783 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

Again, nothing in this guide told you to do any of that, so what's your point?

[Burning2nd]

Dont know what your talking about... Never seen this problem...

It take me about 42 seconds to be behind the enemy team... Some time its just takes longer to find someone to single out...



Dont slip up ladys... Im hunting you

[MacClearly]

Void Angel, on 13 February 2017 - 05:34 PM, said:

Heheh. I'll have to look into it.

PS: what idiocy?

Oh shoot, Evil Goof is my alt and this is my main account.

[Void Angel]

Lol! I don't keep lists of people I'm mad at in the forums other than my ignore list - got some banned people there, which makes me feel vindicated from time to time. =D

[Tesunie]

MacClearly, on 14 February 2017 - 01:38 PM, said:

Oh shoot, Evil Goof is my alt and this is my main account.

Void Angel, on 14 February 2017 - 01:49 PM, said:

Lol! I don't keep lists of people I'm mad at in the forums other than my ignore list - got some banned people there, which makes me feel vindicated from time to time. =D

I always treat every person as though they are a different person for every thread I meet them in. Keeps hurt feelings from remaining hurt I find.

Only people who I don't do this with are people on my ignore list, which are there for a reason. At the same time though, even those people I will give reasonable doubt to and hear what they have to say. I just refuse to respond to them... because I don't wish to spark an incident needlessly...

Also, I know so many people from the forums, I wouldn't be able to keep them all organized anyway...

[MacClearly]

Tesunie, on 14 February 2017 - 01:54 PM, said:

I always treat every person as though they are a different person for every thread I meet them in. Keeps hurt feelings from remaining hurt I find.

Only people who I don't do this with are people on my ignore list, which are there for a reason. At the same time though, even those people I will give reasonable doubt to and hear what they have to say. I just refuse to respond to them... because I don't wish to spark an incident needlessly...

Also, I know so many people from the forums, I wouldn't be able to keep them all organized anyway...

People that I can disagree with and stay civil stand out to me.

Void Angel, on 14 February 2017 - 01:49 PM, said:

Lol! I don't keep lists of people I'm mad at in the forums other than my ignore list - got some banned people there, which makes me feel vindicated from time to time. =D

Wait!!! I was forgiven no????

[Void Angel]

Uh, sure? Sure!

[MacClearly]

There are many reasons to bump this thread and perhaps it can achieve pinned status.

I have been noticing a real drop in the quality of play lately in the solo queue and with the matchmaker functioning so terribly and with population seemingly getting lower there doesn't seem to be a lot of hope.

The current meta is by all the top players accounts PPFLD. This type of sniping role can lend itself to the kind of timid behaviour that Void Angel wrote this guide to combat through education. The idea of winning trades also has to have the balance of actually putting out damage and taking risks. A couple of players that I know, who are way above average have told me that if I am not balancing on the threshold of my heat, I am doing it wrong. I believe them. Simply because doing so means that I am taking as many shots as I possibly can, and doing as much damage as my aim and skill allows.

There is also still quite a lot of room for skirmishers and brawlers. Eventually every fight comes down to a brawl and those PPC/Guass guys don't that well. Large pulse and splat are still awesome in quick play. I see so many guys that are really bad at pop tarting and doing it game in and game out without improvement.... there are other viable options.

Sometimes the amount of derp and 12-0 stomps can make it really hard to stay positive. Generally I try to point the obvious out and never call out any particular player unless I am making fun of myself. I do sometimes just revert to putting out damage and trying to get kill or two to make cbills, but that isn't as fun as winning.

A lot of it comes down to people forgeting that in quick play murder ball is extremely successful in the vast majority of situations. I have seen mindless pushes of just folks storming in be effective more times than not. Aggression and always keeping the other team on their toes works so well I am left stunned when I see so many who are prone to just retreat over and over with same god awful results time in and time out.....

So really hope that more people read this guide and not neccessarily this frustrated rant I am pounding out now on my keyboard.

[Void Angel]

Did someone say, "frustrated rant?" How do you think this guide got started?

[Kokurokoki]

Just stumbled onto this thread and it has been very helpful. It actually helped me win quite a few matches because I was able to motivate the team to push forward when they were unsure of what to do or content with cowering behind ineffective defensive positions..

However, it also makes defeats all the more frustrating. I just played a game earlier when the entire team was trying to push a hill and we were waiting for our three assaults, only to have the Kodiak stop halfway and sit there sniping with gauss cannons while the rest of the team got shot up as we lost our momentum. Our supernovas came up, and then stopped on the second line to lob LRMs to practically no effect.

