Pyramid of Success (Warning: TLDR)

[megaGOD]

I submitted this for a WC entry. Figure a couple of people may find this helpful if you're looking for tournament tips.

Atelo’s Pyramid of Success:

Introduction:
First off I know this article has nothing to do with a pyramid, but the term “Pyramid of Success” is taken from the great John Wooden’s philosophy of teaching to get the best out of his players and coaches. Many of these ideas do also apply to the game of Tankpit as well. Competitiveness, confidence, poise, skills, and alertness may all apply to this game that we play. Even friendship, cooperation, and enthusiasm are big aspects of our game. Also I just like the title so it will be used for this article, which will cover success in tournament play.
Every player has their own playing style in a tournament; when to fighting, when to grab equipment, when to go for kills, who to fight, who not to fight, etc. This is not so much a step by step guide on how to win tournament as you’ve seen in the past, but more of a list of concepts and theories you need to think about to put yourself in the best position to succeed in a Tankpit tournament. Success is defined differently from player to player. John Wooden calls it “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best you are capable of becoming”. To apply to our game, some newer players may view getting into the top 10 as success while the more experienced players may see it as cup or bust. I personally define success as not making as many mistakes as possible that could have been easily avoided and be happy with the outcome whether it results in winning a cup or not. Some things you will not be able to control that could make a difference in winning or not such as lag spikes, game freeze, getting a kill in a mob, or someone else getting a kill. These things I don’t worry about when evaluating myself at the end of each tournament. I believe this attitude help me focus more on the things I can control and further improve my tournament gameplay after each tournament.
Side note: This is written in mind for a 1 hour tournament. There are slight differences for 2 hour tournaments, but these concepts will help you adapt to them as well.

Filling:

Importance of a fast fill:
This sounds very simple and obvious but for the less experienced players, a fast fill maybe the only chance they have at keeping up with the better players as far as experience points goes. With average fill times of 8-12 minutes these days, only the top tournament players are able to consistently compete with equipment fills in the 12-15 minutes range in one hour tournaments. Not to say that you should give up if you don’t have an equipment fill faster than 12 minutes because there is more than one way to win a tournament (and because you can work on your game and because it’s fun). You just have less room for error for the rest of the tournament and you will have to adjust your expectations. Newer players don’t have the necessary focus, discipline, and skills to minimize their mistakes quite yet in order to make the all-elusive comeback. There is always the luck factor that you might have all of your kills to rank and do end up cupping, but this is not something you can consistently depend on.
Now to why it is advantageous to have a fast equipment fill. Simply put, when you fill fast, you rank up first and thus become a prime target for people to want to fight. Think about it, for most people when they want to find someone to fight for experience points, they will look for the highest rank in the field. By ranking up first, you become the target of most of these guys and it becomes easy for you to not waste time looking for someone on the map and instead have them come to you. This saves you one extra move every time you look for someone to fight. For a side note, players with faster connection have a slight advantage in the beginning if they are able to enter the tournament a minute before other players. Often time I am able to radar 5-6 times before most players enter.

Minimize long moves and teleports:
The idea is to be as fast as possible and making long moves and teleporting a lot prohibits this. By long moving I mean driving the tank across a large part (or even the entire part) of the screen when it is not necessary. As a recruit, your radar range is very small so you don’t have to drive more than a few spaces on your screen in order to radar a spot you have not already radar. In the time you drive across the screen and radar you can almost make two moves and two radars. The same reasoning is true about teleporting, because it takes two moves to teleport to a different screen whereas driving takes one move. I sometimes do like to bring up the map to see where I am on the map and see who is around me in order to not run into an area already radar. Once you have extra radars, however, you do want to teleport to a screen that has not radar at all.

Experience points:
Tournaments are usually won by players with the most experience points at the end. So how do you get high experience points at the end? Easy, shoot. It sounds simple, but most players waste too much during the tournament staring at the map screen and not enough time shooting enemies.

