So I watched recoil's stream of what was happening on the water planet in Clan Wars #23, and I have some comments to make. Then I'll talk a bit about some issues I had with Agentx on the lava planet, and finally I'll explain how we'll manage large teams of players spread among different planets in the future, if we get more games like this (which we may not, more on which soon).
So first things first, I really enjoyed watching the war from recoil's perspective in his stream:
Insomnia Clan Wars #23 with recoil and The Cult
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE6kLP4gPOwNow I have a complete picture of what happened, at least from our side. It's a shame the other clans don't stream. I am guessing they are afraid of being cheated, so there's nothing more to say on the subject. I am a 42-year-old man and I don't cheat in videogames, and neither do my clan mates. But to each their own. I would advise them to give streaming a chance though, especially if they want to build large, long-lasting clans like mine. Streaming is a fantastic way to bring a bunch of people together and focus their attention on whatever games the clan is playing. Clans that stream together stay together. Just sayin'. Not to mention it's great advertising for the events, and if you want to play in big events you should maybe think of doing your part to promote them. Again, just sayin'.
Now as for recoil's stream, let me just say that he picked the worst spawn point I have ever seen in my 600 hours of playing the game. He landed in the middle of nowhere, without a single metal point nearby. And when I say nearby, I mean RIGHT NEXT TO IT; right next to AT LEAST two, if not three or more of them. What's worse is that he landed in the water, with a naval factory first, and the naval fabbers being the slowest in the game. It's like he's deliberately trying to throttle our early-game production. If he had just moved his cursor a bit he could have landed right on a metal spot, and grabbed it right away. Check how decent players play the game: the first thing they make is a factory, and the next thing is a metal spot with the commander, without moving at all from the landing point (since the commander is the slowest unit in the game, so you want to move as little as possible with it, especially at the start when every second counts). recoil was SEVERAL MINUTES away from grabbing a metal spot the way he played. Several minutes away for no conceivable reason.
There were countless other errors in Bravo team's play, but we all make many of those errors, so I won't bother pointing them out right now. We can deal with all those errors, but not if the VERY LANDING is botched and we have no metal! If everyone had landed as badly as recoil, we wouldn't have lasted half the time we did last. Fix your landings recoil, please. This shit is unacceptable, it's like you've never played the game before.
Apart from that, the Bravo team co-operated beautifully, so I am really happy with that.
I can't say the same for Alpha team, however, on the lava planet. The main issue was Agentx, who appeared to be randomly building stuff with no rhyme or reason, without bothering to inform anyone to boot. It's like he was playing alone. I would look over his base and suddenly there'd be orbital factories there, super-expensive useless factories at that point in the game chocking our economy while we desperately wondered how to find some metal to build a couple of tanks so we wouldn't get booted out of the planet. I got really pissed at him for a while, and nothing much I said seemed to change anything, so I kinda exploded on stream. I even whined about it to the other team, when I switched over to their voice channel: that's how frustrated I was. So while I apologized later for my outburst via DM, the issue remains that Agentx can't play Clan Wars with us again unless he starts acting as being part of a team, and properly co-operating.
The reason I exploded btw was that I was under a lot of pressure last Saturday. I have been working on and off on getting these events restarted ever since the summer, and on top of spending over a thousand dollars in server fees (our server used to cost $230/month before I found one for $150), I've spent dozens of hours getting the server set up, working on the mod, building maps, updating forum threads, communicating back and forth with dozens of people to ensure adequate participation, and so on. Finally, it's game day, and I have 14 people in the game, many of whom have contributed hundreds of dollars to the effort (including Agentx himself), and I am trying to ensure that everyone has a good time, so they feel their investment was worthwhile, and come back so we can keep playing. And none of this can happen if our clan gets eliminated in half an hour because we can't coordinate worth a shit. So on top of the administrative workload, I also had to figure out how to coordinate a NINE-PERSON clan, spread across TWO PLANETS and TWO VOICE CHANNELS, all the while being under constant pressure from the NUMBER ONE CLAN AND PLAYERS IN THE GAME. So yes, when I see the most expensive factories in the game above Agentx's base for no reason whatsoever, while we spent the last half an hour begging for some metal to build two tanks, I exploded, and though I am sorry about it I am sure that if it happened again I would explode again, so we need to find a way to ensure it doesn't happen again.
To be sure, I made mistakes too. My main mistake was letting everyone make his little base, instead of going two megabases, one per planet. Then I would have taken over production completely, and recoil would have done the same on the other planet, and the rest of the players would have taken other roles, and I think we would have performed better. And Agentx wouldn't have had the opportunity to waste so many resources, which in the thick of the moment honestly felt like sabotage.
But you live and you learn, and if we play Clan Wars again this Saturday (which we may not, depending on what the other clans do; we may end up playing Clanless Wars instead, more on which soon), and we get a lot of people in our team again, we're definitely going megabase. That said, that doesn't mean that that would solve the Agentx problem completely, because the strict division of roles only helps in the early-game; by the time the mid-game rolls around, you have people colonizing planets or moons on their own, or setting up multiple advance bases on the same planet, so eventually everyone gets to build factories and order units and manage bases on their own.
So what I am trying to say is that people who play in Clan Wars in my clan need to be able to co-operate properly, or they can't play. You can't go T2 without telling anyone in a shared economy game: that is SABOTAGE, and if you do it I will get really cross at you, and eventually kick you out of my team. Agentx didn't just "go T2": he made HALF A DOZEN T2 factories without telling anyone over the course of the game, and what's worse half a dozen factories that had nothing at all to do with our strategic plan at the moment, pumping out super-expensive units we had no use for. He screwed us over real good! I don't mind inexperienced players in my team, and I don't mind people making mistakes—I make mistakes all the time—but I draw the line at sabotage, and Agentx pissed all over it.
