Quinc3y

The problem with the low (8-10) vehicle limits is that you can't rush with vehicles properly (maybe only on PUGs). On public games, usually half of the limit is used up by random players who don't teamplay, which only leaves max. 5-6 vehicles to rush with. That's just not enough to succeed, which makes vehicle rushes a waste of time, credits and points. Waiting for the limit to free up in order to rush with ~8 vehicles means waiting a long time (giving the enemy team time to prepare) and losing control of the field completely. This means low vehicle limits decrease the importance of vehicles and make Airstrip and WF less strategically important, while HoN and Barracks are usually the key structures. Also, since infantry rushes are also usually not too effective, it means that there is not much teamplay left in the game. I have observed how more and more buildings in the game are being destroyed by solo players instead of by a group effort. Finally, some maps just need high vehicle limits to break the stale mate with a proper rush. I especially look at Field here, but it's also the case for Eyes and Under. I also miss the big aircraft rushes on Walls. The vehicle limit used to be 14 on most maps in the past and I really liked it.

On a different note; Kenz just uploaded the recording of Tomb from last week's PUG (here: ) and you can see probably all flaws of the PUGs.People ignoring the commander, complaining and blaming the map/balance the whole time, talking off-topic instead of focusing on the game... Kenz, no offence, but you played so bad, you literally did nothing to help the team the whole game. You took part in killing their ref, but that was only thanks to Lava randomly showing up and helping you. Apart from that you were just getting random infantry and dieing like a noob every time. At 7:10 you were a tech in our base and there was a guy q-spamming that ref needs repair, but you didn't even look at that direction - instead you chose to leave the base and die like a noob one more time. We lost the ref a moment later and that was the turning point of the game imo. I hope you guys consider this as constructive criticism and not flaming. Maybe on next occasion PUG players will think one more time before doing stuff described above.

It's a very annoying bug, thought it would be reported already but I can't find any thread about it. So basically sometimes when you go out of the map and the time counter starts, it will not stop even if you go back to the map. And then it insta-kills you & your vehicle. I had it happen to me a few times on Lakeside (at the river in Nod base especially and also near GDI base iirc) and also on Islands (in the water near Airstrip.. I jumped out of the water, ran to the Airstrip door and still the timer didn't stop and I got killed).

I think it is too easy to sneak & kill a building in both bases. So far all games that I played on this map were hotwires vs technicians basically. I suggest to remove orcas and as a consequence remove stairs & ramps of the buildings. This way it will be harder to enter them. And I also think that there should be a way to enter the space ship from field.

So I was playing on the CT marathon server on Mesa, I was a hotwire and the Obelisk was active, and I managed to walk all the way to Nod refinery, entering from the vehicle area on silo side. I was sticking to the edge of the map/the wall at Nod base and the Obelisk didn't even charge. I couldn't believe it was possible, so I launched skirmish and tried doing this again - the Obelisk zapped me immediately when I came too close. The same thing happened the other day on Eyes. The front guard tower of GDI was destroyed (but the AGT was active), so I bought a technician and walked into the GDI base from the front gate, then went around the barracks and to the PP. The AGT ignored me completely, at one point I was just standing and looking at it. Once again I tried to repeat this on skirmish mode, but AGT shot me instantly when I showed up in the gate.

Cool Walls Quick game where Nod standed no chance, overwhelmed by meds & orcas early on. Mesa Early game brought the exchange of GDI Ref (killed by rocket rush) for HoN (sneaky hotwire). Looks like a change benefitting Nod if you ask me, but it turned out that the lack of tech support on vehicles was very troublesome for Nod. GDI had advantage in field for the rest of the game, building up a huge point lead and killing Nod ref (vehicle mass) and the Obelisk (sneaky hotwire again) in the final minutes of the game. Nod seemed organized, tried flame rushing, rocket rushing and chem rushing but all their attempts were called out early and answered. GDI win on points. So far this map guarantees at least one destroyed building on both sides. Eyes Close until the last minutes, probably the best of the games on Eyes on recent PUGs. Sneaky hotwire killed HoN early while sneaky technicians barely killed PP and Ref so that the score remained equal. Then 30 minutes of vehicle combat happened, with the score being close the whole time. GDI tried med rushing twice and they failed, which probably gave Nod the few-hundred-points advantage that was enough to win. Also GDI PP was finished by a sneaky engineer in literally the last seconds of the game. Canyon Both refineries fell early to a sneaky tech and a sneaky hotwire... and then Bong stole a flame tank, I brought a med and planted ion at the end of strip and it turned out that this was enough to cover that ion (kinda lame if you ask me ). I must have played at least a hundred games on Canyon by now and I've never seen Nod make a comeback here after losing the Airstrip. And guess what? That didn't happen this time either! Second ion killed HoN and finished the job. 3-1 total, ~18v18. What's worth noting is that a total of 6 buildings were killed solo by hotwires/techs/engis. Must be a record, I remember solo kills being fairly rare on PUGs usually, where teams are organized and losing mines is being called out early.

