User talk:Maverick Farrant

E. Reynalds

Of course. I'll make my way into the district in a little bit, after pulling a little more ammo from the police station I'm in.

NecroWatch

Thanks for noticing our work! I'm the guy who actually proposed the idea for scouting these types of 'burbs. It may take some time for this to catch on, but the idea is to get them posted, even if there is no real zombie threat right now. This way people who are so inclined see what can be done, and renew them again later when these scout reports can really help. On another note, I'm glad to hear that there are people out here, active people. Some of the burb pages out this way haven't been updated in a loooonnnggg time. I'm usually way over in Penny Heights and don't hear much about Crooketon or Mornington. Anyway, if I/NecroWatch can be of help, let us know. Thanks,--Dr Mycroft Chris 22:58, 3 May 2009 (BST)

Thanks

Thanks for the rez, but the fire station got to VHB before I could get in. The Auto Repair had a zed inside and.. I ran out of AP. >.< Tec7890 ^{T RCDC NW} 00:51, 2 May 2009 (BST)

Thanks

Thanks for creating a few danger reports for locations, but you should make sure that they're not just going to sit unused for 6 months until someone has the inclination to change them. --Pestolence^(talk) 19:56, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Alright, cool. Just making sure. Thanks for helping out. --Pestolence^(talk) 20:00, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Order of the Black Rose

Any inquiries on the Order of the Black Rose can be made here or on the group's talk page. --Maverick 07:41, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

I just wanted to drop by and let you know I normally only provide updates from group wikipages for groups in the Dulston Alliance. Or their close allies. I can however give you tips. My first tip is, feel free to use any and all the wikicode I have used. The UD Wiki is about sharing, so I don't mind if you reuse it to revamp your own wikipage(s). My only suggestion is using a different colour scheme. Tip number two, black is a cool colour, but it's been overdone and can be overpowering. I would suggest a dark/withered brown... akin to a dying flower. Also, check out 404: Barhah not found (not mine by the way, but nicely done). Your group wikipage does not have a lot of content so I would suggest comipiling it into a single page, rather than using subpages (i.e. the SOS Brigade or W.I.Z.A.R.D. are two examples of this. I hope this helps. --Mobius 15:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Evening Maverick

Just saying Hi and good job on keeping the mornington wiki up to date. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:40, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

And on a seperate note, I notice from beerhah that you have a zombie. Might he be interested in joining a small horde? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 09:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

He might be, but you'd have to find him first :P --Maverick 14:06, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

a Challenge! Well he can't be in mornington, I wonder were I'll start looking.....--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 18:20, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

He's in the NW quadrant somewhere, and he never leaves the suburb he's in. So that narrows it down to 25 possible suburbs :P --Maverick 07:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

The Malton Mirror

It would be awesome to include you in the mirror; Incidentally, I really should update the paper, it has been months; perhaps this weekend. Thank you for your interest in the paper. --Marty Banks (aka. Mundane) <DHPD> 05:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

re: roywood danger status

I reverted your edit -- because you provided no evidence that Roywood was green. A News report, ideally backed up by some Iwitnesses, would be sufficient as evidence. But without that, without even a comment made on your danger level change, I felt I had to revert it to the last status. --WanYao 05:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Crooketon

Apologies for the late reply. The M.S.L.F shouldn't have an HQ tag there, as any operation there would now be over. The group is now defunct, and replaced by The Red Guards of Williamsville. Feel free to spray over the tag if you haven't already. Many thanks for the notice. -DeAleksandr 16:49, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Mornington "OBR sitreps"

I don't wanna be a jerk, but these aren't really NPOV... The reports are cool, but the fact that they're labelled OBR every one of them, it falls into the group propaganda realm... Would you consider removing that part of the reports? Every once in a while saying something like, "This sitrep brought to you by your friendly neighborhood OBR" would be ok, probably... but not every sitrep. Thanks! --WanYao 07:59, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem Wan. I totally forgot about that. All suburb SitReps have been changed to be more NPOV friendly. ^^ --Maverick 08:11, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course, what it says in your sig has nothing to do with NPOV, so if part of the read, this message supplied by......--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 08:45, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

St. Lazar's Hospital

Just had a look at the danger report you did for St. Lazar's. You've stretched out the danger report box with what appears to be fragments of your main user page. You put in {{.}} instead of these [[.]]. The first set of brackets should only be used if you have a personal siggy. But not to worry though... I've fixed it for you :) --D.E.ATalk 10:44, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Well done

Its good to see the OBR on the stats page. Keep up the good work! --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:24, 4 April 2009 (BST)

Barricade map

That's a really great (and ambitious idea) you have there. Are you planning on creating a page like that for each individual district, or one for the entirety of Malton?

