48 replies to this topic

[EntertainEnterprises]

hey all,
my title is my question and tbh i dont think so. I know a lot of people see this different but hear me out. In my opinion its a waste to let the assaults push first into the enemys. a moment ago i played my fafnir hero mech and someone said the assaults should push, so i went straight into the enemies and well ... was dead instantly. I always think this is a bad idea, assaults are the slowest mechs and also the ones which are got the most firepower. its such a waste when a 100t mech dies instantly from focus fire. Mediums and Heavys should go first, they are much faster and can run tru the bunch of enemy mechs, so they have to turn around. when the enemies focus on the first mech they see and its a faster medium or heavy the will probably fail to kill him instantly because they can torso twist and are faster. while they focus on these mechs, the 100 assaults, with the higher firepower kann do a lot of dmg which leads probably to a win or well higher chance of a win.

My Opinion, what do you think?

[pbiggz]

In days of yore, hit registration was bad, matches were 8 mechs smaller, and alphas were about half their current size. A fully armoured (and as yet unquirked) DDC could tank damage in ways that are frankly impossible today.

While its still important to soak damage strategically, expecting mechs, especially dedicated gunboats like the fafnir, to tank hits for its team, demonstrates that some players still think its 2013.

We haven't played that game in almost a decade.

[pattonesque]

really the only assaults that push with their armor anymore are brawl Atlases, and even then it generally requires folks pushing immediately with them to make it work

[pbiggz]

pattonesque, on 25 March 2022 - 08:17 AM, said:

really the only assaults that push with their armor anymore are brawl Atlases, and even then it generally requires folks pushing immediately with them to make it work

I saw a ton of them during 8v8 weekend. They worked well when fewer guns were available to pelt them. I even piloted one (poorly) and lived longer than I had any right to.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Yeah, this is very situational. if you have the weight to push, you can drop an arty strike on the way in and overwhelm a held position. If you don't have the weight, you need to distract some of their guns first, and in that case faster mechs should blitz to the side and then the assaults go in.

But you're talking about quick play... so these things happen with less communication and coordination than you hope for...

[TheCaptainJZ]

Pushing is a bad tactic unless the environment gives you the advantage over the enemy and everyone pushes. Even then, some will die. Attacking from multiple angles is generally more effective because it divides the attention and angle of attack of the enemy team. Running headfirst into the enemy line will tear you apart long before you get there. Even a light will get slaughtered.

[Escef]

IMX, assault players are too protective of their paintjobs to push.

[DaZur]

Escef, on 25 March 2022 - 09:44 AM, said:

IMX, assault players are too protective of their paintjobs to push.

"A great many players in all classes" are too protective of their paintjobs to push.

Also the whole premise of "You shoot me and I'll shoot back and/or shoot first" appears to be a lost art as of late...

I wish I had a nickel for every time I saw a pilot duck and run instead of returning fire.

Edited by DaZur, 25 March 2022 - 09:56 AM.

[pbiggz]

DaZur, on 25 March 2022 - 09:55 AM, said:

"A great many players in all classes" are too protective of their paintjobs to push.

Also the whole premise of "You shoot me and I'll shoot back and/or shoot first" appears to be a lost art as of late...

I wish I had a nickel for every time I saw a pilot duck and run instead of returning fire.

What's more,

the amount of "stomps" people experience, i suspect, is vastly lower than they think, because, even a 12/0 stomp might be 12 kills vs 0 kills, but the winning team has 15% total armor left. All things considered that's actually a pretty close match, both teams probably won an even number of trades, until the end, the end game screen just doesn't show it.

People don't know how to take damage anymore, or when. This is why you see many people honestly expecting someone else to take damage for them. We talk about "trading" without really defining what that means in the context of a match.

[pattonesque]

pbiggz, on 25 March 2022 - 10:01 AM, said:

What's more,

the amount of "stomps" people experience, i suspect, is vastly lower than they think, because, even a 12/0 stomp might be 12 kills vs 0 kills, but the winning team has 15% total armor left. All things considered that's actually a pretty close match, both teams probably won an even number of trades, until the end, the end game screen just doesn't show it.

People don't know how to take damage anymore, or when. This is why you see many people honestly expecting someone else to take damage for them. We talk about "trading" without really defining what that means in the context of a match.

pubbies in this game, broadly, have two modes:

1. immediately expose to the enemy, get shot, and push out alone without firing back, die immediately with 30 damage

2. shy away from contact at every opportunity, maneuver in order to avoid fighting rather than getting a good position to fight, die with 200 damage all done against five mechs in the last minute of their life

[R Valentine]

The key to any push is to break up or avoid the enemy's focus fire. Sending assaults first does the opposite. They are large and easy to concentrate on. Sending smaller, more difficult to hit mechs first baits out some heat and cool downs so that your larger mechs have a window to engage. The value of an assault mech is in its weapons, not its armor. You need to keep those weapons on the field as long as possible. The high armor values only offset their lack of mobility.

