783 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

You'll need three variants to make the Atlas work, like most assault chassis. But it's quite rewarding if your team lets you play it well. =D

Just be prepared to have 0-kill, 300 damage matches where you drove the win - and none of your teammates will believe you did it.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Void Angel, on 14 February 2015 - 04:34 PM, said:

Just be prepared to have 0-kill, 300 damage matches where you drove the win - and none of your teammates will believe you did it.

One of my most glorious matches, group of about 6x 228th, plus others vs. a group of CSJ (now JGx) with a couple of Lords mixed in on Forest Colony ... we were rolling heavy ... 2x AS-7-D-DC, DWF, and a few TBRs (because we'd been running into these guys pretty much all night).

They started at the uphill spawn and immediately set up a firing line in the water behind the island.

We knew we couldn't trade with them, and had to brawl, just needed a sacrificial hunk of armor to "open the door".

We moved into the water, with our faster mechs near the stern of the ship, and our assaults stacked at the hole in the ship, and I waded forward in my Atlas, first one shoulder forward, then the other, watching a brilliant fan of laser vomit melt away my arms, my side torsos, and ultimately my CT ... I did something like 100 damage, and died in the first 15 seconds of the engagement, but when my team closed the distance, the enemies were all two alphas closer to over heating. It took a few more minutes, but we walked away victorious.

We won primarily because we had a team that trusted each other, but also because I used almost every bit of my 592 points of armor ... while it is fun to wade through a team punching holes in things, barely living and getting half a dozen kills, it is sometimes just as satisfying to be the guy that enabled others to do so.

[Tim East]

Gift of the Magi, on 14 February 2015 - 03:47 PM, said:

Now hearing all this talk about how an Atlas can be used to open up an enemy line and push....I do have this Atlas I got for ordering the Wraith Edition of Resistance. I normally prefer speed and flexibility, but if there is a need for a giant chunk of metal meat to get things moving, I am willing to re-train myself.

I've had surprisingly good fortune using a SRM Stormcrow as a sort of shock-trooper mech. It's beefy enough to frequently give two alphas before falling to the enemy team, fast enough to leap around a corner in a real hurry, and punchy enough to wreck any one guy. Just know that if you're planning to be the sacrifice, you're relying on your team to pick up the pieces, which they will not do about 2/3rds of the time in my experience. It probably works better when you have a group with voip.

[Kahadras]

Quote

Just be prepared to have 0-kill, 300 damage matches where you drove the win - and none of your teammates will believe you did it.

I always check post match scores to see how our assaults did. TBH though if we win then all is forgiven in terms of what people have done (or haven't done) during the game. The annoyance comes when your team loses and people haven't done their jobs.

[Wintersdark]

Scores are very, very misleading. They're a very poor indicator of performance and who did "their jobs" well or not.

There's not really better indicators, of course - it's all we've got at the end of the match - but even so, that scoreboard is a terrible indicator of performance.

[Gift of the Magi]

Wintersdark, on 15 February 2015 - 09:03 AM, said:

Scores are very, very misleading. They're a very poor indicator of performance and who did "their jobs" well or not.

There's not really better indicators, of course - it's all we've got at the end of the match - but even so, that scoreboard is a terrible indicator of performance.

Agreed. If you are using an assault as a meat shield (odd thing to type when talking about a giant metal box), then it is taking the role of the 'tank' in MMOs.

The traditional tank does not worry about how much damage it does, but how much damage and attention it absorbs. I like the Atlas because it has enough armor to take a beating, enough firepower to force you to respect it and it is THE scariest looking mech in the game (as opposed to the Dire Wolf, which may have more firepower and armor but looking like a mini-van with legs). I see an Atlas and I immediately shoot it in the face and find cover.

I do not grade our assaults for their kills. I grade them by how often do I see them on the front line and are they moving forward or holding the line...or are they moving backward IN PACKS. I do not hold it against a lone assault retreating because no one came to help....in fact if I see that I try to run over and help if I can. But the whole lance? Sorry but no. I have 3 Stalkers, which are mostly support-type Assaults and I STILL try to keep them moving forward at all times. Even if I die with no kills, at least the guys behind me have time to wreak the enemy.