Needless to say, we got totally destroyed despite having a strong initial push that would have won us the game if we had more direct firepower. What's worse is that no one was saying anything, so the rest of the team was waiting on assaults that did nothing but sit at the backline wasting their armor.

[Ragnahawk]

Use the command wheel, and or read the command wheel. I will always mark enemies near me to select either a target or a danger, and my intuition will always let me know when I'm about to be overrun which I use the help command for. (Pretty useful for a brain tool)

[Ragnahawk]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 06:25 PM, said:

I'm small, but I'm not made of ******* magic. That's basically wagering that the ENTIRE enemy team are such bad shots that I won't take what is, for me, grievous amounts of damage from possibly multiple alphas. I do not make such wagers. Hell, ONE good shot amongst them with a decent PPFLD build could absolutely put me into the dirt. A pair of Gauss slugs and a PPC blast slamming into me will probably turn my INTERNALS cherry red, if I'm fresh. If not, it could very well ******* kill me outright. For you, heavy/assault jock, it won't even ablate all of your armor.

Furthermore, I'm not interested in being a sacrificial lamb just to give you a brief opening while their weapons cycle, assuming you're even aware enough/smart enough to take advantage of it.

If I am the first thing an enemy sees in weapon range, either I have done something terribly wrong, or you have.

There are a couple of ways you can pull it off. One is to hug a enemy mech so they risk damaging their own teammates. Two is to dangle yourself slightly until you hook the swarm, and then drag them into unfavorable terrain or friendlies or three you own quicken their deaths by hurting their backs (once) and immediately running away.

[Void Angel]

Kokurokoki, on 24 February 2017 - 11:09 PM, said:

Just stumbled onto this thread and it has been very helpful. It actually helped me win quite a few matches because I was able to motivate the team to push forward when they were unsure of what to do or content with cowering behind ineffective defensive positions..

However, it also makes defeats all the more frustrating. I just played a game earlier when the entire team was trying to push a hill and we were waiting for our three assaults, only to have the Kodiak stop halfway and sit there sniping with gauss cannons while the rest of the team got shot up as we lost our momentum. Our supernovas came up, and then stopped on the second line to lob LRMs to practically no effect.

Needless to say, we got totally destroyed despite having a strong initial push that would have won us the game if we had more direct firepower. What's worse is that no one was saying anything, so the rest of the team was waiting on assaults that did nothing but sit at the backline wasting their armor.

Ick. You will see that sort of thing more when you have just-released 'mechs on the field. Players in new 'mechs know they're not at full strength and are learning to play their chassis, so they tend to be a bit hesitant to engage.

I'm very glad the guide has helped you, though. Just remember that the game really kinda trains that kind of thing into people, and your blood pressure should remain manageable - after all, that's why I wrote this to begin with. =P

[MadHornet]

Bumped for awareness, this thread is needed again because these are the only teams I've gotten in the past 30 games.

[Kaethir]

I just wanted to say thank you for this, and people should pay attention - Both this and the follow the atlas thread are excellent advice.

[Void Angel]

Glad to help! Just goes to show that what you can accomplish when you channel your intense frustration into something positive in order to avoid being banned after a fit of volcanic rage.

[Jace Blue]

Here to perform some necromancy. Like, 9? years after the OP and 5 after the last post and this is still a problem.

[KursedVixen]

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

Edit: Now with 100% More French!

This is for all the times you've looked at your minimap and seen the entire team huddled together like a flock of frightened sheep while the enemy team advances as a unit and swarms you under. This is for every time you've died after heavy combat and popped in to spectate an undamaged brawler plinking away with his one long-range weapon. This is for all the times you've seen an isolated Victor running along your flank, and couldn't get anyone big enough to stop him to leave cover and try. This is for all of us, Mechwarriors - Timidity is Not a Tactic.

Now, I enjoy MWO - enough to write guides for it, in fact. But if I had to identify the number one problem I run into in the game, it wouldn't be a broken weapon system, an overpowered or underpowered 'Mech, or even matchmaker issues and hit registration. No, the biggest issue I see with MWO is more serious - the game trains cowardice.