[DaZur]

pbiggz, on 25 March 2022 - 10:01 AM, said:

People don't know how to take damage anymore, or when. This is why you see many people honestly expecting someone else to take damage for them. We talk about "trading" without really defining what that means in the context of a match.

I equate it to boxing or MMA... Sometimes you have to take a punch or two to get inside their guard. Too many players take those first couple of punches and spend the rest of the round dancing, occasionally throwing a jab or two with little effect.

Usually these are the folks trying to protect their paint jobs and KDR...

[feeWAIVER]

Assaults are the hammer, not the anvil.

[bilagaana]

It's time for the annual repetition of the axiom: Not all assault pilots are timid and unskilled but all timid and unskilled players choose to pilot assaults.

Edited by bilagaana, 25 March 2022 - 11:17 AM.

[Novakaine]

1. Lights and Mediums should flank in and keep them from focusing fire.
2. Heavies up the gut to keep the Lights and Mediums from getting eviscerated.
3. Followed closely by the Assaults to hammer anything left standing.
Like feeWaiver said hammer not the anvil.

[Corbantu]

Novakaine, on 25 March 2022 - 11:38 AM, said:

1. Lights and Mediums should flank in and keep them from focusing fire.
2. Heavies up the gut to keep the Lights and Mediums from getting eviscerated.
3. Followed closely by the Assaults to hammer anything left standing.
Like feeWaiver said hammer not the anvil.

You forgot about the specialized flaming lrm sniper build.

[Der Geisterbaer]

EntertainEnterprises said:

hey all,
my title is my question

And the answer to your question ultimately boils down to "depends". What exactly does it depend upon? Well, largely upon what your "push" represents in terms of military tactics / offensive maneuvers within an engagement and how well they are executed.

Most of the "pushes" in MW:O - at least in theory - represent offensive military maneuvers that either fall into the "shock tactics" / "shock attack" category and the various flavours these can have or a (more or less) planned full-on attack on the front line of the enemy where the commanding officers of the attacking side is willing to take the increased risks for their troops in the hopes of getting a quick result in their favour. So most of the time you'll be talking

• a blitz attack (or "Blitzkrieg" in the tactical sense) ("shock tactic" type)
  
• a charge ("shock tactic" type)
  
• frontal assault ("planned full on-attack" type)

In the first two instances you'd indeed expect the "assault" actually being lead by the units with the highest armor / highest firepower (and even taking a bit of a head start should they be relatively slow) in accordance to both historical and present day military doctrines.




In a frontal assault all involved units are supposed to move at their maximum speed. So there is the reasonable expectation that faster units ultimately "lead" the attack within the actual engagement but even a frontal assault can still be initiated with the slowest units starting the movement in a head start (thus still "leading into" the attack) with the aim of having all units reach the target at the same time.

So in two out of three manuever scenarios there is indeed a reasonable expectation that the "assault" is lead by "assault mechs" and the third maneuver more than often tries to have all available units engage at the same time after slower units had a head start for their movement
Things get a bit messy when "assault mechs" - despite falling into the weight class with that name - actually don't carry weaponry that aligns name with role => A "not really assault mech" with a sniper / long range fire (direct or indirect) support configuration would indeed be "wasted" when leading / participating directly any of these three types of combat maneuvers.

But the hypotheticals of military doctrines are usually only true when talking about reasonably well coordinated units and preferably also units that are trained for such maneuvers ... and those two areas are where we video game warriors (even those with a real world military background) more than often are lacking; particularly in randomly built teams in quickplay.

EntertainEnterprises said:

and tbh i dont think so.

And you're both "right" and "wrong" at the same time.

EntertainEnterprises said:

I know a lot of people see this different but hear me out. In my opinion its a waste to let the assaults push first into the enemys. a moment ago i played my fafnir hero mech and someone said the assaults should push, so i went straight into the enemies and well ... was dead instantly.

This result would indicate that there was something wrong in the execution of the maneuver. It might be that you ultimately had to "push" all by yourself (coordination problem) which in turn meant that you (or rather your team) failed to "shock" the enemy and thus the maneuver failed. Alternatively the "push" itself was initiated in a situation where the potential benefits didn't actually warrant the risk of the maneuver (bad judgement by whoever decided to "push" / called it out) or - more likely - a mixture of both.

EntertainEnterprises said:

I always think this is a bad idea, assaults are the slowest mechs and also the ones which are got the most firepower.

For both a "charge" and a "blitz attack" the amount of armor on the leading units is more important than their speed and the more firepower they have the better. Even when committing to a frontal assault as part of an actually planned engagement all units are supposed to move as fast as possible and giving slower units a head start in order to have all units reach the target at the same time is a sound approach to any such plan.