As for the aesthetics, it seems rather large. You might want to consider resizing is a bit. Also, add a table at the bottom explaining what each color represents, and possibly some text identifying each suburb.

Again, great idea! If you need any help with this, just drop me a message and I'll see what I can do.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 01:48, 27 September 2009 (BST)

I'm afraid I'm not the best person to ask about resizing problems- just look at the schizophrenic squares on the map in my sandbox. Unfortunately, you're probably right about having to tweak the suburb templates to get a uniform size, but you may want to check with a few other talented users (DDR comes to mind in this case) to see if there's an an easier alternative.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 21:11, 28 September 2009 (BST)

Just noticed a slight hitch- a few (read: most) of the suburb plans aren't templated (or follow a specific formula either), which your design requires. I'll see about fixing this, but it might take a while and in the meantime you should be aware of it.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 21:33, 28 September 2009 (BST)

Just jumping in here, at a glance there seems to be a newline sneaking into the template for each suburb map at the end, creating that vertical gap. No idea how it managed to get there, the wiki is supposed to curtail trailing whitespace...

Will have a closer look soonish. --  RoosterDragon  12:50, 8 October 2009 (BST)

Thanks Rooster. I know you're one of the wiki-coding gurus on the wiki and your time is limited as is. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 06:48, 9 October 2009 (BST)

UBP Reviews and Template, Districts

I'm really glad to see you're actively reviewing! I haven't been in Malton long, but the basic lack of subscription to published barricade plans is something I imagine has been cultural more than practical. That is, I can't imagine that the UBP would have been so widely published in years past if it hadn't gained some momentum. That being said, I think that for anyone new to Malton, seeing suburb pages (and their corresponding plans) which haven't been touched in 18 months is a bit discouraging... it's tough to reconcile throwing your weight behind something which appears to be dead. I'd love to help re-publish this though; I think it's a great idea and I think it'll gain traction quickly.

As for the template-- as a user, I find it far, far easier to read a BP that has the names of the buildings in each square. I especially like the plans which use the suburb-map, colored the same way that the UD game itself does, and incorporates the BP into that. Basically, it's just a lot more intuitive for identifying where I am currently standing in the BP, which makes it much less of a pain in the butt. Failing that, if the two plans can at least be on the screen in my browser at the same time, it's much easier to not have to remember "ok I'm 2 from the top, 3 from the left" and then scroll down... over and over.

Lastly, how do you feel about Districts? This seems like a very powerful idea to me, but I haven't seen a lot of evidence of adoption outside of the fact that the OBR and the DEM organize their command structures around districts/regions. --JimBraidwood 15:56, 6 October 2009 (BST)

Thanks! Right now I'm working on getting the {{UBPunreviewed}} template put on the respective pages for all the suburbs, reviews will start as soon as that is finished. So if you would like to help getting that template put on the corresponding pages, that would be great. As far as the templates go, everyone seems to have their own preference. I am most familiar with the UBP Template simply because it is the one most commonly used and easy to set up. As long as it is easy to distinguish the four major types of block on the barricade plan (EHB, VSB, RP, and street) I personally don't care which one a suburb chooses to use.

I am a big supporter of people thinking in terms of districts instead of individual suburbs. I think that districts provide a good middle ground between a suburb, which is rather small, and an entire quadrant of Malton, which is obviously rather large. I also have not seen anybody else act or discuss things in relation to districts, which was honestly the impetus behind the creation of the OBR. My hope is that as the group continues to grow, the logic of thinking in terms of districts and survivor groups staying mobile will spread and cause other groups (already established or brand new) to expand their influence to work over a number of suburbs instead of just one. Right now it's still kind of hard to tell how effective it is though because (1) the Rose District is pretty low-key as far as overall survivor numbers and zombie numbers, and (2) the OBR is a rather small group. So I would like to see something larger happen in terms of a movement toward district-thinking vs. suburb-thinking, but right now I don't have much time or resources for more than merely philosophizing about the issue. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 04:07, 7 October 2009 (BST)

Local Conditions

Are going to stop a few areas from ever having Compliant Plans, especially Dakers, Kempsterbank, and molebank. Areas with high levels of zombies who Salt the land make maintaing vsb trp's hugely difficult. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 15:12, 10 October 2009 (BST)

I entirely understand that. For those kinds of suburbs I am basically putting my knowledge of zombie numbers in the background and looking at the suburb as if it had an average zombie population. There are a number of suburbs in Malton that I entirely expect to be non-UBP, otherwise it would be almost impossible for survivors in those areas. But I'm trying to treat every suburb equally as I review them all the same. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 15:16, 10 October 2009 (BST)

