32 replies to this topic

[MadHornet]

It seems to me the role of lights for the longest time has been offensive, and I applaud that, there is no "easy" light mech to play after all (in my opinion, unless you are fighting potatoes), but I think the dedicated scouting role has been almost absent from the game.

I'll go over why I think it's a handy role to pick up if you like playing lights by showing you one of the least liked mechs in the game; the Spider-5V.

Biggest reason reason this isn't picked up is it's utter lack of firepower. Even with the cooldown quirks it still struggles to faze even a locust and relies heavily on it's unmatched mobility to escape anything and everything that pursues it, but here's the hot tea... don't use it offensively.

Target Decay Duration: +1
Sensor Range: +100

See that? Get all the sensor nodes and BAP on top of that and you get a sensor range of 1440m. You can detect the enemy before they even see you at a range they will probably never hit you at as well. BAP can also be used for countering ECM when necessary. Equip all the jump jets, all of 'em. You can go literally anywhere you want to see the enemy and escape easily. Plant UAV's and strikes in annoying and hard to see places. Get the info and harass the enemy so the team has time to act, counter, or strike first.

Speaking of harassing, get 2 ER Medium lasers. You might be tempted to equip med pulse lasers for more damage, but the range will be necessary when jumping up and poking enemies from different angles to grab their attention. The goal there isn't to do damage, it's to be the most distracting thing on the field. Shooting an Annihilator in the back and getting it to focus on you for even 5 seconds saves some of your teammates from crit center torsos, while you have enough range and mobility not to be easily dispatched by other enemies in the process.

Once the battle has been going on and there are plenty of damaged enemies, you can nip away at critical components and get enemies to hide from you to save their weapons, which 2 ER Mediums can do decently well if you have steady aim and quick thinking.

Lastly, you can utilize it's capture acceleration quirk and the full nodes for it to be the most useful asset in Conquest since it can fully capture a neutral point in less than 15 seconds. It can also turn around an entire team in Assault as it can capture the enemy base in as little as a minute and a half.

The Raven-3L also has the same sensor quirks as the Spider-5V, but is more equipment focused and not as much of a harasser as it is an electronic warfare platform. I haven't played the 3L but using it's stealth I figure you can sit at range and plot where the enemies are with NARC, TAG, and all of your sensor range, and using it's better firepower than the Spider to skirmish once the enemies are weak.

Let me know your thoughts on the matter.

[FupDup]

If you want to distract from super long range on a Spider 5V, grab an LL, ERLL, LPL, or LPPC since those have more range than 2 ERML and the mech definitely has enough tonnage to do so.

But distractions can be done by anything zippy and tiny, and there are plenty of mechs (nearly every other light or a small medium) that can also pose a lethal threat while doing so. The 5V is only good for standing on oil rigs. Once the blue team figures out where the red team is there's not much use for any further scouting.

[LordNothing]

squirrels kind of do give you first intel on mech positions. even if there are no real points involved or special equipment required. what the lights are actually doing is looking for stupid assault pilots. any intel they pass on in the process of doing that is useful to the team. for scouting to be an actual playstyle, there would need to be a reward for doing so.

mwll actually managed to make scouting worthwhile by simply not having free target sharing for everyone. many scout mechs were equipped with c3 and could be paid simply by providing targeting data to the rest of the team. tag and narc were a lot more powerful too. so having a light mech or even battle armor commanding several mechs worth of lerms could cause a lot of trouble.

scouting gear in particular needs to be a lot better. bap for example bap needs to give a serious boost to sensors, more than what can be attained by the correct sensor node selection. 1.5 tons is a lot for a squirrel and if you take that hardware you should be rewarded with capabilities proportional to the cost. instead its a weak counter to ecm and is only marginally useful for mechs dependent on locking weapons.

Edited by LordNothing, 04 September 2021 - 03:41 PM.

[MadHornet]

FupDup, on 04 September 2021 - 03:21 PM, said:

If you want to distract from super long range on a Spider 5V, grab an LL, ERLL, LPL, or LPPC since those have more range than 2 ERML and the mech definitely has enough tonnage to do so.

But distractions can be done by anything zippy and tiny, and there are plenty of mechs (nearly every other light or a small medium) that can also pose a lethal threat while doing so. The 5V is only good for standing on oil rigs. Once the blue team figures out where the red team is there's not much use for any further scouting.

