The best warbird styles

[Randedl]

I don't see how you can say that when GV all play the exact same style.

you are very naive if you believe this.

maybe you didn't spend enough time paying attention in your little squadhopping stint with my squad, but this proves that you either have no clue about warbirds, or you are just, as mentioned above, very naive when it pertains to grapevine.

[Jerome Scuggs]

fuck the gray ship, noone cares, its just bullets and ego

[Kid Kaos]

Yea TG me and you are too elite for newbs top wb line ups.

[Miku19]

fuck the gray ship, noone cares, its just bullets and ego

add a little something and you've got basing, basers have egoes too

[Sirius]

Just back from one of my birthday parties and I'm pretty tipsy so I feel like rambling. Enjoy.

In an attempt to compensate for lag, the game is scripted to stress the ship's position in relevance to the person's lag. The more the person lags, the more his ship will be graphically propelled further ahead than they are, when they move in a particular direction. That's where rock shots come in. When a person flies towards a rock and shoots right before they hit it, on the opponent's screen they bounce off the rock before they even get to it normally; therefore the shot becomes visually delayed and the distance between the warbird and the the area where the bullet appears increases, which creates a visual illusion of greater speed that the bullet travels at.

As for the style theories, I'd have to say style depends on a few things. Some of them include your resources (monitor, connection, graphical capabilities, cpu processing power), the way your mind processes information (physical/visual coordination etc), your emotional topography/personality, and simply the situation at hand. Also, simply whatever it is you enjoy doing; for me rushing keeps the game on a higher level and is lots of fun. Mythril shares the same passion and can easily relate to this.

I'd say there are radar-shooters, backpeddlers, rushers, and average midshooters. Like someone said in the thread (forgot who), technically mixing up something like midshooting and rushing to fit individual scenarios is optimum, but I would have to say that if given proper environments can change that for some people. For example, with my current 75 fps and 160-170 ms, being a straight-edge rusher makes me inefficient in certain environments. I cannot detect movement change in time to act accordingly.

But playing at some other people's houses, for example at 20 ms and 85 fps, rushing exclusively gives me 2-4:1 ratios and mvp's practically every game, due to my well developed sense of rushing in a difficult laggy environment which forced me to develop keen reaction and good anticipation.

Even if rushing solely isn't the best style for my connection, it won't stop me from doing it simply because I don't have patience to play any other way after playing wb for five years. These days I play only 2-3 days a week, so I have a lot more patience and have been getting back to my oldschool midshot, which helps me balance out my game quite a bit, as well as rushing at good moments.

i've noticed that for some reason, you can go into elim, and play alright, but then go into pub and some new guy can just waltz up to you and kill you. - Intriquality

That's how it should be; newbies should typically be more difficult to contend with if you play them without using caution. I can obviously stay at midshot/longshot range and go 10-0 vs a newbie, but if I play a rushing game, chances are that I could go 10-7 against them just as easily. There's a good reason for this.

The skillful interaction between players in this game typically consists of indirect abilities [trends] aquired through latent learning while playing the game against opponents. And the resulting interaction is an orchestrated composition of trends, with the victorious player being the one which has experienced more trends, preferably ones used by the opponent, as well as the player who's developed more counter-trends.

Why do people typically play through trends? Mostly because of how the brain functions, and how it records information. If you look at the majority of players, perhaps even yourself, you'll notice certain things they do in response to certain situations, which seem almost identical. You may even notice an inability to stop yourself from doing those things.

Good players will catch on to that strong weakness (some not even consciously) - the inability to cease from performing certain trends, and will form effective counter-trends which make quick work of trends their opponents uncontrollably perform. Therefore, a fight between two competent duelers is nothing more than a composition of pre-concieved, pre-orchestrated manuevers, like two partners dancing.

Anyway, the reason newbies are more difficult to fight is because they have not established any of these trends, and therefore their attacks and manuevers cannot be pre-concieved, or anticipated by you.

Regardless of what style of player you are, truly good players in this game are those which deviate with their style from the mainstream the most, whether you are a radar shooter or a rusher. This result usually takes certain amounts of talent, arrogance, wit, and confidence. I can only think of about 3-5 players of this caliber.

