this week's training topic is: how to pick the winning team

fwiffo · Post by **fwiffo** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:22 pm

this is going to be a mumble session guys, im not gonna sit around and type and type and type

even if you have no mic, just get on mumble and listen.

so if you still havent gotten mumble yet, DO IT. dont know how? use our wiki: http://freeallegiance.org/FAW and search

there's many factors that will determine the likelihood of a team winning... so if you want to raise your level (rank) then this training is for YOU. no one is going to be able to predict which side will win with 100% certainty but would you like to increase your odds better than 50/50?

note, this isnt a lesson in stacking (though many of its concepts are applicable). you guys still have a little way to go before you can make a great enough impact in an avg sized game (12 v 12) to actually be able to stack... if a handful of you guys team up though and work together.... i'd say you will be a force to be reckoned with!

here's your homework (please come ready)

when you play allegiance, press f1 and read about faction informations... yes all of them. pay special attention to different factional perks specially as it relates to economy and miners. many commanders dont realize that many a game has already been lost before it has even started because they do not know how to read the game settings and see if they are stacked against them or not.

what we will cover:
- reading game settings
- part of this course will take place in real time as a real pug (pick up game) is progressing. i will share with you my analysis of which team is probably winning w/o cheating (asking people already in game if they are winning... not allowed)

fwiffo · Post by **fwiffo** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 10:28 pm

im going to post up some screenshots of some running games and ask you guys which side is going to win and why. lets see some of your thought process!

fwiffo · Post by **fwiffo** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 8:49 am

you can talk about the players involved in each team, the game settings, the factions, game size, how long has the game been running, etc.

answer (be sure to post your thoughts before looking!)
http://s16.postimage.org/a8skhe5lh/2012 ... 30_827.png

kederaji · Post by **kederaji** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:13 am

Well, it's only 16 minutes in, so unless one side cocked it all up, it's still anybody's game. United has a number of good players, names I recognize from people who kicked my ass. On the other hand, ICU is technoflux, and with the high money settings, I'd hope that a competent commander would have built a powerhouse economy by now. It's not really obvious, but I'm going to lean towards ICU being the winners.

Silent_S · Post by **Silent_S** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 2:02 pm

kederaji wrote:QUOTE (kederaji @ Mar 15 2012, 07:13 AM) Well, it's only 16 minutes in, so unless one side cocked it all up, it's still anybody's game. United has a number of good players, names I recognize from people who kicked my ass. On the other hand, ICU is technoflux, and with the high money settings, I'd hope that a competent commander would have built a powerhouse economy by now. It's not really obvious, but I'm going to lean towards ICU being the winners.

Yellow has 10 more rank points than blue so my first thought would be to join yellow. Starting money was also set to high making me thing that the more experienced team would have more money to spend sooner thus getting out ahead of blue. Both commanders are close in rank so I would believe that both have comparable knowledge of the game itself.

Treasures also set to none again gives the advantage to the more experienced team.

vogue · Post by **vogue** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 3:40 pm

These are good answers so far but remember that there are two different ranks Commanding and Regular, only your regular rank is shown at any time so in order to find your commanding rank you'll need to check out the leaderboard. That being said, these ranks are usually arbitrary when it comes to commanding, i've comm'ed against guys ranked 18 and above who comm like they should be ranked 5 and vice versa.

kederaji · Post by **kederaji** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 6:56 pm

Silent_S wrote:QUOTE (Silent_S @ Mar 15 2012, 07:02 AM) Yellow has 10 more rank points than blue so my first thought would be to join yellow. Starting money was also set to high making me thing that the more experienced team would have more money to spend sooner thus getting out ahead of blue. Both commanders are close in rank so I would believe that both have comparable knowledge of the game itself.

Treasures also set to none again gives the advantage to the more experienced team.

Rank points really mean absolutely nothing to me. It's an arbitrary, linear representation of an unquantifiable concept. I made my decision based on data from the wiki, which suggested that the high starting money gave Technoflux a lead out of the gate. That faction's hamstring seems to be their economy, so if you make the economy a non issue, with all other factors being equal, Technoflux will beat Iron Coalition.

fwiffo · Post by **fwiffo** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:25 pm

i like how you guys immediately focused on the money settings. i would too. my personal way of memorizing miner capacities is that med high settings (1.15) is optimal for belters miners on maps with 13 sectors (like hi-higher, inside out, and this one, blender). optimal means, your miner will completely drain a rock w/o leaving anything behind, making each trip 100% efficient. all you gotta remember now is whether other factions miners can hold more or less than belter miners.

in this case, gt miners can carry more than belters, so if they were unmanaged (if they werent sent to a 2nd rock after finishing the first), they would return to unload with still room in their cargo... (less efficient)

tf miners on the other hand, carry less than belters. they would fill up on a rock and leave some behind on the rock which is also inefficient as depending on how much he is left behind, because they may return to the previous rock to pick up the remaining amount (extra trip = wasted time)

now look at the map. is it a big map? big maps favor races that start with only scouts (as the team is forced to find the map instead of flying uselessly in an int or fig). on the other hand, tf cons/miners travel extra slow (slowest of them all) which can limit their attempts at expanding. one way to see if the map is considered big is by counting the number of sectors you might have to travel to get to the enemy home. how does it compare to hi-higher?

another consideration is how well are each sector connected? typically, the more ways you can get into a sector, the more vulnerable that sector is to attack. after all... the teams arent big enough to camp *all* alephs in that sector to secure it...

let's hear more of your thoughts, the more details the better. after i hear more, i will share with you my thoughts on the specific players involved on each team.

White Owl · Post by **White Owl** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 3:12 am

I'll just confess to never yet paying attention to money settings and map size. I always try to join the team with fewer newbies, in order to avoid a newbie-stack.

Post by **Dome** » Fri Mar 16, 2012 4:48 am

Yellow's gonna win cause praf947(aka

) is a boss and they are up two playerz.

----

Derrial? Spose so.

prafman still a boss.