RRF/Malton Herald & Sun/Text/Text031508left
From The Urban Dead Wiki
Editor's Note: This issue covers early RRF history, starting with the assault on Hildenbrand Mall to Dia de los Muertos
Countdown to Brains at Hildebrand
- Taken from an account by Papa Petro himself
Back in the day, the science of Urban Dead was still at a fairly primitive level. We were still in the process of learning, for example, that barricading was a five to one advantage for survivors. We were used to smashing everything that was in our path by simply wearing out the enemy with numbers. Part of what helped us was that the survivors were also utterly inefficient about how they dealt with us, with far too many shooting us out of the mall before barricading back up or even closing the doors.
Back then, when you APed out you could still see the map, and state of the art sophistication in siegecraft was to AP out in a mall quad and then continually refresh and post the health state of the defenders, so those without the scent/diagnosis skills would know who the soft targets were.
(Giddings, SE quad, all fucking day long. But that's another story.)
So we hit Hildebrand. Initially, the plan had been to hit both Hildebrand and Woodroffe at once, with each Group, but Hildebrand bogged Group 2 down enough that I brought the whole horde in to drop the hammer.
Now, somewhere around the end of Nichols, I had a notion that the only coordination we really would need was an attack timer. So one of our members, Deathray I believe, coded up a java thingy that would do a countdown, at the end of the countdown revealing a target (for SOOPER SEKRIT STUFF). The Blork Corps put its own timer to good use in hitting Mayo Row, but the field usage for mall sieges was less than spectacularly successful. In fact, it rather sucked.
Hildebrand was a much stiffer fight than Nichols. We were starting to get some compression effect of refugees fleeing and stiffening defenses as they moved back. Furthermore, they still thought they could stop us, so they were willing to hang tough.
As an aside, Hildebrand was also where a matter with Lisa really started to get to be a pain in the ass. She'd fled to Nichols with her alt, only to have us attack Nichols. So when she fled to Hildebrand, she was PKed as a zombie spy OMG. So when we announced the attack, word got around that we were attacking the mall in retaliation for Lisa's PKing. This was a load of shit, because if we'd caught her survivor character ourselves we would've eaten her. As I said at the time, we didn't (and still don't) operate with any concern for what happens to members' survivor alts. Completely separate existances, what?
It took Lisa's alt a good while to shake off that doombringer rep, and it was actually pretty damned funny. Except to her, naturally.
Having a covert timer worked quite well for coordinating the Blork Corps attacks, and our first two uses at Hildebrand also were quite promising. We'd jam twenty to thirty through the doors, which was a good breach in those days, kill a bunch of people, then get evicted.
On day three, though, we learned a good lesson. They'd gotten wind of the timers, and when the horde attacked, they spent all their APs rebarricading. A few got through, and were ignored as the defenders continually rebarricaded. For the most part, though, we simply APed out outside the walls.
It was an excellent strategy on their part, as was noted at the time, and bought Hildebrand another day of existance. Afterward, we played some games with the timers (attack an hour before the deadline, etc.), and after about five days, we had worn them down and crushed them. The Hildebrand barricading allowing them to put up such a good fight was something that would come back to haunt us later at the first battle of Caiger.
But that was far away, and the highwater mark of the hordes for 2005 was ahead of us- Giddings, the legendary grave of the Many, home of PARA, and alleged by all to be unbreakable.
Or alleged by most, anyway.
Hildebrand: My First Day on the job
- Taken from an account by DM
I learned about the game in early October and choose a medic for my first character. I spawned in Roachtown. I didn't really know how to play the game and had no idea that Roachtown and Central Malton were completely overrun with zombies.
I spent half of my AP searching for items outside to fight all the zombies around me. Getting a little frustrated, I decided to find a place to stay since there were zombies everywhere. I finally found a building that had no zombies in it, but it did have a few bodies. I thought the bodies were there for flavor, so I decided to spend the night there and logged off my character. Well low and behold I am dead before morning.
A little frustrated with the game and not really getting it, I started another character and spawned in Peppardville. This time I chose soldier because I wanted to shoot things. I walk up to a zombie, use most of my AP trying to shoot and punch them ( I think I shot them once and punched them twice). I then found a building with a few dead bodies to stay the night. This time, I decided to shut the door for safety, not realizing to dump the bodies. I woke up dead the next day...
I decided to give the game one more shot so I read the Wiki beforehand and learned that firefighter was a good starting class. I also learned that bodies can become zombies. This time I start a new character, attack a zombie, get 35 or so XP, and I find a lightly barricaded building to serve as a safehouse. What I didn't realize at the time that Stanbury Village was completely overrun and that my safehouse was probably the only one still there. Of course, I am killed during the night. I was pretty frustrated with the game at this point so I basically said 'screw it' and walked away from the game.
About a week later, I read a little more on the Wiki site, saw that Petro was heading up the RRF and so I decided to give Team zombie a chance.
Hildebrand Mall was my first RRF operation. For the start of the siege, we were pmed the location of the timers and told to rally at a spot NE of the mall. I shambled to the mall area and logged off to let my AP fill. Right before the attack, I logged into my character and noticed that I was on the ground (I didn't realize at the time that somone had revived me in a stack of something like 80 zombies).
I stood up, did something else for a few minutes, came back to my character and noticed that a few zombies had attacked me. I didn't think much of it, and moved to the mall at the attack time. We started bashing and I noticed that the zombies were attacking me. I figured that they were misclicking and hitting attack a zombie instead of barricades. I also noticed that the barricades were fluctuating wildly from open to VSB. I hit enter building at a point when I thought the doors were open and low and behold, my revived zombie walks into the building, no problems.
I start attacking the first person on the list and I was happy to see that my attacks were landing. It was at this point that I noticed the game text said punch and that there were no other zombies inside. I started to think: Why is my zombie punching instead of clawing or biting? Oh shit, zombies can't punch. Oh shit, it says survivor. Oh shit, I am not supposed to be in here.
As soon as I realized that I was a revived zombie/survivor, I left the building and just stood until someone killed me. And that was basically my first day on the job....
