Hank [1732212] —
Original article
Relentless chief Hank brings us an exclusive inside look at the causes, tactics and resolution behind the recent war his faction waged against the might of the PT forces.
Anyone who has looked at a map of Torn lately couldn't help but notice that Sector 1 is one of the few areas of our city which is relatively free from wars. Nobody is bothering their neighbour, incursions are few and far between, and everyone seems happy to stick with what they've got.
However, this situation won't last for long, as below that thin layer of peace, I can reveal that several factions are busy plotting assaults on their rivals. Sector 1 is about to explode.
Since the removal of ranked wars, some factions have become a little restless with the lack of real opportunities to do battle. A war of words on discord recently spilled onto the forums whereby some members of JFA claimed they were better than MnC, a faction with which they are allied. This seemingly innocuous conversation soon escalated, with Nova, the leader of MnC, going so far as to prepare a territorial assault on JFA scheduled for the 1st of June 2018. Ultimately it took the intervention of former leader Myhedin to defuse the situation, but one wonders what might have happened had his diplomatic efforts failed.
Another source of tension with territorial relevance is the recently concluded feud between the various PT factions and Relentless. Back on the 25th of February, PT-Family recorded a chain of 25,000, and in doing so became the first faction to achieve this milestone. PT had initially set out to hit the 10,000 record on the 20th of February, but when Chedburn released the 25,000 upgrade midway through, the chance to hit 25k seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
However, for PT-Family to generate the respect required to upgrade to 25,000 chains, they needed to set up some fake territory wars, and thus had to abandon certain territories; namely CFF, MEF and WFD. Fake wars against PT-Calculated and PT-Ironhearts helped them achieve this objective, with members of these factions purposely sitting on the walls to be hit by members of PT-Family. While this was going on, the Relentless leadership noticed that PT's former territories were vacant. Knowing that possession is equivalent to ownership in Torn City, Relentless decided to swoop in and claim these abandoned territories as their own once more, having previously possessed them back in early 2017.
PT's retaliation seemed inevitable, but discussions were held between the leaders of both factions in a bid to avoid a costly war. These discussions were already strained before they even began, though, with several key players already on ignore and/or disliked by each other. Ultimately the discussions failed to resolve the disagreement over ownership of the disputed territories. Relentless was not willing to give these blocks away for free, and PT did not want to offer anything to Relentless in exchange for them. The negotiations concluded with the following act.
This feud between seemingly happy neighbors got worse when PT Family and PT Calculated joined some Anti-Relentless guests in an assault upon Relentless during its first 25,000 chain attempt. After several hours of struggling, Relentless's chain was broken at 14,575, destroying three days, 4 hours and 30 minutes of work. To date, this is the second highest chain to be broken purposely by one or more factions.
PT Family and PT Calculated doubled-down their efforts with the successful assault of territories CFF, CVE, OJE, MEF and WFD. The tactics used by PT during this skirmish included hospitalization of all Relentless and Unrelenting members (then a sister faction, now The Psycho Realm), and a varied blend of overseas and group attacks - some of which had as many as seven attackers.
Relentless' leadership decided that being sandwiched between PT Family, PT Calculated and their other enemies in the form of JFK 2.1 was not a position from which they could defend. A tactical retreat was ordered to give Relentless a stronger defensive position where offensive assaults against PT might be launched in future.
Before the retreat, PT leaders again tried to strike a truce with Relentless knowing that further chain break attempts were likely on the horizon. Relentless' terms were simple; give back our territories (MEF & WFD) and we will agree not to interfere with PT chains/territories in the future. These terms were rejected by PT, so Relentless waited for their war period to wrap up before moving to an empty space created by their allies in Subversive Alliance. Relentless abandoned all but one territory to achieve this tactical retreat, moving east around the top of the jail having negotiated with other factions who allowed them passage.
This area did not generate as much respect (~1500/day) as Relentless's previous combined territory on the map, but its position with regards to their allies and enemies was excellent. Now settled into a fortified position on the map, Relentless was able to plot its revenge against all PT factions. But first came more heartbreak, as PT and JFK disrupted another 25,000 chaining attempt on the 23rd of March.
PT's motivation for this second chain break was to gain leverage over Relentless and force them into a truce. The assault commenced when Relentless was about approximately 22,000 hits in. Having learned some valuable lessons from the previous chain break, Relentless' Sergeants used a combination of overseas hitters, decoy targets and hired revivers to keep the chain alive. The leaders of Relentless even went one step further by changing its faction tag to match JFK and PT to troll and confuse the attackers - an act that would be considered a war crime were it to take place on an actual battlefield.
