H4: Specializations Part 2

We've discussed Armor Specializations before, but here's my quick cut:

• Wetworks: If you love assassinations and creeping around. (FragginURdoodz, TimMAY1023)
• Pioneer: If you want to level up as fast as possible. (CoolerSopranos2, UnsavorySamurai)
• Engineer: If you want to help the team coordinate special ordinance drops. (Beer4Porter)
• Tracker: If you love special weapons. (FishBone10, Masher 24)
• Rogue: If you spend a lot of time scoped in (Sniper, DMR, BR). (gtdroptop, Octurian Poon)
• Stalker: If you get fixated on killing one person. (darknorpo, QuelBelle)
• Pathfinder: If you're always in the gunner seat (OmniscientDeath, MEAN MR MONKEY)
• Operator: If you're always driving (BeerMonkeee, Mean Mrs Monkey)

Picking your Specialization is important because you can't change it until you've fully leveled it up.  There are 8 choices in total, with Pioneer and Wetwork being available to all players at launch.  Purchasing the Halo 4 Limited Edition gets you access to all 8 right away.  Those who pre-order and play by November 20, will get all 8 quicker as well, but probably not until 11/20 (about 2 weeks after launch).

Battle Nations - Population Part 2

Somebody left a comment asking:

"population limit of 150 reached.
Level up to build more house. "
Do you know what that message means?
Build a house there "Housing"> "Bunkhouse" or "Compound", etc.

Yes, I know what this means.  It means you are lvl 24 and are limited to having 150 people in your Outpost.  You usually get this message when you're trying to build a Housing structure that would put you over that limit.  A Compound houses 10 and a Bunkhouse houses 8, so if you got this message while clicking one of those units, then you probably have between 143 and 150 population in your Outpost, and one of those units would put you over 150.  You can either pick a smaller housing unit like a Shelter (3 pop) or Camp (4 pop), or wait until you level up.  You get 5 extra pop for every level at 18 and higher.

Current clan players: gtdroptop, unsavory, omniscientDeath, beer4porter, fishbone10

Battle Nations - Roads

You'll notice that there is a "Decoration" category in Battle Nations with stuff to make your outpost look pretty.  Some of these are functional.  Roads, specifically:

• Dirt Roads
• Cost: 6,500 gold, 100 stone, 0 seconds
• Return: +1% XP to agriculture, max of +5%
• Cobblestone Road
• Cost: 1 nanopod, 0 seconds
• Return: +2% XP to housing, max of +10%
• Blacktop Road:
• Cost: 28,000 gold, 250 concrete, 100 oil, 0 seconds
• Return: +2% XP to shops, max of +10%

The simple ROI is easy.  What's REALLY cool about roads though, is that they can increase Hauler efficiency at your Resources Depots.  Note here in the picture that I've just placed two Dirt Roads in the path of my Hauler, and efficiency increased so much that I only need 1 Hauler for two resources (Stone and Iron).

Battle Nations - Goods

If you've been paying attention to the blog and read the housing post, then you've torn down all your expensive housing and replaced it with Shelters only.  As a result, you're always rolling in gold and are never gold limited.  In that case, the only reason to build any goods (aside from when the campaign requires it) is to gain XP so that you can level up.  Not all goods are created equal.  Here's a table of all the goods you can produce at the earlier levels of the game and what you can earn, sorted by XP per hour per person:

Note that Quinoa from fields is one of the best values out there.  Technically, Cabbage is king, but you have to harvest it every 5 minutes to make it worthwhile.  You'll also notice that Bakery and Tool Shop items are largely worthless.

Artichokes provide a really nice option to grow because Farms only take 60 gold and 5 seconds to build.  I will typically just put all my extra works into Farms to grow Artichokes, and may even tear down my Bakery and Tool Shop when I am worker-constrained.

Battle Nations - PvP

Clan critical mass is now at 5 players for Battle Nations.  Why aren't you playing yet?

UnsavorySamurai gave me a tip to check out PvP.  If you choose the PvP icon in your bottom control panel, it will take you to the "Fight Other Players" screen where you can do live head to head battles against random players that match your lvl.  There's three huge advantages to this game mode:

1. It's absolutely free.  None of your casualties need to be healed in the hospital, so there's no concern about losing expensive units.
2. There's huge rewards.  You earn 1 VP (Victory Point) for each loss and 4 VPs for each win.  The game gives you rewards for every 10 VPs until 40 VPs every 24 hours.
3. Fast return time.  It only takes 2 hours to return armies from PvP, so you get them back pretty quickly.

