contribute to the fight even before you're able to fully engage. If you can safely get around behind the main enemy force, while they're engaging your team, you can deploy a UAV over their position to feed your team information. You can also contribute "nuisance damage" with your lasers in an attempt to distract enemies and pull them away- if you can bait an assault or a heavy into chasing you, that's almost as good as killing them outright because it creates a tonnage imbalance in your team's favor at the front line. You don't have to just restrict yourself to cleanup detail, even if that is what your 'Mech is best suited for.

It should also go without saying that you shouldn't dive in front of your teammates to grab kills- that will anger just about anyone, and rightly so (since it'll put you at risk of taking accidental team damage, which they will then be penalized for). You absolutely should try to put down any enemy you're able to, regardless of how much "work" another player has already done on them- just be mindful of the minimap and where your teammates are (since you're the faster 'Mech, you can avoid them more easily than they can avoid you). It's worth mentioning because you'll see that kind of behavior a lot when events are running. Kill "stealing" is fine, but blocking another player's already established line of fire to get the last shot in is not.

[Phoenix 72]

That's not stealing a kill, that's securing a kill. And it can win the game if done correctly.

However, expect some people to complain about kill stealing. Some people in here complain about pretty much everything.

[Mister Maf]

One of the jobs of an MG light is to help secure kills once an enemy's armor is off. Sometimes it's annoying to not get your name on the kill board when you've been working on a guy for awhile but Kill Most Damage Dealt is credited for a reason and it's more important that the enemy is down rather than who got the kill.

That said, there are other things you can do in a light besides hide and wait. You can harass the enemy, pick off loners, scout, complete objectives, etc.

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

It's pretty much your job finishing off targets with open components.
That said, i sometimes see multiple mechs jumping a de facto dead (legged, disarmed etc) mech just to get the kill tag while there are other, way more dangerous targets on screen.

[Koniving]

Picard90, on 26 November 2018 - 12:42 AM, said:

I'm still relatively a new player. I've been playing light mechs. It seems that I've come around to loving my Javelin, a loyalty variant, with 2 Medium ER-lasers, 3x HMGs and 3x MGs. I replaced two of my jump sets with AMS and its ammo, then beefed up my armor a bit (investing in survival & mobility skill trees really helped a lot as well).

I'm not the greatest player out there, I still die more often than not. I still need to improve my piloting skills.

Now to my question. I've often wondered is it stealing a kill from other players when I lurk behind the fight, waiting to swoop in and snap a kill when my targets are softened up by my teammates, allowing my machine guns to rip apart the internal structure? I usually try my best in practicing a bit of patience, letting my teammates do heavy work in softening up the targets, then go in to act as fire or flanking support.

Do other players ever feel like, "Hey! That pesky light mech stole my kill! I WANT to pad my stats!"?

For your last question, yes there are people like that in every game ever made.

Generally though, as a team game you won't hear too many complaints about finishing off an enemy. In fact help is usually preferred. You are less likely to suffer animosity, however, if you're participating prior to said kill swooping as well, whether you're a light distracting the enemies by drawing their fire away from the big guys so the big guys can get the big punches in that let you "secure" the kills, or by delivering your own can opening blows in addition to theirs.

As an example I have a Javelin design with a snub-nose PPC to deliver a modestly-decent punch on occasion in addition to my machine guns. While not the best design, it can run in, deliver a surgical punch to help open up enemies to let the machine guns do their work. If weight were not an issue and speed not as necessary, I could use something more like a large pulse laser which is generally more effective with slightly better range. Sometimes I actually use twin PPCs on my lights for that punch or a type of adequate missile provided I have enough slots.

Similar, but heavier designs meant to rapidly secure kills will most certainly have their own way of making a good punch to operate independently as well as cohesively.

Now, while the faster the enemy dies the better, if you sweep in within seconds of a kill, deliver maybe 2 damage and get that kill you're bound to have someone be bitter about it. So be certain to pull at least a little bit of weight.

The way I like to gauge pulling weight, is you should have 100 to 200 damage per kill.

If I had significantly less, I judge that as having not pulled my weight and having too many 'opportune' moments to steal kills with too little effort. That's bad for a multitude of reasons, though the biggest one for me is that's a fast track method to a higher tier (which is something I personally do not want).
If I have significantly higher damage than 100-to-200 per kill, then I evaluate whether I had a lot of team oriented combat where someone else got the kill (by comparing kill assists), and if the kill assists is adequate then I did good playing as part of the team. If the kill assists is also too low, then I judge myself to have either been too ineffective at getting my kills OR, on given days, to have spent too much time 'playing' with the enemy which I do on occasion by trolling them.

