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If you don't, it's important because it removes damage dealers from the enemy team faster than engaging one-on-one, and removing damage from them means you have an advantage in firepower. This effect is cumulative, and the more you focus, the better it is. To beat two mechs, a mech of a similar loadout must be 4 times as good a pilot, as he takes double the damage they do, and they have double the health he has in total. There are better explanations with pictures out there, so I'll leave it here for now.
However, I haven't yet come across any guides as to 'who' you should focus your fire on, so it is my hope that by placing this here newer gamers will have a chance to get better at this faster. Veterans already have their own systems, and don't really need this guide.
This is in order of priority.
Who to shoot
1. Listen to the Team/Lance Commander.
In the nigh-miraculous event that your team actually has someone who bothers to take command, follow any of their focus orders first... there's a reason why they make those calls, and there's no time to explain in a match why.
2. Murder Leeroy Jenkins.
Anyone who does suicidal moves like charging into the middle of your formation should be destroyed before they leave your formation. It's one of those rare instances where you can fight 8 on 1, no pilot has a chance unless you let them live.
3. Kill anything with a red CT, ST, or leg.
They're already near-death, just finish the job. Use Q or whatever key you mapped it to to reveal all target HP% without having to cycle through them... and pick the ones with <70% ish health, they'll usually have a red component. Leave the 100%s alone.
4. Don't shoot those you can't hit.
There are 3 reasons why you can't hit somebody. #1, his evasion abilities exceed your aiming abilities, and you're using a weapon like lasers for which you must hold the beam on target for a time to damage him properly. #2, he is behind cover, or can get behind cover, faster than you can expose him to weapons fire - cover reduces damage to zero. #3, he is behind someone else in a narrow location - sometimes your teammate, sometimes his teammate. In all 3 instances switch to the next highest priority. #1 and #2 apply more to light mechs, which is why we generally don't advocate chasing them around the map if your speed is below 110 KPH, because you simply can't catch them, and every second you spend not shooting someone is a second in which your team essentially does not have your firepower.
Whole teams chasing light mechs is known as 'squirrel chasing' or 'squirrelling'. Don't do this. But should the light mech come into the middle of your formation, or is shut down or legged such that the speed is made irrelevant, they are generally the #1 priority to kill as fast as possible.
#3 is one of the reasons why you should try to herd enemies into a narrow location such as the tunnels or the canyons, and then position your own people in a firing line near the exit. If they can't shoot through each other, but all of you can shoot one of them, no amount of skill stops them from being decimated. Similarly, it is one of the reasons why you should never be in a long canyon or the tunnels yourself. The other reason is the overpowered Advanced Seismic Sensor.
5. Shoot whatever your teammates are shooting.
This is the very definition of focusing fire. The above cases are special, but otherwise even if many people are shooting a lower priority target it's better to down that target faster than to take on a higher priority target alone.
6. Eliminate the best players first.
Tournaments are important for this reason. Remember the names on the leaderboards, and those you come across ingame who seem to always top your scoreboards. ELO means that good players are compensated on a team with newer/bad players, so eliminating the best pilots on the team will give you a higher chance of victory. Player skill is overpowered; it may not be that you're a bad pilot, but against the best pilots out there you will want to stack your odds, or else you will definitely die. It's not about underestimating yourself, but don't underestimate THEM.
7. Remove the 'no-skill' builds next.
When you drop into a match, unless you have played with them before you likely will not know who is good, and who is bad. Every team has a mix. The impetus is to kill off all the builds that even bad players can use well, because a bad pilot with a SDR-5K is no threat at all, whereas a bad pilot with a dual AC/20 Jager can still pretty much murder your face given enough luck, or if your teammates do tactically unsound moves like charging them in a straight line. Whereas a good pilot is dangerous regardless of whether he's in a SDR-5K or a AC/20 Jager. This thus removes threat from the battlefield as fast as possible.
A short list of weapons that require minimal skill to use correctly are: LRMs, PPCs, AC/20, AC/10, Streak SRMs. Weapons that require a lot of skill to execute perfectly are: Standard lasers, pulse lasers, standard SRMs, LBX-AC/10, Ultra AC/5, AC/2. The variation in damage in a 'no-skill' weapon in the hands of bad players relative to good players is about 50-100% (good players can use it 2 times as well), whereas the variation of the harder weapons is about 5-100% (good players can be up to 20 times as effective as bad players).
