Playing The Long Game: How Risky Short Term Behavior is Sometimes the Best Way to Win

I wanna apply this to yesterday evening on duststorm. it was what 11v11.
We were taking over the entire map with nf being busy hammering our own base at b1-c1 and they were at a1. ( we swapped base and then we had main bases next to each other )

AZK was comm and I must say I disagreed immensely with him on his tactic.
I was taking over the entire map with grant and another engi he dropped all the refs but after a while he was sick of dropping rax too and ordered everyone to come defend the base. HERE is where he went wrong. He didnt look at how you win empires he just didnt want to lose his base. We had the entire map under controle, every ref on the map was either ours or destroyed they didnt have any, probem was cause azk was so focused on just keeping his main base and diverting resources to it he didnt place any more bases down. Nf kept hammering our main base next to theirs with vehicles I wanted more raxes elsewhere so we could just deplete their resources and win.

Eventually we lost cause that base went down and we had nothing else.

This is one of those cases where you play the game other team wants you to. Nf went with shortterm win apc rushes on our main base with no map controle we had all te map controle. Instead of focusing on our strenght which was map controle AZK got blinded and focused on defending the base -> playing the game nf wanted to, nf was outnumbering us and out fighting us in our main we shouldve abandoned it and used our map controle-> longterm win.

It's something people have to learn. You win empires by killing the CV. Not by having a lot of vehicles map controle or resources. Kill the cv.

For dota guys. Rat dota vs 5 man dota.

 

I just found this, and would like to chime in. And of course I need a LONG post to give you my side of the story. - well TWO stories.

First of all at the start it was 2vs2. I had Mandelbaum (Black Cooper) and I think you had EvilEd. Mandelbaum didn't like having UGL APC's vs your upgraded turrets so he quit early. My plan was to go right for dual HE heavies and eventually nukes. He quit which left it 2vs1 for a long time. I kept base up hoping that one other person would join at which time we would roll 1 nuke and 1 HE/Bio heavy into your base for the win. You kept hitting me with dual APC's while I kept the base up - rebuilding the VF a couple times. I couldn't win 1 vs 2 and leaving base was sure suicide since at that point my com vehicle had very little armor on it, armory destroyed, low on weapons. Attacking was secondary to getting a VF up - mostly in preparation for who ever joined - which never happened. I did effectively use a single heavy to repel your APC attacks. NO ONE JOINED. I think out of mercy eventually Evil Ed quit.

I pushed the one heavy I had all game, into your base - jumped out and committed suicide, while trying to drop ammo, ending the game - FAIL. Your multiple upgraded turrets chewed me up in a second. I never got to implement my plan. Boo Hoo - I enjoyed the match.

So I think your analysis is a bit unfair. I certainly beat you more often than not. I do enjoy playing vs you since I think you are a skilled commander with a fair amount of aggressive nature, not afraid to be in my base while you build turrets. You rarely get killed outside your vehicle.

I rely on a team. You tend to focus on things you can build like turrets. I told you voice that I give team targets, which makes them more effective. I can many times win with a lesser skilled team vs your more skilled team. In absence of a team - I lose.

I rarely counter your turret offense with turrets, since I think building turrets is boring for players, tanks are preferable. Even if we lose 3/4 of the map, we will win the map when we push heavies vs your turrets. I normally do push out of main with a heavy once I complete the research, and I baby sit the nubs in heavies who insist on sitting still shooting until they lose the heavies. I will build a wall in front of team mates heavies and drop ammo to take out your turrets prior to our getting nukes. I don't normally leave the research lapsing while I attack unless it's 2vs2 or lower. In 1vs2 - it leaves me very little choices. I either do one final push - and lose if that fails or I hold up main hoping someone will join. I chose the latter.
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A better fail on my part vs you was your Arty attack on Money this past weekend. Myself and CAP vs you and EvilEd with similar tactics on your part going upgraded turrets and myself pushing heavies and not quite reaching nukes. When you started pushing short range Arty to take out most of my base was very effective. Even though each only got a handful of shots off before they were destroyed and even when ScRaT joined late in the game, making it 3 vs 2 (three on my team). Your aggressive pushing of dual Arty was very effective, against our dual heavy. Your Arty died quickly but we took lots of base damage which we were NOT addressing until ScRaT joined. But this was too late.

We kept pushing into your base and the horde of turrets chewed up the reactive armor. Although I could last about a minute, in your game I focused on your COM and got you down to 10% armor and even did engie calculator to get you down below 50%, but I could not seal the deal. After you moved your com vehicle and presumably healed it, I took down two of your three rax's and both VF's. While trying to shoot from a distance. The big fail was my sacrificing the heavy to take down the two VF's from outside the base while I let turrets and another heavy to shoot at me. I thought it was an even trade. Had we kept ONE heavy in base to enable ScRaT to do some rebuilding the 3 vs 2 outcome would have been very different. Also a bit of luck on your part.

