84 replies to this topic

[Khobai]

FupDup, on 20 May 2019 - 03:45 PM, said:

You mean like assault, incursion, and conquest?

no lol

assault, conquest, and incursion are all bad gamemodes because theyre all still inherently skirmish. having crappy secondary win conditions when the primary win condition is still killing the other team doesnt make it not skirmish. its still skirmish.

I meant creating an entirely new gamemode that doesnt suck. which is something MWO has desperately needed for a long time. Im not saying get rid of skirmish completely; just add some non-skirmish gamemodes to mix things up a bit so its not ALWAYS skirmish.

the best gamemode in MWO right now is faction play conquest with respawns. because its the closest thing we have to a dynamic gamemode with multiple win conditions. And even that falls short.

Edited by Khobai, 20 May 2019 - 04:13 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

FupDup, on 20 May 2019 - 03:45 PM, said:

You mean like assault, incursion, and conquest?

To be fair, it does devolve mostly as skirmish.

[Omniseed]

Rosh87, on 18 May 2019 - 08:36 PM, said:

some of the worst Nascar maps like Canyon Network and the new snow-version, Hibernal Rift, are extremely painful for the super-slow / super-heavy Assaults, because you can EASILY get left behind and / or hammered by ranged enemy fire, just moving from the spawn to your team's side / in the rough center of the map, and that's assuming you DO start moving right away (are not AFK, etc). It can still be a very 'close call' whether you made it 'undamaged' or not.

SO....it seems to me that the prevalence of the Nascar "style" in this game, means that players are almost 'forced' to only run "fast Assaults" (Clan XL engine-capable ones, for example), those with Jump Jets (Blood Asp combines both of these features, for instance, and is a great example of a heavyweight Assault that sort of is 'immune to these troubles' where Nascar concerns are being discussed), or be 'lucky' to just not be on a Nascar-prone map.

You are absolutely right about the plight of heavy gunners in quick play.

Sometimes you just have to make it hurt for the reds.

[Omniseed]

The6thMessenger, on 20 May 2019 - 04:04 PM, said:

To be fair, it does devolve mostly as skirmish.

Assault is super skirmish

[Wil McCullough]

Even comparing a 50+ kph assault to 70+ kph heavy, it takes close to 3 minutes to put a 1km gap between them if they're both moving in the same direction. That seems only vaguely possible on polar. And yet, assault pilots keep moaning about being left behind as early as a minute into the match.

Nascar ia dumb as hell but bad assault pilots need to man up and admit when they goof up. Across the time i've played, i've seen more afk assaults than i can count. Followed very closely by assaults who waddle off into zimbabwe and meet a whole tribe of enemy lights. The most common qp assault though, is the one that backs up all the way into the next map just because he got scratched by a medium lasers at 500m. So he backs up to 1km away. These are the guys we're supposed to bend over backwards for?

[Omniseed]

PhoenixFire55, on 20 May 2019 - 01:19 AM, said:

Its all really simple tho ... Assaults aren't even supposed to "keep up with" anything in the first place. Yet ask yourself what happens when the fight starts around the typical "central feature" on maps like Mining and HPG? ... Assaults are hardly ever doing what they are supposed to do, they hardly ever push the center/top in front of their smaller guys, but rather hang in the back, hoping that the smaller guys would screen them and allow them to shoot without getting shot back.

Now obviously smaller guys aren't build for taking the same amount of punishment on the frontline, so they begin to flank, usually to the right in order to attack the enemy from an angle where they won't be focused and shot as much ... And what do assaults do when they see their lighter mechs start rotating? ... Well, they of course still aren't keen on sharing their armor and taking damage so they try to "keep up". And obviously trying to "keep up" with a mech that does 80-150kph in a mech that does 50kph is a bit of a stupid idea. And yet it still happens because 8 out of 10 assault pilots are cowards and/or selfish pr*cks who are only bothered with their own stats rather then helping the team and winning.

