Welcome to Thunderdome

Cakedaddy wrote: ↑Sat May 11, 2024 8:58 pm
I'm also in discord and ready to go if/when anyone else is.

I just got back, let me grab food and I'll be gtg, less than 30m .

Although I'm ending on a loss, I AM ending on what was a good game for me. I just wish I knew what I did differently that made it one. . . .

I took a front middle spot. Held my lane. Actually had enough metal to buy a T2. Paid in advance to help him get his factory built. Started upgrading all of my mex. Once all the mex were upgraded, I started fusion, etc. When I had a couple built, I stared a T3 factory. Between the fusion and the metal from the battlefield, I was building the cheap T3 amphibious units at a rate of 1 every 15 seconds or so. That is, as long as there was litter to pick up. Something that was different was the econ guy(s) were giving me fusion and stuff. I'm guessing I was doing well enough that they thought I'd make good use of it. I got at least 2 fusion, and some units. Not sure what the units were though. I had to keep shifting to the right because BOTH of the people over there were failing. I'd say, they were our weak link because our whole team had to lean to the right. As I shifted, the people to my left would shift to cover me, etc. The game ended with the other team making a massive push to take out key resources. I did hold a few large pushes on mid. I had to give up some ground, but my T3, would push them back. The game actually ended with them pushing hard on the failed right, we responded, then they pushed the rest of the lanes. Full collapse. My graphs were in the middle of the grouping. Normally, I'm at the bottom. Early game, I got 2 T1 plasma turrets up which secured mid for a while. I was able to take out their forward defenses with it's range. I build a second and was just blind firing on the right to try to take out the stream of units they were sending that way. This was a game I really felt like I did my job.

In fact, I don't remember any real stream of T3 coming from our rear. I may have actually beat them to T3. All the T3 coming from the back were those cheap razorbacks. We had no heavy duty T3 on the field.

Got in a couple more tonight. All That Glitters is a very popular map. . . Probably one of the reasons I'm getting better. Map familiarity.

Game one, I pushed with the team. Our canyon was getting hit hard early, and just didn't seem to have it together enough to hold it. He was pinned down, and way behind. We had to keep shifting to help him. I kept begging him to build turrets (in my head) because they were all fast, weak units doing the damage. Our back line got T2 early and sent some units to defend. Just in time too. T2 of course held them back easy. I think they put way too much into the early shit unit rush, because when we decided to push (2 middle, one back line), we pushed deep and hurt them bad. Took at least 2 commanders and held the field of debris. Big metal injection. I passed 2k metal to our back line that was pushing heavy hitters out. One of our guys would draw on the battlefield, so we could coordinate efforts. Made our pushes way more effective. JUST as I had my first T3 unit built, they surrendered. I think either a nuke, or bombing run took out a key back line asset, plus our mid was pushed way forward. Oh ya, our canyon guy recovered and actually did pretty good the rest of the game.

Second game: Must have had the 'general' on my team again, because there was a lot of drawing again. I screwed up my build order, so was behind due to lack of energy. But not THAT far behind. I could still participate, but not as effectively. I was holding, but couldn't support the pushes to full affect. Eventually, I had some fusion up and caught up. Then they launched a nuke. We had ZERO anti nuke. So we waited. . . . They hit our back left. He had been a big part of our mid push, so that stalled. We held, but we couldn't push any more. But we were past the 50 yard line, so held more land. By the time they had their second nuke in the air, we had full anti nuke coverage. Our back line was dropping nukes on the battlefield. Would find a large skirmish, launch, then mark the landing spot. We'd pull back, enemy pushed forward, and we held them on the landing spot. BOOM! No more enemy push. And we marched forward. This happened a bunch. Nukes were constantly in the air. At this point, I'm building the cheap T3 units. I wasn't using them correctly though. First time I've had Arm T3. They are really fast, but don't hit very hard. I was using them as brawlers. Once I figured this out, I just rushed the back line bases. Did some decent damage, and then teammates would use the gap I created to gain some ground. Not a lot, but some. Then were was deep penetration on the left side (by us), then a nuke was launched. The deep, fast push didn't do a lot of damage, but it DID EMP their anti nuke. Our nuke made it to target and they surrendered shortly after. One of our players slept the longest (23 minutes), then earned the "Did everything" golden cow.

Both games, I felt like an asset rather than an anchor. Way more fun when you're more useful than not!

Cakedaddy wrote: ↑Sun May 12, 2024 6:55 am Although I'm ending on a loss, I AM ending on what was a good game for me. I just wish I knew what I did differently that made it one. . . .

