Roaches Motel

Moon Roach

The place where Roaches come to play. If they want to.

Moon Roach

Echo, echo, echo

Moon Roach

A good couple of events, except for the server problems.

We were #533 out of 22252 in Lord of Thunder and #758 out of 26057 in Deadpool. (I guess 4000 alliances didn't play LoT at all.) That's excellent and I got the best alliance bonuses I've ever had. Being casual we'll probably never be top 100, but I'm sure that one day we'll crack top 500.

And a few of us got a Deadpool cover, well done for that. He's unusable for months, but hey, it's Deadpool.

On to the next one and hopefully some 3* Storm covers.

Moon Roach

Roaches,

We're casual, so there's no minimum requirement for roster or scoring points in events.

But our casualness doesn't extend to not playing for 10 days without advance warning. That's unfair on everyone else and those countless millions out there who want to be active Roaches.

And so, in complete dictatorial fashion (one day we may well be an anarcho-syndicalist commune of 20 commanders, but not today), I'm implementing Rule 1.

Rule 1. Don't play for 10 days in a row (*) and you'll be kicked without warning (**)

(*) without prior notification
(**) though I probably will give a warning after 7 days

I check the daily rewards, well, daily, and know who's been good.

BobaFett991, Mbz sumo and Reinreb will be kicked 7 days after their warning. That's a couple of days from now
papl has just missed his 10th in a row, but I'll give him 3 more days
Onimaru TR has just missed his 8th in a row, so it's warning time for him

I know, if they don't connect to play they're hardly likely to know they're going to be kicked. But I want to be fair and give them a chance.

Comments welcome.

Emu

Roaches-

My name is Emu from NJusticeLeague. We're a top 10-25 alliance with a sister alliance (X_Farce13) that is a top 100. I'm here because we are looking for a casual alliance to join up with us. We occasionally have members that need to take time away from the higher scoring (work, school, vacation, etc) and would love to have a casual team with us that could take them in. We're not looking to change you in any way. When we have to give somebody a little time away, we'll have an opening for one of you to sub in and get some really good rewards. We also have a Facebook page where we talk strategy or just goof off. We'd be more than happy to offer tips or advice to getting better scores to anyone that wants them. We had a casual alliance with us, but the commanders decided to boot some guys without notice or warning. These were guys that were playing daily. Definitely not cool, so we separated from them. Again, we don't want to change you guys at all. We just want to find a laid back casual where everybody gets treated with respect (which your post tells me you certainly do).

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, please shoot me a PM. We'd love to have you as part of our family.

Craig (Emu)

Moon Roach

A tale of two playing approaches. Ha, App Roaches.

Moon Roach is profligate and wasteful. He has more money than sense, which would probably also be true if he had no money.

He buys a Stark Salary and says "this time it really will last a month". Then he fails to get Nick Fury because it finishes at 4pm on Monday when he's at work and he drops what seems like 800 places in the last 3 hours, and so buys 42 tokens of the set with Fury in (and gets 3). Rinse and repeat for Beast (gets 4 this time).

He has way more covers than ISO to level them. Which is fine in Balance of Power, but less good elsewhere

He doesn't buy covers, with one notable exception, Hood blue x3 to max it. Because the idea of Hood keeping HT's flame blast going and generally just wrecking the opponent's HP is too good.

He buys health packs, but only when there's a threshold just out of reach with the barely alive team left. Or a particular node in PvE that needs just one more try to beat, I'm sure I've got it this time.


Wolveroach plays very differently, with no purchases of HP at all. Wolveroach is more fun (*), but mostly because he can apply lessons learned as Moon Roach; he can do it "right". And he's more careful, as a bad loss means a wait, not buying health packs. He has some game play tips for the neophyte:

Golden Rule: Take your time, it's a marathon not a sprint

Roster
Be prepared to sell any 2*, 3* and even 4* covers if you don't have room. A single 3* cover is useless except when it's needed for an essential node in PvE.

Focus on your 1* until you have them fully levelled and covered. Concentrate on Storm, Hawkeye, IM35 and Black Widow. Juggernaut if you really want. At the same time you can be collecting the top tier 2*. Polarity's guide is the standard, it's in the Tips and Guides part of the forum. I focus on Black Widow, Thor, Wolverine, Magneto, Storm and HT. Ares and Daken are also rated, but I got multiple covers in the others first and so went with them.