EntertainEnterprises said:

its such a waste when a 100t mech dies instantly from focus fire.

And such a situation still only shows that the maneuver was poorly executed and/or uncalled for.

EntertainEnterprises said:

Mediums and Heavys should go first, they are much faster and can run tru the bunch of enemy mechs, so they have to turn around.

Those mediums and heavies do equally die "instantly" to focussed fire in rapid succession. Plus you're now trying to reframe the "push" into something where the foremost units in a frontal assault successfully turn the situation into an inverted hammer and anvil scenario

EntertainEnterprises said:

when the enemies focus on the first mech they see and its a faster medium or heavy the will probably fail to kill him instantly because they can torso twist and are faster.

Let's just say that you are committing a non-sequitur fallacy there: Seeing a fast(er) medium or heavy mech has no bearing on their actual ability to "instantly" kill any such mech under focussed fire. Considering the lower armor it also takes far less damage to actually kill those lighter mechs. If the enemy actually has the time to focus fire on singular mechs in the attack that actually means that the execution of the maneuver isn't correct

EntertainEnterprises said:

while they focus on these mechs, the 100 assaults, with the higher firepower kann do a lot of dmg which leads probably to a win or well higher chance of a win.

And now you're also stipulating that the enemy fails to switch to the more dangerous assault units once they appear on the scene (under that "frontal assault" stipulation) => You're creating a lopsided scenario where "your" team acts "perfect" in terms of both tactics and skill application while the opponent acts largely "imperfect" for both tactics and skill application. Given such a scenario one should actually expect "your" team to win regardless of which mechs from which weight class are "leading" the "push".

TL;DR: Whether or not it's "assault mechs" that led a "push" usually has no bearing on the actual success of said "push".

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 25 March 2022 - 01:25 PM.

[Kanil]

No 'mech should be "pushing" into 12 enemies at once, regardless of it's weight class.

That said, the unmatched firepower of an assault 'mech is more easily brought to bear by being aggressive than by sitting back and waiting for someone else to do something.

Figuring out the line between "aggression" and "suicide" is difficult, for sure, but you should definitely be pushing whenever it's advantageous for you to do so.

[Novakaine]

Corbantu, on 25 March 2022 - 11:51 AM, said:

You forgot about the specialized flaming lrm sniper build.

Shush

[AmbidXtrousGNOME]

I fully agree with the view that assaults are not the punching bags of the team and should tank all damage while other hide behind them. However, I do feel assaults are generally the best first line during a push IF the push has good communication and cooperation from the WHOLE team (which in QP is probably not going to happen) and the other mechs do their roles well.

IMO, I have seen best results with: Assaults/heavy going up the middle and taking most of the damage (relatively speaking). Lights and mediums making sure the enemy stays down and doesn't get multiple alphas attacks off on the A/H.

The common mistakes I think of QP pushes:
1. assault(s) push and are abandoned and therefore focused fired and killed in seconds which is a huge loss of firepower
2. everyone pushes in a straight line (blocking the each others fire) which again leads to the front liners getting destroyed instantly
3. having the allies providing cover fire play the hide-poke-shoot-hide meta
4. nobody is patient to wait for their team to assemble, they poke get shot up and when they push they have already lost the majority of their armor and just die right away
5. no body communicates (kicking a dead horse here)

Pushes also are really dependent on map location and enemy position and if your team is just holding down W and going right exclaiming VROOM VROOM.

General strategies that have worked for me:
Choke Points with poor cover positions to the sides: Assaults lead, lights/medium in the middle, heavies in back. The moment the assaults' clear the choke point, lights and mediums NEED to fan out to the side and start harassing the enemy to make sure they back up behind cover and or change targets from the assaults. heavies come to clean up if they choose to poke out again.

flatter open maps with good side locations for cover fire: like it was said earlier in the post, lights/mediums should fan out to the side and assaults/heavies push.

Builds are also huge factors, I've seen that brawlers and people with great heat management and high DPS are the better front line units. Even if their aren't pushing out crazy numbers like a 80+ alpha 4 second cooldown assault, I think just hitting the enemy with constant fire cause them to panic and want to get out of the way. (I've stared down assaults with my blackjack-arrow and 6 light-machine guns, of course when they realize i was hitting them with 6 bb guns they would come back out from behind their rock and slap me silly :> )

I don't think there is a "This Is The ONLY Way" to do a push but there are general methods that increase the success of a push. unorthodox tactics works too, it just depends on the enemy team and how coordinated they are.

So a long winded reply to say Yes, I believe assaults "are best equipped" to push first IF (and that's the $10.54 word) the team is coordinated and is using comms. Sadly, I don't think you'll see it very often in QP but when a game starts just greet your team and see who is talking back and just test the waters to see if they team has good synergy.

See you on the battlefield,