In the end not only was the chain kept alive, but the speed of attacks increased as if the faction itself was possessed with a raging desire to hit 25,000 as soon as possible. Despite an ongoing barrage of attacks from PT Family and JFK the chain was completed when Swaggie of PT-Family took the 25,000th hit courtesy of Shutter.
Despite Relentless' chaining victory, PT's actions had guaranteed themselves punishment, and on the 29th of April an old-school war base assault was launched against all PT factions (Family, Calculated, Iron Hearts and Lifeline aka Kiss My Ass...) Relentless' focus was simple, keep all PT members in hospital for the duration of the war period. What Relentless was not aware of was that Kiss My Ass had recently broken away from PT in protest at their use of guests from other factions during chain break attempts. The_Joker explains more:
"Leading up to the assault I made my feelings very clear that if PT wanted that block back we needed to do it on our own, NO outside help. I know how some look at PT as JFK's "bitch" so I knew it had to be done alone or just going to prove it to those who think it. As far as I knew that's the way it was going down as PT alone."
"I was over in LL stacking and would move to Fam the night before the assault and logged out. I never even bothered to look at the members list and the next morning when I logged in the jump had already happened and I see Z and Cindy and a handful of other outsiders. (Don't get me wrong I love Z like a brother as we go way back to the Rotten Souls faction days and it was him who kept me from quitting the game 10 yrs ago and I'm a JFKer.)"
"I was pissed when I saw it and then when "leadership" in PT in my eyes became complete asses after R had thrown up the white flag so to speak on battling for the territory I was just D-O-N-E done! Had some heated words on discord and left Fam and returned to LL without making 1 hit."
On receiving this update from the_joker, Relentless decided to remove KMA from the hospitalization list. Also, a clever competition was developed through the use of API to track Relentless' attacks against PT members. Anyone who achieved a quota of 150 hospitalizations or more was rewarded from a pool of prizes donated by the faction. This bounty sparked a renewed sense of aggression and served to increase Relentless' relentless stalking of targets.
During this war period, Relentless decided to play it conservatively and go for a 10,000 chain, minimising the risk of having it broken by PT. The chain was successful, hitting 10k during its cooldown, and it was decided that a second 10,000 chain should begin immediately. However, there were whispers that PT planned to attempt another chain break on our second 10,000 chain, so Relentless preemptively began to stack its higher stat players in anticipation of a fight. While the intelligence was correct, PT was not to blame for the failure of this chain, which was broken by accident at 7,022.
With PT now fully stacked they no longer had a chain to break, so it was decided they would return the favor by hospitalizing all Relentless members. Relentless, having wrapped up their war period shortly after the break, decided to wait out the wave of initial attacks and opt for strategy over brute force. Relentless began to initiate regular chain breaks again PT factions in retaliation, and they started with their current chains PT Calc @ 1826 and PT-Family @ ~1700.
True to my word, Relentless launched skirmishes against all PT factions attempting 2500 chains. In response, PT-Calculated stopped their chains at 1,000 over the next 28 days. A few of these broken chains are shown below, where you can see that some broke with as little as eight attacks from Relentless, while others required over 200 attacks to destroy:
PT-Family @ 1760
PT-Calculated @ 2026
PT-Calculated @ 2458
PT-Calculated @ 2906
The last chain break requires a special mention for Alguem who sat in South Africa for hours keeping the chain alive. Alguem was believed to have achieved the 2500 hit, but we suspect he already had the Genocide award.
An inside look at the Relentless announcement page during this period reveals their mood, with a live clock displayed to show just how long it had been since they had allowed a PT faction to chain higher than 2,500.
Feedback received from former PT member Chael_Sorrow reveals precisely why he and other members quit the faction during this feud:
"It sucked having to chain 1k and not getting anywhere lul...Some members in Calculated faction tried to convince the leaders just to apologize u guys but they didn't."
While PT-Calc was farming respect in a fake territory war with PT-Ironhearts it was decided that Relentless would move into position to claim a recently abandoned territory. The territories were claimed on the 29th of May, and with this situation mirroring the events which kicked off the feud in the first place, Relentless waited for PT's reply with baited breath.
While no specific communications were received from PT regarding this hostile act, Relentless' leadership are sure it did not go unnoticed. In retaliation to the constant chain breaks, on the 3rd of June PT-Family used their war period to launch a grinding campaign against Relentless members involving both group attacks and complementary hospital time.
