Zhohar

I've only a few minutes so I'll keep this short. The purpose of this note is to encourage more TG SLs to be aggressive, and to anticipate common TG strategies.

1. At the start of Tuns Harbour, most infantry flows toward Power Station from the two UCBs. Why not cut that off? If on PAC, why not go for Junkyard? If you get there quickly enough, you can take the flag against light infantry.
If not, at least you can slow down the enemy's progression of re-inforcements to Power Station.

2. At the start of Verdun 32p, strike equally for flag farthest from your UCB. A well executed buggy rush will catch the flag before enemy infantry walks to their closest flag on foot. This not only means you have bleed without Church, it once agains slows down the armor coming out of the enemy UCB.

3. When fighting Gibraltar, after a successful blitzkrieg on Harbour as PAC, why stop? Why establish fight lines at Toll?
Most of the team is PAC pubbies and they will push alone, squandering tickets. The stalemate at Toll is boring, and usually doesn't hold the ticket advantage in Harbour blitzkrieg (pac starts with 30 tickets more than EU).

Hence, after taking Harbour, do not wait to clean out the contacts. Spear head a squad straight down the main road to Toll flag. Be agressive, take the fight to EU. Strike them before their rocket spots and sniper spots are down. Strike them while they are confused.

I am quite aware of the lack of bleed incentive -- taking tolls changes nothing with regards to bleed, but the stalemate at Tollstation will usually lead to PAC attacking in a disorganized fashion and wasting tickets. Furthermore, and quite importantly I believe, that stalemate is boring. The game is meant to be fun.
Once Toll falls, the game is usually more fluid.

What really motivates this thread is a quote by one of the MG guys: "Does Gibraltar on TG really have to be such a huge camp fest?"
And I think he's right. Is it really the best we, as a community of tactics-focused gamers can come up with is to hole inside of Toll Station and throw grenades, watch for the odd buggy, recon rush, or revive push on catwalks?


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The points I've meant to make:
1. Be aggressive. Do not expect the similar situations to establish themselves, and do not play expecting things to turn out one way because they've done so a hundred times before. Write your own history, try out your own new tactics.
2. Anticipate what the common map tactics are (flow from UCB to Power/Church), and what the common TG tactics are (buggy rush to Eastern from EU -- mine the east side of eastern to stop it).
3. Focus on the fun. When bleed leaves the equation and two tactics being equal, try the fun one, even if it seems risky. You might learn something, and it'll definitely be fun.


Post scriptum: For the record, the things I've talked about here all come from experience. No hypothetical situations were featured. I've done all of the below myself:
- mine east side of Eastern to stop TG buggies from EU
- take a buggy to Hillside from EU UCB and arrive before infantry, instantly getting bleed
- pushing hard and fast on Gibraltar, against a very decent team of TGers, both through Toll Station and Ruins. Ruins was ruined by a server crash be we had 60 tickets on them and we could have capped them out. Striking fast to confused people and catch them offguard works.

That's all. I know sc1ence is probably shaking his head because there isn't a single, clear, succinct point in this thread but I had to write it down: too many TGers seem to take the route that's worked before, the road travelled before, the safe and tried road. We need more wild things and we need to punish people for taking the safe road of common strategies.

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Pfft, how can you call it suicidal if we lived through it?

LordKelvin

What?

There's nothing wrong with the common strategies, esp. if you are dealing with publics who need to be spoon-fed the TG teamwork element.

That said, I agree with you on the rest. New tactics are always there... take initiative and try them out!

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Flexon

I agree with Zohar,

Earlier today when I was playing Carebear I was on the PAC side and we had taken all of the flags up until roadblock, what usually happens is EU camps it out and everyone runs into the meat grinder and we end up losing.
I decided to let one of their guys 'sneak' by and camp one of out back flags, I ended up having to have my team hold fire and not kill the lone man...we let him cap office ruins and then set up on the main road and at Southtown. We went from being even at 100 tickets to up 75-25 and we eventually won by 69 tickets.

It was a really fun round, and it was nice to try something new.

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Shurikane

What Zohar means is "when you know everyone chooses rock, play paper".

Pulling off an aggressive maneuver is fun and satisfying - but you need a squad that's woken up and a CO with balls of steel.

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DrBeat

Nice Zhohar, all you said is well taken note of.

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Bomber

there is a fine line from being aggressive and suicidal, people need to be more aware of tactically sound times to attack i.e when they're cowering from an orbital, a side looks lightly defended, if a squad gets by, notice several people down

DrakenViator

I have to say that people also need to know when to play defense!!!!!!

I was CO on Berlin PAC we where down about 10-20 tickets at about the halfway point. As we near 50 tickets the EU still has about a 15 ticket lead. So flags are flying back and forth as it settled down I ordered a full retreat out of the EU outpost as they were sending their entire army back to re-cap it (ie if you die, re-spawn elsewhere). That left us with our UCB and Crossroads I order 'FULL DEFENSE - DO NOT PUSH OUT' over Voip Well that worked for about a minute then almost all my squads pushed to Road Block. Okay that was not my plan, but it ended up working out fine.

