How to base

[Aileron]

This is a guide to team based basing strategy. This is based off of both my background in various basing zones, as well as my background in military tactics. Obviously, in Continuum teams are formed ad hoc, so the use of any specific team plan is limited. Thus, this guide covers the core tactics which winning teams do naturally, so as to provide guidance as to how players can work in a team better and what ship builds they develop.

 

1: The roles

 

While there is a large number of ship builds in HS, successful flagging designs typically fill one of the following roles:

 

Lanc: These are the players who everyone else attaches to. It is sometimes expedient to have ship other than a lancaster to function as the team's lanc, but even a cheap lanc is preferable. Essential to a good lanc is summon and antideath, so in HS this role requires someone who has been around a while.

 

Rushers: These ships are designed to charge at the enemy and push them back with repels, as well as clear the passage of fire for following units. One ship that is good for this is the lanc for its high energy levels. However, a quick ship like a warbird or some weasels perform this role very well too, provided they are built for speed and have 3 or 4 repels. When this variety is employed, it accomplishes both the rush role all the time and the leak role some of the time, so I put them in this category.

 

Gunners: These ships are simple. They are designed to shoot bullets to fill a corridor with fire so as to kill or suppress the enemy. A good gunner needs to have bounce. Guns come in the high-damage low efficiency and low damage high efficiency varieties. Both can work in theory. With high efficiency, multiple gunners shoot simultaneously. With high damage, they have to take turns shooting. I recommend high efficiency because it is simpler in practice.

 

Bombers: These ships are designed to kill the enemy with bombs. Bombs are hazardous at close range, so these ships need up-front protection.

 

Weasels: I place this in a different category than bombers, because the weasels EMPs do not do much damage to teammates, bounce a lot, and don't really get the kill as much as screw with the enemy gunner's ability to shoot. Not all weasels fit into this category: I've seen some designed for rushing and leaking.

 

Leakers: There are a variety of ways to leak: Cloak, portal, or repel through. The result is the same. A leaker is any ship that tries to bypass the enemy's lines in order to force them to abandon their position to chase the leaker or risk losing the flags or having the timer reset.

 

 

How it fits together:

 

Your typical flagging scenario looks like this: You have two teams about two obstacles away from each other putting a continuous volume of fire into the no-mans-land between them. To advance, a team must establish fire superiority over the enemy. Whichever team establishes the greatest volume of continuous, accurate fire will advance. So, the role which is critical to victory is the gunner. All other ships play a support role. The only exception is the bomber, which actually becomes the primary role IF AND ONLY IF THERE IS A LONG CORRIDOR WHICH YOU CAN'T RANGE WITH GUNS.

 

Advancing in a base is a three step process:

1: Clear no-man's-land of enemy fire

2: Set up positions in no-man's-land

3: Establish fire superiority.

 

Once step 3 is accomplished, the enemy team will either move back or be killed. The role critical to step 1 and 2 is the rusher. Additionally, for step 2, the gunners have to be right behind the rushers and start accurate fire as soon as possible. If fire superiority is not established, then the rush is in vain. For a rusher, it is beneficial if they take a second to make sure that there are gunning teammates already in base, otherwise the rush is wasted. Also, if there are two or more rushers, they should rush at the same time.

 

Thus, your two 'grunts' are your rushers and you gunners. Every play should have at least one ship which can function in this role.

 

 

Support roles:

 

Bombers: They are useful when either bomb lanes or long ranges make the use of bombs more appropriate than the use of guns. When this happens, bombers are the primary role. Lacking this, a bomber doesn't even offer good support and should switch to a gunning ship, especially on offense. Another note I will add: Don't be that guy who is outside the base wall-bombing the enemy team. You'll only get a kill once in a while, which is good for your ratio but bad for your team as you are little more useful than a spectator.

 

Weasels: They support step 3 by denying the enemy the ability to establish fires. You need an L3 bomb or bigger for this, so as to EMP the *whole* enemy team and not just the one gunner up front who is about to die anyway, and don't expect to actually get kills.

 

Leakers: Face it, when a leak works, it kicks ass, but it rarely works. Cloak/Speed Leaks should be timed to coincide with heavy rushers.

 

 

Numbers:

There needs to be one lanc on a team. Two or three is better.

There should be 2-4 rushers on a team. Any more than that, and your team probably isn't putting down enough fire to secure the area after the rush.

