Posted 04 June 2019 - 04:33 AM
Asking or begging ppl to not leave you behind is not very effective. It implies that you just want cover, but you dont have any idea what to do. Or at least it comes accross as a bit insecure. In love and war ppl tend to hover towards ppl that are confident in what they want and what they do. At least, apart from physical attributes, when it comes to attraction, that is one more relevant dimension.
Meaning, if you have a good idea, and your idea also includes a strategy that will most likely avoid a team to become too split, then phrase it directly, confidently and dont babble. Many ppl I hear keep talking for too long. Ppl are focused on playing and cant spare that much attention. Take Commander Fisher for instance, he suggests briefly and in one or two senteces tops, what he intends to do. Doesnt come accross as bitchy or whiney and focuses on simple strats that dont require much preparaton. Somehing like 'greetings mechwarrios, lets crush them together, evybody take top asap'.
Or maybe that you all hold at a ridge on polar, maybe half a click or a click in front of team reds firing line and that instead of standard nascar you all push over ridge on coutdown together. Give brief, easy to follow suggestions and present them confidently. Thats what ppl will listen to. If youre running an assault, then you will be very reliant on support. Always. The only way to not instadie way out of postion is to immediately sprint as fast as you can to where you know your mechs will prolly gether at least for a while. E.g. your side of hpg when match just began. Most of the time, team will gather their for maybe 30 to 90 seconds, glimpse on top of platform and then lean towards the right side. Or take top. Or split and die right away.
If youre running an assault, then dont join late. Not even one single second and take the shortest route directly to where you know the fight will prolly start. You should run there, dont peekaboo ineffectively, dont delay for anything, and move. A lot of assaults I see join late, just like all other weight classes do occasionally. The difference is, you cannot disengage at all in assaults. Even if you connect right away but then youre afk for just 10 to 20 seconds in a 55 or even 65 kph mech, youre already at a massive disadvantge. Or more precisely the disadvantage you had in terms of being that slow is massively increased. As was mentioned in multiple other threads, ppl know about the most common mistakes in QP matches.
One of the most common mistakes is that slow heavies and assaults are not even aware, that there is at the very least 1 - 3 very fast mechs that do not connect late, that dont join late, and that immediately sprint as fast and directly as they can to where they know that in 9 out 10 matches on any given map (with few exceptions) there will be very slow assault pilots that might have even joined late. Perfect and very easy targets.
What you ask for is not an effective strategy. The very worst thing in many standard QP matches would be for like a heaby and a medium (or maybe even more) to turn around and try to cover you, a mech that is already like 500 + meters behind the main nascar formation. Any light or fast skirmisher that has any experience at all, will have already won in a massive way, when that happens. Thats just one or maybe 2 lighter mechs, that occupy an assault mech, a heavy mech and a medium mech. Even a light or fast medium occupies and delays 3 big mechs for only 20 seconds, that is already a massive advantage. They have already won in terms of getting an advantage.
Now, that doesnt mean that this single advantage, as big as it is, will be capitalized on. Team red often times makes their own mistakes or has ppl that join late and get masscared at their respective back end of their formation. Imagine though, those mechs come back to save you. The fast mech of team red then disengages. Then what? he or she split 25 % of your entire team away from the constnatly moving frontlines. Not only that, ppl know most of the time, that those one or two fast lights that hunt your out of position mechs are only the tip of the spear. Moments later an army of enemy mechs will come around the corner and smash you.
Either way, no matter what you do, you loose if you play like that or at the very least constantly provide massive advantages for team red to exploit all the time. Again and over again. Basically, if you call for help, then youre helping team red in 8 out of 10 instances. Theres exceptions, for intance, when your team isnt really moving that much and youre kinda close. Calling for help wont completly pull them apart and you just make them aware that youre close and are being harassed. Thats good.
But if youre like 500 + meters away and your team is actually running, nascaring, then calling for help is the very worst thing to do. or the second worst thing. The very worst thing is to actually even be in that position. Doesnt matter if you happen to be there involuntarily, cause your mech/build simply cannot run faster or because you sniped a bit too often at mechs far away and lost focus for like 30 seconds and didnt realize your team has already started to move and is now like 700 meters away and youhave no hope at all to catch up in mechs that are that slow.
It is much more effective to not get pulled away and split off by small numbers that can easily disengage and have thus already won, even if they did not land a single small laser shot, to punish the very same openings and mistages on team reds side. Your faster mechs should attack those slow and out of position targets, or provide cover for big mechs that are actually within your formation. But splitting off is an abysmal idea and one of the main mistakes 50 % or more of the players do in literally every single QP match over and over again. They dont even realize that that will bring death and complete stomps. Evybody who just complains that they get left behind, doest not yet understand that.