Bottom line is everyone agrees that my Clan Wars are the best PA event ever, and produce the best PA games, but you have to be able to achieve some MODICUM of co-operation in order to be allowed to play in them. This is a STRATEGY game, and the people playing it want to DEVISE STRATEGIES, which is IMPOSSIBLE if every dude randomly clicks the buttons on the screen without telling anyone anything IN A NINE-PLAYER TEAM SPREAD OUT ACROSS TWO PLANETS FOR FUCK'S SAKES. We're on the verge of taking PA to a whole new level, with multiple Planetary Commanders coordinating with a Supreme Commander to devise the kind of complex strategies hitherto reserved for turn-based games, but not if the players refuse to talk to each other for christsake. I know some people are shy or whatever, some people don't like to talk, or they simply suck so bad at strategy that it just doesn't enter their heads that multiplayer strategy requires coordination, but I DON'T CARE. I do want everyone to be happy and have fun, but not if one person's fun comes at the expense of EVERYONE ELSE'S FUN, and utterly ruins the strategy in the strategy events I have been working for years to set up.
Bottom line is: coordinate properly, or be excluded from Clan Wars. It's your choice.
That said, we're only playing Clan Wars again if the clans continue to participate in our events, which is uncertain. If they don't, we're going back to Clanless Wars, which means our clan will be divided in several teams, which means the teams will be far smaller, with perhaps two or three people in each. Moreover, these teams will be random, so over the long run every team will have to play with Agentx, or with whoever else has trouble with coordination, so in the end the handicap will even out. So for Clanless Wars, I will allow people to take part who suck at coordination. That said, if you're in my team and refuse to coordinate your efforts with me, I might just give you my commander and log off and go play 1v1 Ranked. If I am playing alone, I may as well control all of my units. That's my thinking at any rate, and the other players are free to do what they see fit.
And of course, Agentx can still play in Battle Royale, and in King of the Planet, since there's very little if any coordination required for those events. And of course, he can try Clan Wars again with us, to see if things will improve, but I honestly doubt it. We had another person with the same issue some years ago, infernovia, and in the end we simply had to stop playing PA with him. None of the second chances I gave him worked, and he simply refused to coordinate with us in any way, shape or form. It's just not fun playing the most complex strategy game ever with such people, and they ruin all the fun of it, they take all the fun out of the damn game. And there's nothing I can do to change that. Thankfully, the vast majority of CULT players are not like that, so we're good. And btw, the vast majority of players in OTHER clans ARE like that. Even when they land together, they're like "don't touch my fabbers" and "don't touch my units", so for people who prefer this playstyle, you do have the option of joining another clan. I am just sayin'. At least only for PA, if you want. Think it over, and if you like the idea, talk to people and maybe we can make it happen. I want everyone to be happy, and I will do everything in my power to make this so, except destroy my fun. Because if I destroy my fun I won't run the events, and no one will be happy.
And finally, now that I am done with the whining, let's talk about something fun: the new Planetary Commander role that for the first time emerged from our 9-player team on Saturday. Btw, I don't think we've ever played with a 9-player team before. I think the most we've done in the past is 8 players, and we weren't starting on two planets. So that's why we had to use two voice channels for the first time. I don't think it's possible to use a single channel under such circumstances. And this means that each planet must get its own Planetary Commander, and that the two of them must try to coordinate their efforts as best they can, otherwise the economy will be permanently crashing, as it was for us, not to mention it will be impossible to focus attacks, draw up a strategy, and so on.
For a first attempt, I think we did decently last Saturday. recoil and I hopped back and forth across channels, and we had a general plan throughout, even though it lacked detail. What I want to try next time we have a similar setup (i.e. enough players in a large system in a large war), is try to establish a direct channel of communication between Planetary Commanders without having to switch voice channels. E.g. they could be in a Mumble server, or a Skype chat, and use push-to-talk to chat between themselves while staying put in Discord. Let me know if you think of any other solutions.
Please note that only CULT faced these issues last Saturday. If we had only had two or three players like the other clans, a single voice channel would have sufficed. Nine players bring a whole other level of complexity to the game, and we're the only clan that has ever faced this level, because we are the only clan with so many players (not to mention the only event that ALLOWS so many players in a single team). And note that I want ALL our players to try out the roles of Planetary Commander or even Supreme Commander in the long run, if they want. But it can't be someone who doesn't know the units, or how to pick a decent spawning point, or who doesn't like to talk, and is therefore incapable of coordinating a strategy. If you like the damn game, and want to try the tougher roles, play the game until you've got at least the basics down, and then I'll give you higher roles. So far, the only ones I deem qualified for Planetary Commander are me, recoil and ChevRage. Maybe Robomoo and Some guy could also qualify if they can demonstrate that they can take charge of a situation and manage people properly (which includes speaking LOUDLY and CLEARLY and OFTEN), we'll see. Everyone else needs to play A LOT MORE and learn how the game works, before I even consider taking a look at their leadership qualities. That said, some players will likely not want to command other players at all, and that's fine. But for those who want to, I need to see that you can get the job done at an adequate level so that you don't ruin everyone's fun, and ultimately the event itself, through sheer incompetence.
I am writing several articles that I'll be posting on the
Cosmic War site soon, so look out for those. First I need to figure out how to log into it lol (I seem to have lost my password), then update the event schedule and leaderboards, and then I can finally properly resurrect the site with a bunch of cool new articles. Stay tuned.