As many of you may already have encountered or participated in, entrenching has become a fairly viable tactic at this build of the game. I feel that there are a few issues with this.

-A single tactical cruiser can keep almost all ships in this position for an extended period of time. I don't think I'm the only person who has a problem with how terribly (and wonderfully) effective a good tactical cruiser can be when it can hide under dreadnoughts and terrain very well. It also can heal artillery units almost unfairly quickly;
EDIT: If I'm not mistaken, I've seen an artillery ship wholly healed in less than 8 seconds.

-The healing pods, that are commonly placed in these positions, are incredibly small and difficult to hit. More often than not, they are under and behind cover next to 2 others, which isn't necessarily the problem. More on that in the next paragraph.
Minor fix?: Make them a bigger target.

-If your team is entrenched as well or refuses to engage alongside you, the entrenched enemy greatly extends the time of the match and makes it quite boring. The real problem is if you do not have your team's backing, any plan to flush them out of a trench will probably end in failure. Flushing out requires coordinated flanking and/or just one suicidal move, but it entirely depends on teamwork. I do have one or two counter-measures that involve nigh-suicidal moves to flush them out, but the results are mixed.

All in all, the problem comes down to how fun these matches are. When players try to camp the same positions every match, the game becomes terribly boring and that much slower than we already are. Not that I'm against the tactic completely, but I believe it could use some rethinking.

P.S To the Corvette pilots that successfully helped me flush out the enemy team, you are a god send.

I think this will be less of an issue when more of the player base unlocks nukes

IMHO there needs to be more healing counter abilities. Something like a missille that prevents healing for x seconds, or that makes healing deal damage for x seconds.

Honestly, these problems are not balancing issue as much as it is map/mode design problem.

I am playing mechwarrior online for too long to not notice pattern here. Nerfing support ships is not really good angle to that. In fact, it is good that dreadnought or destroyer can maintains defensive position when he is properly supported. This alone is awesome. Problem is, as you pointed out, game become boring, when it is just peak out, shoot, fly back fest. Maps are full of choke points yet these are very small and without any objective, if team will hold good defensive position while other ships will cover the flank, there is nothing what other team can do, without proper communication (and we know in PUG games, there will be never proper communication), so they can just adapt and keep doing the same.

If map will be static as are now, matches will become very boring very fast and what we call now just some boring matches, it will become meta and solo players, who want have some fun and action will die over and over and over again.

So what is the solution? I think it is to introduce dynamic or even asymmetric modes and maps. Where objectives can shift or there will be more objectives to fight for. Something where map control actually means something. I really hope they have better modes planned than just these two.

So what is the solution? I think it is to introduce dynamic or even asymmetric modes and maps. Where objectives can shift or there will be more objectives to fight for. Something where map control actually means something. I really hope they have better modes planned than just these two.

Maybe Mult-team matches?: 3v3v3. Entrenching your team would be much less viable. It wouldn't hold for long.

Maybe just simple domination would to that, mode, which wouldn't be just about kills. Basically three bases over the map and capturing them and holding them would earn points. Who will reach 1000 points first will win.

This alone could force player to much more movement across the maps, hard supporting would become harder and support ships would be more vulnerable.

Keep in mind, there is very similar mode in MWO and there this mode doesn't work at all.. Because easiest way to win it is to kill everyone in other team. So if mode like this would be introduced, killing enough opponents just can't be one of the winning goal because it would just kill whole mode.

I like the long slow ranged battles. It give it a sense of realism I think. It's pretty cool seeing several giant ships just exchanging fire over a few kilometers.

ZoeSIlvertongue#7724 posted (#post-25924)

I like the long slow ranged battles. It give it a sense of realism I think. It's pretty cool seeing several giant ships just exchanging fire over a few kilometers.

This mode could stay in the game for those who enjoy it. However for others, there should be something more about tactics, movement and some action.

And keep in mind, this style of the game is not really good for casuals and solo players. And if casuals and solo wont play this game, it will go down fast. So, we should avoid all these issues.

Objective-based modes - particularly ones with mobile and/or changing objectives - would change this type of gameplay up a lot.

Another option is to, as mentioned above, have some kind of counterplay to healers (other than just "kill the healer"). I don't think reversing or completely shutting down healing is necessary, just having some abilities which massively slow healing rates (not just external, but auto-heal as well) for a time would be a good step, imo. If this kind of thing were to be added, I'd think the best option would be for it to target individual ships and make healing have less effect on the ship hit by such an ability/weapon.

A more passive option would be to just have a flat reduction to the effectiveness of healing, although I'd personally like to see this be quite small if it happens.

Most folks aren't experiencing matches with the full range of unlocked abilities. Entrenching is certainly effective early on in the game's life, when progression trees are still being filled out. However, as I've done, witnessed live on a show floor, and seen others do against our team, countering an entrench can be as easy as coordinating nuclear strikes between two players. Or one, if they're not keen on shielding.