I was, for one week during the Summer of 1999, ranked 67th in the world in Tribes. I would go entire games playing as a scout without dying in spite of a trail of shattered bodies in my wake. On one occasion, a friend and I, using the most lightly armed and armored class, assaulted the enemy base, overcame every defense they had, and engaged in a 2v20 slugging match with the entire enemy team for half an hour during which we managed more than 100 kills between us and no deaths.
The only other game where I reached a similar level was Mechwarrior 4, though my notoriety there was based on my wildly unconventional but undeniably effective mech designs. At one point, I was responsible for 3 of the top 5 most downloaded variants.
What kills me about that, however, is that two of those three designs were incredibly silly. I mean, who looked at the wolfhound, a light mech that can carry a PPC, and said anything other than "Yeah, I'm gonna put a PPC in that thing". Or in the case of the Atlas, the most popular thing I've ever made for any reason ever, in spite of the fact that I feel it was the best example of what an Atlas could do, even at it's best the Atlas was still terrible.
The only mech I was truly proud of was my Highlander as it violated almost every rule people lived by when designing a mech for city combat. It's alpha strike only managed to deliver between 50% and 65% the damage the average slugger could put out. It's engine made it move at a rapid (for that environment especially) 65 kph - 50% faster than the competition. And it carried three distinct weapon systems, each of which was at best rarely used if not outright hated. In spite of all of that, the Highlander managed to turn city fights from something other than the usual get a kill then get killed cycle that ensured most games had everyone at a 1:1 KDR at best and was often able to achieve 3:1 rates! People laughed that I used heavy gauss and large lasers in a city - certainlY I wouldn't need that range yet the fact I could open virtually any fight at 600 meters while the enemy needed to slog at least another 200 to even begin to fight back meant I usually had the real advantage in firepower. People thought my use of Large Lasers rather than the longer ranged and harder hitting (and equally weighty) ER Large was madness but that ensured the mech could constantly fire all of it's weapons as they became available without worrying about heat. And the final weapon system is one I never encountered on any other mech - the Class 10 Ultra Autocannon. Based upon every theory of how the game should have been played, that mech was a disaster and yet it was brutally efficient at close quarters.
There were other designs I quite liked but they never made it into the top lists anywhere. I forget if it was a Caldron Bourne or the Bushwacker, but like the highlander, most who looked at what it had fitted and considered it's proposed role and said it was rubbish. It was essentially a mech designed to be used on the common "sniping" maps - a mode where most people just loaded up on lasers and LRM's and pounded away at the edge of their range. My own design carried two light autocannons, two ER large lasers and 2 LRM 15's. And the most baffling thing to others is those autocannon were the mech's primary weapons. What they always ignored is that while the single volley firepower was quite low, the autocannons cycled five times faster than the Laser and six times faster than the PPC. Sure, that meant you often delivered some hits in non-critical locations, but really that was only of limited concern. That mech began it's fight 50% further, and it only got deadlier as people closed, The rapid cycle of weapons ensured accurate return fire was all but impossible until they got close. Simply put, people rarely got close.
Damn - now I want to play Mechwarrior Online again.
