"The Cogs" Ruleset

[zitruskiller]

are there any additional rules about killing yourself with a tarbarrel after the last week, or its allowed?

[Swallox]

I honestly don't have a problem with it... And I'll explain why.

In order to off yourself in that sort of manner in order to save a kill, a ship has to escape from combat, find a quiet spot on the battlefield and then spent between 10 to 30 seconds tarring themselves, leaving them very vulnerable... It's an awful, dirty trick, but it's also ingenious in a way. It's similar to towerdiving in a LoL ARAM in a way, and it also allows a clever team to cut their losses and take a risk in order to refresh one or more of their ships for an upcoming fight. Note that in order to do this, the enemy team can't be chasing them. In other words, this is a tactic that only works against long-range teams, or teams that camp in favourable positions.

Yes, it's probably immoral, and if it turns into a serious problem later on down the line, with teams running away from fights to do it then we'll have to alter the rules to disallow it... But for now, it's a clever little trick to refresh a ship without costing your team that I fully approve of... And I applaud BFS for having the balls to pull it off in a Cogs match.

[Mattilald Anguisad]

Tar is not the only way of suiciding, nor is it necesarily the fastest. It is admittedly most reliable if you have a Squid (nothing else can reliably enough run away). One way is to go for example:  far from combat, pop your own baloon with hydrogen and let yourself die from impact damage (or you could combine multiple of these tehnics to be done in shorter anount of time).

It is not like tower-diving in LoL since kill will be atributed to the last chanpion that damaged you, if a tower or a minion kills you (belive me I swore many a time becouse of that). Even if he does a single point of damage out ot 3K hit points you have (+/- 500 for anything that's not in anyway tanky). Many have instead compared to creem denial - a widespread tactic of killing your own minion waves to preven nemies from getting gold for killing them. It's something that exists in DotA and DotA2, but not LoL. Why not in LoL? Becouse developers thought it damaged the gameplay by rewarding pasive/defensive playstyle. Reasoning in DotA2 for allowing that tactic was that it adds new layers of gameplay (if you kill too many of your own meinions you risk enemy steamrolling your minon waves and destroying your lanes too quickly). --I'm obviously on LoL side of this argument.

I think this an easily exploitable tehnic for any COGs worthy captain (unless enemy also has a squid). It makes squid for all practical purposes invincible. Pop in deal some mayhem, run away and kill yourself, till enemy is no more.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Long range battles don't require a squid to run away from. Specially ones in the canyon, fjords, or dunes. Just pull back and do it, pending you have engines functioning to do it. As long as the camper team doesn't move to press an attack, there is more than enough time to pull it off. It would be much harder to pull off with a bigger ship. Specially galleon due to the speed of it and size.

Dying from impact should still count as a kill for the opposing team since they were the last one that damaged you. The game does not really tell the difference between a crash based on enemy fire or one based on friendly fire.

[Captain Smollett]

Swallow, I hope you know that this could potentially extend the length of games tremendously.

If two teams are intent at fighting at range, then teams will just shoot each other until they've done permahull damage, pull into their spawn suicide then rinse and repeat.

This could actually cause games to go on forever if people master this. It's actually not that hard to pull this off in the middle of a close range firefight to deny the enemy a kill.

Really, how long do you want to cast each match? We have a lot of games to play Saturday.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Not if they close range and attack. If one ship is focused and hurt then during the time that it is attempting it, the remainder ship will be alone and exposed to a 2 on 1. There is no guarantee it'll have a close respawn so give or take that is 10-30+ seconds where that ship will not have ally support.

Only real crazies would attempt it in CQC. There is too great of risk of getting shot within the tar by enemy fire. The dmg tar causes is a small amount in comparison to flak shells/etc. True it ticks fast, but under attack in close range would be stupid to use it. It takes timing to pull it off and a knowledge of how low the hull is.

Think your blowing things up far beyond what they actually are Smollett.

[Swallox]

This'll only extend matches if a team is passive enough to let enemies run away without giving chase.

And Smollett: Yes. I do mean the Paddling here. BFS have come up with a way to get around the massive damage output of sniping builds. I know how you might feel, but I'm not going to ban it. After all: I didn't ban Mercs, Artemis or LumberJack when others called for it, did I? I've also never added a match time-limit, despite certain matches going on forever.

Teams are just going to have to come up with a way to prevent teams from getting the chance to tar themselves and refresh their ships. I suggest moonshine and carronading them at the right time, though honestly you could probably screw up their plans with a well-placed merc shot too.