Now what happens when assaults actually do what they are supposed to do on a map like Manifold and push top and take it? ... Well, there suddenly is no nascar, because when assaults push middle they are focused and they take damage, meaning that ligher mechs don't need to do the merry-go-round, and can just push with the assaults without being under too much fire. Team pushes together and wins. Simple.

And finally a thought for everyone who wants to nascar in their mech ...
The length of a "lap" in nascar is about L=2*Pi*R, where Pi~3.14 and R is lap radius if we assume its close to a circular shape. Time it takes for a mech to complete said "lap" is L / V, where V is its speed. In order to "keep up" with rotation in the slowest mech (V1), it has to complete the "lap" in the same time as the fastest mech (V2) does. So L1 / V1 = L2 / V2, or R1 / V1 = R2 / V2. Lets assume V1=50kph, V2=150kph, and R2=600m (typical kind of rotation radius on most maps with central feature). It gives us R1=200m. So ... surprise surprise, you can easily "keep up" with the fastest kind of nascar as long as you nascar with a smaller radius. Sadly for the cowards, 200m radius lies within the center of the Manifold top, Mining top, etc. So in order to "keep up" slow assaults have to take top and rotate there. Again ... simple.

You were so close, but that's awful tactical doctrine to use assaults as the frontal force in the opening minutes of almost any engagement.

It is the job of lights to screen and give sensor information to help the team figure out how the enemy is setting up.

It is the job of mediums and heavies to establish initial firing positions and protect advancing heavier mechs by disrupting the enemy maneuvers via outgoing fire. This frees up the lights to truly disperse and do their light stuff for the remainder of the match. It prevents the reds from casually racing over otherwise dangerous open ground while the slow mechs are still making their way from the drop zone.

Mediums and heavies are the ushers and chaperones of the team, they need to keep firing and orbiting the mass of the team's gunnage throughout the engagement. Without a proper fighting formation (not directly up one another's *** trying to use the same firing position as three other mechs) the assaults are doomed. They can't deal with multiple-angle attacks on their own. Assaults, doctrinally, require an escort. They need a wingman who can turn guns on any little fishy that tries to sneak into the cake.

It is the job of the slow heavies and assaults to make their way to sensible positions without screwing around at first, and then they swivel and pivot while firing until the match is over or they go down.

NASCARing primarily loses games by taking what could be a formidable body of guns and armor, and distributing it in a completely useless string of mechs that can't cover each other even if the pilots understand that they need to. It's not just about the speed, mechs do not need to be stacked atop one another like some kind of idiotic sundae in order to fight and perform. The problem is when the pilots are not 'maneuvering' but only running. When Bravo lance determines that the only thing to do is spend the first seven minutes of the match 'following' an Assassin without ever figuring out where they are going to fire from, they lose the match for everyone else.

[Khobai]

Wil McCullough, on 20 May 2019 - 05:04 PM, said:

Even comparing a 50+ kph assault to 70+ kph heavy, it takes close to 3 minutes to put a 1km gap between them if they're both moving in the same direction. That seems only vaguely possible on polar. And yet, assault pilots keep moaning about being left behind as early as a minute into the match.

yeah but the issue with going 50kph isnt that your 70kph heavies outrun you. its that the 100kph-140kph lights and mediums on the other team catch up to you and youre at the backend of your team instead of being in the middle of the pack.

IMO spawn points are a big part of the problem. Spawning on the far left is the absolute worst place you can spawn in a nascar situation. If people primarily nascar counter-clockwise then why dont assaults always spawn farthest to the right? That would help them keep up.

Of course the best solution is to eliminate why nascar happens not try to bandaid it. But thats a stopgap solution in the meantime (not that PGI will ever permanently fix nascaring because they never fix anything)

Edited by Khobai, 20 May 2019 - 05:27 PM.

[Wil McCullough]

Khobai, on 20 May 2019 - 05:21 PM, said:

yeah but the issue with going 50kph isnt that your 70kph heavies outrun you. its that the 100kph-140kph lights and mediums on the other team catch up to you and youre at the backend of your team instead of being in the middle of the pack.

