FOREWORD:
Well..we all know you win some and you lose some. It's how you analyze your mistakes afterwards though that make you better. Although I was reluctant to make this post, as the former GM of Anger Management/The Dark Knights I merged that guild to be here(losing some good players in the process)..so I'm going to make damn sure everything is being said that needs to regardless if that changes some people's view of me.

TIMELINE:
When I was finally able to sit down at the pc during kid's nap time, the city was already being overrun and the bank was in the process of being locked down and cannons were already deployed shooting at the guard tower. So everything I say is in relation to after that point (both in vent and in game).

SATURDAY SEIGE:
Come on guys...WTF were you thinking? Why do the same coward move that Hyperion did? KGB should be better than that...regardless if we lose the city or not. There is no way you can justify this without losing face...period

SUNDAY SEIGE:
Although I personally had some good fights and never lost gear, Our overall attempt at defense was pathetic at best. We were unorganized, unprepared and lacked any signs of a coordinated group effort. The incident at Pain's hamlet where we left darka's group die because we had zero leadership communication was pathetic. We almost had another incident when we ran into the RN group and leadership was unable to quickly give commands to whether to fight or run...luckily in that incident we fought.

SUNDAY NIGHT SEIGE (RUS CORP):
This was a better fight.. not sure if it was due to the fact that Blood just suck, numbers, simpler combat in hamlets, or better leadership. Every KGB member should have been there though..and I know we had others online doing there own thing during this.

THE FACTS:
1. Frontline battle commanders don't work. They should be surverying the field..rallying troops..relaying commands..etc
2. The Zerg Rush is not going to work against an organized force.
3. We had major communication failures by leadership.
4. We had major communication failures by the grunts(Salochin please stfu next time).
5. We had Zero push on the other forces at Andruk.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Get a Battle/Defense Plan together next time..map out some points of interest..so when you bark out commands people know exactly where your talking about.
2. Split KGB out from the zerg..we get mixed in with all these other fuckers and then have no coordination between the forces or even our own group hardly.
3. Split KGB out from the zerg...seriously..even when we move together..there should only be KGB or same vent channel people in that mass.. the other fuckers can ride 20 feet to our left..at least have some seperation.
4. PRACTICE!!!! We should have had mock seiges against COTP or some other ally way before this shit took place.
5. Don't naked zerg with just one guy... go rally up somewhere..rest up..get 10 others..and do a fuckin coordinated naked zerg.
6. Rally the troops at a POI and get organized before commands are given to push a certain area.
7. If we are fighting against AOE.. then split out with your group and get a coordinated push from multiple sides.
8. Focus fire...
9. Call for melee..and when the call is made..stop ranging our guys in the back.
10. Call for range..and when the call is made..dont run in there like a fukin fool (unless it's tactically planned)
11. Build a line... how many times did you shoot an ally in the back?..or even know what guild you were shooting at?

Well thought out post.

I have to agree on a lot of points. I think I fought all the evening being alone just surviving so I could solo melee rush some mercs. Having no supply line was a bad thing too : after all your food / reagents is down, it's hard to be efficient.

And for future defensive sieges : don't try to protect, attack is the only solution. 2 or 3 groups doing guerrila fight in the attacked city while the 7 or 8 other get the wagered city or the shard holder.

Edit : the CC should try to pool our AoE mages in specific groups which work together and train at playing coordinated.

Attrition got to me in the end as well.. I had to start battle looting for regs/arrows after about an hour of fighting

I also agree with this. I'd love for us to have maps of the area we're assaulting or defending with reference information written on them. It would be SO much more efficient to be able to say "focus fire on tower #3" (as labeled on the battle map) than to try to say "the enemy is grouping up in the canon tower, uh, south east, no west by the city gate."

I also think that we should be splitting ourselves into groups in vent that mirror the groups in the game. The commanders should be able to be heard over all the groups, but the group members should only have communication with each other. If that were the case we'd be much more likely to stick together as a group, and to fight more effectively. Hell, it might even be better if the commanders can't be heard by the entire group, but only by the group leader and the leader relays commands as necessary, and can communicate with the commanders. It's fairly east to set vent up to accomodate this tactic and I think it would be incredibly useful.

I would love to see how TM has their communication set up, because the way they move and work together leads me to believe that they are functioning with some similar kind of system.

we have done that b4 kaotic and we used to on a regular basis in other games its all depended on whos leading the faction. it works way better than 100 ppl in the same room. def should make a map and name all the points of interest in our next town.

zarad zhuul you got very good points and its something i was trying to say yesterday during and after the fight.

I've used different vent rooms on multiple occasions, as you may recall. I wasn't on when the siege started and Donk led most of it as I was behind on information.

The map is a great idea, and I will take it upon myself to get that arranged the next time we own, or have a planned siege on a city.

As far as Tasorin's post, there are some very valid points to alot of that. There's also alot more that we could not control...mainly alliance members. I will elaborate on this and post responses later as my head is readily clouded with works stuff and the amount of demoralizing activity from membership atm.

Little late with input.

But a well thought out post looking from the outside in, since I wasn't there to actually witness this siege.

we FOUGHT Well i alone sent 8 people to a bindstone and well we needed supplies and couldnt get the bank to get them. either way we were out gunned and that means alot. numbers only help u so much. I vote we move to the chaos stone near oromeas city, its 30sec run on foot to a fully loaded city. tons of resources in the are and it would suit our play style to the t. And theres plenty of hostiles to the north to fight and tons of mob camps and well we havent lived on that side of the world yet and i wanna kill elves~!

