Messages

61

General / Pancaking, The Definitive Guide

« on: October 26, 2004, 08:43:50 AM »

Impossible to hit because you can't aim.  Do you ban blinking celerity fades that never die and kill your entire team?  Lerks are simple to kill, just because one flies in and doesn't do so in a straight line doesn't mean it's an exploit, it means they're smart.  Hitting the ground in a small corridor isn't anything new, you try avoiding multiple HMGs as a lerk in a hallway, you're going to hit the wall, the ceiling, the floor, everything.  If you examine the speed you'll see that you never get over the cap, which is a requirement for pancaking.  Stop trying to punish players that have skill.

62

General / Pancaking, The Definitive Guide

« on: October 25, 2004, 10:33:40 PM »

Lightning_Blue told me to start a discussion here after I was banned tonight, and to explain what I told him to the community.

Pancaking is exploiting the lack of a vertical speed cap in such a way as to make the lerk unhittable by conventional means, which means the lerk moves so fast as to be untrackable by anyone or practically unhittable.  In order to exploit this, a lerk must fly vertically only (This is important later) and move as far up and down as possible as fast as possible.  In larger rooms, this results in a speed that can top over 2000, and renders the lerk difficult to hit.  However, moving up and down doesn't mean a lerk is pancaking.  Any horizontal movement adds a cap which prevents the lerk from continually gaining speed, thus it's no longer pancaking.  Avoiding marine fire by moving in a fashion that renders the lerk difficult to track is not pancaking, it's smart flying.  In small hallways, pancaking is impossible by definition because the lerk can't break the speed cap due to the lack of vertical room to move.  Pancaking is not moving up and down from ceiling to floor, it's moving vertically from celing to floor in an effort to lag the hitboxes enough to make the lerk impossible to track by regular means.  A small room doesn't allow for massive speed (in fact you rarely break default cap speed in hallways), thus making it impossible to lag the hitboxes.  Please understand this difference, and amend the rules to reflect this ackowledgement.  "OMG PANCAKER" doesn't apply to lerks that kill you with bite and were difficult to hit, it applies to lerks that fly up and down and do nothing else in order to lag their hitboxes intentionally.  Diving at you isn't pancaking, as the lerk will eventually have an uncapped DESCENDING speed, but not climbing speed, which is the actual exploitive part of the physics.

63

General / Worst Map Ever...

« on: October 21, 2004, 01:02:37 PM »

Mineshaft.  It makes me cringe to play because it has a ridiculous marine bias, and it's just ugly to look at.  Tanith, eclipse, veil, they may be bland but they're not as UGLY as mineshaft.  All the new maps have a blue/green look, which I really like, I feel more at home on ayumi or agora than any other map (except hera, my lerk favorite).

64

General / The Horror

« on: August 30, 2004, 01:01:25 AM »

Often when it's 16/17 I can get into the server, but I'm promptly kicked out once it realizes I'm not special.  I don't think I've ever waited more than a minute to play though (I'll just switch servers if the wait is that long).

65

General / Bill Comm Strats

« on: August 06, 2004, 02:55:55 AM »

Keep this to a minimum please. If you relocate to some impossible location every single time you comm, you're holding the game hostage. You're denying everyone a normal game because you think it should be screwing around time. If we see this happening too often and people start to complain about it, you force us to make rules against it, making our ruleset even more complex and creating more work for the admins. Please remember that LM is not your personal playgroud. Yes, we want you to have fun, but we want everyone else to have fun as well. If your definition of fun goes contrary to the rest of the server's, you'll have to yield.

[snapback]24853[/snapback]

Oh no, let's do something besides the same thing over and over again, because that's the only way to have fun.  Seriously, the most fun you'll have is a game that doesn't follow the default way most NS pub games work out.  An odd strat on aliens will often win simply because marines don't see it coming.  I've organized both a gorge rush and a lerk rush in pubs before, and I haven't lost with either one yet.  Those really ingenious relocation spots are the same way.  I have one on caged that still hasn't lost, even in scrims or pugs.

66

General / Lerk Tactics - Lame Or Not?