In my first couple days playing PvP, these are the rewards that I've gotten at lvl 24:

• 10 VP: 1,600 gold
• 20 VP : 5,000 gold
• 30 VP: 10,000 XP
• 40 VP: 4 - 6 gears

It's actually better if you start playing PvP at lower levels, because the game will only match you with players of the same lvl.  At lower levels, you can go into battle with armies of just basic Troopers and be able to win with just some smart strategy.  Assuming you win half the time, it only takes 16 quick battles to hit 40 VP each day, and it gives you something interesting to do while you're waiting for resources to pile up or jobs to finish construction.

Battle Nations - Population

If you touch the number on the bottom right of your screen, it will bring up the Demand window.  Demand isn't all that interesting, but this does show your population details:

There are three items to make note of:

• Max: This is the maximum population allowed for your current level.  It will typically move up by 5 or so people per level.
• Housed: This is the number of people that fit in the housing that you have built.  If this number doesn't match the Max number, then you are leaving resources on the table.  As previously discussed, Shelters house 3 and Tents house 4, both only take 5 seconds to build.  Between those two, you should always be able to come up with a cheap and quickly constructed combination of Max Pop.  The game will not allow you even start building a House that would take you over Max Pop, so you should try to hit it exactly.
• Working: This is the number of people you are actually putting to work.  If you have 3 or more people Housed that are not Working, you are leaving Gold and XP on the table.  Build a Farm and put them to work.
• Resource Depots: I put this here because I notice many people put too many population in their Resource Depots.  Your depot will max out at 100%.  The game will allow you to assign more Haulers, but it won't increase your collection rate past 100%, so there's no point.  It's just a waste of Pop.

Battle Nations - Raiding Basics

The #1 benefit I've found of having friends on Battle Nations is being able to mine each other's resources.  Within your own Outpost, you can only mine resources on land that you've expanded into.  However, your friends can mine resources from anywhere in your Outpost, even land that you don't own yet.  Better still, it doesn't cost you anything if you do it right!  Some key items:

• Defenses: Take down (sell) all your defenses!  The campaign will make you build pillboxes, bunkers, cannon towers, etc, but they don't serve any real purpose.  Defenses do not defend against A.I. Raiders, they just make it more expensive for your friends to raid you (not nice).  If you are going after undefended resources, it only takes two basic Troopers to Raid/Occupy.  No point in sending more expensive units and having them tied up on the road.
• Battle Flag:You have to raise your Battle Flag in order to raid or be raided by friends.  Don't worry, only your friends can raid you, so you won't have a ton of strangers in your land all of a sudden.
• Attack: You'll typically only choose this against the A.I., or if you want to mess with your friend.  If you're being nice, don't ever choose Attack for your friends.
• Raid: This allows you "steal" resources from your friend, including from buildings and mines that they've built.  You will receive resources when you win, and it doesn't cost them anything.  No resources are actually taken from your friend's perspective, and any damage you inflict doesn't actually cost them anything.  You can return armies from Raiding much faster and re-raid.  You can typically raid a resource every 4 hours, but you can raid several different resources and stagger it.  As an example, unmined iron will net you 10 iron every 4 hours from raiding.
• Occupy: This allows you to park your army on your friend's resources, and you can regularly go back to collect those resources.  The game will even notify you when they're ready to be collected.  This DOES affect your friend if you Occupy something that they are actively using and can result in a 10x time penalty.  It's best to Occupy resources that they don't have access to yet.  Unmined iron will net you 38 iron every 4 hours from occupying.
• Counter-Attack: After your friend raids your outpost, their armies are available on the boundaries of your territory to counter attack as they withdraw.  If you are trading resources, you should NOT counter attack because it results in actual losses to your friend that they then have to go spend gold and iron to heal.
• Collect: After you raid your friend, be sure to go into your Army management window to collect your guys.  Otherwise they'll get lost in no-man's land forever.