I brought this point up a couple times after the first month of release or so - that we should train our people to fight together as a group, by forming teams and testing out various situations & scenarios against our own people, not just at random haphazardous times against the enemy. A troop is much more competent in battle when he/she knows the WHY of what they are doing when following orders. This works specifically well on a kinesthetic level: Once trained in various scenarios, that troop will know the why without having to ask the question, and will have more faith in the leadership. However, after bringing this up, I was apparently ignored.

This sounds like a Thomas post... it smells like a Thomas post... hmmm but isn't!

I appreciate your no holds bar aproach to telling it how it is wether people want to hear it or not. I was not there this weekend so I can't comment on what went right or wrong.

But, I thought we were suppose to go on the offensive on Saturday. The second we sit back and stop being agressive we lose our edge. Hyperion did the same thing and eventually the enemy will wear you down.

As many of us say and originally coined by Donk... The advantage goes the the attacker all the time.

Nuff said though, we need to pull our pants back up and drop another siege.

Hehe actually we did siege on Saturday and promptly got our asses handed to us. Well, Dusk got their asses handed to them.

Let me speak to this.

1. Frontline battle commanders don't work. They should be surverying the field..rallying troops..relaying commands..etc

The duel vent thing is killing us. Our battle leaders trying to listen to both vents are missing important data on both sides. In the past we had one person dedicated to communication (Hare) and the battle leaders would simply lead on the field. Looking back, I was so frustrated with the delays and lack of response from the alliance, everything could have been much smoother.

In the future, we as leaders, need to take this seriously, and keep the leaders leading in combat.

Sitting across from Donk and watching him trying to convince alliance to do this or that, was very difficult. There were long pauses where folks were asking, "What now" etc. Again, a dedicated communications person could help here.

2. The Zerg Rush is not going to work against an organized force.

If we are reduced to a naked zerg, we should at least stay in organized groups, and focus targets / fire. I think by the time this happened, our will was broken, and we all knew we were going to lose. This is not an excuse, and should have been handled differently.

3. We had major communication failures by leadership.

See item one. In the future, we will have leaders leading on the front, and someone behind doing the communication.

4. We had major communication failures by the grunts.

Lets keep the channels clear, except for needed information, and instructions. Think before you speak, and make sure what you are going to say is relevant.

5. We had Zero push on the other forces at Andruk.

Before you came in, KGB and COTP / BOTS were holding our own against Mercs. Interestingly enough, this was when our leaders were out of the duel vent. It was not until they called in the zerg that we began to fall, and our tactics degenerated from there the more we relied on Alliance. In past victories, it was us acting alone, outside the zerg that we were most effective and successful. Again, front like leaders out of back end communication is the key I believe.

Thanks for the post, and these points will be discussed and solutions implemented where possible.

Quick addition to Jet's post.

We, as leadership, were VERY short handed this weekend as well. We are currently working to fill some ranks so this doesn't happen again, but both Hare and Kay were absent for most, if not all, of the siege.

I personally had to leave several times with real-life shit going on and I wasn't even supposed to be in town this weekend.

believe it or not, no one person can handle the job. Donk did a great job with the resources and problems he was handed. I personally think we did a great job in the initial push (when it was just TheMercs vs COTP/KGB in even numbers) but it was because Donk and I were both there in full form and didn't have to coordinate with anyone except COTP, and they had phantoms in our vent channel.


I, and the rest of the leadership team, are currently (and more soon) trying to promote some more leaders to help us fill the voids. This game takes a massive amount of coordination and we didn't have the man-power to pull it off this weekend.

If I had been out of town, you would have had Donk trying to lead the entire alliance by himself...which is a hard job for 3 or 4 of us. Normally I select leaders to coordinate with 2-3 guilds each. CC vent was fucking horrible this weekend on multiple levels.

donk did amazing I'm sure with everything he had to deal with... I mean it sounds like he had to do almost 75% of all the commanding and that is NO easy task!

All these comments are very good and helpful.

When I'm there, I like to have Donk focus on relaying orders to KGB..and I handle CC vent (ya...fucked myself on that one..jk...kinda).

When I'm not there..all bets are off. Someone has to deal with the alliance in a military fashion. Donk is getting much better at it, but hasn't had to deal with it as long due to his move to the JetPad.

Maybe getting one vent for these kind of event would be good.

I had fun at the siege sorry we lost.

Thanks, but for me, this was definitely not a "no holds bar approach." Any really old friends/acquaintances of mine can tell you that. I've been practicing at being nice for over a year now.

I wasn't there this weekend either, however I have spoken to some personally who were, and it sounds to me that KGB has been focusing far more on Stronghold-building, defense, and crafting than on skill-building, skirmishing, and the training to go with it.

I can only talk so much about it though (and I'm sure someone will quote me on it) because I haven't put even an eighth of the time into Darkfall that I put into AOC. Many already know, and I'm sure are tired of hearing, about my opinion on so-called "melee" in this game...aside from RL circumstances right now, that makes it hard to want to log in.

It's been hard on re-supplying, training and practise skirmishes because we've literally had to fight in large battles a lot. Some ally was always under threat, now that our fortress in the North has been taken I hope it means a slightly quieter period were we can get back to training and getting ready.

How about having "fixed groups" where it's the same people that groups up and get the group experience in fighting. In each group their would be specialized roles, that each took care of some special aspect of the fight. The different groups doesn't have to be equally specced, but each group member should be quite aware what his buddies are capable of - how to support them and what support he can expect.

The main thing is that we get selforganized groups that can hold their own, and leave leadership to focus on the larger scale of things (strategic level), instead of having to do detailed stuuf (tactic level).

PS: I didn't read the whole post yet (it's late at night here), so someone else might have said something equal to this.