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1: NC

2: NC and TR

3: NC, TR and Vanu

[Shadowlord]

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/241555497986191360

The NDA has been lifted.

[forsaken1111]

Guys I have a confession to make...

...I am in the beta. I know! I wanted to tell you so badly, but I was under this NDA and it was really restrictive. I hope this won't damage our relationship. Can you forgive me? 

[sluissa]

Now I have to go do something awesome so I can talk about it, because I forgot all the awesome things that have happened over the last week or so.

I will say, game is fun as hell and things are still somewhat imbalanced, but it is a beta. Still having fun even though those NC reavers are dicks.

[timferius]

Perfect! In that case...

Man I'm excited to try out <insert new featuer here>. It should make <current point of gameplay> much more exciting! As well as <adverb> <verb> at <nouns>.

Damn I hate <documents> that prevent me from discussing <interactive media>.

Indeed, although <new feature> is kind of pointless due to the way <current feature> works - someone can just hold a <current feature> on you without actually firing their <related feature> at you, and you'll end up wasting all your <new feature>s trying to avoid the <related feature>s that haven't actually been fired yet.

So I expect they'll have to enable something else besides <new feature>.

... Or was that not what you were talking about? 

Ok, what were you talking about here? I'm guessing something to do with the Locking AA missles... I'm not sure what "new feature" is though? were you talking about the then lack of flares?

AND

Now that we're talking about it, I LOVE the new layout for the Zurvan Amp Station. It works much better with the single shielded Capture point, and the new walls really give it an epic assault feel. The best thing they did was seperate those outposts. Really makes it feel like setting up a front and launcing an assault on a military base.
Also makes being Light Assault great for scaling the walls.

[sluissa]

I also chose somewhat poorly for my main character. West Coast 02 as a TR... I had to pick a server which has almost constant 50% NC population. From what I hear it's different on different servers. Euro servers are complaining about similar overpopping with TR being the top. VS gets the shaft, as usual.

[timferius]

Last night, for ths first time (because of the recent Vanu fixes) we were finally 33.33.33 for a while.

All of us in NA need to consolidate on a server. I'm not too worried about starting over, that is what beta is for.

[palsch]

Phew. Can actually talk now.

So my laptop is nowhere near recommended specs (i3, Geforce 310M, 6GB RAM) but has been working reasonably the last couple of days. The first few I was lucky to get more than 10 FPS in quiet areas on minimum settings. Yesterday I could maintain 30 during fights and am considering bumping the graphics back up.

As for in game, I'm playing NC on EU1, mostly playing Heavy Assault. Palsch for now. Thinking of using Kosoth for my main later.

The Gauss SAW is awesome. I've got the forward grip and x4 scope. The grip means it's got superb and maintainable accuracy while the scope helps a lot in providing accurate medium to long range suppressing fire. I've won sniper duels with actual snipers. I'm getting decent with the rockets but hope they get a little bit of a damage buff. I've pumped five directly into an AA turret that wasn't being repaired before it blew up. Given they usually have nearby engineers during sieges and it often takes a shot or two to get the right ranging - except for a few common fixed positions I've already got locked in - you really need some friends, some coordination and an engineer for extra ammo to do any real damage.

C4 is a lot of fun. That is all.

Infiltrator is pretty fun as well. The Bolt Driver is a great rifle and gives the NC an edge there. Especially good fun to find a battle between the other two nations, find a quiet location out of their lines of sight and start KSing charging MAX units. I was set up overlooking a TR rush on a Vanu spawn for a good five minutes before I got disconnected one time. They all knew I was there but couldn't afford to ignore the other side long enough to do anything as the only points with LOS on me were the killing field between their forces.

Turns out I can't fly for love nor money. I got a bug where some random Galaxy thought I was it's pilot when it's real pilot logged out. Left me to ferry a dozen troops to the next base. I spent about thirty seconds bumbling around trying to land before the last of the soldiers fled in terror and I could dump it and pretend this had never happened. Probably need to work on that. Ground vehicles are OK but for now I mostly just use the Flash to get from point to point.

Zurvan is really fun. Last night there was a lengthy three-way scrap with the TR defending. The Vanu were approaching from distant Galaxies while we had a few close in Galaxies (tended to get blown up by periodic armour rushes from the other two sides) and two of the nearby outposts. Took it in turns wiping out Vanu pushes and storming the base to destroy generators and turrets. At one point I was bouncing around between the towers executing snipers, then dropping rockets onto Vanu/TR MAX duels.

