A Beginner's Guide to War Thunder, Part 2

At the end of Part 1 we’d got the game installed, bought a new plane and set off into battle with the helpful advice of “point yourself in the vague direction of the enemy and hope.” That’s surely a complete and comprehensive strategic and tactical guide to air combat, isn’t it? No? Oh. Well. All right.

There are two Arcade PvP mission types in War Thunder (at the time of writing, subject to change over the course of the beta etc.): Ground Strike and Domination.

Ground Strike

The start of a Ground Strike mission. Look at all the lovely red dots to attack!

A mode called “Ground Strike” suggests that the objective is to strike the ground as hard as possible with your plane. Turns out that’s not the case, although there’ll probably be a fair amount of crashing going on anyway. The objective is actually to destroy all of the enemy ground units before they destroy all of yours, or to shoot down all enemy aircraft. If there are airfields on the map then destroying the enemy airfield is another way of winning. This requires dropping a lot of very heavy bombs on the enemy runway, I’ve never seen a team successfully manage it in lower rank fights, but it’s something to watch out for once the heavier bombers start appearing.

In the early Rank 0/1 battles, when most people are in biplanes with a couple of machine guns and everyone’s keen to dogfight, it’s fairly common for everybody to pile in to a big furball in the middle of the map and keep flying around in circles until one side has been entirely shot down. As attack aircraft and bombers start arriving (and people expand their hangers) the ground targets really become the focus, it’s much more unusual for a higher rank battle to come down to the last team flying. (Update: patch 1.31 introduced two new Ground Strike maps for Rank 0/1/2 battles that are very compact, and finish very quickly if a team concentrates on attacking ground targets.)

Even without any bombs or rockets you can still have a crack at ground targets in a biplane with a couple of popguns; Artillery and Anti-Aircraft Guns (either mobile or fixed) are soft targets (though careful of the latter, they shoot back); Armoured Cars are vulnerable to machine gun strafing, but take a few more shots; Light, Medium and Heavy Tanks and Pillboxes are tougher and need progressively larger cannons, rockets or bombs. Basic technique should be pretty obvious, point nose of plane towards thing on ground, shoot it with guns, then (and this is the important bit) pull up before you crash.

Strafing a tank

I like to fly with mouse aim and W and S as pitch down and pull up respectively, so mashing ‘S’ as you get near the ground can just give a bit of a helping hand, especially in some of the more lumbering planes that take a bit longer to respond to your mouse wiggling. You can always re-run the tutorials or have a go at some single player missions if you want a bit of practise without 15 maniacs trying to shoot you down.

Speaking of the other maniacs, before commencing a strafing run it’s worth checking around for no enemy fighters poised to pounce; look out for red dots on the mini-map, and hold down ‘C’ for a visual check about the place. Though you can’t exactly be stealthy in an aeroplane, you can check where everyone is on the map (‘M’) if you want to head off and find some undefended ground targets, but be careful as you get near the opponents spawn point as newly appearing fighters can really put a crimp on your day.

Carri ‘er? I hardly know ‘er!

Domination

The other main mode is Domination, in which the goal is to capture airfields. So a bit like Capture the Flag, but with airfields instead of flags. Except you don’t have to bring the enemy airfield back to your airfield, you just hold onto it, so it’s territorial domination. Probably why they called it ‘Domination’, in hindsight.

A Domination map with three airfields (A, B and C)

On a Domination map there are one, two or three airfields, and the aim is to be holding more than the enemy, which causes their red bar to go down. If they hold more than you, your blue bar goes down. Once one bar reaches zero, the other team wins. (Update: patch 1.31 tweaked the mechanics slightly so that simply holding an airfield causes the enemy bar to go down, so if both teams hold one airfield, both bars go down.) So that bombers aren’t entirely useless there are also some ground or naval units on Domination maps, and destroying them also takes a chunk off the enemy score bar; destroying all the targets won’t win the round, but it can give you an edge.