I disagree. Unless the field is pretty bare and easy to see the enemy, I think tracking every movement and flank of the enemy when they aren't visible to the rest of the team is very useful. Having a rough idea of where the enemy is when you first spot them doesn't give the full picture. There have been plenty of times I've been the first person to see enemies coming up behind the team before anyone else and delaying them so our team could counter.

And why I chose 2 ER Medium is to save weight to equip BAP and jump jets and still have a top rated engine to get around faster than most, and lasers tend to be more visible and alarming when slashing the enemy with it. I will say though that an LPPC would be useful for disabling ECM. And as I said, it shouldn't be just down to being a lethal threat, the idea is to be very distracting, deliberately making people look at you and know where you are so they spend time shooting at you instead of the team.

And "only good for standing on oil rigs" is a big understatement. It is literally the KING of doing that, and can cost the enemy the game if they don't do something about it.

[LordNothing]

perhaps if you have scouting data displayed on the map. a ghosted a would mean "the last known position of target a" and so on. or if you lock a at the start of the match, and then lock a again after it has moved, indicate with an arrow that the mech has moved since the last detection. of course with bitmap icons the radar would get pretty cluttered pretty fast. minimalist vector icons would be better. enough intel would reveal a bigger picture of what the enemy is doing.

Edited by LordNothing, 04 September 2021 - 03:56 PM.

[My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ]

With the amount of tools at the player's disposal why would you ever need a dedicated scout in MWO?

Edited by My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 04 September 2021 - 06:06 PM.

[Saved By The Bell]

I used Cheeta, which we got from event.

Full sensor tree, 6 heavy mashin guns, flamer, 2 small pulse lasers... Very fast angry strong monkey. It can kill almost all in 1 by 1.

Edited by Saved By The Bell, 04 September 2021 - 08:42 PM.

[JediPanther]

no need to scout when you know where people are going to lemming to. With all the ecm and ppcs you just need a single lppc to disable an ecm. If you want to you can scout by uav which is much safer than risking a mech's fire power. Max sensors really doesn't do much unless you have los with b/cap.

[caravann]

Many of the scouts are mentioned to be the 5th member

The Raven is a mech who is considered a lost cause if in a battle because the cost of manufacturing. The Raven is a harasser, support fire. It can not survive on its own but it can be fitted with LRM20 or ER PPC or ER large Laser. In lore the Raven is an IS model who uses an intergrated ECM who is part of the frame and doesn't take up any weight

Most IS models used integration of weapons until the clan war era. The Raven just like the Hellspawn were both mechs who had intergrated ECM which explain why the Hellspawn has worse stats than the Dervish it was meant to replace since electronic warfare became a standard inside the IS

The spider had an entirely different role since IS used spotters for indirect fire as the ECM became a standard it also countered the use of sensor lock. If you played Battletech you'll realize what role the spider had in the past and how ECM in MWO is pulling the Spider back to the past where LRM couldn't be sensor locked. The spider work but it also only work if the team decide to only use unguided indirect fire and rely on stealth armor and electronic warfare.

Commando is another example of a mech who was updated with stealth armor and ECM and is another squirrel. I'd say that if the Urbanmech is considered the trashcan, the commando is the father of the trashcan. Just like the Urbanmech, once you change the engine it's able to run faster than most medium mechs and standard light mechs. A squirrel can chain any mech to a certain position as long it's isolated from the rest of the opposite team. Squirrels can make the team pushing forward which leads to the tip of the spear being hammered down like a nail.

[Wildstreak]

MadHornet, on 04 September 2021 - 03:00 PM, said:

Let me know your thoughts on the matter.

The 'joy' of the scout role is dead when you have a Casual Mode with a ranking system that rewards Damage mostly.

[PocketYoda]

This game doesn't use light mechs properly. And the whole design of light mechs in MWO is an abomination to Battletech light mechs..

MWO lost the plot lore wise. especially where light mechs are concerned..

Edited by MechaGnome, 05 September 2021 - 04:42 AM.

[MechNexus]

MechaGnome, on 05 September 2021 - 04:42 AM, said:

This game doesn't use light mechs properly. And the whole design of light mechs in MWO is an abomination to Battletech light mechs..

