If you have heavy rail tanks, nukes, and are generally kicking their ass and suddenly you get ninja-mined, you probably deserve it. Ninja-mining is as legitimate as tank-slugging in my opinion. Commanders shouldn't be so foolish as not to check back to their vehicle every once awhile, or players shouldn't be so foolish as to leave the comm undefended.
But, as everyone else has said: Suddenly getting a YOU LOSE message out of nowhere is no fun. I don't mind losing. It happens about half the time with even teams. But getting an unexpected YOU LOSE message with no warning should not happen, ever. It is simply a stupid game mechanic for a game where matches can easily run into half an hour or so. (And, to be clear: Getting an unexpected YOU WIN message is just as annoying to me, frequently.) Having doofuses then come along and say "BAW HA HA YOU ARE IDIOTS, just stop the nine-miners" makes it even worse. Guess what? People play Empires for fun. That means we want to be able to not have horribly unfun, stupid things like insta-losing happen out of nowhere without having to be anal-retentive about guarding the CV 24-7. Sure, a failure to guard the CV should put it at risk -- for taking a little damage, distracting the team, maybe putting you on the defensive for a while and possibly costing you the game in the long run if you screw that up. It should not have any chance -- none at all -- of instantly costing you the game. That is an absurd outcome for one moment's inattention, and leads to stupidly high-pressure gameplay for a game that is supposed to be about having fun. Finally, again, it comes back to the other problem with what you're saying: If ninjaing could be easily, reliably prevented, then you cannot defend having it in the game in the first place, because what's the point? All it does is make things even harsher and more difficult for newbie comms, which Empires (always strapped for people who are willing to get into the CV) absolutely does not need. Comming should be fun, and the mechanics of it should be as easy as we can make it. The comm will always have a lot of responsibility on account of being the person who sets overall strategies and priorities, but we should avoid making the job higher-pressure than it is. And, most of all, we absolutely must avoid situations that encourage people to say HA HA, YOU LOST BECAUSE OF YOUR COMM. Blaming the comm is horrible, and systems (like ninjaing) that put the comm in a situation where they can be forced to take excessive blame for losing a game is even more horrible. Imagine you have a newbie comm; everyone on your team is working hard and doing well. Then your comm gets 9-mined and someone like you screeches "WTF STUPID COMM!?" Even if you don't actually say it, the thought is obviously there. That is not a situation that anyone who wants to be a good comm should ever be in. Likewise, the new player who is working with their team, listening to the comm's instructions, trying to be a good player, and suddenly the game randomly goes into YOU WIN while one jackass says "HA, that was ALL ME!" What kind of message do you think that sends about the game? Easy ninjaing is terrible. Sure, it's sometimes hilarious or awesome to see a game turned around, but turning a game around like that should be a job for the entire team, not one guy; suddenly taking out the comm yourself should be an epic victory that makes everyone take screenshots, something that happens rarely enough for everyone to immediately go to the forums and talk about it. It should not be as easy or common as 9-mining is today; 9-mining trivializes the entire concept of ninjaing and upset victories.
Aquillion wins thread. Someone write a virus that detects people who win a match through ninemining, and make that post appear whenever they pull out a mine.
You can go on commander guard duty every game you play, from now on... since im not wasting my time on doing something i do not enjoy in a game i play for the reason that i want to enjoy myself
Every game should start with a poll: "Do you like ninjaing?" On each team, randomly select one of the persons who votes 'yes' and designate them as the Commander Defender. Every 30 seconds they will be teleported next to their command vehicle to ensure that it's safe.
Ninja is to sneak or covertly fight your way through enemy lines, to sabotage or hinder the rienforcement process. Griefing is often "handing your own cv to the enemy", or various other tactics that end the game, by giving your own team no chance to recover. This by no means, implies i like either of the above. Let the CV have "upgradeable" armour! :D
So ninjas are worse than greifers? Imagine the scenario you described, you're on a great team and pushing the enemy team back to there base destroying everything in site.You have heavy rail tanks and nukes and the enemies vf is burned to the ground. You are dominating them in tickets 2 to 1 using res and squad res to perserve tickets. Now instead of a ninja succesfully sneaking past all your troops, evades your turrets, and then places 9 mines next to your comm without anyone seeing him, instead imagine one in your own team spawning in a barack next to the cv. You can see him on the minimap and you are fully aware that he is at the cv, but you dont care since he's on your team, and your busy mashing the enemy team. He walks straight past your turrets and walls, comm may have placed a camera next to the cv to avoid ninjas, but since he's an ally ,nobody takes notice of him. Without disturbance he places 8 mines next to the cv, even if someone notices him they cant shoot him. He then blows the cv over and you lose the game. Now tell me you still hate ninjas more than griefers
Yes, but the guy who blew up his own CV will simply get yelled at and banned. The guy who unexpectedly forced an end to the other game will be lauded by a hero by other annoying people playing the game, prompting more idiots to try and do the same thing instead of actually playing Empires as a team game. Ninjaing is more harmful to gameplay in the long-term, because the more grating idiots have convinced themselves that it's something heroic and awesome and ZOMG L33T rather than something to be embarrassed about. The ninja who blew up our comm hasn't done anything. Nobody on our team wanted the dull painful job of sitting in an empty base watching our immobile comm. The comm was busy, you know, leading the team instead of obsessing over the empty base. All the ninja did was depend on a coinflip as to whether or not our CV had set proper turrets or not. No matter how much you try to make it sound like an EPIC MANEUVER, that kind of ninjaing is pathetically easy in many situations; this isn't a sign that the other team should devote more resources to watching a base that will be empty and dull 95% of the time, but a sign that 9-mining was a bad thing that led to horrible gameplay, and we should be grateful it is gone.
