Difference between revisions of "Fortress"

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== History ==
+
Fortress is a game mode in Armagetron Advanced. It is a team based game which usually consists of two teams defending their own zone while trying to capture the enemy zone. You can also have up to four teams in one map, fighting against each other.
  
This mode was created by Z-Man, and is still in the works. It is an official mode.
+
==The History==
 +
Proof of concept of Fortress game mode was created by Z-Man, (the game creator.)
  
== Objective ==
+
The following links are related to early fortress. One day this can be written up as a proper history. <br/>
  
In this mode, your goal is to aquire your oposing teams "zone". To do this there are a number of stratagies.
+
[http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2529|The Fortress (Oct 18, 2005)]<br/>
 +
[http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=3133|Fortress changes: more noob-friendly (Mar 02, 2006)]<br/>
 +
[http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?t=14951|Fortress tie breaking (Apr 02, 2007)]<br/>
 +
[http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=16251|Fortress Test Server (May 17, 2007)]<br/>
  
== Stratagies ==
+
=Gameplay Basics=
 +
==The Grid==
 +
[[image:Fortress001.jpg|thumb|Fortress]]
  
TODO
+
==The Zone(s)==
  
== Screen shots ==
+
==The Objectives==
 +
Such as 'Capture the Flag' and 'Sumo', the idea of Fortress is to capture your enemies Zone(s) while defending your own from the enemies attackers. You may win by capturing the enemies Zone(s) or if all of your enemies suicide or get core-dumped.
  
TODO
+
==The rounds, matches and scoring.==
 +
On most common Fortress servers, the first team to reach 100 points wins the match. Core-dumping your enemy, you receive 2 points which also adds 2 points to the overall team score. Hole points have been recently introduced to some Fortress servers and seems to becoming a standard setting which gives you 1 point which also adds 1 point to the overall team score.
 +
 
 +
'''Note:''' Settings vary from server to server, so this may not be exactly how it is on the server you are playing on. You can try asking an Administrator of the server for more information or use the ` console button and type in the setting to get the variable.
 +
 
 +
==Tips==
 +
 
 +
==Strategies==
 +
There is a more detailed discussion of [[:Category:Fortress Tactics]] available.''
 +
 
 +
==Screen-shots==
 +
 
 +
=The Positions=
 +
[[image:wingman_formation.png|thumb|Wingman Formation]]
 +
===Shuffling===
 +
Positions in Fortress are assigned so:
 +
          1
 +
        2  3
 +
      4      5
 +
    6          7
 +
  8              9
 +
 
 +
You can change your position using the chat command:
 +
/shuffle #
 +
Where # is the number of the position you wish to take. Using just "/shuffle" without a number, will just shuffle you out to the last position. When you join a Fortress server you will be placed on the very outside, so the others player's position won't be affected. Usually you're not allowed to shuffle "up" (to a lower pos). The most common way to change your position to a lower position is waiting until an inner player shuffles out. (He may be tired of Attacking) or until someone simply leaves the team.
 +
 
 +
Recently, in some updated servers, you're allowed to shuffle up only once you have logged in through the [[Authentication for Players|Armathentication]] mechanism. However, it is a commonly accepted rule that you ask for your team-mates consense before taking his/her actual position.
 +
 
 +
'''Note''': expecially for newbies, the inner position the harder it is, since you need to have a bit of experience to know when it is time to split out safely (without killing yourself or, in the worst case, one of your mates)... This doesn't mean that starting from outside is "easy", in fact the outmost player is partially responsibile of letting the defender build the zone protection succesfully.
 +
 
 +
===Center/Centre===
 +
As you might have guessed, center/centre (or middle) player starts from position #1.
 +
The initial phase, after splitting, is quite complicated for him: he has the chance to attack the opponents grinding through their attackers' walls, but he will have to prevent the opponent middle player from doing the same thing... Usually acting in a very tight space. In matches where both teams have 6-7 or more players it can become very hard to survive more than 10-15 seconds.
 +
===Attacker===
 +
Attackers start from positions 2 and 3. It is a good practice to try killing opponents' sweepers before attempting to break their defence. A good attacker is able to let his team win very quickly (when his base is well protected, of course).
 +
At start they can ''double grind'', a technique that lets them gain a lot of speed, sometimes enough to surpass opponents' sweepers and to reach their base before the defence is completely built. An attacker must have a good timing either to split well after the start, either to beat the enemy defence.
 +
===Sweeper===
 +
There are usually two sweepers, one for each side: e.g. in a team of 8 players, the defender takes position 8, while sweepers take 7 and 6.
 +
 