IMO spawn points are a big part of the problem. Spawning on the far left is the absolute worst place you can spawn in a nascar situation. If people primarily nascar counter-clockwise then why dont assaults always spawn farthest to the right? That would help them keep up.

Of course the best solution is to eliminate why nascar happens not try to bandaid it. But thats a stopgap solution in the meantime (not that PGI will ever permanently fix nascaring because they never fix anything)

Then let them come at you? A lance of assaults can easily destroy a lance of lights/mediums. Lights are only good against solitary stragglers. Even the piranha doesn't do well against a coordinated assault launce because they're paper and need to get in really close to kill its prey. A half-assed alpha from an assault will downright cripple most lights.

If a lance of assault mechs can't hold off a lance quarter their weight, the nascar decision was the right one to make because the team ditched their burden - the potato assaults. Sometimes, it sucks to admit it but the best thing you can do for your team is just to die as slowly as you can.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Wil McCullough, on 20 May 2019 - 06:59 PM, said:

Then let them come at you? A lance of assaults can easily destroy a lance of lights/mediums. Lights are only good against solitary stragglers. Even the piranha doesn't do well against a coordinated assault launce because they're paper and need to get in really close to kill its prey. A half-assed alpha from an assault will downright cripple most lights.

If a lance of assault mechs can't hold off a lance quarter their weight, the nascar decision was the right one to make because the team ditched their burden - the potato assaults. Sometimes, it sucks to admit it but the best thing you can do for your team is just to die as slowly as you can.

Are you really going to be obtuse? How many times does a lance turn around and form a firing line quickly to out-gun the incoming threat from the left flank? If one Assault pilot does this, they're dead 'cause their lance-mates left them behind.

NASCAR is ok if the teammates grow a brain and decide to do a smaller, sharper turn and cut into the enemy team. Instead, they make wide, useless turns while not shooting anything. THAT is what people are talking about.

If the enemy team gives a slight indication that they're about to NASCAR and your team decided to push them through the centre, then that is the correct decision. If you're caught unaware of this, then it's entirely your fault 'cause you'll get chewed up by the faster enemies coming at you from the left while your team has started a murder-ball right at the heart of the enemies. But you're not even attempting to distinguish NASCAR with this. Everyone here is showing what happens if you NASCAR and how it might be stopped but I don't get what you're trying to accomplish by saying, "Let them".

I don't understand how you are misinterpreting this simple fact.

[Wil McCullough]

FRAGTAST1C, on 20 May 2019 - 07:12 PM, said:

Are you really going to be obtuse? How many times does a lance turn around and form a firing line quickly to out-gun the incoming threat from the left flank? If one Assault pilot does this, they're dead 'cause their lance-mates left them behind.

NASCAR is ok if the teammates grow a brain and decide to do a smaller, sharper turn and cut into the enemy team. Instead, they make wide, useless turns while not shooting anything. THAT is what people are talking about.

If the enemy team gives a slight indication that they're about to NASCAR and your team decided to push them through the centre, then that is the correct decision. If you're caught unaware of this, then it's entirely your fault 'cause you'll get chewed up by the faster enemies coming at you from the left while your team has started a murder-ball right at the heart of the enemies. But you're not even attempting to distinguish NASCAR with this. Everyone here is showing what happens if you NASCAR and how it might be stopped but I don't get what you're trying to accomplish by saying, "Let them".

I don't understand how you are misinterpreting this simple fact.

If assault pilots need a firing line to deter a few lights, they already lost the match beforw they dropped. Sorry. Because that's potato piloting right there. With the firepower they EACH pack, they just need to, i don't know, shoot the buggers. Sweep the legs. Wallop a shot at any part of their torso. Something. Even shooting in the direction of the light mech and not connecting can deter the guy.

There's so many things the pilot can do. Watch for the common angles lights come in while at the same time moving towards their team. Throw up a uav if **** gets hairy. Say something on comms. Press r to lock the mech so teammates can see it. Use the command wheel to ask for help. Take a path that makes lights have to cross large amounts of open territory to get to you. Stay close to things you can put your back up against.

