If there’s a tactic that works against the team, then that wouldn’t be a good team, right?
heh you know what i mean B^P
all the teams ive gone up against that did the turtling there wasnt a way to get close to them other than maybe one or two interceptors and they didnt last long after the initial volley. the team that i was on once that did the turtling they stayed in a nice tight ball and yelled at me every time i shot out of there and went for the other captain, and the other team tried some of the “tactics” mentioned and they had no chance at all to get at our captain.
i would consider a “good team” one that has 5-6 good snipers and the rest of the team in decked out fighters, those are what i have been seeing pulling this turtle ball off
If the enemy team puts up a formidable iron defense that I cannot break, I concede. And I try again and cross my fingers and hope that I don’t meet the enemy team again. (I usually don’t encounter people who turtle that much.)
I rest my case.
Yesterday I had a game with the most annoying turtling team I’ve encountered so far. I was in a 2-man squad, we both had gunships. Enemy cap’n was a guard with ~11k hull and ~23k shields. We’ve tried to assault him with our killteam twice and Oh My God the minefields! It wouldn’t even be that surprising, but their team spammed minefields for the entire duration of the match, everywhere. I can’t even comprehend how did they have so many of then. None of them was flying Machete (which can have 8 of those).
Our 1st assault was blown up just before we broke through his shields, as to the 2nd I don’t even know, but we blew up again cuz mines everywhere. By that point we decided that it has no sense and just killed their ships. Besides they had at least 3 Engis parked here and there. Fun thing is, we probably would’ve won by kills if our team was… not helping us fight. We didn’t die once since 2nd assault and killed lots of ships, but our guys were dying too and we only managed to make frag difference drop from ~20 to ~8.
Now it’s worth mentioning, that our entire team was sitting pretty much on top of their’s. Captain was always 5k away or closer, but we just couldn’t get to him through all this spam of mines and ships that go invisible / run as soon as we target them.
When there was like 22 sec left on the clock I noticed that enemy captain is really close, so I went like “now or never”. Someone else was shooting at him as well. Actually this happened ONLY cuz he was just too cocky since no one could harm him for the entire battle. Along with my unknown support I managed to get this guy to I think less than 500 hull and the match ended, damn. I needed one more damn second (or my guns to not overheat during this). I even exploded in his face with my gunship, but that didn’t kill him either. :c
If the enemy team puts up a formidable iron defense that I cannot break, I concede. And I try again and cross my fingers and hope that I don’t meet the enemy team again. (I usually don’t encounter people who turtle that much.)
I rest my case.
that is pretty much all you can do, just role over and concede and hope your next game is actually fun!!. ill admit i dont get to play kill the captain very much but when i do its usually 75% of the time against turtles
Can it be countered…absolutely. Is it easy to do without team work…absolutely not. Again, for those missing the finer points… This takes teamwork to defeat. It means you and your team are going to need a spread of ships in your hanger. By mid T2 you should consider fielding a full hanger of 3 ships with an eye toward some roles. You’ll want an engy yourself, perhaps a guard, and at least one fighter of your favorite sort. You’ll want setups that differ. Consider having one for close support, one for long range firepower, and another for all around. That means using more then one weapon type.
Yep, it IS pretty involved, and likely beyond your average pug group. No arguement there, as especially in T2 people are still learning. If you are queing up solo, without a diverse hangar, and varied setups… for each of those things not done, your decreasing your chances of having a counter to a given tactic on the field. Especially solo que’d your basically playing dice and hoping for a lucky roll in the form of a team.
All that said, I DO HOPE they limit engineer heal stacking, at the very least via diminishing returns if not eliminate it all together. Even if they do that, grouping up into a “ball” formation with fields of fire that overlap, putting your vulnerable ships at the core, and surrounding that with zones of support fighters an guard frigs… well folks that’s just SMART. It’s effective because defense has always had an advantage over offense, namely because in some way the defense can often choose WHERE and HOW the engagement is going to start. It’s a tactic that works in LIFE as much as any video game… the only difference is, the enemy doesn’t have any one to complain to that’s going to help or care out there in the real world. In here, folks pray a dev is somehow going to save them from tried an true tactics?