Yeah, good games Goldrush Well, this one actually wasn't that good. GDI having advantage in field for the majority of the game and at one point almost killing our refinery with a med rush. Nod managed to kill the barracks with a rocket rush combined with spy ion at GDI PP, but that still left us 3k points behind. To tell the truth I don't know where GDI got all those points from, Nod didn't even buy & lose that many vehicles to feed them. GDI win on points. Walls Very intense. First ~25 minutes is pushing back-and-forth, fighting for the plateau and Nod having the initiative for the most part, but the score remained equal for both sides. Then a hotwire managed to sneak in and kill HoN while a tech killed GDI PP. At that point GDI had a few hundred points advantage with ~7 minutes to go and we decided to camp this out. The gate to the GDI base was blocked by 2 mammoths and that made the stank rush fail. We even had another hotwire kill Nod PP in the last minutes before we won on points. Tomb GDI putting pressure on Nod and having a point advantage for the whole game, except for the 1 minute after SBH/tech (?) killed GDI refinery. 1 minute, because after that we lost our ref to a vehicle mass that came as a suprise for us - all our tanks were at harvester area. No luck. Don't really know what my team was doing after we lost our ref. I asked to save up for tanks, but we never got past 3/10. I also asked for SBH C4 rush multiple times, but didn't see any response either. Was actually rather pissed at that point. Meds rolling in inside our base was a matter of time, we lost airstrip and surrendered. Complex Once again intense. And once again our team was struggling to take initiative and control the field. Nod locked us in our base in the early game and that resulted in losing barracks to nuke with tank cover. We did kill a lot of flame tanks tho, so we were only ~700 points behind after this. And I thought having no bar would mean we will have our vehicle limit maxed out at all times... but it wasn't the case. We still managed to do 2 decent med rushes and one beacon at airstrip was a few seconds away from succeeding. But we did lack hotwire support on tanks and also we lacked hotwires repairing buildings and this is how we lost WF and later ref. And I agree that there was too much complaining and trash talking on TS during the games. Still, I had fun just like every week. Team bong win 3-1! BTW, is there any kind of way to learn how to use the commander mod? I'd love to use its potential, but I struggle with it right now.

Some feedback from me: This map actually confuses me. In theory, it should be a really good map. There are 2 vehicle entrances to each of the bases. The bases are big, open and interesting - a lot of ways to sneak in, to hide at and spies are very useful. The vehicle area is also big and interesting, many kinds of vehicles can be used in different ways. In my opinion the map is also balanced now. But in practice somehow it doesn't seem so good. The games are usually long or very long and they are usually decided by a solo action (hotty/tech sneak, spy ion) rather than by a coordinated effort. It's hard to make any progress (especially if the enemy team is organized), even though the map theoretically shouldn't be campy. Perhaps I didn't play enough and was just unlucky with the long games? What I would change to make it better: 1. The most important thing in my opinion should be to put the vehicle limit up to at least 14 (it's probably up to the server tho?). I think the biggest problem with the current low veh limit on CT servers is that the teams can't rush with vehicles or that those rushes are ineffective. With the limit being 10, usually half of it is being used by guys who don't teamplay and that only leaves 5-6 vehicles to rush with. Not to mention organizing a rush in this situation means completely giving up the field control. A high vehicle limit would give many more opportunities for teamwork and would make the gameplay more dynamic. I remember the vehicle limit being 14 on the first version of the map and it worked great. 2. Gunners. I remember gunner rushes being very effective on the first version of the map - they were able to shoot different Nod buildings from a lot of points at the map. The 2nd version of the map nerfed them, but there was still one spot at the tibierium chamber where you could gunner rush from. Now that spot was removed and gunners seem to be completely useless. I don't know why? In the point above I showed how it's hard/impossible to do a med/orca rush atm. Removing gunner rushes eliminates teamplay almost completely... (maybe chinook rush is left) 3. Another change that I don't like in the newest version of Eyes is putting the invisible wall for flying units in between silo and the tiberium chamber. Not sure why? It's limiting and annoying. If you want to make the tiberium chamber for ground vehicles only, then put walls everywhere and not like this please. 4. Graphics. The map isn't very ugly, but it's far from beautiful. Some shoddy textures, small glitches here and there... and the tree in the GDI PP. I think people mentioned some of them in this thread. But yeah, in general I am positive about Eyes. The map is above average for me, that's for sure.