What the game doesn’t seem to mention is how to capture an airfield, and it turns out that you have to land on the runway. There is a landing tutorial available, under “Game Modes” on the main screen, that teaches you to land safely: very carefully banking around, gradually losing altitude, gently reducing the throttle, lowering landing gear and gracefully touching down. You don’t want to do that in a Domination match; you’re trying to get to the airfield and capture it as quickly as possible, so max the engine and point at the ground, full speed ahead! Except of course you have to be going slowly to land, so then cut your engine completely, hit ‘G’ to extend landing gear (if it’s not fixed) and ‘F’ for flaps and pull a load of violent turns to dump speed as quickly as possible as you get near the ground. Needless to say this can get a bit tricky; all airfields start neutral, typically there’ll be one by each spawn point, so it’s not uncommon for a Domination match to start off with a bunch of people on each side going straight for the capture and an airfield littered with the burning wrecks of planes that misjudged their approach (or got in each others way and collided in mid-air). You might want to leave it to others to actually capture the airfield to start with, though there are nice XP and cash rewards for doing so, so give it a crack if you’re feeling confident.

Our team capture airfield A as I offer moral support and resist the temptation to drop bombs

I say you have to ‘land’ on the runway, technically you just need to have your wheels in contact with the ground, you don’t actually have to come to a standstill, so once the control point turns blue you can whack the throttle back up and take back off again to get into action. It also means you don’t have to bring your speed right down as you would for actually landing, but the faster you’re going the more risk that a slight twitch will result in a crash of flaming death; swings and roundabouts… If, in the process of landing, you clip your propeller on the ground it’s not always fatal, though obviously you’re not going to be flying anywhere. Fortunately landing at an airfield repairs your aircraft (and you get an XP bonus for landing with a dead engine, even if it was self inflicted), so as long as you weren’t going so quickly that you head off the end of the runway into a hanger building or inconvenient tree you might be able to gently brake, come to a stop, then get back into action once the repair timer has counted down.

You ought to be doing one of two things on a Domination map: defending a friendly airfield or trying to capture an enemy airfield. Defending is probably the easiest, especially if you’re not too confident on landings, just hang around a blue airfield and shoot down anything red trying to land. As a landing plane has to fly slow and straight they’re pretty good targets; if you gain a bit of altitude and loiter a little way away the enemy might be so fixated on landing they don’t even notice you until it’s too late, but don’t loiter so far that you can’t make it back in time to stop them. If you’re on your own and there are multiple incoming bandits you can try and get a bit of help via the voice commands (‘T’ and then a number; ‘Defend the base!’ or ‘Cover me!’ are worth a shot, but don’t hold your breath). If you’re going to try and capture the enemy airfield, you really need to shoot down any defenders first; if you’re lucky there might be a big old dogfight going on in the middle of the map, allowing you to sneak around a map edge to an undefended airfield, but if there are any opponents in the area it’s probably not worth trying to land unless you’re really confident of your damage absorption powers.

If you end up in a bomber, either by choice or from a lack of alternatives left in the hanger, then you can always have a crack at ground targets. On a map like Stalingrad: Winter, though, the 30 vehicles on each side tend to be wiped out in fairly short order, leaving you lumbering around with poor air-to-air armament feeling a bit of a gooseberry. Fear not, though, in some ways you’re the ultimate airfield defender. An enemy aircraft has to land, after all, or at least get its wheels on the deck, and you have… bombs! You can’t destroy your own airfield in a Domination match, so line ’em up, and as the enemy aircraft touches down thinking “ha, that bomber will never be able to stop me with its pathetic turret guns”, bombs away! You need to be at low altitude (or to have incredible skill at judging bomb drop time to account for the speed of the enemy plane); the bigger the bomb the less precise you need to be. I have to admit to giggling slightly on the few occasions I have managed to catch someone out like that.

