10 replies to this topic

[Insignus]

I made this video a few months ago as a demo for someone who'd been somewhat dismissive/disbelieving about the state of situational awareness in MWO after hearing me talk about what I do, and I apparently forgot to post it here.

This is more or less what I do in matches, and 2-3 kills is average for me.

I run a 4x MPL Stealth CDA-3M, and this video was in T3 for context. Note the camo scheme at video start.

Key Highlights: LCT kill, Sunspider Gazing in early match.

MadCat II Blindspotting at 1:50

Flea Pursuit and blindspotting 3:30





Commentary: Since moving to T2, I've noticed an uptick in people that turn around when shot, but gazing and tracking/acquisition failures in full view are at roughly the same rates at similar ranges/terrains, anecdotally.

Players in MWO are, in my experience, extremely reliant on sensor feedback. If they aren't given a dorito, they'll generally hesitate, although that hesitation dissipates with player experience, and a disturbingly high percentage of players will simply believe their sensors and fail to acquire the target, although better players will disengage and search for my mech, but these are a minority, with an even smaller minority being capable of identifiable as directing their team-mates to engage me.

What this means for flanking and stealth play in general from my perspective is that I've developed a firm belief that running a flanking mech without an ECM is just a liability, especially to other folks who do have ECM/Stealth, as it reveals their positions to the enemy and boosts the enemies situational awareness, which they have likely specialized their builds to exploit.

I'm sure people can pull it off, but running ECM/Stealth for flanking and harassment work, owing to sensor dependency, provides extensive advantages in terms of tactical opportunities and overall survival that, in my perspective watching other non-ECM lights work in that role, in that battlespace, outweigh the utility provided by non-ECM mechs/builds.

P.S. There are probably a lot of folks here thinking "Not me, never."

Thing is, you're unlikely to know if it ever does

My gold standard is that time I was inside 50m of a mint condition brawling atlas build and back shot him three or four times, having that atlas turn and look each time, give up, and turn around until they get cored. It's something subtle about how a pilot is moving, firing, that telegraphs to me if they'll see me or not. Can't put my finger on it, as yet.

Edited by Insignus, 06 July 2019 - 03:58 PM.

[Xiphias]

The low tiers have really bad situational awareness. It gets better once you get into T1, but it's still pretty bad. The issue becomes that you have a mix of players with poor situational awareness and ones with really good situational awareness. The good ones will ruin your day if you aren't really careful. That Sunspider for example could have unloaded on you standing still like that. You can't count on people not seeing you like that.

What you give up with stealth armor is firepower, if a match goes quickly you often won't be able to put out damage quickly enough to contribute a lot. Another factor is that while stealth does protect you, being seen can actually be a good thing. Part of the role of being a light is to distract and disrupt the enemy team. Backstabbing is good, but turning/diverting mechs can be better in some situations. If you can keep 2-3 mechs distracted and busy, even if you don't kill them it can gain the advantage for your team. Obviously, killing mechs is good, but keeping attention is also valuable.

As a tip, you're doing a lot of standing still in the open. While that can be fine, you need to be careful because it's also a good way to get blasted. It only takes 1 twin heavy gauss mech to notice where you are to ruin your day while you're distracted by another target or an even sneaker mech getting behind you.

[JediPanther]

Most matches I have people go into murder mode at ecm and stealth lights. Since ecm-stealth came into the game I've seen less and less non ecm-stealth lights used. It's become so much of a crutch a lot of people couldn't run lights without it. There's also seismic sensor and uavs that people utilize as well. Grazing mechs I find a lot of enemy teams will turn around and return fire and/or send a fst mover to do a quick sweep of the area.

You don't need ecm-stealth on a light to do scouting or harassment. Just a good sense of the situation and using the optimal range of your weapons.

