Good Job Guys

[NeverRetreat]

Good job tonight guys. We had good progress with vehicles and working the vehicles. Widowmaker is incredible in that shrike. No doubt about it, he was born to fly. Griznak is a good bomber and pilot and his crew did very good working together on bomb runs. Jackle is excellent at bombing and all who flew tailgunner picked it up quickly and were very effective.

The transport attacks are very promising, I'm looking forward to establishing a team who's sole mission on vehicle maps is to assault as we practiced tonight.

Pixelsponge and Palooka teamed up well to work cap runs and routes...This is vital to success, teamwork and timing.

Hats off to those who played Defense on Slapdash...Widowmaker, Abaddon,Sunnyjim<=RD=> Dr. K and SolarWolf. Very, Very Impressive teamwork. Lots of hustling and keeping equipment up. Great Job.

Jackle, Beast, Squidly worked well and provided a lot of input throughout Slapdash as to better our attacks.

Special thanks to Leonidas for joining our practice and putting up with my brainlock on how to say his name. Well done!

Wednesday night practice same time, same place. Maps: Sanctury (briefly), Slapdash and Katabatic

I'll have a short list of teams for the practice. I'm hoping we can slip into gear a tad quickly with some prearranged teams.

Thanks again guys,

[AK]NeverRetreat

[Slaughter]

Sorry I missed a lot last night. I should have the most of the problems with my system worked out by tonight or tomorrow as I will be indtalling ME tonight. Hope its better than my version of 98 2nd edition.

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[AK]Slaughter
slaughter@augustknights.com
'The slaughter fest has begun, punk.'

Slautganken - Lvl 10 Human Paladin
Slaughterin - Lvl 5 Barbarian Warrior
Slaughtarol - Lvl 7 Iskar Monk
Shokwaive - Lvl 2 Human Magician
Ozumar - Lvl 2 Wood Elf Druid
Moonika - Lvl 2 High Elf Enchanter

[NeverRetreat]

Your truely missed when you can't be there...good luck with upgrade.

[AK]NeverRetreat

[Squidly]

It was an interesting practice for me, since I really didn't know what was going on. RW was "zotsing" out on me. I'd get some of the stuff, but seemed to be missing the vast majority of it.

I doubt my firewall is the issue, since I have had RW working both ways in the past.

Frustrating...

My only observation is that you really need to cook those bombers through the target zone quickly - at the expense of accuracy.
Slow bomb runs result in all the tailgunner's flares being expended - and that makes for short bomber life.

[Leonidas]

It's a balancing thing on the bomber, Squid. As bombardier, I thought the bomber was moving a little too fast on Sanctuary. As the bomber moves faster, the bombs fall at more of an angle, so they tend to hit walls rather than inside the courtyard.

I suspect that the bomber is best used against the vehicle pad. The bomb blast radius is not enough to reliably take out spiders and spikes. Killing defenders is fun, but they respawn, rearm, and are back on the job pretty fast. But blow up the enemy's vehicle pad, and his offense is stalled for several seconds while he locates the problem, gets the repair pack out there, and fixes it.

But I'm not sure that the bomber is going to prove to be a good general purpose unit. The vehicle pad repairs very quickly, and most teams will keep an inv near the pad, which means that they won't have to wait while someone carries out a repair pack. Giving up three men to blow it up and stall their offense for a few seconds doesn't seem like a good trade when you think of what those men could have done as a pilot and two heavies in a Havoc.

[NeverRetreat]

Bomber can not takeout vehicle pad nor can most armor unless a heavy can just sit there throwing mortars (4) in a row...

You need to take the gens down first before you can destroy the pad. ForceRecon and I tried all the weapons on the pad last weekend and thats what we came up with.

[AK]NeverRetreat

[[AK]Goob]

Sorry I missed out. My connection has been giving me fits. All weekend it would work for 30 -50 min then nothing for about 2-3 hours. The connection just seems to get droped for no apparent reason. I am going to check on my trouble ticket today to see if anything has been found out.

