Quinc3y

Hahaha I hate being spotted by random people spawning or whatever. Some more tips from me: Maps where it makes sense to mine the sandbags of barracks: Field, Islands, Mesa, Complex, Valley, Grassy Knoll, Snow, Tomb. On all other maps you should mine the doors. When mining the front door of the refinery, it's usually best to put the mines a little bit forward from the door, so that the disarming person cannot hide behind the little things around doors. Especially important with Nod refinery on Field, where those things can cover from the Obelisk. It also makes sense to place mines very very close to each other, so that the disarming person has trouble aiming at mines one by one, taking them down to ~5% each and then disarming them at once. That's an useful trick when infiltrating a building and placing the mines extremely close to each other can deny this tactic. Eyes is the only flying map where it makes big sense to mine the door of airstrip. That's because you can infiltrate it and not get hit by obelisk only if you run inside from the front door and not jump in via the tower. It's exactly the same thing with airstrip and turrets on Lakeside, but there it's not that important. Not the smartest thing from me to give tips to the defenders but oh well, doing it for the cause

Meh. Canyon Nod won the first harvester battle and proceeded to dominate the field with arties and flame tanks for the rest of the game. GDI tried to push forward (they even tried massing meds and pushing at once), but was unable to. At one point the advantage became so big that Nod tanks just rushed in GDI base and destroyed buildings one by one. Under GDI controlling the field with meds & having a comfortable point advantage for the whole game. After being unable to leave the base, Nod tried some infantry rushes but all failed bad. In the final seconds GDI did a mobius rush that destroyed Nod PP (whatever). Volcano Pretty much like Canyon. Nod won by base destruction. Islands The most interesting of the games (if you can even call a game on this map interesting). GDI had the advantage on field for the most part of the game and destroyed Nod refinery at about half of the game. With 10 minutes to go, Nod managed to destroy GDI refinery with some 2 nukes combined with an inf rush or something like this and at that point GDI was leading only with about 500 points. Nod failed to take initiative and come back though and GDI won on time. 4-0 total, not so much action. I played the first 3 games in the winning team and moved to the other team for Islands. I do think team Bong had better players - better vehicle drivers, dedicated defenders and Canuck with his mad aim. But at the same time I feel team Yosh/Madkill didn't really try, at least in the game where I played in their team. After 15 minutes of not being able to take control of the field, someone said "if you're not doing anything, get an SBH and come to HoN" and it was at that point when I thought we probably have no chance to win. Playing non-standard infantry rushing instead of vehicle spam is always risky. This time it kinda paid off and we got the GDI ref, but after that Nod failed to go for arties&flame tanks and take control of the field (even when it was empty), instead we went for rocket soldiers. On that last game team Yosh/Madkill played to have fun and not to win, which was not much fun to me Especially being the only arty in team and having no repairs... Oh well. GG

Voltex is speaking the truth. In my opinion GDI having better, harder to destroy production buildings than Nod is one of the reasons why it is generally a stronger faction that is winning more games.

I think it makes sense to diferentiate between AOW and marathon. Look at Canyon: on marathon I feel this is a totally GDI map, because of how easy it is to ion airstrip comparing to nuking barracks and also how easy it is to sneak to nod ref comparing to sneaking to gdi ref (tunnel below airstrip). But on AOW, Nod can just hold field for 40 minutes and win (which is not impossible, especially if they manage to lock GDI in base from the very beginning). It's just that it's very difficult for Nod to utilize the field advantage on Canyon, which is a big problem on marathon, where destroying buildings is the key. Other than that: Also GDI vehicles are much more useful in field on Walls. Meds > flame tanks (no cover on field), MRLS > Arties (no cover and also mrls are good vs. apaches while arties bad vs. orcas), even mammoths are useful. Also, like on Canyon, it's much easier for GDI to utilize the advantage in field with ion on airstrip. Not sure about that. There is no good spot for artilleries here (like there is on Mesa or Whiteout), the tunnel below airstrip helps GDI spies a lot and also sneaking is easier for GDI - you can sneak to all Nod buildings, while GDI PP and Ref are covered with base defences. I'd say it's 50/50 or even that GDI has a small advantage. The vehicle area is much more GDI friendly, with a lot of open space for meds & mrls and flame tanks are dying easily. And you can't pointwhore WF with arties as effectively anymore. I'd say 50/50 on marathon, but a GDI map on AOW. I can't agree on that. Terrible airstrip placement is what makes Complex a GDI map in my eyes. GDI can shoot Nod tanks right when they get delivered and it's very easy to ion the airstrip, too. If Nod goes for a stank rush, a good GDI team will use this opportunity to ion the strip. Also, again because of how airstrip is placed, you can exactly see what tanks Nod is building and prepare for any rush. Actually here I think it's a Nod map. Arties are great here, better and cheaper than meds. Also WF is closer to the wall, which makes it an easier target than HoN (especially for outside c4 from balcony, this works suprisingly well on this map). And an early chem rush can be lethal, too. So, generally in my opinion there are only 5 maps where Nod has an advantage and about 10 where GDI has an advantage. Quite sad.