The Battle Nations folks have posted a decent tutorial on how to manage your armies: http://battlenations.com/forums/topic/walkthrough-army-management/

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Duke Nukem Forever.

It's launch day, freaks.  Plan ahead, get your copy early, install it to hard drive, and plan to be ready to rock at 8pm sharp.  I'll have an Xbox Live chat party running so that we can handle technical problems more easily.  If you join and can't hear anybody, look for the chat party.  Porter, I'm talking to you.

Clan night tonight. 9pm PT. Halo Reach.

I'm actually out of the country for the next two weeks, but we had good attendance for the last Halo night.  And Porter wants to play.  I trust you kids can self-organize.  And I think Pewn has the Jenga gametype and maps.

Reach Falls in 6 Days

There's some new info posted up at Bungie's Reach page.

• Fiction: In the CAA Factbook there's more details around the fiction of Halo.  One interesting tidbit is a page about piracy and space pirates.  I have to assume this comes into play in the story of Reach.  The ODSTs are also mentioned.
• Noble profiles:
• Noble 1: Carter (S-259), Commander, DMR, natural leader
• Noble 2: Kat (S-320), Lt. Commander, AR/Magnum, girl
• Noble 3: Jun (S-266), Warrant Ofc, Sniper Rifle, chatty
• Noble 4: Emile (S-239), Warrant Ofc, Shotgun, sweet helmet
• Noble 5: Jorge (S-052), Chief Warrant Ofc, Chain Gun, old guy
• Noble 6: XXX (S-312), Lieutenant, AR, hyper-lethal lone wolf
• Ordnance:
• Details around the Fuel Rod Gun, Concussion Rifle, which hadn't been mentioned much before.
• Notes on the Revenant, a Warthog/Ghost cross-over and the Falcon, essentially a flying Warthog.
• All Armor Abilities are listed, including the hinted-at Hologram and Drop Shield abilities.

Mrs. Monkey is our only girl, so I guess a natural fit for Kat.  I can see Porter or BeerMonkeee as Jun, OD as Jorge, and norpo as Noble 6.  What do you think?  Who's your favorite?

HR: Player Profiles - Beer4Porter

Player: Beer4Porter

• Rank: Corporal
• Games: 28; Kills: 109; Deaths: 324; Assists: 82; Time: 0:03:57; Wins: 4; Medals: 159
• Win %: 14%; K/D: 0.34; K/G: 3.89; D/G: 11.57; A/G: 2.93; M/G: 5.68; Encounters/G: 18.73

Bombadier Frontline Support: Beer4Porter is the only player in the clan where only two weapons contribute to over 50% of his overall kills (frag grenade 36%, AR 27%).  This points to a strong propensity to hang back from the action, lobbing frags and spraying from afar.  Although he earned the most Assist medals compared to other medals (51%), his actual assist numbers are relatively low (2.93 per game).  Relatively low Encounters/Game stat is consistent with a Bombadier type and helps to balance a low K/D ratio.

Best suited: Short to medium range slayer, providing tactical and objective support for the team.

Recommend: Although slaying may not be Beer4Porter's strength, he is by far the best team mate for fireteam spawning.  Really excels at following a fireteam leader and backing out to allow respawns.  Consider learning how to gain objectives better as well, would be another way to really help the team.  i.e., grabbing flags, learning efficient carry paths home, where to bring the skull so that it can be defended, etc.

Clan night tonight. 8:30pm PT. Halo 3/ODST

Sorry for the delayed start time the past couple of weeks. I have a new (slow) customer in China and we have calls from 7-8pm PT. As they get smarter, I should be able to bring clan night back to 8pm. If you're going to participate in clan night, please try to be on-time. These are the kind of game types we can play with the number of people on-line:

1. Pocket pool
2. ODST campaign
3. Firefight 200k Slow
   
4. Firefight 200k Fast, Endure, Deja Vu
5. Social Slayer, Social Skirmish, Team Mythic
6. Ranked Big Squad
7. Social Big Team
8. Social Big Team, Team Mythic for Achievements, 2x Firefight

They are all fun game types, but game types for 4 and 8 players are the most popular. That means when we have 5-7 players, we're always trying to get to 4 or 8. We don't want to kick people out of the party if we have 5 players, so it's better if the 3 players who sign on late get on-line on-time so we can have 8 at the same time.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. H3: ODST

FishBone10 and Beer4Porter helped me to break in H3: ODST's new Firefight mode right after the midnight launch. And it is FUN! Even though I scored over half of our team's points, I do have to recommend their generous assistance in my "Invincible" medal (kill 100 enemies without dying). Some housekeeping items:

• Insert your Campaign disc for Campaign, Firefight, and to customize your character for ODST
  
• Under Settings/Appearance, change your EMBLEM to your H3 number.
• In the same area, change your SERVICE TAG to something related to your gamertag.

