aegisknight

the "remote facility" I am mentioning where Maxis currently resides, that is a new 935 facility created with the remnants of the weapons research group and Maxis's staff that was not massacred at Der Reise.

or Maxis I seem to have neglected this for a few days, so lets work backwards. Maxis was, from the very beginning, trying to develop a zombie army using the power of 115. Based on the records from Moon, Richtofen was more interested in teleporter technology from the beginning. Maxis ordered Richtofen to begin research and development of a weapons wing of 935 to augment zombie development, something to sell to the Germans to secure more funds for his own undead army. Richtofen was not happy about this, and continued his teleportation research mostly in secret, with help from his weapons researchers. We know from various radios that Maxis was already undergoing some successes with zombie control during this time. I'm not sure whether or not Richtofen had any direct connection with this, but his in-game quotes lead me to believe he did. At this point, Richtofen's DG-2 and Porter's Ray Gun were completed. He submitted them to Maxis under the hope that the development of applicable "high weapons" would lead to the closure of the zombie program and a resumption of 935's original goals. Maxis promised to produce at least the DG-2, but actually didn't so he could continue his zombie program. This pissed off Richtofen, who now actively wanted to sabotage Maxis's efforts. A short time after, Richtofen's teleportation experiments yield a major success, but he is teleported to the MPD, making his first contact with "the illuminati", or whatever. It was here that he developed the Grand Scheme (which isn't really his Grand Scheme, he is being used towards it via voices in the head, ect). I believe it was here that his affiliation with the zombie project ended, and he began using the weapons researchers in the construction of Griffin Station. The MPD required certain characteristics in people it "chose", characteristics that were very hard to find. They were, however, found in Richtofen himself, Takeo, Nikolai, the unnamed Mexican, and one other person. Richtofen began the necessary procedures to augment these subjects to the requirements he needed (not yet specified), I believe this is what gives the players augments such as the perks, no need to sleep or eat, ect. The Mexican died during this testing, but was replaced with Dempsey. After the augments were made on himself, Dempsey, Takeo, and Nikolai, Maxis renewed his interest in teleportation technology at the Der Reise base. Richtofen was actively sabotaging his efforts, and so experiments did not go as planned (this is the only explanation I can think of for the discrepancies between Der Reise and Moon; Der Reise has Maxis leading the initial teleporter experiments while on Moon we know it was Richtofen). He also began his work on his last subject; Samantha. She was initially cooperative because she did not like the undead army (which she was no doubt aware of), and Richtofen wanted to destroy it. I believe that Maxis was controlling the zombies as the Demonic Announcer directly during Nacht der Untoten and Verruckt, as his "trial run". However, all events took place after the events at Griffin Station, with Sam being taken into the MPD. Maxis somehow gained more control over the zombies, while Sam was increasingly keen on stopping them, regardless of Richtofen's intentions. Maxis somehow received help after the events at Griffin Station and is now at a remote location, controlling the zombies and their spawns using some technology we are currently not familiar with. I believe he was briefly taken into the MPD along with Sam, but since Richtofen did not do his augmentation to him, he was ejected just as Richtofen was. However, this gave him the brief opportunity to be the demonic announcer for Nacht and Verruckt. He continues to further his own grand scheme, which has involved the zombie spawns at all points of Richtofen's plan (COTD, Ascension, Moon, Shangri-La) to stop him. Sam still wants to stop the zombies, but believes Richtofen killed her father so she seeks revenge against him. Whatever the MPD is, it has something to do with 115 and the zombies. I do not think one controls the zombies from inside it, only that it is a factor in their rise. I support this with the fact that zombies were risen before anyone was in the MPD, so it makes no sense for it to be otherwise. Richtofen is now in the MPD and furthering the agenda of those who he is "working for", while Maxis is still growing his army in hopes of something like global domination. Thus far he has only been able to raise the dead where 115 is present in large quantities, but I believe the explosion at the end of Moon was a cloud of 115 he launched to have he ability to summon the dead basically anywhere on earth.