I can't really agree on that... oh well, let's just forget this harvester thing. As long as we don't get to play Tomb again until this gets fixed it's okay.

Volcano The first few minutes of this PUG were crazy. GDI PP and Ref fell to mass flame tanks/APCs and a nuke, meanwhile Nod Ref fell to not sure what (inf rush?). Nod came out with a stronger economy and a 2k point lead. After that Nod played defensively until the end of the game, keeping the vehicle count high. GDI tried to diminish the point difference with meds, but it didn't work for them and they were falling behind even more. So GDI tried a few gunner and other infantry rushes, but nothing worked against well organized Nod, which comfortably won on time. Goldrush Nothing to see here really. GDI played standard and pumped meds throughout the whole game. Nod also tried to take control of the field, but most of the time they weren't able to (I think no GDI harvesters were killed at all). Despite this, the game was interesting in a sense that the score remained roughly equal for the bigger part of the game, with GDI being only a few hundred points ahead. Nod also tried a few infantry rushes and they even managed to destroy the rear GT. With the time running out, the point difference was becoming bigger in favour of GDI, because of Nod rushing to try to turn the game around. But they didn't manage to and GDI won on time. I think no building health was damage at all in the game. Tomb The worst of the games. GDI tried an early infantry rush on airstrip and Nod tried a buggy rush, but both fail. Then comes the standard vehicle fight, arties vs. meds mostly, with score remaining equal. And then guess what - Nod harvester got stuck, GDI proceeded to abuse this fact and targeted everything but the harvester and after 10 minutes meds already rolled in Nod base and it was game over. I think afterwards we all agreed not to play this map on PUG again until this bug gets fixed. Complex The first 15 minutes were standard vehicle slugfest and then somehow both teams rushed in the opposite bases at the same time. GDI managed to destroy the airstrip with an ion at the end of it and at the same time managed to defend from the vehicle mass & 2 nukes at barracks and WF. Soon after the rest of Nod base was finished with more meds and ions. Islands Nothing much to see here either, standard vehicle fight. Drawish for the first 15-20 minutes, then GDI managed to push Nod into their base and roll in with meds + ions and it was game over. I think that GDI is on quite a winning streak on Islands at PUGs. 3-2 total. It's debatable, but you could say that every faction won the map where it has an advantage. The games weren't particularly interesting, but at least the teams were balanced and the atmosphere on ts was good. Also first PUG in a while where no buildings were destroyed by solo hotties/techs. Generally both teams defended well and seemed organized. GG