[Koniving]

As a newer player, you could modify that gauge to about 250 to 350 per kill and it should still be a pretty fair judgement, as I recall from a post of mine a few years ago on the same subject with leniency for newer players. And remember getting a kill completely on your own isn't an easy task early on, many players especially starting out when the game first got released could go for days to weeks of playing before getting our first solo kills.

Tale of my first match in MWO, where I was absolutely determined to get a kill against my 8 opponents.

Spoiler

I know I fought hard to get a kill in my very first time of playing, at the time ramming was a thing, as was standing in the water with standard heatsinks in your feet for faster cooling. Took my Jenner and rammed him, and he in turn would ram me, and we'd duke it out across the map in so many places. He destroyed a laser and my launcher. I crippled away his arms and rammed his leg into breaking (combined with laser fire). He began to limp away as I overheated for the fifth time. Given his slow speed I didn't rush it, I wanted to be as cold as I could be. At the time you couldn't send or receive messages while powered off. No voice chat. And if you were dead, there was no ability to chat either. When I powered on I asked if anyone needed support. No one answered (despite how active the chat was earlier). I then saw an assault and two heavies heading my way. I asked for support as the first shot instantly breaks my leg. No answer. I give their position and again ask for support. No answer. Blue lasers tear off my arms in quick succession. I'm now defenseless and limping. I back away, afraid to turn my back. Glowing eyes of the Atlas approaching and the Catapult's paws splashing in the water. My own mech's cockpit keeps bobbing above and below the water as a hail of fire comes my way, reducing my armor and shredding it until everything turns from yellow, to red, to gone, to structure turning yellow, orange, red, and suddenly it stops. The limping enemy Jenner that I spent the whole match fighting comes out between the legs of the two biggest mechs there, and the Atlas pilot says "Welcome to MWO," as the Jenner delivers the finishing blow. Naturally I got no kills, but I did deliver around 400 damage. (A bug at the time with missiles may have inflated that number, as SRMs could get upwards of 25 damage per missile in the right conditions, an issue long since fixed in 2012).

Edited by Koniving, 26 November 2018 - 09:49 AM.

[Picard90]

Koniving, on 26 November 2018 - 09:44 AM, said:

As a newer player, you could modify that gauge to about 250 to 350 per kill and it should still be a pretty fair judgement, as I recall from a post of mine a few years ago on the same subject with leniency for newer players. And remember getting a kill completely on your own isn't an easy task early on, many players especially starting out when the game first got released could go for days to weeks of playing before getting our first solo kills.

Tale of my first match in MWO, where I was absolutely determined to get a kill against my 8 opponents.

Spoiler

I know I fought hard to get a kill in my very first time of playing, at the time ramming was a thing, as was standing in the water with standard heatsinks in your feet for faster cooling. Took my Jenner and rammed him, and he in turn would ram me, and we'd duke it out across the map in so many places. He destroyed a laser and my launcher. I crippled away his arms and rammed his leg into breaking (combined with laser fire). He began to limp away as I overheated for the fifth time. Given his slow speed I didn't rush it, I wanted to be as cold as I could be. At the time you couldn't send or receive messages while powered off. No voice chat. And if you were dead, there was no ability to chat either. When I powered on I asked if anyone needed support. No one answered (despite how active the chat was earlier). I then saw an assault and two heavies heading my way. I asked for support as the first shot instantly breaks my leg. No answer. I give their position and again ask for support. No answer. Blue lasers tear off my arms in quick succession. I'm now defenseless and limping. I back away, afraid to turn my back. Glowing eyes of the Atlas approaching and the Catapult's paws splashing in the water. My own mech's cockpit keeps bobbing above and below the water as a hail of fire comes my way, reducing my armor and shredding it until everything turns from yellow, to red, to gone, to structure turning yellow, orange, red, and suddenly it stops. The limping enemy Jenner that I spent the whole match fighting comes out between the legs of the two biggest mechs there, and the Atlas pilot says "Welcome to MWO," as the Jenner delivers the finishing blow. Naturally I got no kills, but I did deliver around 400 damage. (A bug at the time with missiles may have inflated that number, as SRMs could get upwards of 25 damage per missile in the right conditions, an issue long since fixed in 2012).

Love your story! Interestingly enough, when I first got my loyalty Javelin, I got 2 kills, 1 was a solo kill. But both were against one light mech (my solo kill) and the other was against a medium mech, I think. Right now my kill/death ratio is 1:2, which isn't much at all. I deal a lot of damage and get few kill assists, but I rarely get a kill, much less two kills in the same match.