 +
Sweepers are those who at start help the defender building the zone protection. After that, they will try to block the enemy attackers, giving their own mates more time to attack the other base.
 +
Sweepers' role is very stressful too, because angry-aggressive attackers will try everything to kill them: a defender being attacked by 2 (or more) attackers is easily going to fail without the support of (at least) one sweeper.
 +
===Defender===
 +
Usually starts from the outmost position, drives along the closest mate's wall until he/she reaches the zone limit. Then begins drawing a square around the zone, as fast as possible. The defender holds the most stressful role in forress. If he dies the round is usually lost. Though sometimes he will be bored while the opponents cannot attack, being attacked themselves by his team.
 +
 
 +
=The Terminology=
 +
===Grind===
 +
To go along a wall to gain speed. Almost all Armagetron servers employ a method in which when you "grind" against any wall you gain more speed. Same principle, but in Fortress the setting have been set slightly lower than usual that you will only notice the speed boost when you grind quite close and for at least a few seconds. Grinding is one of the fundamental things in Fortress and everyone demands that you grind your team players and split correctly at the start of each round. If doing anything else, will most likely get you kicked or suspended.
 +
===Wing (Winger)===
 +
===Sweep (Sweeper)===
 +
The role of the ''Sweeper'' is to stay close to the Defender and help him fight off the enemy attackers. It's not the job of the Sweeper to defend the zone, that's up to the Defender! The best Sweepers are the ones who kill off enemies and be there when the Defender needs it the most. A good Sweeper ensures it blocks off the enemies attackers at the early stages in order to allow the Defender to properly set up his defence. Once the defence is set up, the Sweeper should go around distracting and trying to trap and sabotage the attackers.
 +
===Binding (single, double, triple)===
 +
===Shuffle===
 +
=Servers=
 +
==Online servers==
 +
*NNJG Fortress
 +
*Fortress Cafe
 +
 
 +
==Creating a server==
 +
All you need is administrator access on the server to be able to load the Fortress settings. Once you have that just simply type in the admin command line;
 +
INCLUDE examples/cvs_test/fortress_complete.cfg
 +
If you wish to make the server permanently Fortress, all you need to do is add that command in your configuration so it automatically runs as soon as the server starts.
 +
With this, it'll try to be an exact clone of "CVS Test Server: Fortress". You're advised to rummage through the included file here and the other recursively included files. Copy those you want to adapt into your configuration file and modify them there.
 +
You'll no doubt notice there's a great deal of customization available.  Think of the fortress as a primitive game object, and these settings are how you'll define its behavior.  Between these settings, other game rules settings, and good map design, there are virtually limitless possibilities available.  You don't have to limit yourself to Fortress play, you can use the fortress however you'd like!
 +
'''Conquering times:'''
 +
*1 Attacker, 0 Defenders: 5 seconds to conquer.
 +
*1 Attacker, 1 or more Defenders: not conquerable.
 +
*2 Attackers, 0 Defenders: 2 seconds to conquer.
 +
*2 Attackers, 1 Defender: 3.3 seconds to conquer.
 +
*2 Attackers, 2 Defenders: 10 seconds to conquer.
 +
 
 +
=Different maps=
 +
Default Fortress;
 +
*http://beta.armagetronad.net/resource-browser/resource/Z-Man/fortress/for_old_clients-0.1.0.aamap.xml
 +
 
 +
=Moviepacks=
 +
 
 +
=Cockpits=
 +
 
 +
=The Academy=
 +
To set up a one-on-one time to be tutored by some of Fortress' best, you can add yourself to the student list in [[Academy| The Academy]]
 +
 
 +
=External Links=
 +
http://www.styxdesign.net/armagetron/
 +
 
 +
=Internal Links=
 +
*[[Ladle/Challenge_Board]]
 +
*[[Bowl/Challenge_Board]]
 +
*http://playfortress.wordpress.com/
 +
*[[:Category:Fortress Tactics]]
 +
*[[Academy| The Academy]]
 +
 
