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Okay, so anyways, I've given this a lot of thought and I know that some people hate the idea, mostly terriers, but here it is, I'm always up for a debate.
I'm not sure how many people are for or against weakening the cram, this would definitely help to weaken it, but more importantly, it is my belief that my proposed change would dramatically effect, for the better, the entertainment level of basing games (for all but terriers perhaps).
The issue that I am addressing here is that of terrier bursts (not like there are any other kind in TW mind you), a bouncing, kill in 1 hit multi-bullet spray that totally effects the outcome of a basing game.
First of all, what is the purpose of a burst? I've been told by terrier experts that they are used for a terr's own self-defense. Honestly though, after watching a base game, the ratio of bursts used for defense compared to offence is very far below 1:1. I don't buy this defense at all, and I do believe that there would be very little effect on how often a terr dies if the effect of bursts was minimized in a basing game.
A terr already has two sharks and four spiders to protect it, not to mention a portal in an arena where there is no anti-warp. Moreover, a burst is not a repel; it will not going to stop a warbird bullet, a jav bomb, a piece of shrap or another terr's burst from hitting a terrier. To go a little further, who said a terr dying is a bad thing? While I recognize that a terr's death does, of course, it suck for the team the terr is on, this would probably make for more of a flag room turnover, that is an alternation of the team defending it.
To be completely honest however, for two separate reasons, I really do not think that terrier deaths would dramatically increase if bursts were taken out of the game. First of all, there are a large percentage of terr deaths that are caused by bursts. Below is a link to the results of the first half of the TWLB final. Nine of the twenty-nine terr deaths that game were from a burst that is nearly a third of the terrier deaths that game.
http://www.twleagues.org/?module=twl...nMatchID=23235
While I do recognize that the actual percentage of terr deaths resulting from a burst does have a huge deviance from game to game, the potential for such a ratio speaks for itself.
Next; and I admit to doing this a lot, a terrier may focus too much on doing a burst shot and, in fact, end up dying in the process. While this is more their fault than that of a burst, it is still very arguable that terr deaths would in fact decrease if the effect of a burst was minimized.
Moving on to the aforementioned effect on the cram, which I do believe the majority of players think needs to be weakened, terr bursts are one of the most powerful aspects of a cram. There are many occasions where an attacking team will kill the two sharks and have an opening to get into the flag room. This is, however, combated by a defending terr flying across the entrance and bursting off three of the aforementioned bouncing bullets that kill in one hit. In a game of 8 people a side, the potential for three players to die at once does have a huge effect on the ability of a team to operate cohesively. There are many opportunities for an attacking team to gain the flag room that are, in fact, thwarted by a burst.
With that aspect of the cram taken care of, I next want to address the actual execution of a cram, and the effect that a burst has on it. First of all, an attacking terr can only get one third of it's burst bullets into the flag room, and only from a small collection of shots that are both common knowledge to learned basers and easily repelled, so the advantage of a burst for an attacking terr is, essentially, null. On the other hand, the advantage provided to a defending terr is quite noticeable. With the current base map as it is, a defending terr has a multitude of positions to shoot at least two of the three burst bullets at the attacking team, and this is an offensive tactic, not defensive.
I say this from experience, and especially because a repel does not effect a burst as much as it does bullets and bombs, the burst just bounces back. If said defending terr shoots three bursts into the doorstep of the flag room, they will still hit the attacking team, there is not nearly enough room in there for them to expire on their own, they bounce around until they hit something, potentially hitting the aforementioned three eighths of the attacking team. This is not a defensive tactic for the terr, and it just slows down the attacking team because they cannot do anything about it but waste essential repels. Take bursts away from terriers and you take this aspect of the cram away from a defending team.
The fact that lag is so prevalent in base matches, and thus, different players (most importantly the sharks) see different things than the rest of their team, there cannot be a cohesive defense against said bursts. This adds to effect that a burst by a terr in any situation can have.
Before I move to my argument on bursts effecting flag room battles, I must acknowledge something. Until very recently I referred to the majority of bursts as being the product of luck. While there is no denying that a terr cannot foresee the effect of their burst, I do no recognize that most terrs do aim their burst shots at the opposing team, namely the opposing terrier. I will not spend time reiterating how this actually leads to more terr deaths, as the proof is above. However, I will not cease to reiterate that this is not a defensive tactic. Furthermore, I will go so far as to say that a terr has no purpose effecting a flag room battle while hiding in a corner, the terrier's purpose is to be a ship to attach to, not a major offensive weapon.
While I do not deny the benefits of a terr having a burst one-on-one with an opposing spider, I do not see the reason that this is allowed. Whether a terr has a burst or not is largely based on chance, and the fact that bursts are far too easily greened, and because of this terrs do not save their bursts for such situations, they use them for offence. Furthermore, if an opposing spider goes through the other seven players on the terr's team, including two ships with three repels each, and the terr dies, the problem is not that the terr did not have a burst; it is that there was some kind of mishap in the mechanics of the team. To go even further, a terr has a portal if this situation does actually happen. If a terr has to rely more on it's portal to save it's life, maybe terrs are less prone to sit in that cramming position, from which they have to portal out of to escape a jav bomb that gets through their team, further reducing the effectiveness, or frequency in this case, of the cram. This last point is a hypothetical, and I will not pretend to know how the majority of terr players will respond.