[i]Actually the best technique is to fly so that even if your enemy knows exactly where you are flying they cannot hit you. This is because:

1) You are flying so that the maximum speed of their bullet from their position cannot surpass your speed.
2) You are in a position where they cannot fire at you because they are turned away and cannot turn fast enough to hit you.
3) You have complete control and if they fire at where you are going to be, you can easily just slow down (not thrust) and dodge the bullet. - Epinephrine

Those are pretty good to take into consideration too.

As far as 1 v 1 style dueling goes, me and Foreign are fierce tacticians and share almost the same exact state of mind and perception; we also learn quickly in the middle of a duel against someone, and from practicing against each other we've come to numerous theories and understandings.

Keep in mind that with my current 170 ms, my strongest duel will be in the form of non-rushing conservative mid-range style, with periodic rushing after shot lures, to catch opponent off guard.

As far as dodging, you have to rely on momentum for the most part. Learn to position yourself in a way where you can easily outmanuever the shot into multiple directions. Also, to align your speed/movement with your opponent at an angle where their shot cannot hit you from any point towards which they turn their ship. I've noticed one of my latest styles of dodging is to align myself with the opponent's ship while I fly in the same direction as them [away from them] so that they have a clear shot at me from their angle, and then once they shoot all I have to do is move to either side to dodge it; this won't work up close though.

Lots of people get caught up in the mistake of letting their opponent calculate their inertia and movement and shoot in a way where they fly into the bullet, and breaking only causes them to stop right into it as well. This provides several problems. First off, the shot isn't actually 'aimed' at you until a certain amount of time passes and you and the shot intersect paths, if done properly that means you forcefully get intersected by the shot's flight path first, and only afterwards you can actually try to dodge it, and you may not have enough time to do so.

With the dodging style I mentioned though, as soon as the shot is released you are already aligned with it, and you have ample time to simply move into any other spot (considering you are not standing still) and the alignment will break.

What if they figure out your crafty little technique and try to shoot not at you but to the side where you will go to dodge it? Well in my situations, I have two things that give me time - the fact that I am somewhere at midshot range from them, and I'm moving away from them, therefore I usually have about .5 to .7 seconds [slightly better than average human reaction time] to see whether they'll actually shoot straight at me, or to the side figuring I will move out of the way - if they shoot straight at me I move to either side, and if they shoot even the slightest to either side, then I keep aligned directly with them and the shot will miss.

We've also become a lot more aware and manipulative of the fact that when one of us turns towards the other from a perpendicular angle, we expect a shot and change our actions in some way; from that Foreign's learned to hold the shot, shift his position, then shoot in an attempt to catch me or someone else off-guard, meanwhile I've become very able at utilizing the invert portion of the tactic in defensive mode, turning at my opponent purposefully to make them think I stopped my defensive manuevers to shoot at them, forcing them to stop chasing or aiming and to shoot at me, while I don't shoot and just go back to dodging/moving away or moving around and countering them. This is helpful because by the time they see I turned at them to concentrate on shooting them, and by the time they choose to shoot, I already started moving again, perhaps even at them while avoiding the forced shot angle, so they dont even have enough time/energy to react and allow me a relatively easy kill.

Part 1 of 2

[Sirius]

Part 2 of 2

As for killing..momentum can help too it seems. According to Foreign, I wait for him to step into an area where I carry higher momentum, and if he doesnt, I attempt to make one; so he says if he can stay out of my kill zone he can prevent me from 'doing some crazy shit' =P I never looked at it from that perspective, but it seems to make sense.

For rushing with high fps and low ms, all you need to do if you have any skill at rushing is to build up and keep steady momentum in your favor, lure someone into shooting you and then persue..there's pretty much no way to mess up in the following moments if you've had enough practice and have good reaction speed.

I don't radar so I can't really give any advice there.

I'm not sure what to say about midshooting since using it as a main style of play for many years has given me really good midshot aim and I dont even think about it or try to 'better' it..but I guess just lots of practice, and visual coordination helps with those, as well as knowing what your opponent wants to do.