MWO lost the plot lore wise. especially where light mechs are concerned..

Yeah damn right, the lore says light mechs are only sco-

oh
hang
on
no
it
doesn't

*ahem*

Sass aside, the role never really existed in the first place, nor was it ever needed. Any reasonably fast mech can report on enemy positions, so sacrificing a decent weapons payload to go all in on infotech is unnessecary. LRM boats usually carry their own TAGs (more to cut through ECM than anything, everyone should be utilising their armour) and probes, so lights generally don't bring them and focus on skirmishing (unless they're a filthy streakboat). Comms, map knowledge, and spotting enemies with the radial menu (works on mechs you haven't locked if you just keep your crosshair on them) does the job where sensors fail. Also, C3 is intrinsic in MWO, which further hampers the need for a scout.

That said, if i'm remembering correctly (#notcauldron) the cauldron are experimenting with more EWAR quirks, so stay tuned to see how that turns out.

[FupDup]

MechNexus, on 05 September 2021 - 10:13 AM, said:

Sass aside, the role never really existed in the first place, nor was it ever needed. Any reasonably fast mech can report on enemy positions, so sacrificing a decent weapons payload to go all in on infotech is unnessecary. LRM boats usually carry their own TAGs (more to cut through ECM than anything, everyone should be utilising their armour) and probes, so lights generally don't bring them and focus on skirmishing (unless they're a filthy streakboat). Comms, map knowledge, and spotting enemies with the radial menu (works on mechs you haven't locked if you just keep your crosshair on them) does the job where sensors fail. Also, C3 is intrinsic in MWO, which further hampers the need for a scout.

It also never made any sense from a lore/TT standpoint because any kind of fast vehicle or drone could scout just as effectively as a light mech, except it would cost way fewer resources. It just doesn't make any logistical sense to create a giant complicated bipedal robot for scouting when you can send a tiny UAV or something to do the same thing.

[Gagis]

NARC Raven is still the best friend of the 3 LRM mechs in the same group.

Group up, and make that role happen.

[HauptmanT]

I actually dropped the Tag off my Raven 3L(S) and went triple small pulse + narc. It's still useless. Unless you are going to actually drop with Lurmbloat friends, it just doesnt pay to be a scout. Well not for the team anywho...

It pays huge dividends personally. Every "Scouting" bonus is three grand, multiply that by 10-12 and well... there's 45K+ per match.
Toss in the spotting assists if you have actual Lurmbloats on the team, or Protected Lights if you stay in the group... and a cool half a million per game is not hard to pull off even with low damage output.

The real role of a light is of course capping Conquest, filling the yellow stain in Domination, or running Batteries in Insurection. Failing those modes, just be annoying poking people in the butt with a stick so they turn around and stop shooting at your friends.

...also UAVs. Have 2 of them, and get those bad dogs out where the reds least expect it... you know, behind them.

[LordNothing]

MechNexus, on 05 September 2021 - 10:13 AM, said:

Yeah damn right, the lore says light mechs are only sco-

oh
hang
on
no
it
doesn't

*ahem*

Sass aside, the role never really existed in the first place, nor was it ever needed. Any reasonably fast mech can report on enemy positions, so sacrificing a decent weapons payload to go all in on infotech is unnessecary. LRM boats usually carry their own TAGs (more to cut through ECM than anything, everyone should be utilising their armour) and probes, so lights generally don't bring them and focus on skirmishing (unless they're a filthy streakboat). Comms, map knowledge, and spotting enemies with the radial menu (works on mechs you haven't locked if you just keep your crosshair on them) does the job where sensors fail. Also, C3 is intrinsic in MWO, which further hampers the need for a scout.

That said, if i'm remembering correctly (#notcauldron) the cauldron are experimenting with more EWAR quirks, so stay tuned to see how that turns out.

it is incorrect to assume that scout and light are synonymous. case in point. a scout does not need to be a squirrel.

the intrinsic c3 is one of the biggest failings of the electronic warfare system in mwo. proper scouts were essential in mwll for carrying c3 (implemented more in the style of c3i). electronic warfare quirks are a good idea though id rather make the equipment stronger first and then have the quirks buff those for specific scout mechs.

Edited by LordNothing, 05 September 2021 - 02:22 PM.

