777 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

Hey, if it works in practice, it works. I just bought a spider, and I'm loving the speed - the only 'mech so far that I've gone with an XL engine for. =) It feels a bit too hard to land without damaging armor, but that might just be the learning curve.

[Void Angel]

Bump for getting moved back to the right forum!

[Grugore]

I play a scout, and I'm fearless in it. I die a lot, but I also help my team win games. Earlier today, I was in my raven on frozen city. I zipped through the cave and got behind the enemy. All but one of them turned to try and kill me. Guess what happened? They had their backs to the ridge when the rest of my team came over, guns blazing. I died, but we won. Don't be a freakin coward.

[Shade4x]

I still think this is funny. 100 ton Atlas as a LRM/sniper build, scouts that don't scout, but instead wait till the battle starts and then run in thinking they rock, and 6 out of 8 players being "sniper" builds that include ER large lasers.

Here is a hint to the masses. If you have 100 ton's of mech, your going to need to tank. When you don't tank, the poor hunchback becomes the main tank.

An awesome is a better for LRM's, and no, if you follow the data sheets that have been collected, you are usually matched up with another of the same weight, so 1 awesome does not equal 1 atlas.

If your a scout, your job is to scout so your team can position themselfs well.

Snipers are useless in mass. Pay attention to the games you win. They will almost always be the games where you have an atlas charging and tanking. Take a look at your losses, it will almost always be because your team has 8 guys trying to snipe at 800 meters and only 1 or 2 even have a gauss or ppc. Brawlers that charge win games. Why? It neutralizes the enemy's 8 snipers/lrm boats.

Atlas's cannot jam other atlas's from 800 meters away. Thus 1 LRM atlas can completely ruin the entire teams LRM boats when it maters.

[MegaBusta]

Every time I look at my team and see 2+ LRM-focused assaults I kinda resign myself to defeat right there, because that means we likely have hunchbacks and MAYBE catapults or phracts on the front lines as our damage soaks, while the other team likely has one or more atlas DDCs as their brawler/damage soaks.

If you want your team to win, it's a good idea to have your front line capable of soaking more damage than your fire support, be they direct fire or LRMs, because once the front line is broken your long-range build just became minimally effective at best.

I've also had a couple times where I realized we were in a long range poking match our team wasn't equipped to win, told the team to do a charge with me or some of us to flank to the side while we distracted them, only to say GO and end up charging in alone and get decimated because I'm the only easy target the other team has.

"Timidity" keeps happening beause it maintains a "somewhat safe" status quo, at least until one side suffers a few losses from the sniping war, then the winning side charges and finishes them off. Making an aggressive maneuver doesn't pay off if you do it alone, and good luck trying to get someone to do that without piloting a D-DC.

Either that or an ecm atlas and a couple other people pull off a sneak attack and do a complete rout of the other team.

I think those last two sentences sum up pretty much every pug game in MWO recently.

[Sifright]

Rejarial Galatan, on 22 January 2013 - 11:11 PM, said:

Okay, first off, you know nothing of which you speak. What you call cowardice, I call: tactical retreat, smart playing, common sense, non-lemming bull rush behavior.

Just who the heck <so wish I could use the word I WANT to use here, but, what ever> do you think YOU are to decry ANYONE of a play style that is NOT YOURS? It is idiotic at best to bull rush into a fight and get torn to bits because of it. There is a time honored saying, that applies DIRECTLY to you! Discretion is the better part of valor." which, means: if it is going to kill you to engage in a fight you cannot win, then, NOT engaging is the best choice, it is not cowardice, it is a viable, tactical move on the player's part. Oh, and uh, you this guy, from like 500 BCE in China? Name: Sun Tzu? He has a word or two on this:

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy with out ever fighting.

Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance with out ever fighting.

Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy with out ever fighting.

To win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy with out fighting is the acme of skill.

He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking your enemy's resistance without ever fighting.

So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike what is weak.

These words are by Sun Tzu, and by your definition in your rather zealous post, define him as coward as would be any who fight by his wisdom. Sorry dude, but, honestly, cowardice lies in attacking that which you do not understand.

look guys it's a bad.

So your advice is for us to find out where our opponents live and smash their pcs to kindling?

