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Suicide - risk/reward option or cheap tactic?

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Urz:
If you haven't seen the BFS vs Destructoid match from yesterday's Cogs, here is a timestamped link to the event in question:
http://www.twitch.tv/qwerty2jam/b/402287974?t=100m40s

Summary: BFS's squid survives a 1v2 situation on Canyon Ambush with 10% remaining health, books it back to their spawn to meet up with the respawned junker, and then proceeds to kill his own ship with tar. This allows him to respawn with full health, without giving any points to the opposing team.

Most people's immediate response (as was mine) would be something along the lines of: "that's pretty dumb, that should not be allowed". It's a valid response, and banning the tactic might be the correct decision. I would however like to explore the other side of the argument.

Suicide-ing your ship has risks. You're completely vulnerable while attempting, and also leave your teammate stranded while you're respawning. If it remains an allowed tactic, teams will be aware of this option, and will be incentivized to chase down damaged ships, rather than say, camping at their spawn and waiting for them to come back. If you're expecting a ship to attempt suicide, a stealth approach with the goal of "last hitting" may become a valid counter, giving you the "free" kill of the low ship and probably also their teammate. Success rate would vary a lot based on positioning and what map is being played, since you will announce to the server that you are killing components.

Just wondering what everyone else's thoughts are.

Moo:
I haven't watched the match, but....
Shouldn't deathmatch count deaths, rather than kills?
So if your ship is destroyed for any reason, the opponents get a point. This would mean suicide would be less of a tactic.
As far as I know, if they had purposely smashed into a wall to suicide, rather than using tar, this would have counted as a kill for whichever ship last damaged them (even if some time has passed and any damage has since been repaired). So, accidental death by crashing gives the opponents a point. Why not simplify it even more by saying any death gives the opponents a point. There isn't any games (yet?) with more than two sides, so this shouldn't be a problem. If not, I'd say something needs to change with the friendly fire code or something, so that damage from your own tar doesn't reset the who-hit-you-last thing.

Wazulu :
Hmm, in terms of a sense of 'morality' behind it, I'd say it's by nature gamebreaking- First off, I have to say that was pretty ingenious. However, it's a dirty trick, really- it's not the same as some Moba suicides, where you don't feed the enemy champions, it's more cheating your opponents out of a direct game objective. Looking at the same example, death doesn't count as much in Lol or Dota as it does in GoIO, as, of course, we're playing deathmatch. Even in other deathmatch games, such as CoD, death never counts anywhere near as much, as the score is so low and kills so hard-fought. So to use such a tactic should be discouraged, as it's a malicious style of playing that breaks the current agenda of teams. In fact, this tactic could be incredibly exploited:

A game on Canyon Ambush, as in the match, could see several hit-and-run attacks from Squids. During these encounters it is likely, if both teams are Cogs standard, that both teams drop armor and lose some permahull. However, this is where the tactic really messes the game up. Once the friendly Squid takes enough damage it kerosenes to the spawn, spewing enough tar behind it to halt a quick charge from the enemy. It then proceeds to kill itself. It comes back with full permahull. in this current situation, you've got 'something for nothing'- all of the tactics and damage dealt by the enemy counts for naught, while the enemy ships have sustained permanent damage. Furthermore,  If the enemy team aren't running Squids themselves any of their attempts at suicidal tactics are much less viable, as it simply takes too long and other ships aren't nimble or fast enough to leave the combat zone and buy the time to kill themselves. This presents teams not able or not willing to use this tactic at extreme disadvantages. The game works as a battle of attrition- I drop your hull for 6 seconds, and in that time I afflict damage to your permahull. Everything else can be repaired, but at the core of the meta is dropping the hull as fast as you can, and dealing as much damage to the permahull in a short window of time. This tactic removes the 'perma' nature of the hull, and this therefore breaks combat as this tactic is probably limited to only Squid users.

The main issue, besides morality, which will disappear in any Cogs team going all-out to win, is that it puts the entire game on its head. If the tactic is green-lit, I'll be amazed if every team doesn't try it, or at least consider it. A Junker/Squid combination could perform this tactic easily, and the Challenger Teams will put in a lot of work to optimise this tactic to their advantage.

This tactic does add a new dimension to gameplay, giving some validity to retreat tactics. However, the game is, again, a battle of attrition, and so simply wiping the slate clean goes against its nature.

Mattilald Anguisad:
I second Wazulu!

dragonmere:
Damn. I didn't know it was as easy as tar-ing yourself to death. I had noticed that if a friendly somehow 'gets the kill', it didn't count towards or against anything on the score. Before the latest big patch, I was working on a strategy involving a team kill ram to get hull health back, but somehow never even considered tar barrel.

Personally, I say exploit the hell out of it til it's patched. Thats how games of this scale should work. If it is included in game mechanics and gives you an edge, do it.

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