P1's Notebook

[TheAlaskan]

I'll Fraps a video of what it looks like in milkshape. Essentially it has the ability for particles to get through

[Archangelus]

I would put bios sbs as the best sbs, rix being 2nd or maybe 3rd nowadays (OH?).

Ppl just lack the ability (or will) to shoot down the $#@!in drones.

If I remember correctly a bios sb with HC2 gets 12% sig AB mounted.

[qqmwoarplox]

oh sbs are great because its easily made with oh exp sig and dmg gas

[zombywoof]

P1's Notebook 7:

Motivation.

You've heard many people say that commanding is like herding cats, and it really, really is. Depending on how well your team respects you, how much alcohol (or other substances) they've consumed, how their day at work went, and a million, billion other factors your team may or may not listen to your commands. There are some pilots who are well known for refusing to obey orders and just sitting in an int whoring (whether or not they're good at it), some pilots who are well known for turning their brains off the minute they launch and making no discernable effort to understand what the commander wants them doing, and some pilots who are going to do what you ask and then bitch at you when it doesn't go well.

There aren't all that many tools available to a commander. Basically your options are to a) be better at bitching, b) boot, or c) find some kind of carrot to leada your pilots by. Because of the small team sizes of today, booting has become less and less of an option. If it's 5v5 and I boot Voob@Voobsquad, I've reduced my team by 20%. If it were a 20 v 20, that would be the equivalent of booting 4 people... something that was rare way back in the days of 2007-2009.

(Not that booting 4 people during the course of a game was rare, but booting 4 people in one boot rampage was rare)

There are a few "techniques" I've seen through the years and I'll do my best to explain them here:

1) Spideybitchtm

Spidey always used a mixture of condescending sarcasm and praise to get his way. The goal was to point out both that he is going to put you in a position to win if you listen to him and also to make you feel bad for your failures, hopefully inspiring you to do better. The corollary to this is that it requires something of a reputation to pull off in the first place. Because Spidey was known as one of the best commanders, having him think highly of your play skill was an affirmation of your play skill.

2) Ozzy

Ozzy was a rager. His style was to just yell at you and/or boot you until you did what he demanded you do. Fear kept his pilots in line, fear of this battlestation boot button. This can have harmful effects to your reputation if you don't do it in a fair manner and will make newbies much less inclined to fly for you.

3) Aarmstrong

Aarmstrong was... just a nice guy. His method of motivating you was a sense of ernestness that made you *want* to do whatever it was Aarm wanted you to do. It's hard to describe the joy and excitement he could put in his voice when it was time to attack miners. If there's anyone to really try and emulate in the command seat, I recommend you try for the Aarmstrong method... but don't be surprised if you can't get it to work.

Generally the most successfull method *I've* found is the Spideybitchtm method. It works the best for me, but that's my personality more than anything. I prefer acidic wit to explosive rage. I'm also not nearly enough of a carebear to pull off an Aarmstrong, so there's that.

When to blame your team:

A subset of all of this is when to blame your team and when to blame yourself. This can be hard to define at times because sometimes you make the right call but for whatever reason your team decides that actually hitting scouts with their bullets is hard. Maybe a cat jumped onto your top whore's lap when the bomb run started. Maybe Student's mom is making him take out the trash. Or maybe you just ordered a bomb run that had no chance in hell of working or put a con in a useless sector.

For me, most of the losses I have can be squarely put on the team either not listening on not performing. I know I know the game well enough to make the correct orders. That also doesn't mean I don't make mistakes. Most games I have at least one or two things I wish I'd done differently. I don't always vocalize it to the team of course, but sometimes I will. Losing a con or losing a base when I didn't give the right order is on me, and it helps team morale to say, "it's my bad that this happened, this is how we're going to fix it."

Posting Resigns:

If there is no possible way for you to win, post a $#@!ing resign. These aren't SGs where resigning is bad form. If it's possible for you to win without some kind of act of God (i.e. GOD joining your team, the entire enemy team disconnecting, things of that nature) then don't post a resign. No one wants to play the "let's throw mini3 hvies at each other for 2 hours" game, and when you're required to play the "mini3 hvie for 2 hours" game, you end up alienating enough people that the next game simply doesn't launch. Comebacks do happen and while it's nice to pull a Grav and come through in the 3rd hour, it's more detrimental to the game in the long run.

