cyberstorm email game?

[paul]

Hi everyone! (I hope someone still visits this forum!)

I recently discovered this game, enjoyed it, and would like to play with/against somebody. So if you'd like to play, reply!

[Crow!]

Hey there!

I don't think this forum is very active anymore, but I do check in a couple times a month. I'll send you a PM so you get email notification, since you're more likely to see that sooner than something here.

Look around for the v1.1 patch out there somewhere, if you don't already have it. If you can't find it, I'll email it to you.

If anyone else wants in, just chime in here!

Crow!

[paul]

I don't really know what settings make for a good game so I'm open to whatever. But here are my ideas:

I think we should use maximum rank so we can build our forces however we want, but a relatively low credit limit like 100k-400k. I don't want a battle royale for the first game, I want skirmishes and manouvering; plus we should have to make some hard decisions on how to allocate scarce credits. I prefer worlds like Brell with lowish gravity and enhanced sensors, and detest low-sensor worlds like Charon.

so here's my initial suggested setup, negotiable of course:
rank: 13
credit limit: 200k
world: brell
timer: unlimited
cybrids: 0
fog: complete
herc carrier: no
opfire: on

(copy sent to PM for email notification)

[Crow!]

I'm totally with you on the no sensors = bad bit... I try to avoid non-gehenna missions in the last set. Brell is fun, though the terrain is quite rugged.

You could feasibly spend more than 200,000 on a single Reaper at rank 13. The lowest I've ever played at that rank is 750,000... even that is prohibitive to adding any Juggernauts (it usually leads to too many sacrifices in the other units to be beneficial). I'm willing to give 400,000 credits a shot, though I don't think we'll be mounting any high tech equipment in that case.

In case you don't know, there is a cap of 12 units per force in multiplayer. I find it is rarely a good idea to field anything less than the maximum possible (though 200K credits might actually force the issue).

If you're trying to make a smaller scale engagement, then I suggest we simply put in a herc number cap - 6 hercs per player, with 400K credits, perhaps?

[paul]

That sounds cool, let's go with 6 hercs and 400k. Do you want to make the game or should I? Why don't you take the initiative, I don't want to mess it up!

I have never played a multiplayer game before so choosing a herc loadout should be veeeerry interesting...

[Crow!]

I can start it. Just email me your .cbm force file when you're ready.

[Crow!]

Update:

I'm down to 2 Demons and a Giant, and Paul has 2 Reapers and a shadow with damaged sensors. The akward part for him is he's running out of ammo (only HK+ as armor hitting weapons, he says) and his Reapers have only sensors 7.11. The akward part for me is I have few reliable shield hitting weapons left - he already killed my mortar toting Giant.

Unfortunately, I won't have enough time to continue the game until Wednesday, so we're going to be left hanging for a while.

Edit: Turns out I have internet access at this airport, so I was able to finish up this turn.

I used a tactic I refer to as fake return fire to knock out the first of Paul's Reapers. Idea is that the return fire causing algorythm doesn't require that you actually fire a weapon, only that you attempt to fire a weapon. So if you have (for example) a Thermal Lance on a Sensei and you attempt to fire it from 6 hexes away with a reasonably clear shot to the enemy, they will eventually return fire, thus wasting their shots for opportunity fire, and turning them toward you as well. I used this to turn the weaker shield face toward where my other forces were so I could hit with missiles after I downed shields with the Sensei.

The usual threat with forced return fire is weapons that hit both shields and armor - had the reaper had NBWs, the Sensei would not have reached the intended area intact without significantly more shields.

[paul]

heh, i was going to ask if that was allowed! you can also do that with any weapon you can't currently fire just by clicking on it. i consider it a bug in the game, but it is useful in many situations against cybrids. i used to use it against the huge crowds of cybrids you'd be surrounded by in a quick assault mission in system 3.

i really should have mounted a NBW or two on each reaper. if i had, i'd be much less concerned about the ammo situation. only thing is they're so power hungry you have to worry a bit about draining your battery.

[Crow!]

The game has ended in his concession; I had a Demon with plenty of ammo and two NBWs to his blind Reaper with little ammo.

Looking at his forces, there are very few technical problems. The Reapers should have fit an overdrive into the empty internal slot, and Reactive is usually my choice for life support (the 1 stability per turn does a lot more to let you keep your pilots jacked up than you'd think, and Reactive is bizarrely light). Sensors 7.11 weren't that much of a problem until the last turn since the shadow was generally unimpeded.

To shave some credits on the Reapers, I'd downgrade a couple of the HK+'s to HKs, downgrade Q3000 targeting computer one level, and I'd rely on jackups rather than training to keep the pilots (good choice on bioderm, btw ;) )

So basically the problem was that the 400K credit limit was just too low to support 3 Reapers. Smaller hercs are typically more cost effective, and as such you almost never want to field less than the maximum allowed.

Also, I find some variety in forces are tactically very useful. In many cases what you need isn't more copies of Hercs but instead to have the right herc for the current situation, just so long as you have enough copies of a type of shield hitting to down the face and enough armor piercing to kill. There are exceptions (example: going with shield penetration generally requires that the entire force focus on that tactic or else, with shields already down, you'd have been better off mounting armor hitting weapons than penetrating).

I'll think about what settings we'll do next, and then start a new thread. Anyone else is free to join in, of course!

[paul]

I guess maxing out the number of hercs is more important than I thought! With Crow's 6 hercs to my 4 (only 3 of which had an appreciable combat role), Crow had more weaponry and the flexibility to sacrifice small hercs in exchange for putting my reapers in awkward situations. His forces were also much more mobile than mine, which meant that I had little chance of playing aggressively or outmaneuvering.

One choice of Crow's I didn't understand was putting Kyoko in that demon. He's super cheap but has relatively bad basic skills and poor tolerance for jackup. Was that just a credit-shaving measure? Crow (the bioderm) seems like the choice for a demon or reaper. He's got decent base skills, moderate price, and you can jack him up to near perfection.

Lastly, do you ever use penetrating weapons like the thermal needler and ELF's? I can hardly see the use for either of them. Their range is too short and they do too little damage. I'd rather just rely on shield+armor busting. I'm going to play with them and see if I can't find a use for them though.

[Crow!]

Yes, the Kyoko was chosen exclusively for cost effectiveness. I wanted someone much better, but couldn't find enough credits elsewhere. That Demon was the one with the self destruct module, too.. when credits are tight, it's hard to justify a 15,000 credit bioderm in a Herc that ideally will kill itself once combat starts!

Situations that call for penetrating weapons are few and far between. They're a bit better in single player, where moderately damaging a Herc without killing it is viable*, and when Verminiuses become really annoying to the ammo supply. I did win one game with a force of chain ELF Ogres; at the first few ranks Chain ELF is available it's almost as strong as most armor hitting weapons. The ELF mortar is of no use - its cost is astronomical and it does no damage against heavily armored Hercs (it has like 10 subhits, and heavy armors subtract a certain number from each subhit, and it has less than 100% effectiveness at long range in the first place). Thermal needler also has a large number of subhits, if I recall.

* When a Cybrid takes damage, it is applied to every component evenly - to be technical about it, the way it works is damage is applied to the chassis only, and at the end of any hit (whether or not it even damaged the armor), the health of each component is set to the health of the chassis. This glitch can be used to have 99 units of nanorepair send one of your Cybrids from 1% everything straight to 100% by doing friendly fire.