In response, Relentless decided to meet them head-on, and with only 16 hours notice the entire faction was asked to stack to coincide with the unsetting of our specials. Not only were Relentless made aware of PT's plans, but so it seems were PT's members, who effectively stopped chaining, leading to several chain breaks and a definite lull in war proceedings.
The day before the war began we calmly visited the bazaars buying up Xanax, Vicodin, feathery hotel coupons, energy cans, smoke grenades, flash grenades and temporary stat boosters. As you can see below, the value of FHC's increased rapidly due to our demands.
At 4 pm TCT on the 4th of June Relentless initiated a wave of attacks against PT members. The idea was simple, keep them in hospital to enable assaults to be launched against PT territories. After some initial struggles in getting PT's factions under control and in hospital, assaults were initiated on territories indicated with "2", followed by further attacks on territories marked with "3".
Despite having a significant energy disadvantage against the combined force of PT, Relentless utilized all advantages possible, including a Gold AK47 made available via the armory for all members to use! After this initial battle, Relentless was able to maintain a chain, despite this achievement not being part of the plan. Relentless continued to gain territorial advantage, moving the battle lines deeper and deeper into PT territory.
This forced PT to change its tactics, resulting in assaults launched by PT-Calc and PT-Ironhearts which forced Relentless to abandon territories above MPF in order to continue assaulting PT. During this time, PT-Family and PT-Penguins changed up some territories to enable PT-Family to come within striking distance of Relentless, while also restricting their maneuvers on the map through vacant space.
Despite this setback, Relentless pushed forward and attempted to hospitalize all PT members whether or not they were present on the walls. The next step involved isolating PT-IH to prevent a retreat westwards, while also trying to prevent PT-Family from performing a full assault. Relentless initially locked them down with a fake assault. Meanwhile, PT-Calc and PT-IH were anchored, preventing them from initiating any new assaults against Relentless until their current attempts failed (three day timeout).
This gave Relentless the tactical advantage they needed to slice through and divide PT's holdings without becoming split themselves. The faction found a happy medium of sorts, discovering that while it could sit on two walls just fine, trying to hold a third was a real struggle.
Once the spaces marked with 4 were taken, PT-IH were on the verge of being isolated completely. On the other side, PT-Calc were also becoming divided. Step five of the plan was mapped out below:
At this stage of the war, we were used to constant resistance from PT, which normally took the form of a so-called "small wave" starting about 7 am TCT daily. As PT's waves of attack became more regular, Relentless members stacked in anticipation for a daily fight back. Part of the reason we dubbed them small waves was how these attacks reflected on the territory assault statistics, the red being PT members on the wall.
Relentless did suffer from the interference of outside hitters such as BodyBagger (paid by an unknown source), CindyFury and Kapten_Klitoris. But for the most part, the war was fairly predictable, with PT waiting in hospital until sufficient players were online before emerging in 30-90 minute waves. As the length of the war progressed so did Relentless' expansion, and this led to issues with the number of territories it was allowed to hold (15).
The daily war soon became predictable, and as the assaults progressed our members became more familiar with joining the walls, having not really been involved in Territory assaults on this scale before. These three walls were filled with 66 Relentless members in total - the faction was even winning its fake wars at this stage.
PT members were now starting to make errors in desperation, a good example being when Alguem attempted the kidnapping the mayor crime without having 75k on hand; a mistake which resulted in a lengthy jail sentence. Knowing that a Lawyers Business Card, Bust or Bail were his only options for escape, I, the ever-altruistic Hank, decided to help him out.
Relentless was now keen to fortify its boundaries, and they did so with F2; a war designed to force PT-F family to retreat. By this point, PT-IH were cut off and on the verge of being removed from Sector 1. PT-Penguins entered the fray with a fake war of their own against PT-Calc designed to block Relentless' progress. Not to be outdone, Relentless asked SA to hold a vacant territory which restricted PT-IH's ability to reform in size, and this resulted in them being reduced to five spaces.
Relentless also initiated fresh assaults against all PT factions for the first time in this campaign. The territory map soon resembled a Christmas tree such was the prevalence of territorial war, and anyone suffering from epilepsy would have done well to avoid looking at it for too long. And with their desire for more territories still unabated, Relentless upgraded its maximum capacity from 15 to 16 spaces.
