the patriot tactic
played a match yesterday and came up with this idea for a new tactic so i tried it and it seem to work well, i call it the patriot tactic from the movie in the same name where mel gibson character used multiple rifles and a hell of a lot of running to make it apper there is a lot of man attacking while in realty it was just 3 or so.
the basic of this tactic is switch position and rules so fast as to make the enemy think that there are a lot more on attack then there really are and force them to split there defenses to cover places where there is nobody there.
i'll give you an example of the way i did it, sniper loadout and took a place as a bomber pilot, after making a few bombing run i returned to base and had the bomber replaced with a tank, at this point the other group knows there's a bomber so there looking at the sky for the next bombing run, hide the tank behind a wall where missiles can't hit it and used the laser sight to signal the distance to the gunner of the tank, while he was shooting i took up sniper position and began sniping moving from one location to the after every other shot i made, then i committed suicide out of sight ( dirty i know but it saves much needed time), and picked up assassin loudout and sneaked into the enemy base and planted mines and wrecked havok inside.
by the end of it all i had a enemy waiting in the mountains looking for the sniper (after i was long gone), a couple trying to flank the tank, and a heavy looking for the bomber with a missile launcher (wander when he gave up on that), all the time i was inside there base wrecking there base equipment.
the main point in this tactic is speed so it won't work with maps that the bases are really far apart because of the time it takes to get from one to the other but in the appropriate sized map it seem to work great.
the basic of this tactic is switch position and rules so fast as to make the enemy think that there are a lot more on attack then there really are and force them to split there defenses to cover places where there is nobody there.
i'll give you an example of the way i did it, sniper loadout and took a place as a bomber pilot, after making a few bombing run i returned to base and had the bomber replaced with a tank, at this point the other group knows there's a bomber so there looking at the sky for the next bombing run, hide the tank behind a wall where missiles can't hit it and used the laser sight to signal the distance to the gunner of the tank, while he was shooting i took up sniper position and began sniping moving from one location to the after every other shot i made, then i committed suicide out of sight ( dirty i know but it saves much needed time), and picked up assassin loudout and sneaked into the enemy base and planted mines and wrecked havok inside.
by the end of it all i had a enemy waiting in the mountains looking for the sniper (after i was long gone), a couple trying to flank the tank, and a heavy looking for the bomber with a missile launcher (wander when he gave up on that), all the time i was inside there base wrecking there base equipment.
the main point in this tactic is speed so it won't work with maps that the bases are really far apart because of the time it takes to get from one to the other but in the appropriate sized map it seem to work great.
Comments
i don't think this really works with a large number of players in the game, but with smaller numbers of players comp teams already do similar things. It's not making it seem that there are more people there, per se, but it's doing certain things to draw players out of positions and therefore weakening their team in one respect. There are essentially two roles your offensive players should be performing: flag-centric roles (disrupting and capping the flag) and base-centric (anything related to keeping the enemy from suiting up or getting vehicles). Since 7 man is the most relevant example, I'll use that: your defense will usually consist of something like 2 ld and one hd/farmer. The 2 ld are perfoming flag-centric duties, while the hd/farmer is generally performing base-centric duties. The ultimate goal of any defensive trio in a 7 man game is to ultimately have all 3 players performing flag-centric roles, whether that be 3 ld or 2 ld and a hof. On many maps, therefore, you will see a lot of the time that the offense will send one player all game to rape the base, for the main purpose of simply keeping the hd inside the base and not allowing him to defend the flag at all (actually getting by him to rape the gens is also a plus, of course, but that's not their main function). 3 flag-centric O vs 2 flag-centric defense favors the offense more than 4 flag-centric O vs 3 flag-centric d, or worse yet, 3 flag-centric O vs 3 flag-centric D (which is what happens when they still send someone to rape, but a combination of the ld being very good and aware and the HO not performing well still allow the player to play as an ld most of the time).
In relating to what you're saying, some of the time you want to trick the opposing defense to switching to a 3 flag-centric defense by thinking you've switched to an entirely flag-centric offense. If you go from 3 LO/cappers and 1 HO and suddenly switch without warning to 4 LO/cappers, it can be very disrupting to the defense, since the HD is being basically worthless doing nothing and the defense is now being outnumbered 2:1 at the flag. This will oftentimes trick the hd into playing ld and not worrying about the base, which you follow up by sending 2 or 3 HO to their gens and crippling them when they don't have an adequate defense for it. So it's not so much making there appear to be more players as it is tricking enemies into changing positions and then exploiting the weaknesses that result.
what you can do is to make them think that there attacked from places there isn't any one there, thus having them defend an empty area or preparer suit up inappropriately for the next attack (like having a rocket launcher looking for a bomber when your going into there base with a clock pack).
i think you'll gain a lot more from learning how to play the game on a purely individual basis rather than trying to come up with all sorts of elaborate strategies. The strategic understanding of tribes comes from a lot of experience and time, not from theorycrafting about various possibilities.
what i'm trying to say is that you shouldn't be concerning yourself with strategies like what you're describing, and instead learn how to aim, ski, and play the conventional positions well before you are worrying about drawing out enemies so you can hit vulnerable targets and such