Defeating the Brick

[Aileron]

This topic will discuss defeating the brick. This one will need to be a more open-ended discussion than most of my threads, as the subspace brick is not similar to anything in reality. There is no such thing as a un-breachable obstacle, let alone a wall that will block one sides fires and maneuvers while not affecting the friendly force's fires and maneuvers.

 

Furthermore, it is a simple fact that it is theoretically possible to have a defense which entirely consist of brick droppers and one lanc to guarantee a win without firing a shot, and actually PROFIT doing so, assuming there is enough coordination and that all members of the team devote a little money towards buying bricks. All they have to do is lay bricks one behind the other, continuously delaying the attackers until time runs out. Under these circumstances, it must be stated that defeating any and all use of the brick is impossible. If a 12 flag team uses enough bricks and use them right they *WILL* win, and there is *NOTHING* the attacking team can do to stop them, except maybe thor the crap out of them.

 

'Thor the crap out of them' is a straightforward tactic that does not need to be discussed here, though I will point out that just because a tactic is simple does not mean it is ineffective...quite the contrary. Simple plans are typically the only ones that work. Still, I'm not an expert on the giving end of a thor barrage, so someone else will have to lead here.

 

 

Apart from that, brick defeat is impossible. Thus, I will discuss brick damage control. I will remind you that the brick is one of subspaces magical devices. With a push of a button, a player can instantly put an entire marauding attacking force's momentum to a screeching halt due to the brick's unique properties. This 'magical' status means that countering the brick is counter-intuitive. When you have overwhelming force and the enemy is getting crushed, and suddenly a wall gets put in your path, the intuitive instinct is to knock it down, go over it, dig under it, rig the wall with 100 lbs of C4 and blow a hole through it (my personal favorite method for removing an annoying wall), call in a good contractor, etc. This instinct works because in real life, walls, especially the hastily constructed kind, can be destroyed. Not so in Subspace. In Subspace walls are indestructible. Thus, to defeat the brick you need to tell your instincts to shut up.

 

If an enemy brick is layed right, it is guaranteed that the tiles it is composed of and all the tiles behind it are enemy territory until it wears off. What you can also count on if your enemy has any right to win the game at all is that the terrain in front of the brick will be denied to friendly forces up to the next terrain feature by means of the enemies' fire. What is NOT guaranteed is that the enemy will actually own the territory in FRONT of the brick. Thus, your team's immediate goal is to deny the enemy that territory. Best case scenario is that the instant before the enemy brick times out, friendlies control the tile right it front of it. A detail which is part of that is that UNTIL that brick times out, it does NO GOOD to hold that territory.

 

 

Alright, I've rambled about theory long enough, so I'll get down to business. When an enemy brick is layed, and your team does not have bricks, the procedure is:

 

1) Move back to the next terrain feature. You do this because the enemy will shoot into the area in front of the brick and you can't stop that from happening.

 

2) Fire into the area in front of the brick. Since that area can't be friendly, the best case scenario is making it a neutral no-mans-land by shooting it up. This stops enemy advance.

 

3) Wait. You can't rush until the brick times out.

 

4) When brick times out, start the rush. This way, you resume attacker's momentum as soon as possible.

 

 

If you do have bricks of your own it is best to wait a while until their brick is about to time out, then drop it. This assumes your team follows step one. If you have thors, the best target is the enemy gunners right before step 4 starts so as to clear the way for the rushers.

 

Ofcourse, this whole argument assumes the enemy is a occasional user rather than addicted abuser of the brick. If they ARE an addicted abuser, the best use of thors is a consolidated barrage against the enemy lanc. Subspace is NOT the environment to be mature. If they are being a complete and total lameass, the most effective counter is to be a bigger lamer ass.

Edited December 18, 2009 by Aileron

[whalz]

should make this a wiki on brick's... other than that i hardly see the point! bricks are the same in any base game.. the magical brick that halts all forward movement and gives an evil advantage to the bricklayers team

 

maybe you were trying to say, design a brick that has HP, and shoot the shit outof it before the timer runs out to give u more of an advantage and less of a delay?

[aquarius]

He's not suggesting HP bricks. He's suggesting that bricks are bricks and there's no way around it.