Here’s an idea… you know all those “useless” torp and snipe frigs… Well god forbid your fighters tie up a “ball of death’s” anti missile systems with minor missile spam while your torps salvo grouped ships. Coupled with incoming fire via sniper frigs at enemy frigs with now stripped shields an golly gee you’ve got yourself a REAL fight eh. Suddenly the “ball of impenetrable death” becomes a shooting gallery faced with a choice. They can now adapt to your tearing their defenses up, or most likely devolve into chaos as their one trick pony show just got hammered.
There is almost always a way to defeat a tactic, be it defense or offense. The problem your facing is coordination. If your team is full of solo hero’s, well your just screwed, fustrating as that is. Having a team of random players that can’t be bothered to work together will always lose to a team that will. I’ve yet to see a problem present here that doesn’t have a -human- solution available.
What you say is mostly good. Minus the engineering part. Engineers DO NOT need any nerf to their healing ability. They are slow as crap and can easily be popped. I know this because I main an engineering healer. With out the powerful healing benefits they have, being an engineer would be POINTLESS. Do not try to nerf the ONLY BENEFIT being an engineer has.
What you say is mostly good. Minus the engineering part. Engineers DO NOT need any nerf to their healing ability. They are slow as crap and can easily be popped. I know this because I main an engineering healer. With out the powerful healing benefits they have, being an engineer would be POINTLESS. Do not try to nerf the ONLY BENEFIT being an engineer has.
Oh sure they’re easy to pop…until you have 3 of them sitting around in a nice big circle jerk. Add in a command fighter or two and nothing short of simultaneous nukes would take them out.
The OP’s complaint is so broken. It’s a team deathmatch variant. team as in T E A M. So what you say is you want a teamgame, without teamwork ? What kind of farked up thought is that ?.
Only thing i can say is the dev’s make you a filter, so you will not have to join kill the cappy games anymore. But you also don’t get the oppertunity to do contracts specific for this gamemode e.g. “Kill the enemy fleet commander”. That would be for awesome ppl, that do like T E A M play.
The OP’s complaint is so broken. It’s a team deathmatch variant. team as in T E A M. So what you say is you want a teamgame, without teamwork ? What kind of farked up thought is that ?.
Only thing i can say is the dev’s make you a filter, so you will not have to join kill the cappy games anymore. But you also don’t get the oppertunity to do contracts specific for this gamemode e.g. “Kill the enemy fleet commander”. That would be for awesome ppl, that do like T E A M play.
i love team play!! and i love the kill the captain one the most, but when all the other team is doing is sitting in one spot doing nothing but shot what comes to it is lame and not fun at all. whats fun about sitting there waiting on someone to come into range and go “oooo theres one shoot him… ok he is dead wait for the next one… ok there is one kill him!..ok he is dead…ok there are 3 of them now take them out…ok got them wait for the next group…” how is that fun?? im just asking to fix it to where both teams have to do something instead of just waiting. if they made it to where you HAVE to kill the other captain then it would be more exciting because then you have to work as a team to both take out the other captain and to protect your captain.
I’ve never had a problem winning against this turtle tactic. First, when you notice that they are turtling hard, DON’T try to kill the captain yet. Just because you can get to the enemy captain and take him down to 1 hull point does not mean you are skilled, knowing WHEN to go in as a TEAM and getting the KILL is where the skill comes in. Otherwise you are just feeding that turtle. The correct tactic is to push up as a group: staying in buff range of your allies, killing anything that pops out, retreating before you get killed. Your captain does not need to come, but some players like to “protect the captain” and you will be unable to match firepower on the front lines unless you force them to either come or be seen as useless. Your captain should know when to back off the line though.
The closer your front line kll zone is to the enemy spawn, the faster your team’s kill rate compared to theirs. It takes an alert and confident captain and team, but at comparable team skill you should come out ahead. Once you are ahead in kills, the turtle should open up and try to get your captain; from this point I don’t think anyone has a problem with the gameplay “being cheap.” If they continue to turtle, who cares, you win, you probably have a lot of kills to pimp your stats, and the turtling players will be frustrated. And if you have a significant lead, there is now absolutely zero risk in attempting a captain kill. It’s more likely to work, as you are able to have 8 ships jumping on the captain on a moment’s notice rather than 2 or 3 that they can see coming.