Edited by Sifright, 03 February 2013 - 01:31 PM.

[Void Angel]

I don't think you can turn a non-flammable object into kindling, no matter how much you hit it. Seriously, though, please don't respond to the two trolls in this thread; They've finally left the thread alone, and I'd like to keep it that way.

[BaronofBeanDip]

I pilot 3 hunchbacks atm. I often find myself relaying more information to my team than our lights....Especially when I use the one with a TAG.

[Uspez]

I agree that this is definitely an issue and keeps most games from being fun. The timidity is a mystery to me since there's nothing riding on these games right now: win or lose it's just a short pug game and you can start another one in a few minutes anyway. Be more brave people!

[Abivard]

It drives me nuts when it is a close run battle and all the sudden my team mate takes a hard hit, disengages from the fight and runs away to shutdown and hide. If I say anything I usually get the 'its hopeless, I must save myself' line in reply.

When we had Repair costs I could understand but not condone those actions, with no repair costs left what is the point?

I have been told to give up by those same type of players when they are dead and I am trying to win the game, presumably so they can get their mechs back to ruin someone else drop with their cowardly play style.

Sometimes we still lose, and sometimes we will win, But one thing is certain, as soon as you give up you will lose.

[Mordin Ashe]

How is employing a tactics that many refuse to adapt/counter bad, selfish thing? You know, you can argue about these things here on forums, but evolution for example has a simple opinion of your way of thinking: you are not adaptable and will extinct. Please, don't make evolution angry!

Shade4x, on 03 February 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

I still think this is funny. 100 ton Atlas as a LRM/sniper build, scouts that don't scout, but instead wait till the battle starts and then run in thinking they rock, and 6 out of 8 players being "sniper" builds that include ER large lasers.

Here is a hint to the masses. If you have 100 ton's of mech, your going to need to tank. When you don't tank, the poor hunchback becomes the main tank.

An awesome is a better for LRM's, and no, if you follow the data sheets that have been collected, you are usually matched up with another of the same weight, so 1 awesome does not equal 1 atlas.

If your a scout, your job is to scout so your team can position themselfs well.

Snipers are useless in mass. Pay attention to the games you win. They will almost always be the games where you have an atlas charging and tanking. Take a look at your losses, it will almost always be because your team has 8 guys trying to snipe at 800 meters and only 1 or 2 even have a gauss or ppc. Brawlers that charge win games. Why? It neutralizes the enemy's 8 snipers/lrm boats.

Atlas's cannot jam other atlas's from 800 meters away. Thus 1 LRM atlas can completely ruin the entire teams LRM boats when it maters.

Atlas is one of the best sniper Mechs currently in game, forcing Mechs with huge armor to brawl without softening the target from distance is, with all the respect, ******** and very harmfull to your own team. Also, it is a sort of mental label, which is rather common but at its core fundamentaly wrong. Scout is another example of that - you can scout by different means than running between enemies and wait to get shot. Again, you use label "Scout" and use it badly.
Games aren't won by Atlas charging and tanking. That is how Atlases die. In fact speed tank and stealth is more effective in tanking than any ammount of armor can ever be. See how one or two light Mechs running around the enemy team effectively tanks the entire enemy team trying to shoot them. No Atlas can do that without dying at instant.

Please, play some more games. Your opinions on role warfare need some more experience with actual gameplay to mature. World is not black and white, you know. Warfare has to be richer than a set of explicit roles and rules if you want to be unpredictable and consequently victorious. After all there is a good reason why current warfare looks differently than what Napoleon did.

Edited by Mordin Ashe, 10 February 2013 - 12:16 AM.

[Kmieciu]

Mordin Ashe, on 10 February 2013 - 12:05 AM, said:

Atlas is one of the best sniper Mechs currently in game, forcing Mechs with huge armor to brawl without softening the target from distance is, with all the respect, ******** and very harmfull to your own team. Also, it is a sort of mental label, which is rather common but at its core fundamentaly wrong. Scout is another example of that - you can scout by different means than running between enemies and wait to get shot. Again, you use label "Scout" and use it badly.
Games aren't won by Atlas charging and tanking. That is how Atlases die. In fact speed tank and stealth is more effective in tanking than any ammount of armor can ever be. See how one or two light Mechs running around the enemy team effectively tanks the entire enemy team trying to shoot them. No Atlas can do that without dying at instant.

