Sunday Morning Raid on (2/25/2018)

On early Sunday morning, Miasma and I executed a raid on the T6 base. This base is owned by Serrated, Passenger, Fuzzy, Zero, and Spicy. Here after, I will refer to them as the Butt Hurt Clan, or BHC for short. It’s not clear if they have an actual clan name.

The Set Up:

Mid-week, we had heard through sources that the BHC was looking for my base location. Apparently, they were still salty about our raid from last wipe cycle. They were convinced that I am some kind of evil mastermind. I knew from past experience that they would have significant stores of C4 and rockets.

On Friday of that week, I began to surveil the BHC base. They build into a deep lake valley, which gave me the chance to observe their base and look for weaknesses in the design. The BHC group had built a unique and clever base. It represented a significant challenge to our raiding abilities.

They built the base in a lake, in a cold region. They suspended the base structure above the water with interlocking door frames. A platform below the base was used to mount six turrets. A high stone wall (and gate) surrounded the inner base, and three rows of steel barricades protected the wall. On shore, an outer gate and row of barricades blocked access from the front. A shack with turrets covered the front gate (outer gate).

Obviously, we did not have enough C4 to brute force the base. We had about twenty four C4 and nine rockets. Going through the barricades and walls would cost at least nine C4. The cold water would make this a slow and difficult process, and we didn’t know how much C4 the base would take. My guess was at least ten, plus rockets for turrets. The top of the BHC base was festooned in turrets; going through the back wall would have given us no cover.

Plan of Attack:

Their gate shack was built with sheet metal doors to protect their turrets. This was a clever idea, because they would be able to open the doors during an online raid to protect the front gate. It became clear that we would have to take out their TC in the gate shack, which would give us build permission on the front gate. We could then build over the front gate, which would get us to the inner gate without committing fully to the raid.

On Saturday afternoon I was able to set up a raid base and drain some turrets. They had left the doors open on the gate shack. Once I got a look inside the shack, I found (much to my surprise) that I could see their TC from a half wall. That meant we could take the TC for the cost of a single sheet metal door.

At that time, Passenger logged on. I retreated to my mountain top lookout position and observed her with binoculars. I noticed that they had to swim to open their gates, which made them vulnerable to sniper fire from the cliffs. If we were to online raid them, a good sniper would have kept them penned up inside their base (a painful lesson that we once learned the hard way).

Passenger saw that one of the guns had been drained, which she reloaded. However, since the rest of their turret were inaccessible she never checked them. I had drained half of their turrets by that point.
I spent the rest of the day setting up a hidden raid base and making ladders. We never seem to have enough ladders when raiding.

The Raid:

I went to bed early and told Miasma I would be up early. I got up at 3:00 am, only to find that Zero was still on line. Even Zero has his limits, eventually he had to sleep. I started to work on the BHC raid shack. Two rockets got me into the turret door, then I bled the two turrets inside, with some difficulty.

I was able to spear down their TC and quickly get a new door and TC in place. Miasma logged in around this time with a new account. He wanted to keep his involvement anonymous. I had planned not to kill any sleepers or leave any traces. This is how we generally raid, as a matter of doctrine. We don’t care about boasting our victories or trash talk. Our play style values stealth and deception. We play Rust to win, not to stoke our egos.

Once Miasma arrived, I made a gear run from our base while he built up a raid tower. I returned with gear and reinforced his tower with stone, crates, and a door. At this time, Miasma had drained the BHC turrets on their inner gate. He was already inspecting the inner gate. We were not able to build in past the front gate, so C4 was our only option. It worked out well, we spent two C4 and two rockets and now we were inside the BHC’s compound.

Miasma drained more turrets while I shot out at least four shotgun traps. I tossed him gear from the top of the gate until we could get ladders up.

I made another gear run, for offensive turrets and more stone to reinforce the raid tower.

I had assumed that the BHC would have placed ladder hatches underneath their base for access. But they seem to know better, as ladder hatches are too weak. But this left us with a dilemma, to use four C4 on the bottom center sheet metal, or try our luck with a potential door maze. I wanted to go through the doors, I didn’t think there would be more than four doors. I mean surely they must have learned not to keep big central loot rooms from the last time we raided them. I was sure that they had done the sensible thing and divided up their loot into small rooms a with armored doors.

Miasma remained unconvinced of my plan. The game meta has changed and everyone builds door mazes now. I have learned to trust Miasma’s raiding ability. He wanted to spend four C4 to see was up there. It might be more half-walls and false-floors, but it would only cost two armored doors worth of C4 to find out. Of course this was why we had been so frugal with C4 to get into the compound. Now we had the luxury of taking a few chances. We weren’t chasing a sunk cost dream for mountains of loot. (Yes, we've done that a few times.)

It turns out Miasma rolled the dice and we hit pay dirt. It was a false floor, but filled with low quality loot. We were inside their base, or at least in a kind of crawlspace inside their base. The BHC design inside was quite surprising. The base was built with a kind of inverse star pattern. We found that we could see up the gaps between the various double walls. We could even get into some of the spaces and boost up, where we could see the undersides of loot crates!

It seems that all their high end loot was on top of a structure at the center of the inverted star. The critical flaw in their design was that we could access the crates from beneath. We took about thirty C4 and maybe thirty rockets and ran for the hills.

