If you’re reading this, you probably just got mercy sniped and were directed to this article afterwards. This means that you are likely still in rage mode; all of the logic and reasoning centers of your brain are temporarily shut off as warning klaxons blaze “KILL KILL RAGE SMASH KILL”. Please take this opportunity to take a few moments’ rest before continuing with this post; turn on some soothing music, slowly breathe in and out, go to your happy place, and do some other analogies involving things like calming rivers and soothing forests.
Back? All better? Somewhat less likely to go on a murderous rage rampage? Excellent. The content portion of this post shall now commence.
MERCIES: THEY ARE YOUR FAULT
Oops, that headline might have inadvertently sent you right back into hulk-rage-mode. My apologies, but it had to be said. Please put the keyboard down and stay with me for a few more paragraphs before you do irreparable damage to expensive electronics…
Perhaps we should back up a moment and retrace the steps that you likely took to get here. I’ll bet it started out something like this:
There you were, in an idyllic scenario (read: hostile godforsaken planet eleventy billion lightyears from home, fighting for your life with giant robotic war machines), happily blowing things up on the front lines with your ACU. Like any good commander, you know that the power of the ACU is rivaled only by a large army in the early to mid game – and thus were capitalizing on it by slaughtering vast hordes of low tech units and defenses, cutting a swath for your army to quickly overrun and crush the life out of your hapless enemies.
But then, suddenly, something was amiss. A silence falls over you for a split second, as you unconsciously break into a cold sweat.
For a microsecond, you know what’s coming - yet simultaneously know that you have no way of stopping it. An acute sense of helplessness and despair washes over you as…
Exactly .25 seconds later:
Well, fiddlesticks. That didn’t go as planned.
When this happens, you are immediately jerked from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. You go from “happy happy shooty shooty kill thingies I’m an unstoppable war machine fear me” to “ZOMG I JUST EXPLODED” in less than a second. The result is the equivalent of your mental state shifting without a clutch, as uncontrollable rage (and/or hilarity, depending on your point of view) typically ensues as your brain struggles to reconcile the fact that no, you’re no longer playing Indiana Jones on the front lines, but are now staring at a smoldering crater where you were a second ago, watching as your plans fall down all around you like sale prices of SupCom2.
This prompts you to wax eloquent about the sorry state of affairs of the current balance of the game, and how the smug jerk that sent those mercies at you has no real skill and relied entirely on luck to just barely steal that kill. While it sounds great in your head, due to rage it unfortunately comes out more like:
“WTF stupid noob team let me die you retards. And you’re such a noob mercies are the only thing you can do to kill me NOOB”
Or, more commonly, it comes out more succinctly:
“FU NOOB CHEATER”
So. Let’s back up a few moments and deconstruct a few things. This process will go against everything your brain is now screaming at you (“no, I only died because of the nooby cheaty haxxorz”), but I promise that the process will help you avoid further moments of being killed by “idiot mercy cheater noobs”. Or at the very least it will have some more funny pictures. Hopefully.
STEP #1: IDENTIFYING THE ENEMY
At a high level, mercies are a very niche unit. They have only 1.5 minutes of fuel, are constructed entirely from wet cardboard (ie, have 10 HP), and deal 2.4k damage on impact. They are also built from enriched Unobtanium and kobe beef, costing 300 mass to build.
This gives them a few notable characteristics:
- They will die almost immediately to almost any form of AA.
- They are an incredibly expensive investment.
- Their exclusive purpose is for sniping undefended, high value targets.
ACUs are the most common target of the mercy. The reason why is quite simple: an ACU is the highest value target in the entire game, and has no built in AA. Thus, it is highly vulnerable to mercies should it have no support. Added to this is the fact that ACUs are typically used on the front lines, due to the high combat effectiveness in the early to mid game, increasing the likelihood that its supporting units die.
It should also be noted that it takes 5 mercies to kill a full-HP UEF ACU. Mercy snipers usually use 6, however, to account for veterancy and/or regeneration of the target. That’s an investment of 1800 mass – a *huge* amount even in the mid game. To put that in context, here’s some other cool things you can buy with 1800 mass:
- 64 mobile T1 AA guns
- 36 T1 interceptors
- 15 mobile shields
- 12 T1 stationary AA turrets
- 11 mobile flaks
- 2 T2 mass extractors
- almost 10% of a Monkeylord
Remember that Mercies provide no wreckage should they be shot down. Once that mass is invested, there’s no getting it back. Also, we’re not even counting the cost of the T2 air factory, which is another 630 mass that you could have used to buy even more cool things.
