When I first started playing this game, I thought Jump Jets only served two purposes: skipping over terrain hazards, and jumping on top of buildings. Since then, however, I have spent a lot of time on the king of jumping – the Spider – and I have learned what these things can really do. Here are some of the different ways I’ve seen and used jump jets, and a few tips about how they work. First, though, I’d like to explain a bit about the jets to orient the reader. Jump jets make your mech fly. While flying, you travel across the map in a straight line in the same direction and speed you were moving before taking off. While using your jets, you can also turn your mech, but you will still travel in the same direction until you land. Use your fuel wisely, because if you come down too hard you can damage your legs. Generally you want to save about 25-35% of your fuel for the landing. In addition to damaging your legs, landing will slow your mech down; the harder you land, the longer it will take to get back up to the speed you wanted. One note before I get into the details. This weekend I will work on video demonstrations of these tactics. For now, I’m just worried about getting them on paper, and seeing if anyone has any critique or suggestions. Note #2: I am not including Death-From-Above, because it is not a viable tactic right now. Jumping over Obstacles One of the simplest uses for jump-jets is to get over obstacles. Got a low wall in front of you? Jump over it. Got a hill with an incline too steep to climb? Jump on top. This can save a lot of time in getting around barriers, especially on certain locations. Keep in mind that you have to re-accelerate after you land. Going over a long wall is a good use of this tactic. Jumping from rooftop-to-rooftop on Frozen City, you might actually be slower than a lot of the mediums. Taking this tactic one step deeper, you can often run a group of enemies off a ledge and then jump back up. Now you’ve taken those enemies out of the fight until they can circle around. For example, on Frozen City, if battling in the area above Theta, if you can get half the enemy team to follow you down and then jump back up, you’ve eliminated half the opposition in the brawl until they can find a ramp. Rooftop Snipah The other simple tactic with jets is to get on top of a roof to snipe. Some roofs are only accessible to the Spider, others are easy for most Mechs to get to. This can be a fun tactic, but it runs into a serious issue – it works best to get lights onto the roof. A light standing still on a roof can be a pretty easy target, and lights usually have to sacrifice to get a single PPC to work. In addition, one of the lights’ primary jobs is counter-light, and it’s much harder to do that from this position. Dime-Turns Jump Jets allow you a lot more maneuverability, even if you just use short hops. This is the reason for those 1/5 JJ builds; you get the ability to do those short hops and make use of greater maneuverability. Try it yourself – run around at 130+ kph and hit your full stop button. Run around again and do a small hop and hit full stop while you’re in midair. What stops faster? Slowing down faster allows you to turn faster. Going a step further, on longer flights you can turn your body quite a bit. When you land, you’ll rocket in the new direction. This can throw the enemy’s aim off if done at the proper time. 3D Dodging If you’re an experienced pilot, you probably know what torso-twisting is, and are familiar with weaving erratically to avoid incoming fire. For newer pilots, torso-twisting is the art of presenting different components for the enemy to fire at in order to spread out the damage you take. These are two great 2D dodging tactics, but jets let you use the Z axis as well. This can be very tricky to pull off. It is much harder for ballistics to aim at you when you present an arc. Up close, jumping high can often get you out of the pitch range of your enemy’s weapons. Also, if you’re paying attention to the enemy’s shots and can time it right, you can often jump right before they fire and have their shot go right under you. However, when you jump, you also present your legs (usually the primary target when shooting at lights is the legs). At 300m, it is very easy to track a light flying through a predictable parabolic pattern with lasers, even if it’s difficult with ballistics. And I’ve seen some pilots fly straight towards an enemy Cataphract who basically gets handed a cockpit to plunge Gauss rounds into. Using your jump jets properly will make you incredibly difficult to hit, but using them stupidly will get you killed faster. Friendly Fire Avoidance Don’t you hate it when you are following your group, and