CCG : VP & CFO Strategy Guide!

[King Beany]

These are some guidelines to use when battling the VP or CFO with the CCG. Over many thousands of runs these guidelines have proven to help us in getting a high success rate in our battles.

The VP guide is on top with the CFO guide about 1/3 of the way down.

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CCG : Sellbot VP Strategy Guide
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Dessert with the V.P.
by Good Ol’ Waldo Crumblemonkey

So you have a bit of a sweet tooth. Maybe dessert with the V.P. will take care of that. This post will only address successful techniques for surviving the "Piefest" at the end of promotion. After the traditional battle finishes you have to jump up under the toon in the cage and activate your pie supply. You have accomplished this when you get an indicator at the top of the screen. Quickly run to the side of the V.P.and face him. Put a little distance between yourself and the V.P.. Now comes the tricky part.

Surviving the V.P. battle requires some skill. There are three ways to suffer damage at the hand of the V.P.. First is contact with the V.P. Usually a -1 on your Laff. Prevention of this type of damage is self-explanatory. The second way to be injured is flying parts. All those pies gum up the works. Hurts a little more with a -3 on your Laff. These are largely unavoidable in effective battle positions. There is a maximum range for this flying debris. Experiment with this in battle. The third type of battle damage is the most severe with a -10 on your Laff. This is quake damage that occurs when the V.P. lands after jumping. Now that Toontown has patched the MIDI bugs and we can promote with the sound turned on. The V.P. makes a very distinct sound as he prepares to jump. Learn this sound quickly to survive. A light tap on the Ctrl key and he can safely jump over the threat. Remember the damage occurs as he lands from his jump. Practice this and perfect this. The only way to survive is to learn self-preservation. Avoiding the quake damage is the key.

So now you think you got a pretty good handle on the whole survival thing. Good because your supposed to be helping defeat this Super Cog. Attack. To throw a pie you will use the INS Key. Pay attention to the power meter at the top of the screen. When you depress the Ins key the power meter will begin to fluctuate. When the power meter is down to all white you will throw a line drive with your pie. When it is all they way charged and blue you will throw a high fly.

There are two ways to assist in the destruction of the V.P.. You can either "drive him back" or you may choose to "Pie the hole". Sometimes it's necessary to do both in the course of the battle. I suggest you begin by learning to drive him back. You must drive him all the way down to the heliport then off the edge of the platform. Once one of the other players "pies the hole" the V.P. will crouch down and turn purple. Now is when he is ready to be driven towards the heliport. You must have a charged power meter to effectivley drive the V.P.. Position yourself so your pie hits the upper portion of his body. Hiting steel is of no use at all. You MUST hit his shirt or above. Head shots are extra special. He must be CROUCHED and you must hit ABOVE the horizontal GEAR located at the bottom of his shirt. The best place to be is where he has been. Just simply follow him as you drive him towards the edge. Throw as fast as the power meter will allow.

So your ready to try and pie the hole. Good luck. Want a quick advantage. Take a toon task to be a small toon for 30 days. Remember the doors that open to dispatch the cogs during the traditional portion of the battle. These are the achilles heel of the V.P.. One pie thrown cleanly in the hole will make him crouch. In the early stages of battle this can be quite simple. Get in the path of the cog. Sorry, this is the best and most dangerous spot. You can use the ramps to great advantage until he is all the way down on the heliport level. Remember a low or mostly white power meter is key here. Watch where your pies are hitting and adjust. I try to stand in line with the track on the machine. When he crouchs and turns purple run backwards fast. Hopefully your teamtoons will drive him back in a hurry. When he is on the heliport your power meter must be TOTALLY down when throwing or the pie will be to high to score a hit. You must also be dangerously close. Careful. Watch that Laff Meter. When he is on the heliport you may wish to operate from the ramp behind the V.P.. Although much less accurate than close up it is much safer. Remember not to let up your assault or he will change directions and start back up the ramp. Yikes!