[Picard90]

Koniving, on 26 November 2018 - 09:31 AM, said:

For your last question, yes there are people like that in every game ever made.

Generally though, as a team game you won't hear too many complaints about finishing off an enemy. In fact help is usually preferred. You are less likely to suffer animosity, however, if you're participating prior to said kill swooping as well, whether you're a light distracting the enemies by drawing their fire away from the big guys so the big guys can get the big punches in that let you "secure" the kills, or by delivering your own can opening blows in addition to theirs.

As an example I have a Javelin design with a snub-nose PPC to deliver a modestly-decent punch on occasion in addition to my machine guns. While not the best design, it can run in, deliver a surgical punch to help open up enemies to let the machine guns do their work. If weight were not an issue and speed not as necessary, I could use something more like a large pulse laser which is generally more effective with slightly better range. Sometimes I actually use twin PPCs on my lights for that punch or a type of adequate missile provided I have enough slots.

Similar, but heavier designs meant to rapidly secure kills will most certainly have their own way of making a good punch to operate independently as well as cohesively.

Now, while the faster the enemy dies the better, if you sweep in within seconds of a kill, deliver maybe 2 damage and get that kill you're bound to have someone be bitter about it. So be certain to pull at least a little bit of weight.

The way I like to gauge pulling weight, is you should have 100 to 200 damage per kill.

If I had significantly less, I judge that as having not pulled my weight and having too many 'opportune' moments to steal kills with too little effort. That's bad for a multitude of reasons, though the biggest one for me is that's a fast track method to a higher tier (which is something I personally do not want).
If I have significantly higher damage than 100-to-200 per kill, then I evaluate whether I had a lot of team oriented combat where someone else got the kill (by comparing kill assists), and if the kill assists is adequate then I did good playing as part of the team. If the kill assists is also too low, then I judge myself to have either been too ineffective at getting my kills OR, on given days, to have spent too much time 'playing' with the enemy which I do on occasion by trolling them.

I actually average 100-200 damage per match. I get few kill assists, and occasionally I'll get kills. What was particularly interesting to me is that my stats often indicate I got a savior kill but is not listed as a kill in statistics. A couple of times, the states mention a defensive kill (whatever that is).

I can understand the trolling aspect. In one match, a really fast Jenner got behind our main line, and was running wildly. We couldn't get our shots in, and this Jenner only fired few laser shots. I think the opponent was feeding his team our locations, which certainly helped his team win the match. We only got 3 or 4 kills before being wiped out, and....this Jenner survived the fight. I don't think he did anything significant other than running wildly through our main lines, twisting his torso left and right, and basically made our day miserable.

At the end of that match, I had a thought..."Awesome, I wanna be that guy!" I know that probably sounds comical, but I got a kick out of the other opponent outplaying me and my team as well.

[Tesunie]

Picard90, on 26 November 2018 - 12:42 AM, said:

Now to my question. I've often wondered is it stealing a kill from other players when I lurk behind the fight, waiting to swoop in and snap a kill when my targets are softened up by my teammates, allowing my machine guns to rip apart the internal structure? I usually try my best in practicing a bit of patience, letting my teammates do heavy work in softening up the targets, then go in to act as fire or flanking support.

Do other players ever feel like, "Hey! That pesky light mech stole my kill! I WANT to pad my stats!"?

Doing this in a light isn't a problem. I suggest you add a little scouting work into the mix before falling back into the team to work on killing.

If you were trying to do this with, say, a heavy or assault mech it would be more painful to the team. With a light mech it's probably more helpful. I say this with the statement about "sharing armor". The act of sharing armor isn't to actually take hits, but to present yourself as a target (hopefully without being hit).

In a team game, there is only securing kills. There is no stealing kills. I've jokingly said to friends "Hey, that was my kill", but the enemy gets dropped and there are fewer guns to shoot back at me. I appreciate not dieing, so my allies can drop as many target's as I've opened up as they like.

Remember, this is a team game. Work for the benefit of your team in as many ways as you can. Know the role you've made for your mech, and try to maximize that role in favor of your team. For an example, it's okay to take LRMs and be in a support role. However, don't focus completely on indirect fire support to the point you hurt your team when they need another person to take some shots from the enemy. (Without going too crazy with explaining armor sharing.)

Know your mech's intended role. Leverage that role to favor the team as much as you can. Be willing to also slide out of said role if the team needs it. In your specific case, it's okay to wait a little for targets to start having openings in their armor before heavily engaging, as that is where your mech performs best. However, don't wait too long to engage, as you may find you no longer have a team to support nor support you.

