New Conglomerate Alliance Emerald

If you're looking for a good tanker outfit, WILD has been talking about their new tank tactics lately, and would probably appreciate another good tanker. TAS is more multi-purpose, but they are a solid outfit. If you're looking for something more casual, PXP is probably your go to. They're more about having fun than winning, but they're still a powerful outfit whether or not they're playing seriously.

If you'd like, I can put you in touch with the leaders of these outfits and see if I can't find a spot for you in one of their ops nights.

Shameless plugging for my NC outfit.
Join RCN6 (Recon Team 6) and you will have the most (somewhat drunk) fun in your life.

RCN6 is a little bit on the smaller size, but they are still quite active despite it, and remain one of the best small outfits in the NC. I highly recommend playing with them if you want a tighter, more social experience that still plays the game to its fullest. Tons of respect for that outfit.

Thanks, I'll probably do some poking around once midterms calm down.

If this ever gets a Teamspeak server, I might actually roll a medic on Emerald just to support it.
I'd much rather play for the TR there.... but if they're not going to do the same, then I guess this would be the only option?

I thought it was just an urban myth that NC rolls deep on HA. Then I came over from the VS front to take a break, and it's like, HA, HA everywhere! One is left to wonder how NC loses so many battles with that many HAs and Scatmaxes leading the charge.

Congratulations on winning that Indar alert tonight, NC!

Although, if I have to give any advice to this New NC, it's don't turn into the bleedin' VS and make every zerg into a spawn camp fest just because "everyone else does it".

The alert started with TR having about 47% territory.

Then as usual TR and NC are locked horns while Vanu was capping every TR territory in the NE with practically no resistance. All of a sudden, TR withdrew everything from the western side of Quartz Ridge and Indar Comm and stop VS at Howling Pass with 3 minutes left to cap. They also stopped VS from taking Mao Tech Plant.

NC ended up ghostcapping most of the territories west to win by barely 1 territory at the last minute. In normal situations, TR will ignore VS taking everything. This time, they somehow withdrew to defend from the VS.

It's the story of Emerald: TR is deathly afraid of confronting VS during alerts. They don't go on offense against VS. For most of the Alert TR simply held Quartz Ridge and Indar Comm Array against the NC. VS went from 18% territory to 36% right up to that moment the TR redeployed to defend their eastern front.

My guess here is TR wanted a draw between NC and VS but NC managed to squeak one last base at Dahaka Southern before the fight ended. That or VS metawarriors are running TR platoons to order TR to fight VS and give NC a win. Either way, it's artificial. NC can take all the losses and still chug by. But the TR have completely given up on competing with VS.

SOE will have to nerf the Magriders and the Lancers to change the faction status quo if they don't want this type of faction avoidance to continue.

VS Emerald are bored to death.
NC is NC. Bring it, both of you TR and VS.
TR is downsliding and continue to follow and hound NC wherever we go because "NC is fun to fight".

On that alert alone NC and TR had a tumultuous and up and down fight North of Allatum Biolab all the way to Indar Comm. Vanu experience? Ghostcapping TR territories and stealing Scarred Mesa from the NC. The TR and NC are so into it, that most NC forgot about Scarred Mesa . By the time reinforcements arrived, it was too late. Scarred Mesa is one the easily most defensible base in PS2.

How bored are the VS Emerald? These guys run TR Platoons to teach them how to fight the VS. Yet TR always end up fighting NC anyways.

We do kind of have a TS server for the alliance, but it predates the merger and hasn't seen use since. The big problem is getting people to use it.

And thats the thing. NC Emerald Command chat is either not used at all, or used by ******** little kids. Command Chat should have been something you truely earn through a Command Rank and not just something you with certs. Much like in PS1, you had to earn Command Ranks by actually being a squad leader during base caps. I wonder why SOE did not implement Command Ranks in this game. It would have easily eliminate the inexperience and the kids spamming it.

Falcon any updates on this? I would like to see a TS server for this. I can spread this info with my CO at SubG but there has to be a way for us to unite thats not the forums.

Funny you should mention, SubG just signed up at the Emerald NC forums. You can find us at ncheadquarters.com if you're interested.

Falcon I will preface this by saying good luck as I agree with the majority who have said this is probably doomed to failure. However unlike the pointless posts that explain nothing about the history of Mattherson NC, I think you deserve to hear an analysis of the NC for the last 2 years.

First a little about myself. I have been playing since late beta and was a member of an outfit that suffered from NC infighting from before PS2 officially launched. DBD, Death Before Dishonor, was a medium outfit with some early members in PS1 who wanted to play something after BF3 was such a bust. We all joined NC, the tough man's faction (back in the glory days when the Gauss Saw really was balanced and God like) and enjoyed the beta very well. I immediately disliked the vanguard and was partially relegated to the job of tanking support by use of the lightning. My career in PS2 is about 50% infantry and 50% Lightning duty which eventually led to my allure of the game to be able to improve my armor and infantry ability.

