While the levi and new queens are still sort of in the testing phase I want to plan a Levi battle. This will give the devs some much needed feedback and allow us to have a little fun.

I haven't picked a day or time yet because i want your input 1st. Since I don't think the devs can give us a levithon at will we will have to search for it together. Jumping in to every sector of sedina. As long as no one kills a levi within 6 hours of the start of our hunt we should find something.

This battle is for all nations. Its a chance for us to finally work together agaist a common enemy. Our goal is to beat back the hive not kill each other off.

We also need a general commander. I'm not volunteering because i have very little expirence with the hive. and the person who is choosen should have fought the levi alot.

So post any stratagy below or anything else. as always your comments and suggestions are welcome.

JB :)

First I think they need to give the Leviathan more armor points since it seems that there have already been a few deaths since update. Seems to me that it's just too easy to kill still, a large group will just end up doing it even quicker.

But it sounds fun, I'm in, not a cmd candidate though, no xp with Levi fighting. YET! =)

JB: A fine idea. Thoughts off of the top of the head:

First off, let's see if we can get nation cap ships involved in the frey. Perhaps guides or devs could warp them into a Stronghold sector once player-scouts have located it. The cap ships could potentially be spawned in Sed B-8 or in a fashion similar to the cap ship battles from earlier this year. This could give us all a good idea of how cap ships fair against hive bots, queens and the Levi.

Second, there could be sub-missions with scouts locating Hive scouts and newly placed collectors (or even queens) in non-stronghold sectors. This would be a test of how effective the player-base can be in keeping the Hive from spreading. Here, I'm working under the assumption that the Hive update is following the rules documented in the Dev wiki.

Third, we could form purpose-specific squadrons. One to distract/destroy the queens in the Stronghold and perhaps another to bomb the heck out of the Levi.

I'd be willing to help coordinate/lead this effort. I think Leadfist has an excellent idea as well though. A group or two with objectives of drawing off and destroying the queens would do wonders for the bombers attacking the levi. It would open up a window for them to go in, drop payload and get out. Although a quick note about last night attacking the levi, it's a big help if you can pop a queen or two right next to the levi, helps take out some turrets and does a bit of damage. Fighter/Bomber squadrons comming into effect, woot! Also, cap ships would be awesome attacking the levi, we'll have to shmooze with our guides to see if it's possible.

At the moment, it is not possible for guides to summon a multiplayer cap ship to a location other than the preset ones that are involved in the cap battles. The kind we are able to bring would not have the multiplayer turrets, the beam weapons, a working docking bay, etc.. Hardly worth it.

Also, I think that the Hive is not optimized for cap ship intervention at this point.

me nominates _Ghost_ or Lecter for leadership.

They both did an excellent job last night as leaders.

Ah... no cap ships? sad...

This is an awesome idea though...

Wait... what about the Trident Frigates?

EDIT: And we need more than a "Supreme" Commander... we also need division leaders... for the bomber squads... escorts... interceptors... etc.

"Rag leader, this is Gnat 4, go ahead and drop your payload... we'll take care of those queens"

Yeah... I'm thinking Star wars type "unit" designations... but that works kind of odd with the nation color system...

Pink?

lol The Hive must be a threatening force indeed, an Itani suggesting a Serco for leadership. Since I hardly know when I'm on these days, I would suggest you work with _Ghost_, who put together the group to exterminate the 1st production server Levi :)

Well, like icbm said we will need multiple groups. I was thinking (depending on how many people we get) 2 or more fighter groups of 3 people each. One or more groups of bombers with maximum people in each group. The reason being, 3 people in each fighter group to go and handle different queens (3 people on one queen at a time to distract from bombers: Group 1 takes queen DX90, group 2 takes queen AB70 etc.). One bomber squadron to attack the levi. Lecter can lead one fighter group I can lead another, we would need a bomber squadron leader as well. Fighters go in first, open up a window for the bombers, bombers do their thing on the levi, get out for ammo. All group leaders will monitor a specified channel so that we can coordinate the different groups together. Once an order is given on the specified channel, group leaders pass the information on to their respective groups. If we get a lot of people this could be pretty successful.

Don't forget medic groups, or adding a medic to each type of group.

I like the idea of mutiple groups with differt jobs. I didn't suggest it because I have no idea what those groups whould be doing :)

I don't like the Idea of having the cap ships in the mix at this ppoint. I think the developers would like some hard data on how the levi operates especially against a large force. Maybe another battle we could include the cap ships. Or wait till we get player controled ones.

johnhawl218: I'm not sure if pure medic ships would be a good idea. With fighers and escorts atacking the levi in differnt places it might be immpossible for you to get close to heal them. or the bots just take you our before you get close. I think it might me easier and safer for everyone to ethier fly to a station or just explode thier. But it is an idea.