Let’s just say, for the sake of completeness, they turtle completely, and some pub members on your team foolishly continue to sacrifice themselves on their ball. You should manage to get outside their ball and surround it, popping up with your team to focus off a ship at a time. Because they are turtling, you will find that even when you get close to dying you can just back off a little and heal up, they won’t venture far from their captain. And if they do, chances are your team will kill them off quite fast. It’s like having your own turtle shell encompassing theirs. You have plenty of space to fly around while still being covered by teammates. From there your team has a chance to catch up, and pub members will start to realize how fun it is smashing on the other team’s turtle. Even better is when their captain retreats away from their spawn point to stay out of range; his defenders will follow, and you can just spawn kill those that are not with the captain as their firepower is a fraction of yours.
This is just a summary of what members of my corp and squad employ against turtling, and I notice other top players from corps such as evo and nasa doing the same. Combat recon is much deeper tactically than just what I’ve written, as the thing you are protecting can actually move! Good luck!
I’ve never had a problem winning against this turtle tactic. First, when you notice that they are turtling hard, DON’T try to kill the captain yet. Just because you can get to the enemy captain and take him down to 1 hull point does not mean you are skilled, knowing WHEN to go in as a TEAM and getting the KILL is where the skill comes in. Otherwise you are just feeding that turtle. The correct tactic is to push up as a group: staying in buff range of your allies, killing anything that pops out, retreating before you get killed. Your captain does not need to come, but some players like to “protect the captain” and you will be unable to match firepower on the front lines unless you force them to either come or be seen as useless. Your captain should know when to back off the line though.
The closer your front line kll zone is to the enemy spawn, the faster your team’s kill rate compared to theirs. It takes an alert and confident captain and team, but at comparable team skill you should come out ahead. Once you are ahead in kills, the turtle should open up and try to get your captain; from this point I don’t think anyone has a problem with the gameplay “being cheap.” If they continue to turtle, who cares, you win, you probably have a lot of kills to pimp your stats, and the turtling players will be frustrated. And if you have a significant lead, there is now absolutely zero risk in attempting a captain kill. It’s more likely to work, as you are able to have 8 ships jumping on the captain on a moment’s notice rather than 2 or 3 that they can see coming.
Let’s just say, for the sake of completeness, they turtle completely, and some pub members on your team foolishly continue to sacrifice themselves on their ball. You should manage to get outside their ball and surround it, popping up with your team to focus off a ship at a time. Because they are turtling, you will find that even when you get close to dying you can just back off a little and heal up, they won’t venture far from their captain. And if they do, chances are your team will kill them off quite fast. It’s like having your own turtle shell encompassing theirs. You have plenty of space to fly around while still being covered by teammates. From there your team has a chance to catch up, and pub members will start to realize how fun it is smashing on the other team’s turtle. Even better is when their captain retreats away from their spawn point to stay out of range; his defenders will follow, and you can just spawn kill those that are not with the captain as their firepower is a fraction of yours.
This is just a summary of what members of my corp and squad employ against turtling, and I notice other top players from corps such as evo and nasa doing the same. Combat recon is much deeper tactically than just what I’ve written, as the thing you are protecting can actually move! Good luck!
but what do you do about snipers?? thats been the biggest problem ive seen when going against turtles. 5-6 snipers taking out our team before we can get into range…well before we can get into range. by the time we get in range to even fire at them half our team is gone. how would you break this turtle shell??
but what do you do about snipers?? thats been the biggest problem ive seen when going against turtles. 5-6 snipers taking out our team before we can get into range…well before we can get into range. by the time we get in range to even fire at them half our team is gone. how would you break this turtle shell??