I like what you do, IonTech. Your stuff is stylish and fits the Renegade climate imo

Yeah, a very good PUG! Mesa So far every PUG game on this map is a great game. Nod had advantage in the first minutes, bringing the health of AGT & GDI ref to ~30 with artilleries and accumulating a big point lead. Then GDI managed to push the arties back and a med swarm killed Nod ref, but at the same time we lost PP to a sneaky technician. After that GDI was very organized and kept full vehicle limit at all times and had field control but we were still falling behind in points. Then the rush (recorded by xtractor) happened. "Poke the ob, hit the hon" worked great and we killed both those structures with 4 minutes till the end of the game and came out with a 2k point lead. Nod surrendered. GG! Lakeside Once again "poke the ob, hit the hon" worked. This time it was "poke the ref, hit the WF" and apaches killed the latter in the early game. GDI was close to turning the game with gunners in chinook rush that almost killed our ref, but failed. Nuke on barracks as decoy + apaches rushing and killing GDI ref resulted in a surrender from GDI. Goldrush The game where the communication & teamwork sucked the most in our team. We lost WF to an early infantry rush and then AGT to a flame rush, even though both of these rushes were called out minutes before arriving. We still managed to kill the obelisk with a gunner rush, but then we lose our ref to another flame rush, which, once again, was announced early enough to be countered. After that we APC + ion rushed the airstrip, but the ion got disarmed in the last seconds and we surrendered. Walls One of the very rare PUG games on Walls where Nod had the field advantage and was ahead in points the whole time. Stank + tech + SBH kill the GDI PP first and then a tech kills barracks solo - seems like there wasn't enough defending on GDI. They still managed to make a small comeback and sneak & kill the airstrip while Nod was busy destroying the WF with apaches + nuke and then HoN was killed by meds while a horde of SBHs outside-c4'd refinery. Intense game. Great commanding by Jeff - I believe every building that we killed (except for the solo sneak by Minji on Walls) was a result of his plan. I wish we could play some more of the new maps and discover some tactics/tricks there. I wonder how Snow would look like on a PUG. 3-1 in total, ~18v18 mostly. Nod wins most games.

Ah, my mistake then. !rec nanas When the enemy team has no credits since the beginning of the game, it's much easier for your plans to work. We had no money to defend from rushes, so that's why maybe you have the feeling that it was the only game where you had good teamwork. The other maps we just countered your attempts well. I believe there was an officer camping there. At least I met him the 2-3 times I tried to sneak in in the beginning.

Not a bad PUG imo New maps finally! Grassy Knoll I've played this map quite a few times on public servers and it was almost always the same - GDI dominating the game all the way. I expected the same here, but suprisingly it went different. Early arty spam worked well for Nod and we managed to destroy the key structure for GDI on this map, the guard tower. After that I lucked out a little and killed GDI ref with stank + tech and it was practically game over. GoldRush(the new version) Very easy for GDI. Obelisk falls to vehicle mass (wasn't even a rush, just not enough repairs on the key structure...), soon after that Nod ref goes down and they surrender. I don't know where team Nod was the whole game really, did not see any effort from them. Complex Intense game. No buildings are destroyed and GDI wins with a few hundred points only. It looked good for Nod in the beginning, we had a 1,5k point lead and barracks was down to 30 health so it seemed like an easy target for stanks. But GDI was organized, started massing meds and was defending bar very well. The deciding moment imo was the raveshaw rush in the last minutes. It was close to succeeding and if it killed barracks, Nod would have won on points. The 2 solo nukes didn't help us with points either. I liked how the new pointing system worked on this map. I'm sure that with the old way of giving points for damaging building armor, Nod would have won easily with the amount of arty spam on WF we had. But the new system is more fair and it reflects the advantage in field better. Tomb No big story with this game, another easy win for GDI. Tank mass that Nod cannot counter leads to losing building after building. Well yeah, this one also looks like a GDI map in my experience. Canyon Early APC kills the not-yet-mined Nod refinery and it's game over. We really should have spotted and countered that APC ealier and not when it was already parking at the door to our ref. 20v20 mostly, team Bong wins 3-2, GDI wins 4 out of 5 games. It was fun on our side!

