In many cases I prefer to have people spawning a short distance from the attack anyway. As long as you get equal numbers it is far better to spawn away from the barracks that is being attacked as it is not locked down (mined, filled with riflemen, mortars landing at the exits, etc). Once a rax is being hit by more than 4 enemy you need to have 4 people to attack and 2 to heal the building. Plus you can get tanks out from the VF to help.
AzK - maybe you've not experienced what I am talking about. I am not talking about a normal Ninja attack where they build a rax near your base and start attacking at a distance. I am talking about sneak and rush tactics where they are right next to the COM. Ninja rax are to be expected and it's upto COM to defend against that. I am not complaining about that. Also believe it or not - nothing that Hobbes done is wrong. He's developed a very aggressive COM stance and he loses due to it at a fair rate. So other than pissing off his team, I am not complaining about that. FN knows how to do this best of all. He will coordinate the exact right members on a squad to have the exact right attributes. One sticky Scout, a revive engie or two and grens. I don't know the exact formula and did not intend to single out FN, but his earlier comment that says "Monitor his every move" basically admits to his use of this tactic. He's a superior player and like Hobbes has developed tactics that enable a quick win - no matter the state of his team. I do find this is not the intended purpose of this game. I'm hopeful something will be done. FN is only using tactics that this game allows to win, and I honestly can not hold that against any player. But I can hold it against the game designers. Patch holes - fix unbalance issues. This was CaveDog's whole initial premise for C&C and they did it very well. AzK I too jump out of COM trying to kill attackers, but normally there is a rifleman and SMG2 Engie vs Rifleman, Engie loses. Also - face the com away from vet rifleman who has positioned himself to monitor your exit of the vehicle and you are immediately dead. An attack squad would put a player there as part of the rush. Typically a MG APC is there as well. I should only jump out when near a rax, but when no one is coming it is useless to just die in the com vehicle. Basically this game - requires COM to be Engie. Those COM's who sit in their vehicle and drop shit waiting for someone to come back and build are shit and they lose more than they win. F2 view blinds the COM of any scout sneaking up on the vehicle. Scouts have Sticky stun - and this is all a good idea ? All it takes is a scout to sneak up - and a Engie to wait hiding, for the game to end quickly. Scout stickies - engie runs in and revives four other players. Game over. And pisses everyone off ! Com is shit ! "Oh well this is empires" is used to cover for an imbalance in the game. FN - your recommendation of tracking your every move. Not gonna happen. Also your changing your name with every game to something new first requires COM figure out which player is you, if you are playing. And that is part of this game ? I don't think so. I used to think this game was great - but lately, it is shit and no longer fun. I think once you get to a certain level, either you put up with the shit, or you go find something more satisfying. I can see that in all the games the other tagged friends are playing rather than Empires. Having the whole team push as Engie but first build their turrets at main - does nothing to fix this issue and puts you off at an immediate losing situation. Seconds matter. Catch a Barracks prior to being built fully and it is easy to take out. Original C&C did not have a UGL APC, it had a mine layer. A slow vehicle that layed out mines to block attacks. Run over a mine - you're dead. You could have mine detection and I think you could tag mines to inform other players to avoid them. It has been about ten years since I've played so this is a bit foggy. Since a vehicle dropped mines - you could not drop them inside buildings. The most favorite method for killing buildings and people is to mine inside a rax. WTF - CaveDog is spinning in it's grave. Fog Of War emulated vision on a map. Your eyes do that now. If you are not near a unit, or see them with your eyes you can't see them. Ergo need for a scout hiding - with binoculars to spot incoming units. And sniping from a distance. They wouldn't dare fire if a vehicle was nearby since they died so easily and firing pinpointed their location. They also could not sneak in invisibly to a base and sab it.