While I was sacrificing my heavy for your two rax's and two VF's one Arty in my base took out the spawn point and WE DIDN'T HAVE ANY SQUAD POINTS to respawn. It was a great battle and fails on a couple points. After I jumped in a heavy from the com vehicle, I failed to join a squad. We should have dropped ten RAX's to get one up. We had plenty of resources. CAP was very frustrated that your dual attack was killing his attack. I couldn't get him to go as gren since he said he didn't know how to shoot as gren. So we let you own middle until we hit heavies. Turtling was complete fail since I was only gren and while I was gren I was not building.

I liked your Arty choice although I don't ever choose arty on Money since I think it is way OP, and unfair. I will only research arty when the nub com on the other team chooses arty. Since you didn't research extended range, I thought it was fair enough and required your to drive it near my base to wield it's strength, which is why I kept playing.

 

I played on NF, LazyBum was commanding, and your main being right next to ours was to your disadvantage. I just kept suiciding APC's as a gren into your base, I'd UGL until armor was gone then dump one or two mortars between the buildings and die, repeat. Haschte was doing a great job of defending, and his mines took out lots of nubs on our team, but the proximity of his main was way too close. You were on a defense, and we were not going to let up on the pressure. I told team - HIT C1 and most responded. I agree had you a rax in other locations it might have split our attack. I think I pushed four APC's in before the base was done.

 

Spartacus - I'll give you those two wins, and I won't recount all of the wins I have against you , it would be too numerous. Those wins require at least a 3v3 or more team. I think I do better team coordination than you and rarely do I focus on turrets. Most vets would rather push as anything but an engineer. I'd rather push armories for the engie to build than turrets, although I will turret the main to protect against the APC rush.

I think most com fails are due to base arrangement. I complain that the VF is too far from the rax with some com's but that is one way to keep the enemy from taking down both at the same time. I wish I knew the exact explosive range of an APC grenade.

Player count is really odd since some nights you have a steady 16 players and others very few. I was really surprised to find 30 players playing at midnight (EST) last night. All day yesterday had at least 16 players on but during the week the numbers suck.

 

The explosion range is in the scripts.

Seriously, almost *everything* involving things that can be balanced are in the scripts. If you ever wonder what something is, check the scripts. 95% of the time, it'll be in there.

 

You misspelled "won't".

 

OK - I'm getting the feeling you work for Microsoft:

A pilot is flying a small, single-engine, charter plane with a couple of really important executives on board into Seattle airport. There is fog so thick that visibility is 40 feet, and his instruments are out. He circles looking for a landmark and after an hour, he is low on fuel and his passengers are very nervous. At last, through a small opening in the fog he sees a tall building with one guy working alone on the fifth floor. Circling, the pilot banks and shouts through his open window: "Hey, where am I?". The solitary office worker replies: "You're in an airplane.". The pilot immediately executes a swift 275 degree turn and executes a perfect blind landing on the airport's runway five miles away. Just as the plane stops, the engines cough and die from lack of fuel. The stunned passengers ask the pilot how he did it. "Elementary," replies the pilot, "I asked the guy in that building a simple question. The answer he gave me was 100% correct but absolutely useless; therefore, I knew that must be Microsoft's support office and from there the airport is three minutes away on a course of 87 degrees."
​

Care to translate :
//driver grenade launcher
"weapon_slot"
{
"Bone" "c_weapon_passenger0_type3" //bone name in the model where the weapon is fired from
"Seat" "1" //The passenger who controls this weapon
"Size" "3" //size of this slot
"Type" "4" //0=machine gun, 1=tank cannon, 2=artillery cannon, 3=missile launcher, 4=grenade launcher, 5=aircraft bomb bay, weapon types able to go in this slot
"Slot_x" "90" //x of slot's top left corner //was 108
"Slot_y" "55" //y of slot's top left corner //was 70
"Origin_x" "255" //x point to draw line from schematic to slot //was 269
"Origin_y" "137" //y point to draw line from schematic to slot //was 144
}


Sorry - not obvious to me, or sure whether I'm even looking in the right area. Some concept of size needs to be determined.

 

You're fucking terrible.

You're looking in completely the wrong place for weapon stats.

Try looking in vehicle_weapons.txt

and using your brain
ykno

 

but the joke he posted was pretty good.

 

bollox. I didn't take a defensive stance at all. I gifted our main base with the intention that we would take res from ruins and would destroy their main from C1 where we had an advantage over their main and thus rule the south. We lost that early advantage. Bottom line is always do what your comm says because a questionable strategy well executed is better than a great strategy poorly executed.