Believe it or not, snipers deal less dps than other frigs or fighters with their disintegrator ray; it’s the single pockets of damage that hurt. You should be able to find cover to heal to full if you are a frigate or fighter. Always go from cover to cover, if you are behind cover they lose lock as long as you kill any ints and fighters not in their turtle. If you see them fielding a lot of snipers, when you poke out of cover you will know how many are trained on you (look for the red). If they all are, the rest of your team should have no problem moving forward, and they will just be wasting dps trying to get just you. Interceptors are very unlikely to get hit, especially at ranges beyond a hail plasma or stab railgun. Your fighters shouldn’t really get hit either, unless they are neglecting to look around. Once you get within 5k of snipers, they go down faster than any other ship, as they have about as much health as a fighter, and much less manueverability. Multiple snipers in a turtle means you only need to worry about one direction; if they are spread out it’s harder to avoid but easier to kill them. Torpedoes are a concern, but you can counter this with a couple guard frigs (easy way), or simply move (more team effective way) as it takes time for the missile to travel, and cover=no lock=don’t know if you are near when they detonate behind the cover. And remember for torpedo frigs, longer range = proportionately lower DPS.
I’m usually the front line engineer frig when breaking turtles, and I’m the most vulnerable to snipers out of all my squad. However, I’m also the one that has the best chance of going toe to toe with a sniper; I usually can kill a long range frig before my shields even go down, and they often can’t run if they are in their sniper position (they have to be exposed to snipe properly, and are not completely with the turtle). Note that this means our fighters and interceptors aren’t going too close to the snipers and putting themselves at risk of other nearby enemies. Often, snipers can be ignored if you get close enough to their side, their positions will be so crappy for sniping they likely have to rely on guns to do significant damage.
Interestingly, when I see a lot of snipers on their team, I actually KNOW I’m going to win, barring a suicidal captain or very bad pub members on my side. It means that most of your team does not need to watch the captain: each sniper frig is one less threat. However, I admit that i’m usually with a corp squad when I say “YAY sniper frigs.” We can focus on the frigs much better than a pub squad, and often do not suffer a single death until we make a captain attempt as we are always aware of sniper positions. But I am serious when I say that I look forward to seeing turtling on the opposing side; yesterday I won all the combat recon games I played in T2 (15 or so). None of those T2 matches we turtled, and I probably got Fear Me in half of them.
so your not going up against snipers that can 1-2 shot kill you no matter what ship you are in?? what times are you playing?? also to do a lot of what you are saying it seams like you need to go into battle with a premade team. i guess i have just been unlucky going up against such good teams that can 1-2 shot kill other ships both with their snipers and their fighters.
so your not going up against snipers that can 1-2 shot kill you no matter what ship you are in?? what times are you playing?? also to do a lot of what you are saying it seams like you need to go into battle with a premade team. i guess i have just been unlucky going up against such good teams that can 1-2 shot kill other ships both with their snipers and their fighters.
I’m yet to see a single game with meaningful amount of sniper frigates in T3 post 0.8.0. They’re absolute junk at the moment, fragile with hilariously bad mods and main gun that won’t hit anything smaller then a frigate at non-melee range.
T2 may be different, but I’ve played a few games of that and haven’t seen any meaningful amounts of those either. Biggest in a single game was two I think, and I remember that because that’s basically a double hard-on for me to sit in my gunship or command ship and pick up those two free kills.
so your not going up against snipers that can 1-2 shot kill you no matter what ship you are in?? what times are you playing?? also to do a lot of what you are saying it seams like you need to go into battle with a premade team. i guess i have just been unlucky going up against such good teams that can 1-2 shot kill other ships both with their snipers and their fighters.
Interceptors can be 1 shotted if they have poor equips AND the sniper has overcharge on, but otherwise it takes 2 or 3 hits IN SUCCESSION. A heal frig nearby means an int will be back to full health from emergency barrier in about 5 seconds. And they shouldn’t be getting hit by disintegrators in the first place. Fighters take 2-4 snipes, again in succession, and heal up in about 10 seconds. I think you are overestimating the power and number of snipers; I don’t want to parrot what other users have been saying, but after you play enough games you start to get a feel for how much danger you are actually in at each moment, and how to avoid getting sniped even in a guard frigate. And to followup Luckyo’s post, snipers generally contribute less to a team than if they flew another ship at T2 and up (in arcade/sector conquest, realistic is another story). Most experienced players don’t field them unless they are fooling around.
