Post by Pencil Stick on Feb 16, 2013 10:57:05 GMT -8
Howdy, y'all! PencilPrick here again. As you're probably aware, I was timing us last night for a bunch of shit.
First, let me explain what and how I timed said shit.
My primary focus was on the time it took between deployment (from Galaxy or Sunderer), and full objective completion (spawn covered, all terminals hacked, A point flipped). Measurements were taken on small bases (those with only one point to capture), and are NOT the time taken to flip the base, as that varies greatly due to factors outside our control (resistance, how much adjacency we have, ect.).
Here are the times I recorded. I did not record every base, and notably, I didn't include what was probably our worst time that occurred when I got a phone call and fucked up flipping the terminals, which was my job. My bad, y'all.
1.12
0.42
0.55
0.38
0.53*
0.28**
0.46
A few notes on the above times. Firstly, the only time over one minute was our first deploy. Pretty good job, guys. Much better than last week, and I'll try to continue tracking these times.
Secondly, I did not record whether the deploy was from a Galaxy or Sunderer, but it was about an even mix, and I am fairly surprised to see that there isn't a huge variation between the times. It doesn't seem to matter what we deploy from, and our mode of transportation primarily impacts our travel time between bases.
The first starred time (*) is the base with the most resistance upon deploy. 2 or 3 Lightnings and infantry greeted us on the ground. As you can see, the time isn't significantly higher than the others. Each base offered varying levels of resistance, most relatively mild, but just like our transport method, I was surprised to observe that the level of resistance we encountered didn't seem to have a dramatic impact on our ability to do our jobs. That's pretty cool.
The second starred time (**) was our shortest, and was on a base where a friendly Infiltrator on a Flash had already flipped all the terminals before we got there. This goes to show that the terminals are one of the biggest time consumers overall, and as one of the people flipping them, I can tell you exactly why. We generally pull our galaxy or sunderer right into basically the center of the base. The vehicle terminal is invariably on the periphery of the base, and often down stairs or in a building or some bullshit. So, the Infiltrators have the longest to run, and then a few additional seconds after that to flip the thing.
This brings me to my only suggestion on how to improve these times, as they're pretty good as is (this is one of our strong points). Right now, our deployment pattern is as I said: Bring the vehicle to the middle of the base, everyone jumps out. Drivers/pilots should begin following a different pattern: Move in a line that passes THROUGH the center of the base (where everyone but the infiltrators hop out), and then through to the vehicle terminal, with two separate deployments. This is a simple change, and cuts the travel time of the infiltrators, and I'd guess would bring us to objective completion on average about 10-20% faster.
These images I stole from the wiki are of a base with a small and compact layout, but the difference between these two diagrams would be a lot more exaggerated on most of the bases on Indar and Esamir, where the vehicle terminals are fairly far outside the central portion of the base.
What we currently do (link)
What we SHOULD do (link)
I had to duck out early, but I was also around for two sattelite captures. The following times are from time to deploy to completely flipping the sattelite to red.
1.47
1.27
Not a lot to be learned from two times. I'll need more data to draw any conclusions.
Finally, I only got to properly time one redeploy. I measured this from the time Talron first says "Redeploy at warp gate" to the time everyone is in the galaxy.
1.12
was our time. This is going to be my primary focus next week, as it's one of our weakest points right now. It gets pretty tricky to drop with one hand, start the timer with the other, and actually play and do your job, measuring the time without getting distracted and being the one to fuck it up.
As an aside, when Talron ordered us that we would stop the Sundy and eliminate all threats we encountered, I started timing those, but we just wrecked everything we flanked like that so tremendously badly that it rapidly stopped being worth timing. I'd like to suggest that extreme sunderer hunting be on the list of hard targets that we deal with effectively. If you're trying to hold Camp Connery, and it's being overrun, you've got basically no chance of getting out of the tower and to those three deployed Sunderers outside the base and behind the coral. However, if you had a spec ops team that was capable of very rapidly redeploying outside and going sunderer hunting approaching from outside the perimeter, it might make a big difference.
I also didn't time the hacking of all the turrets around the outside of that one base, but next time, definitely have two teams, one going clockwise and the other counter clockwise. Doubles the efficiency.