I could not agree more! An Atlas is slow and easy to hit, and 100 points of armor is meaningless when the whole enemy team concentrates fire on you. In my opinion a fast dragon or a catapult are the best tanks now. Ravens used to be the best tanks, but due to netcode improvements that is not the case now.

[Teralitha]

Void Angel, on 18 January 2013 - 11:06 PM, said:

So... 1. Scout 'mechs are scouts and should not scout? /logicfail You don't have to skyline yourself, but you do have to go out there and scout - particularly since PGI hopes to have their initial run of netcode fixes ready for the next patch. 2. A straw man is where you respond to an argument that wasn't made in order to discredit a real opinion. I never said to charge into their team with a sniper 'mech. I said to maneuver so you're not just cowering behind Coward's Ridge (for example) and taking the occasional potshot while the team fights. You need to be in a good position to assist your team so that you actually can keep firing. Please read posts more carefully. 3. A fire support Atlas (the only 'mech I mentioned in this point,) meaning an LRM boat, is a stupid build. Anything you can do in that role with an Atlas, the Stalker (and possibly the Awesome) does better. There's nothing inherently wrong with putting in some LRMS for long-range engagements - but you can't afford to make them your primary armament (seriously! The guy had TWO MEDIUM LASERS on an Assault chassis.) An Atlas shines when he's soaking up firepower at medium to short range. It does this not only by being amazingly tough, but by being a rallying point for other 'mechs. I've seen fire support Atlas builds with less firepower than an equivalent catapult. It's just a bad build.

I find your atlas driving methods interesting.... your in the front alot... you die alot...... but then you said you also win alot... I think I can gleen from this that you also have a premade team alot carrying you. Driving an atlas to the front line of the battle is not smart. Expecting eeryone on your team to follow you and save you from the enemy... just bad thnking. This way of piloting speaks volumes. You are bad, and your team is generally good, if they can recover from what IMHO is stupid play.

But thats how you like to play, and I wouldnt tell you to not do what you find fun. I am a tactical thinking player, but even I find some fun in saying what the hell and charging in on occasion hoping my team is behind me and not caring about the results. Sometimes it works, but because it works sometimes, doesnt mean its a good strategy.

I noticed one of your siglines is "follow the fracking atlas" Well I hate to tell you this but... if your team isnt following you to the enemy team to die, they are better players than you. When I play 4 man premade and I see a lone atlas charging straight ahead alone, I let them go alone. I cant stop them from suiciding, and I wont risk my team trying to save them either. better to have only 1 member of the team get into a bad situation than half of it, its easier to save the match down only 1 mech instead of 3 or 4. I cna only hope those lone atlas piltos charging blindly into the enemy team will one day learn their folly and change.

Edited by Teralitha, 10 February 2013 - 09:49 AM.

[Teralitha]

MegaBusta, on 03 February 2013 - 12:47 PM, said:

Every time I look at my team and see 2+ LRM-focused assaults I kinda resign myself to defeat right there, because that means we likely have hunchbacks and MAYBE catapults or phracts on the front lines as our damage soaks, while the other team likely has one or more atlas DDCs as their brawler/damage soaks.

If you want your team to win, it's a good idea to have your front line capable of soaking more damage than your fire support, be they direct fire or LRMs, because once the front line is broken your long-range build just became minimally effective at best.

I've also had a couple times where I realized we were in a long range poking match our team wasn't equipped to win, told the team to do a charge with me or some of us to flank to the side while we distracted them, only to say GO and end up charging in alone and get decimated because I'm the only easy target the other team has.

"Timidity" keeps happening beause it maintains a "somewhat safe" status quo, at least until one side suffers a few losses from the sniping war, then the winning side charges and finishes them off. Making an aggressive maneuver doesn't pay off if you do it alone, and good luck trying to get someone to do that without piloting a D-DC.

Either that or an ecm atlas and a couple other people pull off a sneak attack and do a complete rout of the other team.

I think those last two sentences sum up pretty much every pug game in MWO recently.