Early game, just shoot and shoot bots:
Right after you fill, most players click their map and look around for a corporal or perhaps a private to shoot at. It doesn’t seem like much time is wasted, but the 10 seconds you spend looking around you could have teleported and fired 3-5 shots. Doesn’t seem like much? If you do this 10 times, that’s a wasted opportunity to shoot off 30-50 shots, or half to a full round of duals. This could end up being the difference between an 80exp and 85exp by the end, just from your early game play. If you map and teleport to the first dot you see, more times than not it will be the private or corporal you were looking for anyways. In the early part of the game, there is minimal difference between shooting a corporal and a recruit if you are getting off as many shots as possible. I also often like to shoot bots over humans at the beginning because they are predictable and I can choose to use homing shots or not and never have a misfire. For newbies, this is the easiest adjustment you can make to your gameplay that you can see instant improvement from.

Middle game, don’t panic:
This is when there will be many sergeants, lieutenants, and even captains on the field. At this point, it does make a big difference shooting a captain versus shooting a private. But you must choose your target wisely. If there are already three people on a target, and that target is just running around and you see he will not die, it is not wise to continue to go after him. Or if you are trying to fight a player who is obviously looking to find someone to kill or gathering equipment, you want to move onto the next target. To optimize your experience points you want to find a player who has the same idea as yourself, which is to fight for experience points. You can create great separation if you find a partner who is competent enough to fight you for a while without disturbance. Most importantly do not waste time panicking about getting kills during the middle of the tournament. You want to be opportunistic during this point of the tournament, but you also don’t want to waste time that could be spent gaining experience points.

End game, finishing aggressively and shield fighting:
So many times I’ve seen average to good players unable to hold onto a lead or overtake another player when finishing a tournament. They would be in position to win a cup, only to be beaten out in the final ten minutes of play to a better finisher. To be a good finisher, a player has to have a confident mindset that they are the best and WILL win the tournament. This will lead to a more aggressive style of play towards the end. It is always a fight till the end, and the more aggressive player always win out. A part of being aggressive late is to fight and initiate fighting without hesitation and without fear of getting deactivated. Being aggressive does not mean to be dumb however. If you are in a shield fight at the end and someone else comes and shoot you, you want to get out of there as fast as possible. Also don’t be afraid to teleport low towards someone and shield fight, you don’t have to be at full health to initiate a fight. Shield fighting also does not have to occur at the last couple of minutes. Often times when I find a high rank willing to shield fight me, I am willing to stick in there even before the 10 minute warning. It’s all about maximizing your opportunities, you don’t want to waste a shield fight versus a sergeant when you can find that major who will shield fight you.

Equipment Management:
In my opinion, the biggest difference that separates the good players from the great players is equipment management. This is often not discussed in past strategy guides because it’s hard to explain and teach through only words. This is something that comes from feel and experience playing these tournaments. The top players will rarely have to spend more than a few screens “refilling” with the exception of certain maps and situations such as Apps.

Take everything:
When you land on a screen to fight, you normally radar and often time there is equipment on the screen. First thing you want to do is grab those boxes before someone else does or before you are forced to teleport out of a screen to follow someone or to get fuel. You would have to teleport back to grab those boxes anyways so why waste moves. This is especially true early in the game when you are fighting bots; they are not going anywhere so you can take a couple of seconds to pick up the equipment.

When to use homing shots:
One of the worst things you can do is unnecessarily pick up a box of equipment that will only give you 1-3 supplies. Knowing when to turn on and off your homing shot is all situational. Here are some examples to when I may turn on and off my homing shots. After my initial fill, I always have homing on because as I rank up quickly, I will have to fill homing shots anyways. If at any point my homing supplies does get full, I will turn them off until my dual supplies are full or near full. The important thing is that you want to be efficient with your equipment packs and put yourself in situations where you would be able to gain 5-9 supplies per pack. At the same time you don’t want to sacrifice the chance of using your homing shots in order to land as many shots on your enemies as possible. You must find a balance between these two ideas for maximum efficiency.

When to go refill:
To go along with the idea that you don’t want to waste any time, the best spots to ‘refill’ is when you won’t need to spend more than a few screens just looking for equipment. For example, after my initial fill I continue to fight and pick up all equipment on my screen. At some point when I’m corporal or sergeant my entire inventory will be filled except for dual shots and extra radars. At this point I know it will not take more than a few screens to fill up the rest of my dual shots and extra radars. I also go ahead and fill up my extra radars entirely at this point and not have to worry about them the rest of the tournament.

