ThtAstronautGuy [1977683]
Q: Before we jump in, I just wanted to say thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions throughout this whole process. The (Gold?) dust is starting to settle, Elims are coming to a close soon; how are you feeling?
Astro: A little less tired than before 😆 Got my first full nights sleep since elims started
Q: Glad to hear you got some much needed rest! Walk me through the strategy along the way. What was your plan going into day 1, and how did it change along the way?
Astro: Well my initial plan was the usual elims meta of find a core 1 or 2 teams to work with, then build up to a rough 6v6 or 7v5 type deal. This more or less continued until LCs big push there against us, but with lots of back rooms talk as we all tried to not be the next team out. After that, we were basically just in a normal roughly locked in 3v3
Q: Could you say a little more about those first few days? When did the meta become more clear to you? Who were you initially hoping to work with?
Astro: It became clear once people started talking about what was next after IO/9L got eliminated. And basically all discussions were "who is next", and not making true alliances
As for who I was hoping to work with, I'll keep that to myself in case I decide to subject myself to sleep deprivation for a week again 😆But I will say we ended up working very closely with LDP
Q: Fair enough, how about, who did you think were some of the stronger teams? Who did you under or over estimate?
Astro: Everyone could see the strongest team was touching grass, they had the biggest team by stats. I think we over estimated Brain Surgeons a touch, they looked like a reasonably strong team, and Zuni is good at playing the game of elims. But we by far underestimated Reptilians. They absolutely killed it at the bottom, when we thought they were done for. I think much of that is thanks to KillerCareBear and her voice chat tutorials. She really whipped her nooblets into shape.
Q: Overall how was being the Team Captain for you? Would you do it again?
Astro: My experience being a team captain was the best I have had yet in elims. There was a great supporting team behind and alongside me. I never really had to worry that internally things would fall apart while I focused on alliance discussions, had to sleep, or had to be out of the house.
I am always up to leading an elims team, however unless I forget about the sleep deprivation, I think next year I will stick to being a more supportive role, like council or vice captain, or like how I had sam, benji, and Revan running things internally for comms teams, push captains, etc. Less stress, and I'll get more sleep!
Q: Success in Elims depends on a variety of factors, one of which is funding. Can you say a little on how you approached the financial side of things, such as buying revives, mercenary hits, and providing Xanax, temps, boosters?
Astro: On the donations side of things, we were very liberal with things like xanax. The more xan we got out, the more hits we got in return. While we were largely in a position of power, we did not do revives or merc hits. But once we got med locked and were really getting hit hard, I started using our cash to get revives and merc hits to allow people to hit longer, and keep us from bleeding as much. You really have to balance what you can do with the resources available, and prioritize. If we'd had say, 20 billion in cash lying around we'd have done things completely differently because there would be so much more room to play with.
Med items temps and boosters were easy. We got far more than the team could use, so they went to anyone who wanted them.
Q: All said, how much money did you have to play around with, and how much did you dip into your personal wealth?
Astro: I'm sponsoring 1 day of our top hitter raffle (100m), all 4 days of which entirely came from the leadership team. We're still waiting on our revive bill, and depending on how large that ends up being I'll be contributing more towards that. When we stopped the offensive revives, the rough guess was we had already blown well past the 200m initial amount I wanted. We will probably be a couple hundred mil short, which I am going to cover part of.
With giveaways we were a bit over 1b in cash, xanax we distributed more than 1100, Meds were a couple thousand total, temps a thousand or so, and cans was a couple hundred, although the tracking for that in the sheet is clearly broken
We're not done sorting out all the transactions yet, but a few billion I’d guess.
Q: A real turning point in this Eliminations was around our decision to flip to targeting Apex. What can you tell me about the internal discussions there?
Astro: It felt to Andrew and I like Apex had been leading us (and basically every other team) along with promises of the top 3. Combined with some talk from S&S, we felt used, and with the position we were in at the time had no path left to the top 3. So we decided to jump the shark, and try and change our fortunes with the other teams who had not given us any reason to distrust them.
In the end, it unfortunately did not change our fortunes, but it ended up being a hell of a lot more fun and elims chat absolutely POPPED when those orders went out, and we kept that energy way up until the very end!
Q: Eliminations are steeped in politics. You talked earlier about the meta, I'm curious, how much did previous Eliminations impact this year's? And how do you imagine this year might impact future Elims?
Astro: Air went out first because of previous elims. No one trusted her for anything. Reputation can mean a lot, if you're a lead known to be trustworthy people might be more willing to work with you, and if you're known for otherwise people won't want to work with you.
I don't know if we'll see the more survivor style eliminations again. It was more efficient, but less interesting. I think it was certainly a byproduct of the 10v2 that existed to eliminate air.
Q: Over the years there have been tweaks to how Elimination works. How do you feel about the structure of this year? Are there any changes you'd like to see going forward?
Astro: I really like the format of elims. I feel the attacking format has been honed in nicely over the last 10 years, and the new official leadership process is excellent as well. I do think that next year changing stealth to actually work properly is needed.
That said, I really like this proposal to change elims: https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=4&t=16602890&b=0&a=0&start=0&to=0
Q: You said in your farewell post that this year was your favorite elims that you've participated in. What do you think elevated the Rocket Scientists above the rest?
Astro: I mean, the name obviously had me excited from the start 😆But, the team I was working with this year was excellent. I had a lot of fun working with everyone in the leadership team, and the members. We had some good energy going from the start, but once we did the switch and began shark hunting, seeing that pop in the chat as everyone kicked into gear and got hyped and began attacking at full tilt. It was so much fun, and just writing that first newsie got me hyped!
That night, I thought I was going to be woken up by DarkFall giving me a call at like 4am to tell me we were about to be eliminated, but to my surprise when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, we still had 16 lives! I very happily went back to bed, and when I woke up I saw that we had even taken some of Apex's lives! Just a lot of fun, and a real emotional roller coaster over those last 24 hours
Q: Did you wanna add any last words?
Astro: We are all Andrew on this blessed day