Thread: Vexon praise undeserved

Continuation of comments from http://www.teamplayergaming.com/show...quired/page136

Originally Posted by h7g6f5

Originally Posted by stuntmanSLim

well done to vexon57 be able to find a location/hidden as a commander/confusing the enemy & staying alive for a very long time...

... its just a very hard/interesting place to get in. But your exposed to much to APC/Ttank or any hand grenade that gets in there.

Agree.

What good is it for the Commander to hide away from his assets?

What good is it for the Commander to hide at the Suburbs - a primary objective for the US?

A Commander should be near his assets to protect and repair them.

There are plenty of places for a Commander to hide near his assets, especially at the Factory, and for him to aid in its defense.

As an Engr, you could mine the approaches to the flag. Even as a Sniper, your Gaymores would be more useful protecting the Factory flag.

The Factory is *THE* main flag for MEC and should be defended at all costs. For the Commander to be elsewhere is just stupid, regardless how clever his hiding spot is.

A commander not where one "expects" him to be is much less likely to be hunted down and killed or disturbed by the enemy team, especially if the "home flag" is prone to intrusion by the enemy (eg, Factory flag on Karkand, Refinery on Dragon, the Gas Stations on Mashtuur, etc.). A commander is useless to his team while he's out of his CO map: he can't provide intel, he can't lay down orders, he can't communicate to individual squads, he can't effectively deploy assets. Staying in the map is key to being an effective commander.

A commander is typically alone at his main, and as a lone soldier, is fairly ineffective at stopping, twarting or even slowing down an enemy advance, especially one supported by armor or air power. And again, a CO's job is to stay alive and stay in his map as long as possible. If an enemy force comes into the main flag, a CO's best option is to run and hide and call for reinforcements, not run out onto the field guns blazing and die. Repairing assets may be expeditious, but again working on repair duty takes a metric-butt-ton of time away from being in the CO map; most CO's will elect instead to either assign the inevitable support squad recalled to defend the main to repair duty or drop a supply box rather than work a wrench for ~3 minutes getting his assets back up.

There are too many approaches to the Factory flag for a single Engineer's mine-set to cover the possibilities, and it's ludicrous to think that anyone getting a vehicle back there doesn't have infantry support with them (or shortly on the way with a green spawn). The mines, they do nothing. Same with claymores: a single Sniper's mine-set would only serve to annoy any reasonable attempt at the flag, not stop it.

Factory is a key flag for the MEC, true enough, but there are tactics and strategies that do not rely on holding it for the entire round. If the US are inattentive, the MEC can retreat across the river to the western flags and set up a defense of Square and Suburb that is exceptionally hard to break, and then take a sneak back to the US main and steal the armor. The MEC can use the same destroy-and-delay tactics to trap the US on the eastern side of the river with no hope of resupply or replenishment for lost armor; at that point, the US has to choose either to start spawning forces back at the main, and lose the man-advantage in defending the river (allowing the MEC to push back across and reclaim the flags) or continue to attrition tickets in the river stalemate. The MEC river defense only works because the entire MEC team can spawn on that side of the river and contribute to the effort: if even one squad tries to push out and move back across, the extra ticket loss will quickly cost them the game. In short, Factory is very important to the MEC effort, but not so essential that every man, woman and child must throw themselves upon the battlements to keep out the enemy.

I know where all the hiding spots for a CO are at Factory, as do a great deal of other people. Anyone in those spots who allows an enemy squad into the flag area is going to get a face full of knife and is going to lose the initiative in having to respawn elsewhere and get himself reoriented on the battle. Finding a clever spot and being able to stay in the CO map is key to winning.

Draco

Originally Posted by Sgt.TmH

Unless the US team is a bunch of noobs or the MEC is ahead by 100 pts or there's less than a few minutes left, if the MEC losses the Factory, they lose the round <period>. With no Factory, the MEC have no assets and no Armor!

Yes, the assumption is it's not something that's set up in 30 seconds. Say, if the MEC don't have a commander at the outset and a sneaking US APC heads down the train tracks and gets into the backfield with no one watching. The MEC can win in that situation, with some smart play and a little luck. Unfortunately, what happens most times is that the MEC instead go absolutely ape-shit that Factory was taken and lose all the western flags and 100+ tickets trying to recapture Factory, only to get pidgeon-holed on a few eastern flags with a significant US presense across the river.

Head to Square, head to Suburb. They're devils to attack with the right kind of population.