To progress to the area of Sector 7 held PT-Calculated, Relentless elected to instigate a fake assault upon territory BFF via another faction. Since PT group decided to attack Unrelenting (then Transfiguration) at the start of the feud, it was deemed a good opportunity for them to claim their revenge by locking PT-P into place on the map. Relentless negotiated with IBB to allow them to get into position, and from here Transfiguration launched a territory assault on PT-Penguins' territory of BFF. This prevented any further retreat from PT-Calc, and in turn, enabled Relentless to get close enough to Sector 7.
What Relentless didn't plan on was the then leader of Transfiguration, Scalper, attempting to win the territory. The agreement was simple; initiate an assault, nothing more. What followed next was pretty comical, as in less than 24 hours Transfiguration had been sold to Saitoma for 20b. To guarantee their continued compliance a deal was struck, the details of which are shown below.
Do not agree to Peace Treaty with PT - 200 day Peace Treaty
Win BFF space - 365 day Peace Treaty
True to their agreement, Saitoma's Transfiguration proceeded to assault BFF, and in doing so managed to complete the barrier around PT-Calc.
At this point, Relentless' assaulting walls had 77 players on them, and shortly after they were boosted to 93 with the addition of a defensive wall. It even got to the stage where Relentless were asking PT members to come out of hospital; such was the boredom within their ranks.
PT-Family finally launched an attack against Relentless at AFF to prevent further assaults on PT spaces north of this position. This also made the war at BFF against Transfiguration so important. If they couldn't win within three days then PT-Calc could be released by PT-Penguins, claiming their vacant territory in the process. With RFF being assaulted by Relentless north of AFF, this tactic was designed to hold control of this space at 90% - an important move, as winning this territory would restrict Relentless' ability to assault others without abandoning RFF in the process.
Relentless started to look at options at how best to divide PT-Family to see whether removing them entirely from Sector 1 was possible. Ultimately it was decided it could take weeks to push PT-Family into Sector 7 as well, so having made our point by decimating PT, as leader I felt it was time to reopen discussions with PT for a truce. Initial discussions were held between myself and Dacampa.
With the net tightening on PT-Calculated, Relentless initiated an assault on OHD. PT-Calc were now down to 6 territories and PT-IH down to 4. The pressure was firmly on PT, with the following internal comments from PT members having been confirmed as genuine:
BrocketIII: "Ok I am out of e and heading for bed. Good luck and have fun. We should Ally with them, we cannot face them again."
I_Am_BaZaaR: "Yeah I lagged and scar took me out, he is sitting on me since I changed faction from..."
Shindig: "Sorry, I'm just really annoyed seeing those peeps come online and not do anything."
FalconE51: "They're using a script to hosp us as soon as we come out."
misanthrope: "Didn't realise there was nowhere to sit on the wall lol, even if there was, I don't wanna die again. annoying."
Dr-Strangelove: "Do we only have four territories left?"
hyperfuse: "We dead."
401K: "It's kinda scary when you take a look at PT-Family page and like 98% of the members are in hospital."
hyperfuse: "Yeah."
401K: "Coz they're supposed to be the strong ones."
401K: "Reminds me of the time the dinosaurs got killed and it was just left with us smaller mammals."
401K: "Sighs not again."
The feud concluded when a truce was finally agreed between PT and Relentless, the terms of which involved PT-Calculated and PT-Ironheart abandoning their territories and starting again on territories from Sector 7. Relentless was also barred from giving aid to Transfiguration, and neither PT or Relentless were allowed to target each other in coordinated chain break attempts. Any future provocations by either faction such as a territory assault or chain break attempt would result in the ending of the truce.
With the war wrapping up, it was time to look back on just how decimating territory warfare can be for a faction on the wrong end of a battering.
Relentless' chain also concluded shortly thereafter, with the result being the second most respect ever achieved during a 25,000 chain, including a staggering 6,664 war hits (knocking PT off the wall), 1,173 assists (successful group attacks) and 1747 Retaliations (hospitalizing targets who have attacked us, mainly PT targets).
Throughout this campaign Relentless utilized over 3000 revives and members donated over 200 FHC's into the Armoury. It is likely the war cost members well in excess of $15,000,000,000. However, the true number will never be known.
In the following week, both PT-Calc and PT-IH returned to Sector 1. Transfiguration, who had been renamed The Pyscho Realm, were removed from Sector 1 and - surprise surprise - proceeded to be sold by Saitoma to the_Joker. He then re-renamed the faction to Kiss My... and took them back into Sector 1 south of Relentless.
