medwards

This is a kernel idea thread based on some brief comments by Zephyr, ViolentSquirrel, and myself about how you approach Dystopia tactically for wins.

Something you start to notice is how game tempo operates in this game. This is similar to DOD, but because respawns can happen at more infrequent intervals it's dramtically more noticeable.

Someone (need citation) pointed out that tempo is basically a wave, with lows and highs for each team. Dystopia tends to create situations where the teams are both in potentially high tempo, so there's carnage and then both sides tempo is exhasted. The key to an easy objective capture is to manipulate the situations so you are at high tempo at a time when the opposition is at low or lowering tempo.

The key to avoiding objective captures is to control losses so you can recover tempo rapidly. If a team is mostly blown out, the remainder shouldn't try just charging. If they die they'll just delay the point of high tempo for their own team.

What I'd really like to do is experiment with Legboosters and see whether you can move sufficiently fast as a group to get to critical junctures with high tempo faster.

Chewy

*hugs medwards* where has this brilliant thinking been? On other forums? Could we please continue this conversation with many minds involved... this sounds like a lot of fun to try.

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Zephyr

Yes the wave concept was my analogy for what I frequently saw in Dystopia as I played it over these last few months. Basically, two unorganized teams in most FPS video games, *cough* counter-strike *cough*have no effective way of achieving any objective whatsoever because most people get caught up in the act of killing other players.

Dystopia was designed with a scoreboard that placed objective capturing and cyberdecking kills above real world kills. This was something which had unexpected effects on every fragmonkey to enter this game. What happened was that the fragmonkey discovered the only way to reach the top of his scoreboard was to capture as many objectives as possible or become a talented cyberhacker. In order to ensure his "l33t skills" were shown, he had to achieve the objective as fast as possible without helping anyone else.

This is why the Dystopia games we play today are so freaking fast. Even tactical players saw this and became a part of it. I blame this primarily on the time limit, something which would compel even mature tactical players to behave in an urgent and unstrategic manner. The big difference was that these players sometimes would help the fragmonkeys get their objectives, as the tactical players cared more about getting the objective in general rather than getting it for themselves. This blinded a considerable amount of tactical players into being panic rushers who worked with the fragmonkeys, myself included.

So together these things created the "wave" that we so often see in unorganized matches where a team still manages to win despite having no real wish to benefit anyone but themselves. The "wave" is really represented by the overall health of the players. As players continuously die in random combat, eventually there comes a point where the offensive side gradually places its whole team in the spawn queue. These instances happen through a string of small attacks by groups of about 3 that all fail within enough time of eachother to cancel out smaller spawn times for the other individual groups that recently died. Generally these small attacks inflict enough damage to injure, but not kill, the entire defensive team. The defensive team is thus left at the "trough" of its health wave. The offensive team then respawns at a single time, inadvertedly formulating their health wave's "crest", and annihilates the defensive force through the overwhelming health imbalance. Offensive deckers are rarely hit during their teams crest and start with full energy, while defensive deckers find themselves at their own "trough", out of energy having just finished securing a node or emped from the massive assault by the offensive team. This results in a moment of complete cyberspace and meatspace domination by the offensive team that typically results in capturing an objective. On objectives where the defensive team may take back a lost objective, the waves can go their way as well, depending on if their team is "lucky enough" to be annihilated in small enough groups.

So what can we do to end this stupidity that governs the majority of Dystopia games? Firstly we can SLOW DOWN and WAIT in our spawn if we are on the offensive. By doing this we can generate the "crest" of our health wave without waiting for the inadvertant annihilation of our whole team. The consequence is that the offensive team will encounter a defensive team that is not as crippled as it "should be". The defensive team has not only had time to plan a defensive strategy, it also has been able to heal up it's players and have it's deckers regain their energy. While the defensive team will always be slightly weaker in meatspace because of their weakened players, the defensive deckers will generally control cyberspace as they usually have advantageous initial positioning and network security. By using cyberspace assets to place the offensive team in more exposed and/or dangerous situations, the defensive and offensive team's waves become effectively equalized. What makes or breaks an objective capture now is when cyberspace assets are shifted from defensive to offensive control AND superior attack strategies are used to dispose of the defensive team's meatspace personnel. However this can happen in reverse as well. Superior strategy by the defensive team can completely push back the offensive team. However following their achievements, the defensive team does not always have an objective to capture. The ideal thing for a advantaged defensive team to do in this case is to send its most valuable units, the heavies, forward to strike the spawning offensive wave (now at unintentional crest) in order to lower the offensive wave's force and respawn within enough time to assist the weakened medium and lights, which can then gradually die safely without terrible risk to the defensive team's wave. Defensive deckers should also be extremely hostile in this time period, as securing defenses and thus channeling a "kill vent" is one of the more critical methods of reducing the crest of the incoming offensive health wave.

This my friends, is the tempo of Dystopia. A powerful force which we must understand.
-Zephyr

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medwards

My name is medwards, and I am a fragmonkey. I've actually stood by a fellow decker and hit cyberdeck cap buttons before they did so I could have the points

However, this sort of segues into my overall strategies when approaching objectives. Namely, make it easy for anyone to get to the objective (turn of turrets, open doors, etc.) and then slam individuals against it until someone sneaks through. (see Zephyr's objective cap video for this in action) And I don't just mean slam stealthers, I mean using a good mix of forces. I've seen heavies capture vaccine's docks, I mean they can *create* a moment of low tempo all by their lonesome. Even if the non-light classes don't capture they can provide the distraction or create the low tempo for other players. Legboosters become important for shortening time to target and exploiting holes in defenses when available.

This isn't so much manipulation of tempo, but manipulation of probability. With an opfor at high tempo you have low probability of success, but if you keep the number of attempts high you are bound to make several attempts at a period of opfor's low tempo. One of these sneaks through, BAM, captured.

Therefore, defense is more about good intel and multiple layers of defense and how that contributes to tempo. Opponents have to peel or push away a layer of defense before they can advance to the next layer, and then the next layer and then the objective. I know we played a game of Vaccine one night where we stonewalled the punks on the docks with this. The first layer would die, but by the time opfor had reached the next couple of layers, they had respawned and were able to contribute. We could afford to lose the outer layer tempo because it would respawn before we lost significant inner layer tempo.

Not sure where I'm going with this now. Mostly I still think a modified fragmonkey approach to objective captures is still the most effective in the main.