Drop 1* only when you have something decent that can replace it, after careful thought I ended up dropping Hawkeye and Black Widow. IM35 is next but not for a while yet. The sale is also a source of ISO. When you do have a spare slot, you can build the 1* you like up again with covers but no ISO for the next Balance Of Power tournament. Juggernaut and Storm are really good in that tournament.

Concentrate your ISO on one or two first. It's always psychologically easier to drop a character if you haven't levelled it too much; it's only covers not ISO. And having everyone level 40 is not as good as having 2 or 3 at 80+.

On that, I've read that it's better to save your ISO and jump 5 or 10 levels at a time. That's because your opposition choices are based on your score and your roster. Keeping your roster underpowered as long as possible can be beneficial. (But I've also read that it doesn't really matter, so your mileage may vary.)

Save your HP for roster slots. There's nothing inherently wrong with buying more HP, but if you choose not to it's a waste to buy tokens.

Alliance
Join one. Roaches are the very, very best, or so I am told

Versus Events

Try to hit 400 for the recruit token and 25 HP. It doesn't matter if you get knocked down again later, it's the HP that matters.

Check out your opposition. If it's an easy team for the total number of points they have, take a look at the roster. You could be getting easy points but losing a lot more when the retaliation comes in. And what covers they actually have is a factor.

Hulk with 5 black is to be avoided, but Hulk with 1 or fewer black is just a big squishy target. And why would anyone use Ares without red?

Unless you're somehow in the top 10 it's not economical to buy a shield. Wait, be patient. In time you'll have enough roster slots that you can spend HP on shields.

And hitting 4000 for the season (the heroic token 10 pack) is a good thing, if you can average 400 per event you won't need to get too many points in SHIELD. There's also 25HP at 900 and 2100 points in the season, and 100HP at 7500.

In SHIELD, hitting 1000 gets 25HP, as does 1500 and 1900, so that's something to aim for.

For Lightning Rounds I just try to get 100 points for the ISO and token. Placing high is too hard until you have a decent set of 3*.

Story Events

Without the character for the essential nodes, you stand no chance at all of getting top 100. The other nodes just get too hard too fast. But it's worth playing what you can as over the days you might get enough points to get an event-specific token and you might be one of the 1.5% to draw the guy you need. In addition there's HP to be reached, and you could help your alliance into the next reward tier, resulting in more ISO / HP.

(*) Except that Moon Roach can try stuff out like the Sentry / LDaken / Hood super kill, which is cool but leaves the team the worse for wear.

Comments welcome

Moon Roach

There are a number of different strategies for PvP. This is my current thinking.

Event

Start early, get as many victories as you can, don't shield. You'll get hit, but losses drop the level of your opponent pool. And you get ISO / covers on the climb back up again. Take a break, climb, drop, and so on until the end of the event.

Your victim gets a retaliation against you, against the team you beat him with. For new attackers, it's your last victorious team in that event.

In order to decrease the level of the opposition later, some people finish a play session with a victory against easy opposition with a weak team, and invite the attacks. This is called tanking.

Shielding takes you out of the pool of opponents. You do stay in the queue for people you beat. You also stay in the queue for people who had you next in one of their nodes. If they lose you gain points, if they win you don't lose points.

Shield-hopping is the tactic of shielding for a short time. You skip through your nodes to line up 3 decent matches, fight them and immediately re-shield. If it works you should gain points and lose few or none. But it's expensive in HP and only workable if you have a lot and play fast. Personally I believe there's no point unless you're getting close to the 1100 point level or pushing for top 5 or 10.

Once you hit 600 points, you pretty much see a wall of maxed 3* teams, but skipping can find other targets. There are a few tiers where the difficulty goes up a notch. When building up a 2* roster or making the 2 - 3* transition (like Wolveroach) hitting 500 is a dream come true. Without shields there will be a few defeats as well knocking him back down to 400 or so, but that's still usually good for a top 200 finish.

Moon Roach usually manages to climb to the mid-700s, and that's the limit of opposition his roster (and puny skill) can beat, so one final push about 23 hours from the end, then a 24 hour shield and the event is done.

The possible exception is if others in his bracket gaining points pushes him down too far. 11th is as good as 25th, so dropping from 13th to 20th isn't a problem. Even dropping to 26th and a lower tier may not matter based on the reward lost. If it's only 1000 ISO and 25 HP it's definitely not worth a shield-hop costing 75HP. If it's a cover, well it depends on which cover it is.

Another consideration is points for the alliance. We're casual, any rewards we get are a bonus, but in case I haven't said it before, we're casual. It would be nice if everyone got points in everything, even nicer if everyone got a lot of points in everything, and maybe one day everyone's roster will evolve so we can. Until then, play how you want, just let me know if you're going to be away for any length of time. But I digress.