I'm in position

lol for real? @Jeff If you know that an orca/apache rush is preparing, you can prepare for it and stop it. Flying units are loud and the bases on Lakseide are open, so it should be easy to see a rush preparing. If you can spot it 30 seconds before the rush leaves, you will have time to return to base and to put a hotwire/tech in every building and spam APCs/1k infantry/orcas/apaches to defend from such rush. In the game you linked to, GDI doesn't see the apache rush before it leaves the Nod base. As a result, they get caught mid-field and iirc WF had no repairs until it was already down to half health. That was the mistake they made. And yes, on Lakeside all you have to do as a team is spam orcas and apaches - but I don't see the problem with it and don't find it boring. Even if both teams prepare orca/apache rushes and there's the waiting game, you can make your rush more effective by combining it with a nuke/decoy chinook or whatever... there's plenty of tricks, some tested at PUGs. Both teams can do it, the map is balanced in this sense. And it is unique. Limiting aircraft on Lakeside would not be as devastating for Nod as completely removing it, but it would still help GDI. And, once again, as the bases have only one vehicle entrance and as the vehicle area is clearly advantageous to GDI, Lakeside would turn into another boring map like Under or XMountain...

Please no, I think this is a terrible idea. This will give a huge advantage to GDI, because MRLS and meds pwn on this open map while arties and flame tanks are nearly useless. Also Lakeside is one of the few maps where team rushes still make a lot of sense and often take place even on public games. Let's keep it this way instead of making Lakeside another boring map with only one vehicle entrance where sneaking is the only way to win... @topic I think orcas and apaches are balanced. They are difficult to play with (because of their low health and how they are usually exposed) and only good players can utilize them fully. Removing the passenger seat might be a good idea though. I don't agree with OP - meds and light tanks are not the best counter to orcas/apaches, but that doesn't mean people don't buy them (I see a lot on Walls or Whiteout). There is plenty of counter to air units in game. True, but I don't see how this makes the map 'dreadful'? Lakeside is special and let's keep it this way instead of turning it into another boring map like I described above... also it's not like orca/apache rushes are unstoppable. They are powerful, but there is plenty ways of stopping them.

I have suggested exactly this after the PUG on teamspeak, but Jeff and Crowsy made a good point that it wouldn't be fair either, since a team could play well & control the game for the whole time & maintain a big point lead and still lose the game if one lucky hotwire sneaked in in the last minutes. I also feel this change would influence the gameplay heavily, because a team with one building down would have to focus on destroying an enemy team's building and for the team that has more buildings alive, it would be enough to just camp. The solution to AOW points unfairness that we experienced on the last PUG is probably to work on score balancing more - I'd suggest more points for infantry kills and slightly more for damaging building armour. Also maybe even more bonus points for building kills.

He's the best arty and mrls user in game imo, but no, suprisingly he wasn't present in the PUG. Team bong had Xeon Wraith (debut on pug), Yellow 13 and skip0420, who are all great with vehicles. We had spagg but that wasn't enough. Also we lacked a good sniper that we really needed on Mesa or Under... miz.hht wasn't present and ks.ol was the only sniper in game and he was in team bong. Also wp by him.

