Game Report 12/9/14, 19/9/14

Report on two weeks of Tag Recon games.
12/9/14
Gamemodes:
Old:
Mini HvZ - same as always, 5 second stun for zombies. Ever popular and usually works if you choose the right number of original zombies (OZs) (and alter stun times or add human victory conditions if necessary). Usually requires at least 7 players.
Bombing Run - stolen from UT with CS influence. You try to take a central bomb (a Lanard Scatter Blast) to the opponent's goal, 'plant' it and keep it there for some amount of time. If the enemy manages to remove the bomb from the goal before that time is up, the bomb is 'defused' and is ready to be planted at a goal again. If a team manages to 'detonate' the bomb at the opponent's goal, then that team wins.

New:
Attack and Defend - a variant of Basic Nerf's Siege the Fort. In this gamemode you would have a small team of attackers and a large team of defenders. The attackers would try and convert all defenders into attackers, or steal an objective and return it to their spawn point (and would win if successful in either). The defenders would try and survive as long as possible while defending the objective. Attackers are one-shot-respawn, while defenders take three shots, and then turn into an attacker. The defenders would be restricted to a marked area, while attackers would respawn from a given area.

Blasters:
Regulars:
Strongarms - the usual comparison blaster.
Sweet Revenges - my usual dual wield pistols. Worked great as always.
Roughcuts - performed as per usual. People started dual wielding them, this time with a decent amount of success in HvZ, assuming they were able to prime them effectively, and they weren't against more than 2 zombies. As usual the dual fire ability excites people.
Single Shots (e.g. NF, Firestrike) - rarely used, except as backup to a Strongarm or Roughcut.
Elite Rayven (Barricade motors, 2 IMR 14500s) - it cut out at some point for some reason, but besides that it performed as per usual, quite OP.
Elite Stryfe (Barricade motors, 2 Trustfire 14500s) - performed same as usual, for some reason people go for the Stryfe instead of the Rayven even when they're next to each other. Maybe it's because I can fit more tacticool stuff on the Stryfe.
EDIT: Please do not use Trustfires. eFest, AW or Windyfire IMRs are the batteries you're looking for.
Blastzooka (AKA the Shamecannon) - returned this week to shame more people. People seem to really like the noise it makes upon firing too.

New:
DT Snapfire (AR removed) - saw a lot more action today, people really liked being able to just semi-auto it, and it complimented well with another blaster for dual wielding. Range is definitely competitive with grey trigger Elites, and the one-handability is a big step up from the usually two hand Strongarms. The extra 2 shots are nice too.
Elite Spectre - as usual, not quite as good as the perfectly acceptable Strongarm, primarily due to lower capacity. Adds a bit of diversity though and I personally prefer the feel of the Spectre slide to the Strongarm.
Elite Triad (OMW Vulcan 6kg spring) - though it doesn't have the capacity to go toe to toe with a Strongarm, the spring upgrade gives it comparable power to an OMW spring replaced EAT, which we know is pretty overpowered. It's just powerful enough to sting a fair bit at close range though, which may present a slight issue.
ZS Hammershot - performed pretty much identically to one of my Sweet Revenges.
Elite Alpha Trooper (OMW 5kg spring) - this was quite OP. Ranges exceeding basically everything else, a rate of fire and capacity also exceeding most things, and a reload speed much faster than most things. Simply put, it's almost totally superior to anything else around. It's probably at the limit of the power we'll allow at our games, though at the moment there are many factors that make it OP.
Unknown Toy Crossbow - same crossbow from last time, its flaw being a single shot was very evident from an AnD game as an attacker, and it was generally not too effective despite its superior range.

For much of this day's games, we had an odd number so team games were rarely played. Instead, we played a lot of HvZ and Attack and Defend.
HvZ has never failed us before, and it didn't fail us this time. It's a really good gametype for getting new players warmed up, running, interacting with other players, and comfortable with their blasters.

We implemented a new rule for Bombing Run. To win the round, your team would have to get the bomb to the enemy goal and keep it there for 5 seconds. This helps to emphasise the need for teamwork, as it's very difficult to one-man-rush the bomb and win quickly with the 5 second rule. It also gives the opposing team a small chance of retrieving the bomb and prolonging the round. However, we found that 5 seconds isn't a great time. While it does prevent bomb rushes from being game ending (which is good), if a team works together well and tags or pushes back most of the opposing team's players they are practically guaranteed the win even if most of their players get tagged. 5 seconds is not enough for members of a defending team to run back to their spawn point, respawn, and then tag or push back the attacking team, and then defuse the bomb. Heck, 5 seconds isn't enough to run back to your respawn point and sprint to your team's goal even without the presence of opposing players. 10-15 seconds might make the game run better, but we'll have to see when we try it out.
Besides the flaws in the 5 second rule, it was great to see how Bombing Run promoted teamwork. Because the bomb carrier would usually be unable to use their blaster(s) effectively with the bomb in one hand, they were forced to rely on teammates for the bulk of combat. What usually ended up happening was the bomb carrier would stick with one particular teammate and try and get a position near the enemy goal, while the rest would try to tag opposing players and create an opening, as well as prevent flanking.

