Squad Play and the Secret of the Discordians
Fellow pilots,
War Robots University, to this point, has been a one-way street. Our professors have not interacted much on the forums where these "lectures" have appeared, and some of the readers have pointed out that it would be nice to engage in dialogue about them. No problem! Even if we post a little less, we will engage a little more.
As you know, I've been on the road for the past couple of weeks as a visiting professor in several different clans. Each speaks its own language, and I don't mean Russian, Turkish, German, Italian, English, Tagalog, Patois, etc ... I am referring to the language of the game. We share "squad," and "shock train" no matter what our culture or ethinicity happens to be.
My first stop was DYNM, where the primary language seemed to be Russian, but not much was said by anyone. And that, unfortunately, isn't a recipe for strong teamwork. Facebook connections, of course, kept me in touch with the people at the U, like Professor ZoSo. Here, we are making use of the cover near the bridge on the Canyon map. ZoSo's Orkans and my shield make quick work of the bad guys.
After DYNM, I am honored to have been an Immortal. I'm not sure how it happened, but I've been seeing EHSAN THE KING, george, and Amireza since I began playing War Robots.
The Immortals speak Persian, I think, but they were super nice and taught me a few words. They use Discord, but not really for text; it was just for voice communications as far as I could tell. While I was in this clan, I experienced one of the fastest wins possible. I spawned in an Ember Fury. Before I could blink, my team had all five beacons.
With protection from one of my teammates, I managed to find someone to shoot at.
As you know from "How Long Is A Battle," the very rare five beacon stranglehold only lasts about two minutes. I kill one of three unlucky opponents just before time expires.
And the tale of the tape ... my old friends from Imperial had shut the red team completely out on the beacons. I dont know if I've ever been in a no-beacon game before!
After leaving my Immortal brethren, I ran around clanless for a time. Clan or no clan, you really should consider maxing out your robots. It's good for your health! When some folks on the forums disagreed with the concept, they invariably argued that strong weapons kill strong robots in one vs. one matchups. True. That wasn't the point. The argument we made in the post was that you could survive longer, and thus do more damage, for less silver/gold/time, if you leveled your robots first.
Clan Xenocide (XENO) was super fun. Thanks for the hospitality, gentlemen. We had the unfortunate experience of running into a whole ton of MK2 weapons in the hands of NOOB. This kind of thing happens to everyone from time to time, but it's not good for the game. The U recommended against this system when word of it first came to us, to no avail. We knew the divide between the big spending whales and the free players would grow tremendously - to the detriment of everyone's in-game experience.
The final stop on my tour was a really delightful surprise. I accepted an invite from the Discordians (DISC), and started seeing some really weird stuff in my in-game chat. It looked like this:
TRACELESS: +
at the Beginning: 3/6
EVIL: +
at the Beginning: 5/6
Remember the really weird Jodie Foster movie called "Contact?" In it, aliens send a code out to space in mathematical symbols, presumably because they knew that any life form they'd want to talk with would have worked out that 2+3 doesn't equal 4. Now, it's a bit of a leap from alien intelligence to coordinating squads in War Robots, but Discordians - and perhaps others - figured out a way that anyone can understand.
The symbol "+" means "add me to any available squad." Put me in, coach, I'm ready to play!
Once players are running a squad, and they want others to know, they type the fraction that represents how full they are in the chat. Hence the "3/6," which is the most efficient way imaginable to say "we've got three slots filled and three available in our squad." There was other shorthand, like adding 30 or 60 to say you were leaving in half a minute or so, but I thought these two were elegant and worth sharing.
Tell your friends the secret of the Discordians! I don't think they will mind. Tomorrow I will announce "Art of the Assist" contest rules, wherein two lucky readers each week will win the robots of their choice from Pixonic. For now, think about novel ways to help your team!
Your humble servant,
Dr. Yat
PS: Max your health! My hover is 210K health (MK2 level 12) with level 12 pinata and level 10 Orkans. Here, it's waiting to make one last dive-bombing run.
Faculty Notes
War Robots University, to this point, has been a one-way street. Our professors have not interacted much on the forums where these "lectures" have appeared, and some of the readers have pointed out that it would be nice to engage in dialogue about them. No problem! Even if we post a little less, we will engage a little more.