Anyway, two key ways of dominating:

A: Master dodging and you'll eventually kill them off even with bad aim so long as they can't kill you

B: Become so efficient at being aggressive that you don't even give them the time of day to shoot in your direction they'll be so busy running or dying.

Fuck it, sick of typing and my head doesn't seem to be working anymore.

By the way, we were discussing how we look at shots, ships and the screen itself in the midst of gameplay; that's also a rather interesting concept since it's only dawned on me within the past couple of months that some people don't even necessarily play the game 'looking' at it the same way I do. Although I think my vision changes depending on the style I'm using [rushing/midshot] Do you look at your ship when you play? Do you look at your opponent's ship? Do you look somewhere in between and don't even know what exactly you're looking at and rely on simultaneous spatial corner eye vision? Do you follow your shots? How about your opponents' shots? Where do you keep your eyes when being radared? On the very side where the shot will come from? On your own ship? Talk about it.

[Amok]

I reckon that's about 2000 words about tactics of a computer game. While trying not to sound like Sudden and accuse others of getting too involved in a game....I'm sorry, but you need to step back and take a look around.

[Leaf]

You mean thrusting before you shoot? That's not rushing, that's just thrusting. And for the defensive playing style you described that you said Raspi used, I'm not sure he is really the best example. Not when dueling 1on1 at least, I remember beating him 9-0 in the elim finals once, all mostly radar shots. Raspi was a good rusher back in the day though.

And I remember beating you in wb.

[Sirius]

I reckon that's about 2000 words about tactics of a computer game. While trying not to sound like Sudden and accuse others of getting too involved in a game....I'm sorry, but you need to step back and take a look around. - Amok

I'm not a sluggish typer as it would seem you are, judging by your comment; didn't take much effort on my behalf.

Don't know where you live, but if you lived here you'd step back, take a look around and see it's dark outside and it's the middle of the night and there's not much else to be doing.

?go

[Jones]

wb style

It's actually true what Sirius says in his reply, I've been in some bad situations as well because of my low fps.

When I was on dial-up I couldnt rush or handle rushers, due to my lag, everything was like 0.5 seconds late, so I used radar only. Now that wasnt fun. So I took a one year break from it and started playing javs. Anyways, that's not important.

My point is. You have to get full control of every situation. This will be much easier if you have more fps (I have about 40, lol), less lag (my current is 150), and of course higher resolution.(Used to have 1024x768, great for rushing but 1280x1024 is much better to dodge with) To get full control you also need to watch what your opponent is doing, I always shoot to early which usually kills me.

[TopGod]

Are you back, TG?

I'm done with school/work in 2 weeks... maybe I'll come back.

What Sirius said is mostly correct (<3 foreign), but there are still a number of skill "levels" past what he describes. As Yoda says in Star Wars, "you must unlearn what you have learned." To get from newb->"skilled", you need to learn the so-called "trends". To get from "skilled"->"good", you need to forget the trends, learn how they work and more importantly why they work, and then learn how to create new and better trends on the fly. This is where you develop your own unique style which matches with your personality/monitor/lag/ship control/aim/dodge/etc.

The next level is to do the same to your opponent. That is, if your opponent is also adjusting/adapting his/her movement/style mid-fight, you control/manipulate your opponent to adjust/adapt their movement/style in a way that benefits you. What I mean is that if your opponent changes his style depending on how you react, you can control the changes. This is as close as you get to "mind control". You can completely control your opponent if you're at this level and they are a level below you. Anything else will get completely annihilated because the skill difference is too big.

What happens if you meet someone who can also manipulate people like you? The duel is settled by either how well you aim/dodge/control your ship, or your mental speed and how far and how fast you can read ahead. This is where I'm stuck at the moment along with a handful of other people. What our duels turn into is just a game of speed... whoever thinks faster and reacts faster and is able to read deeper and deeper... I dont know what the next level after this is.

This is the evolution of "skill", but most elite players just concentrate on mastering aiming and dodging and ship control and dont bother mastering the last skill level. To each his own.

[WiseCherub]

I read your reply Sirius, and thought it was brilliantly put together. I will make a copy of it to add to my knowledge base.

