Edit: Pre-warning: Holy crap, this is long! I hate myself.
Yah, the what-not-to-do's. This'll be rambling and stuff, but hopefully something will be had of it.
First, defense.
Lucifer mentioned doubling back. With my defensive style I almost always doubleback at the start and into the zone. I do this in part to close off the rear of everyone's tails so that if some attacker manages to slip through a seam at the start, he'll crash. (Which is why I think, with this defense, it's actually not a bad idea to
let one slip through. Don't worry about making a really tight grind on center at the beginning. Go ahead, leave a visible seam and let him straight in, fooling him into thinking you've been sloppy and he's gonna sneak right in and take the zone. He'll hit a dead end. Boom. One less opponent to worry about.)
Anyway, because I do this, I always say to my teammates, "no one double back except me!" Our mom even has a teamchat with a similar message. Someone new to the team might mess up their first round, but they get it thereafter.
Secondly, if you have a defender who wants to fill the entirety of the zone, and you're near the outside of the formation, don't break off too early. This applies to whether you're going to be an intermediate attacker/defender, or whether you're going to be the outer portion of an inner/outer defense. Wait until you get past the zone a bit. Otherwise you're making it too difficult for your inside defender. You're basically pushing him to one side, or making him take longer to get around to the other. He may also just be taken off guard and smack into your wall.
Thirdly, if you're the outer of an inner/outer defense, don't make some long grind at the beginning thinking you need to get up speed. You don't. Speed for weaks! Truly, speed is not necessary, and in fact can be bad. You making that long grind at the beginning just makes it take longer for you to get back and for the perimiter around the zone. By the time you get halfway to the other side (maybe not even that far), speeding attackers may have already made their way in.
More than likely, a good inner/outer defense will be made up of two players on opposite sides of the formation. The inner guy should double back, swing around the backside of the tails to close them off, then swing back in the other direction to begin covering the side of the zone he was initially on. The outer guy should make a quick grind on center just beyond the zone, then hang one turn to the outer portion, then hang another toward the back wall. Don't 180. Then continue on around the perimiter of the zone. If the timing is right, by the time you get back to the middle, the tails will have receded and you can continue on in the same direction.
Which leads to the Fourthly. If those tails haven't receded, don't turn around. Just stall a few seconds there until they do then carry on. It's best if the outer defender remains on a set course and doesn't diverge from it or take off away from the zone. Don't be led astray by some attacker, either. And again, don't worry about speed. The inner guy should always be paying attention to where you, and possibly your gap, are, so he'll have you covered.
Fifthly, if youre not on defense, and the assigned defender(s) haven't called on you for backup, don't come in and try to be a fookin hero. It's likely that if you haven't been called upon, the defender(s) feel like he/they have it covered, even if it may not look like it to you. He/they may be setting up a trap or something. Whatever the case, you coming in trying to be a hero just disrupts the defense and will cause it to break down. (There's a parallel here on offense, as Lucifer has already touched on.) Stick with your role unless and until you're called upon to change.
Sixthly, if you're a defender, have a couple team instachats to let your mates know what's going on, and use them with appropriate timing. I have four currently. The first is a simple "help!" Yours might want to be a little more specific. But the key thing here is to make sure you don't use it too late. I learned this lesson. Your teammates are likely fairly far away, and will need time to get back to assist you. If you're feeling even a little pressured, hit it. Perhaps, though, you'll quickly find out that you weren't in trouble after all, and you want to let your teammates know they can get back to what they were doing. That's why I have, "Nevermind, I've got it." Heh.
My third and fourth go together as well. One is "I'm dead." Lucifer got mad at me for this being too vague, so I added the other, "Defense needed now!" Look, sometimes the defender(s) crash. It happens, either by accident, myth, or some attacker getting the better of them. So, attackers need to pay attention to team chats for these sorts of messages. Of course, if you're completely on the other side of the arena, you probably won't make it back in time anyway. But certainly anyone in the no man's land should immediately turn back to defend, even if you were in the process of going in to try and take the other zone. Oh, and if you're the defender who crashes, don't waste time typing "omg wtf" or "oops" or any other commentary about the fact that you just crashed and why. Call on second string D first, then gripe.
Um, there may be other things, but now I'll move on to my observations vis a vis offense. There are a few modes of attack that I've witnessed as being largely unsuccessful.
One Lucifer has already touched on a number of times. When you're attacking, don't just circle the zone and its defender. Especially don't circle it in the same direction that the defender is circling. Nothing happens, you're not accomplishing anything whatsoever, and you're actually acting as a sort of second defender for the opposing team. You're also pointlessly prolonging the amount of time that your defender(s) is having to hold off attacks. It's been said once, it'll be said again. This is a team server. Don't think you're alone out there. Others are relying on you.
Another, don't just come diving into my sort of defense thinking you'll get a quick take of my zone. That's what I want you to do. Unless you're one of the very rare breed like our mom or nemo who is really good at navigating a mess—and chances are you're not—you will crash. That's one of my primary objectives. Frankly, I don't care if you get in. I know I'll likely core you (unless I screw up, of course, which I do) and that's just as good, and arguably better, than just staving you off.
Three, the "radiator coil" thing doesn't work. This is where someone gets into the zone and just starts doing a bunch of 180s. You either push yourself in or out of the zone, depending on which direction you're going. If you coil out, you've just reset the zone and have to try again. If you push in, you're trapping yourself for the defender to core. A smiliar thing is true for just trying to zig-zag.
Four, remember that
defenders within slow the depletion of the zone. Like I said in my first post here, "omg wtf I was in there forever!" Yes, and so was I. I then pushed you out or cored you. If it's just one-and-one, you'll need to find a way to push the defense out of their zone or kill them, otherwise you're hopeless.
(Attackers who may need to switch to defense, should their defender(s) crash, need to keep this in mind as well. Always keep yourself inside the zone. Even if you're just circling, you don't need to—and shouldn't—circle on the outside. Keep within the perimeter of that circle. Attackers will try to squeeze themselves along the outside portion, but it won't work. A, you're stalling, and 2, they run out of room out there.)
Which leads me to the next bit of offensive suggestion. As far as I can tell, the best thing an attacker can do, if he can, is allocate as much of the opponents' zone unto himself as possible. The point, really, is to make yourself a defender of their zone.
Try to find a way to get in and make yourself some kind of szieable-enough box (not necessarily square; irregular is good), then close yourself inside of it. If you've done it well, the defender has been pushed outside of his zone some. Now, at this point it's just the two of you, and if the defender still has enough room he can stall the depletion. This is where "two can take the zone" comes in. An aware secondary attacker who has been waiting around the perimiter now only needs to get himself within only a small portion of the zone for a few seconds. He doesn't need much. The effect of the two attackers outweighs that of the one defender and the zone depletes.
Or, that secondary guy, by making his move, peels away the defender from remaining within the zone and stalling its depletion. Because the defender knows "crap, if this second guy gets only a couple seconds in, I'm done," he'll oftentimes take off toward the second guy. This is where, as the second attacker, you say, alright. Because now the defender is out of his zone and your first attacker is sufficient enough to cause the depletion.
Good grief, I just typed way too much. So much so that my login actually expired.
Other than that, as a test server, an argument could be made not to ban people who misuse it because that makes it possible (since the server records) to see what they're doing and to come up with solutions. Of course, I don't know if z-man's doing anything like that, we're in a bit of a quandary about adding new security features to the code, especially this close to release.
Just that when I was playing tonight there were several situations that amounted to textbook examples of what you shouldn't do.
I'm actually hoping that it's just a consequence of my propensity for longwindedness.