You can't expect every resource to be diverted to your whim, we didn't have enough people to roll bases, just a few refs. Instead of running around the map taking refs we didn't need at that point, you should have been with the rest of the team on the C1 hill destroying their base. If we had done that early then you would have had the spare man power to take back our main base when that barracks did go up.

Owning refs & having spawn points is not the same as map control when you have less than 2 squads on an open map. We didn't have map control ever, we just had more refs for a short period, but they rarely repaid themselves because there was no area denial.

They took our main and we failed to take theirs in time. We never had any advantage and we were on the back foot all game, not that surprising I wanted a safe spawn I could chill by.

Anyway, all the eggs went into one basket - and that basket was base swap. It was the clear intention at the start and it should have been followed through by everyone. None of the West / North map was as important as clearing their main swiftly because our VF was right outside.

 

Even though Empty saved me the trouble, I'll answer you anyway:

weapon_slot: This tells the script parser that this block refers to a slot that a weapon can be put into in the vehicle creation panel.
Bone: Models are divided into bones. Every model, including the APC, has bones. Each bone has a name. The bone listed here will be where the projectile originates from when it is fire.
Seat: This refers to which person in a vehicle will control a weapon. Seat 1 is the driver, 2 - 8 are passengers. This one doesn't work though.
Size: The number of slots the vehicle has available for this weapon slot. For example, APC's have 3 slots for grenade launchers and 3 slots for machine guns, while mediums have 2 slots for cannons, 2 slots for machine guns and 2 slots for missile launchers.
Type: This number tells the parser what type of weapon can be put into the slot.
Slot_x/y: The GUI uses this value to know where to place the upper left corner of the weapon slot on the vehicle creation GUI.
Origin_x/y: The GUI uses this value to know where the place the starting point of the line that is drawn from the weapon slot to the vehicle.

This might still count as a Microsoft answer, because I'm 100% correct, but these answers are still completely useless to you, expect perhaps for Size and Type.

All of this I know from reading the comments and from gameplay experience. I did not look at any code to have to know what these values refer to. I will gladly answer any questions about the scripts when the information can't be gleaned purely from the scripts, but this is definitely a case where all information is properly labeled in the comments.

Have you tried reading the aptly named "vehicle_weapons.txt" file? You might find more information about vehicle weapons in that file than in the APC file.

 

You guys are funny. I searched APC, not "Upgraded Grenade Launcher" - which of course is the more obvious choice within the 143 files that I certainly should have found which can only be loaded on an APC, but no comment to help link APC to this weapon.

I give the search 5 minutes, if it takes longer to find an answer I flip the bozo bit.

OK Explosion Radius is 500. Totally clear now - much thanks for all the help. Very obvious now. Also whether the impact point has more damage than 250 units from the point of impact is surely clear so I won't ask. I won't go into details on Explosion Sprite - we all know what this is so stop being stupid.

Someone said Extended range reloads faster than HE,
"Ranged Cannon"
"Cycle Time" "1.5" //time between shots (all weapons other than MGs have limits of 0.1 as lowest)
"Explosion Radius" "150" //radius of damage sphere to hurt surrounding entities
"Explosion Force" "100" //force of explosion

"High Explosive Cannon"
"Cycle Time" "2.0" //time between shots (all weapons other than MGs have limits of 0.1 as lowest)
"Explosion Radius" "400" //radius of damage sphere to hurt surrounding entities
"Explosion Force" "200" //force of explosion


Given the 2X explosive force and higher radius on HE, vs ER - why do some people still think ER is better choice ? It reloads 25% faster, but you can't so as much damage unless it reloaded twice as fast and even then it is not as good against ground units. PS: I love when comments just echo the words used to describe the option. Oh by "Option" I mean it is the Option.

 

AZK I have to agree with you. I think you certainly know how to win on Dust Storm which was proven tonight by a team that did follow your every instruction vs Connection. Good job !
Well OK - I didn't go directly north inorder to build one REF, but after that I did as you said and resulted in the outcome you predicted.

I think Connection did very well until he got cornered and walled which after many attempts was the intended outcome. We didn't even build a radar. I sure wouldn't have wanted to be on the BE team during that match.

 

Because LR goes straight and has higher DPS?

 

Also, not everyone is a powergaming asshole and wants to see something else than the 3p/he/bioml shit every game.
ER is one of the only emp weapons that are not op as shit, but are not shit either.

 

This. When I command these days I want to try to do things a bit differently, I think its more fun and its more of a challenge to switch up tactics. Though I admit it does often end in abject failure & I look really stupid. It also makes for some epic wins too.

 

Doesn't explosion force deal with how much of a push the explosion has? I thought there was a straight damage number in there somewhere.

 

Yes, force is how much is pushes things. You're looking for damage.