Out of Link Assault: A Study in teh Wierdness

[Airlift]

Yesterday I was playing on Dalton (this is vanu week for me or something) and I decided it was time to try some special operations to test base attrition. So, I get a squad together, a MAX, 3 combat engineers, a pair of hackers, and soldiers to fill in the rest. I had 4 from STFU, 3 of whom were on teamspeak, but we were using text chat for most comms to keep everyone up to speed.

We loaded up the HART and dropped on WP 2, SE Mukuru Tower.
The pods came down in a group, and we converged on the tower, blew the lock, and secured the empty spawn tubes while the hacker and cover took the tower. This was the first minute of the op, and so far it was by the numbers. Once the hack was in, the potential zerg clock started to run, so we had to hustle. At this time, the whole southwest had been held by TR, but NC was gaining ground south of their sanctuary.

We left the tower for the waypoint 1, securing the almost-empty backwater base of Mukuru. First the vehicle pad and then the equipment terms were hacked while we spawned an AMS and an ANT. Our backup hacker was dispatched on the short ant run to Searhus gate and I set up the AMS defenses in the courtyard. The other two combat engineers mined and turreted both bridges to Mukuru island, and we fell back to mine all entrances.

Our first approach to causing a neutral reversion was the massive spawn approach. Vehicles and equipment, we spawned mounds of garbage, barely denting the NTU levels (which had started at 90). After about five minutes of this, the call goes in to switch to scortched base tactics, to measure the difference. We moved in teams, taking out the generator first, then the equipment, medical, vehical, and all wall turrets. This did the trick, the level was dropping at a much more rapid rate, around 10% every 45 seconds to a minute. Now tho, with the Generator icon up in addition to the tower, a few early responders from TR came sniffing around. We got 2 uniques out of it, but it looked like there wouldn't be much else coming from them, as NC was making huge strides thru Aja, Bonazi, and Nzame. They were building a buffer between us and the proper Terran response, but it was also only a matter of time before they started hitting our little beach head.

As the NTUs fell, we got ready for the next phase, which was to set up spitfires in the courtyard, get the hacker and cover to the CC (racking up another unique on the way), and put the remainder of our squad in the courtyard and on the walls to hold the base. The ANT came back in and was parked in the AMS bubble.

NC takes our tower back at 40%. They now have a hack in at Torre and Leza. They only sent 3 people to the tower, and our response obliterated them. We secured it and again abandoned the tower, keeping our focus on the base.

At 10% the Terrans finally mustered a response, but by this time NC had us surrounded in the region and we had no security beyond the two bridges to the island. A lone TR galaxy with no gunners comes rumbling down into the courtyard, which is much too small for a galaxy. Seeing the red gal on radar set us into high gear, converging all forces except the CC hacker and his backup on the target. But.. only one soldier came out. Oh well, we killed him, and by this time, the galaxy was parked diagonally up the wall and the ANT that we knew was inside was thrown out into a hail of rocklets and MAX fire. It flipped and exploded, and shortly after the Galaxy was a carcass as well (up to 8 uniques but we were approaching 10 minutes from the first kills).

And then it happened, 0% and the base.... did nothing. It stayed Terran and sat at 0% NTUs, first for a minute, then for five minutes, and by this time we had killed another half squad of NC (who were now dominating the rest of the region and were surely to crash down on us with real forces). Ten minutes we waited, destroying all the terms that had self-repaired already, taking the tower back again, but nothing. WTF, Willis?

Everyone was disenheartened. We didn't know what to try next, but no matter what, it just sat at Terran 0% NTU. So we packed up the AMS and the ANT, moving them to Leza for one last try, and NC puts a hack in within 30 seconds (they had a solidly held link from Nzame now). Of course, Leza was held by a much stronger force, and we lost the AMS and ANT within the first 10 minutes of fighting. We were then faced with two choices, hold the last piece of vanu real estate on Cyssor (Searhus Gate Tower) or pack it in and move on. We collectively recalled and redeployed to Hossin, well within our Lattice.

So what gives? Were we doing something wrong? One speculation from the squad was that the base couldn't revert to neutral until the gens came back online, but that didn't sound right. Another possibility was that we encountered a bug after our hacker tried early and received the No Link message. I can't figure it out.

[Airlift]

I know someone has to have tried an out of link capture. Surely someone has actually succeeded in it... Beuller? Beuller? Beuller?

[LesserShade]

well I have noticed a few bases still under faction control that are at 0% NTU. :O:

[MrVulcan]

ya, they have a bug in it, I was talking to a nc hacker that tried to hace a vanu base with 0 ntu well behind the lines and it wouldnt let him..... its still a broken feathre, so for now we are still forced to fight at the front....