As for premade teams, yes, a squad helps. But you can’t deny that this tactic works in breaking a turtle, assuming pub members are actually participating instead of trying for a captain kill.
Perhaps some examples will help; look in the videos section. Vin posts complete games win or lose. There’s a failed turtle break in the middle of episode 6. You will notice that as the team is in the middle or close to spawn, they get more kills. Unfortunately the opposing captain moved up, forcing all the enemies to move together, while Vin’s captain stayed back effectively cutting down firepower by 25% (3/12 ships not in the fight). But even though many pub members went after the captain instead of the enemies flanking Vin’s team, by positioning themselves in the middle Vin’s team managed to stay just a little behind in kills.
And to show that I’m not backseat driving, Vin’s 7th episode has me in the squad. In the last game, even though the enemy team is not turtling hard, it shows how a slow push should work, how to feel out whether to defend or attack, how captain awareness and pushing helps, and how much more kills you can get when pub members don’t go suicidal for captain. And the end captain kill was very low risk, despite Vin’s stunts. There were no enemy snipers, but I was wary of them: I saw a laser sight near the beginning, notified team, but it was actually friendly. I knew my role, and was trying to keep everyone covered by heals, including every pub member.
started playing some T3 games over the weekend and noticed no one seams to do the turtling. Not one game of kill the captain did the other team do that. i saw that someone else said in T1 not many people do it due to it not working well with the lower level ships so is it only in T2 where its a problem??
nice to see im not the only one who think snipers are not a big threat.
most of the time i fly t2 enigneering with 40k survivability…integrators are little more than a scratch and if you watch for the red laser you can even dodge them in empire frigates…and rockets annoy me because they do area damage and possibly kill my teammates/drones. I even peak out behind the cover to absorb some shots so they dont aim at my teammates…every little thing helps…
My tipp is that your team should move an engineer near the frontlines behind some obstacle…if they have blue equip almost everyone engaged in battle will get the heal.
captain should never stay back at the end of the map…just behind some obstacle near engineer and guard frigate/command ship
If you are in a random group communication is important
In most fights i had, the enemy team always pulls back 2 or 3 ships to defend. youd think thats not much but it makes a huge difference if your fight 3 less against a complete team
In the end its always your teams composition that wins or loses a fight…If you have diversity you can even win with a bad team…if everyone has the same ship type you lost before its begun…even more so if you team has 6 snipers.In addition this is atm the most interesting gamemode for it hast more tactical beackground than the others
I have seen solo members of my corp bust open a well defended group and kill the capt… SOLO
I have never seen a whole group defend the capt either…
i always wonder what the best ship for soloing a captain is…i tried a few times with covert ops interceptor and for fighters and snipers its semms enough if you suprise them, but for guard and engineer frigates it just takes too long…A skilled interceptor captain is also very hard to kill, dont know if tackler with their chameleon are any good
i always wonder what the best ship for soloing a captain is…i tried a few times with covert ops interceptor and for fighters and snipers its semms enough if you suprise them, but for guard and engineer frigates it just takes too long…A skilled interceptor captain is also very hard to kill, dont know if tackler with their chameleon are any good
A skilled inty captain still dies in a hit or 2 from a Jericho torp. Probably 1 hit. So, if anyone brings one, and the enemy captain is an inty, you can declare gg right then.
A skilled inty captain still dies in a hit or 2 from a Jericho torp. Probably 1 hit. So, if anyone brings one, and the enemy captain is an inty, you can declare gg right then.
This is why you have a enig frig AND guard frig protecting you. Missile shield works wonders for captain support.
On a side note, anyone using an int as their captain ship should make sure to have an emergency barrier to prevent being 1-shotted from hail plasma crits, torpedos, and suicide modules.
I devoted one of my ship slots to being a purely captain’s mode ship - I call it my “ultimate survivability” Deimos 2, which has a repair kit, nanocomposite hull, and combat reboot along with a kinetic hull resist, emergency barrier, and shield/energy regen.