So with this feud done and dusted, what is next for the citizens of Section 1? Are its other inhabitant factions finally awakening from their war slumber, or will the status quo of peace and farming prevail? We shall see.
However, this situation won't last for long, as below that thin layer of peace, I can reveal that several factions are busy plotting assaults on their rivals. Sector 1 is about to explode.
Since the removal of ranked wars, some factions have become a little restless with the lack of real opportunities to do battle. A war of words on discord recently spilled onto the forums whereby some members of JFA claimed they were better than MnC, a faction with which they are allied. This seemingly innocuous conversation soon escalated, with Nova, the leader of MnC, going so far as to prepare a territorial assault on JFA scheduled for the 1st of June 2018. Ultimately it took the intervention of former leader Myhedin to defuse the situation, but one wonders what might have happened had his diplomatic efforts failed.
Another source of tension with territorial relevance is the recently concluded feud between the various PT factions and Relentless. Back on the 25th of February, PT-Family recorded a chain of 25,000, and in doing so became the first faction to achieve this milestone. PT had initially set out to hit the 10,000 record on the 20th of February, but when Chedburn released the 25,000 upgrade midway through, the chance to hit 25k seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
However, for PT-Family to generate the respect required to upgrade to 25,000 chains, they needed to set up some fake territory wars, and thus had to abandon certain territories; namely CFF, MEF and WFD. Fake wars against PT-Calculated and PT-Ironhearts helped them achieve this objective, with members of these factions purposely sitting on the walls to be hit by members of PT-Family. While this was going on, the Relentless leadership noticed that PT's former territories were vacant. Knowing that possession is equivalent to ownership in Torn City, Relentless decided to swoop in and claim these abandoned territories as their own once more, having previously possessed them back in early 2017.
PT's retaliation seemed inevitable, but discussions were held between the leaders of both factions in a bid to avoid a costly war. These discussions were already strained before they even began, though, with several key players already on ignore and/or disliked by each other. Ultimately the discussions failed to resolve the disagreement over ownership of the disputed territories. Relentless was not willing to give these blocks away for free, and PT did not want to offer anything to Relentless in exchange for them. The negotiations concluded with the following act.
This feud between seemingly happy neighbors got worse when PT Family and PT Calculated joined some Anti-Relentless guests in an assault upon Relentless during its first 25,000 chain attempt. After several hours of struggling, Relentless's chain was broken at 14,575, destroying three days, 4 hours and 30 minutes of work. To date, this is the second highest chain to be broken purposely by one or more factions.
PT Family and PT Calculated doubled-down their efforts with the successful assault of territories CFF, CVE, OJE, MEF and WFD. The tactics used by PT during this skirmish included hospitalization of all Relentless and Unrelenting members (then a sister faction, now The Psycho Realm), and a varied blend of overseas and group attacks - some of which had as many as seven attackers.
Relentless' leadership decided that being sandwiched between PT Family, PT Calculated and their other enemies in the form of JFK 2.1 was not a position from which they could defend. A tactical retreat was ordered to give Relentless a stronger defensive position where offensive assaults against PT might be launched in future.
Before the retreat, PT leaders again tried to strike a truce with Relentless knowing that further chain break attempts were likely on the horizon. Relentless' terms were simple; give back our territories (MEF & WFD) and we will agree not to interfere with PT chains/territories in the future. These terms were rejected by PT, so Relentless waited for their war period to wrap up before moving to an empty space created by their allies in Subversive Alliance. Relentless abandoned all but one territory to achieve this tactical retreat, moving east around the top of the jail having negotiated with other factions who allowed them passage.
This area did not generate as much respect (~1500/day) as Relentless's previous combined territory on the map, but its position with regards to their allies and enemies was excellent. Now settled into a fortified position on the map, Relentless was able to plot its revenge against all PT factions. But first came more heartbreak, as PT and JFK disrupted another 25,000 chaining attempt on the 23rd of March.
PT's motivation for this second chain break was to gain leverage over Relentless and force them into a truce. The assault commenced when Relentless was about approximately 22,000 hits in. Having learned some valuable lessons from the previous chain break, Relentless' Sergeants used a combination of overseas hitters, decoy targets and hired revivers to keep the chain alive. The leaders of Relentless even went one step further by changing its faction tag to match JFK and PT to troll and confuse the attackers - an act that would be considered a war crime were it to take place on an actual battlefield.
