[Feedback] Community Warfare is live!

I'm already patched and done, waiting for the unit to get it together. May stream if people are curious.

 

This is like a new game now.. so many possibilities / tactics / strategy... a bit unbalanced but they're gonna hotfix that before christmas so.. OOH YEAH!

 

I was able to get one match in (streamed it, and added a copy of that video to my vid post) and holy shit is this ever fun!

Here's what I learned for defense:

1) You HAVE to hold those gates! You can see in the video, but we basically stuffed them there over and over, and they paid a heavy price. At one point, they managed to dissolve our front line (taking a lot of damage as they did), but our freshly dropped mechs tore back through them. Getting stuck at that entry point is death for the attackers.

2) Turrets are deadly, attackers can't ignore them this time.

3) A good mix of builds is best, but having a solid line of heavy/assaults backed up by snipers is fantastic for defending. We had a few LRM mechs, but having some major snipers really turned things around for our team. By the time the attackers made any push, we had stripped a ton of their armor and even gotten some kills, so they came at us much softer than they would have otherwise.

4) HOLD THOSE CONSUMABLES! Until you get a golden opportunity, they are worth keeping in reserve. Both times I fired my UAV, it was at moments that completely screwed the attackers, letting my team know exactly where to go strike. However, I noticed a ton of strikes in the first few minutes, and that made it a lot easier to surprise someone with a strike at the end of the game.

For either attacking or defending, longevity is going to be the key. Mechs that can survive to put out tons of damage before they get dropped are going to be real linchpins of either side. By the time my Raven died, I had over 1200 damage, and I still had 3 of my best mechs in reserve. I also noticed fairly far into the match that I was the only person on my team who still had all three reserve mechs left, and I was the only one who died a single time. Even if things had gone poorly, that meant I still had three fresh mechs to drop in...and that dropship sure as hell will take potshots at anyone who tries to camp the drop zone (it got a kill during my match). I definitely see energy boats being the kings for these long matches, but you could still do a ton of damage with SRM/LRM/Ballistic builds. You can always eject to get to your next mech if you're completely stripped or out of ammo.

I love this mode though...definitely going to play it as much as I can. For House Kurita!!!

 

I absolutely hate CW at this point in time. Let me explain why by showing 3 facts:
1) I have been in my unit for a long time and I love the players in there.
2) My unit is permanently aligned Davion.
3) I have purchased clan packages.

This means my choices to play CW are:
1) Leave my unit
2) Not be able to use mechs that I paid real money for

Frankly, I'm pissed off. You can tell me "CW is about factions" and lore all you want, but they should have put a disclaimer or something stating that I wouldn't be able to use those mechs if I was aligned with the IS.

It wouldn't bother me if you could get Loyalty Points somewhere else, but frankly I'm pissed off that I can't use my newest mechs in the newest game mode without leaving my group of friends.

 

I don't mind being limited to IS, since most of the mechs I really enjoy playing are IS anyway...going Clan, I really would only want to use my Stormcrows and Hellbringers, and that would get a little old eventually.

That said, I do agree that salvage should be a thing, and I'm sure it will be at some point. Until then...I'll just play Clan in the normal gametypes, and IS in CW.

 

I'm in the same situation - House Davion heart and soul but... they did. Repeatedly. Its why I kept spamming command chair pieces and TLDR'ing them. I even have a pair of gold mechs I can't use.

Ultimately, your only restriction is which contract your unit takes - we picked a 7 day Davion one to start with so we wouldn't be too tied down. It gives no LP bonuses but thats the price of flexibility.

As a defender last night I defended Marik etc worlds as I wasn't restricted, as an attacker it was Davion only. My only restriction mech wise was Inner Sphere. Thats a lot of mechs.

Next week we may pick a 7 day Clan Wolf contract... at which point we swap to using Clan mechs. Its our choice.

Short term its not bad but if you want to push for the highest rewards then yes you'll need to concentrate on IS or Clan. If all you're after is farming free mech bays then ironically you'll rotate allegiance every week till you get the bottom free one then move on.

 

your unit can change faction. Just take a 14day contract or something and you can even rotate between clan and is. What's the issue there?

