Basic Teamplay Tactics

Basic Role and Teamplay Tactics

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Welcome to the Alegro Guard Training Academy. This Academy is your source for useful training information for the newest AW cadet to the vetran pilot looking to brush up on skills and tactics. Please use the information below to better your pilot abilities. If you have information to contribute please contact the command group for addtion to the Adademy training program.

MWO Video Tutorial - Terrain & Positioning - By Kanajashi

MWO Video Tutorial - Jump Jet Basics & Fall Damage - By Kanajashi

MWO Video Tutorial - Jump Jet Maneuvers - By Kanajashi

MWO Video Tutorial - LRM Carrier - By Kanajashi

MWO Video Tutorial - Sniper - By Kanajashi

MWO Video Tutorial - Brawler - By Kanajashi

MWO Video Tutorial - Targeting & Information Sharing - By Kanajashi

MWO Video Tutorial - Effective Shot Placement - By Kanajashi
MWO Forum Tutorial - Know your Hit Boxes - By our own LTC Tamerlin

MWO Forum Tutorial - Tactics 101 - "Great sources of info on how to position forces and focus fire" - COL Calon Farstar

AW Training Module - Tactical Movement - By SGT MasterBlasterActual

Mech Class Fundementals

Light Class

Your primary role is Scout and secondary role is a Quick Reaction Force. Whether you like it or not you will almost always be the fastest and the most mobile mech out of your team. Because of that you must be the Eyes and Ears of the team by scouting and the Reflex of the team as well by being a Quick Reaction force. You don’t want to be a blind, deaf, and a slow fighting force do you?

Eyes/Ears: You need to scout and make as much noise as possible about enemy movements. Whether that’s yelling in teamspeak (“Atlas coming in E4!”), or just typing madly in chat window (“Enemy Cent/Hunch G4 flanking Watch out Awesome”.) Also make sure you R (Target the enemy mech) so that it flags it for your team mates.
Reflex: Because lights are usually fastest and most agile, you need to operate as a quick reaction force. Do you see an enemy light trying to flank your assaults? Is your base being captured while majority of your team is pretty far away or engaged in heavy fire fight and can’t turn their backs to run back home? This is when you step in. You are quick enough to get in there and engage enemy light trying to flank and core your friendly assaults. You are quick enough to turn around and run back home even in middle of heavy fire fight to defend or stall your base being captured.
NARC/TAG Tip. Do try to narc/tag smartly and lock on to slow moving units or high value targets. Try not to narc/tag enemy lights when there is some amount of distance and/or tall environment run around in. Lights are agile enough to hide or to break lock, shield behind an environment, or simply outrun LRMs at a certain distance and in certain environments. Do try to narc/tag slower more easy targets and mechs that typically need focusing down on or whatever your ‘commander’ is yelling for. Units like the Atlas are slow at moving and turning. It’s hard for Atlas to move away or even hide in-time. Hell it’s even hard for Atlas to turn in time to take on LRM at a certain angle where they have some armor left, or in my opinion high value like dual ‘gausspults’ because they can deal heavy damage and if taken out early, it can reduce quite a bit on damage your enemy can inflict. That said, if friendlies are 250-300m away and you have an enemy light in fairly open field… light it up with NARC/TAG. I’ll guarantee the enemy light will regret it because even the fastest and the mobile agile light mech with a good pilot won’t be able to dodge LRMs locked in at this kind of close range without cover.
Once you find targets, and you intend to scout, carry TAGs or NARCs so that you can actually mark targets without having to stop and stare at them. If you just see them and run off, all of your long range support loses sight of them as well, which means that you render your missile boats useless unless the enemy team is dumb enough to walk into an open line of fire.

Medium Class

You are the Skirmishers of the battlefield. Able to dish out punishment, though you are not protean behemoths that can stand and take gratuitous amounts of pounding before you fall. You are fast, though not so much so as your smaller Light Mech brethren, and your ability to twist, turn, aim and fire is as rapid paced as it is accurate. You aren’t there to take the brunt of the enemy team’s firepower, however in hit and run tactics, or in pinpoint tearing through enemies, you excel.