The best PUG in a while. Pretty balanced teams and interesting - although sometimes frustrating - games! Mesa GDI defended from the first artillery rush and very early on a hotwire managed to destroy the airstrip. Very soon all Nod tanks but a single flame tank got destroyed. And apparently a single flame tank and a mass of raveshaws and lcgs were enough for Nod to defend their base from all the GDI tanks. With 15 minutes until the end, another hotwire managed to destroy the HoN and Nod was left without production buildings. But... GDI was still behind in points and falling behind even more. Nod started using rocket soldiers and airstrikes instead of special infantry and it worked as well. GDI tried med rushing, apc rushing, gunner rushing, but nothing worked. Nod won on points despite having their 2 key structures dead for the most part of the game. Weird. Grassy Knoll No big story behind this game, GDI just destroying Nod with meds and MRLS as it usually happens on this map. Nod did try but there was just no way we could have won this. Under Me and LavaDragon were forcing people to get meds and hotties for the first 25 minutes of the game, but apparently we were just unable to take control of the field. Nod played very well and kept us locked in our base. So we went for a gunner rush, we lucked out and no one in Nod saw us coming and we destroyed the PP. But it still didn't help us at all and we were behind in points & getting even more behind. The second gunner rush failed, but in the last minutes a hotwire destroyed the Nod refinery. Still that was not enough points and it was the second game where my team destroyed 2 buildings and didn't lose any building health at all, but lost on points. Very discouraging. At this point I saw that team Bong simply had better players, who could make more use of their vehicles and infantry and not die too easily. That's why they were always ahead on points. Complex From the past games' experience, I was thinking we will get raped by meds quickly, but somehow we managed to max out the vehicle limit and held well, even though - of course - we were behind in points. Then 2 stank rushes happened, the first destroyed the refinery and the 2nd destroyed barracks. And GDI surrendered. To be honest that was a suprise for me and I believe they would have still been able to win on points given how the previous games looked like. Tomb Probably the best game of the evening. Early McFarland rush destroyed the airstrip and GDI took control of the field, but then we lost our ref (to a tech probably?) and once again I was expecting to lose on points. One APC rush took Nod refinery down to 3 health and then we had Ryz come up with a crazy plan, we all agreed to it and we did an "outside C4 on PP combined with inside C4 on Ref APC rush". The outside C4 destroyed Nod PP and with about 25 minutes until the end of the game we had a roughly 1,6k point lead. At this point I've ordered people to camp, play conservatively and don't lose any expensive stuff at all. And it worked quite well! Don't get me wrong, our point advantage was still decreasing - of course - but at a much slower rate and with 5 minutes to go we had a 1k point lead. But then Nod did SBH magic and destroyed our PP and WF with outside C4 & lasers and won. Well played by Nod and I admit it was a big mistake from GDI not to leave anyone stealth checking. Team Bong won 4-1, but somehow I feel my team played very well for what we could do and we actually destroyed more buildings in total If it was Marathon or if we had like 30 more minutes on Mesa and Under to finish Nod off... we would have probably won those 2 games. Oh well, team Bong also played well and was very organized. I also liked how the atmosphere in my team was good even after we lost the first 3 games. GG!!

I'll be there.

You probably can't, because of the base defences. I went via the bridge, but I jumped at the little fence on the side of the bridge and omitted all the mines. That's why it usually doesn't make much sense to mine it. My two cents on PUGs: The current PUG formula is good. If there is something I would change, it's the people's attitude. I understand the importance of the social side of PUGs. But I believe that during the actual games, talking on TS should be focused on gameplay as much as possible - clear orders from the commander and warnings, reports, questions, suggestions from the team members. I think the amount of suggestions should be limited and that the commander should briefly comment on every suggestion given by a player. Individual orders also work well. All this should ensure order and, from my experience, the team where teamspeak looks like this is more likely to win. The better time for comments, experiences, complaints, stories from the game is before or after the PUG on teamspeak or in this thread. Of course I don't demand military discipline. It's okay if you make a joke every now and then. Then again, from my experience, the less you talk the more likely you are to win a game on a PUG (unless you're the commander). Generally, in my opinion PUGs should be a healthy mixture of having fun and rivalization, but with much bigger emphasis on rivalization (80%? ). This is because winning games is more fun than "chaos & fun" on teamspeak and then losing games, at least for me