Plus my Stalkers are scary ;-)

[Alaskan Nobody]

Wintersdark, on 15 February 2015 - 09:03 AM, said:

Scores are very, very misleading. They're a very poor indicator of performance and who did "their jobs" well or not.

Seconding this

There are many many many matches in my Locusts (let alone my other mechs) where my score is non-existent.

But if I can keep the enemies attention on me, and not my teammates?
IE:
Had one yesterday where 4 of the enemy spent ~4 minutes chasing me around the map, that is 4 minutes they were not helping THEIR teammates
4 minutes the 11 other people on my team were chewing up the 8 on theirs.

My score?
~20 damage and 3 assists
With frequently similar scores on my Atlas and Stalker, if only because I am focused more on surviving the barrage and leading the charge than on shooting people.
(And people say the upcoming arm-buffs to the Atlas are gonna be wasted. )

[Wintersdark]

Shar Wolf, on 15 February 2015 - 09:41 AM, said:

Seconding this

There are many many many matches in my Locusts (let alone my other mechs) where my score is non-existent.

But if I can keep the enemies attention on me, and not my teammates?
IE:
Had one yesterday where 4 of the enemy spent ~4 minutes chasing me around the map, that is 4 minutes they were not helping THEIR teammates
4 minutes the 11 other people on my team were chewing up the 8 on theirs.

My score?
~20 damage and 3 assists
With frequently similar scores on my Atlas and Stalker, if only because I am focused more on surviving the barrage and leading the charge than on shooting people.
(And people say the upcoming arm-buffs to the Atlas are gonna be wasted. <_<)

Re: arm buffs - they're not as good as torso buffs, but their awesome anyways. Played well, its not unusual to lose arms before torsos on an atlas, and anything allowing you to soak more damage means if nothing else more ammo expended and more heat generated on the opposing team, more damage not directed at your teammates.

But yeah.

As well, you could be doing everything right and still not accomplish much scoreboard wise. You can play well, but be outplayed by the opposing team. This is one (of the many) reasons that the "see how much my teammates sucked!" screenshots piss me off.

Those teammates with low scores could well have just been the ones the opposing team focused down first, while the one guy with the high damage done got it by hiding in the back and playing it "safe".

Guy in the back may or may not have done anything wrong, but those who died first didn't necessarily play poorly either. A good, hard, well executed push can roll a team fast, and once it starts rolling good play won't make a wit of difference on the scoreboard.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Wintersdark, on 15 February 2015 - 11:01 AM, said:

Re: arm buffs - they're not as good as torso buffs, but their awesome anyways. Played well, its not unusual to lose arms before torsos on an atlas, and anything allowing you to soak more damage means if nothing else more ammo expended and more heat generated on the opposing team, more damage not directed at your teammates.

But yeah.

Just try telling that to the haters though.
According to the feedback - the very fact that any ever though any arms should be buffed should be sent to a mental hospital on account of lacking the brain cells to remember to breath!
(I exaggerate... slightly)

[Wintersdark]

Shar Wolf, on 15 February 2015 - 11:03 AM, said:

Just try telling that to the haters though.
According to the feedback - the very fact that any ever though any arms should be buffed should be sent to a mental hospital on account of lacking the brain cells to remember to breath!
(I exaggerate... slightly)

people love to over react and not think things through. As well, it's definitely been my experience that people tend to come up with their own view of the game and anything that doesn't fit that narrow view is disregarded or outright attacked, rather than being considered and explored objectively.

[Nightmare1]

Had a match last night where the leader of a four man took group command on Tourmaline and promptly ordered everyone to assemble in D5 (in the open). As soon as we did, he ordered everyone to form a firing line towards E6 (Crystal Palace). A couple of us asked him if he was out of his mind since we would be vulnerable out in the open and at the base of the slope, not to mention arty bait. So, he ordered everyone to fall back to the borders near the downed Drop Ship and reform the firing line.

Of course, that's the moment Red Team hit us.

That premade got wiped out quick and we found ourselves down a whole lance. My Unit buddy and I collected the survivors and launched a sideways counterattack that crushed Red's flank and rolled down through them. In the end, we actually managed to save the match despite fighting from a bad position and in fewer numbers simply because our team rallied and charged.

