|
Tricky Moves:
DDs and ASs can lurk: they can cloak indefinitely at warp 0 (shields off to improve regen rate). Passive planet defense (orbiting and waiting for aggressors) loses because you cannot see where attackers are amassing, nor how many. [Terence M. Chang]
Killing Starbases, a couple tips: to suicide on it, use a BB or AS. Attack the base in pairs, cloaking in and uncloaking simultaneously on opposite sides of the base. If the base isn't well protected, at least one guy should be able to pummel the base (a load of torps, a couple 100+ pt phaser shots, and an exploding ship).
Main concept: the SB can attack only one ship at any given time. Having a third ship hover just out of the base's tractor range and spraying torps as a distraction improves the cloaker's odds of getting close.
A well protected base is much harder to kill; it's better to exploit the clusteredness of the enemy as described earlier. [Terence M. Chang]
Does it seem like the enemy knows that you have armies before your teammates know? Try waiting on beaming up until you think you're off of their galactic map. Or get a teammate who has kills to orbit the same planet as you. Then they have to guess who has the armies before I (uh, they) suicide you. [Terence M. Chang]
Dont forget: if you have a spread out, which misses, use 'D' to detonate your own torps so you can shoot another stream b4 you get overrun. Usually, your opponent wont even be expecting this! [Andrew B. Potratz]
Clusters of ships on a planet? The last time I saw that happen I doubled my record kills. I really get off on the chain reactions too.
Ah, but good players know to use pressors in that situation! Just push against someone on the opposite side of the planet--you go whizzing in opposite directions, and the torps slide harmlessly between you.
>One thing clueful players will do when they are killed is take out a
>scoutship and fly to the starbase at maximum warp, then refit to the
>ship they want to be in. For example, they can get to the front line at
>warp 12, refit, and be able to fight the enemy in a battleship.
A *lot* of people believe this, but I've always considered this one of the great folklore stories of netrek. Actually, unless your SB is _waay_ far up, you can probably do just as well by joining in as the ship you want and flying at max warp to the base. I've found you really don't save that much time by doing the scout thing, unless you want a battleship. Plus, starting out with the ship you want gives you 3 advantages:
- If, along the way, you see something to do, you don't have to go all the way to your base to get your ship before doing whatever you want to do. I'm big on being prepared for anything at anytime. Notice that this opinion is colored by my known distaste for scouts, especially in offensive roles (I don't think scouts og very well).
- You avoid the 6 seconds where you are a helpless grenade sitting on top of your base. Refitting on a base deep in enemy territory is a tricky and dangerous thing, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to do this when it's not necessary.
- Very often, if your base is far enough forward to make the scout trick worthwhile, there's so much combat going on around the base that you may have to wait a minute or more before it's safe to dock on the base. In this case you would have been much better off just starting with the ship you wanted in the first place.
I've tried this trick some, and I always found myself stuck in a scout wishing I'd taken my cruiser to start with. It might be worthwhile if you wanted a battleship, and the front was very far forward. But I've always found myself better off just taking either a cruiser or destroyer to the front at maxwarp, and then refitting if I found both opportunity and reason. For example, After getting kills I'll often hop on quickly and get my assault ship to go after a planet. But too often you just can't count on your base being available for refits at any time. [John Andrew Markiel]
Have you ever been 90%+ damaged near a planet with no fuel or repair and orbitted it for 180 degrees so you could take the time to repair a little and still move towards your home? Or do you just trudge warp 1-2 straight back? And don't say something lame like, "I usually hang around up front and scum 2 or 3 more kills and then head back at about 97% damage." Because that's what I do. [Jay Thaler]
I feel it's better to sit and repair than limp away at warp 1 or 2. I try to wait until I can move warp 4. Also, you can use tractor/pressors while in repair mode. In an AS or DD, you can repair cloaked for added security.
The tip about using a planet to swing you around is interesting, but it assumes you are in the process of limping away. If I see a guy with a kill struggling toward his home world, I tend to go after him. and theres nothing to stop the guy that just wounded you from announcing that fact on the team board.