[Xiphias]

JediPanther, on 06 July 2019 - 10:04 AM, said:

Most matches I have people go into murder mode at ecm and stealth lights. Since ecm-stealth came into the game I've seen less and less non ecm-stealth lights used. It's become so much of a crutch a lot of people couldn't run lights without it. There's also seismic sensor and uavs that people utilize as well. Grazing mechs I find a lot of enemy teams will turn around and return fire and/or send a fst mover to do a quick sweep of the area.

You don't need ecm-stealth on a light to do scouting or harassment. Just a good sense of the situation and using the optimal range of your weapons.

Yes, running ECM/Stealth tends to make you lazier as a light pilot. It's good and there's nothing wrong with doing it, but you don't spend time practicing the important positioning skills because you can get away with a lot more while stealthed.

[Insignus]

Xiphias, on 06 July 2019 - 09:52 AM, said:

The low tiers have really bad situational awareness. It gets better once you get into T1, but it's still pretty bad. The issue becomes that you have a mix of players with poor situational awareness and ones with really good situational awareness. The good ones will ruin your day if you aren't really careful. That Sunspider for example could have unloaded on you standing still like that. You can't count on people not seeing you like that.

What you give up with stealth armor is firepower, if a match goes quickly you often won't be able to put out damage quickly enough to contribute a lot. Another factor is that while stealth does protect you, being seen can actually be a good thing. Part of the role of being a light is to distract and disrupt the enemy team. Backstabbing is good, but turning/diverting mechs can be better in some situations. If you can keep 2-3 mechs distracted and busy, even if you don't kill them it can gain the advantage for your team. Obviously, killing mechs is good, but keeping attention is also valuable.

As a tip, you're doing a lot of standing still in the open. While that can be fine, you need to be careful because it's also a good way to get blasted. It only takes 1 twin heavy gauss mech to notice where you are to ruin your day while you're distracted by another target or an even sneaker mech getting behind you.

Fair point on the open standing. Its pretty situational. In the video, I was off-axis, so I was in an unexpected arc, as you saw from how the locust positioned itself. I was positioned under a building lip, at a decent range.

A lot of what I do has devolved into subconscious pilot reading that's hard to describe. And I've had sneakier mechs try on me, they'll succeed in about 1 in 10 tries, ballpark. I run seismo, and I like to keep account of enemy light mechs, both for my team and for competitive amusement.

Quote

Yes, running ECM/Stealth tends to make you lazier as a light pilot. It's good and there's nothing wrong with doing it, but you don't spend time practicing the important positioning skills because you can get away with a lot more while stealthed.

Perhaps. But as a Cicada, I've got a substantially higher profile than nearly all light mechs with ECM/Stealth, so I find that keeps me on my toes.


In terms of getting behind me as a sneakier mech, I also run with a boosted amount of rear armor compared to other mechs/pilots, which gets me no end of grief when people inspect my build. "Just frontload your armor forehead?"

I did that for the early months when people were hella insistent. Then I realized I was getting back shot while fleeing evasively and fixed that problem.

JediPanther, on 06 July 2019 - 10:04 AM, said:

You don't need ecm-stealth on a light to do scouting or harassment. Just a good sense of the situation and using the optimal range of your weapons.

I'm serious when I say that it dramatically disrupts and interferes with other people doing the same job while stealthed. Very little about this game triggers me, but the one thing that comes close is when I go off to get in position, have a javelin, FLE-17 or non-PB locust, or some other non-ecm mech, following me and get that "Yeah, he's going to screw me over" premonition and surprise, I go for a setup and here comes Mr. LoudLight popping on someone's radar screen and forcing the entire team to turn and look in my general direction.

Light gets deletoed, I get half armor and spend the next 2 minutes going into hide and reset mode. This puts the team down 2 mechs for an extended period.

Its not even a question of squirreling, as I can pop the armor off and do that. Its more a question of people saying "I'll just go fast!" and not thinking about anyone else's gameplay or thinking a few steps ahead about consequences. And honestly, what triggers me is that I have enough experience under my belt to project the cost of them screwing up what I'm going to do. Cause I'll have gauged that I can get away with MPL concealed shots, and in comes somepne with an SRM set on trying to tackle an assault. And I watch these folks end the match with scores in 80 to 100, and I am just left to wonder what might have been.

