I was the gnat-guy trying to counter the flying jacks.
It works, but not after we lost a lot of stuff, and if people don`t react themselves, the jacks came faster than I could build gnats to stun them...

you didn`t 1v1 me earlier to lose enough elo :D

Hey, it's Sigero. I haven't seen him around recently.

charon jacks:
2 jack 2 charon -> killed 1 lance 1 outlaw
1 jack 1 charon -> killed 1 lance
4 jack 4 charon -> lured enemy air fleet to intercept in own aa space, killing all fighters, best play.

-> transition to space jacks. Note that there are 4 jacks doing this transition - that's a stockpile, they are not being produced entirely from zero, like gnats.

space jacks:

launch 1: hot landing at nuke 18:00, killed with 73% damage dealt to trinity, no kills.
launch 2: hot landing at nuke 18:50, killed with 30% damage dealt to trinity, no kills.

(meanwhile: JonhHunter takes advantage of fighter screen absence to kill Singu using Ravens)
(also meanwhile: start of dedicated gnat interception program. Gnat player has 13 income, 4 of it is spent on high-priority Artemis stockpile, 9 is left for producing gnats)

launch 3: hard impact at mid-rear 18:57, 520 hp at touchdown. Kills: none. Dies to: LPB commander. Gnats: 0
launch 4: hard impact near southern singu cluster, 972 hp left at touchdown. Kills: none. Dies to daggers. Gnats: 0
launch 5: hard impact at nuke 20:23. Kills: none. Gnats: 6, present
(meanwhile: the only western singu dies to an Eos strike)
launch 6: safe landing at southern singu cluster 20:40. Kills: 1 singu directly + commander, fac, minor eco from explosion. Gnats: 10, absent at site, are moving away to a cloaker in mid, and only react after detonation. Dies to: explosion of target. Notes: no interception by East whatsoever.
launch 7: hot landing at front silo responsible for previous meanwhile entry, 3k hp at touchdown. Kills: silo. Gnats: 15, absent at site. Dies to: explosion of target. Notes: silo is also being counter-shelled by infernos from West, so probably doomed.
launch 8: hot landing at bertha, intercepting swifts deal leave 4239 hp at touchdown. Gnats: 4, present. Kills: advradar directly, 3 gnats to friendly fire from blastwings. Stunned. Killed by: swifts. Note: 11 gnats lost to attempted stun of paladin in mid.
launch 9: safe landing at mid singu 23:52. Gnats: 6, present. Stunned. Kills: none. Killed by: swifts+impaler. Notes: kill is very slow - dies only at 24:30
launch 10: safe landing at bertha 24:07. Gnats: 9, 2 present. Stunned. Kills: none. Killed by: commander, minutes later. Notes: damages bertha to 20% before stun.
launch 11: safe landing at bertha 24:30. Gnats: 12, 7 present. Stunned. Kills: windgen. Killed by: commander, minutes later. Notes: 4 gnats occupied keeping undamaged jack 10 stunned.
launch 12: safe landing at bertha 25:07. Gnats: 14, all present. Stunned. Kills: none. Killed by: commander, minutes later. Notes: 12 gnats still occupied keeping launches 10 and 12 stunned, with nothing damaging them except swifts.
launch 13: safe landing at bertha 25:37. Gnats: 15, all deserting from defense and letting jacks 10,11,12 and 13 free. Kills: bertha. Killed by: commander, minutes later. Notes: i don't understand the retreat.
(meanwhile: the four liberated jacks kill a fusion and some minor stuff)
launch 14: safe landing at nuke 25:54. Gnats: 14, present. Stunned on touchdown. Killed by: commander. Notes: Reinforced by the freed four, who are promptly stunned by faradays too.
launch 15: safe landing at southern singu 26:23. Gnats: 17, present. Stunned a dozen seconds later. Kills: glaive, mex directly; some gnats, pylon to Licho ff. Dies to: venom, hermits. Notes: inexplicably does not try to kill singu.
launch 16: hot landing at nuke 26:50. Gnats: 12, 2 are occupied keeping #15 stunned. Kills: gnat. Dies to: aerial collision with said gnat!??? Or did i miss a high altitude Ulti shot? Can they do that!?

No more jacks are launched. Let's tally the results:

16 orbital Jacks were launched, totalling 9600 metal. They have directly killed: 1 gnat, 1 singu, 1 bertha, a glaive, a windgen, a mex, and a silo and a fusion, totalling 12385 metal. They have indirectly caused the deaths of a commander, a factory, a pylon, and some other chaff. Even if we account for this, that's ~130%-150% cost made for Jacks, and all the reclaim ends up in enemy territory.

Of these, 10k are the Singu and the Bertha, which both contain significant slip-ups by defense: Singu had no attempt at interception at all, and Bertha died because the defending gnats pulled out. In both cases they were sufficient in quantity to intercept, i think. That is, most of the value killed by the orbital jack program was essentially attributable to defender error despite having all the requisite material for defense.

There was a significant glut of stunned but not killed jacks (#10-13) that could have been dealt with in many ways, but was ignored by most of the team. That was pretty sad to watch.

There was significantly more metal in orbital jacks than in gnats. There are several reasons for this: 1) inde was reclaiming, essentially doubling his private income 2) there was a high-priority artemis always making more missiles and slowing down gnat production 33%.

Starting to watch this game based on the criticism above, i assumed the jack-using team won. This turned out to not be the case.

quote: well, even if we won that, how do you think if felt for me? Noone but me seemed to deal with it, and I feel that i would have been more useful at front.

Countering the enemy's top player with like 25% investment is pretty good tbh :P

I guess Inde could have done quite a lot more damage if he avoided the "hard impact" type of landings - one of those would have been near the southern singu cluster before you had gnats, so both singus could have died, and much earlier.

One interesting thing here is that Daggers can apparently shoot into space. Of two jacks that did not touch down alive, one was due to daggers using it for target practice.

quote: good, then they only bound forces of the top-player of our team and his sidekick.

Do you mean Sigero's Daggers? They didn't seem that bound to me, they screwed off the moment you deployed enough gnats.

quote: I also strongly suspect that only won because of the DRP

You consistently had a significant eco advantage - even after losing 3 singus.

Can I sum up what we actually wanted to tell you:

Me: Looking at back and send gnats is boring. (Gnat-Guy)
I-I: Have to say - boring as fuck. (Jack-Guy)

Sry if my first comment was misleading. I thought people would always click the "show winners" button before watching the replay.

Hey, these numbers are far more positive than what I came up with. Then again, I didn't really count ff'ed stuff at the time (I did count the nuke as dead tho; 300 hp? common zk). Silo also gave additional 600 'cause it had fully ready Eos in store (which also might or may not have killed some stuff nearby when i poped the thing?).

I have some optimizations in mind, so maybe I can squeeze a bit more from the setup, but my main point at the end is, as with everything in life, it's nowhere near as broken as it was constantly portrayed to be, provided the enemy has a lick of sense on countering the thing.

Oh, also, if my Alzheimer hasn't set in again - that Jack that died weirdly probably was just me abandoning launch with self-d after seeing a huge cloud of Gnats/Swifts being on its way there already. Probably why it was the last of the batch as well.

Notice I don`t know and do not claim to know what the actual efficiency was.

But an addition:
- Who do you think has to pay more attention? I have the suspicion that it doesn`T matter as much who sends the jacks, but the defender has to be vigilant over the whole map. Since i never build ramps, i simply don`t know the ramp-perspective.