Better than last week, at least for me I can imagine the other team being frustrated about losing, but I don't think this was as humiliating as some pugs. Lakeside In the early game GDI didn't go for the predictable orca rush and instead tried to take control of the field and take Nod silo / kill Nod harvester / take down the turrets. They partially succeeded and managed to defend from the first apache rush, acquiring quite a point lead. But the second apache rush by Nod, combined with a nuke on WF, destroyed the whole GDI base. Walls Drawish for the first half of the game. Nod tried buggy rushing and apache rushing and GDI tried a chinook rush, but both teams defended well and the score was even. Then GDI lucked out and got a SBH spy - airstrip tower was not mined properly and SBH planted ion inside the tower while orcas rushed HoN. Airstrip went down. Soon after another orca rush destroyed HoN and Nod surrendered. Goldrush Once again, drawish for the most part. Not much action, meds vs. arties and flame tanks, GDI having control of the field but the score was even. Then a tech killed the barracks (once again the mining could be better) and it looked hopeless for GDI, which couldn't infantry rush and lost the hotwire support on its vehicles. Nod managed to take control of the field and flame rush in the last minutes of the game, destroying the AGT and Ref. Mesa The closest one. GDI went for a rocket rush in the early game and took down Nod refinery to 30 health. Nod responded with massive arty spam and they destroyed GDI refinery and reduced the health of AGT and the barracks. But GDI was organized, managed to push artilleries back with a few meds and MRLS and responded by destroying Nod refinery. At that point, after about 10 minutes and with both refineries down, the score was roughly even. But after that GDI played better. We kept control of the short side for the most part, hitting the airstrip and bringing it down to about 30 health by the end of the game. We tried APC rushing about 3 times, but failed. Nod tried to chem rush (and rocket rush, too?), but never managed to damage the health of a building anymore. A lot of technicians tried sneaking in, but they were all dieing to our campers. I feel if Nod just commited to rolling out arties and flame tanks and pushing us away from the short side, they might have stood a chance. GDI won on time by 2k points. Field Boring game. Standard vehicle fight for 40 minutes with no permanent damage on buildings at all. I saw too many infantry in GDI and not enough meds, which led to Nod winning comfortably by points. Nod only had 2 snipers, but top ones (miz.hht and ks.ol) and they were commited to keeping control of the tunnels. Both finished with 40-50 kills. I commanded one of the teams, Madkill the other. 5-0 total, sorry Still, I don't think the difference between teams was as big as the score would suggest. GG!

I can be a commander as well. As I said, I don't get discouraged easily So it can be me vs. bong&yosh or whatever you choose. I think I'm good enough for that. Also, there is Yellow 13 who said he will get a mic for this week and was eager to command as well. He plays on public a lot and he's really good and understands how this game works (imo).

Well, I will be there. Not getting discouraged easily

What?? This cannot be!

no! I think teams were balanced, or at least more balanced than last week. It's just that Walls as Nod and Mesa as GDI are not easy, especially in the first minutes. We were pushed back to the defense and couldn't do much. People got discouraged, started whining, leaving, team fell apart... I was the commander on Walls, we did a failed arty rush in the beginning and then the plan was to max out vehicles and take control of the field. I was even taking my time to spam the commander message on screen with what to do. But, as we were losing and incapable of going 9/9, some people started to complain how we don't have a commander, don't have a plan, how we suck, that there is no teamwork blablabla and voted LavaDragon to command instead. But he couldn't change the game, since us losing on the first 2 maps was not fault of the commander... Next was Mesa nd LavaDragon being the commander, we had the plan to get vehicles but we got annihilated with artilleries... was nothing we could do. Arties are very strong on this map and Nod always spams them in the early game while GDI struggles. But this was when our team fell apart and I think 3 people ragequit. Tomb came up next and it was a good game for the first ~15 minutes. A lot of action, pushing back and forth, we had a flame rush and some pressure on GDI base and it looked even. Then our harvester got stuck in our ref and team jeff played very dirty. I asked them to kill our harvester - no reaction, 5 minutes later it was still stuck and GDI was taking control of the field and siegeing our base. They began to destroy our PP and then our ref even though I spam to target and kill our stuck harvester. Ofc that meant we lost and that was totally bug abusing by GDI in my eyes. I got pissed and was actually about to ragequit as well. I perhaps should have, since I admit I didn't contribute to my team at all in the last game at Goldrush. I just turned my mic off and was sneaking the whole game for fun. I felt neither of the teams played that last game for 100%, a lot of inf rushes etc. instead of playing standard vehicle spam. I guess I can say it was the worst pug I've played in so far. Perhaps if I was shouting more and people didn't get discouraged & played fair, it could have been different.

Created flame tank, mobile artillery, apache and orca. Encountered some problems: - couldn't find a good picture for an arty and orca. Is there any other source for pics than Google? - don't know how to assign a single article to many names. For example now it tells me that the page 'artillery' doesn't exist, but I created the page 'mobile artillery'. How to make it so that my article shows when you type in 'artillery'? Also, as the apache and the orca are very similar, I've basically copy-pasted one article to the other (of course changing the correspondent names, etc.). Is this okay? Or is it a better idea to make a single article for both of those vehicles? Not sure, but I think it's good how it is now.