There should never be more than one weasel on a team. That one weasel should be a really good shot.

There should not be more than one pure leaker on a team. The rush/leak combo using repels fits into the 'rusher' category.

Bombers should not be on the team unless the situation warrants it.

 

Everyone else should be up front shooting!!!

[Dr Brain]

Well written, with a superior command of the English language. I salute you, sir.

[Cheese]

you forgot to add an asterisk which reads:

 

*Bombs are useless in Hyperspace, as 19/20 bombs are repelled.

[»Ceiu]

Rushers: These ships are designed to charge at the enemy and push them back with repels, as well as clear the passage of fire for following units. One ship that is good for this is the lanc for its high energy levels. However, a quick ship like a warbird or some weasels perform this role very well too, provided they are built for speed and have 3 or 4 repels. When this variety is employed, it accomplishes both the rush role all the time and the leak role some of the time, so I put them in this category.

 

There should be 2-4 rushers on a team. Any more than that, and your team probably isn't putting down enough fire to secure the area after the rush.

 

These two statements embody the primary problem with Hyperspace right now. Do yourself and the zone a favor and stop hyping this jackassary. Hero-mode flagging is beyond stupid.

 

 

Gunners: These ships are simple. They are designed to shoot bullets to fill a corridor with fire so as to kill or suppress the enemy. A good gunner needs to have bounce. Guns come in the high-damage low efficiency and low damage high efficiency varieties. Both can work in theory. With high efficiency, multiple gunners shoot simultaneously. With high damage, they have to take turns shooting. I recommend high efficiency because it is simpler in practice.

 

And this highlights the problem with the players: You guys hit the easy button too quickly and too often.

 

 

 

Arnk and/or Brain, you guys should do everything in your power to fix these immediately.

 

Quickfix suggestions:

- Make guns more expensive.

- Make items recharge.

[vetta64]

1. Weasels can very easily do more damage to your own team than the enemy team.

 

2. Wall bombing is not as fail as you think in certain situation. Using a lvl 3 or 4 bomb is probably one of the most effective way of helping to clear that long corridor at the bottom of b7 without doind damage to your own team. You forget that while each bullet can does damage to just one person, one lvl 4 bomb correctly fired can damamge a whole team.

 

3. I would say leaking and rushing are almost 1 in the same. You are going to rush anyway, if you get in far enough and you have ad you may end up leaking anyhow.

 

 

I did appreciate this post. I hope more people will read it without shooting it down as a rant.

 

The point that is being made here that is useful is that there are different ships, and different ship sets for each ship that when used together create a team. In basing if there is not team work there is usually no win.

 

I have seen a team full of vets with great ships get held back by noobs who really want to win and are forced to work like a team (this usually doesn't happen). This happens when the vets don't care about playing on a team and only want to be the hero.

[Aileron]

As for the 'easy' button, usually in any sort of competitive event, if your opponent hits the 'easy' button and you don't, you'll probably lose.

 

In the case of gunning, I'll admit that a team that can get two spiders with plasma cannons to "talk" to each other, it would be more lethal than two spiders with beam arrays both blasting constantly. Granted, at a steady stream of fire against an stationary unarmored target, two beam arrays crank out 1024 dps while one plasma cranks out 793 dps. However, in a base you are either shooting at a charging target or your bullet cloud is bouncing off of a wall after being repelled. Also, I for one and I would assume everyone who wants to get bullet armor without using a sig slot uses the exoskeleton. Given those things, I'd expect a plasma cloud to be more lethal than a beam cloud.

 

So why don't I recommend the complicated method? Because things can go wrong. First off, taking turns shooting isn't as easy as it seems, as you have to intuitively know when your partner stops shooting for you to start. One of the two shooters could take damage which will mess up their rhythm. One shooter could get killed - what does the other do? One could get repelled out of position. The list of Murphy's Law possibilities is quite long. Those problems can certainly be adjusted for, GIVEN THAT THE GUNNERS PRACTICE THE TECHNIQUE TOGETHER, which doesn't happen with ad hoc teams in pub. If we were talking members of the same squad, and they actually spent the time to rehearse techniques together, then I would recommend it.

 

So, this 'problem' will never be solved, because of the fundamental fact a team that was built five minutes ago can't execute complicated techniques.

