Nation War

The Vendetta Online 5th anniversary Nation War was held on Sunday 2000 GMT in Latos M7. There was a healthy turnout with an unhealthy number of fast ships but between lag/fps issues and weapons fire, a strong attrition rate quickly favored Serco. Four Serco pilots survived. Congratulations to the victors.

I forgot to screenshot the sector list before we started so please forgive and correct any errors in the participant list.

Grey
Ardenus
k'metreq
Maalik, &c.
tumblemonster

Itani
Necro Toxic
Patrizio
Soon(tm)
Wild Thing

Serco
Atice
Denji Royhu (survived)
Folks Dokaris (survived)
Los Rimatsi (survived)
Haxassin 825
Solra Bizna (survived)
Viper88
Xalticus

UIT
Gerty
Phaserlight
Restayvien
Silenzio
Shlimazel
Shna
TaoClown
Zakxifor

Prize
Today's 52 million credit prize was made possible with contributions from Azrael, Blood Thirsty, Gerty, Maalik, &c, Nahin Lor, Ninjr, [ORE], Soon(tm), TaoClown, and Wild Thing. I Hope I didn't miss anybody. Thank you all!

Wins
Itani 60
Serco 34
UIT 70
Grey 19

Basic Rules
Only those who are blessed by me (Maalik) and on-time are allowed to participate.
Participants must be on their nation's team unless they can make a claim to be unaligned in which case they may choose to fight for Grey.
Swarms, lightning mines, biocom mines, and pets are not allowed.
You may not return to the battle sector after you have left except to observe from a healthy distance in a bus.
No running from the asteroid field.
The last team standing wins.

Did people's clients tolerate the fog sector less well than before?

I experienced a certain amount of fps lag in the fog. It was not crippling, and I was certainly still able to function, but fighting in the fog is a certain amount harder than fighting in, say, D-2. This only manifested itself in a noticeable way when going toe to toe with Maalik, where the fps made my shots somewhat more random than they might otherwise have been (not that that necessarily changed anything :P). I prefer fighting elsewhere, but it is not a very strong preference, and the interesting tactics the fog presents do have a draw. Now if only everyone didn't run around in damn valks... :P

The fog hung my client and with it my machine. It could have been a computer problem, but it would be the first time ever. I liked fighting in the fog, but it ate me.

"Now if only everyone didn't run around in damn valks... :P"

I assume people were literally running around in circles in valks?

What else would you do with a Valk?

run around in rectangles

more like ovals, I think. Making real rectangles would involve spending a lot of time at pretty low velocities to keep the turns sharp >.>

Also, the fog was horrible. I turned all my graphics settings way down and was still getting around 20 fps. For reference, I get well over 100 fps at high graphics settings in Nation War normally.

And we all know Valk pilots are deathly afraid of spending even small fractions of a second at velocities below 200m/s.

Fog wasn't an issue for me. The valk chases were good though, and for the record our Prom survived (and we know that thing wasn't running around).

Don't get me wrong, I think the fog was a blast. I was in a Valk running around, taking pot shots and repairing my team.

Unfortunately, the fog killed my machine. First time ever my entire machine has hung. Mighta been something unrelated to VO.

We should do more exhaustive testing of fights in the fog. And YOU were the repair guy?? We were looking for you!

We figured it had to be you or Maalik; the advent of S-Port repair guns makes the fact that a valk can run like a ninny in NW much more devastating. Put a rep gun on there, and the other teams have to kill any of your group members in one go before they get repped. A great and terrible threat...

What do you want done about it, diqrtvpe?

I wasn't suggesting anything be done about it, I was just pontificating. :P

But realistically speaking I don't think there's anything to do about it. It's a perfectly valid tactic, joined with the perfectly valid tactic of flying around in a valk. The only thing at this point to be done about it is wait for the Faction Redux, which will, hopefully, restrict a certain amount of the running to the Itani team.

It's not a complete game-changer. We noticed you guys were getting healed, and figured one of you had to have a rep gun, maybe even both of you. So we tried to kill you, much like we were already doing. We might need to make new tactics to deal with the situation, but functionally now instead of annoying wasps flying around our heads we have regenerating annoying wasps flying around our heads. The mechanics of swatting are still the same, they just might take a bit longer. :)

If the faction redux restricts ships that significantly it will massively unbalance PvP. If I'm uit and I want to fly around in a Valk I damn well better be able to do it.

but i think it is a game-changer. this nw would have been a lot closer if serco didn't have atice, folks, and solra in valks.

numbers plus reps plus valks is going to be a real pain to deal with in the future.

numbers plus reps plus valks is going to be a real pain to deal with in the future.

That's mainly because NW's sole objective -- be the last man standing regardless of how long you take to destroy all your opponents, and no matter how far you're driven away from spot X -- is tilted heavily towards the Valk's strengths and against the Prom's weaknesses.

I don't know that it's a viable approach given the marking out and monitoring issues, but if NW had an alternate means of victory like "keep at least 1 ship within this designated 500m box for 10 minutes," then the heavy weapons area control platform would have a way to win. As it stands now, the Prom is a joke in NW: nobody has to attack it except at the pace they choose and it cannot chase its opponents, which means a slow but inevitable death with zero hope of victory.

I disagree with this analysis of the prom's weakness and the valk's purported strength.

The game changer is organization.

The valk happens to work in NW now because you can be a cowboy and fly around on your own and come out on top. Get a group of good pilots in valks and they don't *need* to organize.

Proms, on the other hand, need to watch each other's backs so they can concentrate fire on the ships that wander in close enough. I've been in NWs where the serco team was very well organized and cohesive. You couldn't get near them without the SVGs flying cover for the proms distracting and then the proms getting in while you're distracted. Very effective if you don't see it coming.

To be honest, I think that given a bit of organization, the Serco team (or, really, any team) would own because they have the incentive to organize. The valk pilots have less incentive and will keep being cowboys because that's the sad way that fps games go when there's a cowboy option available.

The point is, though, that right now, the valk plays to cowboy (dis)organization and winds up carrying the day. I believe a bit of organization and discipline would completely change the dynamics and no amount of running around or "go it alone" would help.

Maybe we should try a couple NWs with stricter banned weps and ships in place. Do one where everyone has to fly a Vulture for example, or disallow all rockets, or all rep beams, etc.

Only slightly related, but NAPs should be forbidden. It's NATION WAR.