they seem to just make an impenetrable wall between you and the enemy? You could unleash so much damage into that enemy Catapult, if only you didn’t have an Atlas and a Stalker blocking your view...with jump jets, you can simply hop up and fire over your teammates into the opposing mech, letting you help the team bring him down! This might sound like a trivial tactic, but honestly it is probably my favorite use of jump jets, even more than maneuvering. This is the one tactic that lets you be a force multiplier instead of just another useless slab of metal in the conga line. Poptart Ah, the controversial strategy of the poptart sniper, named after the breakfast pastry. Honestly, this needs to be nerfed (and can simply by adding cockpit shake), but I’m using the ol’ idiom, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” This strategy is fairly simple, but can be difficult to execute properly. The poptart sniper simply hides behind a barrier, such as a hill or building, and then uses jump jets to peek over, shoot, and fall back behind cover. The name comes from acting like a poptart popping out of a toaster. The reason this is so popular is because you present very little target to your enemy, as they only have a short window where you’re visible, and you usually drop behind cover before their ballistics reach you. With Gauss rifles and/or (ER) PPCs, you can wreak a lot of havoc from a long range with relative impunity. Poptarts are not optimized for brawling, so people can easily move around and catch them by surprise if they are not careful. Use of close-quarters weapons, getting skill with the long-range weapons up-close, or using a shoot-n-scoot tactic will help you survive. Remember, after dropping back behind cover, it might be wise to move to a slightly different spot, or wait for your teammates to get focused again (or wait to cool down in a PPC build), before popping back up again. NOTE: If this finally does get nerfed, it will still be a viable tactic for short-range weapons, allowing you to use JJ to use a barrier as a shield. For now, though, the poptart sniper is one of the cheese builds that is very effective if done right. Ride-a-Long I don’t have any experience with this strategy, but it is possible for one mech to get on top of another and ride around on it. This incurs 4 damage to the lower mech, but can be used humorously. Using this method offensively, if you can get your mech on top of another, you can rain fire on him without him being able to figure out where you are. I haven't witnessed this personally, but other members on MechSpecs have. Conclusion Jump Jets have many uses. They can be used defensively to avoid fire and trap the enemy below a ledge. They can be used offensively to shoot over barriers or teammates. They can be used to maneuver faster or get into otherwise-unreachable positions. And they can be used for fun to ride on top of another mech. Whatever weight class your mech is, if it can hold jets I encourage their use. I’ve never thought “man, I wish I didn’t have jump jets on this Spider,” but there are plenty of time’s I’ve missed them on my Stalker!
I like this! This will be useful for the new system as we will be having an ARTICLES and GUIDES section. I'll add some Editors Notes and then promote this to that section one the new site goes live.
You can also use Jump Jets against much larger 'mechs. Not Death from Above exactly but Gdad77, Pepperdoggy and I have witnessed UntamedZer0 ( In a Spider) land on top of a Stalker; in order to fire down continuously into the top of the poor unsupecting 'mech. Of the many crazy things I've seen happen in this game, I wish I had this one on video. Myth.
I wub JJs, I wub'm wif all my heart! No, not you peoples named JJ either! The particular occurrence Myth is speaking of was rather funny as the Stalker in question had me on it's head with Myth and Gdad77 in other Spiders running around it and our buddy Pepperdoggy in a Dragon 1C approaching. By the time Pepper brought his gauss to bear it was obvious the Stalker just gave up on that match. Good times, good times. I can only imagine that Pepper had the best view of the whole affair. By the time he arrived it probably resembled a scene from the movie Gremlins re-enacted by Spiders.
I will see if I can make this work when I start recording for this (actually some segments will be covered while I work on my video for my Trebuchet 5J build). Worst comes to worst I may end up doing this in the testing grounds (some of my basic movement stuff will be done there so as not to detract from the match).
I have DFA'd a Spider in air. I practice jumping on targets specifically. If you need help in a live drop I think I could make it work.
