Tarenth

Something I'm sure everyone has noticed but never registered is when you capture a silo the silo automatically fires off a rocket and then counts down the 120 seconds to the next launch.

This was made especially clear to me when someone managed to take down a titan shield with 1 silo in under 3 minutes. How?

Capture a silo. This causes the silo to fire off its rocket.
Let the other team neutralize the silo then take them out.
Capture the silo again from the neutral state. This causes the silo to fire off its rocket again.
Repeat.

Is it even worth defending a silo so that it'll fire in maybe another 45-90 seconds when you can fire off another rocket in under 10 seconds by letting the other team neutralize it?

Just to clarify something. When you kill someone attempting to neutralize your silo it is considered, by the game, a defensive action. When you kill someone attempting to orientate a neutral silo it is considered an offensive action. Basically the game considers taking a neutral silo, even one of yours that was neutralized, an attack.

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My sanity is not in question...
It was a confirmed casualty some time ago.

=Sarc=

I had no idea it fired a missile after being captured from a neutral state. I suppose a squad could "defend" by letting it go neutral then taking it back. It seems like a little bit of risk to take down the enemy's shields faster. This should be easy with some RDX and a good hiding spot.

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burble

i can see defending a silo while the shields are up- it's basically conquest mode. capture the majority of the silos, and defend them while you 'bleed' their shields. it's to your advantage to stay put and not keep up the run-around, just hoping that you can fire more rockets off as the silos change hands.

once the shields are down, though, i totally recommend it. more than half the teams are usually in the ships, and one or two squads can deliver a continuous stream of missiles by hopping points. if we dominate the silos, it IS to our advantage for the enemy to retaliate, taking men away from the ship fight and giving us more points to cap.

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Arf

You're technically still defending the silo but you're just risking it's loss to make it fire faster. If you loose it still fires on your Titan.

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Tarenth

In a sense, yeah, it is defending the silo.

However, from the game's perspective it an offensive action against a neutral silo that the other team is trying to capture.

And if you lose the silo it fires on your titan, but if you get it back it'll just fire at their titan again and at a faster rate probably than the last count down.

I guess a better way to phrase the question is:

Is it worth letting the enemy neutralize your silo before you defend it?

BTW, you can also stop a capture/neutralization by standing next to the silo. There's an attacker - defenders = attackers formula when it comes to the speed of the capture.

2 attackers - 0 defenders = 2 attackers
2 attackers - 2 defenders = 0 attackers


In a sense it is of greater tactical importance to hold a silo for at least 2 minutes after the initial rocket before running off to capture another silo from the enemy. This is because if you hold it for two minutes you get 2 rockets out of the same silo and your opponent may only get one out of the silo you didn't capture. Losing the silo within 2 minutes of capture will net both you and your opponent 1 rocket each and it is to their advantage to hold it for 2 minutes. If you ran around trading silos before that 2 minute limit all you're doing is firing 1 rocket each per each silo and speeding up the game.

Of course in a broader strategic sense you want to hold as many of the silos as possible without losing any. Yet the matches where that's possible are pretty slim.

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My sanity is not in question...
It was a confirmed casualty some time ago.

Arf

This is the way I see it, check my logic:

Your team can win with only one silo. If the enemy team holds every other silo you can negate their advantage by capturing and then abandoning every enemy silo as long as you can do it every 2 minutes. Their silo advantage is effecively negated because you're firing off one for every one they fire. In effect you're up by one silo.

So in those cases it's in your best interest to defend one silo and for the enemy to defend all the ones they hold or at least there's not going to be a lot of advantage to overextend themselves by holding every silo.