General Air Combat

Of course regardless of the game mode there are a bunch of enemy aircraft trying to stop your team doing what it’s trying to do, which might be trying to stop their team doing what it’s trying to do, which all gets very circular. Anyway, you’ll end up shooting at aeroplanes at some point. There’s masses of literature already devoted to air combat, both real life and simulated so I won’t spend too much time on Thach Weaves, Immelman Turns, boom and zoom, turn n’ burn, salt n’ shake, Chaka Demus n’ Pliers and the like; Boelcke’s rules from 1916 aren’t a bad starting point, there’s a War Thunder Wiki with some useful articles, or plenty on YouTube like Bis18marck70’s channel.

One thing to watch out for is overheating guns. As you fire, a red circle fills around your gunsight; this represents your guns heating up. The longer you fire the greater the chance of a jam; you might well have seen a ‘Gun Jammed’ message, which confused me to start with as my guns still seemed to be working. As I understand it, a ‘jam’ in War Thunder actually knocks a chunk off your ammunition supply. Whilst not a disaster, with machine gun ammunition resupplying after a short delay (cannon take a bit longer), firing in short bursts is generally a better idea than holding the trigger down, unless you really need to bring something down in a hurry, like an aircraft about to land on your airfield in Domination.

Speaking of really needing to bring an aircraft down, there is a last resort: ramming. Rather a divisive subject, liable to cause outbursts of anger in the chat window, but there is precedent and it’s undeniably effective if someone is about to capture your airfield, or is lining up to bomb the last friendly ground target. Many ramming incidents happen during head-on attacks, and if you’re playing a game of chicken then you’re at least as much to blame as the other person if you do crash. If you really like your plane you should take early evasive action in such a situation; if I’m in a shiny new high rank fighter I’ll break off and circle around for another shot, if I’m in something of a lower rank that’s suffered some damage, heck, I’ll keep the fire button held down, and if the other guy doesn’t turn that’s his problem… There’s always a risk of accidental collisions and friendly fire too, especially if there are three or four people chasing the same opponent, or if one person is performing a daring low-level strafing attack on a target that a high-altitude bomber is attacking; these things happen, it’s best not to get too worked up about it, but do be careful, even if just to avoid the cash and XP penalty from downing a friendly.

That should get you progressing through the ranks of your air force, we’ll continue in Part 3 with a few tips on aircraft and upgrades.

A Beginner's Guide to War Thunder (v1.27)

Version 1.31 of War Thunder overhauled the new player experience, please see the revised version of this guide.

I’ve been having a tremendous amount of fun in War Thunder, and would highly recommend it to anyone who likes either War or Thunder. Actually, on reflection, more the War than the Thunder; there are clouds, and sometimes rain showers, but I haven’t heard a sonic shock wave caused by lightning in the game yet so fans of meteorology should look elsewhere. If you’re after a bit of mutliplayer online World War II flightsim action, though, give it a go.

Update as of 12th June 2013: the account sign-up process has been improved to check for existing names and let you specify a password; the introduction to the game for new players has also been overhauled, a fully updated post is coming soon.

First step is to sign up for an account at warthunder.com. Couple of things to watch out for: you might get a big green tick next to your chosen nickname and think “Hurrah, nobody else has tried to be ‘Biggles’, I’m unique!”, but the system just slaps a number on the end if the name is taken, so you end up as ‘Biggles2’ (or, quite possibly, ‘Biggles146’). Also, you don’t choose a password at sign-up time, the system sends you an e-mail that includes your password; you might want to double check your spam bin if it doesn’t seem to turn up. Both nickname and password can be changed in your YuPlay profile, so you can correct your nickname to ‘B1gggl3z’ and password to ‘password’ or ‘1234’.

(Public safety announcement: don’t do that, it’s silly.)

Next, download the client. It’s 7Gb+, so might take a while. Tum te tum… is it still downloading? Yes? Right-o. Pom de pom… Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it? Oh, it’s all installed now? Splendid.