SHIELD

Leave it alone until there's a week or two left. Do not join it immediately.

Your opposition seems to be based on your roster strength, and the points you get are determined by how many points your opposition has compared to yours. Parity is 25, you get less or more depending on how big the difference is.

Your opposition is also limited to teams that have played at least one match, or seed teams if you join in at the very beginning.

If you leave playing until there are already a lot of players in the pool, you'll get matches against opponents of strength comparable to your roster or weaker that are worth 40+ points.

There's no ranking benefit in SHIELD, it's purely progressive, but there are a heap of covers you can sell or use. And HP. Never forget the HP/

The main target in SHIELD isn't in SHIELD, it's in the season; the 4000 points for the Heroic Token 10-pack. SHIELD is the way to top up the points you get from the events.

The worst you can get is 2500 ISO, but you should get at least one 3*, and it may be useful.

Comments welcome.

Moon Roach

Alliance chat is completely frelled now. On the off-chance that any Roach comes to see what's going on, here's the last thing I sent via Chat, which may or may not have got through.

No one will be kicked for non-attendance while MPQ doesn't work in Android 5.0. Not having chat doesn't help, but not being able to connect at all would have prevented a chat message being sent anyway.

Edit: And I'm off to Tarawa on Kiribati on Wednesday for 2 weeks. Wolveroach will be offline, but I should still be able to play as Moon Roach.

Moon Roach

If the in-game chat gets broken again, or suddenly the game won't work because of an OS change (or new release of the game, heaven forfend), and you want to get in touch, here's a way that doesn't involve joining the forum.

I've set up a new email address: venomroach@gmail.com

Some heinous soul already has MoonRoach, and Wolveroach, and ArtemisStrong, and Kevitch, and...

I've also set up a facebook account under the name Moon Roach, if you want to chat through that. I don't really use facebook, so don't know if I've done it right, but it's there for the Roaches alliance to congregate. If you want to.

Moon Roach

It's been suggested that members be kicked for not entering any PVP events during a season.

I've had a long think about it and I'm not going to do that.

Roaches is a casual alliance, with no requirements for roster or points in events. The only requirement is to play, and even then I don't kick anyone unless they've been away for more than 10 days without advance notice. Or moral turpitude. Members don't even have to say anything, ever, in alliance chat and some haven't. Ever.

I'd hope that members would want to play PVP, if only to try to get to 300 for the token, or 800 for the 3* cover or 1000 for the 4* cover, and go for 4k as a season total for the 10-pack. But that's a personal choice. Not everyone has a roster that can beat anyone more difficult than the seed teams.

I'd hope that members would want to play PVE, if only to get top 400 in subs for the token, or the 3* progression cover, or top 50/100/150 for the new character. But that's a personal choice. Not everyone has the time it takes or the roster to get a high score.

I'd hope that members would want to play DDQ, if only for the 3* cover, 2 tokens and ~3500 ISO. If you do nothing else in MPQ, that is the single best investment of time and effort. But that's a personal choice. Not everyone keeps a 1* around, or has the essential 3*, or has OBW to make The Big Enchilada easy as.

The important thing here is choice. Play what events you want, when you want, no pressure or requirements. It's a game, and real life is more important.

If you find that Roaches are too casual, there are 20,000 other alliances out there, a lot of whom take MPQ more seriously. But I hope that everyone sticks around, shares successes and failures, and generally are excellent to each other.

Bowgentle

Your monologueing in here is awesome.
Sad, but awesome.

Moon Roach

Yippee! Someone who isn't a bot has read this thread!! This year!!!

Roaches are shy and quiet and I don't think any of them are registered on the forum. But they don't have to be registered to be able to view as guests. If they want to...

morph3us

I have to confess to reading your thread every now and then too. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one around here who talks to himself.

SnagglePuss

I have nothing against roaches.. unless they fly across the tv while i'm watching it and proceed to land nearby. RIP I hope they weren't closely related.

Moon Roach

SnagglePuss wrote:

I have nothing against roaches.. unless they fly across the tv while i'm watching it and proceed to land nearby. RIP I hope they weren't closely related.

Well, the multiple Roach personas (and Elrod, come to that) was a consequence of Cerebus's encounter with the Chaos Gem. So, no relation.

Moon Roach

PVE - a monologue

If you're fairly serious about PVE, there are a couple of ways you can play.

