A plea to team players for aggression - Page 3

A plea to team players for aggression

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AntiElite
Posts: 26
Joined: 28 Nov 2007, 19:15

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by AntiElite »

Double nerf all defensive structures and double strenghten all attacking structures, bingo! Defense is now useless.
manored
Posts: 3179
Joined: 15 Nov 2006, 00:37

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by manored »

Lol... have you ever heard about, for example, "making a line of flash in front of the base"? :)
Saktoth
Zero-K Developer
Posts: 2665
Joined: 28 Nov 2006, 13:22

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by Saktoth »

tl;dr version- Whoring econ is playing for a late game win at the expense of the early game. Dont play for a late game win when you havent tried winning in the early game yet. If you arent contributing to the early game at all, your team probably wont even survive to late game.
Star players routinely fail miserably when it comes to understanding how the game is played, in fact often more so.
People in this thread keep talking about noobs, in one way or another. This isnt even who im talking to- i said i dont care what skill level you are, but im not talking to anyone other than stars here. Im talking to the people in this thread who go 'But porcing can be good sometimes'. Im talking to the players who think farming mm's on DSD is a good idea.

I think what people dont understand is that attacking is good for your economy. Firstly, there are mexes. This is obvious. More territory = more metal for you, less for him. Then there is reclaim. If you can successfully make attacks and get the reclaim from them then you will get 60% of the resources you spent, plus 60% of the resources he spent- a 20% return on your investment and a 0% return on his (This isnt even counting comwrecks). Which brings me to the final point. When you whore econ, all you're doing is getting returns on an investment- which he can do just as easily and fast if he also whores econ. When you attack though, you both get returns on your investment and deny him the returns on his.

But this is only if you attack successfully right? If you attack unsuccessfully you just give him metal. Yeah, but imagine what happens when you have players on one team whore econ while everyone on the other side attacks all out. Who is going to win there?

The only reason whoring econ seems to work is that either the enemy is also whoring econ (thus, those on the frontline are fighting more or less even odds) or your players fighting uneven odds on the frontline are so much better that they can beat a superior number of players- in which case the game ends whenever you decide to contribute and tip the scales (And it would end a lot faster if you decided to do that at the start of the game, rather than after an hour of econ whoring).

Econ whoring can be a valid tactic. If the game stalemates because everyone on both teams is pushing- it can help to quick-tech and try and break the stalemate. But playing for a late game win when you dont even know if you'll survive until late game is just a fail tactic.
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Boirunner
Kernel Panic Co-Developer
Posts: 811
Joined: 05 Feb 2007, 14:24

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by Boirunner »

Saktoth wrote:wisdom
This should be the message of the day on the spring server.
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KDR_11k
Game Developer
Posts: 8293
Joined: 25 Jun 2006, 08:44

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by KDR_11k »

As I said, a new player won't even know what to attack with, attempt a few attacks, see them getting eaten by small defenses and decide he doesn't have the economy to produce a large enough attack force yet.
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DandyGnome
Posts: 61
Joined: 25 Jun 2007, 06:43

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by DandyGnome »

As a decade long single player porcer in TA (once a month approximate maximum games), the thing that just recently (still single player) got me to attack at the beginning was quite simply playing non TA games for spring. The game did not have the defenses I was used to and so I had to attack. In particular I am finding EE interesting and have lost so far 4 of 5 games in against RAI (1v1) and am working slowly on being more aggressive ingame because it seems to work better than procing.

I think the reason I had been porcing was that I am of the type of person who likes to build something and then test it to possible destruction. So I liked building defensive lines and sending things at them to see if the line would hold and how it held or not. However to do so successfully I need to understand the units at least a little so trying new games makes me attack. Basically attacking is all fine and dandy but defense is more fun for me if I can pull it off.

However if I ever get around to playing multiplayer then I would like to provide my enemy with an interesting game and so I have been working on attacking some. An ai doesn't care if I proc so it is fine to do so in single player but against humans is a different matter. I might be finally (after a decade) be willing to play against a perso so maybe if I can get my airport card to show back up in Linux you might see me hanging around for a game in the next week or so.
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Teutooni
Posts: 717
Joined: 01 Dec 2007, 17:21

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by Teutooni »

AIs are actually quite nice to train with. 1v5 in CCR is great fun against most AI's I have tested. You really need to be aggressive and expand fast, since you are almost certainly surrounded and outnumbered. :wink:
Saktoth
Zero-K Developer
Posts: 2665
Joined: 28 Nov 2006, 13:22

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by Saktoth »

KDR_11k wrote:As I said, a new player won't even know what to attack with, attempt a few attacks, see them getting eaten by small defenses and decide he doesn't have the economy to produce a large enough attack force yet.
Define 'new'. As i said, im talking to stars- its stars i see do this, its stars i see sit behind an llt line and making 100 adv solars, its stars i see who rush sumos or krows or something.