Of course, it's almost always better to die than be left stranded at warp 1 anyway...
Sub zero asks about an orbit key:
Sometimes I use they orbit key to dodge torps.
For example:
I'm dogfighting over a planet, i'm going warp 3. I get damaged and i'm sitting on the center of the planet. He fires a torp spread aimed right for me. I'm too hurt to dodge. I slow to warp 2, and hit orbit. Often times, it puts me in orbit away from the torps.
Othertimes I use it to drop on the planet when i'm not locked on.
For example:
I'm dogfighting a defender off the planet so I can drop armies. He is runnerscumming me. I fly over the planet towards him. He keeps buttorping. I dodge his torps, get over the planet, slow to warp 2, fire a stream of torps, cloak and drop.
Both of these may also be done with the 'lock' key. But I seem to recall that the behavoir is slightly different. Also before the days of "lock planet" sometimes it was easy to fly over and press O rather than lock on(because you would accidently lock onto a player instead). Then there used to be a severe orbit bug, but that's fixed now. [Robert Hill]
Those who have mastered Orbiting onto a planet are about 10 times more effective planet takers than those who haven't. Orbit allows a player more control over where and when he orbits a planet. This allows players to avoid a stream of torps fired over a planet that the planet taker wants to drop armies on. Used in conjunction of det enemy torps, it allows clueful players to have a better chance of dropping armies against clueful defenders.
Ever wonder why you couldn't kill an enemy taker even though you are close to a planet firing torps and phasers over it? It probably is because the taker is landing onto a planet in a non-predictable manner using orbit. Of course, if you get a phaser lock onto the taker, then it doesn't matter if the taker is using orbit or lock. Orbit helps against torp streams.
> I've been in a few situations where a planet-taker said "faking to X, going to Y". If I'm nearby, and > want to help out, it seems to me that I have two choices:
I generally do one of two things:
- Go to Y (the real destination) well ahead of the take, and try to push enemies away from the planet, while trying to stay alive. Hopefully, when the carrier turns and heads for Y, the planet will be sort of open with me in a good position, and hopefully I can keep it open enough for the carrier to drop before the other nasties can make it.
- Go to X (the fake destination) just ahead of the carrier. It helps a lot of the carrier is heading *directly* towards X at high warp (I'll explain why below). Hopefully lots of enemies will head to X at high warp, thinking that they have to get there fast to stop the take. I then veer off to put myself between X and Y, and also try to keep myself between my carrier and the guys at X. Ideally the people rushing over to X take so long to slow down and turn around that my carrier has made it to Y, so that all the guys at X are out of the picture. If we seem to have enough people at Y to clear it, then I stay near to X and try to hold back those guys as much as I can. If we don't seem to have enough clearers at Y, then I try to run over there really fast, hoping that I can quickly clear it so that the carrier can drop before the enemies coming from X can make it.
The reason it helps for the carrier to head *directly* at the planet is that the human eye is very good at picking out linear features from any set of data. For example, if you take some points in a line and mix in a bunch of random points, it's still easy to pick out the line unless the density of random points is really high.
In other words, if the carrier is headed directly at the planet, then even if an enemy isn't paying close attention, it's quite likely that they will notice that the line of advancing ship positions is exactly in line with one of their planets. This makes it more likely that a lot of the enemies will see the fake attempt and respond to it.
In general, if you want the enemy to see you going for a planet, head directly at it. On the other hand, if you're hoping the enemy *won't* see you, it's a good strategy to aim for a point a little away from the planet, and then change direction when you get close. If the enemy is distracted, it's amazing how well this can work, you can walk right up to an enemy planet with armies without them getting suspicious. Of course, against clued opposition it's often the case that they are already tracking you as a carrier, so acting nonchalant just isn't going to help, but even in clue games you can still get away with it if enemies are paying attention to something else.[Andrew Markiel] |