The process by which it does this is simple, psychologically speaking. People learn by interpreting the feedback provided by their actions. If they get punished for doing something a certain way, they will tend to try other ways to do things, and deferred punishments and rewards are far less effective at modifying behaviors. The problem in MWO is that the rewards for certain good practices (such as taking damage in order to get close or set up a cross fire) are deferred, but the punishment - the visceral negative feedback of damage alarms, missile warnings, and incoming weapons fire - is immediate, particularly if you make an error. This leads us to the major problem affecting PuG gameplay:

Vicious Cycle. The combination of deferred rewards and immediate punishments, combined with the lack of communication typical to PuGs and the dominance of long-range weaponry, sets up a vicious cycle - what is called in biology a positive feedback loop. Players receive immediate punishment from exposing themselves to damage, even for good cause, and for making errors. The rewards for many actions, on the other hand, are not immediately given, and can be precluded entirely by the actions of your team - if they fail to support you, you can do the right thing for nothing. This encourages players to play more cautiously, letting other players take the risks; thus causing other players to learn that PuGs can't be trusted to watch their backs; which encourages them to play more cautiously, and so on; the process feeds on itself in a vicious cycle - a positive feedback loop.

Timidity as a Tactic: Thus we have the problems which plague so much of the PuG environment. Players will run to the rim of the caldera in Caustic Valley, then stop and refuse to move or expose themselves if anyone is shooting at them; they'll rush to the entrance to the "PuG Zapper" in Terra Therma, then cluster and back up if they take any fire; they'll camp whatever cover is available where they first take incoming, and refuse to move even when desperate warnings and cries for help are issued over coms - I know, I've been the poor sucker getting Julius Caesared on the flank. This is a major component of the current PuG metagame; players only feel like they should be shooting when effective return fire isn't possible for the enemy. When faced with enemy action, people's first response is no longer an immediate recourse to lethal weaponry - it's to hide and preserve their armor. They're not doing it because they're stupid, nasty, dirty little Puggles; they're doing it because the game trains them to be that way. Most PuG matches devolve into a waiting game where everyone scatters out to find their favorite hiding rock and start getting liquored up for the end of the match, when one side gets an advantage and finally starts to close.

Hope for the Battlefield: This doesn't mean that we're all doomed to camp-and-hide tactics unless you're playing in the group queue. Humans are the only species on the planet which relies on learned behaviors as its primary survival strategy - we can override the conditioning of our environment by making choices as rational agents. To this end, I have these suggestions:

• Support Your Teammates. Always support the team, even when they're being stupid. Brawlers sometimes get bored, and snipers are often really, really scared of enemy fire. But if the four brawler/scouts on your team run in alone, it's bad - just like when the snipers refuse to leave their favorite spots in order to help repulse or commit to a push. Either of these options is bad, but leaving half the team unsupported is critical - and you can't control the rest of the team - just yourself. No matter how stupid you know they're being, support your teammates no matter what. Even a bad plan, executed now and with violence of action, is preferable to letting your teammates die in a pyre of foolishness and shame without at least getting something out of it. Give advice if there's time, but get to where you can participate in the action - you'll mitigate the damage if they're being stupid, and avoid sabotaging your team if they're not.
  
• Keep Moving. You may be a long-range mech - in fact, it's likely these days - but staying put too long allows you to be outmaneuvered (see Appendix A) and leaves you vulnerable. Additionally, if you have any brawlers on your team, they can help you better if you move with them - and not moving often makes them unable to help you, because of enemy supporting fire.
  
• Damage Is Like Water. You can drown in the river, but getting a little wet won't kill you. The game inadvertently conditions you to react to any damage as if it is an immediately lethal threat - remember that in reality, durability is just a resource, no different from your heat and ammo. It's important to use that resource wisely, but - particularly for Heavies and Assaults - it's there to be used. In fact, sometimes the best durability you can make use of is someone else's: if the enemy is shooting at your teammate, as a practical matter they cannot shoot at you at the same time. Thus, if you see a large volume of fire coming at your Friendly Neighborhood Atlas, often the best thing you can do is use that window to return fire at the enemy while they focus on killing your friend.
  
• Share Armor. This is related to the previous two points, but is vital enough that it warrants its own bullet point. If your team is fighting the enemy team (even in a defensive position,) it is always better to expose more people to enemy fire. This is true even if the enemy is focusing their fire to kill your individual teammates as quickly as possible - in fact, it's especially true then. Your enemies simply cannot shoot effectively at two people at once; the human brain isn't set up that way, even if the 'mech could support the logistics. What this means is that the more of you the enemy has to shoot at, the better off you all are. Enemy fire will be spread amongst more targets (particularly in the solo matches that concern us,) and less effective overall. Share armor when it all hits the fan - you'll always be better for it.
  