And they should know better.
AIs are actually quite nice to train with.
AI's are not really that good for training anything other than the basic newbie skills and, perhaps, micro. It wont have the flow and dynamic that a real game will have. Balancing the damage you do to his economy vs the expansion of your own economy is the foundation of any aggressive tactic, in a 5v1 he will always have a stronger economy even if you hit it really hard. It teaches you bad habits, IMO.

If you just want to play for fun or whatever, go ahead, play an AI. But i wouldnt advise it for 'training' beyond a basic understanding of the tech tree, economy, and unit orders etc.
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Teutooni
Posts: 717
Joined: 01 Dec 2007, 17:21

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by Teutooni »

Sak, I disagree, you really can train multitasking with 5 AI's. You need to keep economy rising and fend off the odd 2-4 compushes and skirmishes. 5 enemies means you will be surrounded form all sides, and thus have to fight constantly on many fornts. If it takes you too long to gain a hold of the battle and mount an offensive, you *will* be overpowered.
Saktoth wrote:in a 5v1 he will always have a stronger economy even if you hit it really hard. It teaches you bad habits, IMO.
Explain how is being able to fight against superior economy a bad thing? They will probably have stronger eco even if you hit them hard, but if you don't hit them at all they will certainly kill you.

It isn't the same as human opponents, obviously, but it has its uses (multitasking and microing).
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Evil4Zerggin
Posts: 557
Joined: 16 May 2007, 06:34

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by Evil4Zerggin »

DandyGnome: I would say that once you can take on a team of 3-4 AIs by yourself, it's time you pack your bags and start playing against humans. Humans play nothing like the AI, and I think it's generally more fun too, assuming you have the basics down.

Also, don't worry about your teammates getting mad at you. It may happen, but for the most part, we're used to the average Delta Siege Dry team consisting of three front players and three parasites. As long as you're a front player, nobody decent is going to fault you too much.
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LordMatt
Posts: 3393
Joined: 15 May 2005, 04:26

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by LordMatt »

Evil4Zerggin wrote:Also, don't worry about your teammates getting mad at you. It may happen, but for the most part, we're used to the average Delta Siege Dry team consisting of three front players and three parasites. As long as you're a front player, nobody decent is going to fault you too much.
Or play 1v1s on worthwhile maps and don't worry about what anyone else has to say.
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DandyGnome
Posts: 61
Joined: 25 Jun 2007, 06:43

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by DandyGnome »

Well currently one AI can beat me fairly consistently so I have some time to go before I get to that. On the other hand I don't mind loosing, especially to a person so long as it isn't caused by things like bugs in the program.
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Day
Posts: 797
Joined: 28 Mar 2006, 17:16

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by Day »

sleksa and me do 2v5 (non AIs)
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AF
AI Developer
Posts: 20687
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 11:32

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by AF »

AI's are not really that good for training anything other than the basic newbie skills and, perhaps, micro. It wont have the flow and dynamic that a real game will have. Balancing the damage you do to his economy vs the expansion of your own economy is the foundation of any aggressive tactic, in a 5v1 he will always have a stronger economy even if you hit it really hard. It teaches you bad habits, IMO.
After a certain point youve learnt all you can in small skirmishes and the role of the AI changes from teaching your basic skills to teaching you how to deal with pressure by fighting allied AIs with handicap and greater numbers. I used to find a 1v10 in OTA with custom AI was useful training.
manored
Posts: 3179
Joined: 15 Nov 2006, 00:37

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by manored »

Sometimes having to relly in the stupiness of the ai to be able to win a game can be fun... :)
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cong06
Posts: 140
Joined: 15 Mar 2007, 22:03

Re: A plea to team players for aggression

Post by cong06 »

AF wrote:After a certain point youve learnt all you can in small skirmishes and the role of the AI changes from teaching your basic skills to teaching you how to deal with pressure by fighting allied AIs with handicap and greater numbers. I used to find a 1v10 in OTA with custom AI was useful training.
I know some of my friends would play single player games all the time cause they were afraid to play online...

You never get better that way...once you know the controls, build order etc. I think an AI is useless. (though I've never tried to take on 10 at a time...)
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