Ammon

Tsumiju Zero's early runs at getting the MO used bubblers and such for the KB. As I recall, that was purely for the minions, but you could ask him.

I've used a Stormy a lot, but always turn Hurricane off to make better use of my AoE debuffs, and get the spawns down faster, in the escapee phase. Commandos can and will run around obstacles though, and are quite adept at evadin Bonfires etc.

Really good point. I think I'll add a mention of that to the Guide. When I'm running these, I tend to be putting the MMs on the reinforce spawn point because the pets make a big difference there.



Great to hear.


Thanks for all the feedback.

Kill all.

The 'far enough away' part refers to time to next spawn, not distance.

You only have a 30 second window between one spawn arriving and the next. If it were taking 20 seconds to kill each spawn, you'd only have 10 seconds between killing the last mob, and the next mob arriving. That would be very tight timing for the AV teams but still possible. That's why I suggest you want to be killing each spawn in under 15 seconds.

Of course, the reinforcement team could save a bunch of judgement powers ready for the final spawn, using those to kill that mob within 5 seconds, and so giving the AV teams a far bigger window of 25 seconds to finish the last 2% health on both AVs.

Every damage-dealing toon in the League should have this, or the bind.
The Commandos will not stop running, so you only have a short time to kill them before they are either out of range of where you are supposed to be guarding, or even are off to the exit. For the MO, one of the badges is for none of the mindwashed to escape.

Luckily, all six escape routes run past just 2 easy to locate choke-points.



The coloured lines show the various escape routes used, and the two red circles show where the teams need to be. Twice as many escape routes (thus twice as many escapees) run through the south circle as the north one, so put 2 teams on the south of the center of the tennis court, and one on the north side, and you have everything covered.

The Controllers can lockdown the minions passing through those chokepoints, and AoE damage will wreak slaughter, but the commandos will often get through, so the single-target damage dealers must focus non-stop on killing the commandos and letting NOTHING get away from the choke points alive.

There seems to be a natural tendancy for players to feel they need to spread out to cover more area. In truth though, I find the teams that stay more tightly bunched, with just a couple of 'chasers' following up and returning again do best. This is partly due to more of the team benefitting from buffs like Assault when closely bunched, and thus considerably boosting damage. Definitely, spreading too far lowers the chances of success. The entire point of those choke-points is that every mob comes to you, right through your kill-zone. Just make sure none leave it.

Watch out for that orange escape route just to the bottom left of the lower choke point, between 2 of those hangers. Its worth having an extra couple of damage-dishers aware of that and killing fast any commandos or mobs that slip past, because the exit is close, and so you won't have much time to shoot the running lieutenants there before they are out. Quick death to anything heading that way. Quick death to anything making it away from a choke-point.

The two choke-points do work, as long as everyone is vigilant for the Commandos, and makes sure none escape. No escapers gives you the badge for the MO. But as long as no more than 20 get out, you still win the phase, get merits, and go to phase 4.

Phase 4: Siege spawns
Once the escapees are all done, Siege comes out at his marked spawn-point. The tactic is about the same as for Nightstar, with one team killing all reinforcements at the Reinforcement spawn point, while the others rip Siege apart where he spawns. Again, remember the badge for killing the AVs where they spawn.

The reinforcement spawns are still not essential at this point, but its the last practice before killing them fast and right becomes essential to the entire league's success of failure in the MO badge. I usually give the Nightstar team a turn on the reinforcement spawns for this first takedown of Seige to help share the XP.

It is worth noting that Siege seems to be supported by more turrets in range than Nightstar is, and so the Seige fight will generally be the harder of the two AVs. Moving inside the warehouse/hanger thing to fight seige out of LOS of the turrets may help, but sometimes that confinement is even more deadly to the squishies.

The fight is much much easier when none of the reinforcements get to arrive and gank the party.

Here's that map again:




Phase 5: Nightstar and Siege together
The final phase of the BAF, and while tough, its not that bad as long as all of the reinforcement spawns are slaughtered at their spawn point. Of course, you do still have to take down both AVs within ten seconds of each other, or the fallen one gets up again with full HP. Steady and careful is the key.

You need all three teams working together, but on different jobs to get this done smoothly and get the MO badges.
You must lockdown and destroy the reinforcement spawns at their spawn-point for the badge, and to make things much much easier for the teams fighting the AVs.

This time, controlling the Reinforcement spawn point is vital to the badges. Hopefully you had your teams on the point earlier for some practice, and to help the AV team leaders know who is their best AoE-person to send now.

The AV fighting teams should each send a high-AoE toon to the Reinforcement spawn team to help with the lockdown and killing of the reinforcement spawns. Heavy AoE damage is best here. If necessary, swap any additional single-target oriented characters from the Reinforce team for more AoE from an AV team.

Each AV team sending that one AoE effective member of their team to the reinforcement team means their team will get some of that juicy incarnate XP for all the slaughter there. Remember that League put teams together, but that XP is still divided by teams, not across the entire league. At least, that's what I've been told, and I haven't wanted to skip all incarnate XP to test it out.

The on-screen popup window in this final phase is something everyone should pay attention to. It shows the health of both AVs, and it also shows the time until the next reinforcement spawn. The final badge for the MO is for dropping the AVs at a moment when there are no reinforcement mobs anywhere on the map.

The easiest current tactics for this still require some focus on timing, and just a teensy bit of luck in regard to AV health regeneration. The AV teams should both be aware before the fight begins, and reminded at stages during the takedowns to pause damaging the AVs when they are down to 2% health. Then let the Reinforcement team leader make the final call for when to finish them off. The reinforcement team leader needs to time it so that the AVs are dropped right after one spawn is finished, and before the next lot of reinforcements spawn.