The MEC armor takes at least 20-30 seconds to bring up from the spawn to the river, much less to the western flags. That's why the MEC typically lose all the western flags anyway: they can't replace their armor losses at those flags as fast as the US can. When the US is heavily invested in Factory, the opposite is true. The US are the ones far from their own armor spawns, and in that case they have no hope of getting any armor replacements at all. So if they're on Factory, they have a choice: either try to stay on the flag and hold off the MEC with no armor (while the MEC inevitably go back and steal the US armor), or start spawning back at their uncap to bring up their armor for a pincer move, but also decrease their man-to-man advantage across the river and give up an opening for the MEC to retake the eastern side of the river.

It's a classic study in a force outrunning its logistics. The US can take Factory all they like, but they have no wherewithal to hold onto it. They must either burn tickets and manpower holding it against inevitability, or retreat and reconsider. That's why Karkand stalemates across the river so often: that's the turning point where both the US and MEC have equal ground in being able to replenish their losses of armor. Taking Factory removes the US' ability to replace armor, but doesn't present nearly so much difficulty to the MEC, who can simply repurpose the US uncap's armor spawns.

What good is an alive Commander, if the Factory is gone along with the assets? A Commander respawns in 10 seconds. You can't retake a flag in the same time.

Ah, now you're assuming the assets go down at the same time. That's not typically the case in my experience because people don't tend to play as spec-ops regularly. It's a poor kit to try to assault a flag, so it will take time for respawns with spec-ops to come in, and then they'll need ammo to take everything down (and nobody plays Support).

An alive CO can still deploy what assets he does have, he can still issue orders, he can still talk to individual squads, he can still manually spot. He's still in the game. A dead CO can do nothing but wait for his respawn timer to expire or castigate his SLs in the CO channel.

Unless the US is just plain stupid, there will be Spec Ops keeping assets down and eagerly awaiting those Supply drops!

I wouldn't think so, no. Standing around an empty flag for 2-3 minutes waiting for a box that might not come, for the opportunity to score a single point? No, most people (if they blow the assets up at all) blow them up and then leave for other pursuits. Almost always. Like I said, the US with no armor across the river needs every man available and on the defense, not standing around at Factory.

As a 'defending' Commander, I've killed APCs and HUMMV's with the TOW as they race in and saving the Factory. Even if I don't survive, I've bought enough time for help to arrive. Mines place stategically, block avenues of approach and force an enemy taking the 'wrong' route to detour. Anything that even delay's an enemy's taking of the Factory is better than nothing!

Yes, there are always exceptions to the rule, but what more typically happens? The armor sees you coming through the fence and nukes you with a few rounds of MG fire long before you can be effective. Mines of any type or description will buy you, at most, a few seconds delay. It takes far, far longer than that for anyone to get back to Factory, or even respawn at one of the eastern flags and hoof it. If you don't kill everyone trying to assault the flag, you'll probably lose it. A competent SL will hang back and quickly have all 5 of his squaddies on the flag, and it'll be gone before your respawn timer expires. What purpose has your efforts served, other than to get you killed? None.

The Factory is SO essential that a good MEC team can win by just holding the Factory!

Factory is too open to support such a defense, it has too many openings, too many points of ingress for US troops to lock down properly. MEC teams that get pushed back to Factory get massacred by armor hiding behind the fences with MG fire, and any armor that does spawn is quickly decimated by AT fire, or else stolen by opportunistic US troops. Trying to defend solely by Factory does prolong the fight, but it is inevitable. If the US push past the river and get any kind of foothold on the eastern side, the fight is lost for the MEC on that side. The ticket burn of trying to defend those flags is so horrific it's not worth talking about (see: fighting uphill to Gatehouse, or street-fighting in Warehouse, or the nade grind of Cement Factory). Unless the MEC team is exceptional, trying to oust the US is impossibly hard. It's better to let them outrun their supplies and regroup on the western side of the map.

Then you strike when they have nowhere left to go.

Draco

Originally Posted by Sgt.TmH

Continuation of comments from http://www.teamplayergaming.com/show...quired/page136


Agree.

What good is it for the Commander to hide away from his assets?

What good is it for the Commander to hide at the Suburbs - a primary objective for the US?

A Commander should be near his assets to protect and repair them.

There are plenty of places for a Commander to hide near his assets, especially at the Factory, and for him to aid in its defense.

As an Engr, you could mine the approaches to the flag. Even as a Sniper, your Gaymores would be more useful protecting the Factory flag.

The Factory is *THE* main flag for MEC and should be defended at all costs. For the Commander to be elsewhere is just stupid, regardless how clever his hiding spot is.

Other players have rightfully commented on the error of your arguments in general. Regarding the specific example, i.e., you calling out a particular player in a round, how do you know he wasn't already out in the field at the Suburb and took the CO job when he saw no one else was doing it? In that scenario, you find the best place you can at the time and command. If you die, then you can respawn at a different location of your choosing.