Attack and Defend is a rather odd gametype, in that the teams don't stay constant throughout the game. It's actually quite similar to HvZ, except the zombies now have blasters too. However, it ran quite differently to how I normally run AnD with my friends. Initially we tried starting with 1v4 (horrible mistake I know). Normally this works ok-ish with my friends because we usually run with exclusively clip (mag) system blasters, so spamming is very much viable to quickly convert a defender. However, this time it worked very badly, because the initial attacker was using a single shot crossbow, making it very easy to dodge, and very difficult for the attacker to get any hits onto a defender. One of the defenders volunteered to become an attacker to speed up the game, and it went relatively smoothly from there.
After that slow starting game, we decided to have at least 2 starting attackers to get the game rolling much faster. Having 2 initial attackers would give the defenders a little trouble, as it wasn't always easy to keep track of both attackers. Having 2 initial attackers also meant that there was a lot less 'safe' area in the defender zone, as if you ran away from one attacker you could potentially run into the line of fire of the other. This helped to get defenders tagged and taken out more quickly, which would propel the game towards the defender's imminent defeat.
We also allowed the attackers to use the Lanard Scatter Blast, as a one-hit-convert weapon. If a defender gets hit by it, they instantly become an attacker regardless of the number of tags they've had. This is not really a huge advantage for the attackers, as it's difficult to line up a throw while also firing and dodging. To ensure that the attackers have the LSB boon for as much of the game as possible, the defenders must through the LSB back to the attackers once out of combat.
Once we started to get the balance of attackers and defenders right, the games began to run more and more smoothly. However, one issue we came across was that the objective flag was too easy to capture. If the attackers effectively pushed far enough into defender territory, they could conceivably rush the flag under the suppressive fire of fellow attackers, and capture the flag without taking out the majority of defenders. This was not the intention of adding the objective, rather the objective was meant to be an anti-coward device. We're looking at ways of fixing this issue now, and will be testing it next game.


19/9/14
Gamemodes:
Old:
Mini HvZ - same as always, 5 second stun for zombies. Ever popular and usually works if you choose the right number of original zombies (OZs) (and alter stun times or add human victory conditions if necessary). Usually requires at least 7 players.
Capture the Flag - same old CTF, two teams, get both flags to your flag post to win (you obviously start with your own), one-shot-respawn, drop the flag if tagged.
Capture the Bomb (FFA) - Oddball stolen from Halo. You would try to hold the Lanard Scatter Blast for some amount of time, while fending off the other players. Tagging rules are one-shot respawn as usual, and throw the bomb towards the centre of the field when tagged (as respawns are in the surrounding area). If the bomb touches the ground then the timer resets. In FFA CtB to respawn you would go to the surrounding grass area, count to 5 and get back in the game.
Attack and Defend - a variant of Basic Nerf's Siege the Fort. In this gamemode you would have a small team of attackers and a large team of defenders. The attackers would try and convert all defenders into attackers, or steal an objective and return it to their spawn point (and would win if successful in either). The defenders would try and survive as long as possible while defending the objective. Attackers are one-shot-respawn, while defenders take three shots, and then turn into an attacker. The defenders would be restricted to a marked area, while attackers would respawn from a given area.
To capture the objective, an attacker must first place their hand on the flag, hold it for 5 seconds while counting out loud, and then they may remove and capture it.

New:
Scavenger HvZ - played after the majority of the games, so that there is ammo strewn across the field. In this game humans go into play with some small number of darts (e.g. 1), and must pick up darts to fill their blasters. Zombies are allowed to pick up ammo, and return it to the dart box/bag/whatever, from which humans cannot take ammo. Same stun rules apply.
This gamemode is really just for the zombies to troll the humans, and to also make end-of-day dart pickup much, much easier.

Blasters:
Regulars:
Strongarms - the usual comparison blaster.
Sweet Revenges - my usual dual wield pistols. Worked great as always.
Roughcuts - performed as per usual.
Single Shots (NFs, Firestrikes, Strikefires) - rarely used, except as backup to a Strongarm or Roughcut.
Elite Rayven (Barricade motors, 2 IMR 14500s) - OP as usual. It did take a little getting used to for newbies, as pulling the rev trigger, waiting and then pulling the main trigger seemed to not be intuitive, so for half a game the newbie user just constantly jammed it. Once developing the right technique though, they were fine with it.
Elite Stryfe (Barricade motors, 2 Trustfire 14500s) - see Rayven.
Blastzooka (AKA the Shamecannon) - now with an extra sling hook so you can use it alongside another blaster, and a slight power increase for longer ranged shaming.
DT Snapfire (AR removed) - proved to be very, very inaccurate which became a problem in HvZ. The ability to one hand it compared to Strongarms is a big bonus though, which can help when run-and-gunning in HvZ.
Elite Spectre - same as usual, a slam-fire-less Strongarm with one less shot.