This is awesome

What do you mean? I missed this PUG unfortunately

All right, I misunderstood the decreased points for building destruction part. The new way seems good.

Looking forward to the new maps! Some criticism from me: UH, why? Especially with Field, why would you want to make it even more campy? Field is getting worse with every patch... if something those walls should be REMOVED, not moved up... On Volcano that ref wall jump was the best way for technicians to sneak, I didn't look at it as a bug. When you remove it, Volcano will become another map where GDI has many more sneaking possibilities. I don't see why either. Destroying a building is usually the biggest aim in this game and I liked how much it was rewarded in points and credits (especially when the points and credits were distributed in between players who destroyed it) Other than that it looks good. I like the LCG, flamethrowers and chems nerf and a slight buff of grenadiers and mammoth tanks. Bug fixes are always welcome as well of course!

- Getting out of vehicles in field to repair them can still be possible if you place remote c4s on your vehicle and blow it up if it gets stolen. Just don't repair it by standing directly in front/behind your vehicle, because you may get ran over before you get to blow remotes. Also try not to repair your vehicles in field continously for a longer period - repair a little, get in and move on, repair again, etc. Especially useful for GDI. - Use alt fire (right click) if you don't want to lock your missiles. Especially useful for MRLS and rocket soldiers. - Be much more careful on AOW than on marathon. Don't lose your vehicles and expensive characters easily and don't place beacons that have a low chance of going off - you are giving points to the enemy team. - While fighting infantry with your gunner/rocket soldier, it's usually a better idea to use your carbine/pistol than your bazooka. - Most important one: teamchat is a very important part of this game, do NOT ignore it. Listen to experienced players' orders, react to what's happening in the game. I could also give several tips on how to sneak successfully, but I better save those for myself

I really enjoyed this PUG personally, mainly because I got to be the commander and my team cooperated well and we won To be fair the games were not that interesting, except for Lakeside. Walls Early APC filled with engineers kills the not-yet-mined GDI PP and this sets the tone for the rest of the game - Nod pushing and GDI struggling to defend. WF and barracks fall to nukes with air cover, the refinery is finished with a classic flame rush. XMountain The two most classic GDI units (hotwires and medium tanks) crush Nod HoN and Nod refinery fall early game to sneaky hotwires and the game is finished with med + ion rush on the Airstrip & PP. After these 2 games we re-balanced the teams a little and it worked out well. Lakeside Once again this map brings a good game full of action. Nod stank rush fails, but an apache rush afterwards succeeds and kills GDI refinery. Shortly after 2 hotwires manage to sneak in and kill the airstrip. Nod struggles to defend without vehicles while GDI defense is good. As a result, SBH, chems and rocket soldier rushes all are fended off while HoN falls to vehicle mass. Nod surrendered few minutes before the time ended, while GDI had a big point lead and was camping hard. Islands First PUG game on this map where I didn't see Nod mass arties in the early game. Instead they went for the infamous scary light tank rush, which failed bad and shortly after GDI took control of the field and kept it until the end of the game. All Nod buildings fall to mass meds basically. I can only speak for my team, but here the communication and cooperation was very good and I think we had fun (at least those whom I didn't make camp the base and defend the whole game had fun ). 3-1 overall, ~13v13, good PUG. Special thanks to Agent and fffreak for dealing with the usual technical stuff.

So how's this week?

So there was like 12 of us and we ended up joining the public marathon server and playing in different teams together with random people. It was fun, much easier to sneak in/rush than normally on PUGs, so some cool stuff happened (like me and DeViTTo killing 3 buildings with humvee/APC rushes on Volcano). Hopefully next week will be back to normal though

Luckers Nicely done, you two won that game for GDI.

