Junglist

Well, well, well, seems I'm advancing to the next round! It was tough and bloody, but it mostly went according to plan. *breathes sigh of relief* AAR Game 1 Jung attacking jby: My plan revolved around a carefully developed attack with three main stages: Stage 1 - Use paladins to probe his defenses, concentrating on killing as many turrets and sams as possible, as well as clearing an eventual safe dropping area closer to the bridge. Of note: I was happy to attack from South-west. Stage 2 - Establish deployment zone and begin to push, with mostly paladins, apollos and mortars, attempting to whittle away his heavy units. Continue to spend most time in a mercury directing bots and dropping own turrets and deployables about the field. Stage 3 - With "jaw-dropping timing" drop several thors and a sam directly South of bridge and push jby's forces off of it. This I did by finally jumping to the front-line and killing all who needed killing. Victory! Game 2 jby attacking Jung: It was jby's turn to take the strategic initiative. I decided to force the one issue I could at the start of the game, and did my best to deny any easy landing in the south and force jby to drop north. From there it was a matter getting in close with thors and apollos and killing as many sam and heavy units as possible. jby's play to the north-east did come close to breaking my lines, but I managed to plow a couple of thors into theirs midst and personally kill or disable most of them. If you look at the map above of the game with 5 minutes left you will notice I had brought in a thor and enough apollos to at least match jby's remaining firepower. I landed a hurricane (easy killer vs light units) and went to work. In the next 2 minutes I used that hurri to destroy the last couple of dropships (including one with jby in it, I believe) and clear away his remaining paladins and apollos north of the bridge. Victory! Great games jby!

We'll probably be playing on delta pavonis instead of creature zoo...I didn't realize the difference in number of bots on the two servers.

Bot Wrangler VS Bot Wrangler! This one won't be easy for either of us.

I'm in full agreement with the though shall not use mines in ctf games idea. It might help a bit.

I don't have time to add much but I just wanted second Redcon's opinion about Sunday...IT WAS TOTALLY FRICKEN AWESOME INDEED! See everyone next Sunday, same bat(tle) time, same bat(tle) channel!

I got it and emailed IG. Still waiting to hear back from him.

Nexus is downright tough to beat. That said, I've gotta have two cents about the old vehicle under the bridge trick: it's a cheapo way to win and should be trumped by any vehicle in position on top of the actual bridge itself. As a matter of honor I pledge to not break the terms of the New-Geneva Space-Viking Convention and avoid accumulating victory points through any means other than brute force and open domination of the bridge itself. A pox on you jby (should we end up playing in the first round) if you attempt such shenanigans.

Jby, you've got mail...I hope.

I must concur with bboyle. Also, three has been a nice mix of newer enthusiastic players and gnarled vets.

I was on holidays when things got organized, so I missed out. I would gladly set some dates and battle it out with you all....perhaps we could have a round-robin with a playoff round, or is this tournament single loss elimination?

How about a reward for best Smack-Talk of the week.....or to even the playing field a bit, since some of us like a drink or two, how about the Drunken Master showdown! Where the players must agree to get inebriated before and during the match (careful where you spill that drink!). Obviously it would be very dishonorable to lie and play sober, and certainly less entertaining. . . . . . To those of you out there who prefer the sober approach to gaming I apologize if this post was in anyway offensive to you. However, you can never vie for title of the Drunken-Master! . . . . . . And besides, we are space-vikings, aren't we?

Bot wrangling is one of the most satisfying/frustrating aspects to the game. Eventually all must wrangle or be crushed by the enemy's coordinated attack. A good way of improving your wrangling skills is to spend some time in a mercury to the rear of your forces, where you can safely give orders, deploy sensors, and survey the tac map. Also, at critical moments in the battle you can always take control of a lead unit to maximize the attack, leaving the mercury for later. [ August 16, 2007, 07:40 PM: Message edited by: Junglist ]

Well....what the f is this! A challenge to the Upstarts!?!? Hey, we were the upstarts! You can't upstart us....OR CAN YOU? Bring it when you're ready. [ August 16, 2007, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: Junglist ]

Oh yeah, Phantom - to your question about shockforce, I currently can't run the demo with the computer i have. It will probably be a few months before I do, just a matter of time before i buy the game....though not my preferred setting for a war game.