New:
Elite XD Demolisher (2 Trustfire 14500s and stock) - both Demos were near unusuable as clip (mag) system blasters. The stock one had such an abysmal dart firing range that we would have probably had a better time using a stock Deploy. The modded one did perform better, however both completely jammed using Streamlines, and totally failed to fire them. Because it was so difficult to scavenge just Elite darts (we have a mix of darts at the moment), we just gave up using the Demos as dart blasters, and just used the rocket launcher. Which is awesome. The range on the rockets is incredible, it was outranging most of the dart blasters with ease. I actually spent most of my time using just the Demo rocket launcher, because it was just that much fun.
Elite Triad (added LSFG spring) - wasn't really used, however its power was quite noticeable, even with the downgrade from the OMW spring.

HvZ is always a good option, it's easy for new people to jump in and have fun. It gets everyone running even if they're defensively inclined, and it's a great gametype for trying out something silly and fun. In one of the games, me and one of the other humans decided to run with just rockets. I used the Demolisher rocket launcher, and he used the Shamecannon, and we managed to be the last survivors by working together. Instead of panicking and running away after firing off a rocket, if we were still being chased by zombies we would call on the other rocketeer to come in and help chip away another zombie. Because lone zombies are not a huge threat in mini HvZ, despite our slow reload times our chipping away at the pursuing zombie groups weakened them sufficiently to escape.

We played a round of CTF, and I felt that it didn't work well. I was able to run around the enemy team, tag one or two defenders, steal the flag and just ran it back in 20-30 seconds all up. This isn't necessarily a problem of the defenders being bad, but more that the lack of cover allowed me to just circle around the opposing team rather than take them out. I personally feel that you should only be able to take the flag if you've worked together with your team to eliminate some key defenders and create an opening that you can run through.
If you can run the flag having taken out just 1 person, and most of the team is defending then either that team is really, really bad or the play area isn't suitable and needs some adjusting. In our case I believe that adding some substantial cover would help greatly.

Capture the Bomb was extremely hectic, and in my opinion quite ridiculous. In the past, CtB (FFA) games have worked with 5 players, because you have enough space to get far enough away from everyone to get near a 10-20 second capture. However, we played CtB with more than 7 people, and as a result there was a lot of bomb drops and it took a long time to have a winner. We also tried a variant where you try to hold on to the bomb for a total of some longer amount of time, which means that no attempt to capture the bomb is wasted.
With so many people, it's near impossible to run away from other players and find a location that is safe for long enough to capture the bomb. From my experience, the only gametype that is still enjoyable when you become entirely too tired to run is HvZ, simply because it is designed for the zombies to win in the end. All other gametypes I've played that make you too tired to run half way through it feel like the game is dragging on too long. While this isn't true for say whole day HvZ games, for the short, fast paced games we play I believe that games should never drag on very long. This game of CtB dragged on for very long, so long that I totally gave up trying to capture the bomb, and just tried to tag as many people as possible.
I feel that while CtB (FFA) is a perfectly reasonable gametype for a small group (5-6 or less), it certainly doesn't work for more in our current play area.

Attack and Defend still had the same issue as before in that the start would be very slow. Part of the issue was that the attackers would quickly run out of ammo. While they would get some tags on the defenders, they would never get the 3 hits required to convert. This is likely due to most of the primary blasters being Strongarms and Roughcuts. As a result, instead of the usual heavily-skewed-to-defenders starting numbers, we had to start with nearly even teams, with the defenders having a slight advantage. The implementation of the 5-second steal helped significantly, greatly reducing the viability of the attacker tactc of pushing/rushing the flag for a quick win.
Another issue with AnD was that the defenders would often be just standing out in the open, due to lack of cover. This partially ruins the idea of "defenders" defending a fortified location, but with some cover that will probably be fixed.

Scavenger HvZ is a finishing up gametype. In this gamemode humans would be given a very small amount of ammo to start off with, and would have to scavenge the ammo already on the ground from previous rounds. With so much ammo on the ground, Scavenger wouldn't seem much more intense than regular HvZ, except the ability for zombies to pick up and remove darts from the field is huge. Humans can either keep running away from zombies to survive, or use (and usually lose) darts on stunning the zombies. Once the zombies have cleaned up most of the field, the humans usually begin to get quite nervous, which as a zombie is great to see. More than anything though, Scavenger is meant to help with dart pickup, reducing the amount of ammo that needs to be picked up at the end of the day.
The need for humans to scavenge darts can distract them from fending off the zombie threat. From picking up darts as a zombie, I was able to tag a human without running or even putting any effort into the tag, with the human walking up next to me scavenging ammo, not realising I was a zombie.
Usually players are given points for the ammo they return, and the person with the most points at the end of the round wins. Depending on how you want the games to run, both zombies and humans can scavenge and return ammo for points. This often gives humans an important dilemma: Do you keep as much ammo as possible and try to survive as long as possible so you have more time to pick up ammo? Or do you return almost all the ammo you scavenge to get as many points as possible before you inevitably and quickly get turned into a zombie?

I personally feel that the 19/9/14 game could have run a lot smoother, with some issues arising from miscommunication and the CtB games that dragged on for a long time.