478 replies to this topic

[Taizan]

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.

[Void Angel]

As you get more experience, you can branch out from just sticking together - but it's still a generally good idea. When I first started hunching, I would make the mistake of going too far forward, then running into their main body behind a hill as I was checking for targets. Now I have a better idea of how to not get made into a nice MechWarrior souffle, so I don't always hang around the immediate vicinity of the assaults. If I see that I can flank them and come at them from behind, I'll sometimes break off and go on my own - but I usually stay close by until they get stuck in.

Even more than mobility, the survivability of a medium 'mech (particulary a chassis that can be outrun by both the Centurion and the Dragon) depends on the enemy not being free to pound you into scrap. An Atlas is great for that. So even once you grow past this guide, I certainly encourage you to wait for the assaults to commit, and then pounce.

Edited by Void Angel, 06 January 2013 - 02:05 PM.

[Cato Phoenix]

Great post OP, and great follow-up oil and gas engineering joke.

[Void Angel]

I laughed at that bit; I only wished I'd thought of it. =)

[Agent White]

Please have patience with your Atlases, too. As an example, if you're on Caustic, and your Atlas or pair of assaults appears to be waiting on your side of the ridge. Do yourself a favor, and wait with them. The team that controls their ADD the best, typically wins. There is probably a good reason they're NOT pressing. For instance, brawling assaults typically are most effective under 100m, especially if they're loaded with SRMs. They would much rather the other team crest the hill in front of them than lumber at 50kph for 200-400m getting slammed by heavy direct fire and LRMs while trying to close to an effective distance. When piloting an Atlas, I'd much rather use my armor for fighting than for closing distance to get to the fight. That's just free damage for the other team.

One last tangent. Don't take an atlas for hill sniping. They're terrible for it. Take a K2. If you must snipe with an assault, use a stalker.

[Ravennus]

This is getting absolutely painful.... I leveled up my HBK-4SP basics, and now I'm on to the 4P.... loving it so far, except for all the damn sniper and LRM boat Atlases!!

Seriously, how bad is it when all our assaults refuse to commit to a push and it's the friggin mediums and (sometimes if lucky) heavies that do it?

I often say in the beginning of the match that I'm following the big guys... only to have the ECM DDCs tell me not to, because they are LRM boats. Or worse.... ERPPC snipers with 10 single heat sinks. *sigh*


Once in a blue moon when I get a great player in an Atlas that's willing to lead the push, we win. Often easily.
That's also when I have the most fun in my hunchies... but in the last couple days it seems so rare.

Why do I have to pretend to be the Assault and get eaten alive because most of my team is scared to leave the base??

[Void Angel]

Yeah, I get left out in the cold many times on my Atlas because people are afraid to back me up. It's something that comes naturally while learning - once you start to get to know what you don't know, hanging back and harassing becomes a way to try and contribute while not letting down the team. Trouble is, that doesn't let you focus your firepower, which is what Following the Fracking Atlas is all about. No getting around it except by calling out the strategy and trying to stay calm during the loss. Then you can tell your team "gotta stay together so we can focus fire," or something like that. My own tendency to shout things like, "Cowardice is not a tactic," and "FIGHT, COWARDS!" is probably counterproductive. =)

On the note of what to do when everyone is playing Supur Snipar: you've just got to hang back and let what will happen happen. Encourage people to group up so we can focus when they push, but a lot of the time people are going to do what they do out of some combination of stubbornness, ignorance, or just plain stupidity. People (particularly in the US; I don't know about other nations) often have the wrongheaded idea that every idea is just an opinion, and therefore equally valid - they'll back off from that if you press them to examine their thought process, but it's gotten its hooks pretty deep into our culture. Therefore, if you yell at them, they're going to feel that they don't have to listen to your opinion because you didn't show due respect for theirs. This is the Wrong Answer - the merits of an idea reside in how closely that idea reflects reality, not how nicely it's presented. But even aside from post-modernism, the tendency of everyone (myself included) is to dig in our heels and push back whenever someone tells us we're wrong - and the harsher the criticism, the more we resist its claims.

[Pain Killer]

Void Angel, on 08 January 2013 - 12:23 AM, said:

Yeah, I get left out in the cold many times on my Atlas because people are afraid to back me up.

It gets even better than that - more often than not,I get into a brawl (like, go over the proverbial ridge at ice city) being sure I'm being supported,and successfully draw the fire of the whole enemy team, only to find out that all the people who were following me a moment ago... Suddenly got cold feet and ran back over that ridge, leaving me to be taken apart from all sides at once. It's more of their loss than mine, since I usually have enough time to cause some damage due to Atlas' amazing ability to soak it up while dealing some of its own out, but still... I feel SOO dumb after this...

Edited by Pain Killer, 08 January 2013 - 04:20 AM.

