P1's Notebook

[zombywoof]

So basically I've just spent the last two days almost exclusively commanding. It's pretty exhausting and I know there's a lot of barriers to new commanders coming up but I figured I'd like a place in gameplay so I can talk about what I see and what I think about in the command seat. Hopefully that'll help you guys get some more confidence in your own commanding skill.

The first thing I want to say before I start this is that I'm not the greatest commander in Allegiance nor do I want to claim I am. I tend to think I'm competent and I know some who would agree and some who would disagree. Commanding is hard, there's a @#(! ton you have to pay attention to and there are a lot of people who aren't going to do what you want them to do, to say nothing of the people who are going to actually hinder you by ignoring what you say and then verbally berating you for what you are trying to do. One of the most important things I've learned about commanding is that the commander must have the big picture in mind. This also means that, as a pilot, you have to assume that any strange orders you're getting from the commander are part of that big picture. Too many times will I command as, say, giga and have people rip in to D a random teleport instead of killing the enemy's miners or defending a sup after I've repeatedly said to just let it die.

So with that I want to talk about what I feel is probably the most important part of Allegiance: tempo. Anyone who's an old-fashioned Magic nerd like myself knows what tempo decks do. The layman's term is they don't really stop you from doing anything, rather they just try to delay you from doing anything. The idea is that if they can make you wait until turn 4 to play what was supposed to be your turn 2 play, they can kill you. Tempo is a key component of any strategy game and Allegiance is no different.

As everyone should know by now (by either taking cadet, reading the cadet post I put in gameplay, or just by paying attention to the game) the most important part of the early game is planting your constructors. People talk all the time of killing opening cons, but there's one trick that really makes me happy as a commander. See, you can't build a second constructor while the first one is alive. If I can have one scout delay the enemy constructor for 30 seconds, that gives MY second round of constructors a 30 second head start. If their con builds, so what? I'm already way ahead because I'm going to get more map which means more money which means more tech. Many allegiance veterans will talk about the concept of bouncing miners and that is also very useful and also a tempo play. You're not stopping them from mining in any permanent sense, but you're wasting a few seconds here and a few seconds there to get your tech up faster.

Many of you know I like to command as Giga. I learned Giga by watching Spideycw (imo one of the top 5 allegiance commanders of all time) command giga in pugs. He would push constructors all around the map and not give two $#@!s if they got killed en route. Spidey was playing a gambit: "if I can get 3 or 4 people to go after this constructor that I don't care about, those 3 or 4 people can't attack my miners." The flipside of the gambit was, of course, that if they DIDN'T attack the con, hey, free con built in their back sectors! I'm a firm believer of this strategy as giga, especially in pugs where your team might not be the most cooperative.

Speaking of which, do you know what one of the most tempo negative plays in allegiance is? Buying bbrs. I'll let you think about that for a second.

Ok, now why is it a tempo negative play? First of all, you dump 10k into something that's not your adv tech. That already sets you back. Then you have to spend the time actually doing a bomb run. If a bomber has to walk 6k, even assuming good rams that's still going to take a minute or so. After that run and assuming you've managed to kill everyone and no one's in pods, you have to rip back to your home rip, dock, and rebase to launch for miner offense. A bomb run can easily take 3 minutes off the clock. The other thing is, bombers cost 10k. If I buy bbrs to blow up a 2.25k giga TP, I just basically threw 8k at my opponent. In order to make buying bombers a play that doesn't just set you back economically you need to get MORE than 10k advantage out of the bombers, which generally involves blowing up more than two outposts. Getting a techbase is ideal, of course, but another way is if you have an outpost in the same sector as their outpost. By killing their op you get 5k plus the value of all the helium in that sector which is now yours.

Now all of those plays above are still tempo negative because they represent time that's not involved in stopping them from mining or defending your own miners. This doesn't mean they're bad plays... far from it. And sometimes bombers can be a huge tempo positive play. In scenarios where you are trying to take the map, you can often "freeze" the enemy's pilots into defending while your con does something else. Or if you're in an economically advantageous position, like say you're Giga with spec refs or Bios in general, keeping your opponent on D is perfect because it doesn't matter if they get adv tech: yours is better.

One of the more important aspects of commanding is having your plan with the faction you choose, and part of that is knowing at what stage your faction is at its strongest. Giga, as the previous example, has a horrible mid game. By using bombers and throwing cons around to buy themselves a few precious minutes, they get to mine and get advanced tech. With lxy whatevers (I think lxy figs are the best) your endgame is much better than your opponents, so drawing the game out is great... and any play you make that wastes an equal amount of time for both teams is in your advantage. On the other hand, Dreg has an awful late game and durdling around with bombers and not getting anything done is a surefire way to straight up lose with Dreg.

Tune in next week for some more thoughts on commanding from P1.

[Archangelus]

This one is too big, I stopped reading in the middle of it. You need to type less. Be more specific and concise plz. You babble about too many things that ppl don't care.

[zombywoof]

Well the first half is really introduction to tell you what these weekly posts are going to be like. But yeah, they're long. They kind of have to be because I'm trying to raise more PUG commanders so I don't have to either watch saturday games die or command my umpteenth game in a row. I'm not a fan of the bullet-point style and I actually enjoy reading long posts like the kind I write.

*shrugs* I also read books for fun so there's that XD

[carbon]

I appreciate phoenix taking his time and energy sharing the knowledge; bullet points would not do this justice.

[Archangelus]

QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Dec 7 2014, 03:30 AM) Well the first half is really introduction to tell you what these weekly posts are going to be like. But yeah, they're long. They kind of have to be because I'm trying to raise more PUG commanders so I don't have to either watch saturday games die or command my umpteenth game in a row. I'm not a fan of the bullet-point style and I actually enjoy reading long posts like the kind I write.

*shrugs* I also read books for fun so there's that XD

I give up.

[TheAlaskan]

Good stuff. I might recommend using bullet points and lists if possible.

[ThePhantom032]

Good points all around.

xJammer and I used to play belters bombers as a tempo play - just two or three people making a 200mps bombrun means the enemy needed way more defenders than we had people on the bombrun, giving lots of time to mine with minimal harassment.

Sadly people on our team were mostly too stupid to follow orders and attack the enemy miners instead - they would grab figs and try to nan the bomber just to notice they couldn't even keep up with adv scouts ramming, which led to hvy ints for the enemy too quickly. Its something I've noticed in general, people tend to flock to and defend bombers no matter what you tell them.

Its why I've recently given up on commanding pugs, people think they know what to do better than I as the commander and it usually ends in total failure. Why attack miners next sector if you can spam the buy bomber button instead? Why probe the sector with an enemy tp on the aleph that is only 2k from our techbase when you could pick up retrobooster and EMP cannons in an unimportant empty sector halfway across the map, and then die to a random enemy voob that also wanted to pick that tech up? (both of these actually happened, and it wasnt noobs but people who fancy themselves vets that were around long enough to know better even without being told what to do, which they were)

[P1 TLDR]

Time spent bombing is usually better spent doing something else more productive. But not always.

[Deathrender]

QUOTE (P1 TLDR @ Dec 8 2014, 06:59 PM) Time spent bombing is usually better spent doing something else more productive. But not always.

Best novelty account.

[carbon]

P1 TLDR
You guys crack me up.