Noob to Noob: Let's talk about togetherness

My Noob to Noob series is just as it says.... one Noob talking about the things he's learned hoping to help other Noobs. A large part of my reason for this is that many of the things I read here on the board turned out be relevant to the 3000k+ crowd and completely different in the <1000 infamy area. So read on and learn the quite probably incorrect lessons I've learned.
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In this installment of the not-so-popular Noob to Noob series I want to discuss togetherness, aka: team formation. It is common among the lower infamies for people to say “Together” and that’s not really what you want. What you want is a team coordinating together but not necessarily physically together.

A note here. My direct experience is largely limited to shooters and speeders. Some of my comments on other roles may be wildly inaccurate. First though, I’d like to present an image that shows my “theoretically perfect” team formation.

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Don’t get too fixated on the exact positions. Here’s why I think boats should be more or less where I’ve said:

Scouts: If you have a speeder or enforcer then they probably ought to be out in front scouting. The exception to this is if your scout is outgunned by the opposing scouts – either a fleet of 2 or a single higher mark. In this case the scout should stay closer to home and friendly fire support while trying to bait the opposing scouts.
Speeders/Enfo’s: If you are lingering back by the shooting line without good reason then you are wasting the speed advantages of your boat. Get out there and scout. Good shooters will love you for it.

The Shooting Line: In the beginning of the match, the shooting line which includes shooters led by a defender if there is one should be all clustered together. The firepower needs to be within range of the enemy to take advantage of that opening salvo when the scouts find them. Many matches are won in the initial few seconds when one team manages to focus their fire and the other team does not. Work hard to take advantage of that opening salvo.
Shooters/Defenders: If you have a scout on your team you NEED to be following that scout at a cautious distance otherwise you’ve wasted a golden opportunity. In addition, if the shooting line is prompt landing those first few hits that opens up the opportunity for the scout(s) to go finish off a wounded target. Time is of the essence here. You have a few seconds to act so you need to be in position and ready when the moment comes.

The Fixer: Is hiding in the back like a good little fixer keeping the shooters all buffed up and waiting to see if I need any help on my way back home. I’m ignoring selfish fixers here.
Fixers: If you have a scout, keep a sharp eye out for the return trip. The scout is likely to have taken some damage on the scouting run and the quicker you get him topped up the quicker he can return back to the battle. Expect the scout to be dodging and weaving to avoid enemy fire so save your healing bolt for a sure hit.

The overall point here is that “together” does not and should not mean “physically together”. Instead, the team should seek to use the capabilities of different boats to maximum advantage. Good team-mates seek to understand and anticipate what their team-mates are doing rather than complain that they aren't "together".

For more in my Noob to Noob series, see the thread: Noob to Noob: A compendium of dubious knowledge

 

Nice

 

Thanks. This is my effort at getting better team cohesion. I think often times people don't really know what to expect from other boats so they call "together". Then when all 5 dots don't appear in the same place on the map they get frustrated.

Or, at least, that's what I used to do.

 

Thank you for putting in the time! Wish u wouldve done it 8000 battles ago! jk.

 

Well-put together and thought out

 

good...but the main problem except fixer none follow this kind of things.....like u said enfo to scout....I use enfo....If I go scouting and if opponet starts attacking me....none helps.......sometime I see fixer going ahead of all to die.....and shooters(only idiots)......well they like to play 1v5 and die before 1 min......only fixer heals from behind....but these idiots doesn't even protect fixer.....

 

I am not offending anyone....it just what I see in most matches....

 

yeah i see that all the time ... a shooter sitting back, chilling doing no good and then when it is 1vs5, he curses us by saying -Negative Negative Negative

 

Heh... to the first part, when I go scouting I assume there'll be nobody there to help. The goal is to not get hit and just light up the targets for my shooters. I only dig in if one or more of the shooters get a lucky hit on the enemy fixer (or if my cursed natural aggressiveness gets the better of me *sigh*). Most of the time this scouting mission is wasted. But then again, my team wasn't doing anything productive in that situation anyway so who cares if I go do a spin around the bay? On the other hand, sometimes it is not wasted and my team abuses the enemy early and quickly. My opinion is that these are the sorts of margins that "going up in infamy" is built on. We can't control our whole team but we can do a better job ourselves and try to add a fractional margin of victory to the team.