 +
=Other=
 +
THINGS TO DO ON THIS PAGE==
 +
-INCLUDE A PROPER IMAGE OF ACTUAL FORTRESS STARTING POSITIONS. (IN =POSITION=)
 +
-INCLUDE INFO ALMOST ALL...
 +
 
 +
<br /><br /><br /><br />
 +
 
 +
===''The following section was copy and pasted from Category:Fortress Tactics during the restructuring of wiki categories. This content is outdated, and will end up being written over. Moved here only for preservation''===
 +
 
 +
<br /><br /><br /><br />
 +
 
 +
So you've started playing in a fortress grid and you want to know why your teammates keep killing you?  Maybe you've got some idea how the team should play, but nobody wants to do it.  Here's the answer to those questions and more.
 +
 
 +
== Line up ==
 +
 
 +
[[image:wingman_formation.png|thumb|Wingman Formation]]
 +
 
 +
As with any team server, a fortress server lines you up in the 'wingman configuration'.  This is a scary configuration!  You're dangerously close to the other player's walls and if you so much as sneeze in the wrong direction, you're roadkill.  You can't get out of the center without killing people, and if you do that they'll vote-kick your ass into oblivion.  So what do you do?
 +
 
 +
The first thing you do is ''don't panic''.  That'll get you all killed.  The second thing you need to do is figure out how you will all fire up gracefully.  There are a couple of concerns you need to be thinking about, and they're very important.  The first is that if you leave a space between your wall and any of your teammates' walls you leave a big hole that your opponents can and usually will use against you.  A fast-moving opponent can sail through those holes before you get your defense setup.  The second is how you will personally withdraw from the wingman configuration without hurting any teammates.
 +
 
 +
== Positions ==
 +
 
 +
Without a doubt, the two most important positions on the grid are the point (also referred to as center), and the goalie.  Here we differentiate between "goalie" and "defense" although it's common in-game to refer to the goalie as defense.  The reason we make the difference here is because while the goalie is a defensive player, he may not be the only defensive player on the team.
 +
 
 +
We won't get into naming all the positions.  Frankly, the rest don't really have names.  You can find good parallels in soccer and basketball, but not in American football.  There are other sports with interesting parallels you might consider for position names, but why bother?  We do go ahead and name the center position "point", although that is usually referred to in-game as "center".  We make this difference so we can use the word "center" with impunity to mean "center of the grid".
 +
 
 +
The team splits up into an offensive team and a defensive team, generally.  With smaller teams, your defensive team will probably only be one or two players.  Of course, that's 3-4 players on a team, which leaves only 2-3 players for offense.  Keep in mind that number of 3 for offense, it will serve you.  These numbers work for up to 5 players.
 +
 
 +
On a larger team, you will generally will split up into three areas of influence.  The defensive team will still consist of up to 3 players, and they'll all stay in the back, near the fortress, with one of them being the goalie.  The offensive team will still consist of 2-3 players and will attack as soon as possible.  Now your team has 6-8 players, what do the extras do?  They'll do two things.  First, they'll play a mid-field defense for a minute or so and be prepared to fallback to defensive positions if the defense needs them to.  If not, they'll advance as the second-wave of attackers.
 +
 
 +
== Who's in charge? ==
 +
 
 +
Generally, on a team with 3 or more players, someone needs to be in charge, and that someone needs to be reasonably close to point to be able to make the calls to separate the line.  How that will happen depends largely on how the point wants to deploy his team and on how the team wants to deploy.  At the time of writing, point calls aren't in common usage but they have been demonstrated to be very effective.
 +
 
 +
As the team gets larger, it becomes necessary to differentiate between who's in charge of offense and who's in charge of defense.  Usually the goalie will take charge of defense.  As to whose in charge of the whole team, the goalie and point need to determine that for themselves.
 +
 
 +
It's vitally important that the members of the team recognize a leader and do what he says, just like it is on any team.  And as with any group situation, it's important that the leader be a good leader.  You may not want to pick the best player on the team, he may not be a good leader!  You want a good leader, someone who can think fast on his feet and make good calls.  You also want him to be able to adapt quickly to changes.
 +
 
