The Cram.

[za gophar]

I was relatively new and i was looking for a way to get to the top, and i realized that getting as many mvp's as possible would be a good way to do this. so while everyone else lined, i went and shot down, and it was a big kill booster but i got tk'ed a lot but oh well. i guess some other people had the same idea and then camisade actually got the thing organized and had the whole team do it.

same thing with sharks timing kind of.. i thought it up on my own, but then i realized that spastic was already doing it.

now that the spawn time has been increased by a second it really magnifies the mistakes that both the spiders and the sharks used to make, and now it takes some skill to have a cram that will hold strong against a good team for a few minutes.

sometimes it annoys me that there is basically one thing that you must do in every situation in tw basing. sharks must cram a certain way, and every life will be the same, for instance. there is no room for creativity. however i guess it will always be like that because there is always going to be a 'best' way to do something. now that the spawn time is increased i think the cram is fine.

[Divine Rides]

I was gone for 7 months, came back and all the spider lines had moved into the mouth- we'd done this some for pushing shitty squads into lower, but never the full-time thing that's happening now. It's awfully effective. Nobody's unbreakable though. As you've seen and will continue to see.

[Mantra-Slider]

windreaper

mythrandir

[Mitch]

ask any oldschool baser... basing was alot more fun when we lined. sharks got mvps for most points/kills, terrs had to be skilled in evening the lines, javs got mass kills and points and spiders got 100+ bounty easily and still had to aim if the line was breached. koan should get alot of credit for cramming but raspi did just as much. raspis always been a premier spider about as equal with koan and he did the same technique at the same time... he just dosent get as much credit because hes a full time dueler nowadays and everyone forgets he started as a baser

Yeah, the terriers from the oldschool style of play are still the dominating terriers of today. Utopia, Mythrandir, Brookus, myself, warportal and even Spybreak! if you ask him to. We're much better suited to change our style of play because we've played all aspects of the ship. You'd be astonished how much pub helps a terrier's game.

Actually, Raspi was a dueler before when he was on sk8 and other newb squads. I, and much of Trench Wars noticed he was a great spider/dueler, was quick to recruit him to Light after coersing Fireballz to let him in. There, he made a name for himself and quickly squadhopped to where he fit in a bit more...

[RabbitRapist]

After this season I propose we have a test TWD period.

One example I can think of is removing all lineup restrictions for a month and see what happens.

Another might be changing the win condition to: 15 minutes with a 5 minute lead, or any minutes with a 10 minute lead.

Might be interesting, I definately think we need some kind of variation - the cram is dull now.

[warportal]

i agree that Ghost Child and Raspi were one of the first to start cramming although back then it wasn't called cramming, it was called sucking and playing for rec.

On another note. I don't believe the cram is so unbeatable as many people think. It's by playing into it you make it unbreachable. dropping team off close, pushing up without sharks, it's those kind of things that simply feed a cram. Other methods can be come up with because the nme ships are simply right there and by definition killable. It's just a question of originality and percistance i guess..

One could also consider that going back to lining could prove a more solid defense when playing a cramteam (cause on offense they cram their way in just like they cram their way out on defense). Lag is a deciding factor nowadays, wether u like it or not. So when a 5spider team elbows their way in flagroom, maybe a disciplined spiderline, with or without a jav (that masters the art of counting to 3), is the answer to a sturdier defense..

[wadi]

windreaper

mythrandir

That's pretty much all she wrote. Cramming is not a spider phenomenon as much as it is a terrier/shark phenomenon. Aggressive spidering is just good play, but what we call cramming is an evolution that takes the best advantage of shark reps, and terrier protection and burst usage. The day myth said in one particularly memorable, and now defunct, chat:

"I'm thinking about a new type of defense where the terrier sits right in the entrance."

That's when the cram was born. And unlike what paul said, because paul was new at the time so it's mostly all he knows, it was not a "second nature" thing to most or even very many players. I remember games where myth would die _alot_ trying to get people to understand what was going on. Wind was first on the trolley for sharking, and the modern shark style stems from him.

The idea that za gophar had anything to do with the creation of the cram is frankly laughable. He wasn't even a blip on the radar when this shit went down. Sorry Za.