 

 

As for bombers, there are places where bombers work well, such as the corridor on the south side of base 7. Also, there are times when wall-bombing works. On the other hand, there are other times where the use of bombs is entirely inappropriate. Its hard to describe without a lengthy lesson in military tactics.

 

 

In any operation, the commander has to determine which role is 'decisive' which is the one thing that absolutely has to get done for the mission to succeed. Then he has to choose the support roles which allow the decisive role to happen. In flag basing, that decisive role is the gunners up front shooting. This is decisive because the goal is not to kill the enemy (which is nice but not required...if the defense gets pushed back all the way to their FR they still lose), but to move forward in the base in a secure manner. The rushers support the gunners by clearing the way. Lancs support logistically. Bombers and weasels provide fire support. Leakers attempt what in military tactics is called a 'turning movement'. Another principle of tactics is 'economy of force', which states that minimum forces should be assigned to secondary efforts, and that maximum forces should be applied to the decisive effort.

 

Thus, a team shouldn't have many bombers, for the exact reason that because they damage all enemy rather than just one, there doesn't need to be a lot of bombers to accomplish their role.

 

 

Rushing and leaking are definitely two different strategies. Yes, sometimes the rush leads to the leak, but there are other pure leaker methods out there like cloaking and portaling. The rush warbird may accomplish the leak role once in a while, but the cloaking shark does NOT accomplish the rush role. Again, there shouldn't be more than one pure leaker on a team if that.

[Unix]

Rushing isnt about leaking, like Aileron said it can lead to the leak, but the original purpose wasnt to leak. Rushing is killing anything in your way and effectively pushing the opposing team. Cerium, you have coined rushing into "hero mode".

 

I generally dont like making parallels from zone to zone, but a lot of the tactics in which you deem the easy button or hero mode flagging is in a lot of zones. DSB is probably the easiest example and one we can all somewhat know since we've been there once or twice.

 

DSB has a few similar tactics that HS uses. Spamming of weapons and specials being two of them. Now I've never heard anyone complain about either or, granted we have a few different things such as larger ships, one way basing, but in the end it is a very viable tactic and one that several zones use. Metal Gear CTF had zero cost for shooting anything, so you could spam weapons nonstop.

 

As for specials, DSB is probably just as spammy if not more than HS. MG also was like this too, it's not a new tactic in which players use specials to overcome obstacles. The problem isnt the amount, but the power of the specials, not so much bursts, but the repels.

 

Gunners and back lancs also have a sub-role, the leak controller. These ships are used to contain any and all leaks. Many spiders tend to use space mines to try and control them.

[»Ceiu]

The problem is that one tactic is so powerful that it's making everything else useless as a result. Why bother with real strategy when you can just have a few guys go hero-mode until someone breaks the enemy lines? Not only are "rushers" single-handedly pushing back the enemy, but they're negating bombs and significantly reducing the effectiveness of bullets (especially non-bouncing bullets). This single tactic is so powerful that it can win encounters by itself -- hence "hero-mode." It's stupid that such a tactic exists, and even more stupid that you people consider it a viable gameplay option.

[Unix]

But the question isnt how to utterly stop the tactic, since we know it's a widely used tactic in many other zones, not just HS. How can we, like many other things in the zone, nerf rushing and at the same time allowing other tactics to become usable?

 

To make it clear, there are differences in rushers in the sense that, not all rushers can actually push well, leak or whatever. It takes more than just items to actually make rusher do well, first you need the items and then the ability to use them. It's not as simple as rep rep rep rep burst burst or whatever, there are reasons why there are better rushers than others. It's not like a team of three rushers will rush just as well as another team of three rushers.

 

Non-bouncing bullets just arent as effective compared to bouncing bullets in base, it's just natural.. The only time non-bouncing bullets are effective is when you're pretty much on top of the enemy in a base.

 

Also, I'd like to add, the biggest reason why rushers are able to in a sense push a team single handedly isnt because they're rushing well or what not, teams will just be idiots and back up. Teams will back up so they dont die, it's not the rusher that is actually pushing them persay, its just idiots falling back for no particular reason.

[Emit]

Cerium will never be good at the zone with this setting. Or any zone for that matter.

[»Ceiu]

Whatever you need to tell yourself to keep justifying this bullshit Unix. You kids can have fun with your two button gameplay. I'll just do something else which is actually fun.