I took a front middle spot. Held my lane. Actually had enough metal to buy a T2. Paid in advance to help him get his factory built. Started upgrading all of my mex. Once all the mex were upgraded, I started fusion, etc. When I had a couple built, I stared a T3 factory. Between the fusion and the metal from the battlefield, I was building the cheap T3 amphibious units at a rate of 1 every 15 seconds or so. That is, as long as there was litter to pick up. Something that was different was the econ guy(s) were giving me fusion and stuff. I'm guessing I was doing well enough that they thought I'd make good use of it. I got at least 2 fusion, and some units. Not sure what the units were though. I had to keep shifting to the right because BOTH of the people over there were failing. I'd say, they were our weak link because our whole team had to lean to the right. As I shifted, the people to my left would shift to cover me, etc. The game ended with the other team making a massive push to take out key resources. I did hold a few large pushes on mid. I had to give up some ground, but my T3, would push them back. The game actually ended with them pushing hard on the failed right, we responded, then they pushed the rest of the lanes. Full collapse. My graphs were in the middle of the grouping. Normally, I'm at the bottom. Early game, I got 2 T1 plasma turrets up which secured mid for a while. I was able to take out their forward defenses with it's range. I build a second and was just blind firing on the right to try to take out the stream of units they were sending that way. This was a game I really felt like I did my job.

In fact, I don't remember any real stream of T3 coming from our rear. I may have actually beat them to T3. All the T3 coming from the back were those cheap razorbacks. We had no heavy duty T3 on the field.

Played against you as the front mid guy in this game. Didn't realize it was you in light blue until I watched the replay. Will have to rewatch - that was a fun one.

I held front for quite a while, t2 and below suddenly became absolute, people were yelling about us not having t3, and a ton of metal sitting in front of me after battles, so I powered through, ate my factories, and got to experimental pretty fast. Used a few, especially the demons, to cover ground late game. I tanked my economy to make a breakthrough Juggernaut, and had it out, barely used, when the game ended.

I suuuuuuuuuucked last night. Partly because I just suck, but also because I think I was going up against better players. Kept having to play a different map than the one I'm good on too. Far less metal available and I never really got going. I would still hit T3 units, etc. But for the most part, I still felt carried.

I need to watch the replays to see how other people build in that spot.

I'm good at certain "peaks" of power for Core - Light Tanks vs regular bots, T1 Tanks vs any other T1, T2 Tanks against any T2 and below. But when it gets to the late game, I see some of the economy some of the backline players throw up, and I wonder how important I am in the grand scheme of things.

Did figure out that you can always put Grunts or Ticks into permanent repeat late game and let them just line charge in, it's always good for vision, meat shielding better units people make. Cheaper to do it with T1 bots than T2 tanks.

Cakedaddy wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2024 8:00 am I suuuuuuuuuucked last night.

I saw you using Arm vehicles as primary for the first time right? It'll take a while to get the build order down. I love the Blitz light tank.

Had one of my favorite games Sunday night. There was a 5v5 game being hosted for quite a while, clearly with 5 people playing together and nobody signing up to go against them. OS Skill range the group was in the 20-30s but with not much experience. So they were smurfing a bit, playing these 5v5s stacked against randoms and winning to pump up their OS.

But, after the game sat in 5v0 for a while, a few similarly experienced players started filling out the other side, and I hoped in. Our team of 5 was way less OS skill on paper but with similar games played. I was maybe second last with my mighty OS of 8.

The other team gave us a pretty good run for our money for most of the game. Our bot players were fighting hard in the center, I kept the pressure on the right flank, and we had overall metal control in the "grey" parts of the map. I got a few tank runs through and knocked out wind farms in my lane opponent's base twice, crippling him and giving me a bunch of room to roam and advance.

The opponents best player went air, and we didn't have any player go that role. My early T1 tank rush up the right got stopped hard with the loss of my Commander and tanks to a major bomber run out of nowhere from their Blue(best OS) guy.

We kept map control, and I used the commander metal (two, me and one I got) to upgrade to t2.

My t2 economy peaked around this point. And 5 minutes later, economy bolstered from the battlefield metal, I swept up the right side with scout rovers, T2 tanks, and a screen of T2 flak AA that swatted Blue's air out of the sky like nothing. Rolled two players on my flank, made it into Blue's center base. He promptly exploded, and GG'd. Glorious W to end the night on.

Had to work late, but will eventually be on if anyone else is gaming tonight.

I am unavailable. With my kids tonight. Graduation party out of town tomorrow. In between two movies right now.

I was beating up a hard AI last night on random maps. Just didn't do water. He won a few, but I won more. I did it without nukes. Would just out produce and I had to do multi pronged attacks to get through the massive amount of artillery he would make. If I just hit his base, a massive barrage of artillery would just wipe out my T2 units, then the T3. If I split them and hit from two directions, he would concentrate all the artillery on one group, and the other group could do some damage. Constantly had to sweep the map to catch any expansion he would try to do. Just kept hitting and boxing him in more and more.

The last game, just for grins, I made a ragnorok. But he still won because I ignored his constant bombing runs and he made it to my advanced fusion which took out my whole base. The ragnorok survived, though. So it was still fun hitting his stuff with that for a minute before shutting down.

Had a good run of wins tonight. Lost some, but won way more. I even participated in some of the wins! Had some 3rd place awards after a couple of games. But most games I was holding on by the skin of my teeth while the back line did their thing. Even won the water on one of the maps. It was 2v2 in the water, so I didn't carry the water, but I took out their water base early while he took the other. So there's that. Once we had it, of course we kept it. It was a short game, though. Their mid lost as well. Never even made it into T2 units.

Over all, I feel like I'm VERY slowly getting better.