Vault fort
Vault forts
A work in progress. Feel free to comment on the talk page.--Belisarius17 22:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
The necessity for new tactics is outlined in this position statement:
Recent events have demonstrated the clear superiority of the Meta-gaming zombie groups in head on confrontations. Such groups are often made up of some of the games most experienced and creative players. Against such excellent coordination and communication, even survivor groups that are heavily armed eventially fall due the need to go offline and "Sleep". While several different and excellent strategic approaches have been developed for survivor groups, the large number of different groups make putting large scale strategies into practice very difficult. As a result, some of the smaller guerrilla type groups have been trying new tactical approaches that are built on the common sense approaches that more experianced players employ in the game.
Conversations between myself and such varied in game characters as Pototo of the RHVP, Taco2 of the Earletown Rangers, Poodle of Doom of EVIL, Sean Connolly of The Survivor's Republic, CheGregory of The Red Faction, Rogue Medic of PLAM, Highlanderjack of the Wulves and observations of tactics used by Oo Willie and a number of other players have contributed directly to the tactic that is outlined below. Also-it bears mentioning that several Pker and Zombie group players were kind enough to put their 2 cents in as well and serves as a reminder that no matter how frustrating the game goes-these are player characters who are interested in playing the game well.
The Main Idea
The idea of building "Vault Forts" is simply the practice of taking the so called "Dark Buildings" and developing them to EHB then letting their generators run out of fuel or smashing the genny. To understand why this is an advantage go here:
http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Dark
The Vault Fort is then used as a place for defenders of a suburb to sleep to lower hit rates against sleeping characters.
Public Awareness of Dark builds
"It's probably worth noting the difficulty inherent in convincing the local survivor population that dark buildings are much, much safer being dark. Effective grafitti campaigns in and around both the dark buildings, and the generators sources, would help, as would adherence to a strict rationing of generators/fuel in a ranked order - light the TRPs first, then the non-essential buildings with useful search items, then nothing else."-MISANTHROPY!
One of the most widely observed phenomenon in the game is the short sighted and narrow minded approaches of survivors and survivor groups. Seeding the suburb with information is important for the proper execution of the tactic and can help avoid confusion. The suggestion of tagging around the free running lanes of the generator sources and Dark sites, rationing of generators+fuel to TRPs and "Public Service Announcements" on the wiki building descriptions (provided they are neutral in point of view)should all be adopted as ground work for the tactic.
Tactical Outline
1) Armories, Banks, Cinemas, and Clubs are the Vault Forts
2) Cade to EHB then "Go Dark" via Genkill or fuel loss
3) Sleep in the Dark
4) Emerge to Fak/Construct/Cade behind hordes "FCC to VSB" (Vsb is very ap efficient AND creates entry points)
5) Focus on Factories First (factories have gennys)
6) Use ruins as entry points (if they keep sentinals in a ruined building use it as a free entry point that won't cade you out)
7) Give Ground in one direction (It helps to know where the front lines are so you can work behind them and then cross back to rest)
When To Fight
8) Attack single Zeds inside buildings ("Commit to the Hit" and dump the body)
9) Withdraw from Zed groups larger than 2 inside buildings
10) Avoid contact with Zeds outside
Advantages
AP efficient.
Can be adapted to various Strategies.
Should appeal to the living-including Pkers and Griefers who LOVE dark buildings (finally something ALL Survivors can agree on!!)
Should appeal to the Zed groups (Would'nt you rather fight through Stalingrad than crush a bunch Cub Scouts with Katanas???)
Disadvantages
Tough to level up quick
Will not "stop" the Metagaming groups (this is a tactic not a strategy though)
Relies on other survivors to work resource builds while you keep them alive
Ancillary Tactics
As opposed to the standard passive "meatshield" technique (often refered to as "dinner" by Zed groups and unfortunately subject to cheating in the form of zerging or alt abuse), the Shieldwall is an active tactic that involves communication, FAKs, body clearing and cading to protect a resource building for a given period of time. The "shielding" term refers to the fact that the survivors who are designated as in the Shieldwall do not attack zombies or deathcultists, but rather spend their AP:
A) Barricading behind break-ins
B) Using FAKs to prevent falling to low HPs that would allow being dragged out
C) Curing infections
D) Clearing opponents bodies from the building
It will fall to organized attacks but allows small groups of determined survivors the ability to hold off larger numbers of zombies from ruining a building for a given amount of time