« on: August 05, 2004, 09:58:52 PM »

No, I use the arrow keys for movement normally, and shift to jump as lerk.  All it takes is 3 flaps to go full speed, and if you do a 180 fast enough you keep about half momentum.  I also always get celerity, so my speed goes up even more.  For some reason not many people use lerk this way, and I honestly don't understand why.  It's brutally effective and gets better as room size increases.  Marines supposedly have an advantage in large rooms or big corridors, and I use that against them.  It's rare to kill me in a large room, most of my deaths are in small areas with little/no cover at all, especially on the ceiling.  I like rooms like Aux Gen on caged because there are so many things I can do acrobatics through, and it becomes impossible to track me reliably until I actually attack someone.

EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION

67

General / Lerk Tactics - Lame Or Not?

« on: August 05, 2004, 05:04:34 PM »

So lately I've regulared on the Lunixmonster due to one fact: I haven't been kicked for pancaking.  Every other server that has the admin presence that lunixmonster does that isn't a clan server has either permanently banned or continually kicks me until I stop going lerk.  Not cool when I'm trying to get my practice in for the next CAL match or random tournament.  

I've also had people in at least 1 game a day complain A LOT about my playing style as lerk.  I thought I'd define why and how I do what I do to minimize the crying from the people that read this forum, which in general are the only ones that count.  I discovered that the reason a lerk dies is one of three reasons: It stays too long in combat and gets whittled down, it takes a direct hit or series of them and dies instantly, or it gets ambushed in some way.  These are common to all aliens, but the lerk has special circumstances.  

The first example is usually because the lerk finds one lmg marine and tries to kill him, yet can't do it fast enough, and either that one marine eventually kills the lerk or backup arrives for the marine and picks you off from the doorway.  I solve this with my diving attack flight style.  Marines have a hard time tracking a vertically moving target, so constantly changing my height makes it impossible to track accurately.  I stay hear the ceiling, then dive down, attack a few times, the go back to the ceiling and repeat.  If more than 1 marine or larger weapons are around, I try to force them to unload ammo.  This is what generally makes people angry, as I fly around the room acrobat style and force them to expend ammo trying to kill what would otherwise be a very easy target.  The power of the new flight model is the possibility of flying around in an impossible to follow manner, while keeping tabs on where you actually are.  It's easy to lose focus and forget where you are in a room and die trying to leave the wrong way.

Second example is mainly for shotguns/GLs/HMGs.  A single shotgun blast with all 8 pellets connecting will drop most lerks dead, and is a #1 killer for lerks.  I avoid this in two ways.  First I get carapace, which makes 1 shot kills with a shotgun impossible at full health.  Second is my flight style once again.  shotguns are less likely to get a full 8 pellet hit the further you are away from them, so the least amount of time you spend close to the marine the better.  The preferred tactics are either diving in a random pattern to minimize damage (the higher the angle the better, its hard to track when you have to look all the way up and rotate around that point) or what I've done lately vs solo shotgunners.  Dive to their feet, bite, then hop over their head and bite from behind.  It's hard to flip around and shoot something and continue doing it.

Third example is the one you really have to watch for.  A good ambush is impossible to detect and difficult to escape.  It involves either baiting a lerk for the "easy" kill or doing something sure to draw the lerks attention.  Once it's in position, the doors are blocked in some fashion to prevent easy escape.  Avoiding the ambush is usually difficult to achieve, and escaping isn't much easier.  Usually reaction skills keep you alive, the moment you see or hear something suspicious you change your flight pattern so whoever was trying to hit you can't follow you.  If anyone has ever shot at me from behind with a shotgun, you know what I'm talking about.  I immediately switch directions and weave up and down, which makes it hard to get a good shot on me.

GUIDELINES
For some reason people feel the need to get angry at me when I play like this, so I started this thread to ask one question: Why?  Why does this bother you so much?  This is for the people that don't like my style of playing for whatever reason to say why, and for general conversation about the lerk and/or pancaking in general.  Don't flame me (flame the playing style), don't flame each other, and stay on topic.  Flame away.