MAG Guide - Advanced Tactics

I did not write this, I saw it on the official MAG forum and thought it would be a good idea to have it here as well as sometimes these things tend to disappear over time and I know if it's here it won't go anywhere.

All credit to oHIKARUo and Thagmor for writing/compiling this stuff.

ADVANCED DEFENSIVE TECHNIQUES

"IRON CURTAIN"

This technique applies to both Acquisition and Domination scenarios.  This technique involves the use of APCs, you know the APCs that are parked all the way in the back?  Yes, those APCs are key components in determining whether or not you will lose a defense mission.  The effectiveness of this technique is reliant on how many APCs are used, if every single APC is used in this technique, then the attacking team has one HELL of a nasty fight ahead of them.

1) At the start of the mission, spawn in the rear spawn point.

2) Take control of an APC

3) Drive the APC to the rear of your bunker.

4) Objective as the driver is to constantly scan the battle field for enemy threats, both near and far.  Keep scaning past your bunkers rear to make sure the attacking team isn't placing a charge.  Your job as the driver is to ensure the APCs survival, keep your repair kit handy for quick repairs, and be ready to fall back if you are taking heavy fire (you will take heavy fire, trust me, the attacking team will absolutely want to kill you).

5) The gunner needs to also scan for targets both near and far and kill anybody attempting to plant a charge.  If a charge is planted, the driver needs to defuse it while the gunner watches over the driver defusing the charge.

6) Both the gunner and driver need to use the mic and the driver needs to call targets as they appear.  The driver needs to emphasis to the gunner that the bunker is the highest priority and any calls to defend the bunker must be immediately dealth with.

Performing this technique makes it almost impossible for the enemy team to destroy your bunker.  The most common way that this nearly pefect defense fails is because a player on your team will drive off with your APC when you are making repairs to it.  This is usually more danerous than an enemy team with RPGs.  So the advice I give the driver is to use judgement when exiting the vehicle, and make sure you don't do it near ANY teammates that you do not have direct communication with (same squad).

You can provide effective cover for up to 2 bunkers  and provide cover for the cracks that most attacking infiltrators use to slip past the bunkers in most cases. You are basically a huge pain in the ass for the attacking team.  It can be argued that you are an even bigger pain in the ass than the notorious bunker turret because you can MOVE QUICKLYand make repairs safely.  This is makes a huge difference when an attacking team has a squad of guys that just planted a charge and are watching over it.  The only thing really capable of defeating such a force in short time is an APC along with a few ground troops will barely give you enough time to defuse it.

A platoon leader as a driver/gunner would significantly improve survivability for the APC and its crew.  The reason being is that the platoon leader has the special ability to regnerate vehicle health.

"ACTIVE SPAWN DENIAL"

This technique applies to both Acquisition and Domination.  This technique requires a machine gun (LMG, MMG) or a sniper rifle (preferably 50 cal) to destroy helicopters and the RPG to destroy APCs.  For helicopter removal laying prone and shooting at ANY portion of the helicopter, as long as it results in a hit indicator (the diagonal red lines) is all you need to destroy these helicopter spawn points.  Doing so will severely cripple the attacking team for several reasons 1) The attacking team will not be able to respawn from there until another helicopter is sent in.  2) The attacking team that was waiting to respawn will now have to sit through another wave.  If the blockade is in effect (Domination only) then this is even more punishing for the attacking team.    The key to successfully suppressing the attacking team from spawning is to attack the helicopter as soon as you can see it and as long as the hit indicators are showing up after you hit the helicopter.  If you can manage to start firing at it while it is in mid flight before it touches down, it is very possible to destroy it before it "settles in" causing the occupants to wait for yet ANOTHER wave.  You can lock up an entire squad for 3-4 waves depending on how long you maintain this suppressing technique.    After destroying the helicopter a few times you will soon realize how popular you became with the enemy team and you can almost guarantee that they will send any remaining squads to take care of you.  I personally use the machinegun on a bipod for this but you can also use the 50cal.

