Time: Nov 12 23:26:39 1995 Server: fisher.psy.vu.nl
From: markiel@callisto.pas.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel) Date: Mon, 13 Nov 95 03:10:46 GMT
Team Tuber visited fisher.psy.vu.nl today for an official INL game against EuroTwinks. Disdaining the simple victory, Team Tuber decided to test my constitution by twice coming within seconds of losing the game before pulling out the OT victory. I feel about 5 years older than when we started the game :)
Due to a scheduling mishap (some of us thought the game was scheduled for a hour later) we started with only 7 Tubers and a sub, but shortly were able to fill out the team. Lag was fairly bad, with high ping times and nasty freezes (in a netrek first, Grey Elf actually had the best lag for the Tubers: go figure) but we sucked it up and played hard.
Tubers took Fed with Alp/Can agri, while ET took Ori with Pol/Her agri. Opening bombing seemed to favor Tuber: ET took the first planet, but Tubers carefully saved 4 planets of armies and quickly pushed forward. ET ran out of armies while Tubers still had a mostly full base, and we began taking their planets. It was quickly clear that ogging was going to be futile with our lag, so we concentrated on bombing, solid space control, and carrying, which seemed to be very effective as we were able to hold the greater ratio (even with the heavy lag). ET's bombing seemed to be rather lackluster, with only a single scout bomber and little help, so we were able to carry insane amounts of armies (286 for the game - 8 different Tubers carried over 20 armies), although some careless moves sent quite a few armies into the void.
About midway through the game ET ogged our base (which didn't really slow us down much), but they also began harassing our scout bomber while ogging any CAs trying to help, and stored armies on their base. We tried a few ogg waves on the base, but he was very defensive and with our lag we were unable to get a good wave - he ended up living for the entire game, although almost completely behind the front line.
In the last 20 minutes of OT, ET began scout dropping heavily and started to whittle down our planet advantage (we had been up 13-7 at some points). We brought out our base to try to hold planets, but in the last minutes of regulation they took Org, we recaptured it, then they neutralized Bet, so we went into OT down 10-9 with Bet at 0 and Org at 1.
At the start of OT Feds got large pops, so we towed the base around and picked ~10 armies. ET easily got the first kills off lagged ships, although we immediately got our kills as well. However, Tuber didn't move to protect our planets - an ET carrier +2 with one escort headed for Org @1, and I was the only Fed anywhere near. I butt-torped as long as I could, but eventually got run over and watched the ET carrier take Org...
just seconds after our carrier retook Bet to prevent the victory (cardiac#1). Our carrier picked more armies, but the Fed base walked away from Bet, and an Ori carrier came in with heavy escort! I and another Fed tried to ogg him, but the escort blew us away and I watched the ET carrier take Bet...
just seconds after our carrier retook Org to prevent the win (cardiac#2) Feeling pretty ragged at this point, I got our base to cover Bet after we retook it, and we were into a fairly normal game. The key in OT seemed to be the breakdown of ET bombing, we were able to save many many armies and get multiple carriers. Several planets were exchanged, Spi/Org/El/Arc. Finally we took El about the same time they neutralized Org (10-9 us), and tfeng had 5 armies. He faked Arc (which the base was near) and headed north. Spi was wide open for the win, but for reasons I'll never understand Tom decided that Pol (agri) was a more dramatic way to win. Making a silent note to wring his neck if this didn't work out, I charged Pol and detted like crazy, which was enough for Tom to drop the winning army about 0.3 seconds before getting atomized by Ori torps.
Congrats to EuroTwinks for an excellent and far too exciting game. At first I was sure we were going to win, then it was clear we were doomed, then we pulled out the win. Both teams struggled mightily, maybe not playing a pretty game but it was very close; ET is a much better team than their 0-4 record would suggest (every game went to OT, except 12-8 vs. SAW). Stats follow.
Bring on GB!
-Grey Elf
From: gchung@romulus.rutgers.edu (Greg Chung) Date: 13 Nov 1995 02:17:11 -0500
(This summary is a response to Grey Elf's above. I've edited the summary to replace article quotations with one line summaries. -Dave)
[Re: Lag to fisher] I've heard this from more than one person. Is it really -that- bad? Was there some truth to the saying "local CMU weenies can't handle lag?" (for the record, GE was once CMU). I've been with ET for some time now, and maybe I've gotten used to it, but today was pretty good. It's definitely not as bad as it used to be.
[Re: ET out of armies while Tubers with full base] I showed late and didn't start the game. Normally I'd protect the armies lying around (such as URS for a while). As "acting field captain because Heiko had his birthday and didn't show", I was somewhat distressed about seeing all our armies get bombed 8-)
[Re: Tubers with greater ratio than ET] ET space control has never been on par with the "premiere" teams, even at home. It became pretty clear that we couldn't rely on our space control at the front. Tubers continually managed to go up over our control to SPI and EL.
[Re: Tubers SB death] Your base wasn't doing much more than ours: hoarding armies. There were NO repair planets between EAR and ORI except ORG, so our base was told to be very defensive (ie. Sit between the two AGRIs).
Your own base was annoying but also passive for the most part, all though there were a few incursions up to ARC. I wouldn't expect more given the lag though.
[Re: ET switch to SC dropping strategy] In sticking to a brand new ET strategy (and since HW wasn't there) we kept our TO until almost the end of RT (most of time, ET takes it early). We decided to go small because at the time we had an army advantage, with about 20 armies on the base due to quick pops and shuttling. It almost worked, but a few pops/reinforcements by Tubers prevented the easy victory at the end of RT.
[Re: ET carrier to Org] Tuber base was at BET (indep) with a bunch of guys with no kills. We had our first carrier headed to ORG, but someone gave up a kill. Tuber retook BET less than 5 seconds before we managed to get ORG. Drat 8-)
[Re: ET breakdown in OT] We noticed this, but true to ET tradition we broke down in OT. We were in this same position vs GB and lost.
[Re: Good game] Thanks to Tubers for being sports and putting up with their lag and occassional bust.
-Greg Chung