• Learn to Scout. These days, lights have it hard. With the fixes to hit registration and the increased prevalence of LRMs and long-range weapons, it's very hard to do the scouting part of your job - to the point that some players (I'm looking at you, Firestarter pilots) will actually refuse to leave the team until the main fight starts. This is a mistake. You don't have to be running around on the other side of the map - and shouldn't be, if you can't survive alone out there. I get that; but you can and should still be out on the flanks watching for the enemy and relaying information to your team; use long sight distances instead of proximity to the enemy to look for them. Ditto with ECM snipers who never bother to tell the team what they're seeing from their semi-invisible vantage points. That being said, scouting is everyone's job, to a certain extent - if you see something important, call it out if you can. It's important. Giving the team that information allows them to make better judgements about what to do, and will help to break the positive feedback loop of excessive caution.
  
• Use Your Words. Get a microphone headset and use it. The cost is trivial compared to the price of a computer that can run the game, and voice communication is the most powerful tactical tool ever given to gamers. Don't chatter, and don't harangue your teammates - you only really need to call out short alert messages - like, "Three heavies in D3," or "Assault 'mechs behind us!"

The vicious cycle I've described here is actually a very common phenomenon that we're all aware of - it's a form of stage fright. Anxiety causes physical tension, which causes more anxiety, increasing physical tension, until the sufferer can't decide on any course of action and becomes tongue-tied and paralyzed. That's exactly the phenomenon we're seeing on the battlefield, just with tactics instead of public speaking - and like stage fright, all you have to do to break the cycle is move. Recognize that it's happening, and take specific action to break out of it, and eventually we'll see our fellow Mechwarriors start to get over it, too.

---

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 - maneuver for a flank shot with your sniper/missile build; being a "light killer" doesn't mean you can't scout so long as you stay close by the main body. If you can't focus fire from your position, you need to move, and if the big 'mech(s) are engaging, go in with them. Don't be stupid, but don't let fear (or tactical tunnel-vision) restrain you from helping the team. As one of the Fracking Atlas pilots, I do not mind dying a horrible death as long as the team backs me up - because teamwork, not fear, is the true key to survival.

Timidity is not a tactic.


Appendix I: The problem with camping

Spoiler

Recently, I've seen a lot of the sort of behavior that this guide encourages people to avoid. Upon reflection, aside from the points covered above, I suspect many players aren't understanding the tactical implications of staying in one spot for too long.

On the surface, it seems like a viable tactic: you set up your ambush, and wait for them to come to you. Wait for them to come just far enough into your trap, then smash their forward elements before they can react, gaining a decisive advantage. Sounds fun, and it's totally do-able... If you're a premade team with voice chat and experience playing with this tactic. Good on you, and well done, but this guide is dealing with the Pug/small group solo queue - by all means take what you can from it, but it is not for you.

Even with the advent of integrated VoIP, the general hesitancy of people in a pick-up match to immediately follow the orders of some random teammate makes camping a risky proposition. I'm not writing this to tell you not to set up ambushes - if you're feeling it with your team, by all means talk to each other and plan it out! But if you're not deliberately coordinating the ambush, I offer you these words of caution: camping is dangerous. It's not that the risk can't outweigh the reward, but understand that it is risky for a variety of reasons:

• Camping cedes the initiative to the enemy. A commonly-cited principle of self-defense is that most fistfights are won by the first good punch. Similarly, the first side in a match to have a significant portion of their tonnage killed or crippled is at a major disadvantage. By staying in one place and waiting to see what the enemy does, you're allowing him that first swing. Sure, he might miss, or start too slow so you can counter-punch - but he gets to decide where and how to hit you, and you have to respond. The opportunity to make the first mistake is yours.
  
• Camping muddles your forces' ability to react to enemy actions in a concerted manner. One of the ways a PUG communicates is by actions. When you are on the move, even without VoIP, you are all moving together, aside from the scouts (hopefully, but that's another thread.) This means that you're all going the same direction and seeing the same things. This means that people who aren't sure of the total situation can take their cue from those around them, and that in turn makes it easier for players to act in concert with one another. If you stop moving, your pilots' minds will wander; they'll start looking in different directions, moving around, getting impatient... They'll start making their own plans. So while the enemy who hits you from the flank is acting in concert, your teammates are at least momentarily unsure of what to do - and the enemy gets in that first good punch.
  