The first time you launch the game it asks if you want to run through a tutorial, which is a very good idea if you’re new to flight simulators, or haven’t played one for a few years. There’s a series of tutorial missions covering basic flying, taking off and landing (in other words, not only going up diddley up up, but also down diddley down down), ground attack etc., mostly very useful, though I’ve never had to land on a carrier in a mission yet (thankfully), so don’t panic if you have a bit of difficulty with that one.

The tutorial: save the world from the scourge of giant yellow floating circles!

If you want to get straight in to action and skip the tutorials, or if you ever want have another go at them for some more practice later, you can always access them later from the “Game Modes” menu under “Tutorial”. There are three basic tutorials for the three aircraft types, and advanced tutorials for take-off and flight control, aerial combat and landing, carrier take-off and torpedoing and dive-bombing and carrier landing. You can also re-run the tutorials at different difficulty levels, if you want to step up to Realistic or Simulator mode sometime. As well as introducing you to the main game concepts you also earn some in-game currency from completing the tutorials, so they’re worthwhile even if you’re a veteran flier.

Speaking of in-game currency, like many games of this type there are two varieties: ‘Silver Lions’ are earned from playing, ‘Gold Eagles’ are bought with real money (though you’ll earn some Gold Eagles from the early tutorials). Don’t worry too much about that for now, but you might want to save up Gold Eagles until you’ve a better idea how you might like to spend them.

Once you’ve mastered looping the loop and defying the ground in the tutorials you can select your preferred nation and review the magnificent array of flying machines that make up your personal squadron. I’m using Britain, naturally, and if you were expecting to jump straight into a Spitfire you might be slightly disappointed to be starting off in a Hawker Fury, an open cockpit biplane, but like most aircraft in the game they do have actual combat pedigree from World War II; Håkans aviation page is a rather interesting place for information on biplane aces.

Grandmaster Hawker and the Furious Fury

Before hitting that tempting “To Battle” button it’s worth grabbing another plane. If you completed the tutorials you should have some money, so click “Recruit Crew” to buy another crew for 10,000 Silver Lions; you can either stick this crew in another starter fighter (click the “Nimrod Mk. II (Reserve)”), or, for a bit of fun, let’s see if there’s something else we can get by clicking on the “Research” button.

The British Tech Tree – not to be confused with the British Techno Tree, which has a lot more Aphex Twin

This takes you to the tech tree for your nation, all the lovely stuff you’ll (eventually) be able to fly. Have a browse of what’s available; the right hand column starting with the Wirraway are premium aircraft, purchased with real money Golden Eagles, the rest you can buy with Silver Lions (the first icon under the name of the aircraft shows the type of currency). The number in the bottom right, next to the silver chevron, is the rank you need to be to fly them; you gain XP from battles, and what do experience points make? Prizes! Also, air force ranks. At rank 2 we’ll be able to get that Hurricane Mk I, but even at the dizzying heights of rank 0 there’s something for us in the Swordfish Mk I, the venerable Stringbag. Click “Order”, and put it into service.

Stringbag!

Now we can go shoot people! You can fly against AI opponents if you like via the “Missions” option under “Game Modes” in the top left, but the online PvP battles are the main focus. Click “To Battle” and, unless you’re feeling incredibly confident, leave it with “Arcade Battle” selected. One setting that you might want to change, at the top there’s a “Current Server” option; for the shortest possible queue you can change this to “Any available”:

I like my Current Servers like I like my women: Any Available

Fighting alongside (and against) players on the Russian doesn’t seem to be a problem, I haven’t encountered any latency issues; you might not be able to understand general chat, but there are probably disadvantages too. Should some sort of tactical co-ordination be desirable you can always issue voice commands/requests in game via the ‘T’ key by default, or you could just shout detailed battle plans at your hamster for all the good it’ll do in a team of random strangers. Click “To Battle” again in the bottom right of the window.

After a (hopefully) short queue and a loading screen, you’ll get this starting screen for the battle:

To battle!