[General Solo]

kill steal = kill secure = focus fire could be said to be a form of kill stealing/securing

But nobody minds when you focus fire.

[Tesunie]

OZHomerOZ, on 26 November 2018 - 05:29 PM, said:

kill steal = kill secure = focus fire could be said to be a form of kill stealing/securing

But nobody minds when you focus fire.

Unless, of course... YOU are the one being focused fired on.

[Tier5 Kerensky]

". I've often wondered is it stealing a kill from other players when I lurk behind the fight, waiting to swoop in and snap a kill when my targets are softened up by my teammates, allowing my machine guns to rip apart the internal structure? I usually try my best in practicing a bit of patience, letting my teammates do heavy work in softening up the targets, then go in to act as fire or flanking support."

No not really. Kill stealing is real when the game uses scoring/reward system that really/mainly rewards kills. In MWO kills are quite secondary.

Sure some people might play in manner thats kill stealing but it shouldn't really bother anyone that much, and can be ignored.

" What was particularly interesting to me is that my stats often indicate I got a savior kill but is not listed as a kill in statistics. A couple of times, the states mention a defensive kill (whatever that is)."

Lets just ignore savior kills and stuff like there. There is explonations to them(all different scoring events), but some of them are quite off. There's very little of killing, in savior killing.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Picard90, on 26 November 2018 - 02:01 PM, said:

I actually average 100-200 damage per match. I get few kill assists, and occasionally I'll get kills. What was particularly interesting to me is that my stats often indicate I got a savior kill but is not listed as a kill in statistics. A couple of times, the states mention a defensive kill (whatever that is).

I can understand the trolling aspect. In one match, a really fast Jenner got behind our main line, and was running wildly. We couldn't get our shots in, and this Jenner only fired few laser shots. I think the opponent was feeding his team our locations, which certainly helped his team win the match. We only got 3 or 4 kills before being wiped out, and....this Jenner survived the fight. I don't think he did anything significant other than running wildly through our main lines, twisting his torso left and right, and basically made our day miserable.

At the end of that match, I had a thought..."Awesome, I wanna be that guy!" I know that probably sounds comical, but I got a kick out of the other opponent outplaying me and my team as well.

100-200 damage sounds about normal performance for being a light with primarily mgs. With experience, you'll be able to increase that, perhaps double.
Yeah, many stats have "kill" in the title, but it's not necessarily your kill.
Defensive kill is when you killed or helped kill an enemy that was trying to capture a base your team owns.
Savior kill is when you killed or helped kill an enemy that was attacking a friendly with low health.
Savior kill is one of the higher paying rewards.
There is also Kill Most Damage Done (KMDD) which you might see used in events. Again, for this one, you don't have to secure the final blow, just done the most damage to it. There is also a Solo Kill which means you overwhelmingly did the most damage (I think you have to do more than anyone else did to that target, might be a minimum % of the total also). PGI has often used various match rewards as criteria for events rewards since revamping the event system a while back.

There are technical descriptions here: https://mwomercs.com...-get-xp-and-cb/
The payout values may have been adjusted but how you score a reward shouldn't have changed.

[Mechwarrior 37]

Your job is to kill other mechs. You are a light, you are supposed to be sneaky.

That said and to your question.

Did you move in and block off other players? IMO, that is a bad thing. And it is also how you get friendly fire. I play a decent amount of flamer mechs and I get damage from teammates trying to help/get a kill.

Plus, and this could be big. Did you waste time As in SECONDS) and position. Did you disrupt the flow of the battle or did you improve it by killing off the enemy mech and then moving quickly on?

It is very hard not to take a kill in this game. Yesterday, twice in conquest games we had the last member of their team legged. "Most" of us agreed on it so we could get more money from capping. And both times, someone could not resist themselves.

Have you ever left the battle line to chase a mech with no weapons left? That should never be done and is almost always done.

It so often depends on the situation. Did you steal a kill or did you save your teammate? It can be a thin line. Did you save a teammate from getting more damage?

There might be two enemy mechs to your left hammering your teammates and killing the one quickly could help. But if you are sort of alone and they did 90% of the damage.....

Most of the time I say make the kill and move on. The sooner you kill an enemy mech the better for your team. And this game has a serious snowball effect. If you get up 2 kills in Quick Play you should win 80% plus of the time. This game is not about one on ones, it is finding and MAKING 2 and 3 on ones.

[Koniving]

Picard90, on 26 November 2018 - 02:01 PM, said:

At the end of that match, I had a thought..."Awesome, I wanna be that guy!" I know that probably sounds comical, but I got a kick out of the other opponent outplaying me and my team as well.