Cool, I thought you'd got it. Dakers really doesn't Need EHB firestations, no one does. And I don't know why people complain about SFHNAS. They maintain the best entry point in the whole of Malton. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 15:20, 10 October 2009 (BST)

Yeah, I'm on the level with you. I know as well as you that any VSB building in Ridleybank will be torn down within 24 hours. But your comment did remind me to add a clause to the UBP page that some suburbs might not be able to implement UBP policy because of local zombie groups that will make it difficult for low-level survivors. I'm still a little confused at places that see active zombies with dark buildings at EHB. Wouldn't it make more sense to leave them ruined and just use them as entry points? --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 15:31, 10 October 2009 (BST)

Exactly. Dark buildings serve little or no purpose, much better to abandon them to the zeds, and help the newbs. (Unless you're somewhere like kempsterbank where with 3 dark ruins you could cut all east, west freerunning routes.) --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 15:40, 10 October 2009 (BST)

True. There is that situation in Mornington too, where you have two buildings (one a hospital) that control the bridge between the east and west parts of the suburb. Those are rough spots, no doubt about it. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 15:43, 10 October 2009 (BST)

I just noticed the UBP review template on the Scarletwood wiki and thought I should mention that your proposed ratio of VS to EHB is not going to work here. There are very few survivors in Scarletwood and the zombies outnumber us at least three to one on a good day. With Fort Feral practically in our backyard and Blesley Mall being held by Clubbed to Death since February, our TRPs are not only extremely difficult to hold at EHB, they would be impossible to maintain at VSB. We simply don't have that kind of survivor presence for this to be a workable plan and this is not a newbie-friendly suburb by any stretch of the imagination with LUE calling this suburb their home, Feral Undead all over the place and what few survivors we do have are busy keeping a text rapist and his zerg army out of safe houses and resource buildings. http://zombies.dementiastudios.org/boards/index.php?topic=12.msg46377#msg46377 Perhaps we can revisit this topic sometime in the future but frankly I don't know when that might be. Scarletwood has been a hot bed of activity for at least the past two years. I don't see that changing for the better anytime in the foreseeable future. Dr Killdare 20:14, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

As above, I understand that local conditions will make it rather impossible for some areas to have compliant barricade plans. In cases like Scarletwood, the barricade plan should reflect something sensible for residents FIRST, and UBP-compliant second. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 20:27, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick response, Maverick. Perhaps you won't mind if I remove the UBP review template from the Scarletwood wiki page. It gives the false impression that the barricade plan isn't quite settled and that isn't the case at all. It's taken the GBP four long years and a lot of blood and (our!) spilled guts to work this barricade plan out. It's changed several times based on survivors' needs and zombie activity levels in the suburb over the years and I'm sure it'll change several times more before it's all over, too. Just not this plan and certainly not at this time. Dr Killdare 20:55, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, what will work better is if you just move it to the bottom of the page and make a note (probably right above the template) that due to local conditions you are not aiming at UBP-compliance but rather a more liveable situation for survivors in the area. This way the page is still accurate and the UBP pages will be as well. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 21:30, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Not to put a huge crimp in your plans but did you happen to look at the suburb danger map before choosing this particular corner of the city to start proposing a MUBP??? http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Suburb You picked a corner with two Red suburbs (Scarletwood and Fryerbank - Very Dangerous)), two Orange suburbs (Whittenside and Pennville - Dangerous)) and a Ghost suburb (Miltown!) controlled by the recently zerge listed Saints, a zombie group. You couldn't have picked a worse or more unlikely area for a SUBP to be followed. I'll be polite and move that template to the bottom of the page but I can guarantee it will not be followed in any of these suburbs. Maybe your MUBP will have a more positive reception if you were to look at a survivor-controlled area, not someplace like the southeast. Dr Killdare 21:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The UBP has actually been around for a few years, followed in some areas and disregarded in others. The areas of the wiki just never really got completed as far as templates and such go. I decided that they needed to be done, and have even had discussion with some folks on changes to the actual policy, so therefore all suburb plans needed to get re-evaluated. Again, whether or not your particular suburb follows UBP is the decision of the residents. The template and review of your area's barricade plan is there for those who are curious what it would take. I honestly don't expect some areas (Ridleybank, for example) to be compliant because of the local conditions. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 06:15, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Miltown is cowboy country. Saint, Sacred and Officer zergs have run it into the ground and there is no way to recover without a significant survivor presence. The zerg there is extremely effective and has enough coverage to grief all significant resource buildings as well as Revive Points on a daily basis. There is also a rooted, local group (name withheld) which practices multi-abuse and would most likely not be compliant. Not to be discouraging, but I feel that Miltown is a lost cause at the moment, at least until Kevan brings down the Banhammer on zergs or the hundreds upon hundreds of useless Fort-goblins and Mall-rats abandon their posts and disperse evenly throughout the city for support. --Ignorant Bastard