 

Well, quite frankly... they did tell... several times, tons of times. On the official forums and in here.....

 

I had one defense game last night, playing for Jade Falcon.

I was pretty excitable flying in the dropship.

The game was really intense, but the poor IS mechs really didn't stand a chance. The first wave they didn't even take out a single clan mech. They went for the zerg approach. Took out one gate then charged through the opening. It really didn't work for them. Our fire was coordinated and they went down extremely quickly. At 12 - 0 it was to difficult for them to come back, but they never really learned and just zerged a different gate.

Turrets seem ridiculous and cannot be ignored. They strip armor and killed 3-4 enemy mechs.

I didn't go down until they were on their third wave and only then because we pushed out the base to clear up fleeing mechs.

I do think they need somewhere to re-arm. I ran out of LRM ammo on their second wave, fortunately being a Timber I had plenty of backup weapons but without being able to re-arm being a dedicated LRM/Balsitic boat means ejecting when your empty - which sucks.

Can the defenders not go out the gates? It seems a bit odd being sat behind a wall while the enemy blow it down.

 

Lights can jump the hills, but it's more of a "pick at them and annoy" tactic than something to save the gates. ERLL snipers can find spots to shoot over too, but it's more of a distraction than anything.

As far as the zerg tactic, it CAN work, but you need to snipe down some turrets first, then STOP the zerg in time. Every attack I was in that worked was basically zerg forward, kill them into retreat, stop and snipe turrets, then repeat. If you have no weapons/ammo left as an attacker, you are the first one in for the next zerg push as a meat shield until you die, that way your teammates get some free shots off and you can drop fresh shortly after. The biggest problem we had was that people were over-pursuing, and getting slaughtered as a result.

That said, I did get an attack drop that had no opposition (cowardly Steiner dogs!), and 6 people got killed by the frigging turrets! Yeesh.

 

I seriously want to see 12 man light/medium jump pack swarm in over the gates and go berserk on the inside, go nut for the turrets maybe. On Sulfur, that could wreck some serious face as there's three gates and the response time for the defending team is a cpl of seconds to traverse to defend.

 

At the moment its very one sided for the defender but thats a mix of it being new and of how simple it is tactically for the defender. Mass your firepower while keeping clear fireing line.... complex huh.....

Ironically when we countered a heavy/assault gate defence with rolling artillery they whined like little children despite having every advantage.

I will admit its slightly tempting to just run defence ops.

 

It is freaking cool when the gates open and they swarm through.

The problem with a light/medium group is they will get eaten by turrets. The turrets have LL amongst other things, and given the 100% accuracy they will leg you/core you quickly.

I've only had one game, but would really like to play more.

Defence OPs are a more reliable way of grinding LP. But I think attacking and winning will be a lot more rewarding.

I did notice a real lack of LRMs on my match, have others had similar experiances? Is it just people avoiding ammo heavy builds?

For those that got the pheonix package, you will probably have some unassigned loyalt points on your profile. To claim them, login on the website and go to your profile, you can then 'assign loyalty points' and select the faction you want for them.

 

Well, they didn't tell in the clan packages "you won't be able to use these if you are in a house."

My unit is a permanent contract, so my options are stay and have wasted $$, or leave.

They should make it like MMOs where if you're on IS mechs you play for your IS faction, and on clan mechs you play for your clan faction. Just like in WoW when I'm on alliance toons vs. horde toons.

 

Good catch, totally missed assigning loyalty points, it is not often that I would visit my profile page.

 

That would be nice Skribs, but wow is a bit of a different beast. I think the issue is more the units themselves and not the way the have implimented the game. Did you unit have a vote? or was it always a dedicated faction follower?

That said I do think you should be able to group with people who are not in your unit, but fight for the same faction.

 

Just fought a game where I thought I would be fighting FRR vs Kurita on a world nowhere near clan space. As defender. Suddenly, when game comes up, we're counterattacking against clans. Hmm.

We're on the snow map with two gates as attackers, our team opens them both for some reason and all of a sudden the defending clan team rushes out of the gate we have least amount of players near and pretty much kills our entire first drop without much casualties.

Knew it had to happen, now to think up ways to make that play not work, hmm.