OKay, about the old days of lining being "more fun".. I'm going to say yes they were. It's an old argument, so I won't rehash all the details (we're all vets here right?) But basically, sharks mined on defense, terriers had to worry about drop timing and line balancing and positioning and taking skill shots at the enemy terr that left/entered the ER, and the line as a defense is weaker so you had more FR battles and more chances to create a close match. Those are always fun to watch. The number of skills the non-fighter ships had to use was higher, and it made for a richer basing experience. It's like comparing US Civil War battles with battles from Russia's invasion of Germany. The Red Wave was damn effective, but not nearly as beautiful to watch in action as the South and North near Gettysburg.

Yeah, the terriers from the oldschool style of play are still the dominating terriers of today. Utopia, Mythrandir, Brookus, myself, warportal and even Spybreak! if you ask him to. We're much better suited to change our style of play because we've played all aspects of the ship. You'd be astonished how much pub helps a terrier's game.

fuck you mitch for leaving me out, but I totally agree. There was a lot more pressure on terring back then, and the shit you learned never goes away. New people don't have a chance to learn it, and even the quickest reflexes among the new crowd lose out to the positioning of the older terrs. Simply put, if you're in the right place to drop your team, you won't have to dodge. Also, new terriers never really see warbirds on a regular basis. Most of the old crowd grew up with pub basing where every second ship was some jerk off in a bird gunning for your ass. Really helps the dodging.

The argument about changing the entrance has really died down in the face of league's approach. The big ups for that should, again, go to myth (I think?), who found an almost transparent way to weaken the cram without changing the map or ship settings. It was so transparent, he neglected to mention it to anyone when he put it up.

[Da1andonly]

This thread is weird. Almost everyone have been constructive. Guess I have to be unconstructive now! CRAM SUCKS!

[Kolar]

People helped develop it into normal use Wadi. It doesn't matter who did more.

[Zerzera]

Camisade never tried to "cram" we tried to master "packing" or "swarming", just because of the portal you are forced to stay in the flagroom-ent as defending team. The "cram" was just a stage, as were the 5-spiders, but because we dissolved we never came further than "cramming" with 5 spiders.
Ofcourse when you just only focus on the cram more than anybody else, you will be the squads with the most wins for a certain time. But when other squads can hold their back straight and dare to evolve and work out other strategies, the cram will lose his power.
But who wants that? People just play to win the leagues and so why not steal a strategy that already proved it's worth, and then when a new style comes up you can always use your fame as winning squad to steal people that master that style.

[cundor]

True, I remember praccing to keep the spiders within the shark's repels. That was pretty weird, but if we managed to prac it a lot if would be very effective...

[Mythrandir]

Well, ofcourse there are a lot of things which made the cram happen. It was developed in the first few months of automated basing. Since there was no trouble finding a host anymore, basing could be played 24/7. This caused a massive increase of skill and popularity in basing. And since a base game wasn't so precious anymore as it used to be, we started to experiment more.

I remember when it was common practice for the terrier to sit in either of the flagroom ears as long and often as possible, even when the flagroom was entirely in control. With the coming of new talent and the increasing difficulty people expected the terrier to play a more active role.

So at one basing game I was being my offensive self as terrier, with windreaper and someone else sharking. I tried to push myself out of the flagroom, but often I ended up being stuck at the entrance. Some spiders stood with me, and some went back to their line, while I was yelling 'push out!'. Then Windreaper had a moment of genius and decided not to mine, but to only use his repels.
In the next 3 or 4 games Windreaper was capping and we played a 6 spider, 1 shark, 1 terrier line, with Windreaper giving instructions. We won each game easily, though we had to deal with numerous stubborn spiders who refused to cooperate.

I don't know about these claims from other people who say they invented the cram way earlier. But what I do know is that this way of playing (which is called cramming, I guess) really took off after Windreaper and I played these couple of games.

So, when the question is who took the last steps in the 'development' of cramming, then the answer would be Windreaper. But a lot of other things led to this, such as the higher frequency of basing games, the demand for more offensive terriers and people generally looking for new ways to play base.


p.s. the main aspect of the cram is that the terrier is at the entrance of the flagroom. And I'm pretty sure there was no terrier (excluding those stupid pub terrs) before me for who it was common practice to sit in the entrance when the team controlled base.

[Luckily Yours]

sadly zerzera is right, ppl are too attached to wins and ideals, they wont experiment anything. so untill some1 does it we will still have cram vs cram

[NaiLed]

I still don't see why there isn't a limit of 4 spiders.

[brookus]

Mitch is correct. Line-mining is the fundamental foundation of cramming. Case closed.

llater,
Tony