Throwing Pies~ Hows it done?
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Pie Throwing 101
by Brer Rabbit

Hold the INS (insert) key down and you will see the aim bar continuously cycle right and left, blue and white. Releasing the INS key will launch your pie in an arch according to where the aim bar is when you let go. All blue is a high lob and all white is a straight line drive. For a quick volley of shots tap on the INS Key fast.. tap.. tap.. tap.. This is good for tooning up a nearly sad teammate standing in front of you or for knocking back a stunned vp when you are a good distance away or up on a ramp or higher level. For a high lob shot hold the INS Key down longer and let go when it is nearly all blue. This is good for knocking back a stunned vp when you are right in front of him. For a straight line drive shot, hold the INS Key down longer until the blue bar goes all the way back to white. This is good when you are right in front of the hatch when it opens.

The best way to stun at first is to stand a distance back and repeatedly tap the INS Key at a consistent rate so your volleys land at roughly the same distance. Then adjust your range with the UP and DOWN arrows, moving forward and backward while continuing to fire. You can see where you are hitting by the white SPLATs. Yes, your teammate's pies will make SPLATs too, so you have to look carefully to see which are yours. When you see the vp stunned, keep firing and hold down the UP key to run forward and knock him back. You may need to change your tapping tempo to get higher volleys to hit him as you get closer. A successful hit will turn him all red for an instant and knock him back. Hits on his face seem to knock him back further. The closer to edge you get him, the shorter the time he stays stunned.

Brer Rabbit's favorite stunner sweet spot is right in front of the vp's right tread, out of the spray of gears that come out when the hatch opens. When standing there, pan your view back with the TAB key so you can see when the vp is about to target you with a round of grears. When that happens, simply turn and take a few steps left or right and he will shoot at where you were just standing. When he sprays out the rain of little gears, dash around beside him or up close to the hatch, or just take your laff lumps. The same stunning tactics work for the rear, except the sweet spot is even better because there are no small gear sprays in the back. Being a small toon from a just for fun task seems to help, but you will be much harder to toon up.

Mouse users: The main (left) mouse button does the same thing as the INS key except it only works when the pointer is over the pie icon at the top of your TT screen.
The trick to the INS key or mouse button is the cadence. Once you can establish a steady rate of tapping then it becomes easier to maintain that and adjust where your pies land by moving your toon around.

TIP: On a standard keyboard, turn the NUM LOCK off and use the zero key, which becomes an INS Key, allowing the right hand to control the arrow keys and INS Key. This frees up the left hand to hit the CTRL to jump or your special left-handed mouse to speed chat or type messages to your secret friends.

Another useful thread with a bit of humor attached is Pops Guide to hitting the box


Toon-Ups
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About Toon-Ups during the VP battle:

If your Laff Points are getting low (20s), be sure to ask for a Toon-Up. By throwing those pies that are used to drive back the VP at another toon, they are being tooned-up. So if you ask for a Toon-Up, someone will most likely get behind you and start tooning you up!

Some great tips about tooning up:
1) Sometimes you can't heal toons that are smaller than you. This is one reason not to take any small JFF tasks unless more experienced at avoiding hits from vp and jumping... or if going sad isn't an issue.
2) Try JUMPING in the air if you see those pies fly over your head from behind you!
3) If you are being tuned, it is sometimes better NOT to throw pies at vp if the tuners pies are flying over you.
4) Please make sure you continue to jump WHILE being tuned. There is nothing more frustrating to tune someone and watch them lose points at the same time from the vp.
5) If the toon healing you needs tuning, turn around and tune him/her at the same time. Listen for the vp to jump and jump at same time. This helps all the toons get back to fighting the vp sooner. But only do this if you are comfortable doing so.

Jamie Girrl


Lure Tactics
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When in the battle before the VP pie fight, there are several strategies of how to beat these cogs and skelecogs.

The LURE strategy is one of them and the most used, but many people seem to not know how to use this strategy most efficiently.
It is a very safe strategy and is excellent to use with lowlaffers in the group.

First of all: Do NOT use traps unless the trap can finish the cog off, or if its followed by a gag that will finish it off.
Else it can get very critical especially with low/mid laffers in the group.

