Core Levels for Next Season

by **Mark392** » Mon May 02, 2016 8:06 pm

Best written explainers of awesome tactics I know are: Jedi, Drak, Lothar, DKH. They are very talented at written picture works. I, on the other hand, can only scribble non-sense that doesn't touch the actual painting in my mind, it just drags a rake around the edges of the sand nearest the mote of my verbal sandcastle (Jedi, I used mote because of your mote joke, I've used the joke twice at school, thanks!). Yeah. I suck.

by **roncli** » Mon May 02, 2016 8:39 pm

Mark, if you'd be willing to send something in a few minutes in length for playback on SDS... that would be awesome.

by **Jediluke** » Mon May 02, 2016 8:40 pm

Yeah...I remember one instance specifically that still chaps my arse... Warlord would only give me a shot at #1 if I played a level of his choosing AND I allowed him to remove my most used/best weapon at the time...PLASMA. so damn ridiculous!!!!! It's why I have a strong adversity to anglers.

The core levels random selector really came about as a means to allow 2 pilots to disagree on a level and have a means of falling back on a list of levels that are reasonable to play in.

by **roncli** » Mon May 02, 2016 8:41 pm

Hell Jedi, or anyone who's got top tier tactics. We'd love it.

by **Drakona** » Mon May 02, 2016 9:03 pm

by **Mark392** » Mon May 02, 2016 9:10 pm

The upper layer of information gathering is done through reaction, however, I can influence the pilots movements by my lighting placement and then entertain the notion of getting behind them or waiting on them. There are 3 levels of lighting play with primaries I utilize on a regular basis, and I use all primaries in a different way on each level.

Ron, if you give me some speaking points or the community has some questions to ask, I could talk for more than a few minutes... LOL

Jedi, Warlord is the exact person I was thinking of... Had a good few of those types of games even for a lesser position... LOL!

by **Jediluke** » Mon May 02, 2016 9:33 pm

Mark...I know you know this...but....

You also have to take into consideration the 'smarts' of the person you are playing against...and just how 'smart' they think YOU are.

So.....shooting a flare down a hallway. A smart pilot will know that the flare is a distraction.....a rudimentary attempt to create misinformation. So...the smart pilot knows that when he sees the light traveling down the hallway...it is just that.....misinformation. So he believes that it represents where you were and likely where you are retreating from. He knows it wasn't you flying down the hall....and he isn't going to 'fall for that'.

Now, the advanced pilot will shoot the flare and chase it via insta-trichord so that the lighting of the flare gives off the "misinformation" that the smart pilot expects it to be....only he doesn't realize that you were immediately behind the flare flying down the hall.

Best way to create this misinformation and make it believable is not to shoot 1 flare down the hall...but to shoot 2 a mere second apart from eachother. A few times it must be just that...the 2 flares flying down the hall....eventually it's 1 flare followed by your own ship so that both light sources as seen by the 'smart' player are interpreted as 2 flares once again.

Also, when you have a smart player playing against an advanced player....the advanced player must be smart enough to know when to do things that a not so smart player would do...becuase the smart player will not expect the advanced player to do something so basic and obvious and will thusly be caught off guard.

The mind game is the best part of Descent....imo.
Despite advanced tactics....the advanced pilot can never truly know how the other pilot is going to interpret or react to what he is doing. There is no guarantee that the smart pilot was even in a position to see the advanced pilot shoot the flares down the hallway.

It's a constant guessing game. When the smart player sees the advanced player turn down a hallway...he expects the advanced player to double back and not allow the smart player to cut him off at the pass. However...the advanced player knows that he must be unpredictable and sometimes do the stupid thing and just fly down the hall even though he knows the smart player saw him. Bottom line is...the advanced player does not truly know how the smart player will react to the information he gave him.

This not knowing....this mind game that ends up in several different outcomes each time it's enacted...it's what keeps me coming back for more. It's why the game is never boring.

by **Sirius** » Mon May 02, 2016 9:43 pm

And this is making me miss the game already.

by **Mark392** » Mon May 02, 2016 9:54 pm

As I said before, Jedi is one of the best text-to-awesomely-written-advanced-tactics-like-my-mind-wants-it-to-come-outerer. *Claps* well played my brother, well played!