-Karash

-Birdseye

-Sirian

-Grax

Io NH "Believe it or not, this was my first full game with Xciter head to head. We have played countless times on Kali in anarchy games. I remember quite a few of them in Muses First Half. We had tried to play a D2 match on Kali back in Dec 97 and with the quality of the connect we had, we both went into full runner mode. After more than two hours the score had only been 6 to 4, his lead, and we were both exhausted. We eventually called that one off. I am pretty sure it's the all time yawner for IDL matches. Anyway... I finally got off the P90! YAY! And I got back up to the top of the ladder on my very last P90 match. I ran off a good string of wins and held on to #1 and Xciter won a big match and climbed to #2. Well we just HAD to play! So we decided to do some D1, and we tried all week to set it up, but we were never free at the same time. And I continued to play matches... and as luck would have it, I was still #1 when we finally got our chance. He called me up for the match, and we played Io NH, which is one of the handful of levs he calls home. I started right beside the spread, so I grabbed it and the vulcan while he got to the fusion first. I harassed him a bit with the blue, but he just wasn't impressed by that. ;) So I whipped out the vulcan and I caught him in a hall and really let him have it. Then I had the fusion! And I hit him with it on one of the next couple kills. I guarded the weapons and it got to be 5 0 before he scored. We did one plasma dogfight in the largest room where it lasted a good 20 or 30 seconds and I didn't get hit, finally took him down. Whew. This game was going REALLY fast. He tried to chase me down a couple times, but I ran and he died every time. I was really laying into him with the vulcan when he turned aggressive. So he switched up and made camp in the big room. He took me down in there a couple times, and made it clear he was guarding the spew. So I took my time gettin back there, and the next three times I got to the second plasma with just 11 damage or less. At 13 5, I caught him on a respawn in the energy bay with a precharged fusion shot. That had to hurt! Musta pissed him off, too, because he came roarin in and smacked me, then reeled off four more kills in a row! One of them was SO sweet! He laid some proxies up in the dogfight room, and when I went to get the plasma he forced me right into them. First time I ever recall giving up a bomb kill in an open room like that. He also got a one-shot preloaded kill. It went from 14 5 to 14 10 and he was on a roll! But I always find a way to adapt (its not always enough, but I make my opponents earn every kill). I got the fusion and hit him with it a few times, including a peekaboo facial at the energy bay. I really raked him with the vulcan, too. I figure I got at least 5 or 6 total kills off vulcan. Yet when he had it, I mostly got him to burn it off in long distance spray-n-pray shots. There was a second incident where my dodging was really on. I had had that one dogfight earlier, but he had adjusted and found ways to hit me some in the open. Well... after a respawn at the exit, near where I had died, he came at me with plasma and I backed into the exit. I kept scoring hits with the vulcan, and he charged in! He was RIGHT THERE at the exit with me trapped inside, and I danced and juked and somehow I wriggled out of there with just three or four plasma hits out of at least 24 shots fired point blank, and I killed him with vulcan as I tripled along the floor and popped out of the trap. I know that if that had been on Kali, he would have been crying foul! I still don't know how I lived through that! It was pure Zen! I have done things like that at times and been accused of cheating by GOOD players. *shrug* I make it my business not to get hit. You can't THINK about it; you just have to react. We had another really hot face to face fight over by the tunnel entrance. I respawned right there after a death just two cubes away, and he picked up the fusion from my spew and all I could get to was a quad! So there I am, back to the wall, and I'm firing laser 1 and he's reeling off fusion after fusion from three ship lengths away. And as I'm sittin at my machine, I am physically leaning from side to side, ducking my head, body tight as a guitar string! And I am dodging the purple and gettin a laser hit here or there. Man that was really intense! Musta dodged a dozen moth nets in a really tight spot. I finally jumped out at him and got the kill as I tripled past. Got to use my favorite macro, too: "Laser 1 kill! WOOOOHOOOOO!!!" ;) Xciter had some really badass dogfight kills tho. He definitely hurt me the most with the plasma. I gave up that one fusion kill, but mostly evaded the pretty purples. He tried the spread once, but I was no more impressed with it than he had been at the game's start, so he went back to plasma. He camped a couple times, and caught me as I came into a room while he was nested above the entrance. I survived 3 of 6 such incidents, and two of the times I died I was low on shield. So I figure I was successful in thwarting that general tactic. The game ended with a natural fusion stomp. I killed him in the big room to go up 19 11, and he respawned by the energy bay. I started to precharge the fusion but he came through the bay, so I just held the trigger and started takin damage, and I nailed him in the corner. WOOHOO! Was a fast and furious match between #2 and #1, and I am just lucky he started off cold."