Surely better than last week! Eyes Ok, this one wasn't better than last week Nod gains point advantage in the early game and keeps it until the time runs over. No rushes work, keeping control of the tiberium field again proves to be crucial here. Lakeside Apparently no one on GDI called out a big apache rush that killed barracks and WF early on. After that a failed rocket rush by GDI and some pushing back-and-forth with vehicles, but this wasn't leading anywhere. GDI surrendered. I do think Nod lucked out with that apache rush Walls Fun game. The first time I saw an early rocket rush by Nod and that a successful one - we killed refinery, but it cost us HoN. I would say this exchange favours Nod, but soon after we lost our ref (honestly I have no idea how 2 or more people managed to get there unnoticed). GDI finished it with style, gunners raining from the sky There was also a 10-minutes-long game on GoldRush, where Nod managed to accumulate a rather big point lead, but the server crashed on this map again Shame. Overall score 2-1, Nod winning 2/3 games and 20v20. Much better communication and more interesting games (and maps) than last week.

I will have to let you down then Eyes First time that this map was played since a long time, but yeah... turned out to be dull and campy. Nod tries stanks, apaches, arties. Meanwhile GDI tries APCs, orcas/chinooks, gunners. Nothing even comes close to succeeding, but GDI ends up being a few hundred points ahead by the end of the game (probably thanks to those MRLS hitting HoN every now and then). Also infantry seems to be pretty useless on new Eyes, it's all about vehicles. And the low vehicle limit (10) makes it even harder to accomplish anything. XMountain Probably even worse than Eyes, since I didn't see any decent rush going on. 35 minutes of some pushing back and forth with vehicles and Nod wins with a few hundred points thanks to the spot at silo where arties can hit WF. Volcano Quick game, Nod overwhelms GDI with vehicles and rolls over GDI base within 10 minutes. I see Volcano become a real Nod map with the new patch, Nod wins a big majority of games on public games here. Even if GDI manages to defend from the early flamethrower/chem rushes from all sides, they struggle to counter arties. Unless team has plenty dedicated defenders and meds are pumped out quickly, GDI will lose early. Total score 2-1, Nod win 2 out of 3 games. I'm not sure why we ended so early and just when we voted a promising map that I think we never played on PUG (Valley). Oh well, could have ended up being a stale mate like the old Valley. Eyes also looked promising before we actually played it

Balanced teams, good stuff Volcano & Canyon Same story on both maps, Nod wins the harvester and crushes GDI with artilleries/flame tanks within few minutes. Lakeside Both teams well organized, a lot of rushes happening. Apache rush and gunner rush fail, the first successful one is 2 chinooks that destroy Nod refinery. Nod tries raveshaw rushing barracks, but fails and surrenders just as a horde of orcas with ions enters their base Walls Fun game. GDI plays standard at the start while Nod begins with a LCG rush that doesn't accomplish much. After that 15 SBHs outside C4 the barracks while the rest of the team struggles to defend. HoN is destroyed while barracks are saved (barely) and this is when the game is decided. Nod base is finished by good cooperation of chinnok + gunners and vehicle swarm. Islands Standard Islands. Nod gains an advantage in the beginning and gains a few k points lead by spamming Ref with arties. Even though after that GDI is in control of field most of the time, that point advantage is held until the end of the game. Both refineries are destroyed during the game (Nod to meds, GDI to SBH?), but it doesn't have much influence on the gameplay. Complex Draw-ish in the beginning, after ~15 minutes a stank rush kills barracks & GDI ref and the game is decided. For some reason GDI didn't want to surrender until 2 minutes of time were left Even tho they managed to kill Nod ref, the point difference was huge. 3-3, Nod win 4 out of 6 games, 24v24 in peak I believe. Good PUG overall.

Nah I think one is enough, good job I think the PUG was quite good, for sure better than last week. Especially the game on Mesa was great... so many turnarounds and the winner not decided until the last moments. Epic. What I didn't like was a lot of people changing the team. In the beginning my team had a good commander (Bong) and 3 good snipers (IonTech, miz.hht, ks.ol), but during the PUG we lost all of them. IonTech left early and the 3 other changed to the other team for some reason. Same with Yagi, who started on our team, then moved to team Ryz and then came back. Combined with a lot of people joining/leaving the PUG during games this caused a lot of chaos and it looked like a public game to me sometimes. GDI win 3/5 games (despite how Nod got much stronger this patch) and my team wins 3-2.