King of the Hill

[Gerald Hernanderson]

Ok, I have played KotH a few times, and every time I can't figure out exactly what to do. Sometimes, I'm touching the blimp with no contesters around, and the point will not begin to get captured. Other times, it will. Is there a certain position you need to take to capture or contest the point? How close can a ship be before it is counted as "contesting"? I would appreciate your answers as I am stumped about this game mode.

[Eukari]

As far as I can tell, you need to be beneath the balloon for it to start to capture. As in, the balloon is above you in vertical space. I also know that it can be a little buggy, and I'm not sure how big the blocking radius is for enemy ships. Just try flying low and see if that works better.

[HamsterIV]

Beneath the balloon is a circle of light created by the spotlight attached to the balloon. Imagine a cone created from the spotlight at the tip to the circle on ground. You have to be inside this cone for the Capture point to register your ship. Also if you are fighting  to hold the point against a numerically superior opponent you can go low and still block the capture point while further away from dead center. This is good on labyrinth where you can go under the globe to cover you from enemy ships while still blocking the capture point.

[treseritops]

Sometimes, I'm touching the blimp with no contesters around, and the point will not begin to get captured.

There are three KOTH variants that may explain this:

1. Straight KOTH- One point, everybody fights for it.

2. Crazy KOTH- There are several hills (A-E) that rotate between being active. While "A" is active you can only get points from A, and only take A. Once the timer reaches zero the hill moves to B, and then to C, D, E, and to A all over again. My guess is you were trying to take a non active hill in crazy king.

3. Resource Race- All hills (A-E) are active. Having more hills captured will accrue points at a faster a rate.

Also, no one calls it "the hill" but saying you get points from capturing points and the more points you capture the faster you get points sounds awfully confusing.

[Eukari]

Also, no one calls it "the hill" but saying you get points from capturing points and the more points you capture the faster you get points sounds awfully confusing.

In my experience, people call the game mode King of the Hill, the individual points Point A, Point B, etc. and the point itself "the balloon," because it's...a balloon.

But yeah, it could have been Crazy King. That one's not so bad, you can get some interesting strategy around "Should we try and grab the current point or move to the next one for when it changes," but Resource Race kinda sucks. You spend the whole game flying around, trying to grab the uncontested points and hoping your team doesn't get snarled up in a pointless firefight somewhere. I think it would work a lot better if they dropped the number of points (or hills, or whatever) from five to three. That way, at the very least you can expect three 1v1 battles over stuff that actually mattered. I guess the idea is to prevent one team from camping all the points, to give the underdog a chance to come back, but you could still have two guys hold one point and the third try and keep the other one. (maybe even put one at each and a "floater" ready to rush to either's aid...hmmmm...)