Chapter 47 - Meeting the Iron Stalkers (1/2)
Gray and the rest took seats inside the simulator pods and joined the same virtual lobby.
"What's this?" Gray thought as he noticed that there was now a team size option instead of just a simple mode option. "Ok guys, looks like we have more options now in matchmaking." Gray announced.
"Duh, weren't you paying attention to the forums and game announcements? With more players we can have larger battles so now we can do larger than 5 vs 5." Said Geoff.
"I uhhh… knew that, was just pointing it out." Nobody seemed to buy it that he paid attention to it but shrugged it off as it was becoming expected for him to miss important details every now and then. "Wait, so Xyra or Paul, what did you guys do with your 7 person team?" Gray asked.
"We'd take turns or two of us would go in solo and get put on teams that were short of 5 players to fill in." said Paul.
"Makes sense. Ok, it looks like the smallest team we can select is 8 now… we can do teams of 8, 16, 25, 50, and unlimited. Uhh, how would one do unlimited?" Gray asked
"The system queues up each player or team then combines them to try and make both teams as even as possible. We should note that unlimited and the other sizes have separate ranks, so our silver rank does not carry over to unlimited." Said Caleb.
"You guys are silver? Nice, we were just in the middle of bronze since our last few matches. We did end up going 24 and 23 so you could say we had a winning record, although just barely" Paul admitted.
"Yeah, we started at Bronze 4, but for some reason we advanced very quickly even though we only won 3 out of 5 matches after getting our rank. You guys did a lot of matches though!" Gray said.
"We just grinded matchmaking like everyone else, I noticed you guys did a mission though and one without mechs even!"
"How did you guys know about that?" asked Gray
"Everyone on the base saw you guys walking through the base trying to be a bunch of bad asses, totally worth jumping out of matchmaking for a minute to see it!" Paul said while laughing.
"Yeah yeah, whatever, we completed the mission and even got a huge completion bonus since we did it with only 5 people instead of the recommend amount." Gray said proudly.
"And how is your arm from missing that little detail?" Geoff said with a grin
"Hey, even the mission board staff admitted that they forgot to add that detail, not my fault. Let's just get on with matchmaking!" Gray said trying to change the subject. "I want to do 50 versus 50, any complaints?"
Nobody disagreed and so Gray queued up a match for 50 versus 50.
Waiting for a total of 100 players took about 15 minutes for the pregame lobby to fill up as players from around the world finally filled it up. Once inside they were given a mission overview and an area map.
Mode: Assault
Map: Military Headquarters Assault
Objective: Assault – Offense needs to capture and hold a certain amount of strategic points, Defense needs to stop them.
Hints: Both teams will get a chance at offense and defense, even if your defense doesn't hold, just take down the enemy defense faster than they took you out.
Offense – Cutting off the base's power source will limit the amount of defenses and blind them strategically.
Defense – You can return to the base's mech hanger to repair and rearm as needed.
The map itself was a large mountainous jungle area. A large square area was cleared out in front of a tall mountain next to a river where the base stood. The base itself was partially cut into the side of the mountain completely closing off the North side of the base to a direct attack. The West and South sides featured the most defenses as the South side was accessible by a bridge over the nearby river and the west side had a road running up to it. The east side of the base was closed off similarly to the north side but large pipes ran up the steep hills to the top of the mountain north of the base where the solar energy farm was constructed. If the map contained any hidden features, nothing was revealed by the map except that the attackers would be placed in a small camp setup just South-West of the base.
A 5 minute timer appeared in corner of everyone's HUD and the teams were then separated into offense and defense. Gray found that he and the rest of the Steel Wolves were put on offense first.
"Dang, was hoping to get defense first so we could see where they try to attack first to see how effective it was." Gray thought.
"Everyone, we are the Iron Stalkers, we are gold ranked and probably the highest ranked team here, follow us if you want to win!" a loud guy's voice rang out with 4 others standing next to him. They looked sleek as they each had matching black pilot suits with silver streaks and the outline of a mountain lion's head on the sleeves. The guy that spoke was tall, well-built, and had perfect hair that he kept checking whenever he saw a reflective surface. "I am Giacobbe Stronzo, a military cadet graduate out of the domed city Rome and a Diamond-Tier player, my four teammates have followed me to victory every time and we are undefeated in matchmaking."
This caused a slight stir among the other players as for most of them this was their first or second matchmaking game unless they were also Diamond-Tier, plus all of his teammates were very attractive women leaving a lot of the male players jealous.
Gray didn't really seem worried or even concerned with Giacobbe and instead asked him "Are your 4 teammates also Diamond-Tier?"
"Well, no, I earned the Gold rank from my previous team, which was still under my leadership, so the other members left to form other teams led by us, witnessing our teams prowess, these 4 pilots were given the chance to join my team since they are the best… prospects." Giacobbe explained.
A few of the discerning players figured out what he meant by prospects and immediately lost respect for Giacobbe, but they also figured he had to have some skill since he was still a gold rank in matchmaking.