Edited by Insignus, 06 July 2019 - 07:46 PM.

[crazytimes]

Thanks, I will keep this idea in mind if I ever want to make another account just to exclusively play stealth mediums against the lower tiers.

[Vxheous]

Keep in mind that Solaris city has bad lighting and often requires thermal vision to see properly without doritos, and stealth armor makes you almost invisible in thermal vision past outside 100-150m (you literally blend into the rest of the greys). I have extremely high situational awareness, and I even have trouble locating the pesky mech with stealth armor on certain maps, especially if I'm having to deal with a situationally more dangerous mech in front of me. Its almost backwards in a sense on those maps, because locating where that damage is coming from with mark I eyeball basically relies on looking for movement in the environment, but the stealth mech actually blends into said environment under thermal.

Here's some examples:

First screenshot, here's a stealth Fafnir:


Same Fafnir with stealth off:


Stealth Fafnir again, further away:


Stealth Fafnir with 2.0x zoom


This is a 100 ton mech under stealth, and it's incredibly hard to pick out, especially if you're just scanning behind you after getting shot at. Most stealth mech are the size of a cicada, or below (flea, locust, commando, etc).

Edited by Vxheous, 07 July 2019 - 09:29 AM.

[Insignus]

Honestly, yeah, Solaris has confusing layouts and bad lighting. It is hands down my favorite map, and the one I'm most consistently successful on. Its to the point where I pull up that NeoTokyo song whenever I play it, because I know I'll be having a good time.

[Kubernetes]

I find it easier to spot stealth lights and mediums than stuff like Fafnirs using heat or night mode because I can see their little legs churning. They also carry shorter ranged weapons so they're a lot more likely to accidentally put you under their ECM bubble and reveal their presence. Stealth was a big surprise when it first came out, but now I'm a lot more aware of things that move without doritos.

[Xiphias]

Insignus, on 06 July 2019 - 04:19 PM, said:

Fair point on the open standing. Its pretty situational. In the video, I was off-axis, so I was in an unexpected arc, as you saw from how the locust positioned itself. I was positioned under a building lip, at a decent range.

A lot of what I do has devolved into subconscious pilot reading that's hard to describe. And I've had sneakier mechs try on me, they'll succeed in about 1 in 10 tries, ballpark. I run seismo, and I like to keep account of enemy light mechs, both for my team and for competitive amusement.

Absolutely, I'm just warning you that as you play against better players you'll have to be more careful.

Quote

Perhaps. But as a Cicada, I've got a substantially higher profile than nearly all light mechs with ECM/Stealth, so I find that keeps me on my toes.

I don't mean it as a slight, but being stealthed is easier than not (obviously). I've spent a lot of time in Cicadas and you can be effective without stealth armor, but it is less forgiving.

Quote

In terms of getting behind me as a sneakier mech, I also run with a boosted amount of rear armor compared to other mechs/pilots, which gets me no end of grief when people inspect my build. "Just frontload your armor forehead?"

I did that for the early months when people were hella insistent. Then I realized I was getting back shot while fleeing evasively and fixed that problem.

Front loading armor has a lot of advantages. What people forget is that you need to have a certain skill set to use those advantages. Running more back armor because you get shot in the back is perfectly reasonable, however keep in mind that not getting shot in the back is even better.

The Cicada has a lot of torso twist, when you run away you can usually use your arms to shield. If you are consistently getting shot in the back it means your positioning/twisting need more work. If you improve those you can gradually lower your back armor since you'll get shot in the back less often.

[Brom96]

Pilot's lack of awareness, lighting, and camo all play part. In this Solaris match, you have nice blending camo that also disrupts your silhouette. I wonder how mach the angle fo view plays part, too.