This is a thinking man's shooter. Bad fatties should try to use the box between their heads to think.of ways to prevent lights from making them a meal instead of moaning when they get caught alone and in close range. If that happens, you're probably already dead. Just need to prevent that circumstance from happening. I played assaults and it's not frigging rocket science.

[GuardDogg]

Well, the first years of MWO (beta), nascar was not a thing, and everyone came out with tactical manuavers. It was fun, for both sides. As the years went on, the moving right thing was starting to come in with lack of communications. One player "Topa101", was communicating and always commander. Stating where to go/move. Later years, players told him to be quiet, and refused to accept orders, then MWO began to break down even worse. I even commanded, and most time, rounds were won. Crimson strait, and on grid C4 was the master piece of starting tactical, then changing it from there after that grid, Pilots followed and it was awesome. Although on Crimson strait..the saddle became the only maneuver, months and months, year after year. Same old "Go saddle". Some will command, and then their will be that one guy on mic.."No, all to saddle". So team refused commanders orders and started going saddle. It became luck of the rounds. HPG Manifold. "All top center, Hurry, quick". Tactical of anything else was pointless. Another Luck of the rounds. You can take top center, and still lose, and sometimes win. Then the Polar Highlands. Was a awesome map, then it got twisted to only go center, LRMed and Nascar. Polar Highlands has a lot of Room for Tactical, thinking. But, Players now refuse to think or unable to bring up a plan of any tactical, because of one or two guys will refuse. Because center is the only plan. On all maps, both sides know where enemy is going to be. Where is the fun in that? But,...always going to be the same, center/nascar. Goes for all maps. Now, conquest, it is always "Theta". It is never, "Hey team, let our base be Kappa", or "Sigma", or other. Because going theta first "Center" is the only place or yelling match on mic/headset will break out. Take theta first, fight then cap. Never hold/defend a base or else team is in trouble for not assisting. Then Domination came out, and hearing "how do you play this?". This was the helper of Nascar for sure. Players refused "Escort", because. No nascar for sure, but I dunno, I really enjoyed Escort. Because of defending or attacking. Wasn't easy, but fun. A lot going on. It was removed, but PGI kept incursion. Now that one should been removed. You can not defend, you maybe get to attack enemy base. But either, not worth it. So you skirmish and while doing so, is nascar. When 12 enemy mechs destroyed, you attack one enemy building in their base with one laser or weapon shot. Round is over. Why have bases, or why have incursion at all. Would think over the years, of this Nascar problem, same old, same old, that it gets so redundant players will catch on and try to help change MWO for the better. Nope, ya just have to live with Nascaring. Eventually MWO will die off because of it. So, in the mean time, it is top center, push, top, center, push, top center. Other maps, center, center, other game types..theta, theta, theta.

Edited by GuardDogg, 21 May 2019 - 06:37 AM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Wil McCullough, on 20 May 2019 - 08:03 PM, said:

If assault pilots need a firing line to deter a few lights, they already lost the match beforw they dropped. Sorry. Because that's potato piloting right there. With the firepower they EACH pack, they just need to, i don't know, shoot the buggers. Sweep the legs. Wallop a shot at any part of their torso. Something. Even shooting in the direction of the light mech and not connecting can deter the guy.

There's so many things the pilot can do. Watch for the common angles lights come in while at the same time moving towards their team. Throw up a uav if **** gets hairy. Say something on comms. Press r to lock the mech so teammates can see it. Use the command wheel to ask for help. Take a path that makes lights have to cross large amounts of open territory to get to you. Stay close to things you can put your back up against.

This is a thinking man's shooter. Bad fatties should try to use the box between their heads to think.of ways to prevent lights from making them a meal instead of moaning when they get caught alone and in close range. If that happens, you're probably already dead. Just need to prevent that circumstance from happening. I played assaults and it's not frigging rocket science.