[Shizoku]

I always prefered the GreySlayer method of commanding:

Buy hvy ints, get in a hvy int, and pod lots of things. Regardless of what your team does, you are gonna have a good time.

[Student]

QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Jan 19 2015, 12:32 PM) Maybe Student's mom is making him take out the trash.

Reaction from Student's mom. "Yes! I made the forums!" That being said, that would be highly unlikely to happen, as I don't take out the trash (that is what brothers are for).

[zombywoof]

My favorite form of commanding is probably the Thallium which I didn't mention here, which is basically this:

Spam 'gl, then complain that the commanders are uneven and go play some other game.

[vogue]

Rekt

[Student]

Dammit P1, you gave her ideas -.- .

[zombywoof]

P1's Notebook 7:

Factions all have their own playstyles and favored techpaths. These techpaths also inform their strategies that are frequently used. Knowing all of the factions and how they play is key to being a good commander for obvious reasons. It's just like knowing your opponent's tendancies as a commander: knowing what the faction you're up against is weak to (or soft to) or strong against is key.

One key example is IC. IC is very strong against sup. It is very difficult for a sup team to keep abread of IC thanks to ripping miners and ungalvable bases. This is a significant problem for factions like Belters or Giga who's primary strength is their sup. In those matchups, Giga and Belts have to find an alternate route to victory.

Understanding each faction's strengths and weaknesses goes beyond just the numbers. By the numbers, IC sup (1.1 pw damage, 1.1 missile damage, .95 hull, normal shields) should be phenomenally powerful. In practice however, IC sup suffers from a number of serious problems: their figs are very large and easy to hit and 2 minute con build times limits their ability to quickly secure (and then flexibly defend) large sections of map. On the flip side, Giga, whose cheap and fast outposts, would seem like a natural fit for expansion. But the fact that these outposts are so easy to kill (something not even the station GAs helps very much) and that their sup can exploit con spam much better leaves giga exp with something to be desired.

Sometimes switching between the techpaths completely changes how the faction plays. Rix expansion is about a large hvy int presence as early as possible. Rix sup is less reliant on advance tech and most of its damage is dealt with gat2 rix enh figs ripping into SR scouts. Indeed, many times with rix sup it's correct to try and end the game with enh tech, getting hvy scouts, nan3, and hvy bbrs before even getting galvs ad adv figs. It's important to keep that in mind: if you're playing against Rix you have to have a plan (see previous notebooks) that would work if the opponent chooses to go sup or if the opponent chooses to go exp.

There are also significant play-arounds, options that some factions have in certain matchups that they wouldn't have in others. The big example that comes to my mind is Giga vs IC. Traditionally this matchup is considered poor for Giga, but there are some techniques a clever Giga commander can do to defeat an underexperienced IC commander. While 99% of the time you'd rather be Giga sup, against IC you have the option of going Giga exp. Because the IC figs are so easy to whore, you can often defend your bases by sheer whorepower. If your opponent; however, decides to go a more traditional expansion, you can get spec mines which are difficult for interceptors to kill. One or two specmines means that your econ will get to hvy ints well before your opponent, as well as making miner trades very much in your favor. Eventually, with good miner offense, your opponent has to replace their miners while you upgrade your tech or even get a second tech (almost always tac).

Similarly, GT has a huge advantage over Giga because GT can purchase MiniDis, a mountable disrupter for GT hvies. This, combined with GT's ability to push palisades and researches (which are ungalvable), means that the Giga Sup vs GT Exp matchup proceeds to a lategame of GT Exp "galving" down Giga Sup bases! In order to get you guys thinking about how factions and their relative perks play into the matchups they have, here's the basic gist of how each techpath wants to play its matchups:

Tac:

vs Tac: Tac v Tac is a battle of attrition and eyes. Sniper is key in this matchup because it lets you kill SFs very quickly which is useful for miner defense. Often Tac v Tac can devolve into "who buys bbrs first" because bbrs are so powerful against sfs.

