Team coordination

[Silverius]

Does anyone have tips on team coordination? In my experience this is where most human teams fail, especially when doing base moving (some maps basically require that).

[Catalyc]

All maps except ATCS require a relocation as soon as the game starts, at least for humans. Sure, you could live with the default spot, if you've got good players on your team and manage to stage up and attack ASAP. This is the reason why everyone thinks tyrants are impossible to win over, default base spots only work against small aliens, but ussually a Dragoon or a Marauder can jump in and take out the armoury without much effort.

There are great building guides and discussions here and here.

[Silverius]

Yes, but the problem with relocation is all too often coordination (which is why I asked about that) though. And that's where it fails, people don't do what's needed.

Thanks for the links though.

[Catalyc]

Theres no real trick for 'coordination'. just know who you're playing with, teamchat is the key, inform the better players that you plan to move the base to X location and that you need cover, regroup at base, kill reactor "Come on!" and they should follow. Sadly, on publics most people don't understand how important it is to cover the builder and the new base during a  relocation. For the people who have been playing since before 1.1.0 the human gesture pretty much says it all

[Silverius]

Hmm, killing the reactor before moving out. Isn't that a bit risky?

I tend to go by the principle of leaving one builder behind while everybody else moves towards the new base. It's effectively a free kill for the aliens, but should people die during the transition they can still get weapons and armor.

Unfortunately, as you said, most people on publics don't quite understand the importance of teamwork. Kinda sad that there aren't any semi-publics for casual gamers that do know how to play.

[Catalyc]

It depends on the ammount of people you have that know what they're doing  I guess, ussually telling people to kill reactor rarely works. As well as theres always some idiot that puts it up before you get to the new location. It also depends on the distance you have to travel to get to your new location, maps like nexus6 has the hallway thats on one of hte sides of the default human base, so you can get away with killing the reactor on the move. The problem with having "private" servers is that if all the good people played there, Newbies would have to learn from other newbies, which wouldn't probably have a good ending

[Silverius]

Well what I mean is to first move team to new locations, then teamchat "kill reactor" and build the new one. The idea is to minimise the downtime of the reactor.

Regarding "private" servers: true enough. And there would be the problem that somebody has to actively promote people into the restricted server. Still, the thought is very attractive.

Hmm, is there a mechanism for making a server private-public, only those who know a password are allowed to join the action? That would cut both ways: a server for the more experienced to fight good games and a server where the new can learn from the old.

EDIT: There is a mechanism for reserving slots for people who know a password. It doesn't seem to extend any further though.

[Catalyc]

I understand what you mean about killing reactor first, but for this you will really need teamwork and a second experienced builder, (how often does that happen? ussually its better off when the experienced players are covering the builder instead of leaving newbies to cover you) also as I said, it depends on the distance you have to travel with your team, sometimes its just better off to killing reactor as soon as you spawn and putting it up as soon as you get there, talking in teamchat, and waiting for a teammate to kill it is also giving time for the enemy to attack you. Of course, if you have another experienced builder, telling him to kill reactor works, and he can aid in building the new base, relocations with 2 builders or more go quite fast.

I've seen quite a few times people that just wander off with their ckits to the new location by themselves and then ask for reactor to be taken down, 90% of the time, this ends with a lonely reactor on the other side of the map, and a bunch of dead humans. Having people to follow AND cover you (which can be quite frustating sometimes) is the key to successfull relocations. Maybe coordinating with the whole team isn't needed, just know who your 3-4 best players are then get them to pay attention.

[edit]
I guess you could do a server with ~16 public slots and ~10 private ones or something like that.

[Silverius]

Heh, getting them to pay attention is often the difficult part. All too often I see rambo's who get the most kills but don't play with the team (and at the end of the game moan about the team being bad).

Luckily I'm getting more and more convinced that base relocations are often not needed at all. In a game of nexus today no alien got into the (default) base, despite the fact that the defense was adequate but nothing special (two turrets for each door). Instead the whole human team marched out in groups of 3-4. The aliens were totally stormed by this.

Interestingly I don't recall seeing a single teamchat line. I did see a lot of Come On gesturing though. Guess the art of effective attack is not so much talk but body language and action.

[Catalyc]

It most likely was  bad alien team, many times you can just jump in with a mara in the nexus6 base and kill the armuory. Base relocations aren't necesary if you've got camping aliens and attacking humans, however,  in most games aliens are constantly attacking and humans rarely go 10 feet away of their base.

[Silverius]

Well if the humans go out in teams it could be very hard for aliens to actually get the three kills needed for a dragoon. Plus when the hummies get better weaponry a small group can actually take on a dragoon when they meet it.

[b0rsuk]

If I understand Silverius correctly, he would like a server anyone can connect to, but only privileged players can join teams.
This is a very good idea.

Simply passwording a server is bad, because it would stagnate.
------------
On topic: be sure to bind these:

say_team ^6GRENADE!
//mostly useful for aliens. A single grenade sometimes kills several aliens.

say_team ^6Enemy turret down

say team ^6Enemy building down
// a very good way to encourage others to attack

[Catalyc]

Well if the humans go out in teams it could be very hard for aliens to actually get the three kills needed for a dragoon. Plus when the hummies get better weaponry a small group can actually take on a dragoon when they meet it.

Remember, the more humans outside trying to attack the alien base, the less humans defending their base. Ninja attacks are quite effective in trem if done correctly, especially with goons.

[Silverius]

Yes, that's the idea.

<offtopic>
This would be one area where GUID's would be most useful, instead of using a password (which suck for large groups) keep a list of invited players.
</offtopic>