"That guy!" From the perspective of one of his opponents, me.

Though that one did quite a bit of fighting.
Note: ghost heat didn't exist yet, so some builds that can't be practical now were somewhat practical then, like the Stalker that got 2nd place scoring on their team ("that guy" got the first place scoring).
And that guy, from the perspective of that guy (in another scenario, also me)

[Picard90]

Koniving, on 27 November 2018 - 11:40 AM, said:

"That guy!" From the perspective of one of his opponents, me.

Though that one did quite a bit of fighting.
Note: ghost heat didn't exist yet, so some builds that can't be practical now were somewhat practical then, like the Stalker that got 2nd place scoring on their team ("that guy" got the first place scoring).
And that guy, from the perspective of that guy (in another scenario, also me)

Very impressive piloting! Thanks for sharing your video clips.

[Alfa Xim]

Picard90, on 26 November 2018 - 12:42 AM, said:

I'm still relatively a new player. I've been playing light mechs. It seems that I've come around to loving my Javelin, a loyalty variant, with 2 Medium ER-lasers, 3x HMGs and 3x MGs. I replaced two of my jump sets with AMS and its ammo, then beefed up my armor a bit (investing in survival & mobility skill trees really helped a lot as well).

I'm not the greatest player out there, I still die more often than not. I still need to improve my piloting skills.

Now to my question. I've often wondered is it stealing a kill from other players when I lurk behind the fight, waiting to swoop in and snap a kill when my targets are softened up by my teammates, allowing my machine guns to rip apart the internal structure? I usually try my best in practicing a bit of patience, letting my teammates do heavy work in softening up the targets, then go in to act as fire or flanking support.

Do other players ever feel like, "Hey! That pesky light mech stole my kill! I WANT to pad my stats!"?

Well,a weird commando stole 3 kills from me when i was running the trial mech hellbringer. I tell him to go to hell and his answers was "is not stealing kills,is securing area" or something like that he says.

So,a summary: i hate light mechs who stole my kills,specially the big head commandos and the stupid locusts. I HATE THEM FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY SOUL. And when the stole kill is done they run like a demon to the next target,the problem is that they hide back my heavy mech,waiting to the debilitation of enemy mechs from mine for go on his back and steal my kill.

[Tesunie]

Alfa Xim, on 08 December 2018 - 09:54 AM, said:

Well,a weird commando stole 3 kills from me when i was running the trial mech hellbringer. I tell him to go to hell and his answers was "is not stealing kills,is securing area" or something like that he says.

So,a summary: i hate light mechs who stole my kills,specially the big head commandos and the stupid locusts. I HATE THEM FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY SOUL. And when the stole kill is done they run like a demon to the next target,the problem is that they hide back my heavy mech,waiting to the debilitation of enemy mechs from mine for go on his back and steal my kill.

Play a light mech. I think your opinion on if it's "kill stealing" or not probably will change very quickly. It also often isn't a matter of stealing a kill, but normally about just dropping the enemy mechs. As a team oriented game, where every player has only a single life (or some other set number), the goal isn't to "get all the kills", but to "win the match by killing the enemy before they kill you". As such, any action that drops a mech helps the team, as there is one less opponent that can shoot back at your team.

Now, are there cases where someone could be literally aiming to "take the kills", sure. There are cases where some players do literally aim to steal kills without helping the team overall. Those are the ones that are more of a detriment to the team, and thus probably more so "kill stealing".

If that Commando you described was shooting at targets, even while hanging back, as well as possibly scouting, protecting the flanks of allies, shooing away enemy light mechs... That Commando very well probably could have been doing far more than you think he might have been doing.

Even then, light mechs are far different from other mechs. They crumple easier and don't tend to pack much of a punch. They need to be a bit more careful in their approach.

My final question to you: That Commando, how much damage did he have vs kills? If he's only done a hundred (maybe two) damage and landed 5+ kills, then he's probably hanging back too much and aiming to literally drop in at the last moment to get kills (not easy to do). More than likely I'm guessing he probably had a kill or two with a couple hundred damage. If he had several hundred damage (300+) with several kills, he probably did a lot of work.

[loopala]

as an occasional assault pilot, i have been known to walked away from a crippled mech when there are others finishing the kill and there are other more deadly targets around. if i got a stripped King Crab with one ML left and some MG light is taking care of business and a Fresh battle master turns the corner. have the kill light while i strip some armor off this battle master. the faster the reds go down the less that are shooting at me and i may survive another game.