vs Sup: Tac vs Sup is a matchup in which Tac needs to kill off Sup's miners very quickly and use their ships to prevent Sup from expanding. Sup's lack of pulse probes makes this a pretty good matchup for tac overall, plus the fact that purchasing counter 2 can be counterproductive for sup teams as fighters' missiles represent their best weapons against SFs.

vs Exp: Tac vs Exp is very rough for the tac team. Int bombing with pp1 is a very efficient way of ending the game. Excellent probes and coordinated teams are very necessary to repel int bombing and kill miners. The nimbleness of interceptors combined with carrying pulse probes is also an excellent form of miner defense.

Sup:

vs Tac: Sup vs Tac is a rough matchup from the Sup perspective. Typically the solution is to get AB2 and AC2 and transition to hvy scouts and hvy bbrs. With hull + shield GAs as well as sensor GA, late-mid game bombing is very effective versus tac. Unfortunately, before that point the miners are often sitting ducks and it can be very difficult for figs to mount effective offenses against a tac team's miners.

vs Exp: Sup vs Exp is basically a series of suicide runs one after another. The key to remember is that enh figs are much better miner killers than ints. In a 7v7 scenario, 7 figs should just about be able to kill any configuration of a combined 7 ints and scouts every time. Throw your entire team behind every offensive action and you'll do well. In the transition to the late (and after that, end game) your new plan is to literally galv your opponent off the map. As a general rule of thumb, the more the better. In the old 15v15 games, it was all but impossible to stop a 10 man galv run. Today's allegiance is a bit more forgiving, but a 5 man galv run is almost always enough to pop a base. Ideally your opponent will be left with hvy ints, an adv expansion, and a garrison. Then you can pop your econ into overdrive and freely mine the map for however long it takes.

vs Sup: Sup v Sup is a race to galvs, little more and little less. It also often ends up in carrier battles early on: a scenario where there are 2 carriers in one sector (one for each team) and whichever carrier is left standing controls the sector. The team that gets to galvs first almost always ends up winning the game. This matchup is also about hiding your bases as TPs have very low signature (.5) and your opponent can't galv what they can't see. Hiding your miners early and shielding them from attacks is also key (much like the exp matchup) because you can, if you get to galvs early, push your opponent back far enough to free mine for the rest of the game.

Exp:

vs Tac: Exp vs Tac is pretty simple and fairly heaviliy tilted in Exp's favor. Exp wants mini2 ints, pp1, and an outpost next to the enemy's techbase. From there, exp just massacares miners (tac really can't stop miner offense runs) until they're ready to int bomb. Then they int bomb. Exp, like sup, rarely gets adv exp in this matchup... but unlike sup they don't need to get a starbase or any shenanigans like that. Exp is also much better at defending miners against tac than sup is.

vs Sup: Exp vs Sup is all about whorepower. You have to get into the enemy's sectors as the enh level and whore them into submission (including their miners). This matchup is very often on a timer because unless you're IC (or GT), galvs basically spells the end of your game. It is very difficult for expansion to mount an offense when they control no map. Similarly, it's very difficult for SUP to mount an offense without map, so keep your miners out of the reach of the enemy.

vs Exp: Like all of Expansion's other matchups, sheer aggression will win you this game. Even Bios Exp will tend to be hyper aggressive in exp v exp matchups. Hvy ints are a huge upgrade from regular ints (adv sfs and adv figs are definitely better than sfs and figs, but not by nearly so large a margin) which means the team which gets to hvy ints first has a huge advantage for a short time. Many games in this matchup devolve into various attempts to put bases very close to enemy targets and large-ish furballs where the team with superior whores wins almost by default. Perhaps the most interesting effect of exp vs exp battles is that while in most other configurations you want a 90/10 mix between nans and combat ships, exp vs exp is closer to a 60/40 mix between nans and ints. Sometimes you even want runs that are 0/100 nans and ints, though this is somewhat rare.

Like I said earlier, all of these techpath plans change subtly based on the factions involved. Understanding the basics; however, of beating each faction will put you on the way to understanding how each faction works on a fundamental level.