Maverick, I don't want you to take offense at what I'm about to say but I want to point out that I'm not a new player and I'm not new to playing in Scarletwood. I'm about to start my fifth year of playing in this suburb and I realize that the MSBP has been around for quite a while. In fact, I knew FedCom Prez and worked with FedCom, STARS, the BMC and other survivor groups in the SE when this plan was originally proposed. Much of the current Scarletwood barricading plan is still based on the work we did several years ago. There is nothing new here except the fact that you revived an old wiki page and proposal and decided to implement it on an area you know little to nothing about. A lot of things have changed since we first started work on a USBP for this suburb and our current barricading plan is a reflection of those changes. The SBP has evolved over the years to include more strategically placed VS buildings around NTs and RPs than your proposed plan includes. And one shouldn't overlook the fact that the current barricading plan has been wiki-published and followed by resident survivors and our neighbors for a very long time. I'm afraid that your proposed changes would leave a lot of people sleeping in the streets. But not to put too fine a point on things (and this really is my main point to you), I think matters of this nature are always best left to the survivors who actually play in an area and should never be subjected to outside influences. If you don't "live" and play in a suburb, it's impossible to be aware of the nuances and history of that suburb. I applaud your initiative on this but I would no sooner tolerate a non-resident survivor dictating this suburb's barricade plans than I would go to the wiki for someplace like Dulston and tell them how to run that suburb or construct their barricade plan. However, I do have a non-resident alt playing in Crookton and if you'd like to implement a USBP there, I would be more than happy to comply since she's only visiting the area. Dr Killdare 14:22, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to interrupt, but I think you may be missing the point of what he's doing. He's not suggesting that you throw out your current plan (and with it years of fine-tuning) and replace it with a UBP-compliant plan. Far from it, in fact. He openly advocates not following the UBP in many suburbs because the UBP simply doesn't make sense, and that local survivors should make a plan that works for them first, with UBP concerns considered as a distant second.

The whole point of the UBP is to provide visitors to a suburb with a standard barricading methodology that they don't have to relearn. If a suburb is not UBP-compliant, I don't think anyone has a problem with it, but visitors would like to be aware of that fact. That's all that Maverick is doing. A stamp of UBP non-compliance is in no way an indictment of the standing barricade plan for that suburb or a suggestion that it should be reworked, it's just a way to let visitors know that they shouldn't expect the standard to be followed there. And in many or most cases, it's not followed for good reasons that the visitors should then make themselves aware of. —Aichon— 15:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Aichon, you pretty much summed it up perfectly. It is a common misunderstanding (perhaps since the DEM was in large part trying to make every suburb UBP-compliant) that I am trying to remedy. But it is a slow process all the same. Obviously local residents should make a plan that works for them considering local conditions. In fact, the Pimbank Barricade Plan will not be reviewed for a while because a new plan is being proposed there right now, and I have no intention of reviewing the plan until local residents agree on a plan. Again--in short--residents 1st, UBP 2nd.--Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 06:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Gentlemen, your assumption that I haven't understood from the very beginning that residents should do as they see fit regarding barricade plans based on the particular conditions of their suburbs is woefully incorrect. However, you repeating it and me understanding it does little to eliminate my concerns that "visitors" may have a different interpretation of what's going on when they see that template on any suburb's wiki page. There's an implication in the template that visitors to suburbs who's barricade plans are "under review" can take a free hand to the barricade levels in those suburbs to bring it into compliance. Having played in this area for four years, I can bear witness to the fact that groups much larger than the GBP have tried to change and implement a barricade plan much like what you're proposing and they have failed. In fact, due to their lack of understanding of the history and difficulties of playing in areas like Scarletwood, it wasn't long before they found it necessary to flee to other parts of the city for (relative) safety but not before they "reworked" the suburb's barricade levels costing other survivors in the area an exorbitant number of APs and time correcting their misguided notions and reviving masses of survivors caught in TRPs that should have been EHB but were lowered to VS to be in some kind of "compliance" or newbie-friendly.