Getting back on subject the our downfall was indicative of the overall NC cancer. We believed that every other NC outfit was guilty of these unforgivable sins.

1. No NC outfits bothered to look at the map and send reinforcements, even when we would request them from the NC alliance. It didn't matter if we requested things early the alliance never REQUIRED members outfits to send aid. It could only REQUEST help. Any outfit that was doing anything remotely important would just say it was busy and nothing would happen
2. People were concerned about farming and little else. At the time the NC were the #1 faction. We used to double cap continents when the crown was the only place worth controlling. You think it was bad with the Vanu now try back then but as super op NC. We simply had no reason to have infighting but guess what happened....
3. INFIGHTING / BLAMING EVERYONE ELSE. Little did I know that the faction leaders for the NC had really deep seated dislike from PS1. Apparently, old habits die hard and any little incidents between outfits would flare up into major incidents and until the outfit leaders cooled their jets, NC alliances were essentially counter productive.
4. The infighting between outfits eventually sparked internal debates and infighting in the largest outfits with friends outside of the main outfit. Okay what do I mean by this? Take outfit DBD, we had members starting to total about 120 members. We were originally a military orientated group but in order to gain member we recruited more people. Some of those people were from CML, TAS, etc and they were former members of the alliance. We have an incident with the alliance, they start to spread rumors about the other outfits not coming to our aid and we start to become distrustful. Tempers flare when they again don't come to our aid in time. We eventually become outright hostile and to keep our members happy by making sure our raid nights do not have constant holds and wipes from waiting on the NC alliance; we stop communicating with the alliance entirely.
5. The only outfits that held together after a year had extremely strong, centralized leadership. CML, BAX (my current outfit), SG etc. These are in turn led by leaders such as Dzire and Ltiy. This was a survival instinct as the groups only trusted those members who they had served with and leadership who got the job done. But this same leadership was extremely inflexible because no one wanted to be burned and eventually you get used to having your own way. It works but ultimately spelled the death of any alliance because these groups just want to do their own thing and specialize down to what they do best. BAX was and is an infantry focused unit with no more than a platoon reinforced at any given time. They are good, able to trade blows with DA and GOTR but it lacks the combined arms approach that controls and holds territory and will never field the numbers to counter zergs or large factions. CML was more balanced but still infantry focused with an ability to field multiple platoons. BUT IF THERE IS ONE THING THAT MARKS PS2, THEN IT IS THAT COMBINED ARMS SEEMS TO CAUSE NC OUTFITS TO SPLIT APART. IE TAS, CML, etc.
6. Ultimately, the problem was being initially overpowered/overconfident, leading to disappointment/distrust, infighting, and conserving what remained of NC leadership and successful operational units without that combined arms approach that was the hallmark of the game.

Now after the merger, these problems seemed to have gone away. Emerald inherited NON-Mattherson NC outfits that did combined arms and had no knowledge of infighting. Even better 666 Devil Dogs and Phoenix had NO NEED for new experienced Mattherson members who could spark this infighting. It was perfect; the large combined arms outfits who didn't respond to requests but simply moved across the map in a slow but efficient way allowed the super specialized units to do galaxy drops onto contested points in 3 on 1 fights that they enjoyed. Best of all there was now the expectation that someone was going to get there in 5-10 minutes to make their difficult fight overcome all odds and cap the base. Meanwhile the Zerg/large outfits got to pounce on distracted, disorganized defenders and fight in a relatively level playing field where the Vanu could not leverage their famous coordinated action. Say what you will of DA, GOTR etc but at least they bring a decent amount of armor and a SURPLUS of sunderers to a fight which allows the Zerg to help them swarm objectives.
Alas, I don't know what happened but it seems that these large non specialized outfits have lost a lot of their strength or no longer push as effectively as they once did. Could be the Vanu learned how to counter uncoordinated armor by swarming magriders. In fact, I believe the nerf to the Saron and the rise of the PPA allowed them to quickly form ad hoc resistances that the NC are naturally weak against because we RARELY PULL COORDINATED HEAVY ARMOR.

It could be that we simply have no well elite tanking groups to hold the line intelligently causing mass slaughter, but what an NC alliance needs to succeed are these simple things.

