MagicHamsta, on 03 January 2013 - 08:32 AM, said:
Aye, tis even better when they park in front of you, blocking your hardpoints but aren't quite tall enough to stop the enemy from taking free shots at the top part of your Atlas.
(>.<)'
Med piloting, you be doing it wrong or you be the very good ace pilot.
When you "follow' an atlas, you merely stay nearby. (generally to take advantage of the slow moving, constant ECM)
Not the literally up it's rear.
Seriously, we don't want you literally binding your mechs to us. You start to get in our way, block our shots, & present an easy big target for the enemy. *The only exception be the tunnel in frozen city where staggering our mechs will allow us to put out the most firepower.
Once the fight starts (or shortly before), med mechs and faster brawlers (dragons, etc) will disengage from the atlas and convert from the travel to the battle mode.
Well I'll generally "hang around" and use ECM cover when available but usually I prefer being somewhere on the flank with the mobility to retreat when necessary. The travel speed of Atlas and Stalker just is so horribly slow that I prefer to be more in a forward deployment role to harass, flank and assist in singling out mechs from the herd, for fire support I feel a heavy mech makes more sense. Being static means death for a medium mech, thus I'll weave in and out of combat as often as I can.
I do agree that for a completely new player the best tactic is to stick close to the assaults and break once the enemy has been engaged. The best advantage may be that they can visually see which mech the Atlas/Stalker is targeting and assist them.