If 4 or less folks show up, I'll kick off the first games in Firefight on the Campaign disc. Once we have more than 4, I'll move us into custom games on the Multiplayer disc. In >4 player multiplayer, we'll run custom games on the brand new Mythic maps (Heretic, Citadel and Longshore).

Below are the assigned emblems (carried from H3) and some recommended service tags. Your service tag is what people see above your head as you run around the map. Since we have 4 characters to work with now, you should pick something that will quickly remind people of your gamertag and who you are.

• gtdroptop: " GT ", 0
• BeerMonkeee: "BMNK", 1
• TimMAY 1023: "TIMA", 2
• CoolerSopranos2: "CULR", 3
• OmniscientDeath: "OMNI", 4
• FragginURdoodz: "DOOD", 5
• FishBone10: "FISH", 5
• Beer4Porter: "PORT", 6
• Masher24: "MASH", 7
• Spix: "SPIX", 7
• BeefierBen: "BEEF", 8
• MEAN MR MONKEY: "MR M", 8
• Mean Mrs Monkey: "MRSM", 7
• darknorpo: "NORP", 9
• Dawill0: "WILO", 5
• Octurian Poon: "POON", 7

If you're not listed and need help, let me know.

Good Times

Thanks to everyone who logged in for clan night tonight. Was an awesome reminder of just how fun Left 4 Dead can be. There's a lot of play left in the game with the new Survival Mode and the two new Multi-Player maps that are still new to most everyone. Please keep me honest in balancing teams, as it can become unbalanced pretty quickly. If you're feeling picked on, speak up and I'll try my best to equalize things.

Clan night tonight, 8pm PT, Left 4 Dead

As a reminder, please join BOTH the Left 4 Dead game as well as the Xbox Live party. Both groups have "Friends" permissions, so you can join without an invite. Just select my gamertag from your friends list and choose the "Join Party and Game" option.

Pro tip: Anytime you see Xbox Live pop a dialog window like "gtdroptop has signed in" or "gtdroptop would like to play" or "Achievement Unlocked", hitting the Xbox button on your controller will bring up the context-sensitive menu relative to that dialog window. For friend notifications, it will take you straight to their friend screen where you can quickly join the party. For achievements, it will take you straight to the achievement list for that game where you can see what you just unlocked.

Nobody asked me last week to keep sending them e-mails, so I'm not going to press the issue.

• For the small handful that still want e-mails, let me know, and I can set that up. Please note, however, that you will get substantially MORE e-mail because each post will generate a separate e-mail. As an example, this week's clan mail will be 5 separate e-mails in the future.
• RSS is a much better way to stay informed. You can have RSS feeds in your My Yahoo! page, your iGoogle page, an RSS reader, or even your inbox, depending on how you setup the feed.
• [Click here to subscribe via RSS], or scroll to the bottom of the blog to see other options in the left panel.
  

Almost as good as Chocolate Milk

Clan night tonight, 8pm PT, Left 4 Dead

I'm moving the clan mail to a blog soon. This way, items in these weekly posts will be archived, and you can avoid clutter in your inbox. For the handful of you that prefer the e-mail, I can auto-email up to 10 of you. For the rest, I'm happy to help you setup RSS feeds so that it automatically shows up in iGoogle, My Yahoo, or your favorite reader.

Effectively, the entire clan has moved to Left 4 Dead. It's hella fun. Active players: gtdroptop, FishBone10, darknorpo, OmniscientDeath, MEAN MR MONKEY, Mean Mrs Monkey, BeerMonkeee, QuelBelle, Beer4Porter, CoolerSopranos2

Left 4 Dead Parties

L4D only allows team chat, and because of the way the game proceeds with no post-match lobbies, teams may never change. Which means you'd never be able to talk to the other 4 players.

