1
Everyone knows that a light moving with sufficient lag gets harder and harder to predict the path of, to the point that it's not worth trying! If they are dumb enough to run directly away or toward you, you can take their lunch money. In a straight line it doesn't matter how far forward or back along their path they are! But as we all know, the most powerful light gundams train by nailing one foot to the floor.
So how do you hit a circle strafing RVN-3L with 250+ ping? Simply put, you can't reliably.
Unless of course, you aren't inside the circle.
Point 1.
Gentlemen, this is a tangent line.
It is a ray that intersects only one point on a curve.
For a circle, you'll have two of them!
This is great, because today circles will represent obnoxious players who abuse terrible internet connections with poor play styles.
Let us assume that the theoretical Mech you are piloting has a ballistic weapon (because I enjoy the noise they make) and is sitting at point P.
Your friendly neighborhood Atlas, with his copious armor and wide array of death dealing weapons, is at point O.
Points A and B on this diagram then will represent the two times during this 3L's orbit that he is either running directly towards you, or away from you. See where this is going?
If you fire at any other point, you may as well have brought a solid ton of hula girls for all the good that ammo will do you. Worse, you are firing towards your team mate. My grandfather would slap me just for talking about such a thing!
You may be saying, "Well that's great, but I'M an Atlas pilot, and I just had too look at pictures and read words for nothing! Geometry is stupid!"
To that I would say, "You're stupid and your Mech is a fatty fatlas, Geometry is the best." I would also be quick to follow it with the this advice. A simple tactic can usually be beaten by an equally simple tactic if you care to leverage your incredible brain-meats. If they want to run in a circle around you, make that as difficult as possible. They took out collisions so a light can run through a lot of things now that at one point they could not! But if there's one thing PGI can't take away from you, it's walls.
Point 2.
Back yourself up to a wall and that light will have no choice but to either run at you, run away from you, or choose any other number of strategies that are not circling you to death, which means you have a fighting chance again.
Not all walls are created equal. Some walls are part of small hills that won't do much for you. Some walls are cliff faces that work much better. Some walls are in hallways, some are in corners. It is up to you to chose where you fight, not the light. You are bigger than them and it will take them awhile to cut through your massive, glorious lard of a Mech, use that time to position sensibly and put the fight on your terms.
See? Half circles are much better. Now go eat the other half! We'll still love you as long as you keep up that damage!
Just remember, the open is a dangerous place to be if you have no friends. Even then, it's rarely ideal. Always pay attention to cover nearby and where you should go if the worst happens. When you see some little tool bag peek around the corner, rubbing his small lasers together and twirling his ECM mustache, be ready for him.
Is this the perfect strategy? No such thing. You will still take damage, and as such you can still be killed. But this WILL put the ball in your court. You don't have to feel useless and throw your fat, butter-coated atlas hands up in disgust. And everyone else out there, protect your lumbering deathbringers! Won't you look stupid when they get poked to death and you are stuck with your finger lodged firmly in your nose?
In summation:
1: Shoot at tangents so you can cut down on the amount of leading to be done WHENEVER possible.
2: Break up patterns that the enemy seems to prefer. Be a jerk about it!
3: Aim for the legs occasionally because it's pretty funny to leg one and then run it down like an axe murderer in a horror movie vs screaming college kids. You have to enjoy the little things.
Terms:
Altas: 100 tons of pain.
ECM: Electronic Countermeasure suite, like a radar cloak that makes locking difficult if not impossible.
Lag-Armor: Term for latency induced appearance of taking hits, but not damage. The power of Greyskull.
Circlestrafing: The act of a light mech running rings around a larger mech to take advantage of it's lack of turning to do disproportionate damage. Made worse by having a high ping to the point that many (incorrectly) deem them invincible.
Raven-3L: The babby with ECM.
Ray: A line with one end.
Tangent: See previous explanation with pictures.
Wall: Seriously?
Circle: Ok, ****.
Edited by BCOVertigo, 18 December 2012 - 02:28 AM.