A really good tip added in the posts below suggest instructing the AV teams to dismiss the pets at about 5% health to better control the damage, and thus drop, of the AV. Certainly, when holding the AVs at 2% health any MM pets should be on passive (not bodyguard) and any controllers or dominators fighting the AVs should dismiss all pets.

It is easier when the Reinforcement team are reliably killing the spawns in under 15 seconds. Under 10 is better still. The reinforcement spawn leader should call for extra damage if he needs it. However, there's still a tiny element of luck involved, (as in bad luck can get you), because one AV may suddenly have a regenerative spurt, or knockback suddenly splits the last mob, or several people miss at once... It may still take more than one shot to get this last badge. However, luck aside, the tactics and strategies given do make it fairly controllable.


This post, like this strategy, has been made possible by a great deal of other players, not only those who provided and published the original maps I have marked up, and the macro used above, but also the scores of players on the Union server who've been willing to test and try tactics. Any usefulnes to this guide depends on all of those people as much as to I who merely added words and formatting. Thanks

Its no surprise that what we can mostly discover is that you'd argue a lot, CB

None of us have the right to unilaterally decide anything about a shared, consensual reality. We attempt to reach a collective consensus, which is a massive undertaking in itself and the reason that some of these hard rules seem to smack people in the faces at times.

I mean, which of us have the right to dictate that a newly arrived roleplayer tomorrow can't possibly have fought Frostfire in the Hollows because he's already reformed at the stage where players have reached level 50? That is one of the trickiest examples, of course, not least because it is such a hard to miss changing event that is at all stages of the change at once in game-mechanics.

Generally this comes down to the time-fudge method of letting it slide. Frostfire was arrested many times before reforming. New roleplayer is either part of that past event, or is fighting some copycat mutant using the name Frostfire to make himself a bigger deal to the Outcasts. It won't even matter unless that player tries to make it a current event others should react to. Generally, there's lots of ways to let it slide and get along with a shared reality with a shared 'now'.

Where there is a will to get along and find wriggle-room, there is always a way.

Generally the safest thing is to provide your own plots, villains, and locations, or use non-cannon ones that others have created and given permission to use (depending on whether it is important that others can react/share the reality).

Noone is going to object to you taking out the notorious Outcast leader ChillBurn, FrostBurn, or Freezerburn, and it won't upset their reality in which they just worked with Frostfire the reformed villain and signature character of Going Rogue.

Likewise, we accept that it is technically cannon that Agincourt gets blown up at a certain point, but that that certain point is always in the vague past and/or future, so that we are not stopping the RP of anyone who is just about to blow it up, or save it, or simply refer to being there, which it is.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

The whole point is to try to not leave just small amounts of wriggle-room (e.g. All your characters must have missed what's been on the news all day and all week), but lots and lots of it (my event barely made the papers, due to lack of eyewitnesses or pictures), and better yet, leave the wide vistas of the game as totally open as possible.

The ultimate aim is to create your own reality that is open to all, rather than that forcibly gropes everyone elses. One where those who want to can find a hook to join in, but that the hook isn't catching on everyone around you and tearing holes in their stories.

Note the bit about subjective realities, thus alternate universe type stuff, and specifically that this would NOT be brought to the Unionverse.

Yes, as suggested.

This didn't get properly answered in all the stuff about dirty bombs and landmarks generally.

It is again, entirely missing the point of the Unionverse as a continuity for all. While you are level 20, scores of other characters are level 30. The timeline based on level does not work for a shared, consensual 'now' and so has to be discarded. If level 20 character and level 50 character can see person X then he can't also be abducted, imprisoned, etc. Nor can building Y, which they are currently at, have just been blown up, no matter what your in-game mission may say.

This is the point at which, if it is important for you character to have actually kidnapped person X, e.g. Blue Steel, then you'll have done so in an alternate universe, the old Onionverse, while in Unionverse, the hundreds of other players continue to see Blue Steel going about his business as usual.

To share a Universe, we have to share a consensus on what is now, and generally, if any character you couldn't contact can see that thing, then at no point can that thing be actually missing now.

Quick example: The Militia have recently been doing the newly revamped Maria Jenkins arc in-character. We got to that bit where one minute Statesman is on the mission with you and then, Oooops we lost him! Statesman is kidnapped. At the moment, the Militia's reality is that the world famous Statesman is missing, and they lost him.

But that would never be brought to the wider RP community or Unionverse as a current event. We fudge around it, and there are many ways to do so. We can have in our reality (not the wider Unionverse) that there is a stand-in doing all Statesman's public appearances to prevent panic. That sorts out our side of how others are currently still dealing with a man who is missing. We can also have our timelines crossed, so we consider this event to be out of the now, and actually somewhere in the past. "We once lost Statesman. Oh, he's back now, and thanks to a stand-in, noone who wasn't involved ever noticed it". The one thing we cannot reasonably do, ever, is try to force the plot that Statesman is missing on the entire community.

If we were so stupid to even attempt it, everyone else would obviously either decide we were crazy, or else that it was us that had been fooled by a stand-in. We'd likely be put on ignore at the same time.

Yup. We get shafted regularly and on everything. Why expect any care or rebalancing now?

I have 6 years of Veteran rewards, paid at the EU prices, and for that get less support, no official events in my country, and have server maintenance timed for the middle of my day. Why should I not also be losing my global name of those 6 years to some American who already gets all the advantages?

There's a reason that Europe, which massively outnumbers the raw human population of the US has a much smaller in-game population on US based games and it is nothing to do with server issues.