[Corey]

Whatever you need to tell yourself to keep justifying this bullshit Unix. You kids can have fun with your two button gameplay. I'll just do something else which is actually fun.

3 buttons sometimes sir.

[kid]

I must disagree with your argument that there should never be more than one weasel on a team. As far as Point Defense rushers go, weasel has arguably the best combination of maneuverability and energy, making it a solid rusher. On top of that, given that the rushing weasel does leak, it has the ability to EMP the enemies while repping them, doing tremendous amounts of damage with the Point Defense. Having three or four of these ships is quite effective, even moreso than other rushing ships, sometimes.

[Aileron]

I was describing roles, not ships. I named the role 'weasel' because that is the only ship that can fill the role of the bouncy emp bomber. If a player happens to be flying a weasel, but is rushing, he's a 'rusher'. By no more than one player in the weasel role, I meant there should be at most one player in the back lobbing EMP bombs. If players are rushing in ship 6, that's entirely different. Sorry for the confusion.

 

BTW its the same for the 'lanc'. 'Lanc' the role means 'staying in the back with summon on'. If someone is using a rush lanc, his role is 'rusher'.

 

 

 

By the way, here's what right looks like:

 

 

All that's missing is an EMP-chucker. Also, we only had one rusher, but since we pushed them all the way to the front of the base we couldn't rush any farther. However, note that you need to have more gunners than rushers, as you need to hold an area by filling it with bullets after the rush occurs. Leak and flank are the same role applied to offense and defense, so I marked the guy flanking on my radar as 'leaker'.

Edited October 13, 2009 by Aileron

[CapnBoost]

I agree with this 100%. A team of rushers either wins or dies, leaving their lanc vulnerable to a quick death. Other times, the rush is so successful that the rushers leave the lanc in the proverbial dust where it is annihilated by a flank during a successful offensive.

 

Another thing that is entirely missing from basing is communication.

 

Did anyone here play SWZ years ago, or Redstar (when it was good)?

Edited October 22, 2009 by CapnBoost

[Anonymous]

Basing after getting a team to follow these instructions.

We won. Massively.

http://i318.photobucket.com/albums/mm408/taow88/screenshot5.jpg

Edited December 9, 2009 by Anonymous

[vetta64]

yeah, not that I dont disagree but look at your stacked team.

 

It's not as though you needed to do a lot of retraining to get the job done.

[Anonymous]

yeah, not that I dont disagree but look at your stacked team.

 

It's not as though you needed to do a lot of retraining to get the job done.

15 vs 13 is not stacked.

Also considering we had a point defense unit.

Why can't you count?

[kid]

I think he was referring to the fact that your team had sprinkle, Mav, Unix, and I on it.

[vetta64]

It is true that I can't count, I also can't read very well. I apologize.

[Anonymous]

It is true that I can't count, I also can't read very well. I apologize.

No love lost, vetta.

[Hiro]

Well this should be an easy guide: You don't.

[kevinz000]

This is a guide to team based basing strategy. This is based off of both my background in various basing zones, as well as my background in military tactics. Obviously, in Continuum teams are formed ad hoc, so the use of any specific team plan is limited. Thus, this guide covers the core tactics which winning teams do naturally, so as to provide guidance as to how players can work in a team better and what ship builds they develop.

 

1: The roles

 

While there is a large number of ship builds in HS, successful flagging designs typically fill one of the following roles:

 

Lanc: These are the players who everyone else attaches to. It is sometimes expedient to have ship other than a lancaster to function as the team's lanc, but even a cheap lanc is preferable. Essential to a good lanc is summon and antideath, so in HS this role requires someone who has been around a while.

 

Rushers: These ships are designed to charge at the enemy and push them back with repels, as well as clear the passage of fire for following units. One ship that is good for this is the lanc for its high energy levels. However, a quick ship like a warbird or some weasels perform this role very well too, provided they are built for speed and have 3 or 4 repels. When this variety is employed, it accomplishes both the rush role all the time and the leak role some of the time, so I put them in this category.

 

Gunners: These ships are simple. They are designed to shoot bullets to fill a corridor with fire so as to kill or suppress the enemy. A good gunner needs to have bounce. Guns come in the high-damage low efficiency and low damage high efficiency varieties. Both can work in theory. With high efficiency, multiple gunners shoot simultaneously. With high damage, they have to take turns shooting. I recommend high efficiency because it is simpler in practice.

