What IS ratting?

[Drakona]

Behemoth and I met in FRP, and . . . I see. That *is* different. I like it.

Consider me educated.

[Behemoth]

Yeah, there aren't many levels that i've come into contact with that cater to REAL tunnel ratting styles. There are some tight maps but not many mind tense tunnel ratting levels, Don't you agree Drakona?

[Drakona]

I will certainly agree that I've never played anything like FRP! I like the style a lot.

I think it would be very hard to replicate in a smaller map. Because there are so many places your opponent could be, the odds of him picking any particular one are low. It's not "I guessed he went left, and then I knew he went right." It's, "just getting into this area, there are 10 deadly camping places within line of sight of the door." The whole level is like that. It makes you reasonably safe in any given spot, because your opponent has to make a lot of guesses to guess right. You couldn't do that in a smaller level.

On top of that, the key doors serve as choke points. Between the fact that they are the ONLY way to go from one part of the level to another, the fact that they are the ONLY doors, and the fact that you can hear them from almost everywhere . . . it's reasonably easy, if you know the level, to know for CERTAIN that your opponent isn't in a particular part, and isn't getting in or out without you knowing. That enables some very heavy-duty camping indeed.

There's another factor, too. If you get all the guns in one section of the level, it's pretty easy to fortify ahead of that and FORCE your opponent to engage you with laser 1's and whatever secondaries he can find. Most levels, gun-guarding means, "I get a free hit or two on your way in." In FRP, it means, "I own all the weps and there's nothing you can do about it unless you get past me." Heavy-duty camping indeed.

It's opens up a different kind of strategy than something like Logic or Lurk. In smaller levels, there are some quality camping places, but the problem is that you can check them all pretty quickly. If I don't see or hear my opponent for a while, I check spots 1 and 2, and if he isn't there, I know he's in 3. He can do the same, so I can't sit in any one place too long. In FRP, if I don't know where you are, it's simply hopeless. So I can sit in one place for a very, very long time. Plus, in a normal level, you can assault most spots from two or more directions, but in FRP, there are many, many places where I can know which way you'll come in. Lots of non-obvious places like that. So the camping places are profoundly defensively strong, but with everything so enclosed, and many offering no good escape . . . guessing right about where someone is leaves them pretty dead.

So on the one hand, to decide a camping spot is worth commiting to assaulting . . . you really have to get inside someone's head. On the other hand, they're all pretty safe individually because there are so many of them. The net effect is to raise the stakes on the guessing game to the point where you HAVE to play it.

It makes for a really unique kind of strategy, and I really can't think of a way to get it in a smaller / less involved level. I've gotta say, I'm kinda hooked. I do think it's applicable to my regular game in smaller doses, but I can't think of another map that would have taught me.

I think Ascend might be next-best. It's too multiply-connected all over, too much dogfighting space, too many ways out of anywhere to really mimic the style completely, but just the same, I've been billing it as where to play if you want to play FRP but you don't want to have to spend a lifetime learning the level. It still has a lot more running and a lot less camping / guessing where he camped / counterguessing where he guessed where you camped, but . . . there's more of it than any other level I can think of right off.

So no . . . to answer the question, I've never seen another level that truly plays like FRP. If I had, I wouldn't be so excited about learning something new.

[JinX]

If a dogfighter holds down the biggest rooms, a ratter holds down everything that is not a dogfight room.

I'd even say there's a few different subdivisions of ratting that including hit and run, dominating tactical positions, and camping; however under normal circumstances, I'd say the big three types of players are dogfighters, ratters, and campers. It's not until you start breaking down ratting that campers become rats.