The counter arguments that I have heard, ignoring the ones addressed above, all hold just as little weight as the ones mentioned above.
The most prevalent argument that I have seen is that taking the current burst away from a terr weakens the ship too much. To the contrary, it is my belief that, in an arena that has no anti-warp, the only ship that has a portal, the only ship that is attachable, is already the strongest ship in the game. Further, a terr does have a multifire spread of level one bullets that can go far in neutralizing a close range ships.
After careful consideration, the only other argument that seems to hold any ground against removing the current burst from a base terrs arsenal is that "that is how it is in pub", and indeed it is. However, the rest of the ships are not the same. There is no maximum in pub pertaining to how many sharks you have to repel the terr's bursts. There are also those mini weasels that keep the terr a lot more responsible for the entire flag room. As well, I don't think that I need to re-iterate the importance that the purchasable anti-warp has in balancing out the advantages of a terr, and neither do I think that I need to underline the importance of a levi, or the lack thereof in base games. However, I will point out that all of the above differences between pub and base games, along with any that I am missing, disrupt the balance that the eight ships have in the Trench Wars public arenas.
To summarize, I will provide a few suggestions that I have in helping to eliminate what I believe to be an imbalance, and thus a detraction from the entertainment value of base games for all but one eighth of the players involved. My propositions are listed in declining order (from the largest effect to the smallest) by the magnitude that I believe they will affect current base games. With that said, I do hope that you will all take these suggestions seriously and give me whatever constructive feedback you may have.
1. Remove bursts from basing games.
2. Give terrs one burst each life, but make them ungreenable (much like rockets).
3. Standardize the burst damage to ~520. This ensures a kill if all three hit a player, but decrease the effectiveness of repelled bursts (they hardly all hit the same player), and decrease the effectiveness of cross flag room shots.
4. Lower the lasting time of a burst to ~3 seconds from the time they hit a wall and begin their bounce.
Finally, I would just like to point out that I do not pretend to know everything about Trench Wars. What I have said here is the honest truth that I have come to believe from my playing experience, coupled with what I believe would increase the quality of the games played in Trench Wars Basing. I am a firm believer in the idea that there is no harm in trying. With no TWL news as of late, what could be the harm in testing any, or all, of the above ideas out?
(continued)
I'm not sure how many people are for or against weakening the cram, this would definitely help to weaken it, but more importantly, it is my belief that my proposed change would dramatically effect, for the better, the entertainment level of basing games (for all but terriers perhaps).
The issue that I am addressing here is that of terrier bursts (not like there are any other kind in TW mind you), a bouncing, kill in 1 hit multi-bullet spray that totally effects the outcome of a basing game.
First of all, what is the purpose of a burst? I've been told by terrier experts that they are used for a terr's own self-defense. Honestly though, after watching a base game, the ratio of bursts used for defense compared to offence is very far below 1:1. I don't buy this defense at all, and I do believe that there would be very little effect on how often a terr dies if the effect of bursts was minimized in a basing game.
A terr already has two sharks and four spiders to protect it, not to mention a portal in an arena where there is no anti-warp. Moreover, a burst is not a repel; it will not going to stop a warbird bullet, a jav bomb, a piece of shrap or another terr's burst from hitting a terrier. To go a little further, who said a terr dying is a bad thing? While I recognize that a terr's death does, of course, it suck for the team the terr is on, this would probably make for more of a flag room turnover, that is an alternation of the team defending it.
To be completely honest however, for two separate reasons, I really do not think that terrier deaths would dramatically increase if bursts were taken out of the game. First of all, there are a large percentage of terr deaths that are caused by bursts. Below is a link to the results of the first half of the TWLB final. Nine of the twenty-nine terr deaths that game were from a burst that is nearly a third of the terrier deaths that game.
http://www.twleagues.org/?module=twl...nMatchID=23235
While I do recognize that the actual percentage of terr deaths resulting from a burst does have a huge deviance from game to game, the potential for such a ratio speaks for itself.
Next; and I admit to doing this a lot, a terrier may focus too much on doing a burst shot and, in fact, end up dying in the process. While this is more their fault than that of a burst, it is still very arguable that terr deaths would in fact decrease if the effect of a burst was minimized.
Moving on to the aforementioned effect on the cram, which I do believe the majority of players think needs to be weakened, terr bursts are one of the most powerful aspects of a cram. There are many occasions where an attacking team will kill the two sharks and have an opening to get into the flag room. This is, however, combated by a defending terr flying across the entrance and bursting off three of the aforementioned bouncing bullets that kill in one hit. In a game of 8 people a side, the potential for three players to die at once does have a huge effect on the ability of a team to operate cohesively. There are many opportunities for an attacking team to gain the flag room that are, in fact, thwarted by a burst.