Timidity is not a tactic. That premade practiced timidity and paid for it. The rest of us practiced aggression and turned the tables on Red Team, winning the day quite handily.

If I have the vid then I'll post it up. It was a pretty good fight; one of the better scraps I've had in a while here on MWO.

[Void Angel]

Kahadras, on 15 February 2015 - 08:38 AM, said:

I always check post match scores to see how our assaults did. TBH though if we win then all is forgiven in terms of what people have done (or haven't done) during the game. The annoyance comes when your team loses and people haven't done their jobs.

Like some people have pointed out, it can be very difficult to gauge true performance based on match score. You can find correlations after the fact based on what you saw in match, but simply looking at the score doesn't tell everything.

[Tim East]

Nightmare1, on 15 February 2015 - 11:23 AM, said:

Timidity is not a tactic. That premade practiced timidity and paid for it. The rest of us practiced aggression and turned the tables on Red Team, winning the day quite handily.

Aggression is useful simply from a position of psychological advantage. When you get close to snipers and LRM-boats, a lot of them tend to panic and shoot everything they have regardless of its effective range. I seem to recall a speech given in one of the novels about mechwarriors who heat up faster than the mechs they drive. Way of the Clans, I believe.

Anyway, if you attack your foes closely and fiercely, it puts pressure on them to shoot back, and it's hard to watch every variable at once when you're right on top of their Atlas's Richard Cameron shooting them in the leg.

[Nightmare1]

Tim East, on 15 February 2015 - 01:36 PM, said:

Aggression is useful simply from a position of psychological advantage. When you get close to snipers and LRM-boats, a lot of them tend to panic and shoot everything they have regardless of its effective range. I seem to recall a speech given in one of the novels about mechwarriors who heat up faster than the mechs they drive. Way of the Clans, I believe.

Anyway, if you attack your foes closely and fiercely, it puts pressure on them to shoot back, and it's hard to watch every variable at once when you're right on top of their Atlas's Richard Cameron shooting them in the leg.

Yep! It's one reason why bayonet charges are so feared, even today: http://militaryhisto...ayonet-charges/

The bottomline, is that when someone is coming at you hard enough and fast enough, you don't normally have time to think of those around you; just yourself. Pressing the enemy gives your forces the initiative and forces the defenders to conform to your battle. In short, attacking not only presents the defenders with a psychological challenge but also the attackers with battlefield control,

When you stop attacking, you cede that advantage to the defenders and allow yourself to play their game.

I found that vid I mentioned and am uploading it. In the meantime, here's a better one showing what aggression can do for you when coordinated:



Match score hit 3-8 in Red Team's favor at one point. It took some hard drivin' to win, but we pulled it off.

[Kahadras]

Quote

Like some people have pointed out, it can be very difficult to gauge true performance based on match score.

Yup but if there are a couple of assault mechs that have done less than 100 damage on my team then that's a fair reason as to why we might not have won that round IMHO. Being able to tank damage is fine but assaults need to be dealing some out in return. Now they might have been caught in a bad position or have been shot to pieces at range through no fault of their own but if your assaults have a bad game then the team has a bad game IMO.

Edited by Kahadras, 15 February 2015 - 03:14 PM.

[Nightmare1]

Finally got that vid uploaded:



BerserX and I weren't able to assume command due to fighting on the front. Neither of us had the luxury of typing while engaged. However, the Pugs were smart enough to follow our lead and smash through the flank with us.

It was a good scrap, even if a clueless King Crab ally did leg me in the end.

[Void Angel]

Kahadras, on 15 February 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

Yup but if there are a couple of assault mechs that have done less than 100 damage on my team then that's a fair reason as to why we might not have won that round IMHO. Being able to tank damage is fine but assaults need to be dealing some out in return. Now they might have been caught in a bad position or have been shot to pieces at range through no fault of their own but if your assaults have a bad game then the team has a bad game IMO.