At the top are your available aircraft; below the selected aircraft you can change its weapon load-out (if there’s more than one option), its camouflage paint scheme (if there’s more than one option), and stuff like the gun targeting distance (if you can be bothered; I don’t think targeting distance affects Arcade mode anyway). Don’t worry about those for now. To the right is the map over which you’ll be fighting, with the fighter and bomber spawn points highlighted. I wouldn’t worry about that too much either, we’ll just point ourselves in the vague direction of the enemy and hope.

Pick which aircraft you want to start off with; I’d suggest one of the fighters rather than the Swordfish, but I don’t think there’s any difference other than cosmetics between the Fury Mk I, Fury Mk II and Nimrod (a naval version of the Fury). Click “Select” in the bottom right corner, and after a countdown it’s chocks away and time to deliver the bacon! (Except you don’t have to worry about the chocks, as you start in the air in Arcade mode rather than having to take off).

Cabbage crates over the briney!

I’ll get on to highly advanced combat tactics in Part 2, for the time being: red dots on the ground are enemy vehicles (shoot them). Red dots in the sky are enemy aircraft (shoot them). Blue dots are friendly (don’t shoot them). Keep shooting things until either (i) all the red stuff is gone or (ii) you explode. If (i), congratulations, you win! If (ii) you return to the aircraft selection screen; pick your next plane, hit “Select” again, and return to the fray! Repeat (ii) until either (i), or all your aircraft have exploded.

If you find yourself on a map with ships, the torpedo mounted on the Swordfish will come in very handy (see the torpedo tutorial for how to employ it; short version: fly at low altitude, press space bar when pointing at enemy ship), but I don’t think you will have naval targets until you’ve gained a few ranks, so if you select the Swordfish you might as well hit space to get rid of the torpedo straight away and improve performance a bit. (I tried using the torpedo in a ground attack role, but there was just a bit of a ‘clang!’ as it bounced off an armoured car, not very effective.) More usefully, the Swordfish has a rear gunner, controlled by the AI by default; the AI isn’t a very good shot, though, so you might be better off taking control of the gun yourself by pressing F6. When you do, the plane will continue flying straight and level, so make sure you’re in a nice open bit of sky and not, say, at tree-top level with a big old mountain straight ahead. Wave the mouse around to control the gun, and give that bandit on your tail what-for.

That should get you through your first few battles, see Part 2 for an introduction to the two main Arcade battle modes.

Thunder, Thunder, War Thunder, Ho!

It’s been a quiet start to the gaming year; a bit of Borderlands 2 DLC, the odd World of Tanks battle, an ongoing bid for world domination in Civ 5, but nothing much new for me apart from SongPop, a sort of Facebook version of Name That Tune (only with less Lionel Blair). A piece on Rock Paper Shotgun’s always splendid Flare Path caught my eye, though, about War Thunder.

It’s a sort of Massively Arena-ish Drop-in Flight Sim Type Thing (that well known MADFSTT genre), rather like World of Tanks but with planes; indeed it used to be called World of Planes but changed name about a year ago. I’m not sure how I missed it, it’s right up my proverbial street, and really rather fun; I don’t think the new name helps, War Thunder is very generic, a bit “pick two vaguely military words out of a hat” without the meme-worthy silliness of Warface. Like an anti-tank shell off well sloped armour it’s the sort of name that glances off my brain without penetrating, so even though it’s been mentioned on various blogs, sites and forums it had been flying under my radar, as it were (an easier task in one of the biplane starter aircraft). Apparently one reason for the name change is that they’re broadening the focus to eventually include ground and sea combat, so it’ll be an interesting head-to-head battle with wargaming.net’s World of Tanks/Warplanes/Warships triumvirate.