So I say again; Full defense work on revives let them come to us. It worked we went to a 1 point ticket difference versus the 15 from earlier. Then squad 2 decides despite me repeating NOT to push over and over again on Voip that they are going to go for Outpost... We have about 20 maybe 25 tickets left at this point...

Well as I'm sure you guessed Squad 2 was destroyed, and we went on to loose by only 2 tickets... I am convinced that if Squad 2 had listened to the CO (Me) and stayed back we could have won that round, versus lost by 2.

Oh well...

Yes Zhohar, I agree that if you have the tickets to use be gutsy and go for it, but if your tickets are down, play defensively. Like others have said no point in wasting tickets in a chaotic mess when a strategy would be better...

~ Draken

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|TG-55| Infantry Division

FloodKotton

Defense!

Mixa

Zhohar seems to be talking about start of the rounds... Why? Because using agressive tactics at the end of round is usually waste of tickets... Like famous "lets do cap out" when final flag is command center -.-

But yeah start round fast assault to points where foes usually don't except attack are good. Unfortunately for me, they usually end so that my lone 5man squad is flanked by 20 guys, all of them medics with rockets of snipers... Not nice!

And I NEVER want to stick point camping at toll, when SL! It is horrible, and I usually get TK when some1 wants to catch my grenades!

Play more agressively when possible, don't be affraid to push if it isn't too well defended (you should know what I'm talking about ; P ).

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Kossst

Very interresting guys.

K-ossssT

Mech__Warrior

Draken, the same thing happened to me today except on camp. PAC took Harbor and my squads kept going past that first catwalk. We 20 tickets down for most of the match until they started listening and stayed back. People need to listen to the CO sometimes.

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YdoUwant2know

Zhohar, your argument as always is very well thought out. I will have to keep this in mind when I CO. Just don't be mad at me when I use these idea's against you

Zhohar

You haven't really read my post, have you?

The entire point I was trying to make was to AVOID common camping situations, such as Toll Station and Central/Ruins lines. A smaller instance of this "trenches" idea is the EU Base on Gibraltar and Command Center on Cerbere.
If a squad strikes hard and fast, they can establish a solid footing around the flag and keep up a capout. I am not talking theory here and I want to emphasize that: this comes from both SL and CO experience. A decisive push wherein people IGNORE the usual TG camping lines leads to victory. It leads to a ticket gain because the defense is confused and not well established.

A slow push, or a moderately-paced push, on a defense at Command, South Town, Church, Harbour and basically any other flag in the game is never going to work. Because of the geography of Command Center and Toll, TGers EXPECT to camp and that's exactly what happens. What I say is damn be what is expected. I have seen and I have done capouts both on EU Base and COmmand Center, against solid TGers and good pubbies.
The key here is to strike with speed and to cause confusion. Simply staying alive on Command Center area destroys any kind of defense formation on the eastern and western flanks. This, once again, comes from experience.

Of course it's a bird-brained idea to assault Command Center 5 minutes after Roadblock has fallen -- by that point, their entire team is alive and defending. The time to Assault Command Center is when another squad is taking Roadblock, before Roadblock flag even falls. A constant, furious offense and the very presence of enemy troops on the flag that's being defended stops a defense.

The fact that the EU hasn't had time to establish a safe zone, to mark a line "We're here, Command Center, they're THERE, down below" -- the fact that such mental comfort dosn't exist causes mass chaos and PAC reinforcements can literally steamroll through Command Centre flanks. THey may not take the flag itself, but the defensive line doesn't exist anymore. When the line exists, EU wins by being better organized. When the line is broken, by a squad stayinga live around the flag, the line crumbles, and so does the overall defense, regardless of the skill of EU players defending.

The point I wish to empahsize is to strike quickly and to cause confusion. If not for the obvious ticket advantage when done correctly, then at least for the fun of it. I do not want to sit through another camp fest on Command Center. Camping any defensive line is boring and even the most skilled players on PAC are reduced to an equivalent of a grunt. There isn't anything to do but shoot. There are no clever strategies to be executed once lines are established, other than attacking and dying.

Hence I say: do not allow EU to form a line. Break up Toll Station. Break up Command Centre lines. The best way to do this is to enter the line as it's being formed or before it's even created.

Of course, a necessity of this strategy is extreme squad cohesion. There cannot be 3 people assaulting and 3 other SMs 20 meters behind. THat kind of squad will fail and waste 6 tickets. 6 men need to run as one to arrive at the defensive lines at Toll as they're being formed. Arriving when the entire team arrives is too slow.

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Pfft, how can you call it suicidal if we lived through it?

YdoUwant2know

I tried your suggestion last night on the main server and I agree with your idea's 100% We punched right past toll and into central without even having to fire a shot. They were all so focused on keeping us at harbor, that the rest of the map was ours in minuets.