What I've presented here is a theoretically perfect model that seldom happens. In real matches I'll abandon whatever I'm doing and jet across the bay to help my team. If they all go chug off for a team capture I'll buzz the other team buying precious seconds for that capture clock to tick, doing my best to draw their boats and attention away from the capture circle. If someone (as inevitably happens) gets themselves into a 1v1 I'll turn it into a 2v1. As a speeder I try to use my speed to the advantage of the team. My hope is that other boats do the same with their advantages.

I still think there's merit to the "pure" model... particularly because it serves the basis of the next few articles where I want to talk about the role(s) of various different ships in more detail like the difference between a brawler and bombardment shooter.

TL;DR: Worrying about why other team mates are so poor does not make the team better. Worrying about how you can be a better team-mate does.

 

I love your noob to noob series btw.

In the event that your team has a fixer and there's at least 1 speeder on the enemy team, it's important that someone stays behind the fixer as well, as it's almost guaranteed that your fixer will get flanked. Any ship can fill this counter-flank role. I tend to use my shooter to hold off flanks with my flare, cannon, and blast cannon, while lobbing firebombs and napalms into the main battle to continue providing offensive support.

 

Oh yea, enfo does the trick, but any ship can do it if they're well-equipped with cannons and have good aim. What matters most is that someone is protecting the fixer. As much as I agree that enforcers are best suited for this, I often seen them up ahead with the speeders, so I usually take it upon myself to save the turtles.

 

Excellent point and one I'm not good enough at. I mentally flag this when the other team has dual speeders... "OK, I need to stay and guard our fixer". Unfortunately, my noobness shows and something shiny inevitably distracts me on the other side of the map.

Keeping a virtual eye on my fixer seems like a nearly insurmountable problem while dogfighting at the same time. I did a much better job of this on my shooter which was cannon-heavy just to say hello to feisty little speeders. But the shooter was also slow enough that me being off on the other side of the map was unlikely.

 

When you have a fixer you can afford to give up a bit of the team's firepower to be on guard a little more. I usually go back and forth between pushing and defending when I'm playing shooter and have a fixer, depending on whether or not my team has the upper hand. If you're in the middle of a firefight, try to get to cover so you and the fixer can help each other out. Playing defensively is the key to winning with a fixer.

 

Oh I know.... Oh I know..... *sigh* But the whole reason I love playing the speeder so much is that I am naturally aggressive and the boat serves that purpose well. Reining that in is my constant challenge. My current push is skills-development so I'm not grinding and not questing. It's just the same boat and weapons in endless repetition. I have no issues hitting targets or maneuvering my boat. My focus is pretty exclusively on riding the ebb and flow of the battle better rather than letting my natural aggression run amok.

 

Lol I like to think I am a one man hit squad but my 2k life and dodgy devices often mean i am ending up dead or just floating. Trust me today my Ipad was glitching, I couldnt go backwards so I end up slamming into the wall to try and turn around. I also lost 200 infamy.

 

I hate when I scout for my shooters and they ignore it (they just sit somewhere near spawn and they dont't fire) or when I need heal urgently (have <100hp and burning) and fixer simply ignores me probably because I am mk2 between mk4 and 5...

 

Hey sometimes most people usually play their own game. That saying a person who picks fixer usually thinks that they can keep themselves alive longer first, but after they learn they are the group's fixer. But most times in battles using the fixer everyone seems to be killing me first so I'm most times paying attention to what happening with my current situation before I could notice a teammate needs fixing. But most times the ones that need to be fixed are the to far from healing blast or bursts forward thinking it's an incoming stun or something. But for anyone to ignore you is not just to ignore you, it could be a multitude of factors. To name a few are that you may have happened to seek fixing when the fixer just used it's blast and is waiting on cool down, the fixer is thinking on self preservation and is equipped with tape only, main weapon was pointing opposite direction to you and is rotating to heal you circling it just to be killed to save you, um could be maybe you should think of all the factors of a game before thinking it's all about you in the game... Just saying

 

that's misunderstanding (I did not write everything, sorry): I was in front of the fixer, his bolt was ready and he was trying to heal shooter at opposite site of map (but the shooter lost only 100 hp), also I don't think that everything is about me but it sometimes looks like they ignore me: they sometimes say 'NEGATIVE' when I want help but after few seconds they someone next to me when he says that he needs help, sometimes when I want to pick up repair box because I need heal, someone with full hp intentionally takes it (he makes 180° turn and NITROs to the repair box)
but some possitives: I realy like team players (they help each other when needed, coordinate fire etc.) and fixers that are not afraid of risking when they want to heal someone