We made another loot run, but both of us were getting tired. It was already close to 9 am. I knew there had to be more loot up there. But, we only had two C4 on us. In our excitement, we had taken all the C4 and rockets to our raid base (a long hike up the cliff). We were starting to make dumb mistakes. I had not eaten anything or used the bathroom since the previous night. I had to take a break, my head was pounding. As Passenger had logged on, we decided to call it, as it is our general goal is to remain anonymous during raids.

We were very close to getting all their loot, taking over their base, and completely wrecking them. But that’s Rust, where a simple mistake can cost you everything. Sometimes, you just have to play the hand that fate has dealt. We did get enough to loot call it a successful raid.

Post Raid:

In retrospect, I supposed I should have seen this coming, but I was rather surprised at the outcome. After getting a few hours of sleep I logged in to find Shark (the admin) making comments about checking entity identifications. She’s talking about ladders and possible cheaters in the general chat with Serrated and Passenger. Shark is “restoring” things apparently. I would later learn that this meant returning all of the BHC’s C4 and rockets.

I immediately texted Shark and explain that I was the one who raided the BHC group. And, in no way did we used ESP cheats to find their loot.

She then asks about the player [deleted] and how he built a tear 3 work bench in one hour of game time. I explained to her that it was my friend, who wants to remain anonymous. But my evasion does not hold her off for long. She implies that I will be banned if I don’t tell her who this person was. She’s forced my hand, but I ask her to keep the information private. She agrees to this request, so I had to tell her it was Miasma.

I explained the raid in fine detail. I tell her about seeing their crates from between the inverted star cracks and going in from the bottom. She looks at the base as says that she would have gone in from the bottom as well.

Shark then asked how we got to the loot when the base had no apparent damage. I explained to her that Passenger must have fixed the damage. I would later learn that Serrated did indeed fix the damage. It would appear that Shark examined their base only after Serrated had fixed the floor panel. I am not sure what Serrated (or Passenger) told Shark about the state of the base, but it certainly looks like they made some misrepresentations in order to accuse us of cheating.

And frankly, the BHC strategy worked. They were able to manipulate the admin into restoring their gear. Well, this is a revolutionary new way of playing Rust that I had never considered [insert sarcasm here]. Simply manipulate the admin to get what you want. I have to say, I have learned something new from this experience. Though, I should point out that the admin (Shark) is very kind and sweat. She’s been a great admin for the year that I have played on the server. In this case, I honestly believe that Shark tried her best to do the right thing with the information she had available.

The lamentations:

Ok, so at the end of the day we didn’t get banned.

However, I did get a round of abuse from Fuzzy and Serrated. I cherished the experience. They don’t seem to understand that their childish whining is golden music to my ears. The cheating accusation was a huge ego booster, I have to admit. Damn, we are we really that good, we have reached god-like abilities? Bow to the greatness that is the Rusty Basterds Clan! Ok, more sarcasm there…

The reality is that both Miasma and I have 2k hours in Rust. We both have a talent for cracking hard-to-raid bases. It’s how we roll; it's what we do. We don’t fight in PVP very well. We don’t have role playing tea parties. And, we are not good at dominating the map (like Hammer or Kitty Crusher). We are great at building bases and farming sulfur. We love political intrigues and have intense focus. We pretty much farmed for three weeks only so that we could raid the BHC.

So back to my chat with Fuzzy, at first I denied his accusations in vague terms. But, he seemed to know more than I would have expected, including details that I only discussed with Shark. After I continued to play dumb and insult his limited intelligence, Fuzzy began to quote verbatim from my text discussion with Shark. He really isn’t very smart. The only reason I was baiting him was to find out how much Shark told him. It seems she pasted our entire conversation into chat, including the part about Miasma.

Well, this was unfortunate.

I am particularly found of Shark. Don’t get me wrong, I mean The Rusty Basterds enjoy a well-executed backstabbing now and then. For that matter Miasma and I sleep with a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince Next to our beds. (Wow, I mean not together, because that would be like weird.) But, I had assumed that the admin was out of bounds as it were. I hoped that she would at least maintain the illusion of objectivity. But, of course Shark, like all of us, is pray to human frailty and manipulation.

It’s natural for Shark to feel some loyalty to the popular clan. I understand that she is trying to maintain a fun server in a game that’s designed to bring out the worst in people. The evidence for cheating (or against) is not always so clear cut in these cases. But, this is the third or fourth time that she’s intervened or disclosed information against us.

Having said all that, it’s Shark’s server, so she can damn well do as she pleases. I am grateful she’s given us a fun place to play rust for the last year. Though, as I sum up the pros and cons of playing on Rust-A-Holics it’s become clear that we can’t keep playing on a server where the admin is effectively “in play”.

I should also point out that Fuzzy made some threatening remarks to me and Miasma. Something like, “I know you live in Minnesota, so let’s see if something happens.” He’s not very smart, really. From his Steam profile, apparently Fuzzy is a Glock pistol fan. Which explains a lot, as Glocks are also inaccurate and have a poorly design designed safety mechanism. For the curious, I used to shoot in IDPA competitions and I received my Marksman Qualification in ROTC at Cal Poly SLO. Finally, as my Steam profile states, I do actually live in San Jose California.


Post Script: Zero is cool and was not butt hurt that we raided him.
Second Post Script: Recently Shark has changed her policy on intervening in game play. She will no longer restore gear unless there is clear and documented evidence of cheating.
Final Post Script: We decided to return to Rust-A-Holics. The BHC has moved to RustGaming.