Talk:OEM?

talk to me! 'arm. 23:21, 17 August 2007 (BST)

Yes, Extinction is interested in any coordination OEM? has in mind. Do you want to join the United Zombies of Malton?--Zeug 12:08, 19 August 2007 (BST)

Salt the Land Tactics/Strategy

Regarding OEM?'s proposed use of sentinels, Extinction had this discussion at its beginning and decided it would be kind of pointless. Unlike the RRF etc we don't care how other groups conduct themselves, it's not a moral concern, but more a practical one.

First off it probably won't help recruitment asking your average UD player to create sentinels and do the boring chore of logging in, standing up, logging out, logging in etc. Most players will find it either far too much like work rather than a game or be put off by the stigma of "cheating".

Secondly, Extinction finds it a rather dubious waste of AP. Our initial success with the top 6 burbs of the NW Extinction Zone came about not by using sentinels but by starting with the corner suburb of Dakerstown, destroying its organized defense then expanding out to its three neighbours. It was constant fighting until we managed to get that one suburb buffer zone around DK and then it started to die off.

We have a few members (now a separate group, the Extinction Guardians) and whatever local zed groups that regularly pass through the suburb check the NT's and TRP's, take down cades, and fight any low level survivor insurgencies. If necessary the main Extinction strike group returns to destroy any significant survivor resistance that reforms.

The main way we manage the NT's is through strategically striking at the local survivors logistics and supply lines. The key to keeping the top 6 NW suburbs NT's ruined isn't sentinel bots or even any Extinction members being in those suburbs ... it's Calvert Mall. As soon as we ransacked that the top NW burbs literally died off, and they did so while Caiger Mall was still going full bore. For Extinction Salt the Land as a tactical concept has made UD a City-wide strategic mil sim game as much as a combat sim and that's precisely why we concentrated in Malton Suburb 01, Dakerstown, to start the Extinction process off.

Once the strategic TRP's are ruined and there's a buffer zone of at least one suburb then all you need is to patrol the area every now and then and let the local zed groups and ferals have their way. We've also found that the red burbs, once revival is extinguished, become natural zombie farms and those zombies start filtering out to the neighboring burbs and do Extinction's job without us lifting a finger.

Going back to recruitment, there's a trollbait idea going around that Extinction can only do what it's doing using sentinels. For me it's completely the opposite case. For Extinction, or OEM? for that matter, to be successful we need mass recruits, not a small force of players using large numbers of alts, but real players and lots of them helping sack and hold contested NT's in the front lines around our growing Extinction Zone. Salt the Land as a concept needs to be disseminated as widely as possible to get as many zeds as possible camping the nearest NT or other TRP at the end of their turns. Extinction doesn't care who does it, other groups or ferals or just our Extinction Alliance.

Relying on a mass of alts is a short term game plan in our opinion, and many especially survivor groups who are very skilled doing alt troop rotations are also very vulnerable in the longer run. They can't maintain that level of activity for too long. Extinction on the other hand can because we rejected the idea of relying on a small band using zerging/sentinels etc very early on and have adapted our tactics and strategy to the mass recruitment and efficient comms model, which also includes helping local zeds and most especially communicating to the mobs of ferals that follow us - via in-game shoutbox, forums and the NTJ Brain Location Report. Our feral friends are actually larger than Extinction and the main reason we have been able to do what we do.

That and the strategic approach to UD gameplay is actually fun.--Zeug 15:39, 30 August 2007 (BST)