jesus you people are still bitching about ninjas? just fucking defend your CV, get a little comm experience learn how to not get ninja'd anymore. I just hear "bitch-bitch-bitch one guy can outsmart our comm and we loose" coinflip if he set the proper turrets and stuff? wow I didnt realize you DEPENDED on a coinflip to put your CV in the right place. Go you champ! team should have to devote all that many resources to defend the comm, just utilize a base defenses turrets and player. people keep spawning and rolling vehicles out of a certain VF late game? well FUCKING PARK your CV infront of it and use the whole like 2 turrets that are covering that base to defend you, oh man so hard. having your CV where most your team is continuously is a awsome defense even if its quite close to the front line. Also constantly moving around helps alot, CVs that get ninja'd are CVs that dont fucking move all game like morons. Do you realize that the comm is an extra engineer on the team? and he can ACTUALLY fucking build shit? amazing! and the comm knows more than most players where you need buildings, oh is west open on streets of fire? oh let me drive my CV over there and build 4 turrets to keep people from WALKING in our base, and hence possibly ninja me or my teams base. Seriously any location you want to defend in general and you have a base that you put turrets at is a great place to park when comming gets intense. I simply cannot believe how much crying there is in this thread about ninjaing. and I mean its not exactly like Im the one out there ninjaing other CV's I never really get the chance to since I'm stuck commanding the majority of the games I play so you think I'd be on your side? no your logic sucks sorry, blaming other people for your command sucking balls is fail.
I concur. too bad everybody (okay, a large majority) on the forums are noobs, and can't play this game good
So you think playing comm should be a combination of boring defense over something that 95% of the time is going to have nothing happening at all, plus rushing around the frontlines repairing things by hand? Fail. The comm's role should to command their team, not to play virtual nanny to a glorified SUV or to do things themselves because their team sucks. The reason you keep getting suckered into CV-duty is because you're one of the few people who actually likes doing such pedantically dull things; but most people don't. It would be better for us to balance the game towards what most people enjoy doing; we need more comms, not less. It is not a matter of noob vs. pros; for the most part, while I'm not saying anything about anyone here, the people who are most enthusiastic about ninjaing in-game are relatively new players who don't get Empires much but are completely psyched about something that sometimes lets them feel awesome and screw everyone else. But for most people, ninjaing just isn't a fun part of gameplay. It's not a matter of dealing with it or not dealing with it. Everything involved in fighting or preventing one-person ninjas is dull, stupid, and non-fun. Having them happen, regardless of which team it happens to, is anticlimactic and unfun. The effect it has on gameplay as a whole -- encouraging people to stupefyingly wander around looking for random lucky holes in the enemy defense rather than playing as a team -- is horribly, pathetically unfun. It detracts from the game as a whole, simply by existing. The game should be balanced to make it nearly impossible, into an epic event that very, very rarely occurs; I'm all right with the occasional bizarre event. But it shouldn't be a gameplay element of any significance, one that has any impact on the metagame or strategy. When it has that kind of impact, it is simply not fun for most people.