-Sirian

Io NH "This was only my second match with Xciter because he had always been unhappy with our connections on kali. So, on Sunday, I offered to pay for a modem direct game. He was #1 at the time, and I decided to try to beat him in his home level. The game went back and forth early on, with some monster dogfighting by him. He tended to camp the (for IO) big grey dog room. That became a bit repetative, and I was able to taunt him with vulcan whenever he hid in one of his spots. I made a 7-3 run, using fusion, a little spread, but too my own surprise, mostly plasma. I got a bit cocky at this point, and Xciter decided to take control. After losing to him in a dogfight in big room, he decided to camp my spew. Now, most people have trouble keeping up with my spew guarding, but I would say Xciter it certainly up to par with me on it. He blasted me with plasma and fusion to cut the gap down, and at one point had a sweet kill where as soon as I entered to get my stuff, his first two fusion shots killed me. Wow! I was in trouble. I looked at the score in disbelief, it was now only 10-9. My lead just abot shot and him gaining momentum with each fusion shot, I decided to back off, and play it much smarter. I realized that if I kept dying in the dog room, X would take the game. So I made a mental note to try as hard as possible to die anywhere except the dog room, and attempt to kill him in areas besides the dogroom. I did not avoid dogfights altogether, and in fact got a few kills int here, but when low in shields, I attempted to head for the hills. After killing him in the area with the passages to the reactor, I rattled off four kills camping spew. I managed to die in the smaller orange room adjacent to the reactor orange room. I killed him right off the bat with a *sweet* fusion shot where I popped out of the energy bay after flushing him out of the big tunnel, and shot a fusion bolt straight across the entrance to the grey room, hitting him square on the nose. He nailed me pretty good after that in the dog room, and had some really good plasma weaves. The score was now 16-10, and the game seemed to be in my hands. I was able to kill him once again in the reactor entrance room, and that was all she wrote. A 4-2 run finished off a 20-12 game. My strategy of forcing deaths out of the dog room certainly paid off, because the final stretch of the game was 10-3. Had I not thought of this, I am sure X would have pounded me. This was my first match with xciter in d1, and I enjoyed it, especially because it was modem direct."

-Birdseye

-Birdseye

-Xciter

Io NH "Cloaker, like a lot of people had been hounding me and hounding me to play him, for quite a long time. But he just happened to be one of those people (Like I am with Sirian) who always catches the person at the WORST possible time, when they have no time at all to play. So I challenged him to the vendetta and we agreed to do a d1 home level for each of us, and a d2 neutral level. Well, his d1 home level was first, and why he picked Io-NH to play against me, I don't really know. He should have checked out my profile I suppose and realize that I am one of the 2 or 3 "Io players" in the UT, who tend to do very well in that level, with the exception of a close game or a loss to another one of the "Io players". In any case, I was somewhat relieved because I know this level well and I tend to annoy the hell out of people when I play it. :) "My whole strategy (thanks for the tip Xciter) was to capitalize on the fact that Cloaker is VERY impatient. I figured if I could rattle him really early on, I would totally destroy his confidence and be able to manhandle him and thats pretty much what I did. Cloaker likes to fight straight up, in HIS favorite room and dogfight, with prettymuch nothing else mixed in. So I did nothing but run away from him for the first 10 minutes of the match. Thats it. Every time I saw him, I ran the other way. It totally pissed him off too! I got the occational kill when he tried to follow behind me by using vulcan, or a smart or homer I had picked up while doing my marathon run through the level. "I knew he was frustrated when the macros started. I generally do not use macros much at all in a match, but I use an opponents macro against them in some cases. Some opponents have macros to try to goad you into fighting with them, that they only use when they are frustrated that they can't get you. Once cloaker gave me a barrage of those taunt macros, I knew it was time to switch up on him. And I went aggressive on him. "The next few encounters with him I started the same maneuvers as before, but as soon as I rounded the corner, I doubled back, and about 3 or 4 times caught him going to another entrance of the big room, trying to catch a glimpse of my running ass on the other side of the level where he *THOUGHT* I had gone to. The second he turned around....*DOINK* I built up a comforable lead in this fashion. "In cloakers defense, he tried a different tactic on me after I had got the jump on him a few times. He tried camping. I'm not talking about waiting in a single room... He was mostly doing that already, which is cool...but this time he brought marshmallows, chocolate, and grahm crackers and had the campfire burning. :) I have always been good at sniffing out a camper and this time just worked to Cloaker's disadvantage. I chased him around the energy center into the large room once, and I followed him out about a second later. Not seeing him anywhere in the room, and knowing he couldn't have made it to another one of the room's exits by then, I knew he was camping just under the ledge that leads into the large room. So I slid into the room, face down, and fusion charging and let one go the split second I passed over the ledge, and there he was...like a faithful dog fetching the morning paper for his master, Cloaker never thought twice about fetching my fusion :) "To be honest if we had only been dogfighting, the score would have probably been like 20-18 or something REALLY close. I think I won 7 or 8 out of 12 dogfights we had. The rest was mostly tunnel fighting, or hit and run by me, or a sweet missile kill by either of us. Cloaker later said something to me about my choice of playstyle for that match, but heck...to me you use whatever the best tactic is. If hit and run will get me 20-12 win and dogfighting will get me 20-18, I'll take the 20-12 any day of the week!"

