Frantic 4c
Dates: 10th December 2001 - Christmas 2001
Winners: Tibrans
Best known Tibran LCs: Esperandus, Hermione, holly
Best known Boraxian LCs: Shiid, Boris, Stile
Best known Ajaxian LCs: Stile, SuicideSquad
Best known Kril LC: Not known
In general this frantic was won largely by morale. As LC I had made it a point to delegate tactical combat to others and to concentrate upon recruiting and training new players and building morale. That paid off. We kept a lot of our players active and attracted 'recycled' foes as loyal new family members. Our team made them feel welcomed. I assiged people to befriend newbies and others, and build morale. The actual combat leadership, however, was fairly simple.
The Krils were far ahead until it was disclosed that some of them were cheating. It seemed there was a glitch in one of the ways of connecting by phone that allowed players too many moves per turn! The other Krils were honest and principled and voted to self-destruct their own base. I admired their courage of conviction. It is better to lose honestly than to win dishonestly.
I atoned for my earlier blunder having commited the unpardonable sin of an LC: I lost my ship and our LC Scans! We also lost TWO LCs who went AWOL: Razor and Esperandus. Theirs are also interesting stories. Razor actually remained in our legion awhile when the Bors and we attacked Ajaxus. He told me later that he used Tara's Lounge to direct their defense! He wanted to die, and asked us not to repair him. I deliberately repaired him, because I figured he wanted to come back and help the enemy. He never did! Later he went rogue, but was not destroyed.
Both Razor and Esperadus went rogue because they were angry that so few in the legion seemed to do what they ordered. Life doesn't work like a machine. It takes emotional maturity to keep working alone. Eventually followers will come. An LC has to build personal alliances and friendships. TVS is not the army; it is only a game. You have to make people feel good emotionally about helping you and about being part of the best team. That takes a lot of patience.
One of the things I had to do was stay up all night Friday when no one else could serve as LC, because I knew the friendly Bors would not keep helping us unless we maintained a presence and showed strength. My wife is very patient.
Beta 4c Frantic actually went to completion and was not called off by Wingee. It ended on Christmas Eve, which was a bit of psychology we employed to persuade our Boraxian enemies to 'just end it.' We never used words like 'blow up your own planet'. We talked to our opponents in Tara's Lounge about wanting to open Christmas presents and be with our families. We sympathized when they complained about how long the game had lasted, and deflected their anger toward Wingee and away from us.
I began building rapport with them in Tara's for days and was able to persuade two of the Bor's strongest crusiers to go rogue and help us attack Boraxus in the final battle, and they recruited others! It was calculated. I also advised our team never to send taunts and always to speak respectfully and admiringly to them in Tara's lounge. That was back when the lounge worked right. I had different people working on psy ops to befriend the Bors continously. We planned to make them like us. That was helped by the fact that they were dissatisfied with their own LC's incompetence since early in the game.
One of the Bors gave me what is probably the highest compliment an LC can receive. Recall that the problem with previous training camps was that they led to accidents by undisicplined troops and that destroys morale and trust. We had not suffered even one "friendly fire" incident, because I made that a top priority. I monitored the health of all the ships and nobody on either side fired except with permission. When it was over one of the Bors said in Tara's, "You must be a good LC. Your people do what you tell them to."
That kind of cooperation was earned. It didn't come with the title, LC.
Submitted by Holly on 21/04/03
About the start : Krils, Jaxs and Tibs started of pretty evenly matched. Us poor Bors had a huge lag of active players, especially after Shiid stopped playing around tick 80. By that time Krils and Tibs turned out to be the strongest legions.
There were some players constantly abusing WAP bugs, especially on Tib side, which made a lot of the Kril pilots extremely mad ( David, darkley, Britnoth... ) and even stop playing. Leaving the Krils with only a few active players and no danger to the now superior Tib fleet. As far as i know Espy ( Tib Lc ) was extremely mad at those bug abusers in his legion which was one of the main reasons for him to go rouge at some point, despite the fact that he was online 24/7 and needed a break and that he wanted to be the first rogue carrier of all time.
In the meantime Ajaxs happily bombed our homeworld ( Boraxus ) and gained some levels. Bors had no chance at all. Boris was our LC by that time but calling someone LC who is in charge of like 5 active Bor ships is like saying "hey i hit lvl 2... 2 more ticks and i can get my cruiser". Poor Boris ... [ There is a funny note about Boris and me during that time. We tried to score some points on Krils but being outnumbered I decided to leave the sector again. In fact only Boris, me and another Bor have been in our huge blob at that time. 14 mins later and in safety Boris posted a sarcasrtic comm about the 2 heroic bors leaving him alone. This ended with my first in-fight with boris. A few ticks later he asked me if i'll be on for the next couple of hours so he could make me VC while he's offline. Till then we had a funny VC who always posted great plans about different attacks but always collapsed in front of his computer soon after. Pity that i forgot his name :-P. Anyway, I told Boris that I'll be offline too and just frequently checking my HP via WAP at college. Before I had any chance of protest he made me VC and went offline. That was my first day that i didnt went to college just for TVS, not that i could do any good to us Bors :-P ]
The fact which saved us Bors a couple of times has been the Tibs ( still Espy LC ), who had to intercept the Jaxs from leveling at Boraxus w/o resistance. The Ajaxians tried to give the Tibs good sport but couldnt keep up with'em in the long run. With no active Kril force left and Bors as allies the Tibs finally went for Kril and Jax Homeworld. ( By that time most bases have been over 400k HP and almost indestructable. I don't remember if Ajaxus was self-destructed but I think PK was taken down regularly ) At the end 2 legions survived. The Tibs off course and us Bors ( everyone was fighting the Tibs and we could leech of jaxs and Krils and get us some cruisers by that time. ) It was already close to christmas and activity was dropping rapid. No side had a force strong enough to take a base out even if not defended.
I think Whitewolf and me have been the first 2 Bor Cruiser who went AWOL to bomb our former Homeworld. Reasons : 1. to finally end the game. 2. During the whole game Tibs dominated the galaxy and helped us to survive. So most of us just thought that us Bors simply dont deserve to win the game and started to bomb our former HW. On a small note to holly : There was no brain-washing going on from Tibs by luring Bors into bombing their own planet we just wanted to end the game ( we already passed tick 900+ ) and we saw no reason why us Bors deserve to win coz basically during the whole game expet for some single actions we've been simply not worth to win ( at least that was the reason for the 4 bor cruiser to go AWOL [ Whitewolf, MiNiPiMeR, me and someone else which I forgot ]
Submitted by Trinity on 07/05/03
