12 replies to this topic

[Kingfucius]

Hey guys,

I like to run weak performing mechs, trying to understand (and improve my own weaknesses..)
So.
Playing about 20 games with Commando-DO3(h) : Average 250-300, all games lost! (Not being the worst with that score, anyways.)
It's okay. Moving on.
Here comes: I know beforehand: firing up one of my favorite mechs will give me wins+green arrow. Prediction comes true.


>>There is a bias towards assaults<<

[GreyNovember]

It is easier to dump lots of damage, and get higher score, in a bigger robot, yes.

You are more likely to die in a smaller mech if no oppurtunity cleanly presents itself, and the enemy is even minimally competent.



If the stars align, you can get away with a lot.



But even if you were to 2v1 other light mechs, you didn't do a whole lot of damage when you zoom out and look at how much match score everyone else builds.



That's what the Green arrow means. "You did lots of damage relative to everyone else."

It is not a "You are better at the game than everyone else". It does not mean "You were the bestest player ever who did the mostest goodest things".

[LordNothing]

i usually do ok with the elf penis mech. i used medium lasers on mine which are pretty good with the 30% duration quirk. i also use an std engine and run it as a zombie so its really hard to kill. hit and run tactics.

but yea assaults do tend to give more green arrows. its a lot more complicated than that. there are exceptional lights (commando iic is mean) and there are terrible assaults which produce green and red arrows respectively. i get more green arrows on losing matches. ultimately i can go over my mech stats (if the damn thing would work!) and see which mechs perform the best. run those, get greens. thats assuming you want to up tier anyway.

should really weight the scoring system for mech class. lights would have all the scouting, spotting, protected, etc behaviors 2xed so you get all around better scores with proportionally less damage output. other classes can have their scores adjusted. heavies and assaults being more geared for damage and kills. you may be able to do that with quirks. lights need reliable ways to build score beyond just shooting things. then you end up lights doing all kinds of backstabbery and general dillweedery just to make enough score to run lights with stable tier. i recently got booted out of t2 because of firemoths. they can do a lot of great things that can help you win, but damage is not one of them. since damage is king, they will forever be red arrow mechs.

Edited by LordNothing, 31 December 2025 - 01:41 PM.

[Ilfi]

Kingfucius, on 31 December 2025 - 09:28 AM, said:

>>There is a bias towards assaults<<

Yeah, it turns out the big robot with many guns tends to perform better than the tiny robot with not that many guns. Honestly don't think there's any real way to fix something so inherent to... like, reality. More guns good. There's very, very few reasons to bring less gun and less armor when you can bring more gun and more armor, particularly in the soup queue.

Hope that helps.

[Saved By The Bell]

Its strong commando. You doing bad ( ). Try really bad lights.

[Ttly]

Well it's not helped that someone kept nerfing the MASC Commando for whatever reason lately.

Also MASC vehicles are "balanced" around the user being able to abuse the MASC, if you can't get over that floor well they just suck. Or they just straight up suck like some of the So8 Executioners (i.e EXE-Prime)
I'd recommend binding the toggle MASC key to LeftAlt or something.
Then you have the MASC Fleas being just a worse PIR-D/Fire Moth now because apparently its "smallest hitbox in the game" means it totally doesn't need as much quirks as those two that can do 40+ alpha (on an hit and run platform at that) thanks to heavy lasers just being that busted if you can actually aim.

Oh also the game's scoring system is stupid since it values raw damage points too much.
100 damage against an assault for 8% of its total health is totally not as valuable as 100 damage against an enemy medium for 20% of its total health yet is scored the same when taking out players out of a match is what matters rather than raw point values.
And then there's protection proximity/protected medium/light scoring medium/lights that clump up (i.e not using their main gimmick of mobility unless they're on the subclass of slow medium/lights[stunted heavies] like the Cougar) near heavies/assault being too valuable or too easy to farm if you know to look for it.
It's also what makes it so that longer fights/matches (not efficiently killing enemies) to give more score in general than short matches among other things.
Not that I dislike longer matches, I prefer them even.

Well there are stuff with mobility that has good excuse to clump up though, stuff like MG (not LMG) Piranha waiting for a brawl where the enemy is distracted/can't afford to twist away to shoot at it so that it can get shooting time for MGs.