As you know, I've been on the road for the past couple of weeks as a visiting professor in several different clans. Each speaks its own language, and I don't mean Russian, Turkish, German, Italian, English, Tagalog, Patois, etc ... I am referring to the language of the game. We share "squad," and "shock train" no matter what our culture or ethinicity happens to be.
My first stop was DYNM, where the primary language seemed to be Russian, but not much was said by anyone. And that, unfortunately, isn't a recipe for strong teamwork. Facebook connections, of course, kept me in touch with the people at the U, like Professor ZoSo. Here, we are making use of the cover near the bridge on the Canyon map. ZoSo's Orkans and my shield make quick work of the bad guys.
After DYNM, I am honored to have been an Immortal. I'm not sure how it happened, but I've been seeing EHSAN THE KING, george, and Amireza since I began playing War Robots.
The Immortals speak Persian, I think, but they were super nice and taught me a few words. They use Discord, but not really for text; it was just for voice communications as far as I could tell. While I was in this clan, I experienced one of the fastest wins possible. I spawned in an Ember Fury. Before I could blink, my team had all five beacons.
With protection from one of my teammates, I managed to find someone to shoot at.
As you know from "How Long Is A Battle," the very rare five beacon stranglehold only lasts about two minutes. I kill one of three unlucky opponents just before time expires.
And the tale of the tape ... my old friends from Imperial had shut the red team completely out on the beacons. I dont know if I've ever been in a no-beacon game before!
After leaving my Immortal brethren, I ran around clanless for a time. Clan or no clan, you really should consider maxing out your robots. It's good for your health! When some folks on the forums disagreed with the concept, they invariably argued that strong weapons kill strong robots in one vs. one matchups. True. That wasn't the point. The argument we made in the post was that you could survive longer, and thus do more damage, for less silver/gold/time, if you leveled your robots first.
Clan Xenocide (XENO) was super fun. Thanks for the hospitality, gentlemen. We had the unfortunate experience of running into a whole ton of MK2 weapons in the hands of NOOB. This kind of thing happens to everyone from time to time, but it's not good for the game. The U recommended against this system when word of it first came to us, to no avail. We knew the divide between the big spending whales and the free players would grow tremendously - to the detriment of everyone's in-game experience.
The final stop on my tour was a really delightful surprise. I accepted an invite from the Discordians (DISC), and started seeing some really weird stuff in my in-game chat. It looked like this:
TRACELESS: +
at the Beginning: 3/6
EVIL: +
at the Beginning: 5/6
Remember the really weird Jodie Foster movie called "Contact?" In it, aliens send a code out to space in mathematical symbols, presumably because they knew that any life form they'd want to talk with would have worked out that 2+3 doesn't equal 4. Now, it's a bit of a leap from alien intelligence to coordinating squads in War Robots, but Discordians - and perhaps others - figured out a way that anyone can understand.
The symbol "+" means "add me to any available squad." Put me in, coach, I'm ready to play!
Once players are running a squad, and they want others to know, they type the fraction that represents how full they are in the chat. Hence the "3/6," which is the most efficient way imaginable to say "we've got three slots filled and three available in our squad." There was other shorthand, like adding 30 or 60 to say you were leaving in half a minute or so, but I thought these two were elegant and worth sharing.
Tell your friends the secret of the Discordians! I don't think they will mind. Tomorrow I will announce "Art of the Assist" contest rules, wherein two lucky readers each week will win the robots of their choice from Pixonic. For now, think about novel ways to help your team!
Your humble servant,
Dr. Yat
PS: Max your health! My hover is 210K health (MK2 level 12) with level 12 pinata and level 10 Orkans. Here, it's waiting to make one last dive-bombing run.
Faculty Notes
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The U is not just a blog ... we are also iOS clans #48669 [theU] for Masters/Champs and #139479 [U-2] for Diamond/Expert. We welcome skilled communicators from around the world.
The U is not just a blog ... we are also iOS clans #48669 [theU] for Masters/Champs and #139479 [U-2] for Diamond/Expert. We welcome skilled communicators from around the world.
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