Strategy Rules and Regulations

[Nielk1]

I am reminded of Ace Combat Zero's sliding scale from Knight, to Soldier, to Mercenary. You went Merc if you shot down disabled aircraft and you went Knight if you let them go. Being balanced got you soldier. Missions were different for each mostly in who you fought and some minor events.

I would like to take this opportunity, and hopefully people will agree, to dub 3 sets of rules. Those being Knight rules, Soldier rules, and Mercenary (or Merc) rules. The difference being derived from as stated above. Mercs can empties whenever, or blow them up, Knights try their darndest not to, and Soldiers play the middle ground.

Thoughts on this proposition? It would allow the host to very quickly state the rules for the given match with regard to this subset once everyone learned the terms.

[Zero Angel]

How I stand towards the stealing also depends on who does it.
If the winning team losses a ship and than quickly steals an empty, or after the opening DF steals an empty while the other team got whiped out » I do not agree with it.
If you're losing and your team cant really build the ships cause they're being shot to pieces and you can find an undefended empty in a full base » go for it.

It basicly comes back to that chivalry bit, where the underdog can get away with a bit less of it.

Well, a lot of people consider empty stealing legit, even if its a pilot of the team who basically wiped the other team. It is up to the team who is waiting for empties to be vigilant of enemy pilots who may attempt a steal.

This is far different from base camping where a player will who already has a ship will fly into base to kill various things and then when he runs low on ammo or health, kill enemy pilots around the rec pad and steal a fresh empty, leaving them with the damaged one -- then repeating the kill pilots/steal fresh empty tactic, it can be insanely difficult to counter when it is already occuring and it makes base defense an impossible task. It doesn't happen in a lot of games, though.

[MrTwosheds]

And the best way to avoid it is by not building empties...this only becomes a problem when you have some of those insanely competitive types playing, who only care about their own chain gun firing and never consider the requirements of the rest of their team or their sides tactical advantage, had a game like this yesterday, my thugs were lead on such a relentless assault of the enemy base that ultimately I was unable to keep up with their demands for new ships, scavs and pods, they overstretched our resource supply and caused our defeat, victory was handed to my opponent on a plate as my "team mates" filled the chat box with spammed demands for stuff at a rate that could just not be met. Countless empties were wasted on players ego's as they tried to take on blast tanks in them.
Empty spamming does NOT work in 1.3! you cannot hover-camp a base and fly away like you can in 1.2, all you do is feed loose scrap to your opponent.
Empties = Defeat.

[Feared_1]

Pilots typically have fewer rules against them since they're quite a bit easier to kill. Late in the game, I've seen pilots hide on the Bomber Bay and shoot up the Bomber for a while until it really needs to be healed to be used again.

As for stealing things, it is one of highlights of my strat game when I steal an empty scout. The pilots on the other team need to let the commander know when to cancel an empty in the event that it is likely that the empty will be stolen.

I've never seen the rule about not stealing an AI ship that the enemy is about to hop into. I've stolen walkers before because the enemy doesn't get into the walker right away.

[Zax]

2. why limit that? Especially if you have mortar. 12+ healers on one walker means 12 easy kills for you. Also, they are in your base, which means you will get the loose, which means you have the huge advantage. Always kill the medic before the tank. Assault walkers tend to only look forward, which makes it hard for them to protect the healers from a flank. Use strategy.

Shouldn't limit, but if a walker with 12 trucks is coming at you, game's over son. Only thing going to beat that is another walker with 12 trucks, so hopefully you caught it early enough.

[Ded10c]

I've never seen the rule about not stealing an AI ship that the enemy is about to hop into. I've stolen walkers before because the enemy doesn't get into the walker right away.

If the AI can steal ships, why not do it yourself?

[Red Devil]

13 years later and people are still debating strategy in this game. love it.

[AcneVulgaris]

2. why limit that? Especially if you have mortar. 12+ healers on one walker means 12 easy kills for you. Also, they are in your base, which means you will get the loose, which means you have the huge advantage. Always kill the medic before the tank. Assault walkers tend to only look forward, which makes it hard for them to protect the healers from a flank. Use strategy.