Again, all of that has what to do with the matter at hand? If you think that doing any of that will alert your teammates to coming back to aid you, then I don't know.... you've been extremely lucky with the MM.

[Wil McCullough]

FRAGTAST1C, on 20 May 2019 - 10:20 PM, said:

Again, all of that has what to do with the matter at hand? If you think that doing any of that will alert your teammates to coming back to aid you, then I don't know.... you've been extremely lucky with the MM.

There's no "coming back" to aid you if you stay 300-500m from the heavies. Which isn't difficult to do. It's especially easy if you stay within line of sight with your teammates as well. Because if you can see them, they can see you. And it's always worth the effort to chase that enemy cookie light that made the mistake of engaging your team 300m from bravo lance and right around charlie lance.

I've been in situations where i'm spearheading the right side push in my assault while simultaneously hearing salty comms about how the nascar left the assaults behind. It's always that fatty pilot in a dakka boat who can't breathe, move and shoot at the sake time that's doing the whining. And if he can't breathe, talk and shoot at the same time, guess what is he doing when whining over comms?

Not moving. Go figure huh?

[admiralbenbow123]

Khobai, on 20 May 2019 - 02:59 PM, said:

nascar happens because of idiot gamemodes like skirmish.

I don't think I can fully agree with you there because skirmish is basically a classic online shooter gamemode, for example in Halo it's called "slayer" and there is no such thing as nascar there. And if we take Mining Collective or Canyon Network, nascar happens there in every gamemode, so I don't think skirmish is something to blame.

[Khobai]

admiralbenbow123, on 20 May 2019 - 11:46 PM, said:

I don't think I can fully agree with you there because skirmish is basically a classic online shooter gamemode, for example in Halo it's called "slayer" and there is no such thing as nascar there. And if we take Mining Collective or Canyon Network, nascar happens there in every gamemode, so I don't think skirmish is something to blame.

youre ignoring key differences between MWO and halo though. like mechs being comprised of multiple hitboxes each with their own health pool and most mechs in MWO having their weapons on the right side. if halo had that im sure thered be nascaring in halo too.

so yeah its true that theres multiple factors that cause nascaring in MWO. But skirmish is BY FAR the easiest of those factors to change. adding a new gamemode is way easier than eliminating the right side weapon bias on most mechs.

and if mining collective had a gamemode with static objectives you had to defend I doubt youd see nascaring. because nascaring when you have to defend a static objective almost always results in that objective getting destroyed. Incursion was PGI's attempt at such a gamemode, and I still think incursion could be salvaged, if PGI fixed the obvious problems with the gamemode.

Edited by Khobai, 21 May 2019 - 12:16 AM.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Wil McCullough, on 20 May 2019 - 11:00 PM, said:

There's no "coming back" to aid you if you stay 300-500m from the heavies. Which isn't difficult to do. It's especially easy if you stay within line of sight with your teammates as well. Because if you can see them, they can see you. And it's always worth the effort to chase that enemy cookie light that made the mistake of engaging your team 300m from bravo lance and right around charlie lance.

I've been in situations where i'm spearheading the right side push in my assault while simultaneously hearing salty comms about how the nascar left the assaults behind. It's always that fatty pilot in a dakka boat who can't breathe, move and shoot at the sake time that's doing the whining. And if he can't breathe, talk and shoot at the same time, guess what is he doing when whining over comms?

Not moving. Go figure huh?

Let me guess... rather than taking the shorter route, you took a wide approach leaving large gaps in your line. Your line of thinking doesn't hold water, especially when YOU are the one leading the NASCAR to chase enemies 300m away but won't turn around to intercept the enemies just 100m behind you.

[Wil McCullough]

FRAGTAST1C, on 21 May 2019 - 12:05 AM, said:

Let me guess... rather than taking the shorter route, you took a wide approach leaving large gaps in your line. Your line of thinking doesn't hold water, especially when YOU are the one leading the NASCAR to chase enemies 300m away but won't turn around to intercept the enemies just 100m behind you.