Reporting! Islands Standard Islands, almost the same as last week. Plenty of vehicle pushing, eventually GDI had the upper hand and ref, hon and strip fell to tanks/ion spam. Not sure why we keep choosing to play this boring map Tomb Bad defending from GDI in the very beginning. Like 2-3 guys walked in and destroyed WF while whole team was focused on the early Nod APC (still, I think WF was infiltrated before APC entered GDI base). Flame rush followed and finished what was left of GDI base. Lakeside Apaches vs. orcas the whole game. A lot of failed rushes, a lot of waiting for the actions of enemy team and finally one orca rush succeded and killed HoN (only because some of us managed to jump in via windows... it wasn't mined well). Nod surrendered. Eyes Standard vehicle fight, looking even with points before a tech killed the GDI PP. As a result of that, Nod took advantage in field and GDI, having no morale, surrendered early. Mistake from GDI not to leave a person camping that crucial path. Snow I'm happy we tried a new map for once. In the start whole Nod team rushes barracks with flamethrowers, fails and meanwhile loses HoN to like 2 people... right after that GDI counter-rushes with officers and kills airstrip with outside c4. Well... humiliation. 5-0 total. I do think teams were imbalanced. We had all the sneaky people and all the snipers while team bong seemed to have all the newbies. But the biggest problem in my opinion was terrible defence, you lost 3 (if not 4) games because of it. I saw no campers in your team and my experience tells me that, unfortunately, very often campers are what you need to win.

Walls GDI just rolling over Nod. Early APC kills Nod ref first, then a chinook with some help from orcas kills Nod PP. Meds & orcas with ions finish off HoN and strip. Nod had nothing to say the whole game. Mesa First one-sided Mesa on a PUG. Nod keeps spamming artilleries & techs the whole game while at the same time camping the passage from the central infantry cave. Ref, barracks and PP go down consequently to arty spam and GDI surrenders. Volcano Nod having slight advantage in the early game gives lone tech opportunity to sneak & kill GDI refinery during chaos in GDI base. After that GDI turtles in its base and somehow goes from being 2k behind in points to ~3k in front. In the late game GDI PP and Airstrip go down, but it has no influence on the gameplay. GDI win on points. Nod tried flame rushing, rocket rushing, chem rushing but not much could work against a disciplined GDI camp - even though we never went past 4 meds. I guess multiple SBH nuke + flame tanks rolling in could have worked... but still our point advantage was huge. Don't suicide so many flame tanks next time? Islands The only game where my team played bad. After losing control of the field in the early game, we simply didn't get enough tanks and gradually lost our buildings to mass meds + ions. First ref, then strip and HoN. Kinda lame, public-game-like loss if you ask me. I liked the PUG! Total score 3-1, GDI 3-1 Nod

I like the surrender option, for the reasons Agent mentioned. I actually don't like the 15 minutes rule, because often the game is decided already in the first minutes. Although I agree that sometimes teams get emotional and surrender too fast (today on Under GDI locked Nod in base for 30 minutes & was having full control of the game, then I managed to sneak and kill GDI PP and they surrendered immediately...), but it's the fault of the surrendering team and not of the option itself. It is the role of a player in a losing team to encourage his/her teammates that "we can still win" and show a plan how to win the game.

I like this map. Some technical/graphics stuff here and there, but it plays great. It's dynamic and allows for different kinds of gameplay (as in: a lot of units are effective and there's a lot of ways to win the game). I just think it could be more balanced. I feel GDI has an advantage now, for 2 reasons: - the spot behind rocks near Nod PP that is overlooking Nod base. GDI tanks can shoot at Nod base while covered, especially MRLS there is op, it can shoot all buildings and vehicles landing at strip. That spot needs nerf imo - the vehicle area doesn't have much cover, which makes it GDI friendly. I would add some rocks/small walls (especially on the non-harvester side) for artilleries and flame tanks to counter meds better. As it is now it's much easier for GDI to control the field Also like people above mentioned I would move silo to the other side / remove it, to make gameplay even more interesting. But if you went for removing, make sure to fill that spot with some cover for artilleries.

I won't be there