In the end not only was the chain kept alive, but the speed of attacks increased as if the faction itself was possessed with a raging desire to hit 25,000 as soon as possible. Despite an ongoing barrage of attacks from PT Family and JFK the chain was completed when Swaggie of PT-Family took the 25,000th hit courtesy of Shutter.
Despite Relentless' chaining victory, PT's actions had guaranteed themselves punishment, and on the 29th of April an old-school war base assault was launched against all PT factions (Family, Calculated, Iron Hearts and Lifeline aka Kiss My Ass...) Relentless' focus was simple, keep all PT members in hospital for the duration of the war period. What Relentless was not aware of was that Kiss My Ass had recently broken away from PT in protest at their use of guests from other factions during chain break attempts. The_Joker explains more:
"Leading up to the assault I made my feelings very clear that if PT wanted that block back we needed to do it on our own, NO outside help. I know how some look at PT as JFK's "bitch" so I knew it had to be done alone or just going to prove it to those who think it. As far as I knew that's the way it was going down as PT alone."
"I was over in LL stacking and would move to Fam the night before the assault and logged out. I never even bothered to look at the members list and the next morning when I logged in the jump had already happened and I see Z and Cindy and a handful of other outsiders. (Don't get me wrong I love Z like a brother as we go way back to the Rotten Souls faction days and it was him who kept me from quitting the game 10 yrs ago and I'm a JFKer.)"
"I was pissed when I saw it and then when "leadership" in PT in my eyes became complete asses after R had thrown up the white flag so to speak on battling for the territory I was just D-O-N-E done! Had some heated words on discord and left Fam and returned to LL without making 1 hit."
On receiving this update from the_joker, Relentless decided to remove KMA from the hospitalization list. Also, a clever competition was developed through the use of API to track Relentless' attacks against PT members. Anyone who achieved a quota of 150 hospitalizations or more was rewarded from a pool of prizes donated by the faction. This bounty sparked a renewed sense of aggression and served to increase Relentless' relentless stalking of targets.
During this war period, Relentless decided to play it conservatively and go for a 10,000 chain, minimising the risk of having it broken by PT. The chain was successful, hitting 10k during its cooldown, and it was decided that a second 10,000 chain should begin immediately. However, there were whispers that PT planned to attempt another chain break on our second 10,000 chain, so Relentless preemptively began to stack its higher stat players in anticipation of a fight. While the intelligence was correct, PT was not to blame for the failure of this chain, which was broken by accident at 7,022.
With PT now fully stacked they no longer had a chain to break, so it was decided they would return the favor by hospitalizing all Relentless members. Relentless, having wrapped up their war period shortly after the break, decided to wait out the wave of initial attacks and opt for strategy over brute force. Relentless began to initiate regular chain breaks again PT factions in retaliation, and they started with their current chains PT Calc @ 1826 and PT-Family @ ~1700.
True to my word, Relentless launched skirmishes against all PT factions attempting 2500 chains. In response, PT-Calculated stopped their chains at 1,000 over the next 28 days. A few of these broken chains are shown below, where you can see that some broke with as little as eight attacks from Relentless, while others required over 200 attacks to destroy:
PT-Family @ 1760
PT-Calculated @ 2026
PT-Calculated @ 2458
PT-Calculated @ 2906
The last chain break requires a special mention for Alguem who sat in South Africa for hours keeping the chain alive. Alguem was believed to have achieved the 2500 hit, but we suspect he already had the Genocide award.
An inside look at the Relentless announcement page during this period reveals their mood, with a live clock displayed to show just how long it had been since they had allowed a PT faction to chain higher than 2,500.
Feedback received from former PT member Chael_Sorrow reveals precisely why he and other members quit the faction during this feud:
"It sucked having to chain 1k and not getting anywhere lul...Some members in Calculated faction tried to convince the leaders just to apologize u guys but they didn't."
While PT-Calc was farming respect in a fake territory war with PT-Ironhearts it was decided that Relentless would move into position to claim a recently abandoned territory. The territories were claimed on the 29th of May, and with this situation mirroring the events which kicked off the feud in the first place, Relentless waited for PT's reply with baited breath.
While no specific communications were received from PT regarding this hostile act, Relentless' leadership are sure it did not go unnoticed. In retaliation to the constant chain breaks, on the 3rd of June PT-Family used their war period to launch a grinding campaign against Relentless members involving both group attacks and complementary hospital time.