I would love to be a part of something like this.

Depending on the mix of players available, it might be smart to make squadrons of same-nation, green dot players to benefit from friendly fire rules. That way, for example, if a bomber fires a rocket too close to another bomber, it doesn't hurt them.

I propose doing this on Saturday or Sunday, since that's probably when the most people are available.

damnit, everything is always planned for the weekend, the only time I CANT play...
damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!

kernel.panic
[IA] Commander

I guess Ghost should be our Supreme commander. But I think you should also pick 2 other people from the 2 other nations to be team leaders or sub commanders.

The way I see it, and I could be wrong, is that you need 3 teams. (Not necessarily just 3 groups though). One for the each of the following: the Leviathan, the queens, and the other bots in sector. Each team leader will take responsibility for one of the teams and the Supreme commander would take direct responsibility of the last team and the overall battle. What do you think?

I think the actual groups should ideally be made up of people who have already worked together, but like I said that’s ideal. If you do put people who have never fought together in groups I hope you make them a mix of all the nations if possible. No, we won’t have the faction system working for us, but players of each nation would get to know each other. And the purpose of this battle is not to kill any players at all, just kill the bots.

In the early days of the cap ship battle, we Itani organized ourselves similarly. I was supreme commander and in charge of the attack groups and Lebermac was my 2nd in command and in charge of the defense of our cap ship. I tried to have intergrated groups of IDF and IA members along with non guild members. That way we could really feel we were a team.

Another big thing was voice chat. We used skype so giving "orders" to the group leaders was easy. So if you can use skype or something similar it would make the job a lot easier for the commander.

Now about a time and date. We could do this tomorrow at 7pmGMT. That’s the time that is slated for the next cap ship battle. I could postpone the cap ship battle till next week. Or we could wait till we're more organized. What do you guys think?

JB

Having a group for the bots is pointless. Once our queen group begins attacking the queens, the bots will aggro on them. So the queen group will draw off the bots as well by attacking the queens. Besides, there's too many small bots to worry about. As for time, if you mean Saturday at 7GMT, i think that works for me.

That's a good thing Ghost, while the queen team is attacking her and the bots are attacking them, the bot team has ass shots of all the bots making it easier for them to clear them.

Although those damn seekers suck a lot when they show up, ram exploding from no where.

The "bot" group could be the same as the queen killing group.
Just get an MGC, target the bots and the queen and shoot.
You can damage practically every bot following you AND the queen.

Dr. Lecter just reported in game that the Queen he was trying to kill was at 5% when he got back after (i think) reloading the queen was fully healed. I think its important to keep the bots away from the queen and levi so they don't heal them. But you are the boos man.

I started a new thread here in Role Playing:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/11172#131169

Continue to discuss stratagy here. I guess if you want to join the battle you should post there. I reccomend that _Ghost_ picks groups just before the battle and not on the forums. I think its just easier.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, PLEASE DON'T KILL A LEVI PAST 1 PM GMT ON SATURDAY. THERE WON'T BE A BATTLE IF WE CAN'T FIND A LEVI. THANKS

JB

My most recent observations RE: queens and effective dispatching thereof.

(1) They don't just heal if you go to reload. I was using a mega posi hog to eliminate the bastion in K2, and after luring the queen and half a dozen guardians and assaults out to 3000m, I really laid into the queen. I dropped her to low red health, maybe 5%?, and suddenly one of the guardians started beam healing her. The beam didn't slow its rate of fire at me one bit :P With one or two of them healing her, I was able to keep her health from rising notably with a single mega posi... but once the mass of guardians (only bots that I saw healing) arrived, a dozen or so beams brought her back to FULL health within SECONDS. Needless to say, eight or so repeats of this behavior, at varying ranges out from the mass of healer bots, had me giving up in much annoyance. A group of two or three, though, should be easily capable of dispatching the queen before she can be healed.

(2) On a more positive note, the seekers seem to only arrive in the middle of the sector. Hence, luring your queenish quarry far far away from the general field of battle (yay for FA off) is a wise call. I was not disturbed by seekers at any point, even though healer bots kept butting in.

This may prove to be an annoyance. But remember our objective is just to lure the queens out in order to give the bombers an open shot on the levi. If we are able to kill the queens, awesome, if not just keep them away from the bombers. Everything goes byebye once the levi goes anyhow. I've posted a general strategy/battle plan in the RP forum on Jes' thread.