As for balance, on EU1 Vanu are underpopulated and certainly seem to be easier to fight against than TR. TR tend to explode in population at night making it impossible to hold out against them. They are getting enough resources that every single pilot has both the A2A missiles and A2G rockets available. It's making open battles hard if any air forces are in the area at all. TR's MAX units also are far more annoying than the Vanu ones (I mainly fear Vanu LA and Infiltrators), given their anti-infantry weapons are far superior to any other anti-infantry gun in game. The NC AI MAX is frustrating to use. Most NC seem to have relegated MAXes to anti-air or anti-armour support roles. Still, that should change once more guns and certs are opened up.

The latency didn't seem too bad when I tried out US East, but that was when I still had really bad lag and was disconnecting periodically even from EU. I might try it again soon.

[miauw62]

Damnit, i really wish i was in the beta

[Shadowlord]

Perfect! In that case...

Indeed, although <new feature> is kind of pointless due to the way <current feature> works - someone can just hold a <current feature> on you without actually firing their <related feature> at you, and you'll end up wasting all your <new feature>s trying to avoid the <related feature>s that haven't actually been fired yet.

So I expect they'll have to enable something else besides <new feature>.

... Or was that not what you were talking about? 

Ok, what were you talking about here? I'm guessing something to do with the Locking AA missles... I'm not sure what "new feature" is though? were you talking about the then lack of flares?

AND

Now that we're talking about it, I LOVE the new layout for the Zurvan Amp Station. It works much better with the single shielded Capture point, and the new walls really give it an epic assault feel. The best thing they did was seperate those outposts. Really makes it feel like setting up a front and launcing an assault on a military base.
Also makes being Light Assault great for scaling the walls.

Yep, the flares. I haven't tried them firsthand, or the A2A missiles, since I don't have either yet and flares were just unlocked (for 100 cert points?). I just got the A2G rocket pods yesterday and tried those out (mostly on galaxies, heh). I bought the rocket pods rather than A2A missiles mainly because it doesn't feel fair to use lock-on missiles when the Vanu lock-on missiles don't actually track at all.

Basically, my understanding of how the lock-on works from other peoples' forum posts, is that someone can just hold the lock-on on you without firing. A translation of what I said earlier:

Indeed, although flares is are kind of pointless due to the way lockon works - someone can just hold a lockon on you without actually firing their missiles at you, and you'll end up wasting all your flares trying to avoid the missiles that haven't actually been fired yet.

So I expect they'll have to enable something else besides flares.

However it looks like flares have a 30 second cooldown right now, and a2a missiles have a shorter cooldown. So it's not so much that you would waste them all as that you would use one and then...?


I haven't had an opportunity to get in a good battle over Zurvan or the other one they've changed yet, but I like that they're trying different things, and it might be interesting to keep different bases with different methods of capturing (although I expect this is just for testing what works best and is most fun).

I'll have to check out the forward grip - I haven't bought that for any of my weapons yet.

The reaver is a hell of a lot faster to get from point to point than any of the ground vehicles, but it's prone to exploding on landing or takeoff if you aren't really careful right now, especially if you try to land right on or next to the cap point in the middle of an outpost (with buildings and stuff all around, since fighters don't have a reverse and you can get caught on a building or tower, flip over, and explode).

The Vanu and TR on West 3 both present a challenge, having more pop than NC at different times of the day. Based on the past two days, Vanu seem to peak in the morning (e.g. when the servers open and for the next several hours), TR in the middle of the day, and NC late in the day, with NC getting more and more as it approaches shutdown time. I'm not sure if Vanu pops will sustain, since they've only been high yesterday and the day before (I haven't been on yet today) and were consistantly low until the devs said they were underpowered and would be improved and be able to shoot farther more effectively. Also, it SOUNDS like the Vanu didn't actually get a buff? People are saying that they did while other people are saying that they didn't, and I believe one of the devs outright stated that the range rebalance that would have balanced them hadn't gone in yet, and so Vanu were likely winning here because they had shot up to 50% pop and had high morale.

I mainly play NC medic and engineer, or LA when I want to get somewhere up high. I should get a grip and zoomed sight on the gun I use as an LA so I can snipe people more accurately with that from the top of bases.

When I was playing Vanu, I played a MAX most of the time since that was their most effective class, even at long range. Quasars and comets both beat all their other weapons (I haven't tried them again lately).

The TR HA seems remarkably effective (both from playing it, and fighting it).

[sluissa]

NC do seem to have a distinct advantage at indoor fighting. You run up on a blue guy inside, and all else being equal, you're dead. At range they do seem to have less luck but even with their attempts to make capture points more outdoorsy, they're still surrounded by buildings and cover, making most encounters at ground level pretty close to face to face.