This isn't an easy tactic, nor should it be jeered down. It's innovative, and that's exactly what we want to see from teams in The Cogs.

[RearAdmiralZill]

2v2 scenario. 4 pyra's. The teams face off, and the end result is red gets a kill, and is left with one badly damaged boat. Being cautious instead of "meat grinding" into the enemy fire, the remaining blue boat hangs back for the respawn. Well in that time, the damaged red boat suicides and comes back along with the newly respawned blue boat. It's now 1-0 and blue loses their chance at taking out the damaged boat despite sacrificing one of their own to earn that "permahull" damage.

It's an exploit, and no carefully placed words or long winded speeches will ever make me think of it otherwise. Its a level of "tactics" that shouldn't exist to begin with, and should not be encouraged in game at all, let alone the competitive field of play.

[knoxi]

This isn't an easy tactic, nor should it be jeered down. It's innovative, and that's exactly what we want to see from teams in The Cogs.

Lol. Sorry, I've never heard anyone call Suicide "innovative" with a serious face before. Continue.

Suiciding is something that goes beyond the intention of the game, to kill ships to score points and survive to not give them away. Deliberately not surviving because killing yourself doesn't count as a death (or counts as both a Kill and a Death eg. "Ship 1 killed Ship 1"), is obviously counter to the intentions of the gameplay mode ... this has been WIDELY known since the days of Doom and the rules for what constitutes a deathmatch were changed to reflect this, christ, it's even on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathmatch . It's something that shouldn't need to be fixed within the ruleset of "The Cog", it should be fixed within the ruleset of the game itself, we're in the days of suicide tracking to give kills to the factor that most contributed to a death, how is a literally 20 year old view of how legitmate "deathmatch" works in any way "innovative"?

Even when specifically confined to GoIO gameplay, lyravega nailed it.

This is completely against the idea of permanent hull. It's not a trick, it is an exploit. Something in the game is abused to bypass another part of the game; suicide to bypass hull damage.

[JaceBoojah]

It's innovative, and that's exactly what we want to see from teams in The Cogs.

Disagree.  It's an exploit.

[Captain Smollett]

I'm not sure why I feel a need to defend my position but alas here I go.

I suppose to many I'm coming off as biased because it is perceived that this "tactic" would work against a camping team which is how people, fair or not, view the Paddling, and would somehow give me a disadvantage.  This could not be further from the truth.

I'm coming out against this because it seems to me to be an exploit unintended by the developers and goes against the spirit of the competition and fair play, unlike say mercs, lumberjacks, no time limit etc whic are intentional parts of the game design.

To be honest we've always known there were ways to do this (prior to 1.2 there were even more btw) but would never in good conscience do this in a match let alone the cogs.

I really don't have anything against BFS for doing it because in a competitive environment it's natural to do anything and everything possible to win, especially if it's within the rules. What I am disheartened by however is that now that this has been brought to the forefront of the community and condemned, it is being encouraged to be used in competitive play.

See this would actually encourage teams to camp their own spawn and never move. You don't need to flee to get out of combat, you just need to get two kills. I can't imagine how frustrated a team would be to charge a team camping their spawn, mortally wound a 1200 permahull galleon, die in the process, charge back at the enemy spawn again to try to finish the wounded Galleon and kill the teammate only to find the Galleon standing with full health.

There's just something that feels dirty about it, and I think people sympathize with it somewhat because it was done in a Squid and it makes me wonder; what would this debate have been like if Squash had done this in his Galleon?

This confers an even bigger advantage than already exists to the team that gets the first two kills, I fear we'll see a lot more conservative play and a lot more 5-0 matches for teams who don't leave their spawns or spend the whole match fleeing from enemies.

[Moriarty]

I have to agree with Smollett, i think people feel they can support it because - this helpless and ineffectual squid found a way to let its team down a little less. (note: Not knocking Gilder or crew but a squid is, well a squid)

When the paddling/Gents/Pasta start doing this in the galleon (cant afford not to), it wont be so cute.

[Coldcurse]

the dutchman will not participate in this epic battle of words

[Swallox]

If it becomes a serious issue rather than a sneaky tactic, rules will be added... Likewise, if Muse patch it out then it won't be an issue anymore.

Until then, The Cogs has no rule against suicide. In-game. Don't actually suicide. That's not cool.

[Squash]

Swallow can you update the cogs rules so we know what's allowed and what isn't?