Late game management:
Players don’t realize this, but you can shoot off 50 or more shots in a matter of a few minutes if shield fighting is involved. I’ve seen many times players go the final 5-10 minutes shooting entirely single shots while in a exp. points battle for cup position. Remember it takes two single shots to equal one dual shot. So technically a player shooting singles for six minutes is the same as he would be shooting duals for three minutes. So how do we make this profitable? Theoretically, spend two of those minutes searching for dual shots and the final four minutes fighting. I understand that other factors do come into play such as picking up homings or armors instead of dual shots, or in the events of a dry map. You will learn which situations you need to pick up some equipment as you play, but going six minutes shooting all singles is just too long.

Kills:
Getting kills in tournaments is all about being opportunistic. The more kills you’re a part of, the higher your chances of getting the actually is. If there are raids of four that gets the kill, theoretically you will get one of these kills in every four deactivations over a long period of time. Naturally you’re going to go on hot streaks and cold streaks because you’re never going to get a kill out of exactly four try in our example. The best you can do is put yourself in as many situations you can to get these deactivations and just leave it up to chance. For this you need to be aware of what’s going on throughout the entire map and not just in your screen. A single missed opportunity could prove to be the difference between a cup or not.

The newb:
The fact of the matter is there are not currently many newbs who play the game like there were in the past. These guys use to be prime targets for at least a sergeant kill. When you find a legit newbie you need to remember his name for future tournaments as well. There are still some around and I always keep tabs on these guys when I’m in a tournament. This does not mean follow them around the entire tournament. What I do is I check the top 10 of the color they are playing frequently and go find them when they are at the rank I need. Many times other players will be waiting for these players as well so you need to make sure you don’t lose any opportunities.

The mob:
Certain maps will produce bigger mobs than other maps. For instance, you will almost always see huge mobs break out at the end of a Desert tournament but you won’t see these mobs (or the size of these mobs) in an Apps tournament. You need to know when and where these mobs are taking place in order to try to snag a kill (or to avoid being deactivated yourself). A lot of players will stay on the outside of these mobs and just snipe. They do this for two reasons: 1. To avoid lagging and freezing. 2. To not turn into the target after the original is deactivated. I like to be careful but yet aggressive. When a player is very close to dying, I make sure I teleport right in the middle next to him so no one will block my dual shots (dual shots give you twice the chance of getting the kill as other shots). However, to avoid any major consequences I always turn on armors before teleporting and make sure to teleport out of there as quickly as possible once the original target has been deactivated.

The die down:
This has become a part of every single tournament so we will not ignore the fact that it happens. I do not condone anyone dying down in a tournament for any reasons. This has been a very controversial issue throughout the years so we will not get too far into it. I will just say be aware of what is happening and you can choose to go for the kill or not.

Evaluation:
Like most things you do in life, and especially most competitive things you do in life, you want to get better at what you do. One of the best things you can do to improve your tournament game is to evaluate how you just played. Like in competitive sports like football or basketball, you need to think about what you did well and more importantly, which mistakes you made and how you can improve on them. In football, you may ask yourself if you missed that block? Should you have put a little more on that pass or lead your receiver a little more? In basketball you may ask yourself should you have made the extra pass? Or did you set that screen too early? All these minor details are things you need to concentrate on in order to get better. For Tankpit, it is the same and you need to ask yourself questions about your own game. In Tankpit, some of the questions I often ask myself are: Did I spend too much time on the map screen? Should I have continued to fight instead of following the marathoner? Should I have picked up a few more boxes of equipment near the end? Did I spend too much time filling my inventory? These are just examples of some of the questions you can use to evaluate yourself. You will never learn and get better if you know what you are doing wrong and make adjustments next time. The greater you evaluate yourself on the minor details of the game, the better you will be off next time. If you are a player who is constantly on the cusp of winning a cup but can’t seem to reach it, it means that it’s some very little details that you are doing wrong. You need to pay close attention and evaluate your play and make the right adjustments to get yourself over the hump. Like the old saying goes, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.