 +
In the early days of fortress play, having something resembling a team captain was necessary because most players were still getting a grip on the new style of play.  These days, it's not so important anymore, most players have an idea what they should be doing at any point in time.  So don't be surprised if nobody's taken tactical command of the team and the team still plays well.  Periodically it becomes necessary for someone to take charge, and it still happens, and it's still generally a good thing, but the emphasis has shifted.
 +
 
 +
== Important Calls to Start the Round ==
 +
 
 +
There are two important calls needed to start the round.  Any given point man may have more, but these are probably a bare minimum.  You need one call to deploy your defense and one to deploy your offense.  Generally you'll want all players to grind on the point's wall and pull off on his signal, although there is certainly room for alternate scenarios.  The wording can be anything you want, but it needs to be general enough to handle changes in the team's makeup.  So logically you don't want players' names in the calls.  You also need to have them in a language everyone understands.  This can be a real problem if you have German players on your team but you don't speak a lick of German!  You may find it useful to include translations of your calls, provided your calls are short enough that you can do so.
 +
 
 +
Another consideration in your calls is lag, and this is serious!  Lag will sometimes eat your call completely, and when it doesn't, there is a noticeable delay between when you make the call and when players respond to it--even if they respond as soon as they receive it.
 +
 
 +
More recently, players have gotten generally pretty good at splitting from the grind in the center without killing each other.  The line divides into several smaller groups of 2-3 players who work out for themselves what they'll do.  This is covered in more detail in sections devoted to the two respective teams that develop within your own team.  In any case, break calls aren't made very often anymore.  But don't forget about them!  Some point players prefer to make break calls still, and sometimes it's just necessary to make them.  Just don't be surprised if you don't see the calls, they're not made very often any more.  Most players have a pretty good feel for when they should break.
 +
 
 +
== [[Fortress Tactics_offense|Playing Offense]] ==
 +
 
 +
{{:Fortress Tactics_offense_intro}}
 +
 
 +
== [[Fortress Tactics_defense|Playing Defense]] ==
 +
 
 +
{{:Fortress Tactics_defense_intro}}
 +
 
 +
''End copy+pasted section''
 +
 
 +
[[Category:Playing]]

Latest revision as of 13:26, 24 August 2021

Fortress is a game mode in Armagetron Advanced. It is a team based game which usually consists of two teams defending their own zone while trying to capture the enemy zone. You can also have up to four teams in one map, fighting against each other.

The History

Proof of concept of Fortress game mode was created by Z-Man, (the game creator.)

The following links are related to early fortress. One day this can be written up as a proper history.

Fortress (Oct 18, 2005)
changes: more noob-friendly (Mar 02, 2006)
tie breaking (Apr 02, 2007)
Test Server (May 17, 2007)

Gameplay Basics

The Grid

Fortress

The Zone(s)

The Objectives

Such as 'Capture the Flag' and 'Sumo', the idea of Fortress is to capture your enemies Zone(s) while defending your own from the enemies attackers. You may win by capturing the enemies Zone(s) or if all of your enemies suicide or get core-dumped.

The rounds, matches and scoring.

On most common Fortress servers, the first team to reach 100 points wins the match. Core-dumping your enemy, you receive 2 points which also adds 2 points to the overall team score. Hole points have been recently introduced to some Fortress servers and seems to becoming a standard setting which gives you 1 point which also adds 1 point to the overall team score.

Note: Settings vary from server to server, so this may not be exactly how it is on the server you are playing on. You can try asking an Administrator of the server for more information or use the ` console button and type in the setting to get the variable.

Tips

Strategies

There is a more detailed discussion of Category:Fortress Tactics available.

Screen-shots

The Positions

Wingman Formation

Shuffling

Positions in Fortress are assigned so:

         1
       2   3
     4       5
   6           7
 8               9

You can change your position using the chat command:

/shuffle #

Where # is the number of the position you wish to take. Using just "/shuffle" without a number, will just shuffle you out to the last position. When you join a Fortress server you will be placed on the very outside, so the others player's position won't be affected. Usually you're not allowed to shuffle "up" (to a lower pos). The most common way to change your position to a lower position is waiting until an inner player shuffles out. (He may be tired of Attacking) or until someone simply leaves the team.