The APCs are a high priority target for the defensive team for the same reason I outline in the offensive technique "mobile spawn point."  The APC is a vehicle of destruction if used conservatively while maintaining close proximity to the objectives that the attacking team needs to capture/destroy.  The best weapon to take APCs out is the rocket launcher.  The machineguns and sniper rifles do damage the APC but not to the degree of rocket launchers.

Rocket launchers also cause panic to most APC drivers because of the psychological effect of being shot at with a rocket.  If your team is doing fine guarding the REAL objective then you can allocate 1-2 players to this task and it will seriously reduce the amount of enemy troops coming in at what seems to be a non stop pace.

"ROUGE REPAIR" tactic/concept by delligerent written by oHIKARUo

This advanced defensive tactic applies to both Acquisition and Domination missions.  You are required to obviously have a repair kit for this.  Armor selection is up to personal preference, but I personally suggest light armor for the added mobility.  The other reason that I recommend light armor is that if you are detected and even if you are successful in killing those who found you, it is highly likely you will die immediately afterwards by more of the enemy, or by a persistant enemy.  The key to this tactic is stealth, without stealth this will not work at all and the element of surprise (more like horror) will be lost.  I also recommend doing this alone, it would be nice to have more than one person along for this mission for the sake of saving time.  However, the trade off with having more people is the significantly increased chance of the attacking team noticing one of you which will quickly end up with EVERYBODY on the special mission dead.  For the sake of this write up we will make it a one man operation.

The situation in which this tactic is applied is when you are facing a blockade of enemy troops and you are pushed back to the far reaches of your base compound.  During this blockade it will be VERY difficult to escape from the new front line which is certainly going to be packed with an entire platoon of enemies.  This is where you have to exercise discipline and remember the golden rule of stealth, DO NOT FIRE UNTIL YOU ARE SPECIFICALLY FIRED UPON.  If the enemy doesn't shoot at you, he doesn't see you or may actually have mistaken you for a teammate! Ok slip through the enemy blockade, this may take many tries if you are not good at being sneaky or if you simply catch bad breaks, or lastly if a teammate attracts attention while near your position and gets you and himself killed.

Now that you made it past the enemy blockade the job got a little easier.  This isn't a walk inthe park.  It is safe to say that the most commonly patrolled piece of equipment once it is destroyed by the attacking team is the anti air infrastructure unit.  Bunkers are almost universally overlooked at this point because they are so far behind the new front line that has been drawn.  Start with the furthest bunker (either all the way on the right or left, use your judgement).  Repair the first bunker to 99% condition, do NOT finish repairing it now for the quick EXP gain.  If you repair it now you will probably be lucky to survive another full minute and your bunker will be destroyed immediately and you will have your cover effectively blown (they will want to see a dead body before they give up looking for this engineer.)

After you repair a bunker to 99% move on to the next bunker and do the same thing until all 4 have been repaired to 99%.  I'll repeat it again, stealth is vital here. You do not wan to kill anybody and end up with a stalker.  Just let them go, you have a big objective to accomplish 5 experience points is meaningless.  After the four bunkers are repaired to 99% head to the anti air unit and repair it to 100%.  After you repair the anti air to 100% quickly move to the bunker (either all the way to the left or right) and finish repairing it to 100%.  Move along quicky and get the bunkers all up to 100%.  At this point in the mission you want to maintain stealth and bypass enemies that are not shooting at you. If you start shooting at an enemy even with the advantage of surprise, and you miss, or if the enemy is a better shooter than you, what will happen is you will end up dead only completing part of your mission.  Avoid this disappointing result by sticking with stealth.  Repair the bunkers to 100% and you have now given your team the front line back.  As long as your team takes advantage of this and fills the front lines again, you will have set the ground work that will end up absorbing even more time from the attacking team leading your team to victory!

Something to note, during Acquisition a gate is usually blown open at this point in the game.  You will want to move in and repair the gate to 99% between traveling to the next bunker.  This way you won't have a bunch of unmanned bunker turrets and a gate that is left wide open for the enemy to slip through with the prototype.  Including the gate in this mission will increase your chances of success and preventing an upsetting, and avoidable loss.