[PRIDE]

good tourney guide

[Seven]

Nice

[wardizzle]

I guess I'll give it a go as well.

I've shown a few people this, but I don't know if it works for anyone else.

There's a lot information that's repeated from atelo's guide, but I also feel as though I go into a few things a little more specifically. Also, my playing style won't suit everyone. Unlike other strategies, my style usually involves playing catch-up for the first 30 minutes or so, but it's a strategic catch-up. I play knowing that whoever is ahead of me is eventually going to have to stop to refill and that it's highly improbable for them to have consecutive fast fills that would allow them to spend less time filling than me on aggregate.

First of all, you should realize that everyone has their own style and strategy for tournaments. What may be ideal for me isn't necessarily ideal for the likes of 987 or knock or Kenny or atelo. As such, take anything I list in here with a grain of salt and try it out while bearing in mind that you may have to tweak it to work ideally for you.

Also, I won't be listing any tips for specific maps. This is all just general advice and things most people who have played tournaments have picked up on over time as well as some personal strategies.

Lastly, if anyone has anything to add, please feel free to do so.

1. The Fill

As most of us, whether we have difficulty cupping or not, know, filling is one of the most crucial parts of tournaments. Over the years, different strategies have been tried out which have included ranking up prior to filling and different screen-covering patterns, but the most effective is the one that MJK posted in his Bible years ago. Just to reiterate that, the idea is to start in the middle of a screen and then to move to the periphery of the screen, driving to the top middle and leaving a few spaces between your tank and the edge of the screen to fill before driving in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction and stopping at every corner and between every corner.

However, technique isn't everything. If you just blindly try to fill like this, you could easily look at having 15 minute fills consistently, which, with the quality of players we have, puts you well out of the running for a cup. In my opinion, fill location is just as important as technique. Try to go where you know few players ever try to go. For logical reasons, most people try to avoid areas with bodies of water. I have found that going to the edges of lakes and running through the area with a few quick scans will usually yield a few boxes of equipment. Besides areas with water, people usually try to avoid rocky outcrops since it's really inconvenient to make your way through them. So check out the rocky outcrops. Usually, if the area is really packed with rocks, I can count on finding at least 2 or 3 boxes of equipment there within the first 10 minutes of the tournament. Otherwise, just try to make your way to areas where you haven't seen anyone or to those just outside of where you've seen another player trying to fill. With the latter, chances are everyone else is avoiding that patch because they don't want to re-cover an area that's been sucked dry. With enough experience, though, you'll know what areas are usually the first to get radared and where you'll usually be able to find equipment after the first spawn.

Another tip is to make a little bit of use of bots. This, I think, is more of a wardog-specific strategy since I haven't heard of anyone else doing it. The idea is that if you find yourself close to a bot in an area you don't think has been cleaned out, make your way to that screen. If you teleport next to the bot, drive to the northern edge of the screen to radar right away and use the in-game message "Use the radar." The cool thing about this is that it saves you from have to scan 1 out of the 9 locations to radar on a given screen since the bot will do it for you. This is especially useful if you use a corporal bot (with a larger scanning area), but works equally well with a recruit or private. Moreover, if you really want to go nuts using the computer tanks, you can use them to radar and then tell them "Buzz off!" to send them elsewhere to rinse and repeat the process, but I've found this to be more cumbersome than it is easy.

2. The Initial Fight

In my experience, the most crucial part of the tournament (besides the fill) is your initial fighting. If you fall behind at the beginning, chances are you won't catch up. If you snag an early lead with a comfortable points cushion, you're in much better position to keep going throughout the tournament and end up as one of the top players in the end.

This is where I feel as though I differ from a lot of other players. Unlike most of the playing field, whom I have found tries to shoot off the 60 dual shots they collected at recruit as fast as possible to go fill again, I don't worry too much about jumping to number 1 early in the tournament. There's plenty of time for that after everyone else gets situated and tries to grind their way to a cup.