your putting words in my mouth here and I dont appreciate it. I never said I liked commanding, I try to get out of commanding as much as possible whenever I see other people on my team that know how to command well. The problem is I hate being under the command of a shitty commander so would rather command than have a fail command. You dont need to be hovering over the battle every second to command your team, the minimap gives alot of information when your out building something and you shouldnt have to stare at a fight for several minuites at a barracks say to tell how the battle is going there. The biggest thing to be in the CV constantly for is targets. The way you talk about running around building things gives light to the thought process, "why go engy and build anything at all? obviously its boring so why should I do it?" now that just sounds retarded. Now I dont know where your building your defenses that 95% of the time have nothing happen to them at all but your obviously doing it wrong if that is the case. Judging from what youve said im guessing your one of those comms that just sit in base and do nothing, which in my experience fails against an active comm. You have limited turrets anyway why would you waste them on a place that no one will ever go to? you have to maximize your resources. Base layout can assist in this dramatically, a base that would sometimes require up to 8 or more turrets to properly defend can be made to need perhaps 4 and have enough open space for a CV to park at. Like I said before frontline bases that people are constantly spawning at are an excellent place for a CV to sit. You also seem to think that commanding is something that anyone should be able to just jump in a CV and command people. Lets face facts, some people have what it takes to command real live people, to maintain the moral of a team and to have active useful strategy. Alot of people simply do-not-have-that, if anyone could just jump in the CV and "command" well then it obviously wouldnt even be commanding and would have to be dumbed down to clicking research buttons and not much else cause thats all some people can do. You shouldnt NEED to be in this command view to command people, in this game it simply gives a title and a convienent view to see the battlefield which is yes quite nesessary but isnt required to command people. You DONT need to be in your CV 24/7 to be worthwhile, hell maybe that means building shit in area's YOUR aware that need stuff there but dont feel it is nessessary for the team to pull off the front line to build it, some side passage both teams have ignored as a front line for much of the game for instance. This game is all about active manpower, having forces always on the front line, having your forces split accordingly. If you only have your main start barracks and your team is running all the way across the map to the front line you-are-going-to-loose. Incase comms havent noticed, they have a vehicle that moves relitivly quickly compared to everyone else and am bound to it. They have a engy tool that has lots of time to recharge during commanding. AND they are part of the active manpower of their team, they CAN build stuff that requires someone to leave the front line for. People will not respond to things that are not of the utmost importance! They are probebly fucking to busy on the front line or taking ground to run back to the chokepoint youve overtaken to build your turrets. Need vehicles to start rolling out? drive to the base and build the VF so that when people spawn they can just roll out. It really doesnt take all that long to use up your entire repair kit, and unlike other engies you have something you can do while it recharges! huray for maximizing effectivness! If the commander wants me to leave center on duststorm where were fighting as BE to build the D6 ref when he is just sitting in our main he can go fuck himself and drag his lazy ass over there to do it. NOT WORTH MY TIME TO DO IT, he is more than cappable of doing it. The fact remains that out of everyone on the team the commander should be aware of wtf is going on better than everyone else. So ya he could ask someone on his team and keep asking and causeing alot of mic spam to get 1 thing built, or he could keep the communication channels a little clearer and just build it himself. Cause things that kill teams surer than a 9 mine is mic spam that no one can talk and communicate over and lack of communication. Just the comm isnt the only person that can communicate, NE getting rushed? well someone that is there and sees it happening can say in the mic "two nade boats inc to NE, need help!" the comm can then utilize this information and look at(allready know) who is elsewhere in the map and say "*player1* and *player2* can I get you to killspawn to NE as grens?" where if they are worth a grain of salt they can do so and own the APCs. Which brings to another important thing that helps which is knowing your teamates so you know player1 is quite good and shooting and can count on him to be able to lay waste to infantry as a rifleman or go gren and hit their vehicles even if he cant command his way out of a paper bag, he is still quite useful. Or another player that can be relied on to killspawn to emergency situations around the map all game as the appropriate class. Commanding as dull huh? Commanding emp_money, yes very dull. Commanding emp_crossroads, yes pretty dull but more high maintanence. Other maps where you are running around doing all kinds of stuff, very much NOT dull, unless of course you just sit in main start giving targets then well ya its dull. You should also be aware that ninjas arent just comm hunting, getting your base ninja'd is something you can almost be just as worried about. Alot of the time ninjas simply kill the comm instead of a base cause he happened to be there and happened to be a sitting duck just BEGGING to be ninja'd. But there are more ninjas than comm ones running around that you have to watch for and it defends just the same as comm ninjas. Pre-emptive, you shouldn't get caught by surprise, you shouldnt have tons of holes in your defense, build your base in a diffenernt place if you do or set it up differently next time. An example of this is both starting barracks on duststorm, their position fails MISERABLY, one of the worst places to have a base. A barracks is only 200 res, not enough reason to have your main there. there is simply to much area to cover, move your base to the corner of the map or some other part like center or NW. But if you try to defend that starting barracks area your going to need 360 degrees of coverage which is a pain in the ass, takes forever to build, and is covered thinly. Where as if you move it to the corner you only need 90 degrees of coverage, thats 1/4 of the defense needed or 4 times the defense if you use the same resources. Perfect place to ride out rushes if you have turrets up, every turret will be shooting a vehicle since they will all come from the same direction and every MG will be fireing at people getting out, AND a ninja will have to kill all kinds of buildings to get through it which is more than enough notice. hell some turret(s) you place in places you expect to die, and use them as a notice that an enemy is moving through that area. wether that be a ninja comming to kill you or your base, you now have notice that someone is comming and can ask someone on your team to spawn at main or w/e, get a vehicle and hunt down this soldier.
How would the engineer camera vote? And the turrets? If you don't protect your CV, you deserve to get ninjaed. And if your team doesn't remind you to place a camera, or doesn't check with you every time commander under attack sounds, they deserve it too.
