MercNet/Netmech (Advanced), On piloting and shooting.

[Sir MMPD Radick]

This is another repost that I hope everyone may find useful.

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Panther
post Aug 21 2005, 09:14 PM
Post #1
Rank: Khan
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This guide covers the basics of piloting and shooting in MercNet. We will first begin with a general description of the things you should take note of.

Lag - The delay it takes for data to be sent to you. I believe this is pretty self-explanatory and I cannot really describe it well so I will leave it at that. If someone else wants to provide a better explanation, whether technical or not, please post it here then.

Ping - Related to lag. A ping is a packet of data sent to a specific computer or server and then the time taken for it to come back is recorded, in order to estimate the amount of lag present.

Jetting/Jumping - Moving around with jumpjets.

Lag spot - The actual place where one should shoot to hit the enemy.

On Piloting

If you do not know how to move your mech around and pilot it well, then no matter how well you can shoot, you are still going to be a sitting duck in the long run. So, you better learn how to move your ass in combat using an unresponsive mechanical giant first.

The main thing to note is the increase of your own lag. How to do that without doing illegal stuff? The answer is torso twisting.

Torso twisting allows you to face the enemy while moving in a perpendicular direction to where you are facing. It also allows you to increase your own (no matter how small or big the increase is) and makes your lag spot more difficult to find. Torso twisting should always be done in combat.

To pilot a mech and shoot while having your torso twisted demands experience to build up the necessary skill, but not to worry, you will get used to it.

Never move directly towards your enemy in a straight line. That means you should not have your torso facing the direction where you are going (towards the enemy), because you would have no lag then and he can just shoot you where he wants to. Free hits for the enemy will equal a dead mech for you in no time.

The throttle is not as good a mech controller as your jets, but you can use it to fool the enemy if you believe it will help you. For a start, the speeds are changed from the lowest at button "1" on the keyboard to the top speed at "0". You can also use the "-" or "+" buttons to decrease or increase speed respectively.

How do you use it to "fool" the enemy? If you think that your enemy is going to shoot, and if he happens to already know where your lag spot is, then you can stop your mech suddenly, before moving on again after a second. It can throw off his aim, it can save you from going into a salvo of fire, or it can also put you into one. There are pros and cons to everything.

Jumpjets are vital to survival. They allow you to move around freely in the air, speed up your mech, jump vertically up even when you have lost a leg, and when you are skilled in their use, you can use them to keep throwing off the opponent's aim.

The jumpjets are controlled with the following buttons (default ones):

J - Jumps up vertically; only one that has a vertical motion.
Home - Jets forward.
End - Jets backward.
Insert - Strafes left.
Page Up - Strafes right.
Delete - Turns the mech left.
Page Down - Turns the mech right.

Learn to use them all wisely under fire, because it can save you a loss, and perhaps bring you a win.

Piloting using jets requires practice and patience. This is aside from the fact that JJ's normally recharge slowly, so therefore you have to watch their usage.

Most mechs allow a maximum of only 4 JJs in MercNet. The Grizzly allows 5. For individual mechs, you have to check them yourselves. Jumpjets can only be placed in the legs or torso areas.

Jetting at weird times for just a split second or two also helps to throw off the opponent's aim. You will have to decide for yourself when you wish to do this, and experience will tell you the rest.


On Shooting

Anybody can take a MPLAS into battle and start shooting like a madman, hoping to hit someone. Or you can even say that anyone can shoot.

It takes skill however to actually hit someone who is at least an average pilot, and it takes even more skill to hit anyone jetting around, free-floating as though the mech was a balloon.

First of all, you have to compensate for the lag, and aim for the lag spot. The lag spot is the actual point where the mech is, not where you see the mech. Since there is a lag delay the data sent to you is of course slower than in real-time. Therefore, you have to aim ahead of the opponent's mech visually.

How far ahead, you might ask. To find out, before you enter a game, while you are in the lobby or in the room (the latter is preferred), type the following:

/ping player

where player is the player's name. For example, if you were to ping someone called Panther, you would type:

/ping Panther

The full name is not really required. If there are three people you wish to ping and all of them start with different letters or symbols, then you need only type in the first letter of their callsigns. If more than one exists, then you must type in as many characters or symbols as needed until the difference shows. An example is shown below.

Game Room Players are [BP]&B Panther, [BP]&B Striker and [DDC] Geonitz.

All three start with the symbol [, so you will not be sure whose ping it is you get when you just ping that symbol. Moving on to the second character, there is only a difference between Geonitz and the other two. Thus, you may ping Geonitz using /ping [D. For the other two BP mechwarriors, you must ping up to the 8th character, where their callsign starts (/ping [BP]&B P or /ping [BP]&B S) in order to get an accurate ping for each player.

A general guide follows.

For pings from 1-200 ms (milliseconds), the lag spot is nearly directly at the mech and you can fire just a little ahead of where you see the opponent. Do not aim too far ahead, you will eventually learn that sometimes you can even fire at where you see him visually despite the lag. This is because the lag is very small.

For pings from 201-400 ms, the lag spot is less than, and then equal to, about roughly 1-1.5 mech lengths ahead. It is still rather small, and 400 was considered normal in the old days. 350 was considered good. Thus you know how bad the lag used to be on the old Activision servers.

Normally the pings are 50-150 ms. You may however occasionally get pings more than these.

For pings from 401-600 ms, the lag spot is 2-4 mech lengths ahead.

For pings from 601-700 ms, the lag spot is around 4.5-5.5 mech lengths ahead.

For pings above 700 ms, good luck.

Now, most of the time the MPLAS (3 of them) is used for combat as the primary weapon, and learning to shoot with them and still keep your heat down is essential. The basic C1 configuration should help you get used to them, and you should learn to control your heat by not letting yourself do any overburns (unless absolutely necessary and most of the time this never happens) or move any more into the red than you should. Generally, 4-5 salvos of group-fire MPLAS will shoot you into the red. Heavier mechs take about 1-2 salvos more.

There is a sound associated with the shutdown warning procedure, before you get the "reactor critical, shutdown imminent" message. It can even occur if you were firing past the 700 K limit, and Betty is still giving the "internal heat at 700 Kelvin" message. Learn to associate this sound with the letter "O". This is because O is the manual overriding of a shutdown. Once you hear that sound, you must instinctively press O to override it. Otherwise, you risk shutting down. Of course, pressing O also gives you the chance to overburn, which is mightily dangerous in a league game. So, be sure to learn to be used to the heat, and control it under as safe a limit as you can.


Combining Piloting & Shooting

This is the absolute necessity - to shoot and pilot at the same time. You must be able to hit the enemy, whilst dodging his shots. All of it cannot be trained easily without your own experiences. You must practice. A lot.

There are no general guidelines for learning how to shoot and pilot at the same time, but if you get your basics right, and go as you learn, you should be able to get there soon. After that, developing your own style of play, or learning from others, is up to you as an individual.