-Goob

[Leonidas]

I think I've seen a bomber take out a live vehicle pad. It usually doesn't happen because the bomber is moving and spreads its bombs out. The trick is to get a precise painting, then get the bomber way up high out of sight and out of missile range. The pilot puts his nose through the ring and stops. The bombardier can't see the ground, but once the bomber has stopped he cuts loose with the bombs dropping straight down. Six or eight of those things will take out the pad. A live pad isn't impossible to kill, it's just heavily shielded.

Once, I managed to take out a live pad in a Shrike, but it's very hard. You have to move the mouse to compensate for the Shrike's auto-leveling to keep the nose still at a down angle.

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Organize Aggressively
Leonidas

[NeverRetreat]

If you a bomber or a shrike have that much time to sit over vehicle pad, then the other team is all on offense.

[AK]NeverRetreat

[Squidly]

Each map has it's own personality. Slapdash was the one that proved to be the biggest problem last night... Lots of defenders, lots of missles, never enough flares. It just makes a slow run a poor option. Quick, relatively low altitude runs right up the flag valley seem like the best solution for that map. Disrupt the defense before the transport comes in with the heavies, followed by the cappers.

On a map like Sanctuary - a slower, high altitude run makes more sense. Sure, you may not drop more than 2 bombs "in the barrel" but you're still disrupting the guys standing on the roof defending or the turret-field outside the front door. That's really what the bomber is all about... keeping your opponent from organizing a coherent defense. Just when they start to settle in, they have to fix/redo/respawn and that gives the second and third wave an opening.

[Drewski]

Hey NR have you ever thought about useing a Shrike for defence?
I say this because it is very difficult to bring down a bomber if they have a tailgunner that has even a small idea what hes doing, the flares just totaly rule out missels. A shrike in the right hands is very usefull for takeing out bombers.

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Member of GanG Green
[GanG]Drewski

[This message has been edited by Drewski (edited 05-21-2001).]

[Pixelsponge]

I personally think the bomber's best use is to cause as much confusion for the other team as possible. With the proper timing, something like 2 bomber passes, and the crew jumps out just as the cappers come though would pretty unstoppable. That of course would require a lot of communication, and a whole lot of practice



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[Leonidas]

I think a real defense will shred a bomber no matter what. Between AA turrets, defensive Shrikes, and defender chainguns, any low altitude bomber isn't going to have the energy to do anything but try to stay alive. Our bomber on Slapdash wouldn't have lasted as long as it did if the turrets had all been swapped out with AA.

With high altitude bombing you are out of range of turrets, missiles, and chainguns. On low visibility maps they can't even see you. The only thing that can take out a high altitude bomber is a Shrike. The bomber sinks pretty fast, though, so it takes a good pilot to maintain altitude while hovering, and a good bombardier to leave the pilot enough energy to maintain altitude.

I'm not saying that high altitude bombing is a cure-all. It isn't good for anything unless you've made an accurate low altitude painting pass - and survived. And once you go through the trouble to set it all up, all you've accomplished is taking down a single target.

I'm pretty skeptical on the general usefulness of the bomber. The only time I see it being a decisive factor would be if you manage to catch the enemy with no Shrikes in the air. Then a good bomber crew could effectively camp the vehicle pad while maintaining high altitude, sitting out of reach of any ground based anti-air weapons. On a vehicle-mandatory map like Dessicator or Recalescence, that could win the game.

[NeverRetreat]

We're getting there Pix.

Drewski...you should see Widowmaker in a Shrike defending our air space. He has a gift.

Squidly...bomb runs should be effective. Fast or Slow, doesn't matter as long as they are effective.

[AK]NeverRetreat

[Squidly]

Originally posted by [AK]NeverRetreat:

Squidly...bomb runs should be effective. Fast or Slow, doesn't matter as long as they are effective.

Well sure...

I just think that on some maps fast is "more effective" than slow, high is "more effective" than low, etc. And on other maps - vice-versa.

It doesn't seem to me to be a one size fits all proposition.