I'm at work, I watched with the sound off Well the first point is that you're running in solo, in multi I would always recommend finishing the EE on moon, so you don't have that problem. With the Wave Gun, I do not really see the value of M&S. They are the most useful to clearing a path, since they don't have a large ammo reserve. But lets assume you hold onto them anyway. You have hacker, and thus you have a 4th option. Hack flopper, grab mule kick, grab mp5k or 74u until drop, then switch back. This would be easiest if you have a Gersch to make sure you can actually have time to hack it (because there will still be zombies around), but honestly I don't know when you would use a Gersch in solo if it wasn't specifically for this case (or maybe turning off an excavator). Using claymores might be a better option here, and I'm not doubting the validity of it, but I think in the longer term (50+ games, where this is especially relevant) they aren't very useful. The reason I suggest it as such is because drops are based off the points accumulated in the round. If you are using Mustang and Sally with a Wave Gun, you're not getting enough points to trigger significant drops in the first place, regardless of your claymoring versus flopping. Using a wall weapon to just point whore until the game gives in is the only reliable method I know of it actually get the drops you need when you need them.

I use the Grandfather paradox theory as a supporting argument here: viewtopic.php?f=72&t=18931 where I assert that the earth wasn't destroyed at all, just burst of 115 by Maxis to further his agenda. I think that Black Ops ends with Richtofen's grand scheme, but there is no way the explosion was his idea. Richtofen's grand scheme ended with the Cryogenic Slumber Party (says so in the achievements) I believe the explosion is the first step in Maxis's Grand Scheme, which will be the focus of Black Ops 2

I'll give that a resounding "meh". Claymore piles can be nice for that, but at very high rounds it can force the game to screw up and boot you. Especially in Moon, a better strategy is just keep a pack-a-punched wall gun (*ak74u*). I went to 45 the other day with a friend, we never once went out of ammo. We both had Ray Guns, I had zap guns and 74fu2 and he had HK and RPK. We'd get our full spawns, run them together, wave gun, then repeat. When I hit half ammo with the Wave Gun, we'd just use our regular guns to kill, and every time we got a drop before we ran out, threw a gersch and hacked it. I keep a spikemore pile in Shangri-La, but on other maps its not as useful. Ascension flopping is a breeze, same with COTD. Kino and FIVE have ammo rounds, traps, and without hacker getting a random drop isn't especially useful anyway.

Mix. Boss rounds are nice because it makes the game go faster, and the max ammo doesn't hurt. But George, napalm, cosmonaut, and shriekers add something different to regular rounds, prevents people from running an uninterrupted train in the same spot for 70 rounds. I appreciate that.

Some change, yes. What that change is, no idea. guilt from what? But he works for the illuminati, and I still have never seen the zombie hordes as part of any of Richtofen's plans, or experiments. Richtofen wanted to return to the aether, but he wasn't the only one. Someone scrawled all over the walls in Nacht, Verruckt, Der Reise and Kino, and it wasn't him.

can't prove it, but it doesn't make any sense for Sam to control them. She was dropping powerups to counteract her own efforts. Richtofen has never showed any interest in controlling the undead from the beginning and was against Maxis's efforts to create the army to begin with. His efforts to develop the teleporter and beginnings of his grand scheme were before maxis's zombies really existed. I cannot think of any reasons for Richtofen to want to control the undead.

maxis's manical laughter certainly makes me think otherwise. As does Takeo's vow to destroy 935; if earth was destroyed that would be a kind of dumb thing to say

Didn't Samantha and Richtofen switch places specifically so that Richtofen could control the zombies? Wasn't that his Grand Scheme? samantha didn't control the zombies either. Why would she? What is the connection between the aether and control over the zombies, exactly? Maxis had been building his undead army, with progress in mind control over them, long before Richtofen made his journey through the teleporter or Sam was trapped in the aether. The zombies were always Maxis's deal. Not Richtofen's, not sam's. Richtofen's plans are the opposite, he delights in zombie destruction and seems more inclined to see them all destroyed.

Richtofen doesn't control the zombies

we don't actually know of anti-matter, its still theoretical. The LHC is beginning to do tests to prove its existence soon, since most of the Higgs-Boson particle tests are coming to a conclusion. Either way, I was basing this off of observations after finishing the easter egg. The explosion did not seem to happen on earth, nor did it seem the earth was hit. The earth is still clearly visible behind the explosion, if the atmosphere was vaporized in such an explosion you wouldn't be able to see clouds and clear skies near the top of the planet as you very clearly do.