It's possible, but consider: I've been that Assault. Sometimes, you just screw up, but a lot of the time it's coming around a corner with no intel (because all the lights are Firestarters who tag along in the back) and getting hammered by the enemy team - while your team takes one look at the incoming fire and wets themselves. Nothing annoys an Assault pilot more than wading to their death through an ocean of incoming fire, only to find out that their team used the opportunity to try and stand on top of each other behind a rock - and likely blame the Assault for the loss.

[Wintersdark]

Void Angel, on 16 February 2015 - 05:38 PM, said:

It's possible, but consider: I've been that Assault. Sometimes, you just screw up, but a lot of the time it's coming around a corner with no intel (because all the lights are Firestarters who tag along in the back) and getting hammered by the enemy team - while your team takes one look at the incoming fire and wets themselves. Nothing annoys an Assault pilot more than wading to their death through an ocean of incoming fire, only to find out that their team used the opportunity to try and stand on top of each other behind a rock - and likely blame the Assault for the loss.

Or the whole team moved at full speed away from the assault lance, who were left at the mercy of the entire enemy team.

Or the assault gets pinned in full view of the enemy team by a swarm of mechs pressing up against his back.

Or friendly mechs keep jumping into his field of fire, preventing him fr.bringing his weapons to bear effectively.

Or he's just rushed and effectively focussed down first.

Its been my experience in losing games, the guy with the highest score is often not the best player, he's just the one that his in the back and died last.

Likewise, thebguy that died first may have been an awesome player, who either made a small mistake the enemy team capitalized on or who was just unlucky - both a serious threat in the start of the match when you don't have lights actually scouting. Assaults have to make decisions about where to go very early, so they need to know enemy positions asap. They can't always redirect to a better place mid way, as it just takes too long.

That's pretty key to assault play, in fact. Lack of speed forces you to commit to a plan very early, and ride it through. You rely on your faster teammates to provide the intelligence to make good early desicions, and if nobody does, it can be quite a coin toss.

[Void Angel]

Hey, lost this response in the Notification Overload of forgetting to unfollow a feedback thread. =)

Yeah, I've been in about all of those situations as an assault - though I've also seen awesome players survive in the back too.

I've come to find that often (though certainly not always) the Assaults getting left behind is largely the Assaults' fault - such as on the standard Pug Rotation tactic on River City skirmish fights. The Assaults on the Lower/upper city side will be in the leftmost lance, and the teams will start to rotate counterclockwise (flanking right) to try and avoid the Citadel Sniper Standoff(tm.) The Assaults, notably Dire Wolves, will thus come under fire as the trailing element - and then stop to fire back. If Assaults keep moving, under most circumstances they can get to the fight without taking significant damage, but if they stop to fire back they end up isolated with a ride on the rofflecopter.

This is not always the case, however, and players will often ignore the Assault's frantic cries of "I've got a light swarm in me! Need help in B4!" or et cetera. This flows from some of the same causes as lack of scouting. For example, take the Firestarter. Many Firestarter pilots have learned that they get the best performance out of their 'mech when backstabbing larger opponents who cannot afford to pay attention to them - such as assaults engaging their counterparts. So, the Firestarter jockeys, who have all short-range guns anyway, will hang back and try to preserve their armor instead of running the risk of scouting and taking early damage. Well, and good, but these pilots have concluded that this is The Way You Play the Firestarter, and will refuse to adapt that playstyle to the reality of being the only light(s) on a given team. Same goes for ECM Ravens who are "covering the team."

This is why details matter in all things; overly simplistic solutions to problems usually flow from misunderstanding the problem itself - and lead to maladaptive behaviors. =)

[McGruberr]

I gotta say, I LOVE this post. The I have to agree that there simply isn't enough teamwork going on in pug matches. This definitely leads to timidity when you can't depend on your team to back you up. I'm not a big assault player myself, but I do drop as a crab or atlas from time to time, and nothing is more infuriating when a team calls a charge and then doesn't follow through with it leaving me alone out in the open with a slow assault chassis. I agree that timidity is simply not a viable tactic. There is a difference between being careful and being timid. I loved the point you made on armor being a resource. I never thought about it that way, but totally agree. I think more people, especially in pug matches, need to start using that thinking. Over-all great post. Thanks for sharing it.