Here is how the lure strategy is supposed to work.
Lure the first 4 cogs.
Kill the rightmost cog. And ONLY the rightmost.
when the next cog come in, you lure it with a 10$ - NO TRAPS here please.
The extra cogs ALWAYS comes in to the left.
Again the rest of the group kill the rightmost cog.
Continue to do this till all cogs are dead.
If you have no lure fails, and if everyone is doing this, you wont have to worry about your laffpoints at all.

Sadie McSpeed


New to VP and have questions?
Here is an informative guide for some commonly asked questions.
VP HELP: If you are new

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CCG : Cashbot CFO Strategy Guide
by WizardHawk
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The Zone Defense System.

The basics:
The game pairs you with another toon and drops you both into one of four zones in the CFO battle room. One of you will become the crane operator and the other will defend that crane. In our experience we discovered that proper stomping defense of the crane operators is the main difference between a win and loss on a run. It is the chaos of toons running around in an every-toon-for-themself kind of fasion that destroys a run. Stay and battle in your zone and you will increase your odds of winning.

Roles:
The natural thought many have is to put your best players on crane. Problem is, it is the stompers that have the most influence on winning so making sure you have at least a couple of really good toons there may be key. The crane is much easier to learn then the good crane operators would like others to believe. Having one or two good crane people and at least a couple of good stompers should make sure you all come out alive. According to the basics, you should stick with the pair you land with. The problem is what if both toons in one zone are natural stompers? What about a toon that has asked to try crane that is dropped with another crane operator? It is ok to swap zones to get everyone in their best role, however YOU MUST WIND UP WITH 2 IN EACH ZONE.

Cranes:
Guideline #1: NEVER THROW A SAFE AT THE CFO UNLESS HE HAS STARS AROUND HIS HEAD OR ALREADY HAS A HELMET ON. If you see someone throwing safes at the wrong time, let them know with the speed chat phrases.

Not only are the cranes responsible for doing the damage to the CFO, but they are at least partially responsible for their own defense and the defense of the stompers. You can pick up live goons and move them toward the stompers to help move ones that are too close to you or help with clusters of goons. You can also drop a safe on nearby goons or to help clean out your area if there are a large number of goons there. You will not win if you allow swarms of goons to remain in your area.

Guideline #2: NEVER ALLOW MORE THAN 3 SAFES IN YOUR ZONE AND KEEP ALL SAFES AWAY FROM THE CFO'S TREADS. The CFO can pick up safes near it and put it on as a helmet. Keep them away from him and help make sure everyone has a safe by getting rid of some if you have 4 or more in your zone. You can get rid of them by tossing them sideways into your neighbors zone.

A word about safes: What most of the experienced crane operators do is find a time early where you have no goons to toss to move one of your two safes in front of you. The proper location for it is slightly off to the side away from the CFO's door so that you have a clear path for picking up goons and fairly close to your crane podium. Remember that the CFO can pick up safes near him and use them as helmets. The safe you drop in front will be used for ONLY ONE OF TWO RESONS: Hit the CFO when stunned, or drop on goons to defend yourself. If the CFO winds up with a helmet, use any other safe in your zone to remove it since you have plenty of time to do it. This front safe works very well for damage on a stunned CFO because you are already lined up with the CFO when you pick it up. One full swing back, and forward and let go. If you let go a little lower (around the chest area, or a little higher) you can make the safe bounce off of him and land back in your zone. This is one way you can help make sure you do not run out of safes.

In the end game, the CFO will have a flashing red light showing that you are close to victory. The problem with getting the last hit in is that as you get that far, he gets helmets almost as fast as you can take them off. It is best to have two cranes work together to win. One needs to attempt to take the helmet off, and the other needs to have a stunned goon on crane ready to go. You may only get one good shot at it so make it count!

Guideline #3: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN LP LEVEL. DO NOT WAIT TO TOON YOURSELF. I've seen too many very good players go sad because they waited to heal themselves. If you are lucky and have good stompers around you, you may find toonup treasures near you. Go toonup really fast after taking a gear hit or light hit. Don't worry about losing your crane, just stay healthy!