Shouldn't limit, but if a walker with 12 trucks is coming at you, game's over son. Only thing going to beat that is another walker with 12 trucks, so hopefully you caught it early enough.

2 manned chain scouts could rip that assembly to pieces.

[Red Devil]

or one well-placed shot from a subversion rifle

[Zax]

2. why limit that? Especially if you have mortar. 12+ healers on one walker means 12 easy kills for you. Also, they are in your base, which means you will get the loose, which means you have the huge advantage. Always kill the medic before the tank. Assault walkers tend to only look forward, which makes it hard for them to protect the healers from a flank. Use strategy.

Shouldn't limit, but if a walker with 12 trucks is coming at you, game's over son. Only thing going to beat that is another walker with 12 trucks, so hopefully you caught it early enough.

2 manned chain scouts could rip that assembly to pieces.

Point being is the context. That walker is 99% of the time accompanied by blast tanks. You put yourself in the position where the enemy could produce a serviced assault, the game was mismanaged and is now over. Chain scouts can beat the assembly, correct, but the general understanding is that it has friends with teeth watching it's big hairy buttcheeks.

[Sly]

I'll address a few of these points. Just last night, Tom, BB and a few others were hitting my base and were on low HP. A few tried to jump out on my empties, but I simply canceled them and killed their pilots. It is not difficult to counter the base camping pilot killers. The easiest tactic is to not put yourself in this position. If I see 2 pilots wanting to get an empty, and my teammate is near them as a pilot, I will probably run them over to help him get the empty. I will only do so if other enemies are already in ships though. This all depends on how much you want to win though. I've seen Billy Boy rage over voice chat about how much he hates campers and people who sit on factories; but when he is losing, he will employ all of said tactics in order to attain an advantage.

As for the walker assault. This is such an ambiguous statement that I can't really answer it that well. It's like if I said; well, nothing beats 10 maulers rushing into your base. The answer depends on many factors. How far into the game are you, who has more map dominance, what are the thugs on each team, commanders on each team? What is the base layout and which map are we speaking of? I played a strat 3 days ago on Big Hilo against some newb. I joined late and he had 7 walkers outside of my scion base. He didn't assault me at first so I made 10 guass guardians and a jammer and 1 spire. Needless to say, they were easily decimated and the newb rage quit his server. A walker with 12 service trucks and a group of blast tanks may sound ominous at first, but it can easily be countered with the correct preparation. I've faced plenty of walker assaults in the past. As a good commander, you should always be scouting the enemies base. During one game on quarry, I knew 6 minutes beforehand what was going to go down. I made 10 mortar bikes and hide them behind my factory. When the walker came to my secondary, I ordered my thugs to distract the other tanks; the walker and his trucks were easily destroyed by the mortars and their splash damage.

[Zax]

It took him 6 mins to put out a serviced assault? Yikes.

One thing that is too common with those is that the striker invests all attention into the assault that he forgets to check the rest of the field. losing position. Lose all your pools and the assault goes badly, that game can and will be flipped in an instant. He will have 0 scrap from having sat in the base building up. Serviced assault is not a desperation tactic, but a finishing move. If the enemy's extractors happen to all lie en route, then steam rolling them on the way is another story

[Sly]

Tested an instant action edited game...Enemy walker with 12 healers versus 6 mortar bikes with splinter + my tank with splinter and chain shooting at it. Didn't last long.

[Zero Angel]

Tested an instant action edited game...Enemy walker with 12 healers versus 6 mortar bikes with splinter + my tank with splinter and chain shooting at it. Didn't last long.

That has got to be a lie, because everyone knows that enemy walkers with 12 healers are LITERALLY unstoppable.

[Nielk1]

Tested an instant action edited game...Enemy walker with 12 healers versus 6 mortar bikes with splinter + my tank with splinter and chain shooting at it. Didn't last long.

That has got to be a lie, because everyone knows that enemy walkers with 12 healers are LITERALLY unstoppable.

First, that was an AI Walker, so what was its AI level? Plus, without human thug back up it would be dead if you got behind it.