[Void Angel]

Oh, I hate Coward's Ridge. Just today, I went through the tunnel to roll up their rear. No one saw me until I opened on a catapult with my full alpha strike (that's 14SRMs, 2 large lasers, and a Gauss Rifle) at ~200M - from behind. I called out what I was doing, moved to engage, and not one of those cowards came over the ridge. I took one guy out and zombied a stalker, and the one kill I should have gotten was stolen by one of the other three fracking Atlases - who thought a viable weapons loadout on an Atlas could consist of three Artemis LRM15s and a couple of medium lasers. He fired over the ridge at my target because he could lock onto him - and hit the catapult in the back after it turned to face me.

Edited by Void Angel, 09 January 2013 - 04:59 PM.

[XphR]

FrostCollar, on 19 December 2012 - 03:07 PM, said:

I fail to see how Atlases or any other assault mechs are involved in natural gas extraction.

It needed to be said and you needed to be thanked for saying it, thank you.

[Void Angel]

Heheh.

[Fut]

If "Follow the Atlas" is a good idea for PUGs, can we somehow make Atlas pilots follow a simple rule of "Atlas, call out your targets" ?

Would just make everything a bit more effective...

[Pando]

Fut, on 14 January 2013 - 11:23 AM, said:

If "Follow the Atlas" is a good idea for PUGs, can we somehow make Atlas pilots follow a simple rule of "Atlas, call out your targets" ?

Would just make everything a bit more effective...

Instead, it would speed the "process" up if everyone focused the Atlas's targets IMO.

[StalaggtIKE]

Pando, on 14 January 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

Instead, it would speed the "process" up if everyone focused the Atlas's targets IMO.

Agreed. Typically I find most Atlas pilots focus on the biggest threats anyway. They're far too slow to cycle through multiple targets, so instead follow his lead.

[Fut]

Pando, on 14 January 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

Instead, it would speed the "process" up if everyone focused the Atlas's targets IMO.

I might just be a bit out of it, but how can people focus on the Atlas' Targets if we don't know exactly who he's targeting?
,
Hence:

Fut, on 14 January 2013 - 11:23 AM, said:

Atlas pilots follow a simple rule of "Atlas, call out your targets" ?

[Ens]

"Stay together!!!!!!!!!!!!"


...is the first thing why PUGS lose to premades... because a full bulk of 8 mechs gets flanked by ppl who play together and split their team up effectively

[LoboSG]

Focus fire 101. Shoot at the enemy your teammate in front of you is shooting at. If you are in front, YOU decide who to focus fire on.

p.s watch out for friendly fire though.

Edited by LoboSG, 14 January 2013 - 08:14 PM.

[Void Angel]

Ens, on 14 January 2013 - 11:36 AM, said:

"Stay together!!!!!!!!!!!!"


...is the first thing why PUGS lose to premades... because a full bulk of 8 mechs gets flanked by ppl who play together and split their team up effectively

Certainly you can be flanked or ambushed if you're not paying attention, but if you use only half your team to hit a PuG with people like me in it (recall, many people will play with a friend or three - and they all go in the same queue) you'd better be hitting me with the other half at the same time. The reason for this is simple, and as old as reloading missile weapons - weight of fire matters, a lot. As I pointed out in the original post, "The more firepower you can put on a single target, the faster that target will die, and the less damage he'll be able to do to our team." This is not a gaming principle; you will find it in deadly serious treatises and real-world training documents - such as Von Clausewitz's On War. If any pug simply pays attention and shoots what the big guy in front is shooting at, they'll have some chance of success

Another point is that I tell people to get out there and scout. That's a light 'mech's primary job - I don't care if you're "specialized" as a light hunter. You can hunt those other light 'mechs from the flank, without jeopardizing the team's security. Information is a weapon, and one the team can ill afford to do without.

So I wonder why you've posted here, frankly. Your objection, such as it is, has already been addressed, and I wonder what you would tell a PuG to do instead of sticking together. Scatter out and die?

Edited by Void Angel, 14 January 2013 - 11:46 PM.

[Ens]

communicate more

[Void Angel]

They're pugs; they don't have voice chat, and they don't typically know each other. Poor communication is one of the defining characteristics of a pick-up group. Telling them to communicate more is like telling an unemployed person to "get a job." Nor is "communication" a substitute for fire superiority. If you split up and my scouts find you before you're ready to engage, my fracking Atlas is going to lead my entire team right down your throat and crush you - we call it "defeat in detail." So you still don't have any real justification for your objection.

Communication is certainly a good thing, but it's also something that you will not reliably be able to get a pug to do - people will whine at you for "talking too much," be deliberately uncooperative because you're "telling them what to do," or just generally ignore you. But those same people will naturally follow the herd, either because they see there's a plan, or because people are social creatures. Even if a 'mech or two insists on running to their favorite Snipar Spot, so long as most people go along, the tactic works. So, again, I'm wondering why you're posting here: your factually incorrect objection and sullen rejoinder have served only to keep a guide of which you disapprove at the top of this forum.

Edited by Void Angel, 15 January 2013 - 03:32 PM.