Unfortunately for the moment, my FPS is low enough that I can't really be all that accurate with bullets. I've mostly been flying and avoiding indoor combat if possible. The HA rocket launchers can be a lot of fun though. I managed to take out a low flying scythe as the TR with the dumb fire missile, did some damage to tanks before I died, and a couple of times used it to some effect against unsuspecting enemies on a lower plane than me.

[Rez]

The streaming and gameplay videos I've seen look pretty haphazard and unorganized.  I don't know if it's happening already, but organized ops seem like they would be super-effective.

[palsch]

The streaming and gameplay videos I've seen look pretty haphazard and unorganized.  I don't know if it's happening already, but organized ops seem like they would be super-effective.

I've seen some attempts at organisation. The outfit I'm lurking in has a leader who fancies himself a general. Although it's mostly calling for air support and trying to deal with back hacking. Air patrols and back hacking dominate the resources/territory game, to the level that not giving them priority makes the large scale battles utterly pointless. You can desperately push back a larger force to finally seize that last control point only to lose the base to an adjacent hex being taken by one man in a fighter.

Even just forming ad-hoc groups tends to lead to some level of organisation. We had an extended siege at West Highlands Checkpoint earlier, a repeat of several similar battles in the past. It's one spawning point next to one capture point, set in the side of a huge valley. Because of the bases it's near you end up with the besiegers bringing dozens of tanks, usually in semi-organised waves of five or six, while infantry push down the cliff sides. Defenders end up in a couple locations safe from air (who simply dominate it with rocket attacks) or artillery fire, with engineers and medics healing, repairing and resupplying. Then slow push forwards, knock out a couple of tanks, fall back and absorb another infantry rush. We kept that up till they ran out of tanks for the siege, mopped up their infantry and then counter-rushed to meet their next tank wave in the open. A Galaxy came in and we were able to push on to their next base.

It was more the sort of organisation you get from a team in TF2 who have played a few rounds together than a well oiled military machine, but it worked. The sort of organisation that is desperately needed is fire discipline and movement within fire teams to focus fire on enemies and avoid shooting friendlies. And because you are always fighting alongside randomers I don't see that happening.

[timferius]

The streaming and gameplay videos I've seen look pretty haphazard and unorganized.  I don't know if it's happening already, but organized ops seem like they would be super-effective.

I've seen some attempts at organisation. The outfit I'm lurking in has a leader who fancies himself a general. Although it's mostly calling for air support and trying to deal with back hacking. Air patrols and back hacking dominate the resources/territory game, to the level that not giving them priority makes the large scale battles utterly pointless. You can desperately push back a larger force to finally seize that last control point only to lose the base to an adjacent hex being taken by one man in a fighter.

Even just forming ad-hoc groups tends to lead to some level of organisation. We had an extended siege at West Highlands Checkpoint earlier, a repeat of several similar battles in the past. It's one spawning point next to one capture point, set in the side of a huge valley. Because of the bases it's near you end up with the besiegers bringing dozens of tanks, usually in semi-organised waves of five or six, while infantry push down the cliff sides. Defenders end up in a couple locations safe from air (who simply dominate it with rocket attacks) or artillery fire, with engineers and medics healing, repairing and resupplying. Then slow push forwards, knock out a couple of tanks, fall back and absorb another infantry rush. We kept that up till they ran out of tanks for the siege, mopped up their infantry and then counter-rushed to meet their next tank wave in the open. A Galaxy came in and we were able to push on to their next base.

It was more the sort of organisation you get from a team in TF2 who have played a few rounds together than a well oiled military machine, but it worked. The sort of organisation that is desperately needed is fire discipline and movement within fire teams to focus fire on enemies and avoid shooting friendlies. And because you are always fighting alongside randomers I don't see that happening.

Adding to this, I'm hoping there's a few changes that'll come through to help with these problems.

Well, firstly, backhacking has been completly stopped with the new adjacency rules, basically to cap a hex you need at least 1 adjacent hex.
What we need is, I think, 2 things.
1. Factionwide global chat, so people can request reinforcments/AA/air support at certain locations. Right now, the winner of the air war tends to reign supreme, because the only people who know air support is requried have to wait 10ish minutes to get their planes back.
2. Some way to tell the current population of each faction in a hex, so we can quickly tell where reinforcements are required.

Actually, on global chat, a cool suggestion I think I'll make is giving squad leaders access to a "command chat" of sorts. So they can communicate amongest each other and orginize. Call it War Council or something.

[Charmander]

... Seriously need map positions of stuff like rearm points, vehicle points, reloading stations... all of that jazz.

[Sensei]

Regular server is full. Quick, anyone online? Which server and faction?