I have made my own Warbird Dueling notes, you have an email Sirius? I could send to you, and perhaps you could review (see if I made any wrong assumptons or mistakes.. perhaps might be able to add more insight to my own..vice versa). Just keep in mind if I send my notes to you, don't mass distribute them to ingrateful or (amateur) players.

Amok, Warbird dueling is like real-time chess... its quite fascinating and interesting when one analyzes it.

Most players just play and don't think... that is one reason why a majority of them suck, even after many years of playing.

Sirius quite a good composition there, I highly appreciate what you wrote there and seen nothing like it in these forums. However, most laymen(women) or ADD(Attention Deficit Disorder kiddies) would just read 1 sentence and say "I'm not reading that, its a book!" Yeah, I got plenty of those type of lame-ass replies as I try to talk on these forums. Just most feeble minds can't grasp what is being said in a well written message, since maybe they have limited vocabulary or just don't care.

But its quite an awesome feeling when one uses the Warbird Dueling Wisdom/Knowledge and crushes a fool (ingrateful, amateur) -- I admit I laugh when this occurs and love every millisecond of it.

Thanks again...

[Mattey]

Sirius is right. Dueling 1v1 is basically about who learns faster. I know how 90% of the people in TW duel, so it becomes a lot easier when you know which people feint, and which people always run.

[WiseCherub]

I didn't make the list? wtfz =(

Sorry, not familiar with you, I guess maybe you play at different times or never caught my eye.

Ok add TopGod (I guess you were in Rampage, so must mean you are good, I'll have to spec you when I see you online), and ohya I forgot about eRad, 11001100.... there is so many lol.. well not as many bad skilled players, but many.

Last night I was thinking about Trench Wars, its long proud history of warbird duelers and the word "generation" came to mind.

This may not be accurate, but quite an interesting way of looking at it the big picture of warbird dueling.

1st Generation - the originals, the wb duelers who pioneered all the tactics/skills we take for granted today.
Guys like Burnt, FieryFire, Epinephrine..etc

2nd Generation - the next batch, 1-2 years later

3rd Generation - the next batch, 1-2 years later...and so on.

I talk about Generation of ELITE Warbird Duelers, and how long they played within this zone. For example; some players played for many years, but maybe never got into Warbird dueling, instead they focussed on basing more or other ships.

The main reason I bring this up, is I think its sort of cool how knowledge/wisdom is passed on to others. Its quite interesting how these 1st Generation wb duelers trained younger more recent wb duelers... and so the knowledge is passed on. However, some do not like to pass knowledge for having fear it could be used against them.. just wouldn't be prudent. But knowledge and theory is one thing, it takes wisdom to use it in the Arena; and even if you gave ingrateful warbird duelers the silver platter...they still don't take the time to read and think. And to the ones that do, then they deserve help, cause they show ambition to learn; and there is few of these types as I have found. Yes, when I started playing this game 1 year ago..very few helped me at first. I would look like a retard newb when dueling, and lose horribly. But the important thing, 1 year later I have improved and never gave up. Infact its better to fail sometimes, cause thru failure you learn (Heuristics - Discovery!) and then get better and better.

Why I bring this up?

I would love to know which Elite Warbird duelers pioneered or was first to figure out the warbird tactics/skill some of us take for granted today. Like some recent warbird duelers could careless, but I do... I respect what they did in the past to develop and evolve this niche within the SS/Continuum game. Think of the time they spent to experiment and learn wb dueling strategies/tactics; its sad they aren't given more recognition. Its quite sad, with all these ingrateful new batch of wb duelers.. just show off in their egocentric manner and just yell, "Ez.. newb.. laggot.. luck..blah blah" in ELIM chat. I have absolute utter contempt for such a breed of wb duelers, to me your a disease that must be destroyed without mercy; if you get into my way.

[Sirius]

As Yoda says in Star Wars, "you must unlearn what you have learned." To get from newb->"skilled", you need to learn the so-called "trends". - TopGod

I completely agree with TopGod on that; I kind of forgot to mention it but you can't really become one of the best until you go through the phase of learning as many trends as you can, especially those commonly used, then, like going through a cold, build up an immunity against them, play with enough motivation to force yourself out of the trend pool, and use a bit of wit and personality to create your own style.