Comments on the sunday practice / team selection

[bvark]

OK folks:

(Practice)

A little disorganised - bombing practice is probably something people want to do in servers of 2-3 people, since folks with nothing to do cause trouble otherwise.

I didn't get a chance to observe much of the anti-tank training, but general comment about anti-tank (especially with bazooka) - GO FOR THE REAR ARMOUR! shooting the front does almost no damage to a tank.

Also, do not throw a gren and run after it - I saw several people standing right on their grens when they blew cos the tank had run away :(

I'd like to see more artillery training, and groups of people who are REALLY good at it practice - I think it is even easier to be an ineffective user of defguns and battleships then it is to be an ineffective pilot.

http://thegamingchronicle.com/2002.09.06.htm looks promising on that score.

(Team selection)

Already covered elsewhere, but once again thanks to everyone who turned out, and please come again on Tuesday if you didn't get in tonight.

(Voice comms)

We had teamspeak 2 working for about 10 people, I liked it, although the voice quality is not as good as gamevoice it has some good features (channels, whisper, shortcut keys) than make it a good system, and it has a linux server which means it's actually usable

Voice comms will likely be mandatory for clan matches, so get over to http://www.teamspeak.org, unless someone has a better recommendation that will work on Linux (or a windows server on 10Mbit).

I think with whisper between group leads + 'group' channels (where the groups have yet to be defined) we can make a managable voice solution for a 16 player team.

(56k users)

56k and ISDN users seemed to have a lot of trouble both with voice comms and in-game text comms.
How they can be useful members of the team is something we definitely need to discuss.

(Organisation)

I don't want to create or be part of an elitist organisation, and we've taken a few steps tonight down that road.
Anyone in the group is welcome to talk to any of the folks who have been suggested for command roles at any time, and I'd like to think that despite the military structure, we could be a democracy.
On the other hand, I don't really want to see a lot of criticism of the commanders (+ other players) - this will be a very big clan with very big games, and we need to play as a team well on and off the battlefield :)

[Eskimo]

Originally posted by bvark
56k and ISDN users seemed to have a lot of trouble both with voice comms and in-game text comms.
How they can be useful members of the team is something we definitely need to discuss.


I was on 56k. And Battlecom and Gamevoice run fine alongside online games. But Teamspeak would just buggar my ping up totaly.

I would suggest using battlecom or Gamevoice idealy but then if TS is soooooo much better as you say then i guess you guys should use that.

I can still figure out what needs doing without being told. As i did in the praccy.

comms would be nice though :D

[bvark]

Well TV it's the only thing possible, essentially, unless someone has a colo windows box to run the BC or GV dedicated servers on. We _can't_ run the BC or GV servers on someone's DSL, there just isn't enough bandwidth for all the players.

We set Teamvoice on the highest bandwidth setting there (16kbps, more or less by accident), but it could go lower..

[Afty]

I'm putting a pair of Compaq servers into a co-lo on 10Mbit in about a months time - assuming the server software is unobtrusive (as in, runs minimised) I could probably provide the windows boxen.

My only worry is a bandwidth limit - anyone (bvark, network l33tor) care to knock up a simple estimate for the amount of bandwidth it's likely to use per hour?

[Afty]

BTW I'm also volunteering myself for artillery duty. Five years of FPS games practice means I'm not really likely to improve significantly from my current skill level of "needs more limbs" in close firefights, so I need a partner (artillery works in pairs, or even threes if the scouts are getting hit bad) for practice.

Scouting/Shooting duties to be split evenly in practice (open server provides nice moving targets, children ;-) ) and then democratic style "who's better? I dunno, let's decide this at ten paces" choosing for spotter/shooter in game.

[Tsung]

Well afty in public servers, I'll help you improve your artillery aim as a scout. Im good at avoiding fights, usually becuase I end up dying from them.. I'll sneak about providing targets for ya thou' :D

[bvark]

What I'd like to see is people (at least on wake, and most likely on other maps) who can (from a defgun or the destroyer at the start) use a scout's binoculars *on the battleship* to hit target reference points (TRPs):

These would be: The 3 planes in the airbase, the 3 tanks, the AA sites that you can hit from the battleships start posn. (for Axis)

The AA sites, the battleship and carrier default positions, the 2 tanks you can hit, and the AA sites you can hit (for the Allies in the airbase defgun)

You should be able to do this by memorising where the yellow bars for a particular TRP are (so for instance 6.6 ticks above vertical, 5.1 ticks right of horizontal) and lining them up.

[I want to do this in the first 30 seconds of the round - killing all three tanks and all three planes, then knocking out all but two AA sites is going to put a crimp in the allies defensive plans]

Adjusting fire takes a fairly long time, and I suggest it is _NOT_ strategically useful in most cases on this map (since it's hard to lead moving targets) -- I'll bet there _are_ levels (e.g. omaha beach as allies) where it is, but here it's only good to take out defensive positions (like the north base + village and south village, where the defensive line is pretty clear).

A good use would be to support bombers by killing AA sites, and that's something I'd like to see practised.

[Afty]

I will commence this sort of practice as soon as I can, if I can only play a game without some pe0n moving the destroyer.

I cannot *WAIT* to get my hands on a battleship.

[Eskimo]

afty,

on your website on roster. it says Uncle_Pothead, thats me. i used a diff name for trial, can you change me name cheers.

-Esk

[Afty]

You need to mail Boff and get him to contact me. For obvious reasons I cant go changing names on the roster at the whim of a forum post ;)

sorry for any inconvenience

[Eskimo]

np,

i talked to boff after the praccy and said i was playing as a random name.

[Gifted]

because he knew everyone was pissed so he cganged name and didnt say anything :D

Cheeky

[Eskimo]

Originally posted by Gifted
because he knew everyone was pissed so he cganged name and didnt say anything :D

Cheeky

yea i came into the praccy about half way through after downloading TeamSpeak then realising it wouldnt work on 56k..... dam.

And i just seemed to see everyone pissing about and joined in... i didnt realise what was going on at that point and hadnt been privvy to the conversation in the server so i started killing people and getting seriously flamed. At which piont i stopped and just stood on the hill for 10 minutes asking

"Whats going on"

about 15 times with no answer then everyone left, and i got flamed in IRC for "pissing around" by Boff and bvark. (rightly so given the circumstances, but they didnt know the situation, bless um :))

any way i decied to play as Uncle_Pothead so that i would get an "Imparcial" trail and then after i was selected for the team i exalpined it all to boff and bvark and all is now cool.

sorry for any inconweeeenence ;)

-Eski

[Devvy]

I appeared for about 15 minutes, then found the lag real annoying. I'll just have to wait the 2 weeks for ADSL :)

[phil]

Originally posted by afty
(artillery works in pairs, or even threes if the scouts are getting hit bad) for practice.

Worth remembering that you can always pop out of the defgun and scout a target for yourself if your partner dies. Obviously you'd need line of site to the target, but I imagine this would be ok for a stopgap or from the beach gun which has a little cover and you can see most of what the limited angle of fire can hit from there.

[Afty]

Indeed Phil, and that's a very useful tactic with my new favourite position - the airfield def gun.

You can target for bombardment, the north and south bases and the south village (only the north village is out of targetting range) from a 5 second walk out of the turret door.

If friendly infrantry can prevent enemies from lobbing grenades at you, the defgun there can prevent jeep/apc/tank attacks from the south with *EASE*. It dominates that road. Less so no the North road, but it can still hit the vehicles in the village to stop them being used.