It is not effective to simply ask for help, for mechs to travel all the way back to your position.
What are they supposed to do? While they run back, invest like a minute to get to you the other mech will just disengage and you allocated way and way and over the top too many ressources and mechs just to protect one single assault. Even if its two assaults.
No. You leave them to die and instead attack team reds flanks and hope that you got the better deal.
Its either that or you actually communicate. Im too lazy to tell ppl every single match, that you have a huge advantage on mining for instance, if you take center, as it prevents in 9 out of 10 times, that youre team splits around the center elevation to ineffectively run from one side to the other. The terrain and map features in center force a team to stretch out. All the while they get hammered from high ground nonstop. Almost all pug teams that get smashed burtally with zero or maybe 1 or 2 kills do this very mistake. Theyre timid, they dont know that not taking center almost always plays directly into team reds hand. Cause your team will always do what QP teams tend to do. That is the most prevalent strategy and it gives them assurance. A sense of security to just do what they will always do in most matches where theres no communication. Meaning, if center is taken, they will just stoically run around one side, right in complete vision of team red in center, to run to the other ramp in hope that for some reason they can get off some shots into your backside. They rely on you just running around and nascaring just like them.
It even works in quite a few games, as ppl that took center just start to rush after what seem easy targets. Which is how a team that has lowground and is down even 3 mechs can come back and win. Cause your team gave away huge advantages and leads by doing the very same thing they do.
Im too lazy to tell ppl eery single time and a lot of ppl are very timid and scared and they just stand around unsure, right infront of center ramp, wait, look what other ppl do and are scared to bleed some armor and then team red already got the center.
Same goes for hpg. I mean, how often do ppl hear over and over and over again, that not allowing team red to just take high ground which will by default massively reduce their chance to split into a stretching nascar right away is a very solid idea. You hear that every single time. And yet, a ton of players in literally every single match just wander about aimlessly or actually even counter nascar alone or in small numbers, smashing right into the entire death ball of team read. Instadying. Often times I get too annoyed and I rather just adapt and try to exploit team reds identical msitakes and at least dish out good dmg and killed a few mechs, even when loosing, than to try to organize a team ievery single match and tell them the most basic things.
And I also just expect for ppl that I get mixed with in QP matches to have some experience. Thats what I expect from a MM cause I have played this game since open beta for well over half a decade. If somebody actually has to be told that certain prevalent positions and strategies are potent in tier 1 - 2 then something is deffinitely wrong with the MM and tier system but thats not the topic here.
Either you communicate convincingly like some of the good commanders out there (listen to what they say and how they comminuate, theyre not whiney or angry, they just name a known, ez to follow, precise strategy) right at the very beginning of match or they at the very least know exactly where to go and where definitely not to be in an assault. Joining late in slow assaults and heavies is basically suicide. If you join late, like 30 - 60 seconds, your chance to actucally contribute in a meaningful way are basically non existend in 9 out of 10 cases unless youre a very sneaky and crafty assault pilot that does the only thing that could work. namely, they do not try to catch up when they consider their cahnces to be very bad and that effort to be very risky in a number of situations and on a lot of maps.
instead, they fall back a bit, hide and wait for their rotation to shift so that youre not trying to reach your nascar train right when team red has circled to where you try to catch up, what 99,9999 % of all slow heavy and assault pilots do, to get slaughtered over and over again, doing 0 - 1 alpha worth of dmg.
You dont need to be the best shot or pilot at all when playing assaults, What ou need to be is preferably a charismatic or at theast competent communicator that gives precise suggestions that make sense and that ppl know might work. E.g. to simply wait for reds nascar or to rush over a ridge togther at the same time or something like that. If you run assaults communicate. Or you better know exactly where to go and know how to get there asap. But even that might not be enough. As you saw on caustic, it is very easy to catch slow mechs every time. Even when your team gets smashed you might very well catch 1 - 3 slow mechs and can at least punish them and then at least you had some fun and didnt just melt like a bunch of ducklings getting blasted by nuclear warheads.
But simply begging for help for ppl to turn around to cover you vs a small number of even jsut one light???
If you do that, then you actually help team red. Involuntarily, but you still provide a very nice and juicy opportunity for team red to either smash your split mechs or at the very least occupy them and stop them from being able to attack any of your mech. Cause by then theyre all out of position trying to cover you in your assault
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