Why Caiger Mall Fell

Late on the night of November 9th Shacknews blitzed the Upper Left Corner of Caiger Mall, and by late morning of November 10th the mall had fallen. The immediate question is, of course, why did Caiger Mall fall this time and not its other two major sieges? Both those sieges were unquestionably much larger in terms of the numbers involved on both sides. The fact that it took weeks for Shacknews' blitzes to finally break Caiger suggests that the blitzes alone weren't it. Latrobe had sustained over a week of such blitzes with far fewer numbers than any corner of the mall. So why then?

Zombies Aint What They Used to Be (They're Better and Smarter!)

The advantages of Ransack and Feeding Drag (while significant) were not the reasons Caiger fell in the third siege. Since Feeding Drag has been implemented a comparatively small proportion of eaten survivors have been actually dragged from their safe houses. In Caiger Mall especially very few survivors were dragged outside compared to those who were killed where they stood. The reasons for this might be that ferals and the fresh zombies of Shacknews didn't have xp to waste on this secondary skill. Ankle grab and the attack skills are much more profitable and necessary to a young zombie. It might also be that attacking zombies are so blinded with Brainlust that they don't want to take the effort to drag a meal outside. That, or they were too lazy, drunk, and/or stupid to stop attacking and do something slightly more clever for a moment. Survivors are not exempt from this as you’ll see below.

The third siege is only the second recorded instance of a corner of Caiger being completely cleared out. The only other instance is the Thanksgiving Day attack during the First Siege of Caiger Mall that was eventually repelled. The most important difference between now and then, and what counted more toward the downfall than the ransacking, was mall walking. Mall walking meant there was no opportunity for distributed defense. Distributed defense might have worked if survivors had moved into the surrounding buildings instead of another corner, but that would have meant abandoning the mall altogether (if only for a few hours until a counterattack). Unthinkable.

Zombie response regarding feeding drag at Caiger:

Being a zombie who was there for the battle, and inside during many breaches to kill harmanz, feeding drag was unfortunately quite ineffective during the battle due to re-barricading efforts. Feeding drag is only successful when the doors are open, if a barricade exists, the attempt will fail (And, I believe, waste an AP.) Secondly, there is always the chance that when you go outside, the barricades might go back up before you can re-enter. Therefore, it isn't quite as effective of an attack with a very active defense like there was at during the third siege.

Also, the strategic value of Ransack cannot be overstated. Forget the sack of the NE corner for a moment; Ransack enabled Caiger's revive operation to be shut down by way of a zombie-enforced moratorium on syringe production. You can't revive if you don't have syringes, and you can't get syringes if the NTs are ransacked. The net effect was that survivors who were killed in the mall stayed dead after Latrobe and the other NTs in the area fell. Then, of course, when a single corner of the Mall was totally cleared of survivors, the barricades stayed down. Mall-walking brought the rest of the mall down with that corner.

That's what killed distributed defense: not mall walking by itself, but ransack plus mall walking. As, I believe, Ron Burgundy said, any time a zombie group lays siege to a mall proper, they're really only fighting the survivors in the least-populated corner. The rest of the survivors are dessert.

Caiger Aint What it Used to Be (It's Worse!)

If the survivors really wanted it they could have cleared the 140-odd zombies that were in the square at the time it was ransacked. Countless sieges have shown survivors' greater capacity in a direct, stand-up fight. Shotguns and pistols both have greater accuracy. First aid kits also greatly expand the meatshield. The 500+ survivors still standing at the time could have cleared the invading zombies. Even a fraction of this number could have reclaimed the corner. Especially since the attacking zombies had already spent most of their AP clearing the one corner. No, the zombies didn't take Caiger Mall because of Ransack, and that brings us to the real reasons the mall fell.

First, Caiger Mall was not what it used to be. In comparison to the other sieges the Mall was relatively vacant at the start of the third siege. Barely 600 or less in the entire mall. The situation wasn't much better even at the height of the third siege, and when the revive queues were still functioning. Survivor numbers were still about half what they were against the Mall Tour siege of Caiger (Zombageddon is still the largest and longest running siege in Malton history).

Response to Zombie answer to this Whole Deal

I've moved your answer to the discussion page. I apologize if that screws up the rhythm of your argument any. Actually I didn't see anything in the first zombie response that seriously contradicted what I put here (and I tried at least a little to be objective). In that spirit, let's move the debate to the discussion part of the page until a real historical and truthfull perspective emerges (probably 6 months to a year from now).

Sing a Song for the Necrotechs, Wherever They Are...

Then there were the Necrotechs. The Shacknews finally did what any besieging zombie of Caiger should have been doing since Day One. They sytematically swept the surrounding Necrotechs and left task forces to guard them (which was made easier by ransacking them). The revive queue took a hit, but that's not to say it was or should have been fatal. The CMS had months to stockpile syringes, and some were heard to have 30 or more waiting to be used. And every single survivor who came to reinforce the mall was bound to have at least a couple syringes stashed away, if only for people he or she knows. It would have also been possible to go further afield to find syringes. The Battle of the Bear Pit proved this. Survivors would leave Ackland for syringes, and be gone sometimes days at a time. But when they came back they went right back to reviving. It's arguable that too little time had passed for the loss of the necrotechs to be really felt in any case. It might have taken a week or more for the defenders of the Mall to burn through their stashes of syringes. Numbers within the mall when it fell were only very slightly less than they had ever been this past month. The slow wearing down of numbers the loss of the Necrotechs would have produced was then obviously not yet in effect..