Nice guide! One or two things I might add: - on some situations poptarting is effective at close range, with splatcats mostly; - on slow mechs, JJ are useful against lights in order to keep them face to you. I'm not a heavy pilot so I won't give any practical advice, but as a light pilot I met some annoying Highlander pilots that did not want me rubbing their back; - jumpjets are very effective to stabilize your aim at high speed when the ground is uneven (especially for a PPC spider); - it's also effective to get the kill on a cored mech retreating behind a ridge or a friendly mech; - ride-a-long a cat on a jenner turns it into a fearsome 150km/h LRM boat, because fuck you physics, but it also make you vomit since at high speed the upper mech teleport every second.
Dropping on a 'mech seems to send the damage straight to its legs. I've found that it can work to kill a legged 'mech because of this.
So I was in my Spider and found this Heavy Metal. I figured "Why not?" So I jumped on his shoulders. He did not respond. I spent at least 90 seconds here shooting at his own team. Thats when the real fun started. The HM just quit responding, probably trying to figure out why all of his team mates were shooting at his head and where the 2 medium lasers and the large laser came from? I had enough time to type in All "I am on your Heavy Metals head shooting at his team mates."A Centurion of his walked up and witnessed the spectacle just to be taken back. I shortly turned around and shot him. I didn't take much damage up there, however here is the important data this gleamed: *Yes, you can land on a High Lander and not rubber band through (as I not once rubber banded) *No, I could not shoot him, for some reason with my arm weapons aimed as far down as I could I could not shoot him as you can a Stalker when you land on them. *Yes, it obviously screwed this guy up and am fairly certain he was unaware I was ever up there. I spent most of the match on his head lol. A big thank you to Pepperdoggy for managing to take this screen cap.
Great landing and awesome control... This is surely one for the books. Hell, it even got a small audience. Love how the Centurion just came in to watch and scratch his head.
Jenner's are great for it. I probably have done it more in a Jenner even though the antics in my Spider get the most attention. I need to go back through the assaults with my lights when we get a more stable patch and see if anything has changed. I generally do things like this with Stalkers, this was the first time I tried it with a High Lander. Sometimes standing on a Stalker is rather stable but most times it is not. I have never once stood on top of an enemy mech as stable as standing on the shoulders of that Heavy Metal. I get some sort of sick pleasure out of making the other team shoot one another. As far as a larger mech on a smaller I have experience with this one as well although it is from a few months back and much has changed since. It was pure happenstance that this occurred and I was lucky to have a full view of it. On Ice Colony a unit mate was in a Catapult heading towards theta from kappa. He decided to take the the fast way down off of the cliff at one of the paths back up. I can not remember exactly what I was in but it was something traveling at warp chicken, I scouted ahead and encountered a Commando which I reported and engaged. The Commando and I entered into our death spiral, he ran a wide path against a cliff in Jenner Alley right when my buddies Catapult stepped off of the edge. He landed squarely on top of the Commando ,completely unaware of it, and was promptly wondering why the heck he was rubber banding everywhere and couldn't move. I informed him that he had landed on the Commando and appeared to still be on top of it being moved along by it. The next part is kind of hard to type and will probably be hard to read without laughing but this is how the next few seconds went down. After just a few seconds, having traveled roughly 100m or so from the point of contact, there was an explosion between the Catapults legs and an armless Commando shot out. Apparently (most likely through a physics engine bug) the damage being incurred from the collision was being applied to the Commandos arms and partly side torsos. The Catapult took some damage to the legs. I am sure I will never see something that crazy again as it was a purely a 1 in a bazillion chance.
OK, now I want to get under an ENEMY poptart and then run them back to my team. "Hey guys! Lookie what I caught!"
Unfortunately it will be some time before I can get videos working, so if someone else wants to do a video tutorial in the mean time, have at it. Windows Live Movie Maker is failing to convert my videos into something that Windows Media Player will recognize, so until I can afford some pro software or sit down and troubleshoot it (which I hate troubleshooting) I am dead in the water as far as video footage is concerned.