In response, Relentless decided to meet them head-on, and with only 16 hours notice the entire faction was asked to stack to coincide with the unsetting of our specials. Not only were Relentless made aware of PT's plans, but so it seems were PT's members, who effectively stopped chaining, leading to several chain breaks and a definite lull in war proceedings.
The day before the war began we calmly visited the bazaars buying up Xanax, Vicodin, feathery hotel coupons, energy cans, smoke grenades, flash grenades and temporary stat boosters. As you can see below, the value of FHC's increased rapidly due to our demands.
At 4 pm TCT on the 4th of June Relentless initiated a wave of attacks against PT members. The idea was simple, keep them in hospital to enable assaults to be launched against PT territories. After some initial struggles in getting PT's factions under control and in hospital, assaults were initiated on territories indicated with "2", followed by further attacks on territories marked with "3".
Despite having a significant energy disadvantage against the combined force of PT, Relentless utilized all advantages possible, including a Gold AK47 made available via the armory for all members to use! After this initial battle, Relentless was able to maintain a chain, despite this achievement not being part of the plan. Relentless continued to gain territorial advantage, moving the battle lines deeper and deeper into PT territory.
This forced PT to change its tactics, resulting in assaults launched by PT-Calc and PT-Ironhearts which forced Relentless to abandon territories above MPF in order to continue assaulting PT. During this time, PT-Family and PT-Penguins changed up some territories to enable PT-Family to come within striking distance of Relentless, while also restricting their maneuvers on the map through vacant space.
Despite this setback, Relentless pushed forward and attempted to hospitalize all PT members whether or not they were present on the walls. The next step involved isolating PT-IH to prevent a retreat westwards, while also trying to prevent PT-Family from performing a full assault. Relentless initially locked them down with a fake assault. Meanwhile, PT-Calc and PT-IH were anchored, preventing them from initiating any new assaults against Relentless until their current attempts failed (three day timeout).
This gave Relentless the tactical advantage they needed to slice through and divide PT's holdings without becoming split themselves. The faction found a happy medium of sorts, discovering that while it could sit on two walls just fine, trying to hold a third was a real struggle.
Once the spaces marked with 4 were taken, PT-IH were on the verge of being isolated completely. On the other side, PT-Calc were also becoming divided. Step five of the plan was mapped out below:
At this stage of the war, we were used to constant resistance from PT, which normally took the form of a so-called "small wave" starting about 7 am TCT daily. As PT's waves of attack became more regular, Relentless members stacked in anticipation for a daily fight back. Part of the reason we dubbed them small waves was how these attacks reflected on the territory assault statistics, the red being PT members on the wall.
Relentless did suffer from the interference of outside hitters such as BodyBagger (paid by an unknown source), CindyFury and Kapten_Klitoris. But for the most part, the war was fairly predictable, with PT waiting in hospital until sufficient players were online before emerging in 30-90 minute waves. As the length of the war progressed so did Relentless' expansion, and this led to issues with the number of territories it was allowed to hold (15).
The daily war soon became predictable, and as the assaults progressed our members became more familiar with joining the walls, having not really been involved in Territory assaults on this scale before. These three walls were filled with 66 Relentless members in total - the faction was even winning its fake wars at this stage.
PT members were now starting to make errors in desperation, a good example being when Alguem attempted the kidnapping the mayor crime without having 75k on hand; a mistake which resulted in a lengthy jail sentence. Knowing that a Lawyers Business Card, Bust or Bail were his only options for escape, I, the ever-altruistic Hank, decided to help him out.
Relentless was now keen to fortify its boundaries, and they did so with F2; a war designed to force PT-F family to retreat. By this point, PT-IH were cut off and on the verge of being removed from Sector 1. PT-Penguins entered the fray with a fake war of their own against PT-Calc designed to block Relentless' progress. Not to be outdone, Relentless asked SA to hold a vacant territory which restricted PT-IH's ability to reform in size, and this resulted in them being reduced to five spaces.
Relentless also initiated fresh assaults against all PT factions for the first time in this campaign. The territory map soon resembled a Christmas tree such was the prevalence of territorial war, and anyone suffering from epilepsy would have done well to avoid looking at it for too long. And with their desire for more territories still unabated, Relentless upgraded its maximum capacity from 15 to 16 spaces.
To progress to the area of Sector 7 held PT-Calculated, Relentless elected to instigate a fake assault upon territory BFF via another faction. Since PT group decided to attack Unrelenting (then Transfiguration) at the start of the feud, it was deemed a good opportunity for them to claim their revenge by locking PT-P into place on the map. Relentless negotiated with IBB to allow them to get into position, and from here Transfiguration launched a territory assault on PT-Penguins' territory of BFF. This prevented any further retreat from PT-Calc, and in turn, enabled Relentless to get close enough to Sector 7.
