Sellbot HQ: VP Strategy Guide!

[King Beany]

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

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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

About Toon-Ups during the VP COG battles:
There is only ever one good reason to leave the cog battles without everyone at full health. That reason would be if you are trying to hurry to help out the other side. If this is not the situation, then take the time to lure that last cog and toon everyone up, even if it takes a couple of rounds not attacking that last one.


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

Another point to consider, especially during the first cog round, is the level of cogs that you are facing. If you are facing 3 medium to high level cogs and one lower level one (say lower than level 5), you might consider leaving that lower cog for later. The benefit from doing this is that you can eliminate some of the more damaging cogs earlier, and if the smaller cog becomes unlured, it's unlikely to do any significant damage anyway.

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

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.