In short: mercy snipes are REALLY FRAKING EXPENSIVE. If someone is making Mercies, they are giving donating you a huge mass advantage, so long as you don’t go and get yourself killed by them.
STEP #2: DEFENDING AGAINST THE ENEMY
Now that we know what the enemy looks like, its common characteristics, and how incredibly expensive and unwieldy they are, let’s get down to the meat of the article: ensuring that said mercies are a huge waste of mass, which once fully wasted will allow you to effortlessly crush them with your advantage and put the mercy noob cheater noob sniper in his place (under your ACU’s foot).
Some quick dos and don’ts:
DO: make stationary T1 AA. It costs 150 mass and hard counters 1800+ mass in mercies. So long as it is between your ACU and the mercy death cloud, you will be fine.
DON’T: make mobile T1 AA. In large groups, it can kill mercies (except for Cybran, which, like much of that faction, is utterly useless), but due to its firing randomness it’s just as likely to miss and let the mercies through.
DO: keep mobile flak near your ACU.
DON’T: make mobile flak and expect it to be a magical mercy-shield. It has abysmally slow turret turn speed, which means that if other air is flown over it first before the mercies, it will not be able to turn around fast enough to shoot and kill them. Also, it’s possible for mercies to fit through the flak bursts, due to the flak’s firing randomness.
DO: make mobile shields to make mercy snipes prohibitively expensive.
DON’T: forget about said mobile shields and let your ACU out from under them. A good mercy sniper will look for such moments of forgetfulness and capitalize on them swiftly and brutally.
Now, for some practical experience. The vast majority of mercy snipes happen in one of the following situations. We’ll go through them in order so that you can learn to avoid inadvertently putting yourself in one, giving those evil noob cheaters a chance to sneak in a cheaty noob snipe (noobishly).
SCENARIO #1: THE RAMBO APPROACH
In this scenario, you are throwing caution to the wind, running deep into enemy territory with little to no backup or support. Usually fueled by the invincible feeling a gun upgrade gives you, you charge forward, laying waste to all in your path… right up until the moment you are mercied.
The problem with this is simple. You cannot, *CANNOT*, do this. Contrary to popular belief, your ACU is not Jason Bourne. It can and will die if you try to use it like it is. It always needs scouting, air cover, and sufficient backup to ensure that it cannot be killed by a surprise change in events (two ACUs appear around the corner with guns of their own, a large land army rolls in from the side, a cloud of mercies appears…).
SCENARIO #2: THE CHEATY SNIPE
Realizing your earlier mistakes, you are now determined to keep your ACU alive while still being useful. You make sure it’s always covered by flak. You have T1 AA near it. You even have a massive cloud of ints circling it. AND YOU STILL DIE FROM MERCIES. “WTF is this $%!^ing %#$@” you might say, as this cements the idea of “mercies = cheats” in your head.
It’s not. Micro is your problem.
Simply put, if the mercy sniper flies other air units over your defenses first, distracting them, mercies can typically sneak in. To counteract this, manually move your air force to intercept the mercies, and/or select your AA and manually target the mercies.
SCENARIO #3: THE NOOB
If you have this guy as your teammate, especially if he is supposed to be providing air for you, you are pretty much toast unless the opposite team has an equally-mentally-handicapped player.
The solution is not, however, to press even harder with your ACU knowing that you have no air support. I’ve seen this done many, many times. The logic, whilst okay if you look at it really fast from a distance while squinting, upon further examination is clearly ridiculous. It’s like having an allergy to bananas, and then convincing yourself that the only cure is to eat as many banana products as possible instead of looking for alternatives. It seems great at the time, right up until the moment you are on the floor gasping for air as you go into anaphylactic shock.
The proper solution is to TML the guy, take his mex, and make even bigger armies / air forces / whatever. DO NOT SEND YOUR ACU INTO HARMS WAY WITHOUT AIR SUPPORT. That makes Chris Taylor cry.
CONCLUSION: MERCIES ARE GREAT!
Now that you know how to counter mercies, you never have to suffer the humiliation of dying to a nooby cheater noob idiot noob sniper noob mercy noob cheater noob noob again, we can look at mercies in a new light: as a valuable part of the game that separates the noobs from the pros. Noobs will blindly send their ACUs into harm’s way, thinking them invincible. Mercies are the Darwinian answer to this, thinning the herd of those who partake in such behavior.
[prediction: lots of "zomg, no, mercies are bad and evil and wrong and my ACU shouldn't die no matter what, even if I let my enemy get a massive mass advantage and then send my ACU off into oblivion without paying attention" comments to follow]
) of the cost of the power to build the mercies, the t2 airfac, the cost of the mercies themselves.
