Mattherson Alerts - Observations on each empire

My main is VS. I've ran VS since Tech-Beta and was a PS1 vet from Beta past Core-Combat. That said, I've noticed a lot of complaining about VS dominating the server during most alerts so I took time to run full Alerts on TR and NC alts and see things from the other side. Here are personal observations on all three empires during alerts at multiple play times. This is not to say this is true all of the time, but reflective of how they preform.

VS - Orders chat is fairly active, sometimes to the point of being annoying. Some of the 'commanders' issue orders that do nothing to help the goal, but others are spot-on. I've noticed the most solid outfits stay mobile and are constantly looking for ways to circumvent the front-line grindfests. There is a problem with VS having a big zergling group charging head-long at objectives (ie bio-lab alert) but the active Orders and strong outfits hitting optional front-lines helps draw some of those troopers to other combat areas.

TR - Orders chat is used occasionally and seems to do a good job relaying priority targets. While there is still the normal zergling front-line push, it's a little more reserved and not as aggressive as VS. I'm not sure if this is due to all the lock-down and defensive weapons like the Striker, or a mentality with the players. There are some really strong outfits on TR, but they seem to run a lot of air and planes cannot take bases. When they do hit a base on the ground, it's pretty effective, but one or two outfits can't win an alert.

NC - Sheeze, did anyone buy Orders chat here? No communication with the common troops, no direction or emergency call-outs. One alert I ran had not one Orders message in the full 2 hours. I'll be honest, I love the NC weapons a lot. They are really effective. If they had some real leadership here, I think NC-Mattherson would be a pretty nasty force to deal with. There seems to be no shortage of NC air-outfits, but other than CML, I've seen little in the way of effective base-taking outfits. Someone REALLY needs to take charge here and direct the new players and loose outfits.

TL;DR
VS - Too many arm-chair commanders but lots of mobile/adaptive outfits
TR - Strong selective outfits with a few good commanders, but empire needs better directing of combined arms.
NC - Desperately needs commanders to direct the troops.

NC has the same problem as VS, too many commanders. The only difference is NC commanders don't talk to eachother and don't agree with eachother, and each one pulls their own outfit in their own direction. When the stars align and we all come together, it's great, but it's not often enough.

That might be the case. I was playing NC from a 'new' players perspective. No outfit, no command channel. Running about with the LA80 or Gauss-Saw helping on whatever fronts I could. I would have been happy to assist in important pushes to win, but me and the fellow zerglings around me had no direction, so it was a lot of grinding at the most convenient fight. It's really disappointing, the NC gear is surprisingly effective, so I'm shocked at the lack of NC wins.

Gotta be honest, you need to turn this post into advice, then take it back to GOON leadership.

I know VS orders chat can sometimes get confusing with so many messages. There are also a few people who I've learned to ignore when they use orders. Far too many times I've seen them call for help at some base that simply doesn't matter in the larger picture, and when I look at the map a second later, I see 1-12 against 1-12 with VS having 60+ pop in the hex.

Overall though, VS orders chat works well, and our outfits rock. Don't know how many times a base will have 30 seconds or less left on the timer, and almost always one of our outfits will drop in for the resecure. TR and NC rarely seem to do that unless its a tech plant/amp station/biolab. My brother plays TR, and watching him play his orders chat is much quieter, but still gets the point across.

VS Orders Chat.....Large group of TR capping Rashnu, 1:30 left NEED REINFORCEMENTS IMMEDIATELY!!!
TR Orders Chat...... VS taking Rahsnu.
NC Orders Chat..... So anyone else listen to that new Kid Rock song?

Somehow I doubt our outfit of 1-2 squads if that is the crux of the problem with organization on NC Mattherson.

Also, there is no GOON leadership. Think of GOON as an amorphous blob that shapes itself around the situation it's in.

Everyone can fall prey to "Too many Chiefs, and not enough Indians". TR is fully capable if certain people are online since sometimes a person will willfully disregard what the other outfits are doing, to try and act big by doing something else regardless of if it helps do the alert or not.