The mentaility in this topic is silly.. Atlas's charging the front line is the best strategy? Yes, all brawlers using cover vs 8 snipers is gerally going to win on a map with plenty of cover.. But you dont know if your facing 8 snipers do you? If you are, then great, your idea works, but if your enemy are not a sniper team... guess what... you can lose badly with your strategy. It sounds your methods of winning are probably yeilding you a less than 50% win ratio and you think that means your strategies are good when in fact they are not.

[Void Angel]

Mordin Ashe, on 10 February 2013 - 12:05 AM, said:

How is employing a tactics that many refuse to adapt/counter bad, selfish thing? You know, you can argue about these things here on forums, but evolution for example has a simple opinion of your way of thinking: you are not adaptable and will extinct. Please, don't make evolution angry!

The bad tactics I mention in this post would have a postively Darwinian effect on players if we had any kind of Elo system in place. However, since we don't have Elo yet, the pace of evolution is slow - I'm trying to give it a helping hand by correcting bad tactical practices.

Quote

Atlas is one of the best sniper Mechs currently in game, forcing Mechs with huge armor to brawl without softening the target from distance is, with all the respect, ******** and very harmfull to your own team. Also, it is a sort of mental label, which is rather common but at its core fundamentaly wrong. Scout is another example of that - you can scout by different means than running between enemies and wait to get shot. Again, you use label "Scout" and use it badly.

First, I haven't said anything against sniper Atlases, or even snipers in general; the only Atlas build mentioned in this thread was an LRM boat, which is simply a bad idea. 40 LRMS and 2 medium lasers is what you might expect to see on a Hunchback, not an Atlas; this was not a hypothetical example. As for scouts, since when does "go look at them" equate to "run through their entire team so they can shoot at you?" Also, as I've already explained, there is specialization within the role; but any fast 'mech needs to be willing to scout, even if they're specialized as a light killer - because of the speed essential to survival in that role. Anyone can do visual spotting and close recon, but only a scout has the speed to get out there and scout.

Quote

Games aren't won by Atlas charging and tanking. That is how Atlases die. In fact speed tank and stealth is more effective in tanking than any ammount of armor can ever be. See how one or two light Mechs running around the enemy team effectively tanks the entire enemy team trying to shoot them. No Atlas can do that without dying at instant.

Wait, I thought that lights "running between enemies and wait[ing] to get shot," was a bad idea? Which is it? Regardless, your statement is wrong anyway: not only do I not preclude whittling down the enemy, an Atlas is the best 'mech in the game to deal with that kind of close combat. The only way he dies "in an instant" is if he runs into more than he can chew because he is fighting blind (see point about scouting) or when his team isn't willing to back him up. It might be his fault if he's just charging blindly in - I'm not telling him to be stupid, I'm trying to correct a bad tactical mentality.

I'm seeing a disturbing trend in this thread of people accusing me of saying things I haven't said, or insisting that some partial quote they've taken out of context absolutely has to mean what they say it means. I know there's a lot to my posts, but please read them carefully before firing off a reply.

Quote

Please, play some more games. Your opinions on role warfare need some more experience with actual gameplay to mature. World is not black and white, you know. Warfare has to be richer than a set of explicit roles and rules if you want to be unpredictable and consequently victorious. After all there is a good reason why current warfare looks differently than what Napoleon did.

Now you're just being condescending and rude. In point of fact you have no idea how many games I've played; or what my win/loss ratio is; or what level of overall skill I have; or what real life experience I have which may be applicable to my grasp of tactics. And no, I'm not going to provide you with any of that information - much of it cannot be verified anyway, and in the end, you're going to have to deal with my actual ideas and reasoning instead of objecting to made-up arguments and making a fallacious appeals to your own presumed authority.

Edited by Void Angel, 10 February 2013 - 11:04 PM.

[Void Angel]

Teralitha, on 10 February 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

I find your atlas driving methods interesting.... your in the front alot... you die alot...... but then you said you also win alot... I think I can gleen from this that you also have a premade team alot carrying you. Driving an atlas to the front line of the battle is not smart. Expecting eeryone on your team to follow you and save you from the enemy... just bad thnking. This way of piloting speaks volumes. You are bad, and your team is generally good, if they can recover from what IMHO is stupid play.