Recently, in some updated servers, you're allowed to shuffle up only once you have logged in through the Armathentication mechanism. However, it is a commonly accepted rule that you ask for your team-mates consense before taking his/her actual position.

Note: expecially for newbies, the inner position the harder it is, since you need to have a bit of experience to know when it is time to split out safely (without killing yourself or, in the worst case, one of your mates)... This doesn't mean that starting from outside is "easy", in fact the outmost player is partially responsibile of letting the defender build the zone protection succesfully.

Center/Centre

As you might have guessed, center/centre (or middle) player starts from position #1. The initial phase, after splitting, is quite complicated for him: he has the chance to attack the opponents grinding through their attackers' walls, but he will have to prevent the opponent middle player from doing the same thing... Usually acting in a very tight space. In matches where both teams have 6-7 or more players it can become very hard to survive more than 10-15 seconds.

Attacker

Attackers start from positions 2 and 3. It is a good practice to try killing opponents' sweepers before attempting to break their defence. A good attacker is able to let his team win very quickly (when his base is well protected, of course). At start they can double grind, a technique that lets them gain a lot of speed, sometimes enough to surpass opponents' sweepers and to reach their base before the defence is completely built. An attacker must have a good timing either to split well after the start, either to beat the enemy defence.

Sweeper

There are usually two sweepers, one for each side: e.g. in a team of 8 players, the defender takes position 8, while sweepers take 7 and 6.

Sweepers are those who at start help the defender building the zone protection. After that, they will try to block the enemy attackers, giving their own mates more time to attack the other base. Sweepers' role is very stressful too, because angry-aggressive attackers will try everything to kill them: a defender being attacked by 2 (or more) attackers is easily going to fail without the support of (at least) one sweeper.

Defender

Usually starts from the outmost position, drives along the closest mate's wall until he/she reaches the zone limit. Then begins drawing a square around the zone, as fast as possible. The defender holds the most stressful role in forress. If he dies the round is usually lost. Though sometimes he will be bored while the opponents cannot attack, being attacked themselves by his team.

The Terminology

Grind

To go along a wall to gain speed. Almost all Armagetron servers employ a method in which when you "grind" against any wall you gain more speed. Same principle, but in Fortress the setting have been set slightly lower than usual that you will only notice the speed boost when you grind quite close and for at least a few seconds. Grinding is one of the fundamental things in Fortress and everyone demands that you grind your team players and split correctly at the start of each round. If doing anything else, will most likely get you kicked or suspended.

Wing (Winger)

Sweep (Sweeper)

The role of the Sweeper is to stay close to the Defender and help him fight off the enemy attackers. It's not the job of the Sweeper to defend the zone, that's up to the Defender! The best Sweepers are the ones who kill off enemies and be there when the Defender needs it the most. A good Sweeper ensures it blocks off the enemies attackers at the early stages in order to allow the Defender to properly set up his defence. Once the defence is set up, the Sweeper should go around distracting and trying to trap and sabotage the attackers.

Binding (single, double, triple)

Shuffle

Servers

Online servers

  • NNJG Fortress
  • Fortress Cafe

Creating a server

All you need is administrator access on the server to be able to load the Fortress settings. Once you have that just simply type in the admin command line;

INCLUDE examples/cvs_test/fortress_complete.cfg

If you wish to make the server permanently Fortress, all you need to do is add that command in your configuration so it automatically runs as soon as the server starts. With this, it'll try to be an exact clone of "CVS Test Server: Fortress". You're advised to rummage through the included file here and the other recursively included files. Copy those you want to adapt into your configuration file and modify them there. You'll no doubt notice there's a great deal of customization available. Think of the fortress as a primitive game object, and these settings are how you'll define its behavior. Between these settings, other game rules settings, and good map design, there are virtually limitless possibilities available. You don't have to limit yourself to Fortress play, you can use the fortress however you'd like! Conquering times:

  • 1 Attacker, 0 Defenders: 5 seconds to conquer.
  • 1 Attacker, 1 or more Defenders: not conquerable.
  • 2 Attackers, 0 Defenders: 2 seconds to conquer.
  • 2 Attackers, 1 Defender: 3.3 seconds to conquer.
  • 2 Attackers, 2 Defenders: 10 seconds to conquer.