• The side that takes effective action wins. This touches on both the previous points, but it bears repeating. Whether in politics, videogames, or the very serious arena of modern war; the side that acts effectively wins. The best generals throughout history (yes, even Sun Tzu) desired the initiative, and suffered when they lost it. And it is very difficult, for reasons including those above, to take effective action from a static, defensive position - take a moment when your next match starts, and keep track of how long it takes everyone to get moving.

To be clear: fine art of the ambush should not be lost to MWO - nor must you always be charging randomly around the battlefield just for the sake of "doing something." I'm not telling you to never stop moving, or advocating any sort of "lemming bull-rush tactics." But you must realize that the lack of team cohesion inherent in the solo queue environment makes stopping and standing in place hazardous - you should only do it if you have a specific plan, and have actually used your words to tell everyone what's going on.

NOTICE! This guide has undergone major revisions as of May 9th, 2014! The original post can be found here.

And finally, I simply must recommend these Wonderful Tactical Illustrations, in whose creation I had no hand, but which I greatly admire, both for their simplicity and for the quality of their advice. Thank you all for reading through my giant wall of text advice!

Edited 16AUG2016: added "Share Armor," and updated throughout to account for the availability of reliable VOIP.

Don't expect me to share armor in a clan mech or brawl very well... mainly the first one because Clan mechs have less armor than IS so DO NOT Expect me to share armor in a clan mech when the Atlas or victor next to me has 3-4x my armor.

Edited by KursedVixen, 05 November 2022 - 05:30 PM.

[Jace Blue]

My guy(I'm using this as a general term, not insinuating gender), if we compare Dire Wolf vs. Atlas (since they both have an armor total of 614) the Atlas might have slightly higher amounts of CT armor with 160pts vs. the 140pts on the whale, but you discount the advantages of heavier armaments on the DWF due to Omni-pods, faster kills due to more guns means less armor lost when making a push down the tunnel or out of a choke point. The argument that Clan Assaults can't brawl as well as IS Assaults due to less armor and therefore, shouldn't be expected to do what they are meant to by having more armor is....not a very good one. Assaults are big, and mean, and dangerous for a reason, to draw fire and dish out the pain while your Lance/Star/whatever does work and to punish people who choose to ignore them, not so you can be the last one standing and get knifed in the back by a 20-30 ton 'Mech. Honestly I'm generalizing/glossing over a lot for the sake of brevity as Assaults can and do make some mean Fire Support builds, but support doesn't work that well if there's nothing left to support on the frontline and none of that matters if the other team seizes the initiative and brings their tonnage down on your individual 'Mech's while your team is hill/corner peeking and trying to get free damage/running from danger. Coordination, speed, surprise, and violence of action gets you a lot farther than pussyfooting around trading potshots.

Edited by Jace Blue, 05 November 2022 - 10:35 PM.

[martian]

KursedVixen, on 05 November 2022 - 05:28 PM, said:

Don't expect me to share armor in a clan mech or brawl very well... mainly the first one because Clan mechs have less armor than IS so DO NOT Expect me to share armor in a clan mech when the Atlas or victor next to me has 3-4x my armor.

1) Let us compare two 80-tonners - Clan Warhammer IIC and IS Victor.

WHM-IIC Warhammer IIC
494 points - maximum armor capacity
36 points - armor bonuses from the 'Mech quirks

TOTAL ARMOR: 530 points (fully armored 'Mech) - 100%

VTR-9A1 Victor
494 points - maximum armor capacity
87 points - armor bonuses from the 'Mech quirks

TOTAL ARMOR: 581 points (fully armored 'Mech) - 109,62%

Unless I have missed something, it seems to me that the difference in armor protection between Warhammer IIC and Victor is mere 9,62%. So no "victor next to me has 3-4x my armor" as you said.

---

2) Let us compare two 100-tonners - Clan Daishi and IS Atlas.

DWF-PRIME Daishi Prime
614 points - maximum armor capacity
72 points - armor bonuses from the 'Mech quirks

TOTAL ARMOR: 686 points (fully armored 'Mech) - 100%

AS7-D Atlas
614 points - maximum armor capacity
158 points - armor bonuses from the 'Mech quirks

TOTAL ARMOR: 772 points (fully armored 'Mech) - 112,54%

Unless I have missed something, it seems to me that the difference in armor protection between Daishi and Atlas is mere 12,54%. So no " the Atlas ... next to me has 3-4x my armor" as you said.

---

Recommendation 1: You should stop complaining how horrible and weak Clan 'Mechs are.

Recommendation 2: You can successfully brawl in Clan 'Mechs, if necessary.