Edited by Ttly, 31 December 2025 - 11:14 PM.

[Ted Wayz]

GreyNovember, on 31 December 2025 - 10:34 AM, said:

That's what the Green arrow means. "You did lots of damage relative to everyone else."

Sometimes.

You can get the green arrow without doing high damage relative to the team. The arrow is based on match score and lights have many ways other than damage to get a high match score.

AMS
Scouting and using UAVs
Objectives
etc.

[pattonesque]

properly played lights are extremely strong, but the skill level required to do so is quite high. the best most folks can manage is being *annoying* -- think like an arctic cheetah 600m behind you poptarting with ERML and waving them all over the place. oftentimes they're the final mech remaining on the losing team, but that's because the player in question likely spent their time avoiding combat rather than using the light's speed to position correctly and engage.

assaults, on the other hand, require less skill to actually contribute in a meaningful way, even if they get destroyed early. assaults pack far more guns than lights and have the armor to use them -- and even if an assault gets jumped, it has a better chance of doing a decent amount of damage before it goes down simply by holding down M1 and pointing in the general direction of an enemy. Sometimes you get some barely-functional potato who somehow does 20 damage in a mech that can manage 50 damage in a single click, but this is outweighed by their more common average performances.

So as a result, assaults tend to have the highest average match score in the game, which is how you get that sweet green up arrow at the end of matches. They also tend to have the highest w/l ratio in the game if for no other reason than the best way to win most MWO matches is to kill the enemy, and usually the more damage you do, the more enemies you can kill or set up for a kill.

[Void Angel]

Ted Wayz, on 01 January 2026 - 12:16 PM, said:

Sometimes.

You can get the green arrow without doing high damage relative to the team. The arrow is based on match score and lights have many ways other than damage to get a high match score.

AMS
Scouting and using UAVs
Objectives
etc.

None of which are remotely as impactful as damage - both in terms of winning, and of match score. And... that's correct. Do other things, like coordination and teamwork matter a lot? Sure, but their success is generally expressed as favorably exchanging damage with the enemy. Take it from a guy who got his Ace of Spades in a Spider: damage matters more, which is why it's weighted so strongly.

Edited by Void Angel, Yesterday, 02:13 PM.

[LordNothing]

Ted Wayz, on 01 January 2026 - 12:16 PM, said:

Sometimes.

You can get the green arrow without doing high damage relative to the team. The arrow is based on match score and lights have many ways other than damage to get a high match score.

AMS
Scouting and using UAVs
Objectives
etc.

you forgot flanking. flanking pays out a lot. still you aren't getting a green arrow doing just these things. you cant carry enough uavs, you can only scout each mech once (really should have a cool down or reset each time the team loses contact). this is why i want scoring quirks for different classes, or specific mechs.

Edited by LordNothing, Yesterday, 04:41 PM.

[LordNothing]

Void Angel, on 01 January 2026 - 01:07 PM, said:

None of which are remotely as impactful as damage - both in terms of winning, and of match score. And... that's correct. Do other things, like coordination and teamwork matter a lot? Sure, but their success is generally expressed as favorably exchanging damage with the enemy. Take it from a guy who got his Ace of Spades in a Spider: damage matters more, which is why it's weighted so strongly.

lights accumulate damage slowly. high risk high reward like going for backs or hunthing the wounded gets you killed faster. the best use of lights i think is sowing chaos. you dont need to drop a lot of damage to disrupt the enemy lines long enough to give your team a temporary advantage. did a 7-run in a flea once, and most of that was hunting wounded and getting lucky.

[Void Angel]

Or, you could stay in combat the entire match, using your mobility to continually deal damage and redline your heat while avoiding enemy attention throughout a closely fought match:
This is a lot more difficult, and of course the teams need to be evenly matched to get you that long fight - and it gets harder and harder the higher Tier you reach. But, this is why Lights are described as having a high skill floor.

Edited by Void Angel, Yesterday, 05:59 PM.

[Ekson Valdez]

Ted Wayz, on 01 January 2026 - 12:16 PM, said:

Sometimes.

You can get the green arrow without doing high damage relative to the team. The arrow is based on match score and lights have many ways other than damage to get a high match score.

AMS
Scouting and using UAVs
Objectives
etc.

Minor correction: AMS does not reward Matchscore. This was changed some time ago to provide CBills instead.