SethAbercromby, on 25 April 2014 - 05:07 PM, said:
Being able to work autonomously makes the lance think differently. Yes, you run the risk of being isolated if you do the wrong move, but if the team starts tripping over each other that is just as bad. Integrating yourself into the lance will help you think outside the cluster that is everyone else. They are important to achieve the goal, but a lance must be able to make the necessary decisions itself. 3 well-coordinated lances that can spread the enemy forces and engage multiple objectives at once can beat a clustered mess any day. Communication is, of course, vital for success with this method, but is not impossible in PUGs. A lot of players just want someone else to call the initiative and call the shots and/or is open to communication.
Having that lance detached means several things:
- The initial engagement against a grouped team is going to be at best 12v8 - if all of your lances are decentralized, it's going to be 12v4. In either situation, you are gambling that the enemy team will not scent blood and simply roll over you before your autonomous lance(s) come to the rescue. If they have any light scouts/snipers at all, they should know that part of your forces are off somewhere else. So, splitting off your lances means that you are now dependent on a grouped enemy committing an error just in order to avoid a near-certain loss. You are literally tossing some figurative dice and hoping the enemy screws up.
- You are vastly more vulnerable to random mismatches if you simply go with the lances you're dealt. You have no cohesive group composition, so you likely have different roles in uncomplementary positions - such as a light-hunter grouped up on the opposite spawn from the scouts. Sure, you can make any lance-level comp work kinda-sorta-well, if you work at it. That light-hunter can just guard whatever he's with from the lights, right? Except that if the enemy grouped up and consolidated their lights, their recon elements may be murdering the LRM boats half a map away, and there's nothing the light-hunter can do but cry bitter tears, and beat their breast, saying, "If only I could have been there!"
- Finally, knowing that they're out by themselves will indeed affect how the lances think. It will affect their morale in a distinctly non-positive way. That 4-man getting pressured by 8-12 enemies knows that its support is several grids away. People shy away from gunfire anyway - being alone and "away from the masses
Added to these two points is a fact that I simply have to insist upon: PuGs
do not communicate well or consistently - and communication is
literally impossible in combat. Sure, you can duck out of combat, or snap off a terse line while you're cooling behind cover, or waiting for your AC/20 to recharge. Heck, I've hammered out endorsements to "GOOOOOO" as I ran through the enemy team desperately shielding what was left of my Battlemaster. But you simply can't expect PuG teams to communicate efficiently, consistently, or well - this is in fact the truism upon which this entire guide is based.
Take the second bullet point; I left out an important argument to use as my closing piece: there is
no standard on how to use those segregated lances. Players who know each other and have practiced together can make about any composition work - but those are premades. Most players in a drop have different skill levels, playing styles, and loadouts; they also have no communication or familiarity with each other's builds and playstyles. So they're not going to be able to just decentralize and "learn to think at the lance level." It's not that simple - and it's not that possible. Every player is going to have a different idea of how to use his build, how to support and be supported by his lancemates, and how their builds should be used - and we haven't even decided where to
go yet! Certainly, you get PuGs who talk, scout, and cooperate, but when you do, you notice them. They are the exception that proves the rule - and if you think back, or go over a recording, most of the cooperation is nonverbal anyway.
So asking randomly generated PuGs to operate as ad hoc lance combat teams simply isn't realistic. Instead, detaching your lances sets the team up for failure, unless the enemy detaches their lances too, or just screws up and doesn't pounce on one of your elements. This is simply gambling, and it's foolish to roll the dice when you don't have to. The simple fact of the matter is that the kind of communication, morale, and team cohesion you need to have three separate lances act as a "well-coordinated" team cannot be realistically expected in PuGs.
Follow the Fracking Atlas.