-LordDeath

-Chipmunk

D2 Io "This was the first game of my vendetta with scream, and I knew I HAD to win if I was going to win the vendetta, because I was certain I would lose to the kid in his D1 home (Athena). I started off well, built a slight lead early on, as scream and I felt each other out. I believe that I was helped by previous wins against scream in my home levels of FRP and Atropos: I had gotten inside his head a good bit, learned some of his tendencies, and also managed to shake his confidence in his ability to beat me. As the game wore on, he became more and more aggressive, and actually took control of the game away from me and spanked me good like any Rat Bastid should be able to do. I fell into patterns, gave away more ground than I should have, and was in serious danger of losing the match, the vendetta, and five rungs on the ladder. But then, that's part of why the IDL plays matches to a length of 20 points: to give you time to adjust and readjust to your opponent. I realized why I had started to lose and changed up my strategy. If he wanted aggression, I was going to give it to him, and we pretty much jumped in each other's face for most of the rest of the match. I came out ahead, and then had to face him in Athena. He later went on to win the Cross Maxius in this level vs Kiln."

-Sirian

IO is the smallest level ever to achieve popularity. Another masterpiece from Spaz. There are two small rooms connected by three tunnels, one of which contains the main energy bay. A third room sits to the side and holds access to the reactor area, and a U-shaped tunnel runs out the back of this room to the back of the room next to it. And that's it. Also, there is only one fusion cannon and only one spreadfire, so you must fight for possession of them to be able to use them and to prevent them from being used against you.

Although Io is smaller than Athena, it does not play as fast. The three small tunnels in the middle of the level act like a border between nations, and games on this level are a story of repeated invasions of one side by the other. The energy bay is often the front line, and is easier to control from the larger room; yet most missiles respawn in the U tunnel or reactor area, so he who controls the two rooms on that side usually has more missiles at his disposal.

This is a level where both dogfight and tunnel skills are required. Wreckless aggression can get you killed, but so can too much waiting. Going for missiles is a dangerous exercise unless your opponent is preoccupied with controlling the large room, as it is easy to get trapped in the back tunnels, and the reactor gives away the fact that you are up there when it starts to shoot.

If you want to win on this level, polish up your prediction and anti-prediction skills, your courage and your stamina. You are in for an intense fight.

This level rates 9 on overall design.

Io NH Since Io only has a few homers, the NH version is almost identical. Only users of fast PCs will notice the difference, free from the occasional nagging of those hard-to-shake drugged-up high-megahertz homers on PCP. :) Overall Rating: 9

D2 Io Throw D2 items into Io and it makes a great level even better. The pace of the game picks up quite a bit with the diminished threat from spreadfire combined with the increased mobility of the afterburner. Io in D2 is primarily a plasma war, and it can be either a dogfight to Hell in a shoebox or an extremely fast paced hit-and-run peekaboo ratfight, depending on the inclination of the participants. The available range of tactics and tricks may at first seem limited by the level's tiny size, but this is deceptive. Coping with runners can be either easier or harder, depending on the relative tunnel fighting and prediction skills of the players. The D1 version was truly before its time, as this level seems to have been designed from forethought with D2 in mind. As with Athena in D1, Io in D2 offers players a wide range of possible approaches to winning the game and throws the particpants together in an arena where there can be no excuses for losing, no shortcuts to victory. We rate it a 10!

Io OW The OW version of Io, for D2, plays just like the D1 version, except with a diminished threat from fusion and spreadfire. Overall Rating: 9

-Ratings-

Level Name	DF	TR	TM	TP	EB	GM	3D	WF	CR	LV	ST	Overall	Special
D1 Io	7	7	6	5	7	2	3	8	5	6	6	9	x
Io NH	7	7	6	5	7	2	3	9	5	6	6	9	5
D2 Io	6	8	8	5	7	2	3	9	5	8	6	10!	x
Io OW	7	7	7	5	7	2	3	8	6	8	6	8	JK