From rec.games.netrek Thu Mar 5 10:12:09 1998 Path: sci.kun.nl!sun4nl!bullseye.news.demon.net!demon!woodstock.news.demon.net!demon!news.idt.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-peer-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!newsfeed.xcom.net!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!prodigy.com!prodigy.com!not-for-mail From: Tony Chamberlain Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek Subject: Exercises to help in playing CA(long) Part II Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 18:22:52 -0700 Organization: Prodigy Services Corp Message-ID: <34FCACEC.5152@icarus.weber.edu> Reply-To: tonyc@icarus.weber.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: port3.layt2.prodigy.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Post-Time: 4 Mar 1998 01:23:24 GMT X-Auth-User: 001888422/9374de7b238cbc55 X-Problems-To: abuse@prodigy.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (Win95; I) Lines: 201 Xref: sci.kun.nl rec.games.netrek:62876 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789 The second part of my CA exercises. Please see part I or this will make no sense :) Section II: General CA skills Now that you can fight at least slightly better than the average player, you can then proceed to skills you will need to become a netrek player, rather than just another df'er. Exercise 5: Space control This is probably by far the most important exercise and concept you will need to learn and understand. Thus I rate it with the highest hours. If you don't totally understand the reasoning, just do the exercise anyway and it will become apparant. Note : You must play on a pickup server to achieve this exercise, preferably in a full 8 on 8 game. Since you will at least be moderately helping the team, you shouldn't worry to much about taking up a slot. A key to this exercise.. as with all the others.. is to do it do the exclusion of all else. Don't worry about bombing, taking, or running to save a planet. Just do the exercise. 3 hrs: First step, find the dividing line between your planets and your opponents. Now fly to just on their side of the border. Your job now, is not to let ANYONE by you. Use your dogfighting skills from earlier to kill everyone trying to get past you. If you get to your position and no one is near, slowly infiltrate and penetrate as far into their space as possible. Eventually, some one will notice you and try to kill you. Your job now is to slowly give ground, will butt-torping and fighting them back to your original position. Hopefully, you will have killed them, as its easy to run than to chase. If not.. again DO NOT LET THEM past. Mutual on them at this point of that's all you can do. NOTE: do not retreat to quickly during the "giving ground" phase. do it about warp 4 or 5, and stopping every so often to df with them.. then start giving ground again. Do this constantly and a LOT until you really get a feel for it and I think you will come to understand why you should.. If not read the following section and start doing the exercise again. The reasoning behind this idea, is that if you don't let anyone in your area, they can't take, they can't gas and be escorts FOR the taker, they can't ogg your carriers, they can't help the SC bomb.. in general they just can't do anything that helps them win. By penetrating you are taking ground (and in a real game you would be doing all the can'ts from above) then by slowly giving ground you are giving yourself and advantagde in dogfighting.. so when you kill them, you still have position to do all the above mentioned items.. and your IN THEIR SPACE. Don't concern yourself too much be the giving ground.. as all you are doing is slowly giving up space you took, to gicve yourself a tactical advantdagde in killing them.. However, remember. if you are pushed to the front line.. STOP RETREATING, and kill, mutual whatever ;) Exercise 6: Escorting Probably the primary thing you will be doing other than space control. 1 hr: Pick some planet scummer, or convince someone on your team to take. Your job now is to make sure the person takes as many planets as possible in the shortest amount of time :) This shouldn't be hard to do as ANYONE will welcome a constant escorter *grin*. The basic goals of the escorter are to make sure the planet is clear when the escorter gets there. This generally means killing anyone who is there, and once the planet is clear.. sitting about 3 shiplengths from the planet between the taker and the incoming oggers. Use the DET key extensively. You WILL DIE a lot, its ok, ships are cheap. As you gain proficiency in this, try helping the carriers who are being ogged. Use your ship as a pick. Get between the ogger and where he wants to be. Not necessarily directly between him and the carrier. Basically try to visualize where his "ogging lane" is and step into it. Note: Here are some basic no-nos to avoid. Don't fire to many torps once you've basically cleared the planet. Use phasers. they will not only hit the cloaked guys, but will save your fuel for dets. DO NOT FIRE over the taker at cloaked oggers. wait for them to decloak and tractor/phaser them. their is a significant lag between decloaking and actually being able to fire. do escort too close to the planet.. move out a bit, so when you do blow up those oggers, it doesn't hurt the taker. Exercise 7: Galactic awareness Probably the hardest exercise to learn, and one you will probably need to come back to more than any other (I still constantly have to pracxtice this one ). 2 hr: Your job is to fly around and do whatever you feel like doing, with 1 big exception. YOU MUST call every pickup of the enemy. If an enemy takes a planet and you didn't call the pickup, count it against yourself. Keep at his until your are only missing 3 or 4 an hour. If you become extremely proficient at this, try not only calling, but becoming a "free safety". Fly right behind your front line, targetting EVERY possible taker. If they attempt to cross the line, mutual/ogg them. Be at every enemy attempt at a planet take.. oh yeah.. you still have to call EVERY pickup and keep it to less than 4 misses an hour :) Exercise 8: Taking This final exercise i hesitate to include, for fear of misunderstaning. But, if you get the gist of it, you will be much more effective in a game. 1 hr: You goal here is not to become the main planet taker of a game. That is beyond the scope of what these exercises will provide. However, limited taking in certain situations is everyone's responsibility. Try this for just 1 hour. Every time you get a kill, you must pick up if possible, and drop the armies UNESCORTED on a planet. If someone decides to escort you that's ok, but you may not CALL for escort. Also, if there is only 1 ship between you and your destination you must kill him and still drop. This exercise will help for 2 reasons: a) For some reason, when people can out dogfight many others, they become extremely conservative while carrying. In fact in a 1-1 situation, they will turn tail with armies, even when they normally defeat the opp. 90% of the time. b) In many situation in the game, it is important for your 1 kill CA to pickup from the front line and quickly drop on the enemy front line. This will usually involve and unescorted drop.. with possible dfing in between. NOTE: This should be used sparingly in a real game. For example, in the recent past in clue and INL games, I have had a 100% PAD with about 8 TAC ( basically that means in a 90 minute perioud i picked up and successfully dropped 8 armies, with no dooshes.) While this is nowhere near a main planet taker.. 4 guys on a team doing this helps a lot. Well, I hope this exercises help, they certainly help me :). However, they are nowhere near a complete course on becoming a "clued" player.. for that you have to go to a real player and ask him :) Tony drwhat aka Revenge