The first is to leave it to the last minute/hour, join a slice, and hope it's new enough that a win or two can get you a high finishing position. The pro for that is that it takes little effort; just a couple of battles. The cons are that you miss out on any progression rewards, you'll get nothing from the previous 24/48 hour subs, and (worst of all) you might end up #999 and get 250 ISO.

The second is the way I play (as Moon Roach), which is to start early, and maximise the points per sub. That's what I'll be describing here.

The most important factor here is ending time. You need to be free to play a couple of hours before and maybe an hour after the time the sub ends. I normally choose the slice that starts 6pm local. The ideal schedule would then be:

6 pm, start the sub with a clear
2 am, clear
10 am, clear
6 pm, clear (if > 24 hours)
2 am, clear (if > 24 hours)
10 am, clear (if > 24 hours)
4 pm (when we're down to 2 hours remaining), grind those nodes down as far as possible
6 pm, start it all over again with the next sub

Now, life, work and sleep get in the way, so realistically it's more like this:

6 pm, start the sub with a clear
11 pm, clear last thing before bed
(work day)
6 am, clear
1 pm, clear
11 pm, clear last thing before bed
(non-work day)
10 am, clear
6 pm, clear
11 pm, clear last thing before bed
and so on, with the final grind starting at 4:30 pm for a work day, 4 pm for a non-work day.

It's not optimum, clearing more frequently decreases the total points possible. But the number one rule is to never leave a node full, and there's no way I'm getting up at 2 am just to clear some nodes. Not again, anyway.

Even without grinding everything down to 1, this strategy is always good for top 100, sometimes top 10, once even #1.

You can see those following this strategy in the placement list, they get to 4170 or whatever the clear value is, then stop, waiting patiently for the next clear. Others grind everything down straight away. They get a lead, but drop the potential points down to 5x opening value, when this strategy gets you up to 6x (for a 24 hour sub). In this case the tortoise definitely beats the hare. (And there's also the potential of rubber-banding from the hares making the nodes worth even more points to the tortoises.)

There is a third strategy, one that Wolveroach uses simply because I don't have time to do as good a job. That is to clear as early as possible, play the essential nodes before going to work, then whatever high-point nodes I can before the end of the sub. The main idea is to always hit at least top 300 for the event token, and in so doing make sure of getting all progression awards, needed or not. Top 100 is usually (but not always) a bridge too far, but the overall rewards are worth the effort expended.

Moon Roach

Another monologue, number 94 in a series.

These are my various recent musings on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Simulator, which runs for the entire season.

There are two main reasons for playing Simulator. The first is for the rewards, which include 75 HP, 4000 ISO, a heroic token, 3 3* covers and a 4* cover. The second is to supplement the points gained in events, as they all count towards the season's total.

The first thing to note is that no-one is boosted in Simulator. You see your opposition, and you choose your team accordingly. Usually it's your best 3, not always, for example you might take a stunner when facing a Hulk with 5 black when normally it's not someone you'd consider. (But always remember that it's your last winning team that most people see when you're in their queue. Your Hulk-beating team may be easier to defeat than your usual trio.)

The second thing to note is that the event lasts nearly a month. There's no rush.

The third thing to note is the availability of targets. The score you get for beating someone with the same points is 38. Targets with higher points can go as high as 75, lower can be worth as little as 1. Note that if you lose to someone who would have been worth 75, you may lose as few as 1 point, depending on how low your score currently is.

With that being said, this is how I approach the Simulator.

The first day, I clear the seed teams, just to get started.

Every day or so, I do a check of the nodes, see what points the matches are worth. Anyone over 70 is considered, but the trickier teams are left to last. If my current total is below 1000 I probably won't drop many points if I lose. I'll check what's on each node once, and skip if nothing valuable enough is there.

The main strategy is not to get ahead of the curve. There are plenty of hares out there who rush to a high score, and they can be worth a lot of points to you. You don't want to be a target yourself for those climbing after you. But also you don't want to leave it too late. The Big Guns start their climbs in the last week or two, and you'll find yourself seeing nodes full of level 270 4* opposition. Or even 5*, these days. It's worth checking out the current top score, and stay a few hundred points lower.

Defensive losses aren't the end of the world. If the retaliation is worth fewer than 40 points, forget about it and look for someone else. An exception is when the attacker is on the climb, if you leave it a couple of days, it might still say it's worth 10 points, but could really be worth 60. It's a judgement based on the team. And while you're climbing back up, you're getting ISO.

