Let's try again. For everyone else, I'm basically talking about 'Mech 4 now. I still play it occasionally, so sue me. The only relationship this ever had to MWLL was that it was started by a minor comment i made a while ago.
Velaska, I never said that 'in no cases a light mech can take on heavies, assaults etc.' Please actually read my posts before you try arguing. A fast, long range light is extremely difficult to hit even to a good player. Piloted well, using cover, shooting straight and moving smart, a fast light can kill almost anything with enough space to run.
A a slow or brawling light is a different story. If you have had experiences to the contrary, you are playing against sub-par opponents or people on a bad connection.
This is why:
1. To win, you must remain alive for upwards of a minute, firing constantly, while taking next to no hits in return.
2. The heavy can nail you if you are in front of it. If you slip into its forward arc, you take a hit. I'm assuming here that the heavy is a good shot, or this entire discussion is moot.
3. You must stay in its rear arc, which is extremely difficult. Combining the heavy's torso track with its own turn rate, it can swing faster than you can move most of the time, and will get a bead on you if you are in this window. Additionally, In order to change tracking direction, it simply has to turn and twist the other way. You, on the other hand, need to do a u-turn. Everyone here knows this, I'm walking through what has to be done so we see why it's difficult.
4. Any heavy worth his salt will be arm-swinging the entire time, and these shots alone will likely be enough to kill or leg you. It is impossible to stay out of arm-swing arc unless you track much faster than his twist + turn rate, which is pretty much never the case.
I have never seen a light pilot who can keep his opponent from ever, ever getting a red crosshair up close.
Light pilots survive because when their opponents get that crosshair, they miss. An opponent above a certain calibre will not miss, and the light will die. Because any 'Mech up close, even a light, is a large target, this skill threshold is low enough that you have a reasonable chance of encountering such a pilot.
All the above is for a fast light, mind you. For a slow light, your tracking speed is cut in half, and so almost any 'Mech can get a bead on you. You simply cannot circle quickly enough to prevent this.
Also, most 'Mechs under 75 tons can comfortably get a speed approaching or faster than 76kph. A TW going 86 is not "dipping into the slow light's waters," it is happily cruising along at its stock speed and equally happy to obliterate anything it can catch. Once a good heavy is faster than you, with more weapons than you and more armour than you, it's over. Period.
Now, all this said, one of the best pilots I have ever encountered has a pet 'Mech which is a brawling Jenner IIC. He can kill most pilots in heavies easily, but he does this because he is much, much better than them, and will even then only use this 'Mech on terrain where it has a large advantage.
Throwing that out there so it's clear there are exceptions. I just don't believe Velaska's 76kph Raven is one of them.
tldr;
It's almost impossible for any brawling light, let alone one going 76kph, to remain out of a heavy's firing arc for an entire fight. Once it slips into that arc, it gets mauled. If it survives doing so, that was because the heavy pilot was a poor shot, not because the light is innately superior.
