User:Rosslessness/Scouting
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WikiRantings |
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| Mission Briefing | |
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| Mission | : Suburb Scouting |
| Group Size | : 10. |
| Difficulty | : 
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| Goals: | : Complete scouting of suburb, including zombie numbers & repair costs. |
| Requirements | : No skills required at all. : Memories of Life a bonus. : A Witness System. |
| Outcome | : Entire suburb scouted. : Zombies know nothing of your presence. : Learnt about witness systems. : Worked together as a unit. : Used Trans-Mortal Tactics |
The Mission Series
Welcome the first of The Mission series. It's a series of articles designed to show what survivor groups can do. Each one can be combined with other missions, or done on it's own. You'll get a quite exhaustive methodology, and also some useful links if you want to know more.
Above all, this is designed to be a simplistic guide. There won't be a lot of numbers. I've added recommendations for survivor numbers, skills and equipment needed in the box to the right. It's designed to be a stepping stone. A mission such as the first, scouting, could be done by half the number of players just as well. As you learn you can improve and tweak the missions to suit yourself.
Scouting
Scouting is simple. It's going to look at something. In Urban Dead this could be;
- A location.
- A group.
- A character.
This mission is going to focus on location, but by it's conclusion you should know a little about groups and players as well.
Urban Dead takes place in the city of Malton. Malton is a square, subdivided into Suburbs. Each suburb is a ten by ten square of locations.
Click here for a map of all 100 suburbs.
Most groups in game focus on a specific area, normally made up of one or more suburbs.
Why Scout?
Scouting is one of the easiest missions a group can undertake. It can be quick, simple and entirely painless. In a few simple moves you can find out almost everything about an area.
Malton is vast. You could spend a week in a building and not meet another player. One hundred zombies could be standing two squares away and you may never know. Scouting is very important. It helps you understand your environment, warns you about future threats and helps you meet other survivors.
Most importantly it provides opportunities for more missions. You might find a building under siege, or fresh recruits. You may track down a wanted murderer or just find a building full of fancy hats.
The Scouting Mission
To illustrate how easy this type of mission is I'm going to use the suburb of Ridleybank as an example.
For those who don't know Ridleybank is home to the RRF, one of the oldest zombie hordes in the game. But this doesn't matter, as for this mission, you won't be fighting them, you don't even need to be alive.
This is the first important part of scouting. Pick a target. Everyone needs to know what their job is, and what they need to do.
Preparation
This mission needs only one piece of equipment for your group. If you are scouting you need an accurate way of recording what you can see. This is a Witness System.
A witness system is a programme that lets you save screenshots for later use. There are several available, but the most widely used is Urban Dead Dumbwit.
Click here and follow the simple onscreen instruction to enable Dumbwit
Have a quick practice. Each screenshot is saved at an external location. Here's an example.
Now you're ready to get into position.
Position
As I've said, this is a mission designed for ten people. Its a simple scouting mission. To begin with, you've got to get set up.
Here's the plan. Each characters sets up at the top of the suburb, and they head south. Each member has to take a photo of ten squares.
But in order to do this properly, he needs to check inside for the buildings as well.
As a character moves southwards, taking screenshots, he needs to check inside buildings that he can enter. For example.
On the following scouting run the screenshots should be taken at
- Bush Blvd
- Lewellen Way
- Club Capps
- Inside Club Capps
- Moggridge Place Police Department
- Inside Moggridge Place Police Department
- Riglar Boulevard
- Wootten Towers
- Inside Wootten Towers
- a Factory
- Inside a factory
- a junkyard
- Inside a junkyard
- St. Luke's Hospital
- Inside St. Luke's Hospital
- Blakey Street
Problems
There can be problems, you might not be able to get into a building because it's over caded. This means that someone has Barricaded so much it can no longer be entered from the street. If this is the case, dont worry, that's fine, just move on. An active zombie might try eating you. That's also fine, just move on. The only thing you should be doing is taking pictures. You're a team of spies. If you do this properly, no one will know you were even there.
Dead? No problem
The brilliant thing about a mission like this is that if you're currently a zombie, it doesn't matter. Your eyes still work, you can still take screenshots. in fact many groups go scouting when they're dead. It's a lot better use of your time than waiting for a revive. In such cases if a building has it's door closed you won't be able to scout inside unless you have Memories of Life, but it's only a minor inconvenience.
This is an example of a Trans-Mortal Tactic.