If you're pushing for 2000, you will be hit, often. It's worth a few HP to shield at 1800 or 1900, just to hop to 2000 and the 4* cover. And in the last two weeks it becomes a lot harder. I try to hit 2000 before we get to 10 days to go, and then just free-fall down. I often drop back down to 1400 or so. The only time I'll play Simulator again would be for ISO, or if I need the points for a season reward, such as the Legendary token at 10k.

BL8NT

Heya Roach,

I was just on and found I was no longer in the alliance? What happened?

BL8NT

Moon Roach

Civil War II

The key to this event is doing a full clear in each and every 8 hour window. As each round is cleared, the nodes get harder and the boss has more health.

Last time the nodes in the first three windows were remarkably low level, then they went up by a million levels after 24 hours. The devs have said that the node level increase will be more gradual, but that can mean anything.

It's important that the weaker rostered alliance members get a chance at the easier matches. So if the big guns could avoid the first few hours of window 1, that would be good. But that shouldn't be at the expense of your own clears.

When you do a clear isn't really important, you can clear with 5 seconds to go in window n and then carry on to clear window n + 1 straight away. The timing is up to the individual. Here's how I plan to maximise my time in the game.

The event starts for me at 4 am, Friday 27th May. That means my windows are 4 am - noon, noon - 8 pm, 8 pm - 4 am. Weekdays I normally get up at 6, leave the house at 7:30. Lunch is after 12. I finish work at 4:30, get home about 5:30. The event is 3.5 days, which means 10 windows of 8 hours, and a final window of 4 hours.

So my schedule will be:
Window 1: Friday 4 am - noon: Up at 5:30 as I need to clear both Wolveroach and Moon Roach.
Window 2: Friday noon - 8 pm: Lunchtime clear for Moon Roach, clear when I get home for Wolveroach.
Window 3: Friday 8 pm - Saturday 4 am: Evening clears for both accounts before bed.
Window 4: Saturday 4 am - noon: Up whenever, clears for both accounts in the morning.
Window 5: Saturday noon - 8 pm: Clears for both accounts in the afternoon.
Window 6: Saturday 8 pm - Sunday 4 am: Evening clears for both accounts before bed.
Window 7: Sunday 4 am - noon: Up whenever, clears for both accounts in the morning.
Window 8: Sunday noon - 8 pm: Clears for both accounts in the afternoon.
Window 9: Sunday 8 pm - Monday 4 am: Evening clears for both accounts before bed.
Window 10: Monday 4 am - noon: Up at 5:30 as I need to clear both Wolveroach and Moon Roach, though we might have hit the wall by then
Window 11: Monday noon - 4 pm: Lunchtime clear for Moon Roach, no time for Wolveroach

We're going for Team Iron Man again, but there will be nodes where you lack the essential character. For those, if you can play the equivalent node in Team Cap, go for it. If you can beat him, always fight Cap as part of Team Iron Man. As we complete rounds that will get more difficult, when he gets too tough for you then fight Iron Man as part of Team Cap.

In Civil War I we beat Round 6, and so got 2 Hulkbusters and a token. They've changed the rewards this time, the token is for beating Round 7. Which is evil. Round 7 is "only" 4.8 million instead of 5.5 million, so that's good, but may still prove a round too far. If all goes to plan we should all get a full set of Quake covers. I like Quake, I may have mentioned that before.

Moon Roach

2* Champions, what to do once you've maxed one.

The rewards you get for maxing your champion are:
17000 ISO
250 HP
5 CP
5 Heroic tokens
3 3* covers

If you sell the champion, you get another 65,000 ISO and 125 HP, for a net gain of:
82000 ISO
375 HP
5 CP
5 Heroic tokens
3 3* covers

Now, it costs 69524 ISO to max a 2* from base level 15 to 94, and another 5000 ISO to champion it, so the total cost is 74524 ISO.

The net position, taking a character from 15 to 144 and selling it, is:
7476 ISO
375 HP
5 CP
5 Heroic tokens
3 3* covers

You have to decide if the ISO, HP, CP, tokens and covers is worth it. Of course it is. Now.

If you do decide it is worth it, you have to consider the timing. If you sell the champion before you have a replacement ready, you lose the benefits of a viable character for weeks, if not months. It will make essential 2* nodes in PvE more difficult. If you wait, you'll have to wait until the replacement is at a decent level, meaning an upfront ISO cost and HP for the roster slot. What that level is depends on who the character is, it's probably around 40 for most.

Personally now I think it's definitely worth it.