That's all this week, folks. Feel free to comment on my data or conclusions.
First, let me explain what and how I timed said shit.
My primary focus was on the time it took between deployment (from Galaxy or Sunderer), and full objective completion (spawn covered, all terminals hacked, A point flipped). Measurements were taken on small bases (those with only one point to capture), and are NOT the time taken to flip the base, as that varies greatly due to factors outside our control (resistance, how much adjacency we have, ect.).
Here are the times I recorded. I did not record every base, and notably, I didn't include what was probably our worst time that occurred when I got a phone call and fucked up flipping the terminals, which was my job. My bad, y'all.
1.12
0.42
0.55
0.38
0.53*
0.28**
0.46
A few notes on the above times. Firstly, the only time over one minute was our first deploy. Pretty good job, guys. Much better than last week, and I'll try to continue tracking these times.
Secondly, I did not record whether the deploy was from a Galaxy or Sunderer, but it was about an even mix, and I am fairly surprised to see that there isn't a huge variation between the times. It doesn't seem to matter what we deploy from, and our mode of transportation primarily impacts our travel time between bases.
The first starred time (*) is the base with the most resistance upon deploy. 2 or 3 Lightnings and infantry greeted us on the ground. As you can see, the time isn't significantly higher than the others. Each base offered varying levels of resistance, most relatively mild, but just like our transport method, I was surprised to observe that the level of resistance we encountered didn't seem to have a dramatic impact on our ability to do our jobs. That's pretty cool.
The second starred time (**) was our shortest, and was on a base where a friendly Infiltrator on a Flash had already flipped all the terminals before we got there. This goes to show that the terminals are one of the biggest time consumers overall, and as one of the people flipping them, I can tell you exactly why. We generally pull our galaxy or sunderer right into basically the center of the base. The vehicle terminal is invariably on the periphery of the base, and often down stairs or in a building or some bullshit. So, the Infiltrators have the longest to run, and then a few additional seconds after that to flip the thing.
This brings me to my only suggestion on how to improve these times, as they're pretty good as is (this is one of our strong points). Right now, our deployment pattern is as I said: Bring the vehicle to the middle of the base, everyone jumps out. Drivers/pilots should begin following a different pattern: Move in a line that passes THROUGH the center of the base (where everyone but the infiltrators hop out), and then through to the vehicle terminal, with two separate deployments. This is a simple change, and cuts the travel time of the infiltrators, and I'd guess would bring us to objective completion on average about 10-20% faster.
These images I stole from the wiki are of a base with a small and compact layout, but the difference between these two diagrams would be a lot more exaggerated on most of the bases on Indar and Esamir, where the vehicle terminals are fairly far outside the central portion of the base.
What we currently do (link)
What we SHOULD do (link)
I had to duck out early, but I was also around for two sattelite captures. The following times are from time to deploy to completely flipping the sattelite to red.
1.47
1.27
Not a lot to be learned from two times. I'll need more data to draw any conclusions.
Finally, I only got to properly time one redeploy. I measured this from the time Talron first says "Redeploy at warp gate" to the time everyone is in the galaxy.
1.12
was our time. This is going to be my primary focus next week, as it's one of our weakest points right now. It gets pretty tricky to drop with one hand, start the timer with the other, and actually play and do your job, measuring the time without getting distracted and being the one to fuck it up.
As an aside, when Talron ordered us that we would stop the Sundy and eliminate all threats we encountered, I started timing those, but we just wrecked everything we flanked like that so tremendously badly that it rapidly stopped being worth timing. I'd like to suggest that extreme sunderer hunting be on the list of hard targets that we deal with effectively. If you're trying to hold Camp Connery, and it's being overrun, you've got basically no chance of getting out of the tower and to those three deployed Sunderers outside the base and behind the coral. However, if you had a spec ops team that was capable of very rapidly redeploying outside and going sunderer hunting approaching from outside the perimeter, it might make a big difference.
I also didn't time the hacking of all the turrets around the outside of that one base, but next time, definitely have two teams, one going clockwise and the other counter clockwise. Doubles the efficiency.
That's all this week, folks. Feel free to comment on my data or conclusions.