1. A guarantee that they will send aid when requested ESPCIALLY for alerts in a timely fashion.
2. A main force tasked with taking territory with THE USE OF HEAVY TANKS, AA, AND REPAIR SUNDYs. I cannot stress this enough nothing will break the camel's back and disappoint than having momentum get smashed, you need to recruit a platoon that specializes, no, DEDICATES their life to armor / AA. It doesn't have to be a quick attack group, it doesn't have to have 1000 members but it does need a hard core group of tankers, lightnings, and sundys that are willing to take to the field in almost a Platoon size element. We will always lose without these two things and you need to have a crack force that will decimate the enemy armor. It can be done my buddy herrfaul and I used to go greater than 100:1 in a vanguard. From practice we used to decimated armor in the fields west of the crown. But it takes practice something no NC outfit has been willing to do so far.
3. Use the specialized NC outfits for what they can do but don't expect them to perform miracles or change their tactics even if it seems obvious. Hmm what do I mean by this, the Vanu and TR adapt rapidly to the field. In they are north of quartz ridge and the NC are sallying forth, they will take the high ground and spam lockdown prowlers, AP Magrider Strafe, Missile turret batteries etc to wipe the floor with attacks. Their leadership just sets it up, and they JUST DO IT. The NC just does not do it. They will run in head first to get it blown off with all the bravado in the world but even the elite outfits don't like TAKING THE TIME TO FLANK. You got to set these up, by micromanaging these tactics in baby style to get them to work and expect to get a butt-hurt response from the elite outfits. Your best bet are going to be young poorly certed outfits that just want to get the most advantage they can and deal the most damage possible.

I could go on and on but I think that the long lasting members of the NC and our competition in the Vanu would agree with me on these points.For reference points to the examples I listed please look up the histories of TAS, CML, SG, etc to understand the breakups that occurred and the loss of experienced NC leadership and players.

I apologize for the grammatical and spelling errors. This document was hastily written as it expresses my frustration with the NC that I have noticed for the past 2 years.

I wish you the best of luck regardless.

[BAX] BlackShrike

Seems you've given this quite a bit of thought. To be honest, most of the people who are pushing this alliance currently either came from Waterson or weren't personally involved with the Mattherson alliances. I can only speak for Waterson, but we did manage some success with an alliance for quite some time, and another group (the Coalition of Badass, an alliance formed specifically to serve smaller outfits) has been running relatively strongly since its inception. I can't say for certain things have changed, and there is definitely still some infighting, as you'll see on the site I'm going to link you to, but I'm confident in the core leadership that we have left. The details behind the alliance haven't quite made its way to the forums yet, but the gears are turning. Perhaps you could drop by and help guide this movement to success?

http://www.ncheadquarters.com/forum/index.php

Also, the CoB site, if you're interested
http://coalitionofbadass.com:1337/

Relationships between outfits are incredibly important. The only way you get good relationships between your outfits is to frequently interact with each other in a positive manner.

Outfit leaders, if you haven't already, learn who the other OLs or platoon leaders are for other outfits. This starts with you, not with your BR10 members who are still learning how the game works. If you and another leader are able to communicate and work together, that's the best start you can have.

Be as inclusive as you can - and I can't stress this enough, some have said it in this thread already - use in-game leader chat as much as possible. Sometimes you might want to use proximity voice, if you see another outfit with you and want to coordinate. You will shoot yourself in the foot if you start consistently using a third-party VOIP for all coordination. That said, feel free to do a big joint op where everyone's on the same TS or whatever - but make that a special event, or something weekly or monthly, not every day. Every day interactions really need to be using in-game leader chat, you have to make those good connections with other outfits.

There is nothing more powerful for interoutfit relations than an amazing base capture or defense alongside another outfit. Even the smallest, seemingly insignificant communication -

"GOKU, is that you guys at Mekala?"

"Yeah, we're hitting the tunnels now"

"Great, we'll drop on the roof"

These are the building blocks of good outfit relations and any attempt at an "alliance" - which I'm not the biggest fan of generally unless you are willing to include everybody - will rely on you actually knowing each other, and you can only know each other if you work together on even the smallest level.

Good luck in your endeavors. I'm hoping to see some serious, organized NC competition.

We've done it at least once before on Emerald. Here's hoping we can make it consistent. Thanks for the well wishes.

I kind of can't help but feel that all the NC tankers, the ones that were good and consistently pulled a ton of tanks, decided to just move to VS/TR. 'Cause this game isn't built with defense in mind, and NC are pretty much mutant hedgehog turtles.

i feel honored...I feel notorious...I feel like...muahhahahahahahaha...BRING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bingo. VS command chat (somtimes) is filled with these small communications.
Infact I remember the days (before the merger) when on Mattherson, VS would report their outfit, numbers, and current attacking location in command chat at the start of an alert. Back then, when alerts were new and all the rage, I remember the excitement of starting a coordinated attack on other factions by speaking to command.

"Good day command, this is Fireclaw from Rabble [RBLE] with 2 Squads currently fighting on Esamir. We will be moving over to Amerish to help with the alert in approx 5 mins."

"Hey there Fireclaw, Nightmare [NMTR] has 1 platoon currently fighting at Sungrey Amp station. We could use some reinforcements ASAP, as we're currently under MAX crash by the NC"

etc.

You get the idea. My point is, that you don't need any "Alliance" to communicate with your teammates. You're all NC.
Also, I really miss those awesome VS coordinated attacks. Sadly, it doesn't happen much anymore since most major outfits roll by themselves and just steamroll everything with overpop and PPA spam. Those messages were much more common after ZOE got nerfed, and VS was underpowered and underpoped on Mattherson. (They were also the days where BCP and TE ruled over our server, and we actually had to cooperate to beat his zergs).