Please ensure that you can hear everyone and that everyone can hear you. If you're not hearing anybody talking, something is wrong, try to fix it. It's SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER annoying (Beer4Porter) when, for example, we're working on an achievement that require cooperation from both teams, and one jackhole keeps killing the Boomer and preventing the achievement.

Halo 3 Service Tags

• B80: gtdroptop (John Wei)
• B81: BeerMonkeee (Scott Lenker)
• B82: TimMAY 1023 (Tim Romero)
• B83: CoolerSopranos2 (Kevin Copeland)
• B84: OmniscientDeath (Ryan Averill)
• B85: FishBone10 (Laurence Day)
• B86: Beer4Porter (Brien Porter)
• B87: Available
• B88: Available
• B89: darknorpo (Nory Ison)

Halo 3 Final Stats

It's been a year since H3 came out, so this is the last week that I'm going to update the stats like I've been. Here's a dump of the past year:

• gtdroptop was promoted to First Lieutenant. Represented as clan overlord with a massive number of games logged, specializing in Team Slayer by optimizing play for K/D ratio and leading the clan in fewest deaths per game in all game types. Finishes the year with most games played, most custom games, most campaign missions, most enemies killed, best campaign K/D ratio, most achievements, highest gamerscore, most skulls, most meta-games finished, highest campaign level finished, least ranked deaths/game, best ranked K/D ratio, most social games played, least social deaths/game, least total deaths/game.
• BeerMonkeee finished the campaign on Legendary. Finished the year with the least ranked deaths (owing largely to very few games played there). The stats don't show it, but BeerMonkeee is an assist machine and is far and away the clan's best vehicle specialist with over 1300 Wheelmans and over 200 Splatters!
• TimMAY 1023 finished the year as the highest ranked active clan member as a Major, grade 2. TimMAY was a ranked matchmaking machine, logging some 4X the number of ranked games as the next closest person, and 7X the clan average! He had the most matchmade games, the highest skill, the most EXP, the fewest friendlies lost in campaign, the most ranked games, the most ranked kills, and the most total kills. His most important contribution is taking up his role as team sniper, something Bada Bing has always desperately needed, logging over 500 sniper headshots, and over 1100 total kills with the human sniper!
• CoolerSopranos2 fell from grace during H2, but has regained a shadow of his former glory. Though he remarkably leads in zero stat categories, he has maintained a positive social K/D ratio for almost eight straight months. An impressive feat, considering how few games he logs.
• OmniscientDeath is the clan leader in kills, taking the reigns from darknorpo's H2 reign. ODeath leads the clan in games/skill rank, skulls found, meta-games finished, campaign level finished, social kills, social kills/game, social K/D ratio, total kills/game, and total K/D ratio. His score-whoring is welcome because of his unparalleled skill on the chain gun. He proves that it's more than spray and pray, with two Untouchable and one Invincible medal in his medal chest.
• FishBone10 has been our small team's most consistent fourth. His video game ADD syndrome hurts his H3 skills, but he has racked up an impressive body of work, considering how many other games he has had to play to chalk up a clan leading 15,860 gamerscore. Though he doesn't lead in any individual stat categories, he does trail in the fewest, showing a consistent strength across the board.
• Beer4Porter gets special notice here for being far and away the most persistent n00b, sticking through the tough times to come out on the other side as a respectable team member. Gone are the days of being double digit negative, Porter finished a stringent training regimen through the lower ranked game playlists and actually bests CoolerSopranos2 in several real categories including: games/skill, games/exp, ranked deaths/game, social deaths, social deaths/game, total deaths andn total deaths/game.
• darknorpo has let work take priority over his true love, and his H3 stats have suffered accordingly. Once a clan powerhouse, he is now relegated to being an occasional average contributor. He does shine in games/exp, ranked kills/game and fewest total social deaths. But norpo is a shell of the master chief he once was. Maybe with the new map packs and new achievements, we'll see more of the pink wonder.

As a clan, the active members have logged:

• 4,253 games
• 44,764 kills
• 38,343 deaths
• 10.53 kills/game
• 9.02 deaths/game
• 1.17 kills/death