Who's leading this mob?

Well like I have said previously I have no fancy tricks or ninja magic tricks that will turn our despair into victory just the good old fashioned hammer and nails approach. Anyway with out trying to write too lengthy of a post here are some basic steps I would take to try and make lemon out lemon aid. Of course this is not the only way this is only my way and my way isn't always right.

Malls / Forts: In an act of shocking blasphemy I say F**K malls and as for forts I think we can work with them but not right now because we need more man power. The problem with malls is they have too many damn doors. There are now many large hordes who can easily breech one section of the mall, stack up 20+ zombies in that said section they block our ability to barricade, allow dozens more zombies to poor into the compromised mall, and make the whole mall useless. Pole Mall might be a bit of an exception because with only 2 squares we don't have to spread our defenders out so much, but the same is also true with the zombies. Once the zombies crack Pole they can easily stack up 50+ in both squares and make it damn near imposable for us to get back in again.

Other Buildings: In my opinion this is where the game is at and not always with just hospitals, PDs, and NTs either. It's like a game of Risk. While there is always a temptation to stack up the majority of your forces at the choke points of you continents (or in our case a mall or fort gatehouse) to maintain the power that owning a continent gives you there is also a risk involved with doing this. For if your enemies amass a force large enough to punch through your heavily defended choke points then once they are on the other side it is likely that your rear lines are wide open and easily crushed.

However, if you spread you numbers out stacking a few troops in every country then when your opponents try to make drive on your lands they find that their massive army starts to descentagrate (sp) with every country they take. No it's not the fact they have fight servile smaller battles instead of one huge battle, that essentially makes no difference. It's the fact the fact that with each new country they take they are required to leave behind soldiers to protect it, and this weakens them beyond the loses they are taking in battle. That means that with each new country they take they will have fewer and fewer troops to take the next one with.

It's the same with zombies and buildings. It's a fact that zombies can pretty much dominate any building they choose, they may even be able to control a small cluster of buildings at once, but sooner or latter if you spread them out far enough they will start to lose critical mass. The zombies need to cluster about 20+ rotters inside of any given building to reach critical mass (the point at which a building becomes all but imposable to take back with anything less than a real time coordinated raid and some serious fire power). This means that horde of a 100 zombies can only control about 4 or maybe 5 buildings. On the other hand we don't have to make more than a token effort to defend any building, because if one building falls we just have to move to the next one. All we have to do is survive and we're showing the zeds deviance. Now of course, the zeds can move around better than Risk soldiers can, but they still can't be everywhere at once.


Weapons: Now this is where life might become hard to accept for those use to siege warfare. The pistol (AKA old stand by) is no longer such a great weapon to have anymore. Granted I still recommend carrying about 2 or 3 of them with a few extra clips (note that clips cost less encumbrance and therefore allow you to carry more ammo this way), but pistols are no longer able to allow you to win sieges like they have in previous battles. The only thing that they will be good for now is buying your allies more time to escape before they get munched. You can gun down a few zombies, and try to board the place back up, but that's about it and your new barricades too long either. The biggest problem with pistols is that by giving up our malls we are also giving up our best ammo caches. You can dump the extra shooters and carry clips which will help but before too long you will shoot through that extra ammo as well. Still these days pistols only prolong the inevitable and it's best to give up the gun than give up the war.

Shotguns have never been considered to be all that great before but these days they are surprising useful when it comes to building clearing. One trooper armed with 8-10 fully loaded shotguns can pretty easily take out three zombies in one playing session and that's assuming that every zed has body building, a flak jacket, is at full health, and that the trooper rolls slightly worse than average attack rolls. Using this fact along with a real time coordinated raid allows you to fully clear out, repair, and barricade some pretty heavily infested building it just doesn't allow you to keep them. This can be useful but it can't be our end game. Also like the pistol we still won't have enough ammo with our shotguns to hold the zeds off for any length of time, and we just can't find new shotgun ammo fast enough to replace the shells we'd be shooting, and that would be true even if we had a fully equipped mall.

Fire Axes: For better or worse this is the new/old old stand by. Axes still allow us to clear out lightly infested buildings, as well as repel small break ins. As you know they don't have great killing potential but when ammo is hard to come by they may be your only real choice.

Tactics: It's the simple hit and run tactics of the old days. We work together take a few buildings barricade some to heavy plus, others to very strongly. We position no more than 4 fighters per building, and when 1 building is compromised we fall back to another one rather than defending the compromised building.

Advanced Tactics

Super barricades: This is a tactic that might not be so useful but I'm putting it out there as something we could try. Super barricades are barricades that built above EHB. According to some joint CDF and CC experiments we ran last year the highest we can go EHB+4. That's great but the downside is talking hundreds of AP just to get that high and making matters even more complicated is the fact is that there is no way of knowing if you are at EHB+0, EHB+4, or anywhere in between. You don't even know if you're actually making the barricades tougher, or just fixing damage that trenchies/zombies have caused.
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It's worth noting that this plan worked for us for the reasons listed above, but it's something that we could always try again with more people.

Darkened Buildings: This one is slightly more helpful I think. Basically you find a dark building like a movie theater, pop in a genny to help barricade it up, and then when you finish building the barricades, you smash the genny. This gives you a double protection because if the zeds get through the barricades they have lower attack rates from the darkness. Of course our attack rates would be lower too, but with these tactics we wouldn't really care too much about that because we wouldn't be trying to hold the buildings forever anyways. The downside of this is that is a question of if this tactic is even worth the genny in the first place.