Along with the smaller scout class, you are the speed of your team, and as such you should be attempting to either sniff out enemy locations, or reacting when your base comes under attack. Unlike the smaller scouts, however, you can actually, assuming you run across a lone stray, actually stay and fight effectively on your own, while maintaining visual on the target for your long ranged support to be lobbing shells and rockets at them.
Always remember that, against a well piloted heavy mech, going from behind them to in front of them can happen very very quickly… not only that, but as long as you have them in your sights, if you are up close, they have you in theirs, and their support mechs are going to be lobbing rounds at you. Thus, keep moving, always keep moving, and don’t stop moving, until you either get away, or you are safely out of combat once again.
Always keep in mind that, while yes you do have an impressive amount of fire power at your disposal, especially in a Hunchback, your firepower can quickly turn to dusts given a few well placed shots. Try to keep your ‘sensitive side’ facing away from the person you are in combat with, letting them pound on the side you spent the least amount of tonnage and focus on, while you rip them apart.
More than any other class, if you can manage to cripple an enemy, or tear off a shoulder/arm and then get away from them, do so, as it will improve your odds of not being on the receiving end of an LRM volley or ten.
In Mass group fighting, try to stay somewhat behind the bigger, heavier mechs, so that fire stays focused on them as opposed to yourself, and use those pinpoint weapons of yours (admittedly there are some inaccurate ones as well, but hey), to assist your team again by focusing down the weapons of enemy heavy and assault mechs, as opposed to spending your time chewing through tons of armor plating that coat their cores… you still get assist experience (which is comparable to the kill itself), and you will keep your heavies alive much longer which, in turn, means that they are still taking fire and you aren’t.

Heavy Class

Here we find one of the strangest mixes. Heavies can have the firepower of an Assault or the speed of a Medium but rarely both. The heavy class is tipped toward the firepower side of the scale in general but are far more flexible than the lumbering assault class. For this class, we will use two examples of 'Mechs. The Cataphract and the Catapult. These two mechs are as different in play styles as any two mechs in the same class could be, therefore I will keep this bit simple.

The Cataphract is a front line mech that ultimately is the hurt locker of an attack force. You are tough enough to stand up to the brunt of the front lines, though no quite as much as an assault mech, yet are quick enough to stay on target and force them down, while still managing to turn and bail should you need to. You have enough up-front, in your face, pain that you can manage to dish to an enemy mech that even an Atlas thinks twice about standing still and merely taking the beating, however in a toe to toe fight, with a comparably equipped and skilled Assault mech, they will merely outlast you. You have to learn your limits, as to when it is best to stand and fight, and when it is best to dip back behind your lines to catch your breath for another assault.
The Catapult is fairly straight forward… you stand in the background and lob horribly damaging projectiles into the fray (hopefully missing your teammates), whether it be LRMs, Gauss Rounds, or PPCs. Some 'Mechwarriors use short range missiles on Catapult builds. This takes practice, and timing, and I would recommend that concept for after you are more accustomed to brawling in a frigiale and managing to land your rounds decisively and accurately, even at extreme range. Remember that Infrared (H) and zoom can be your best friends while wielding PPCs and Gauss Cannons, as their declared range is one thing, the fact that they are line of sight in point of fact is another. If you can see it, you can hit it, at least with those two weapons.

Assault Class

You are the big, hulking terrors of the battlefield. Your range of weaponry is nearly unlimited, as are the roles that you can assume (though admittedly you make dreadful scouts, as you are not exactly fast). Your armor is peered by no one else on the battle field aside from other Assault Mechs, however this does not make you invulnerable. In point of fact, this makes you the biggest target that is slowly making it’s way down range.

As both the Awesome and the Atlas the sheer firepower at your disposal is enormous, the amount of hurt that you can dish out in a very short order is exceedingly impressive, and your ability to withstand punishment is unparallelled… this also makes you, generally, the first and primary target of the entirety of the other team. For this reason, just like the lighter classed mechs, positioning is just as important, if not more so, to you than anything else. In the open you are a slow moving hulk that every LRM within range of you is going to soon be raining down upon, and your AMS can only stop so many. Remember that, while you are indeed incredibly tough, and pack a massive punch, you are not immortal.
While you are, indeed, the paramount Front Line of your force, you also need to be aware of those who are going to use you as a shelter to hide behind, and attempt to not to step into their line of fire if you can manage. No one likes a Gauss round or two in the spine, least of all a mech (assaults) that scouts tend to love to try and get behind to tear at that lack of armor there.
Remember that, even while walking as slowly as you do, you can ram into your own team’s mechs, thus causing them damage, and therefore you have to keep track of both where the enemy team is, and your own.
While you can stack countless light weapons on yourself, there is no real reason to do so, as your medium and light mechs do this already. You have the tonnage to carry around the biggest, nastiest weapons in the game, and thus your unparallelled ability to dish out mammoth amounts of damage to an enemy mech should it be bold enough to decide to try and stand and fight you.
Do not chase scouts. You cannot catch them, and if you set off to chase one, he is winning in a way, as he will invariably pull you out into the open so that his 'lurmers' and other long range support 'Mechs can tear you apart.
Again, you are an exceedingly tough mech, however let your scouts do their jobs and do the Enemy Locating for you… doing this on your own may merely end up with you poking that big head and shoulders up over a ridge, or around a corner, and you will promptly discover why Gauss Cannons are feared.
While the XL engines are lovely things, as it means that you can pack on all that more hurt, you also then have to ensure to, the best you can, ensure that you protect your shoulders, as the loss of a shoulder no longer merely decreases your firepower, it simply means you die.

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