I think you're post is 100% correct. All you can really do is back up to the next terrain and shoot at the terrain in front of the brick until the brick has almost run out. If they keep being lame and setting a new brick right before their old brick runs out, assemble a thorstorm.

[p man]

Well the easiest and most common practice to combat this, is rep whoring

 

Believe it or not, HS's rep AOE is pretty big, and if you have three people with three or two with four reps, you can keep them from the current brick, gaining at least 8-15 tiles per brick, which is a lot compaired to how long it takes to win a flag game

 

More strategies are:

Thoring

Ports

Cobalt

[kid]

Bombing the brick, ADing behind the brick, repping people behind the brick.

[Simulacrum]

How about strategy for using the brick?

[Aileron]

To those with wonderful ideas of what bricks should do, you are off topic! This topic answers the question: 'Yeah, it sucks. So what are you going to do about it?'

 

Alright, strategy guide for using the brick: 'Press F4 and hope it drops perpendicular to the hall'. Don't get me wrong, I've seen idiot drops before, but I'm not going to pretend using a brick inherently involves tactics. You use it at the places in times when your defense is weak.

 

I sort of tried to imply it, but these two guides are geared towards strategies for those who don't have a bottomless pit worth of money. Obviously the Cobalt user is not too much affected by enemy use of bricks, but that's not the point. Better equipment trumps lesser equipment, but what about the grunts who don't have the fancy crap but are still vital to the team's progress? That Levi with cobalt can't take the base all by himself!

 

If you have a port or ad behind them, obviously you use it. Heck, if your team happens to have a lanc with ad in the enemy FR and they don't have anti on, defeating the brick near the entrance of the base is easy. But, for this example I'm assuming you aren't that lucky. More of a 'holy crap they dropped one in our tracks and we can't get past it', or worse yet the 'damn, they keep dropping bricks like candy and we can't make forward progress' type scenarios.

 

 

Repels don't really work against chronic bricking. I guess the theory would be to push the brick layer back before the drop, but the problem is that repels don't push ships very far, and at the end of the day they can *still* brick you up for a long enough period of time that the timer runs out.

 

Also, I was wrong about the thors. Most of the bricklaying ships are warbirds and javelins...ships that blow up when hit with at most two thors. Thus, bricklayers should be identified and thors reserved special just for them.

 

I guess another point that has to be made though is that if you let the other team get all the flags and the full length of a base to defend to begin with, then you make it that much easier for them to brick you up. If you are fighting over the FR, then they really can't back up and when you break the brick there won't be any more delays. Prevention is the best strategy. Heck, if the attacker team has but one flag, then the brick becomes *much* weaker, because the defenders can't just wait it out any more.

 

Leaks are a big threat to the chronic brick strategy if it leaves the occasional gap. Chronic bricklaying, if the bricklayers can't push forward, is fundamentally a continuous trade of space for time. If a leaker buys more time, then more space is needed by the defender, and a base is only so long. Also, leakers tend to cause a good 2/3rd of the defending team to turn around and chase it, which enables the attacking team to get right up on the brick when the defenders stop shooting at it and go after the leak.

 

(A.D.D. moment: Look, if you are defending with a spider or the like and a faster more maneuverable ship manages to get past you, don't chase it. Let your teammates in the warbirds and sharks run down the leak. In the meantime there is still an entire enemy team that needs to be held off, and your slow ship with a lot of firepower is best suited for the job.)

[vetta64]

I was going to say pretty much the same as Pman. Repping the bricker back IS and effective way of moving the line, but more than that the bricker will get frustrated and maybe even waste a brick in a bad spot.

 

One of the downfalls of the zone is bricking, if 1 or 2 people care more about bricking than money they WILL WIN.

[Samapico]

Ad'ing IN the brick with a fat ship, and getting moved in a different room instantly

[espo]

Stopping the brick is close to impossible when all I have to do is kami or suicide, tw to base 8, buy more bricks, and then do it over and over. A ship with 2 brick mounts and a tw key can start a rq ez unless the team is just terribad. Making a profit doesn't really matter late in the reset anyway when you already have it all. You just need money for items. Edited August 13, 2010 by eSpO~