Different maps

Default Fortress;

Moviepacks

Cockpits

The Academy

To set up a one-on-one time to be tutored by some of Fortress' best, you can add yourself to the student list in The Academy

External Links

http://www.styxdesign.net/armagetron/

Internal Links

Other

THINGS TO DO ON THIS PAGE==
-INCLUDE A PROPER IMAGE OF ACTUAL FORTRESS STARTING POSITIONS. (IN =POSITION=)
-INCLUDE INFO ALMOST ALL...





The following section was copy and pasted from Category:Fortress Tactics during the restructuring of wiki categories. This content is outdated, and will end up being written over. Moved here only for preservation





So you've started playing in a fortress grid and you want to know why your teammates keep killing you? Maybe you've got some idea how the team should play, but nobody wants to do it. Here's the answer to those questions and more.

Line up

Wingman Formation

As with any team server, a fortress server lines you up in the 'wingman configuration'. This is a scary configuration! You're dangerously close to the other player's walls and if you so much as sneeze in the wrong direction, you're roadkill. You can't get out of the center without killing people, and if you do that they'll vote-kick your ass into oblivion. So what do you do?

The first thing you do is don't panic. That'll get you all killed. The second thing you need to do is figure out how you will all fire up gracefully. There are a couple of concerns you need to be thinking about, and they're very important. The first is that if you leave a space between your wall and any of your teammates' walls you leave a big hole that your opponents can and usually will use against you. A fast-moving opponent can sail through those holes before you get your defense setup. The second is how you will personally withdraw from the wingman configuration without hurting any teammates.

Positions

Without a doubt, the two most important positions on the grid are the point (also referred to as center), and the goalie. Here we differentiate between "goalie" and "defense" although it's common in-game to refer to the goalie as defense. The reason we make the difference here is because while the goalie is a defensive player, he may not be the only defensive player on the team.

We won't get into naming all the positions. Frankly, the rest don't really have names. You can find good parallels in soccer and basketball, but not in American football. There are other sports with interesting parallels you might consider for position names, but why bother? We do go ahead and name the center position "point", although that is usually referred to in-game as "center". We make this difference so we can use the word "center" with impunity to mean "center of the grid".

The team splits up into an offensive team and a defensive team, generally. With smaller teams, your defensive team will probably only be one or two players. Of course, that's 3-4 players on a team, which leaves only 2-3 players for offense. Keep in mind that number of 3 for offense, it will serve you. These numbers work for up to 5 players.

On a larger team, you will generally will split up into three areas of influence. The defensive team will still consist of up to 3 players, and they'll all stay in the back, near the fortress, with one of them being the goalie. The offensive team will still consist of 2-3 players and will attack as soon as possible. Now your team has 6-8 players, what do the extras do? They'll do two things. First, they'll play a mid-field defense for a minute or so and be prepared to fallback to defensive positions if the defense needs them to. If not, they'll advance as the second-wave of attackers.

Who's in charge?

Generally, on a team with 3 or more players, someone needs to be in charge, and that someone needs to be reasonably close to point to be able to make the calls to separate the line. How that will happen depends largely on how the point wants to deploy his team and on how the team wants to deploy. At the time of writing, point calls aren't in common usage but they have been demonstrated to be very effective.

As the team gets larger, it becomes necessary to differentiate between who's in charge of offense and who's in charge of defense. Usually the goalie will take charge of defense. As to whose in charge of the whole team, the goalie and point need to determine that for themselves.

It's vitally important that the members of the team recognize a leader and do what he says, just like it is on any team. And as with any group situation, it's important that the leader be a good leader. You may not want to pick the best player on the team, he may not be a good leader! You want a good leader, someone who can think fast on his feet and make good calls. You also want him to be able to adapt quickly to changes.

In the early days of fortress play, having something resembling a team captain was necessary because most players were still getting a grip on the new style of play. These days, it's not so important anymore, most players have an idea what they should be doing at any point in time. So don't be surprised if nobody's taken tactical command of the team and the team still plays well. Periodically it becomes necessary for someone to take charge, and it still happens, and it's still generally a good thing, but the emphasis has shifted.