As soon as I'm full at recruit (with radars anywhere between 50-60), I go off to shoot the closest target I don't think will drive everywhere. Given that a lot of people are still filling when I'm getting started, this usually means going for bots. No breaking news there. Anyways, as soon as I land, I will usually radar. If I'm at above 1/2 fuel, I will start shooting my target immediately. If not, I'll find some fuel first and then take care of business. I like to just have duals and radars turned on.

In the first 15 minutes, if I manage to find another player who is full and willing to fight with me for a little while, I'll shoot until I'm sitting at 1/4 to 1/5 fuel, turn my shields on, and keep shooting. I'll only move if my target moves out of my screen, if my fuel drops really low from the act of shooting, or if I'm getting shot at by multiple tanks. You want to make the most efficient use of your time and at this point of the tournament, equipment is relatively abundant for anyone who has extra radars. So an extra 8 boxes to fill 50 armors isn't a big deal.

Anyhow, as soon as I get to a new screen and radar there, I will take my time to pick up every equipment on that screen. I don't care if that gives the other players ranking up at the same time an advantage of 1 or 2 shots per equipment picked up. This time is more than made up for later on. If there isn't anyone within 2 or 3 screens of me to go chase, I'll simply make my way to somewhere I think I'll find more equipment and pick every last box up there. This shouldn't be a problem since most people are full between 8 and 11 minutes into the tournament and don't need to fill by the second equipment spawn (which happens 14 or 15 minutes in) so there's equipment everywhere. I may do this for another screen or two before looking for a target again. For my playing style, this is crucial since I want to get as many points as possible until I'm ready to go for a full fill and since everyone else will try filling at sergeant, there's a 5 to 6 minute window of time where there will be no equipment on the field.

Once past the 16 or 17 minute mark, forget about wandering off to get equipment as you did before and just worry about finding someone to shoot. This shouldn't be a problem since everyone is trying to rank up by this time. Also, stop shield fighting as profusely as before at this point meaning you don't want to blow 50 armors getting shot 2v1 or against a target that won't sit still. Equipment is becoming more scarce and will be for the next 20-25 minutes and, at the same time, you want as few breaks from shooting as possible.

I will try to avoid any semblance of a mob for now and will break off to go fight 1v1 but I won't waste time looking around the map for a suitable target to get points from. If there are no players chilling solo or fighting 1v1 that you can quickly teleport to, just make your way to a bot and shoot. If there are no bots or if they all look to be low on fuel and there is a small group of players fighting, I will teleport to the edge of them and shoot whoever I can scope. All other variables equal, I'll shoot the highest rank, but I'd rather shoot the player that is least likely to move away for as long as possible.

At this point, you should be hitting the 25-minute mark, should be among the top 3 or 4 sergeants, have 10 to 15 dual shots left, and are more than likely within 15-25 duals of #1 at the most. Everyone else who shot exactly 60 duals before breaking off to fill should be done or wrapping up their fill. Now is the time for you to break off from the fighting and fill up your equipment. I like to stay at sergeant until I've filled up to at least 50 duals since it's faster to cap off armors, homings, and missiles (which should be 10-30 pieces short of the max) at this rank and you start getting exclusively duals and radars a few boxes sooner than if you had just ranked up to lieutenant. If I feel as though I'm finding equipment easily enough, I'll break off at this point to find a bot and rank to lieutenant before finishing my fill. If I'm having a tough time filling, I'll fill to as many duals as possible without wasting too much time (usually 60-70) and go back to fighting. What I like about playing like this is that because I start to fill with a fresh spawn of equipment, I'm usually maxed at 92 duals and 60 radars within 2 minutes of breaking to fill and still a good number of duals away from the rest of the pack. I won't be at #1 (yet) because those guys who had really quick fills at recruit are halfway through their second load of duals around now, but it probably took them 2 minutes longer to refill than it took me, so I gained that much more time over them on the whole.

If I had trouble refilling my equipment earlier, I'll break off from fighting in 3 or 4 minutes to finish topping off my equipment and then I'll start getting points again.

Between now at the 45-minute mark, avoid mobs except to snipe the target if he teleports low (and switch to shooting one of the raiders if the target doesn't look like he's going to die in that screen) or to target someone whom you think is low on shields.