What Relentless didn't plan on was the then leader of Transfiguration, Scalper, attempting to win the territory. The agreement was simple; initiate an assault, nothing more. What followed next was pretty comical, as in less than 24 hours Transfiguration had been sold to Saitoma for 20b. To guarantee their continued compliance a deal was struck, the details of which are shown below.
Do not agree to Peace Treaty with PT - 200 day Peace Treaty
Win BFF space - 365 day Peace Treaty
True to their agreement, Saitoma's Transfiguration proceeded to assault BFF, and in doing so managed to complete the barrier around PT-Calc.
At this point, Relentless' assaulting walls had 77 players on them, and shortly after they were boosted to 93 with the addition of a defensive wall. It even got to the stage where Relentless were asking PT members to come out of hospital; such was the boredom within their ranks.
PT-Family finally launched an attack against Relentless at AFF to prevent further assaults on PT spaces north of this position. This also made the war at BFF against Transfiguration so important. If they couldn't win within three days then PT-Calc could be released by PT-Penguins, claiming their vacant territory in the process. With RFF being assaulted by Relentless north of AFF, this tactic was designed to hold control of this space at 90% - an important move, as winning this territory would restrict Relentless' ability to assault others without abandoning RFF in the process.
Relentless started to look at options at how best to divide PT-Family to see whether removing them entirely from Sector 1 was possible. Ultimately it was decided it could take weeks to push PT-Family into Sector 7 as well, so having made our point by decimating PT, as leader I felt it was time to reopen discussions with PT for a truce. Initial discussions were held between myself and Dacampa.
With the net tightening on PT-Calculated, Relentless initiated an assault on OHD. PT-Calc were now down to 6 territories and PT-IH down to 4. The pressure was firmly on PT, with the following internal comments from PT members having been confirmed as genuine:
BrocketIII: "Ok I am out of e and heading for bed. Good luck and have fun. We should Ally with them, we cannot face them again."
I_Am_BaZaaR: "Yeah I lagged and scar took me out, he is sitting on me since I changed faction from..."
Shindig: "Sorry, I'm just really annoyed seeing those peeps come online and not do anything."
FalconE51: "They're using a script to hosp us as soon as we come out."
misanthrope: "Didn't realise there was nowhere to sit on the wall lol, even if there was, I don't wanna die again. annoying."
Dr-Strangelove: "Do we only have four territories left?"
hyperfuse: "We dead."
401K: "It's kinda scary when you take a look at PT-Family page and like 98% of the members are in hospital."
hyperfuse: "Yeah."
401K: "Coz they're supposed to be the strong ones."
401K: "Reminds me of the time the dinosaurs got killed and it was just left with us smaller mammals."
401K: "Sighs not again."
The feud concluded when a truce was finally agreed between PT and Relentless, the terms of which involved PT-Calculated and PT-Ironheart abandoning their territories and starting again on territories from Sector 7. Relentless was also barred from giving aid to Transfiguration, and neither PT or Relentless were allowed to target each other in coordinated chain break attempts. Any future provocations by either faction such as a territory assault or chain break attempt would result in the ending of the truce.
With the war wrapping up, it was time to look back on just how decimating territory warfare can be for a faction on the wrong end of a battering.
Relentless' chain also concluded shortly thereafter, with the result being the second most respect ever achieved during a 25,000 chain, including a staggering 6,664 war hits (knocking PT off the wall), 1,173 assists (successful group attacks) and 1747 Retaliations (hospitalizing targets who have attacked us, mainly PT targets).
Throughout this campaign Relentless utilized over 3000 revives and members donated over 200 FHC's into the Armoury. It is likely the war cost members well in excess of $15,000,000,000. However, the true number will never be known.
In the following week, both PT-Calc and PT-IH returned to Sector 1. Transfiguration, who had been renamed The Pyscho Realm, were removed from Sector 1 and - surprise surprise - proceeded to be sold by Saitoma to the_Joker. He then re-renamed the faction to Kiss My... and took them back into Sector 1 south of Relentless.
So with this feud done and dusted, what is next for the citizens of Section 1? Are its other inhabitant factions finally awakening from their war slumber, or will the status quo of peace and farming prevail? We shall see.
Original article
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