"Upon seeing your opponent in this rat trap, as most serious "fusion rats" know, there is only limited time before you either have another kill or another death. LordDeath proved it this day. He was quicker on the draw. What made this game memorable for me was just HOW CLOSE each kill and death was on my end. LD and I are both on "Direct Connects" with very little lag time. A game between us almost looks like LAN to the inexperienced. Our connection quality, like always, was very good. What amazed me was all the "sparks" I was getting on my client that missed him at his end. It took only that twentieth of a second for his ship to move completely out of the way…and I was left eating fusion. A LOT of fusion. Way too much fusion. Not only did he have more level experience than I did (his home, after all), he reacted that hair-trigger amount more quickly, and this left a lopsided score of 20-11…a real whoopin for me. But that's ok, I take a licking and keep on ticking. He finished the vendetta (Game 3) in a sheer act of courage trying to take me out on my own turf…an act that I will always honor, because it says a lot about him as a player."

-Karash

"LD is a fusion freak. In a small tunneling level like Rat-Hunt, expect to get raped by purple from left, right, up, down, front and back. I tried my best to get more kills off him, but his fusion is just too damn annoying! Basically my strategy was to camp in the big room with the 4 fusions, LD would keep shooting purple at me from the far end of the tunnel and hope I would run into one. As for me, I would harass him with spread, plasma, lazer, vulcan and a lil fusion. I didn't know the level well so I knew if I leave that area, I would get lost and get raped even more. The kill ratio is about 2:1 LD's lead, I started to play like Birdseye, camp his weapons and at the same time definitely stay away from those deadly tunnels. Got some freebies, but it was not enough to overcome LD's supreme fusion ratting skill. The final score was 20-12. Great game, one of the most fun ones I had."

-Z

"Counting this match, I've played LD three times in this level. The first was right after I created the level and released it. The second was some time later, after he started terrorizing other UTs in here. Those first two were not scored, but I won them both by close margins, and to the best of my knowledge, no one else has ever beaten him in here. Well, he'd been trying to get a game with me for over a month and just picked really unfortunate times to ask; I was always in the middle of something or other. Well he finally caught me when I was free... heh, well, sort of. More like he stalked me in an open socket game. :) So we agreed to play, and he just happened to be ranked #1. I looked back over and found we hadn't played since I had been #1 last... like seven months? Wow. Well, heh... we had PLAYED, just not for a match. Well last time out had been in my home level, so even though I've gone with his level picks for the most part (he has good taste in levels!) and let him pick most of our matches, I sorta owed him a game in his home. So I suggested it. "He offered to call modem, and this was the first time we ever played that wasn't through the internet. LD's from Ohio and I live in west PA, and wow, we had a sweet modem connect. Anyway, I spawned in the red area, and he must have started in the blue. Great. So he's got all the homers. I took some time to waste most of the conc packs; I remembered that I'd let him grab them all in the first two games, and it had cost me a death or maybe even two, so I wasn't going to let that happen again. I got the first kill, I believe, but then he got two and had the lead, and I did not lead again until near the end of the game. He wasn't pulling the same moves he had in our first two encounters in Rat Hunt... but those were also from a while back, before he started to build his rep for dominating in this level. So it took me some time to get any sense at all about his rhythms. One thing I spotted pretty quickly was his new mastery of both stealth and mobility in combination. These qualities are essential to any rat bastid, and I hadn't seen anyone else pulling them off quite so well since scream retired. Anyway, I found myself defending the red area while LD was moving between the two areas at will, and I realized I couldn't afford to be the less mobile rat and still hope to school him this time out. So I undertook to wage war for control of the blue area, and it didn't go very well at first. He killed me from behind twice over there and pulled out to a 2 or 3 point lead. But I had my game plan, and I wasn't going to be rattled by a nice kill or two, nor chased back into the red area on the defensive. I had to change up something, though, so I decided to try some plasma. Not as a feint, but for real. An FRP clone this level is not; it's got its own rhythm and rules, and the tunnel structures provide a very different flow. For one thing, the doors play a larger role, and fusion just doesn't dominate the game play quite as much (though it's still the primary weapon). "LD went to some plasma in reply, but he just didn't make it work as well as I did. Maybe that's because he was doing it in reply, without a specific plan for it, whereas I was using it only under certain conditions. Or maybe I just defended against it better. The plasma was actually the difference in this game. I figure I got about 5 kills off it to only one for LD, and there's your four point margin. But that only tells part of the tale, sort of like reading the baseball box score. What really did it was when I took control of the blue area. I went on a 7-2 run and turned the tables on LD with all his best moves, getting the drop on him in the same spots he had been getting the drop on me at the start of the game. Then it was me with the 3 point lead, and the end of the game closing in. He must have wondered how it slipped away from him. I'd have to say that it came down to mobility and stealth, and he didn't lose this game so much as I managed to win it with a slightly stronger performance. He also had a lot of near misses. As sweet as the connect was, there was still about 100 ms of lag, and that can be a lot when a whole game is fought in each other's faces. If he could have kept me from gettin comfy on the blue side, he'd have contained my threat level and not lost track of my whereabouts as much. I'll be shocked if anyone besides me or scream ever manages to get a Busdriver off LD in Rat Hunt. And screamy is retired!" :)

-Sirian

R AT HUNT is an all-tunnels level designed to provide a modern-era counterpart to the classic old school D1 level, Fusion Rat's Paradise. There are no choke points or seldom-used areas in Rat Hunt. The action spreads throughout the mine instead of focusing in any particular area.

The level is divided by doors into two regions, each of which holds half the start points. The sectors are clearly marked with signs, and there are plenty of landmarks including not only the signs, but the color of walls, doors, ceilings and floors.

The alpha sector is all on the blue level, and contains not only the reactor room and the energy bays, but also the plasma cannons and all five of the homing missiles. This sector is tight and brutal. With fewer avenues, there is little hit and run. Fights either end quickly or turn into a bit of a standoff. Beware of the ramp overhead, which adds a deadly 3D element to the gameplay.

The beta sector is larger, and contains all of the red level plus a fraction of the blue where the two converge. This area is extremely interconnected, making it impossible to predict what your opponent will do. The possible moves are nearly endless, so you will have to take your chances and hope you outguess the enemy. There are fifteen packs of concussion missiles tucked in secret closets off the tiny room perched above the red tunnels. This area also holds the exit and a secret, third energy bay, which you would be advised to know about.

With no way to jam open the doors in D1, there is no escaping the noise of opening them, which can tip off (or mislead) your opponent. Tricks and tactics involving the doors that divide the two sectors will play a pivotal role in most Rat Hunt games. Overall Rating: 8

-Ratings-

Level Name	DF	TR	TM	TP	EB	GM	3D	WF	CR	LV	ST	Overall
Rat Hunt	0	10	7	1	7	3	3	9	5	7	10	8