There are two reasons for me going this route with tournaments:
1. It puts me in a counter-cyclical fill pattern, wherein I'm emptying when the least-used equipment spawns are popping up (and therefore don't have to compete with as many others for equipment boxes)
2. It gives me an advantage in absolute terms as far as points go, since I'm able to get more shots off in less time than all but 2 or 3 other players (40-50 duals before the 15-minute mark and another 40-50 by the time I go for my first all-out refill).

3. The Finish

If you were efficient throughout the first 45 minutes of the tournament, you should be #1 or #2 (or, at worst, exchanging #2 with someone every few shots) in points by now. If you haven't at least made it to captain yet, you want to start chasing kills. Don't waste your time when you look for someone to target for a kill on your map. Scroll through the different quadrants until you find 3 or 4 dots of one color around a dot of another color and make your way to them in 4 teleports or less. If your target doesn't seem to be close to dying, switch. There's the off chance that you'll miss a fluke kill, but more often than not, your time is better spent joining another raid on a weaker target at least until more people decide to join in on the raid you had gone to first.

For the love of God, though, don't be a complete moron and chase one of the leaders in points for 10 minutes just because they're the minority color. Not only are you unlikely to get the kill (either because that player just won't die or because it takes a mob of 15 to get the kill), it's also annoying as fuck to be trying to rank up for gold or silver only to get completely fucked by a multi-color mob of morons chasing you instead of the non-minority lieutenant whose shields you've burned to the low double digits.

If/when you get your kills, break off with 10 minutes left for a quick fill of armors and duals. Around 70 armors and 70 duals (give or take 10-15) and 15 radars should be plenty. You're going to be hitting the home stretch and you don't want to lose to someone you could have beat just because you didn't have enough equipment to get more points than them. You want to finish as empty as possible, but you don't want to potentially end up shooting singles for the last 30 seconds.

Find someone to fight 1v1. Anyone will do. If you run into a solid player stuck at lieutenant who is clearly out of the running for a cup (i.e. there's no captains in the top 3 or at least 1 major), go for them. They could very well just go for the pride of finishing top 5 in points and could make a great faking partner. If you are #1 and #3 is around you, go to that player. They will most likely be thrilled to fake with you for a chance to get into 2nd place. Win-win. You build a gap between yourself and #2 and #3 gets a chance at cupping silver. Plus, to get that high in the tournament, that player more than likely isn't a complete noob that drives to a fuel every 4 shots. Otherwise, anything goes. If it's a map with large lakes and you find a ferry and someone to shoot in that lake, do it. (As long as you legitimately find your faking partner using only the resources available to you in-game). If everyone is busy clusterfuck mobbing one another, go shoot bots or go snipe the mob (if you do the latter, though, stay alert since everyone is going to want to shoot you for points given that you're the highest rank).

Do all of this right, and you'll start doing much better in tournaments. That doesn't mean you'll religiously win gold every tournament, but you'll definitely notice the difference in performance. I still have quite a few of those tournaments that I manage to squeeze in here or there where I go 75 or 85 EXP, but there's also a good deal of results in which you'll find my tank sitting pretty with a 99, 98, or 97 next to it (whether you know it's me or not ).

But the biggest tip I can give you is to just have fun. Don't take tournaments too seriously. Don't get worked up because someone cheats. I tell you from experience that a legit player with just a little bit of luck can blow a cheater with everything pre-arranged completely out of the water.

[savin]

damn you weren't kidding duy. gj duy you top 5 tourney players duy.

[kaizenlol]

nice posts duy and seb

[eldawg51]

atelo
wardog

Nice articles, gentlemen. I especially liked John Wooden's references in the intro. You either are a big basketball fan or you read a lot of John Maxwell's books.

[lefty]

My tourney guide is way fucking better:

Enter tournament, Shoot other players, Perform Ownage,

done.

[Liquified]

My tourney guide is way fucking better:

Enter tournament, Shoot players that don't shoot back, Take free kills,

done.

[lefty]

get 200 hrs of 1v1 in water with DADDYLEGIT, marathon from every attack, quit low constantly, create BASEDGOD and troll everyone, then suck a lot of dicks