I can think of 3 possibilities you are explaining, depending on starting resources for each map. IMO no map should start with enough resources so that you can build a VF and an APC. Right at the start of a round - Case 1: 1a. Comm builds a VF & builds a jeep. A squad uses revive to whore 6 / 12 squad points to be used for revive. 1b. Squal lead engineer & scout with sticky stuns & vehicle stealth drive full pelt towards the enemy commander. Sticky him, squad revive 3 rifle men with sticky grenades & end the game in <2 minutes. Conclusion: This is pretty shitty & actually harder to stop than an APC rush. Squad point whoring is not a legit tactic no matter what people think. Overall I think all kill spawns should be emp_forcekill so you cannot be revived if you have committed suicide which would help but not solve this entirely, it would make it harder. Case 2: 2a. Comm builds a VF & builds an APC. 2b. Entire team rushes APC to enemy starting main base. Commander sometimes goes first taking the aggro from ML turrets & walls in the opposing CV before getting out of there. Conlusion: If your team is not engaged at the normal point then you know something is up. Move and keep an eye out for the APC. In these rounds going with scout speed or vehicle stealth is a real option. There is no one strategic counter but your tactical stance should be one of mobility. with scout speed you will outrun them and their ruse will fail so long as you can arrange an intercept. The main objective MUST be to kill the APC. Deciding factor as to whether to go for a straight up counter offensive depends on where your troops are, if you can get to them and if you have a forward barracks. Consider if you really can stop the attack. If the enemy is in the barracks I wouldn't bother trying to counter it. Do consider dropping your own VF and doing the same on open maps. You do not need to go straight for their commander - but a rifleman in a jeep or a gren who can get on a hill will destroy that APC sharpish. Case 3: Halfway through the round - say after the radar is dropped. I defer to my previous post, be vigilant and aware. Don't be in the starting main base, be where your troops are spawning. You should have barracks redundancy by now and be covered by a turret farm. At this point kill spawn response from everyone not in a vehicle combined with a counter push by everyone that is in a vehicle is usually the best bet - but again. Be prepared to move away from the immediate threat and position the vehicle so you have two exits if possible. If you can issue attack orders whilst keeping an eye on yourself then you are in a good position. At this point it really relies on the competency of your team to respond. Multiple UGL APCs are tough to counter like this but basically wall formations help ALOT, walls absolutely win games and where walls are not applicable it is the number of tanks you have. If you see the rush coming in then use walls to halt their progress. Put walls between & behind buildings. On open maps APCs should die to your own vehicles, in choke point maps you wall the choke point and buy yourself more response time. Having a team that uses vehicles is the best safe guard, people will naturally engage the enemy column. Be very wary of placing forward barrcks that are not your own "ninja" barrcks (i.e. in or close to mortar range) because everyone will spawn forward. Much better that they spawn near a VF and get vehicles, keeping a steady flow of armor leaving your own base is the best possible way to defend against a vehicle rush. Barracks beyond the front line need to be carefully considered in pub games where there is less than 15 people on each side, they can be detrimental. These tactics only powerful because the enemy is prepared and focused before they arrive, making it easy t catch you off guard. If you can break up their flow, hinder their movements, cause some confusion then if they fail they will be worse off in every way. They aren't easy to counter as the commander, you do rely a lot on your team knowing the anatomy of these tactics to be able to break them. So I agree that they can ruin the game, but also when a round isn't stacked and both teams know what they are doing then you can counter them and turn them to your advantage which actually makes the game more fun, however often it is just a way to frustrate a whole server.
For most of us, what actually happened is we'd have high population games, so this kind of thing didn't happen a whole lot. If it did happen, then there were enough people to fight it out, and there was always a large chance of winning. What you're describing sounds annoying (though i'm surprised it's happening so often to you) but actually seems to be because Empires just wasn't made for low population. Some of these things can be fixed a little (and are being), but they are things that occur because a team hasn't got a lot of players. Let's face it, you can instantly tell from mapsize that Empires wasn't made for small teams.
jgf you're just going to have to step it up, dude. you gotta stop playing this game like it's supposed to be 'fair' or the game you want it to be. empires was made to be played to win.
I thought Empires was made to be played for fun? Winning is just the icing on the cake, but for me the bulk of it is the actual gameplay.
I'd like to call bullshit on walls being the counter to ugl apcs. With current wall mechanics, walls are utter crap against anything with real splash. Not to mention Gl's are the go-to weapon for hitting poeple behind walls anyway. Thats what they, in theory, should excel at. Vehicles are not really an answer either, as ugl spam mostly occurs, and is at its gayest, on choke maps, where getting a vehicle past said choke is nearly always impossible.
OK, I'll give you that it isn't a hard counter. But it helps a whole lot in the specific example of defending a base from attack by UGL APCs. Also if the APC has to waste half a clip getting rid of walls before it gets to your base that's helps a bunch as the reload time is pretty high. If you can stop an APC from driving straight through your base at will or being able to drive around in circles. If you can force it to stop, slow down get stuck, & stop it from getting behind one of your buildings where your infantry don't have line of sight from the barracks.... Then that APC is much, much more likely to go down quickly.
Honestly, the last couple times I've played I haven't been very serious, mostly just having fun with squad targets. For instance, not only can you target empty ref nodes and ammo boxes, but you can target live enemy grenades. :D In my opinion, Empires was made so people could capture boats on palmbay. That's right, it has all been leading up to this moment.
Games were made to let people have fun. Winning is ONE of the many things that get you fun in Empires. For me, the fun of process >> the fun of winning. Probably because I've been through 15000 rounds, I think I am out of reason to care about 1.
Whilst I won't disagree here FN, I do sometimes think that for the good of server population, it's maybe best not to steamroll every round. Especially through stacking. If you really want to use those tactics, you should try swapping teams every round to make sure you're not beating the same people over and over again, as well as not actually stacking. Using rushes and stuff against shitty players will always have a near 100% success ratio. That's not really THAT fun. I'd much prefer to pull a rush off in the face of adversity. I'm not going to say that you should start trying to get the pub players involved and put your own clanners on the other team, because I know how difficult it is these days to get pubbers to actually listen. But at least change it up a bit so it doesn't feel so bitter for everyone. I know it sucks not being able to play at 100% every single round, but as veterans we really have a responsibility to at least try our best to help server population, or eventually we're just not going to have a game to be veterans in at all.
Whatever your feelings on whether or not buildings should have spot radius or not (I'm rather ambivalent on the issue), as the game currently stands, you have to drop a camera to be notified if a squad comes out of hiding near the CV. Not dropping a camera near the CV and then complaining that you got ninjaed is simply absurd.