 

Bombers: These ships are designed to kill the enemy with bombs. Bombs are hazardous at close range, so these ships need up-front protection.

 

Weasels: I place this in a different category than bombers, because the weasels EMPs do not do much damage to teammates, bounce a lot, and don't really get the kill as much as screw with the enemy gunner's ability to shoot. Not all weasels fit into this category: I've seen some designed for rushing and leaking.

 

Leakers: There are a variety of ways to leak: Cloak, portal, or repel through. The result is the same. A leaker is any ship that tries to bypass the enemy's lines in order to force them to abandon their position to chase the leaker or risk losing the flags or having the timer reset.

 

 

How it fits together:

 

Your typical flagging scenario looks like this: You have two teams about two obstacles away from each other putting a continuous volume of fire into the no-mans-land between them. To advance, a team must establish fire superiority over the enemy. Whichever team establishes the greatest volume of continuous, accurate fire will advance. So, the role which is critical to victory is the gunner. All other ships play a support role. The only exception is the bomber, which actually becomes the primary role IF AND ONLY IF THERE IS A LONG CORRIDOR WHICH YOU CAN'T RANGE WITH GUNS.

 

Advancing in a base is a three step process:

1: Clear no-man's-land of enemy fire

2: Set up positions in no-man's-land

3: Establish fire superiority.

 

Once step 3 is accomplished, the enemy team will either move back or be killed. The role critical to step 1 and 2 is the rusher. Additionally, for step 2, the gunners have to be right behind the rushers and start accurate fire as soon as possible. If fire superiority is not established, then the rush is in vain. For a rusher, it is beneficial if they take a second to make sure that there are gunning teammates already in base, otherwise the rush is wasted. Also, if there are two or more rushers, they should rush at the same time.

 

Thus, your two 'grunts' are your rushers and you gunners. Every play should have at least one ship which can function in this role.

 

 

Support roles:

 

Bombers: They are useful when either bomb lanes or long ranges make the use of bombs more appropriate than the use of guns. When this happens, bombers are the primary role. Lacking this, a bomber doesn't even offer good support and should switch to a gunning ship, especially on offense. Another note I will add: Don't be that guy who is outside the base wall-bombing the enemy team. You'll only get a kill once in a while, which is good for your ratio but bad for your team as you are little more useful than a spectator.

 

Weasels: They support step 3 by denying the enemy the ability to establish fires. You need an L3 bomb or bigger for this, so as to EMP the *whole* enemy team and not just the one gunner up front who is about to die anyway, and don't expect to actually get kills.

 

Leakers: Face it, when a leak works, it kicks ass, but it rarely works. Cloak/Speed Leaks should be timed to coincide with heavy rushers.

 

 

Numbers:

There needs to be one lanc on a team. Two or three is better.

There should be 2-4 rushers on a team. Any more than that, and your team probably isn't putting down enough fire to secure the area after the rush.

There should never be more than one weasel on a team. That one weasel should be a really good shot.

There should not be more than one pure leaker on a team. The rush/leak combo using repels fits into the 'rusher' category.

Bombers should not be on the team unless the situation warrants it.

 

Everyone else should be up front shooting!!!

loved it,post more soon,its very helpful

[BZAP]

Bump because this needs to be read by more people.

[Samapico]

Addendum 1: Lancs can't be used effectively for rushing anymore, unless the anchor lanc has Jump Beacon, which would allow other lancs to attach to it with full energy. However, any lanc with antideath can create a very effective one-time rush.

 

I'd also add something concerning gunners... Spam gunners tend to sit in one spot and fill the corridors. But gunners can greatly increase their range if they use momentum to fire. Some areas will allow you to bounce back and forth. If you fire bullets while you're moving forward, those bullets will go much faster, and reach much farther. Additionally, you can use the short period of time while you're moving backwards to recharge a bit, especially if you're using low efficiency/high damage guns.

 

As for bombers... yes, a lot of bombs can be repelled. But when a bomb gets repelled, that means you're forcing the enemy to use its repels to repel bombs instead of using them to rush. Also, you must try to find a line of fire that will not allow bombs to be repelled back at your team. If your bomb travels along a wall, for example, chances are it will be repelled into the wall. These are some things to keep in mind.