Strategy: We could put this plan into effect anywhere really, but it's best to try and find somewhere meaningful to do it. A prime location to use such a tactic might be the “Stange Bank” because from this location would have a PD, a hospital, an NT, an autoshop (I think these have gas), and a school (for spray paint) all with in one block away from this location. In that same area we also and all very close to the bank we two other NT (for a total of 3) and another close by PD located in Havorcroft.

Having a great free running 'shopping center' isn't the end all and be all of this plan either though. The zeds still need enough of reason to want to fight us in the first place otherwise the whole idea is moot.

As for leaving an unfuled genny behind it would only be a matter of at most hours before that unfuled genny somehow becomes a fueled genny. Paint all the warnings you want but people will still fuel it.

The thing with putting a genny inside a darkened building or at least as I have observed is that smart zombies will usually leave the lights on to clear the building out because their attacks suffer from darkness as well. Still maintaining a genny would be more useful if we actually plan to hold a building, but under the old hit and run tactics when one building becomes too compromised we just accept it's gone and move on.

Holding a building wouldn't be such a bad deal if we could successfully do it, but these days we can't even guarantee that we're going to have an NT building. That means we can't risk needless casualties.

A final consideration is that genys send the message that "hey we're holding onto this building" not only to the zeds but to the unaffiliated survivors as well. The unaffiliated survivors want the false security of well stacked safe house but we need them to stay hermits. We actually don't want people to cluster we want them to spread thin for two reasons. First it spreads the zombies thin as well and makes our barricades more useful, and secondly it actually reduces our casualties. The zombies cheat and use spies or else they just get lucky. But one way or the other they will find where the large safe houses are and target them with overwhelming force. Spreading our numbers out prevents them from doing just that which in turn keeps them from scoring a crushing blow. Though I suppose the same doesn't apply for a radio transmitter those could be useful as decoys (although they don't make the most tempting of targets to the zeds).

You say that as if we've already won, but we're from that. Theres are lot of chances for failure in these types of plans because this is honestly one of the hardest types of fighting there is. The zombies have traditionally always hated these types of tactics and believe it pisses them off to no ends. If they can get us to stand still they'll knock us down for the count for sure and they know it, and takes constant footwork to keep the zeds off balanced enough to prevent them from doing just that. For the most part you'll be axing and gunning down zeds, bracing the doors as best as you, and running like hell hoping your buddies get enough time to make it out too. Meanwhile the zeds will score punch after punch, but they won't be able to land anything solid so they'll jab at you constantly trying to goad you into a stand up fight. If you do that then the zeds will hit you with a blow that will rattle your brain, and if you let them hit you like that enough times they'll send you down to the canvas. The only way to win is to keep your distance, take the jabs as they come, and let the zeds box themselves out. Then and only then will you be able to land the serious of combinations that will be necessary to either send them down for the count, or thrash them so badly that they throw in the towel.

This is the type of fighting that made the CC famous, but that was a long time and people are not used to style of fighting anymore. There will be temptations to make epic stands especially at NT labs. In keeping with my boxing analogy an NT lab is like a human liver, and if the liver takes a hit the whole body starts to shut down. When that happens there is going to be a tendency to try and move in close to keep the liver from getting hit again. But if we do that we're going to allow them to smack that live with a brutal body blow instead of a straight jab, and as our head is drooping from our body rearing in pain they'll hit us upstairs with an uppercut straight to jaw that will more than likely drop us.

Also I'm not some kind of god of UD just like everyone else I've lost my share battles too.

sighs.

* climbs up on soapbox*

Everyone has a preferred type of play, you can do as you like but I will tell you how I approach the game as a survivor.(my oldest alt joined in 2005.)

If a zombie is in line in a Revive Point or the Cemetery they get a revive unless they are brain rotted ( the brain rot clinics are a special case) Rotters have to be removed by force if they clog the line and they make good target practice for newbies .

If they can PK we can ZK while in zambah form especially those known Zergers and lone zombies standing guard in ruined buildings.Or at least take em down a few so they will be easier to kill by the repairmen.

I might say here blatant zergers will wait a long time or get the same treatment as a rotter if clogging the line.

Other zombie revives elsewhere are Combat Revives. I will only revive a member in good standing on my contact list or known good guys elsewhere .Sometimes CRs are OK to use as tactics but I try to be very sparing of their use.

I always scan unknowns before reviving ,and am fairly lenient about lots of zed skills especially in young ones you never know when someone wants to try the other side (grin). and some PKers can be very clever although deadly. but hey ,it's a game.

Try never to zerg or cheat .

Safe houses and malls are fun because it is interaction in the game with other players from all over the world. I mean who wants to stay in a building alone for very long as a survivor?

No particular fall back points.If the safe house/mall falls, try to keep the revive lines going ,even if you have to commute from another suburb and revive the docs first as they can revive 3 or 4 more when they stand .

Keep the buildings unruined as best you can.Those repair cost can build up.

Keep lots of needles on you at all times if you are a doc ...or if you like to defend ..try safe houses or malls and know the good guys you are defending.

I think no Active player wants to hang around waiting for a revive for 3 or 4 days , long lines are ridiculous and slow the play.

It boils down to wise use of your AP (and that includes fun stuff),knowledge of the area and players and staying active.

Thank you for your attention.