With that aspect of the cram taken care of, I next want to address the actual execution of a cram, and the effect that a burst has on it. First of all, an attacking terr can only get one third of it's burst bullets into the flag room, and only from a small collection of shots that are both common knowledge to learned basers and easily repelled, so the advantage of a burst for an attacking terr is, essentially, null. On the other hand, the advantage provided to a defending terr is quite noticeable. With the current base map as it is, a defending terr has a multitude of positions to shoot at least two of the three burst bullets at the attacking team, and this is an offensive tactic, not defensive.
I say this from experience, and especially because a repel does not effect a burst as much as it does bullets and bombs, the burst just bounces back. If said defending terr shoots three bursts into the doorstep of the flag room, they will still hit the attacking team, there is not nearly enough room in there for them to expire on their own, they bounce around until they hit something, potentially hitting the aforementioned three eighths of the attacking team. This is not a defensive tactic for the terr, and it just slows down the attacking team because they cannot do anything about it but waste essential repels. Take bursts away from terriers and you take this aspect of the cram away from a defending team.
The fact that lag is so prevalent in base matches, and thus, different players (most importantly the sharks) see different things than the rest of their team, there cannot be a cohesive defense against said bursts. This adds to effect that a burst by a terr in any situation can have.
Before I move to my argument on bursts effecting flag room battles, I must acknowledge something. Until very recently I referred to the majority of bursts as being the product of luck. While there is no denying that a terr cannot foresee the effect of their burst, I do no recognize that most terrs do aim their burst shots at the opposing team, namely the opposing terrier. I will not spend time reiterating how this actually leads to more terr deaths, as the proof is above. However, I will not cease to reiterate that this is not a defensive tactic. Furthermore, I will go so far as to say that a terr has no purpose effecting a flag room battle while hiding in a corner, the terrier's purpose is to be a ship to attach to, not a major offensive weapon.
While I do not deny the benefits of a terr having a burst one-on-one with an opposing spider, I do not see the reason that this is allowed. Whether a terr has a burst or not is largely based on chance, and the fact that bursts are far too easily greened, and because of this terrs do not save their bursts for such situations, they use them for offence. Furthermore, if an opposing spider goes through the other seven players on the terr's team, including two ships with three repels each, and the terr dies, the problem is not that the terr did not have a burst; it is that there was some kind of mishap in the mechanics of the team. To go even further, a terr has a portal if this situation does actually happen. If a terr has to rely more on it's portal to save it's life, maybe terrs are less prone to sit in that cramming position, from which they have to portal out of to escape a jav bomb that gets through their team, further reducing the effectiveness, or frequency in this case, of the cram. This last point is a hypothetical, and I will not pretend to know how the majority of terr players will respond.
The counter arguments that I have heard, ignoring the ones addressed above, all hold just as little weight as the ones mentioned above.
The most prevalent argument that I have seen is that taking the current burst away from a terr weakens the ship too much. To the contrary, it is my belief that, in an arena that has no anti-warp, the only ship that has a portal, the only ship that is attachable, is already the strongest ship in the game. Further, a terr does have a multifire spread of level one bullets that can go far in neutralizing a close range ships.
After careful consideration, the only other argument that seems to hold any ground against removing the current burst from a base terrs arsenal is that "that is how it is in pub", and indeed it is. However, the rest of the ships are not the same. There is no maximum in pub pertaining to how many sharks you have to repel the terr's bursts. There are also those mini weasels that keep the terr a lot more responsible for the entire flag room. As well, I don't think that I need to re-iterate the importance that the purchasable anti-warp has in balancing out the advantages of a terr, and neither do I think that I need to underline the importance of a levi, or the lack thereof in base games. However, I will point out that all of the above differences between pub and base games, along with any that I am missing, disrupt the balance that the eight ships have in the Trench Wars public arenas.
To summarize, I will provide a few suggestions that I have in helping to eliminate what I believe to be an imbalance, and thus a detraction from the entertainment value of base games for all but one eighth of the players involved. My propositions are listed in declining order (from the largest effect to the smallest) by the magnitude that I believe they will affect current base games. With that said, I do hope that you will all take these suggestions seriously and give me whatever constructive feedback you may have.
1. Remove bursts from basing games.
2. Give terrs one burst each life, but make them ungreenable (much like rockets).
3. Standardize the burst damage to ~520. This ensures a kill if all three hit a player, but decrease the effectiveness of repelled bursts (they hardly all hit the same player), and decrease the effectiveness of cross flag room shots.
4. Lower the lasting time of a burst to ~3 seconds from the time they hit a wall and begin their bounce.
Finally, I would just like to point out that I do not pretend to know everything about Trench Wars. What I have said here is the honest truth that I have come to believe from my playing experience, coupled with what I believe would increase the quality of the games played in Trench Wars Basing. I am a firm believer in the idea that there is no harm in trying. With no TWL news as of late, what could be the harm in testing any, or all, of the above ideas out?
(continued)
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