8. Ignore the joke weapons.
See a Flamer, NARC beacon or multiple machine guns on a Mech? Kill that last. Chances are high the pilot has no idea what he's doing, and even if he did those weapons are weak.
9. Sort the rest by Damage to Armor ratio.
Generally, you want to remove Mechs that are easy to kill but do a heck load of damage, and leave the Mechs that are difficult to kill and don't do much damage anyway. They go in approximately this order, in descending order in terms of who to shoot first.
- Commando
- Cicada
- Jenner
- Dragon
- Awesome
- Raven
- Blackjack
- Cataphract
- Jagermech
- Catapult
- Trebuchet
- Highlander
- Atlas
- Hunchback
- Stalker
- Spider
- Centurion
If there are only two mechs left, one is 2 map grids away and the other is next to you, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to go for the further one in most cases. There are exceptional cases, but chances are if you are able to make use of the exceptional cases, you're not a pilot that needs to be given advice on how to deal with them in the first place.
Where to shoot
Most mechs have weak points and such. This is a general guide:
1. Cockpit
This applies to mechs that are shut down or AFK. Generally 2 alphas is enough on any chassis to kill it. Sometimes 1 is enough. Don't aim for it if it's moving however, most players are nowhere near skilled enough to hit it, and are better off concentrating fire elsewhere.
2. XL Engines
This applies to anything carrying an obvious XL engine, like say, 80 LRMs on a stalker, 9-10 weapons in total on anything. It excludes anything holding an AC/20 or 2 Uac/5 when the mech build only has torso mounted ballistics hardpoints.
3. Vulnerable weapons
First, the Gauss Rifle. See it, blow it. It does extra damage when it blows up too. Second, the Yen Lo Wang Right arm. Third, the Atlas Right Torso (if it carries an AC/20 or Gauss) or the Left Torso (if it's a D-DC boating LRM15). Fourth, the Hunchback Right Torso. Fifth, Catapult 'Ears', especially on the A1 chassis. In all other cases, don't bother.
I'll note here that all ECM hardpoints are in the Left Torso. It's not gonna matter for lights since most can't aim for something like that moving at ridiculous speeds, and should really just aim centre of mass or the legs instead. For the AS7-D-DC, you might want to just kill it instead of disabling the ECM, to be honest. Unless it's an LRM boat, in which case the ECM will be together with the LRM in one convenient location to whack.
4. Legs
This applies mainly to the Raven, because its legs are really weak. But in addition, XL LRM boats should also be shot in the legs as people like to hide their ammo there, since when the ammo blows they'll die if they put it in the side torsos or arms, and they need a lot of ammo.
5. Rear Centre Torso
Many players have raised front armour to deal with the current sniping situation, so their rear torsos tend to be under-armoured. It will usually blow in 4 alphas or less for most mechs.
6. Front Centre Torso
Especially easy to hit from Cicadas, Jenners, Dragons and Awesomes, even from the side. But this guarantees a kill on any build.
Now, the secret is... to shoot for the groin. Most mechs can shield their CT or rear CT by torso twisting if you shoot for the back, and the Centurion can even use its arm to shield everything. However, the groin on all mechs always registers as Centre Torso (front and back respectively) regardless of where the upper part of the torsos are pointing. There is NO WAY to defend yourself against a groin strike other than to turn your mech, and most mechs take too long to turn for this to have a chance of saving their CT, if your aim is good.
It is worth noting that your C-Bill rewards at the end of the match includes a component called "Salvage". This is 2% of the value of undestroyed components of all enemy mechs destroyed divided by the total number of mechs in your team. This C-Bill reward is GREATER than the amount you earn off dealing damage and blowing off components even to you alone, but is less experience than blowing off all components one by one for only you. Generally, unless you're really farming only experience and you like to be really selfish towards your teammates, it is better to kill mechs while limiting damage to their components. Cockpits and dual legging earns the most as the engine is not destroyed, and the engine is worth more than all other components in a mech combined. For instance, for a 4,500,000 C-Bill XL engine you save by blowing a Jenner cockpit, the amount everyone gets is 0.125*0.02*4,500,000, or 11250 C-Bills for just the engine alone, not counting possible Savior Kill, Kill, Defensive Kill, damage dealt bonuses, which may very well increase it further.
Version II, on feedback from Logi to account for squirrels.
Edited by Hayashi, 25 May 2013 - 08:14 AM.