War Thunder is from Gaijin Entertainment who have some flight sim pedigree with games like Wings of Prey, which has given them a bit of a head start in terms of available aircraft; you can choose to fly for the Soviet, German, US, Japanese and (most importantly) British air forces, so I’ve been pottering about in Gladiators and Hurricanes grabbing my eggs and fours and getting the bacon delivered. There are plenty of types of aircraft available, and maps generally have overall objectives such as ground targets to destroy or objectives to capture; if shot down you can switch to another plane from your hanger, so I’ve also been doing a bit of level bombing from a Blenheim, and developed quite a nice line in torpedo attacks from the Swordfish and Beaufort where shipping targets are available. There are a few game types, including some historical options with realistic controls and accurate combatants, but I’ve been sticking to the arcade mode while getting used to things.

All in all, well worth a look. You can even customise your aircraft with decals; don’t blame me, though, I was just picking from the options they give…

Sausage squad up the blue end!

Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely

Captain’s log: a nice hunk of larch. It’s funny, you see, because “log” means both “a thick piece of tree trunk or branch, especially one cut for burning on a fire” and also “a full written record of a journey, a period of time, or an event”, so scientifically that was *hilarious*. Oh please yourselves. Following a series of exciting adventures, Starfleet have appointed me to the rank of Admiral and given me command of a new ship, one that doesn’t have big, tempting red buttons labelled “Abandon Ship” and “Self Destruct” on the arms of the captain’s chair. Due to budget cutbacks it is equipped with the most basic weapons, shields and engines from the Spacetesco Value range, but high command seem pretty relaxed about captains performing their own upgrades, so while my application to “Pimp My Spaceship” is being considered I have tasked my senior officers to review the spacedock market and make some recommendations to improve the performance of USS Hope Springs Eternal

“Good morning, men. And women. And aliens from tri-gendered species. And robots, and holograms and… whatever you are, in the corner”
“That’s a potted plant, sir”
“Very good, carry on… potting. Now, as you’re all well aware, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century. Except where it does, a bit, sort of, or there’s some sort of bartering involving credits, or energy or… oh, look, it’s all vague enough that Cryptic can get away with a bunch of different currencies and an auction house and stuff. So, as a new crew, let’s go around the table, introduce ourselves, outline what upgrades you’d like to purchase from the market, and we’ll run the budget past Stevens of accounts. You in the red shirt first.”
“Thank you captain. I’m Alexei Vladimir Ilyich Dynamo Kiev Five Year Plan John Paul George Ringo Antonov, Chief Tactical Officer, nuclear wessel etc. I propose replacing the aft photon torpedo launcher with a quantum mine dispenser, upgrading the for’d launcher, and replacing the phaser arrays with plasma cannons fore, and plasma turrets aft. Total cost would be approximately 100,000 energy credits for a moderate upgrade. We can also equip the away team with new weapons and armour for 75,000 credits.”
“Excellent, next”
“Jings crivens, sir, I’m Angus McScotsman, Chief Engineering Officer, och aye the noo. I recommend fitting improved combat impulse engines for greater speed and manoeuvrability, and reconfiguring engineering consoles for maximum weapon power. There’s a moose loose aboot this hoose. Estimated cost, 70,000 energy credits.”
“Very good; you in the blue with the pointy ears”
“Well, sir, there is a theme I have on that scheme you have; a flight on the wings of a young girls dreams that flew too far away. Basically we get some shields for 50,000 credits. And some china for me to hold.”
“Thank you, Science Officer Decker. Now, you in the rather… extravagant uniform, what department are you again?”
“Petty Officer Llewelyn-Bowen, sir, Chief of Interior Décor. Now, as it’s the holiday season, I’m thinking ornaments, I’m thinking Vulcan incense, sleigh bells, Bolian candles, Targ fur earmuffs will look simply *fabulous*, we can kit out the whole bridge for a mere 750,000 energy credits.”
“Three quarters of a million credits?”
“Oh yes. If you think about it, the whole game situation of players putting a premium on cosmetic appearance and digital pseudo-rarity from limited time events and such fits in quite well with a post-economic society, if you sort of squint a bit. Tell you what, there’s a lovely jacket for sale. Brown, thigh length, very in this season, a snip at 300,000 credits.”
“So, I can either dramatically increase the effectiveness of both this starship and her away team, or get a jacket?”