After some discussion of your proposal, one of the GBP has these questions: "What is the point of suggesting a universal barricade system that is useless in any contested area where one side has a numeric advantage? And how will just "suggesting" such a plan give any info at all to visitors if it is neither implemented or expected to be followed? How does a double negative of that type give you any info at all?" These are vaild questions that should be considered very carefully as you proceed with any MUBP of the city.

Here is what I'm proposing - once areas where a MUBP simply will not work have been pointed out, rather than leave anyone with the false impression that a suburb's barricade plan is still under review, I think it would be prudent if you or someone else took the time to create a template for suburbs like our's - a template that clearly states that a MUBP cannot work in a particular suburb but does not say or even suggest that suburb's barricade plan is still under review or worse, in non-compliance with your MUBP.

Now if you will excuse me, I'd like to be finished with this discussion. Since a member of LUE was kind enough to alert me that they are finished with their Halloween Tour and are headed back home to Scarletwood, we're about to throw the whole barricade plan out the window (again!) in favor of just keeping the doors closed.

Review barricade plans to your heart's content but do consider the replacement template. It would be far more accurate and informative to "visitors" and less potentially intrusive (and dangerous) than the current template. Dr Killdare 15:15, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I see where you are coming from (although I am still unsure what the M in MUBP stands for...). I have been busy of late and going through all the suburbs is taking longer than anticipated due to RL. However, I will change the template to better address your concerns. Just please keep in mind that it will take me some time before I get to it. I will let you know when I get to that point so that you can look at the new template and help me address any further changes that you think need to be made. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 01:50, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Mutual, meaning for the benefit of all the surrounding suburbs. You might notice that Scarletwood has two VS designated buildings along each border with the exception of our southern border at Danversbank. Sever was raised to EHB when it was agreed that we would not clear and barricade Luellin. Having these strategically placed VS entries ensured a free running lane in and out of the suburb for our neighbors. It's something we put into place four years ago and still maintain. Dr Killdare 03:17, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

NT buildings as VSB TRPs

I see that the UBP calls for one VSB NT per suburb (if any), and that you're grading some plans as non-compliant if they don't have this. My feeling is that NTs are:

1. Critical to mitigating damages caused by normal zombie activity
2. Critical to resisting organized zombie activity
3. The *first* buildings targeted by any organized effort in a suburb
4. Not essential for early leveling for the classes that require them for later leveling

On these grounds, I move that NTs be kept at EHB, with a possible caveat that if there are two in a suburb one may be kept at VSB (tbh I think they should all be at EHB).--JimBraidwood 16:53, 14 October 2009 (BST)

I understand your logic, but the argument remains that NTs are one of the resource buildings that help low-level survivors--particularly science-class folks. Considering that many suburbs have more than one NT (if they have any at all) aiming to keep one of them at VSB shouldn't be an issue. Also, keep in mind that I am not factoring in ground conditions when I review the UBP plans. As my discussion with Rosslessness above explains, I will be aiming to review Ridleybank the same as Crooketon and the same as Pitneybank. Obviously if ground conditions warrant raising the barricade levels above VSB then it should be done--the UBP already states that. But a suburb's barricade plan should reflect ideal conditions, and as such one NT should still be VSB.

Now, that being said, if a suburb only has ONE NT, I will re-evaluate those suburbs on a case-by-case basis as brought before me by local groups. But as a general rule I still think that asking for one NT to be at VSB shouldn't be that big of an issue as far as barricade plans go. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 03:41, 15 October 2009 (BST)

Cade Templates

I felt bad having a super script that reduced my workload by orders of magnitude that nobody could use. So I had a bot insert the code at the top of each cade template inside some comments. To finish any plan:

1. Remove the comment tags
2. Put in the cade levels
3. Mark RPs (MPMs and Dark buildings are handily pre-marked)
4. Delete the other template code
5. Do whatever fixing to the actual cade plan page (not the template) is needed.
6. You're done!

--  RoosterDragon  15:55, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Wow dude! That will certainly speed things up. You never cease to amaze me. Thank you.--Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 19:22, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Checking

Hey, did Gnome or Rooster ever get around to this? Just thinking about how I never got to help out and I'm wondering if any of us ended up helping you out. --DANCEDANCEREVOLUTION-- 11:48, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

New barricade plan template + old district template == fail. Maybe once the new system is all fixed up? --  RoosterDragon  15:22, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I actually ended up figuring most of it out. It boiled down to a problem with IE; it worked perfect in Firefox. But yeah, it's definitely a fail with the new template. I will probably try to work out something for districts using the small version of the new template once all of the suburbs get updated to the template and I finish up with the UBP update. So honestly, the district plans will probably have to wait until 2010. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 01:40, 6 November 2009 (UTC)