Guideline #4: YOU ARE NOT GLUED TO YOUR CRANE, MOVE WHEN NEEDED. This means you may have to stomp goons in your area if your stomper runs off or goes sad. You should also watch the CFO and be ready to step aside if he targets you. You have plenty of time to move so don't panic. Run around and toon up as soon as you take damage, then jump back to your crane.

Stompers:
Guideline #1: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE CRANE IN YOUR ZONE. This does not mean you cannot go to other zones to help out, it means you need to always keep an eye on your home zone and be ready to move to defend it.

Guideline #2: DON'T BE AFRAID OF STEPPING INTO THE LIGHTS. You can, and should, step into the lights of goons if you cannot jump them in time to prevent them from getting to the cranes. In general, you will lose around twice as much as the current value of toonup treasures coming out. It is also VERY IMPORTANT to understand that once you step into any light, you are immune to other lights for a short time! This means you can jump into the middle of a cluster and just stomp as fast as you can and only worry about taking one hit. You will do more damage by always trying to go around a goon to stomp it then by just taking a hit and getting that one down faster.

Guideline #3: ATTEMPT TO LEAVE TOONUP TREASURES THAT ARE CLOSE TO CRANES FOR THE CRANE OPERATORS. That doesn't mean leave them if that is all that is left and you are injured. You are totally responsible for your own health. Worry about YOU first, and your crane operator second. The crane operator can stomp a few goons if they need treasures and none are around. Having said that, treasure farming is one of the things that seperates the good stompers from the great ones.

Guideline #4: IN THE END GAME, ABANDON ANY ZONE THAT IS TOO INFESTED WITH GOONS. Both the crane operator, and the stomper should bail. You can either reinforce other zones, or slowly clean up that zone. What is most important is to have at least TWO well defended zones and to make sure they each have safes and disabled goons. Failure to keep a couple of defended zones near the end WILL RESULT IN TOTAL TEAM LOSS.

Beyond that, one more important thing a great stomper can do to help the team is pay attention to what the cranes and CFO are doing. If you notice that the cranes are having problems removing a helmet, go up and run into one of his treads. You will only take a -1 damage but he will 'sit down' to try to swipe at you. When he sits it is much easier for your cranes to take his helmet off.

This system does NOT require all 8 to be aware of it for it to work. Our experiments found that having even two or three strangers were not enough to kill this system provided that everyone helped cover the areas being neglected by those strangers. It even works with as few as 4 or 5 toons going into the battle.

These 'guidelines' are designed to help newer cfo'ers to know what is most important to victory while they are learning the skills needed to win. That one guideline (#4) was very important to us in the early development of test. At that time, EVERY run ended in failure until we worked out what each team member really needed to do.

That guideline is hard to lay out in detail since the end game is not exactly the same every run. Some have major swarms and others are quite spread out. The point is that it is better to abandon a zone or two then to take a bunch of damage trying to work it back to a usable state. Since it only takes one or two zones to win it is most important to work as a team long enough to get that last hit in and to be smart enough to know where that last stand should take place.

Several times in the last week we have won with only one crane at the end and here is how we do it. It does help if there are at least 3 or 4 toons left so that there are other targets for the CFO.

First, pick a zone with a few safes in it. You can take a few rounds to move them into formations you like and toon up before you make that last attack.

Second, the stompers can make this MUCH, MUCH easier if you attempt to stomp just one goon in line between the crane and the cfo.

Third, after stomping that goon its time for your end crane operator to take the crane. Have one or more run into his treads to attempt to give the crane time to toss the safe to remove the helmet. Since they already have a disabled goon lined up it doesn't take long to get that last hit in and in fact they even have enough time to step back from a gear attack if needed.

It is also quite important at this time to not stand near the crane. Doing so doubles the chances that the crane operator will take a gear attack. Stand off toward the door to try and have the CFO target you.

TIP: Should you get disconnected during a CCG run, please log back in as soon as possible so that your toon gets "cleared"(disappears) from the group you were with. This will help the others that were on your side get through the cogs faster, and enable them to hurry in case the other side gets into trouble.