Captain’s log, stardate: about a week later. Forced to retreat from confrontation with Klingon patrol, shields unable to withstand concentrated fire and weaponry insufficient to cause significant damage. Beamed down to planet to try and negotiate ceasefire, away team overpowered and captured. On the plus side, Counsellor Ilium said I looked very dashing in the new jacket.

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it

After hearing Tim & Jon talking about Star Trek Online on the rebooted How To Murder Time podcast (and Patrick Stewart talking about space exploration on The Infinite Monkey Cage), I thought I might get the old starship out of mothballs and boldy go where quite a lot of people have gone before but I haven’t been for a while. Melmoth brilliantly captured the problem of picking up old characters, and between space and ground hotbars, bridge officers, tactical kits and whatnot, none of which I could really remember, I wouldn’t have stood a chance in a fight with a Clanger, let alone a Klingon battle fleet. Fortunately Star Trek Online has a few nice low-key ways of getting back into the swing of things, such as Duty Officer missions.

Duty Officer missions concern the day-to-day management of a crew of hundreds that the TV series generally glossed over, apart from the classic episode “Annual Performance Evaluation Reviews on the Edge of Forever”; calibrating shields and weapons, hosting ambassadors, granting leave, searching for contraband, that sort of thing. Pack the crew off with a couple of clicks, they return in an hour or two with loot, brilliant.

After a couple of days I thought I really ought to leave Earth Spacedock, though, so with a bit of helpful advice I at least got some decent Bridge Officers slotted up to give USS Hope some useful combat abilities, and took a refresher on Space Combat Basics (1: point ship at enemy 2: mash ‘fire all weapons’ button) followed by Advanced Space Combat (3: point ship away from enemy and repeat step 2 with aft weapons) and Extremely Advanced Space Combat (4: press all number keys then Ctrl-all number keys to see if your Bridge Officers can do something helpful like buff your weapons or debuff enemy shields). There are many tactics and manoeuvres in the Star Trek canon but none really capture my Extremely Advanced Space Combat technique, so I might have to dub it The Zoso Manoeuvre:

“Mister Herring! Attack Pattern Omega. Ensign Izzard! Polarise the hull. Lieutenant Osho! Auxiliary to structural, deploy repair parties.”
“Erm, sir… we haven’t actually received any damage yet.”
“I know. But we probably will. Ensign Lee! Dispersal Pattern Beta.”
“Dispersal patterns are for quantum mines, sir”
“Really?”
“Yes sir. We’re not fitted with mines.”
“Right. Well, if we were fitted with them, deploy them in Dispersal Pattern Beta.”
“Yes sir.”
“Right, I think that’s clicked all the buttons. Oh wait a minute, what’s this one with the little picture of the starship and the arrows coming out of it? That looks useful, do that.”
“That’s… Abandon Ship, Captain.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Oh well, I’ve clicked it now. Off we go!”

And so it was that USS Hope II did a couple more days of Duty Officer missions before venturing into space again…

Player of a murdered game, owner of a murdered characer, I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next

Van Hemlock tweets: “Good grief. “#AvengeCoH” hashtags… seriously? What is wrong with you people?” And of course it is a touch on the histrionic side, but then this is a comic book universe, so arch-enemies and pledges of vengeance aren’t entirely out of character. According to narrative imperative, a group of orphan players should now travel the world, ceaselessly training in MMOG-programming techniques in mountain-top monasteries (that nevertheless have excellent broadband internet infrastructure) before returning to civilisation in the guise of The Group Of People Seeking To Exact Satisfation For A Previous Event (note to editor: there must be a catchier name), unleashing a new superhero MMOG of hitherto unimagined quality, and attracting all existing NCSoft subscribers away from their previous games. There’ll be a climactic confrontation with the board of NCSoft, probably on the window ledge of a skyscraper in the middle of a thunderstorm (it’ll need to be quite a big window ledge, perhaps with a conference table and lots of chairs), who will ultimately be vanquished, and good will have triumphed.