Why would i intercept enemies 100m behind me? I can just... turn to shoot? 100m is point blank dude. The "interception" phase has passed.

In fact, 300m is kinda short range as well. Which is my main point. It's not difficult to remain something like 300 - 500m away from the main bulk of your team unless there's a pebkac issue. If an enemy light engages you, it'll be well within firing range of a number of your allies (assuming they have line of sight on you), making it a free kill unless ALL of them can't aim at all. Considering lights hug their prey as closely as possible to abuse the assault's low torso twist speed, you being in line of sight of your allies means the light is probably in line of sight as well.

Nascar also normally happens around central structures. There's no "long way" or "short way" because lights are the ones normally in front and they generally need to get to knife fighting range to kill straggling assaults. No one with half a brain is gonna nascar around the lowest level of hpg or canyon for example. You just go around the structure, using it for cover.

You're kinda grasping at straws here. Problem comes when the rear end of the nascar does something incredibly stupid like breaking line of sight with teammates like taking a stroll in the canyon ditch, go tunnel alone on crimson, tunnel on mining or camping at hpg gates when the nascar moves around. Or going basement. That's when they get reamed by lights because none of their teammates can even fire off shots of opportunity because there's zero line of sight.

Nascar is generally ********, don't get me wrong. But it's not as ******** as pilots who can't figure out how to deal with it. Nascar is actually pretty good on certain maps like hpg because of the ramps. As most mechs are right-side strong side, the angle of the ramps means a leftward counter-nascar movement forces the defender to expose almost their whole mech to trade with the nascar team. The nascar team only has to expose half their mechs or less. Assuming equal skill level, the nascar wins counter-nascar on that map unless the counter nascar team takes top. There's a reason why so many people nascar on that map and/or go for a top push and hold.

[PhoenixFire55]

Omniseed, on 20 May 2019 - 05:08 PM, said:

Stuff ...

I'm not gonna argue about any sort of tactics, since tactics don't exist in PUGs.

I will just emphasize one thing ... in a PUG, you generally have no clue how good/bad other 11 players on your team are. So, you take an educated guess based on their early match behavior. Personally if I see an assault pilot that presses W and isn't afraid to go shoot the enemy by himself, isn't afraid to push and take damage, then I'll stick with him in whatever mech I'm piloting and we'll push together. But if I see an assault standing behind teammates and generally running away from the enemy rather then towards them, then I'll nascar away from him all day, since he is most likely utterly useless anyway.

You simply can't generalize these things. When you got an organized group then obviously you won't nascar away from your assaults, for different reasons, including the fact that your organized assaults won't let themselves get nascared away from. But when you are playing with random people, then it is very likely that staying with your assaults instead of nascaring is actually a totally wrong tactical choice, because those assaults piloted by random people can very well be useless to begin with. And the better you are yourself as a pilot, the more important your survival becomes, and the less important the survival of an average teammate is. Its harsh but true.

[PhoenixFire55]

GuardDogg, on 20 May 2019 - 08:51 PM, said:

then MWO began to break down even worse. I even commanded, and most time, rounds were won.

Cool story again bro. Except your monthly W/L was over 1.0 like ... once in 3+ years.

[Catnium]

I love nascar..
It's the only logical way to fight mech combat.
It's the only thing that keeps me playing this game.
I hated the game and actually quit playing it for years when it was just potato mode hill humping alpha striking meta.
Mobile combat is the name of the game.
Glad you all finally caught on after about 5 years orso.

You are not a turret!
Mechs have legs, so they can fire and move at the same time.
And what's better than one advancing mech laying down fire?
Well multiple advancing mechs ina firing line ofc.



Plus only a potato would refuse to relocate when their **** is getting pushed in.
and
also to the Op after reading your wall of text there bud.
Only Potatoes would nascar without their assaults being in the 1st 2 lines pushing the nascar.
It's literally what the assaults are for ffs.


Just my 2 cents.

Edited by Catnium, 21 May 2019 - 03:49 AM.