But thats how you like to play, and I wouldnt tell you to not do what you find fun. I am a tactical thinking player, but even I find some fun in saying what the hell and charging in on occasion hoping my team is behind me and not caring about the results. Sometimes it works, but because it works sometimes, doesnt mean its a good strategy.

I noticed one of your siglines is "follow the fracking atlas" Well I hate to tell you this but... if your team isnt following you to the enemy team to die, they are better players than you. When I play 4 man premade and I see a lone atlas charging straight ahead alone, I let them go alone. I cant stop them from suiciding, and I wont risk my team trying to save them either. better to have only 1 member of the team get into a bad situation than half of it, its easier to save the match down only 1 mech instead of 3 or 4. I cna only hope those lone atlas piltos charging blindly into the enemy team will one day learn their folly and change.

Actually, what you're "gleening" is self-serving speculation based on no facts whatsoever. What's interesting is that you assume that I play a 4-man premade against Pugs like you do - and you assume I die a lot, something I don't recall saying. Both yourself and the poster above you insist on putting words in my mouth, claiming I'm advocating stupid things like charging alone at the enemy lines - that's a straw man fallacy, or what my mother simply called "telling lies." In actuality, I said:

Void Angel, on 18 January 2013 - 03:44 PM, said:

At the end of the day, you should be cautious up to a point - recklessness is the courage of a fool, after all. But you have to keep in mind that, just as you don't go to a knife fight without expecting to be cut, you can't go to a 'mech fight and not expect to be blasted apart and melted down into commemorative paperweights from time to time. The most important thing you can do is cooperate with your team, no matter what your build.

If you're a "tactical thinking player," fine! Let's hear some tactical thought. Otherwise, you're just coming to my thread and insulting people without contributing anything useful.

Edited by Void Angel, 10 February 2013 - 11:53 PM.

[Red Klown X]

Let the people make their own build , learn about their error and improve themself . Dont force them , it will come soon or later , even if for some never !

[Void Angel]

That's like not teaching your kids to drive properly. Let them learn about their errors and improve themselves! Don't force them! But in the mean time, all the other drivers have to deal with them being on the road. I'd rather help people than wait for them to learn on their own - and only a tiny fraction of my post dealt with any specific build.

[Armando]

@ Void Anggel

I agree that I am not a fan of defensive minded play style. I also agree with you that the Atlas is the BEST brawler, out of all the possible mechs that can brawl, that does not mean that brawling is the ONLY thing they are good for.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the Atlas > Stalker in both mobility (how fast they can turn), and twisting (can torso twist further and faster), and while you can put a TON of LRM15s or LRM20s in the Stalker you can NOT do it without running an XL engine (very, Very, VERY dumb thing to do in a mech who side torso sticks out like a sore thumb).

Listen, I love the Atlas…I love the Atlas, so much so that I have not one, but TWO different D-DCs. My 'main' D-DC is STD 350, AC/20, SRM6x3, 2MedLas (your good old fashion brawler). My 'backup" D-DC also has STD 350 but instead of a 'brawler' weapons load out it has... ERPPC, LRM15x3, and Tag. Guess which mech 'on average' gets more damage/kills???

My LRM D-DC is faster, turns better, has more armor than any Stalker....AND it has ECM. I don't have to use an XL engine either (unlike in my Stalkers). As far as the 'each team has one mech left, the LRM Atlas is honked' notion....the last time I took out the LRM Atlas my 3 other teammates (also running LRMs) died, our 4 pugs were also dead, and I was left alone to fight not one, but THREE enemies....they all died, we won, I ended up with over 1K damage and 4 KBs, so it CAN be done. (killing the last mech “RVN-3L” with the ERPPC took a couple of minutes, but he ended up going down like a virgin on prom night. :-)

The majority of your post about hanging back and not moving up until the teams D-DC is dead (or almost dead) being a bad strategy is spot on, a good read for any new MechWarrior to be sure!!!

[Pandamcpanda]

[Redacted]. The whole argument that an atlas is a worse missile boat then a stalker is laughable, and having an extra 15 tons in a system that pairs you at class ratios just shows why not go atlas.

Edited by Niko Snow, 13 February 2013 - 05:06 AM.