Until one of The Group Of People Seeking To Exact Satisfaction For A Previous Event turns out to be a robot from the future, and they all meet evil clones of themselves from a parallel universe, and their powers are drained and absorbed by an entity of pure energy from Dimension Z, and they get framed for crimes they didn’t commit and the public turn on them, and then they’re all killed, for a couple of weeks, until the deaths are retconned and then they get cancelled. Or something.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Since they added British tanks to World of Tanks a month or so back, I’ve mostly been playing those. I started out focusing on the medium tech tree, as most of my current garage is occupied by Soviet heavy tanks and tank destroyers, and the Brits eventually get the iconic Centurion. The early tiers always fly past quickly enough, but things bogged down in Tier IV with the Covenanter (also known as the A13 Mk III (Covenanter Mk I (Cruiser Mk V)), presumably as part of a cunning disinformation operation to make the Germans think we had a lot more tanks than we really did by assigning them at least three designations). At that point I decided to start on the British heavy tech tree for a bit of variety, and to make the most out of researching common tank components; before too long I made it up to the Tier V Churchill heavy tank, unlocked the option of the 6-pounder gun for it, and also upgraded the Covenanter to a Tier V Crusader. Looking at the stats the Crusader is a nippy tank that relies on speed and manoeuvrability, firing and rapidly moving, not really my forte, whereas the Churchill ought to be a nice, solid heavy, comparable to the Soviet KV-1, more suited to my preferred technique of slowly trundling forward, pausing occasionally to shoot stuff.

Something rather odd has happened in practise, though. I think my Churchill tank is cursed. I’ve outlined my theories on the random outcomes of World of Tanks battles before, and my overall win rate continues to bobble along around 52%. In the Churchill, over the past week I’ve been on the winning side in 5 out of 21 battles, 24%. I’ve seen some amazing performances, spanning the whole gamut of losing. There were battles where the team decided to demonstrate that it *is* possible for a pick-up group to display incredible precision and co-ordination, by carefully lining up in single file and one-by-one advancing towards concealed enemy emplacements, each one pointlessly exploding just in time for the next lamb to be slaughtered. There were road-rage incidents where two or three players collided during the Parisian traffic chaos of the start of the round and hurled expletives in chat (one of the joys of a multilingual swearing filter is that even if you can’t understand Italian, Polish or Czech, frequent bursts of asterisks convey the general tone of a message), rapidly followed by shells; when your own side are that stupid, even I was rooting for the enemy. There were battles that seemed to be going well, our team having a numerical advantage and closing on the enemy base, until our opposite flank crumbled and the dreaded friendly base occupation bar appeared, our heavy tanks having no chance of getting back in time to defend it. There were battles where my tank was destroyed but our team still had eleven other tanks compared to six enemy, a position we couldn’t possibly lose from, so I’d log out and play another tank, only to discover on reviewing the results later that, sure enough, we had managed to throw away the lead.

On occasion, at the start of a battle, someone will give a stirring pep talk. Something that brings to mind Henry V at the siege of Harfleur or Francois Pienaar reciting Invictus, something like “come on guyz dont suck my last 4 teams have been loosers lets win this”. Hearing that you ponder what connection there might have been between those last four teams, what common thread could have run through them causing those losses… I don’t think the results are entirely down to me, though, over the same timeframe I’ve fought five matches in a KV-1, won four of them, and in 12 rounds on the Crusader I’ve been on the winning side nine times. Maybe that’s it, instead of the usual 50/50 allocation of luck, the Crusader has nicked half of the Churchill’s. Or maybe it’s just a quirk of random outcomes, especially over comparatively small sample sizes. Onwards and (all being well) upwards!