That was a nice game tonight - I was a little surprised it was close in the end too; you guys were pretty cagey though. Seems I forgot what the drop once command is for and used up all of our dropships. I was really enjoying the beginning of the battle, hehe, too much typing and the curse of the smack-talk almost burned me, and honestly, if Rua'anith hadn't been there defending with me it would have ended badly.

Been on vacation for awhile and I'm glad to see you guys are still at it! I haven't had a chance to read any of the threads yet (except a quick peak at the tourney - which I gotta say is a great idea) but I look forward mixing it up again soon. See you on the battlefield.

For the most part v 1.2.9 seems to be running well for me and other than a couple of crashes to desktop, game-play itself has been fairly smooth. I have, however, noticed a couple of quirks which need to be addressed: first-off, the hover-craft are getting bogged-down immediately after getting dropped on a very frequent basis - almost every time with a hurricane. The other problem I've encountered a lot recently occurs when attempting to give an attack order (possibly other orders as well) to all the bots at once, and instead they all freeze in place and are unresponsive to any other group orders. The only way I've been able to get them moving again is to give each individual bot its own orders....not a very good option when you've just released your emp and are expecting the bots to all attack on cue, but instead you have to start issuing a tonne of new orders. As far as CZ is concerned, I've kinda enjoyed having the maps on full rotation, as it gives us more variety in terms of the environments we can test the new toys in. One thing I would like to request Poesel, when you get back from your holiday, is upping the number of bots in the scenarios. As a dedicated bot wrangler I find my tactical options limited with the lower number of bots to boss about. Anyway, hope everyone is enjoying the summer!

Good games indeed. You guys deserved to win, as you played well as a team (esp. House to House) and I played like someone who'd been drinking all day. It makes me wonder how the Soviets crushed the Germans when the only ration not cut was the vodka ration. Maybe Russians are better drunk drivers than I am, who knows.

You've always been the youngest admiral in the fleet there Chiliman, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Personally, I turn the bot voices off becuse they disrupt voice comms to much for my liking. The strange switch of orders back and forth might help explain the annoying habit the bots have of grouping together in some far off corner off the map and basically following each other nowhere.

I still think 3 or 4 ion thors is a good number. While were at it, could I have a pint of vodka with that? Thanks Poesel, I always said you were the best (server) host around!

Ions now target turrets, and destroy turrets, with little difficulty. Personally I think they are too plentiful on creature zoo; six is too many - you should be able to come up with a way or destroying a couple of these long distance terrors and move on with the game. Maybe 3 or 4 Ion Thors would be a better number. As for me being the I Beam Boy, I think that title belongs to Nexus. Lately I've been using them as an experiment, mostly to try to come up with a weakness in this tactic. And yes, there are ways to overcome the ion tanks - emp attack followed by a mass drop of infantry on the beamers is one way. For the most part, I'd have to say, the Ions are a little too much zappa-zappa and not enough pow-pow, if that makes any sense.

Although, I would have to say (again) that I think the number of mines available should be cut back. Too many mines = too much frustration game slow down.

I'm putting 4 request, so there. 1. any ariel tempest variant, or both and dump the original as it is just too slow 2. Nebelwerfer 3. Apollo quad 76mm 4. Thor KC-HM

First off, aim low! Tracks are often the most vulnerable and largest target available. If your shot to the tracks doesn't outright kill the enemy it will usually slow them down or stop their movement, making the subsequent killing shot easier. For the near sure kill you should be aiming a little up from the tracks, anywhere from crew section (starts usually about 1/3 - 1/4 in from the front of most vehicle) to the back engine area (about 1/3 to 1/4 in from the back of most vehicles). Personally, as some of you would know, I like to get much closer to the enemy; to the point where it becomes a game of 120 AP to the death! For in close combat involving heavies (1500 m or closer, depending on the atmosphere) you should be using armour piercing, and you must be prepared to be quick or be dead. For front on Thor on Thor action (or Apollos for that matter) you want to aim at the tracks, preferable on an angle which will propel your shell inwards towards the vital components and squishy human bits inside. If you want to be really fancy and punish someone who comes out of hull down too early, on the Thor there is a tiny metal grate right in the centre front hull armour, or what I personally think of as the "sweet spot". If I can hit this spot at will against opponents early on in a game it definitely gives me a sense of being in the "zone" so to speak. Kinda like playing darts. This is of course all moot if your enemy isn't paying attention and you can get a shot away at the side or rear of their turret. When the turret shot presents itself it is the surest way to quickly incapacitate your enemy.