Important Calls to Start the Round

There are two important calls needed to start the round. Any given point man may have more, but these are probably a bare minimum. You need one call to deploy your defense and one to deploy your offense. Generally you'll want all players to grind on the point's wall and pull off on his signal, although there is certainly room for alternate scenarios. The wording can be anything you want, but it needs to be general enough to handle changes in the team's makeup. So logically you don't want players' names in the calls. You also need to have them in a language everyone understands. This can be a real problem if you have German players on your team but you don't speak a lick of German! You may find it useful to include translations of your calls, provided your calls are short enough that you can do so.

Another consideration in your calls is lag, and this is serious! Lag will sometimes eat your call completely, and when it doesn't, there is a noticeable delay between when you make the call and when players respond to it--even if they respond as soon as they receive it.

More recently, players have gotten generally pretty good at splitting from the grind in the center without killing each other. The line divides into several smaller groups of 2-3 players who work out for themselves what they'll do. This is covered in more detail in sections devoted to the two respective teams that develop within your own team. In any case, break calls aren't made very often anymore. But don't forget about them! Some point players prefer to make break calls still, and sometimes it's just necessary to make them. Just don't be surprised if you don't see the calls, they're not made very often any more. Most players have a pretty good feel for when they should break.

Playing Offense

Offense is relatively simple. The two players who will usually rush the opposing fortress are the point and the person to the right of point. The person to the left of point can rush, but usually doesn't get to do so right away. So the two rushers need to account for at least one opponent between them, two is preferred, on their way to the zone. If they don't even get one, they need to double back and go pick one off. The reason is simple, there's probably one goalie at the zone, and if they don't kill anyone on their way, they leave their defense outnumbered.

The left of point is usually an offensive position as well, but his is a little unique from the rest. He has to take out one opponent before he can rush the zone, and it's this fact that usually causes him to show up after the other two. It's not a big deal because three players at the enemy's fortress wind up killing each other in their rush for the zone. So left of point is usually better off playing a forward defensive position until it's time to go to the zone. When he goes to the zone, his best bet is usually to prevent opponents from returning to protect the zone and buying time for the two rushers (who should already be there) to take the zone. In either capacity, he's playing a defensive role, but he's playing it in offensive positions.

All other players are defensive players until the opposing team has been reduced to a point where it's safe to leave the goalie by himself.

Playing Defense

Defense is also relatively simple. There are currently two defensive models in use. The dominant one is the inner/outer defense model. Put simply, one person follows his tail immediately inside his team's fortress, creating a barrier to entering the zone. The other person will create a similar barrier farther out, usually touching the rim wall in his circuit. The inside player, the goalie, is the inner defense. The outside player's position has no name, other than outer defense.

The second model is a goalie/guard model like that used in soccer. It has some advantages over the inner/outer defense model, but some disadvantages as well. In this model, you have a goalie that plays just like the inner defense already mentioned. The second player takes up a guard position in front of the goalie and works his area like a zone defense. In this model he will hunt anyone who comes to his side of the grid.

The tradeoffs are huge. In the inner/outer defense model, the inner player doesn't have to be particularly strong if the outer player is strong. The converse is also true. So if you have new players, or just players who are new to fortress play, the inner/outer defense model is very effective. The goalie/guard model requires both players to be strong players, and the guard has to be a strong dueling player. The advantage to the goalie/guard model is that the guard can switch easily to offense if his offensive players should crumble. He can also easily switch to take a winzone, should one appear. He can also switch to outer defense on the fly if need be. Obviously this requires a lot more skill and experience on the part of the guard. In the end, let the goalie make the call on which he prefers. The best defense he can set up is the one he can play best, regardless of what the tradeoffs are.

The other defensive players will deploy early in the round and take up what are essentially zone defenses. If the offense deploys well, the defensive line will only receive 2 or 3 players, but it needs to be ready to take 5, and there's only 4 defensive players at the most. The mission of the defense, combined, is to deny the rear part of the grid to the other team. This is a larger area than the fortress itself, and it makes sense. If an opposing player can get into the area of denial, he can prevent defensive players from coming to peel him out. But if the defense can deny the whole area to him, they keep him off the goalie's back.

Depending on the strength of the defense and the skills and experience of each player, as a defensive player you may be able to let 1 or 2 opposing players get by in order to get 1 or 2 others.

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