Yeah, I always figured GOON were just some guys hanging out and playing together. Nothing super serious. But that said, nothing keeping one of you from helping direct the common troopers on the ground to support an objective. I like good fights, I LOVE good fights. Anything I can do to improve the quality of combat between empires is a win.
(Disclaimer: "Good fight" does not mean Rocket-spam.)

GOON was to 4chan what TEST was to Reddit.

Absolutely terrible individually, but they would just pile their bodies up until they took the base.

Yeah, VS has a couple of those. They wanna run the show but have no idea what they're doing. It's funny how some TR claim TE led them to victory and now that they're gone, TR suffered. No, not really. I've fought TE since beta. They're a pack of rabid wolves that run about attacking whatever they can catch and steam-rolling with numbers. Laws of attrition and nothing more. BWC and AOD however, I will say tend to run strong Ops and can be fun to combat.

The VS GOON outfit, GOKU, is probably one of the best outfits on the server, with some of the best players. Hope this helps.

Spamming ZOE MAX until you run out of resources while swooping into a base that AT, DA, and the other VS outfits are already capping and swinging the pop to 70/30 makes you good now?

GOKU is one of the best outfits. they clearly get in ya heads and troll ya constantly. ya just feeding into it good tactic GOKU. keep it up.

Good observations Indigo, but a part of this all comes down to morale and the overall desire of the TR and NC to participate in alerts at all. From my alt playing on VS, it is clear that almost the entire empire gets behind an alert, even if they don't necessarily realize it at the time (due to good pub direction by large outfit leaders).

However, when playing on NC and TR, I notice the opposite. Most would rather just keep fighting in their current fight if it is a good one, myself included, even if the yellow text comes through giving direction on how to help win the alert. Some of this is due to lack of constant leadership, but my bet is that the biggest contributor is the months of dominance by VS with every alert.

I'm not going to debate why that dominance occurred, since I think that's been debated to death, but the fact is that it did, and continues to occur, leading many on the other empires to simply ask themselves why they should participate in this shoddy attempt at a metagame when they are having fun and gaining certs just fine in their current battles.

Just my two cents.

EoB

Nah, but you got a couple individuals that do exactly as you initially posted.

As an NC in a well known Mattherson Outfit (CML), our thought on most alerts are......big deal. Most alerts see VS Population jump to 40-45% of world pop. It is no fun becoming cert farms for Vanu, that usually overpop NC at almost any base we fight at. Ever try to dislodge 50 ZOE Maxes in a Biolab? Even with 80 Scat/Hack Maxes (Supposedly the best Max in a Biolab, yeah right, who is kiddng who here? ), we just end up as vanu certs.

Sure we can go to Esamir or Amerish and basically ghost cap, but that is boring as fu.....

So we find a nice even fight somewhere and have a good time....

VS pop advantage is huge.I don't even try for alerts anymore.

Although to be fair, we get stomped by VS even when we have the numbers advantage. I swear last night they stopped a Amp station cap with 8 guys when we were capping with 30.

It is because NC have players like Jkool in goon that would rather run infront of someone shooting a mine to clear and get killed by it and teamkill in retaliation enough said.

We had a pretty good alert on Mattherson earlier. Biolab alert, each faction started with one lab each. TR and VS were pretty much entirely ignoring Vanu all morning and just fighting each other on the east side of the map, so we had adjacency to Saurva when the alert started. We attacked it, and TR sent a decent amount of pop to defend it, but since NC refused to fight VS we were able to hit it with all of our population and pretty much steamroll TR. Then we pushed through Zurvan to Rashnu almost completely unopposed by NC, who continued to exclusively fight TR at the Crimson Bluff area.

The pops were something like 40-30-30 for the entirety of the alert. One of the most pathetic dominating victories we've had, but hey, at least TR tried a little bit!

Well it will never get better when you have some of the only decent NC outfits like CML ignoring alerts. Maybe if you ignore it long enough the problem will just go away? No wonder people are fleeing NC the leadership does not even try.