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Macrobeus

Lately tried this tactic on pub server with in a 3 man squad (all on TS) and it worked pretty good. Half time we were able to let 1-4 enemies to get to a silo, shoot 2-3 of them and let others to convert it to grey, shoot remained ones and took silo back, so it launched a new missile in less than 2 minutes. Other times we were just taking out all incoming threat if we were worried of their numbers or vehicles Of course sometimes we lost a silo completely but was able to take it back in less than 2 minutes thus not giving any advantage to the other team by using "our" silo. Finally we won the round even with the rest of our team playing quite bad and unorganized. Had much fun
All in all, such tactic is not useless and can be pretty rewarding if goodly conducted. It applies to pub servers only since on tight-teamplay server it's very risky to purposely let enemy to convert silo to grey (you'll never know if one you let live is not an SL and others will spawn on him and quickly take the silo) and it will surely take more than 3 persons to keep decent def of each silo.

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jepzilla

I'm thinking well placed RDX would be beneficial here. Wait in hiding, blow the RDX when it is neutralized, then sweep in to clear out the remaining attackers. However I imagine the trick would only work one or two times against an organized and well-lead squad.

Macrobeus

I've heard somewhere that RDX packs don't work near silos. Took it for granted. But think must check it on my own.

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jepzilla

I think the problem is that the silo itself grants you cover from the RDX explosion, so it's difficult to plant the RDX in such a way to kill all the attackers.

Tarenth

It grants some cover, but its not perfect. Basically you have to know where to plant it to do the most damage.

I personally like 3 layouts.

• 4 corners + 1 on top - Each RDX planted on the ground at the corner and one slapped on the launch tube itself. This provides a nice explosive radius with an emphasis on range and less on damage. Vehicles parked near the silo are seriously damaged/destroyed when you blow them, but you might miss that guy hiding in the recessed terminal.
• 4 points + 1 on top - 4 RDX planted on the silo itself at the center of each side with the last slapped on the launch tube itself. This provides the best 'kill zone' for dismounted troops, but will prove somewhat ineffective against vehicles that park at the corner since they only take splash damage.
• Swastica - 4 Placements on each right/left hand corner of the silo and one slaped firmly on the top of the silo base. Not as obvious to the observer as the 4 corners and more effective against vehicles than the 4 points method, its a nice mix of the two that makes up for some of the weakness while trading some of the strength off as well.

Something I find amusing is the fact that you can blow RDX from any range . Its somewhat satisfying to hear your team losing a silo, pushing the button, then getting 6 RDX kills from across the map.

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My sanity is not in question...
It was a confirmed casualty some time ago.

Elite_Master

I've been pretty successful before using a Recon and playing with another guy as Support (to re-arm me) and just defending one silo planting all 5 RDX and claymores around the silo and waiting for troops - I'll snipe some then get the rest with RDX/APM's - if some are still left then the support guy will start lobbing nades as I rush in for the knife kills. Usually though I will only plant 4 and keep the fifth one for in case a tank,apc..etc comes instead of troops so that I can plant the final one on the armor and blow the whole thing - usually there is a Roush cannon around too that you can jump into in case you need one more hit to destroy the armor; when they get out stay in the cannon and let Support guy hiding take him out (better yet have the support guy start nading the area right by the armor so that when the guy gets out he's dead). There is some mathematical consistency related to the argument that it is better overall to let the enemy nuetralize the silo first before taking it back BUT remember that even though you get that immediate first missle, the clock was at some number already when the enemy stopped it by nuetralizing the silo so you have to consider the time wasted (taken off the clock) by the action of reseting it too .. for instance, if you own the silo and the clock is at 1:40 (20 secs until fire), and a enemies come such that it takes them only 15 seconds to nuetralize the silo, and then you kill them it will probably be about a 10-20 second battle (not instantaneous) PLUS the time it takes to own the silo again say 10-20 seconds = upward of 40 seconds and if you would have killed him right away (with 20 secs until fire) you effectively wasted the team 20 seconds of missle fire count down time.. I know, not much but just a small tweak to the theory so that you should usually let the enemy nuetralize the silo first but I would say NOT IF the countdown is less than ~30 seconds to fire.