[PocketYoda]

MechNexus, on 05 September 2021 - 10:13 AM, said:

Yeah damn right, the lore says light mechs are only sco-

oh
hang
on
no
it
doesn't

*ahem*

Sass aside, the role never really existed in the first place, nor was it ever needed. Any reasonably fast mech can report on enemy positions, so sacrificing a decent weapons payload to go all in on infotech is unnessecary. LRM boats usually carry their own TAGs (more to cut through ECM than anything, everyone should be utilising their armour) and probes, so lights generally don't bring them and focus on skirmishing (unless they're a filthy streakboat). Comms, map knowledge, and spotting enemies with the radial menu (works on mechs you haven't locked if you just keep your crosshair on them) does the job where sensors fail. Also, C3 is intrinsic in MWO, which further hampers the need for a scout.

That said, if i'm remembering correctly (#notcauldron) the cauldron are experimenting with more EWAR quirks, so stay tuned to see how that turns out.

I never once said they were only scout mechs.. read my post again.

[Jugger Grimrod]

Give me a RVN-3L w Stealth Armor, TAG, NARC and 2xERMLs. Put a NARC on every enemy ECM mech first, then Assault brawlers, then everyone else. This isn't about helping LRMers on my team to get locks(TBH, the best ones get their own. Yes, I said it!). This about psych-ops. Straight up - NARC Warnings scare the hell out of any pilot - I don't care who they are. When a team is getting pelted constantly with NARCs by a good Scout on their flanks, whatever plan they had just floated out of the airlock. They can either deal with you or get dealt with as their ECM bubbles are suppressed - their choice. The purpose of the NARCs, TAG and UAVs is not just intel gathering, it's also 'area and movement denial' by scaring them a bit with the NARC harassment, 'soft pressure' to herd them into your Team's Kill-zone, and 'squirrel chases' to pull their 'Rambos' out of position where they can't help their team. All of this can happen without firing a shot from the MLs. If I do use the MLs, it's usually as a finishing shot or maybe to distract an enemy brawler at just the right time. (R/L Rear Torsos have the thinnest armor on any mech out there. Easily popped when you take your time and position yourself well.) All will help your team IF THEY ARE PAYING ATTENTION. If they are not... well, even the Blessed Blake can't save you from bad teamwork. Remember kids: "Teamwork is OP!"

Edited by Jugger Grimrod, 07 September 2021 - 03:40 PM.

[LordNothing]

MechaGnome, on 05 September 2021 - 05:38 PM, said:

I never once said they were only scout mechs.. read my post again.

re-read mine, i was agreeing with you.

[Elizander]

The problem is prolonged exposure and at higher levels of gameplay, people are quick to shoot and quick to duck behind cover. The game is also based on damage and scouting is just a small part of the entire equation to win a game.

As an example. I can get an ECM mech, find the enemy team early, pop UAVs to reveal the majority of their team for over the duration of two whole UAVs and my team does... nothing. Now if I did that with more risk to myself I wouldn't even last a minute. The times where I get a decent team at my PSR that will take advantage of such a move is so rare, like maybe one in ten.

The only time scouting worked yesterday while I was grinding energy damage for the Shadow Hawk event was when I heard the team talking over VOIP and there were at least 4-6 of them communicating calmly instead of meme'ing. I ran ahead and UAV'd the entire enemy team twice at the start and they flanked and found good spots to take them all out even if I only did 52 damage and lost half my mech just trying to get the UAVs in place. This is the exception in my tier and not even close to the average.

The only reason for me to take a mech with sensors that powerful at the cost of my damage would be to complete events that have high scouting requirements because the current culture in pugs at T3 and below is to not care if you detect the enemy for them. In most cases, you are better off just packing 6 lasers and doing more damage.

One thing they can do is increase target decay to higher amounts so that a scout can keep 1 target locked for a longer period, but in that case, it just becomes a free NARC beacon that you don't have to spend tonnage for and it clashes with Radar Depravation. They can sort of do a "Can see the guy I locked on the mini map but not target him with LRMs" kinda mechanic but I doubt they will do anything like that. If it becomes an issue then people will just get more Radar Derp nodes and 100% cancels it all out.

Edited by Elizander, 05 September 2021 - 08:52 PM.