Psychology

However, it is worth noting that during the first two sieges of Caiger, LaTrobe was never knocked out of action. The effect that the loss of the NT facility had may have been outweighed by the effect that it was percieved to have. Instead of fighting to the death and looking for a revive, survivors were more likely to flee or change sides because they believed that NT operations had been successfully disrupted.

Who's In Charge Here?

But more important than that to the loss of Caiger was the complete and utter absence of any sort of organized resistance or leadership. In past sieges these positions had been taken by the visiting Survivor groups. These groups' leaders would then become the leaders of Caiger Mall until the siege was over. Then the Caiger Mall Survivors would revert to what it had always been: an ad hoc group of unaligned survivors without clear goals or methods other than to hold the mall, and maybe Latrobe. This was illustrated perhaps most clearly by the continuous and unthinking focus of all survivors on the SE corner.

The SE corner had been the focus of attacks in the first siege. It eventually became the same target for the Mall Tour. The Mall Tour might have wanted to switch to an easier corner, but were having trouble thrashing their ferals into doing anything smart. They spent the first weeks of the siege pointlessly attacking a library, a building of absolutely no value except as an entry point. Now, due to the last two sieges the bulk of the survivors in Caiger stayed in the SE corner in the third. Even the newcomers who continued to arrive later in the siege, for some reason, stayed mostly in the SE corner. Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE!!!) was telling them to spread out, to reinforce Latrobe, to move to the other corners. The effect was negligible, and the mall eventually paid the price.

Why didn't they spread out? It could be because the Caiger Mall Survivors were too lazy, stupid, and/or drunk to do something that was only just barely clever. That could be why. But a more likely reason was: they didn't think they had to. As mentioned above, there were no leaders, no strike groups, only a few scattered members from different groups and none of those had any authority in the eyes of the Caiger Mall Survivors. This includes the reinforcements who should have known better. Those who did were too few and had too little weight with the majority to make a difference.

The Ridleybank Resistance Front and Channel Four News Teams are run by de facto cults of personality. What the Papas, or Mr. Burgundy says goes. They have advisors and senior members who help craft a plan, but Burgundy and the Papas are the ones who end up telling people what to do. They're the voiceboxes of the cadres who make the decisions. That wasn't the case in Caiger. If a stranger comes off the street and tells you to do something you say to him "Who the f*** are you? F*** you! I do what I want!" This attitude was demonstranted most clearly by one defender of the mall who said (paraphrasing) "Waah Waah 'Spread Out!' Come on, grow a sack you babies! This is Caiger." And that brings us to the other reason Caiger fell.

My Magic Beans Will Protect Me!

And for this I'm going to reference the lesson the RRF learned during the First Battle of the Blackmore. You cannot depend on your mythology to save you. The NMC and BBB were in Ridleybank for months waiting for the certain death all sides assured them was a moment away. They expected it. It was the reason they came. They waited 2 months for their Ragnarok. Finally the RRF realized that they would have to commit themselves, and ultimately nearly every other major horde in the city to clearing out Central Malton again. Territory they took for granted as theirs. A similar attitude had been present in Caiger since the end of the First Siege.

Old News is Bad News

The CMS was a victim of its own basic structure. Its wiki page and announcements were all grossly out of date, and no significant efforts were made to do anything between sieges. The CMS Meta made an admirable effort to put a brain on its massive host, but even they fell victim to inactivity and their own percieved dominance. By the time of the third siege it had been over half a year since the mall had faced a serious threat. The most active, organized, and bloodthirsty defenders had moved on long ago. What were left were the veterans of past sieges who wished to relive their victories forever and whatever survivors passed through, still counting on the mall for safety, supplies, and revives.

We All Know What Happened Then

Caiger fell because there was no organized response to Shacknews, as there should have been from the start. Strike groups should have been waiting to pounce on any incursion as it appeared there was during the early days. More than that, it fell because the survivors decided that it deserved to fall. The major groups that flocked to the mall in past sieges and the thousands of unaffiliated survivors didn’t take the initiative to retake assets like the Necrotechs or the NW corner. Some were occupied by barely a dozen zombies, easy prey for even a single group of ten coordinated zombie hunters. Even after the NW was ransacked it could have been taken back if even 1/6 of the survivors inside agreed to fall back, and counterattack together at a later time. Instead the zombies kept their foothold in the mall, and hundreds of ferals poured in as they logged on that morning to see the doors open. Survivors blasted away, healed, and seeing a very large pile still indoors, scattered while they could.

So Caiger fell, and the Survivors are as much to blame for it as the zombies. But they can take comfort in the fact that it was not in its first defeat what it had been in its more storied victories. And zombies can be satisfied that they cracked a tough fortress, even if it wasn't the best Malton had ever seen. The stakes were lower (fewer defenders means fewer losses), and there's always tomorrow...

Tyler Whitney0 01:06, 11 November 2006 (UTC)