the cloud would be heading towards earth at the same rate as the rockets were traveling (newton's laws and whatnot), then at an increasing rate as it approached earth due to gravity. No cosmic wind nor debris would alter this path, the dust didn't just stop in the middle of space when the rockets exploded. If it were as simple as launching explosives at the planet, no "calculations" that Maxis did would have been needed. Just point and shoot. What he did was calculate the exact point of explosion where the dust would accelerate enough to get to the earth unimpeded, but not so fast as to burn up in the atmosphere before slowing down due to wind resistance. about 20 minutes to the atmosphere (given the rate of the rocket's acceleration towards earth), another half hour after that to settle to the surface. 3 rocket's worth of anything would never, ever, ever be enough to destroy the earth or create an especially long-lasting eclipse. That is cartoon physics, and the detail Treyarch has put into the development of the zombies storyline thus far makes me sure they are above such slapstick errors.

because particles aren't burned up during re-entry, only larger objects. Smaller particles which can enter slowly and drift on wind resistance don't have much of a problem (the earth gets heavier every year thanks to falling meteoric dust). I believe Maxis's purpose of the rockets was to create a slowly falling cloud of 115 particles falling to earth, which will create zombies and somehow further his own scheme. The thickness of the cloud would be enough to blot out the sun in a few places for a while (creating an eclipse of its own), but as it falls and disperses the effects would be negligible; that of a large volcanic eruption. Treyarch has called Moon the "season finale" for Black Ops, not a grand finale. It seemed pretty clear to me that there is more coming. More could not be coming if the entire planet was destroyed.

nope, but I don't see why Shangri-La would be at the present day either.

again, it did not leave any such sign on earth. The cloud was well away from Earth, perhaps 1/3 of the distance to the moon. It blotted out the sun, but there was no actual impact, no damage, and no blast into the atmosphere. Need proof? How about this. Moon took place somewhere between 1950 and 1980, lets say. I never bothered to look into it. Call of the Dead takes place in present day, yet the EARTH IS NOT DESTROYED. Maxis said he wanted to prevent the damage Richtofen would cause, I believe he is doing this by enlarging his zombie army to combat Richtofen's Grand Scheme. I still see nothing to confirm that Richtofen is malevolent in all of this, once he was in the aether his plans ended. The rockets were nothing of his doing.

not necessarily, there isn't an eclipse every month. Even if there was, the moon's shadow would be minuscule and constantly moving (which would be hard to program into a static background image). I think Richtofen is talking about something entirely different with that. Sam never talks about controlling the undead army, from her quotes after the EE it seems she was only really in control of sending powerups. If Sam was in control of the zombies, they wouldn't have been found on FIVE. She was shouting "you'll pay for what you've done to daddy", I think that she was still pissed off at him but they generally had the same goals in mind. With what we know of the EE, it would be assumed that she would be more pissed off about what Richtofen did to HER. Maxis isn't dead (otherwise he wouldn't have been able to do the calculations to send the rockets), so its assumed that Richofen did something entirely different to him. Thats my theory to it anyway, I don't see why Richtofen would have done the prep work to get Sam into the MPD unless it suited his ends. It took a lot of work to get her there, it didn't just happen. As for this: 115 doesn't kill zombies, it creates them. Guns powered up with 115 are just that; powered up. Its like adding a supercharger. Constant exposure to 115 will cause the undead to rise, but industrial applications of it seem to have no such affects.

defeats the purpose of what? Richtofen didn't want the rockets to launch, that was all Maxis's doing. The fastest lunar launch took 8 hours and 35 minutes. Those rockets clearly used ROCKET technology, not some kind of advanced pulsars. So if we assume that each rocket had a pack-a-punched Tsar bomb laced with 115, the resulting explosive cloud containing 115 fallout would have literally blotted out the sun over the affected area, and caused an eclipse over the rest of the planet. The timing of all this is significant as well; it is twilight at NML when you spawn, and when you teleport to the moon, Earth is in fully lit view. This means that the sun is directly behind the moon; there is a possibility of eclipse. The location of NML (near twilight) means that since the center of the earth viewed from Griffin Station is at Noon (since the whole thing is illuminated), NML must be near the edge of the visible earth. The cloud of 115 released by the rockets would have blackened out the sun across most of the earth which was daytime, but from NML it would have only covered the Western edge of the sky where the sun happened to be. This would have indeed blocked out the remaining light (so everything looks like night time, and the stars would be visible), but the light that did reach earth would have a deep reddish hue, since that is the color of 115. Indeed we see this hue. The rockets are launched, and the 115 cloud shrouds the area of the planet

because its maxis's undead army. Sam nor richtofen never controlled them. I base this off the image of the earth after the EE. There is a cloud of 115, but the image of earht is unchanged.

I just did the EE again, and I've looked at the earth a lot during this. The earth isn't destroyed. the rockets didnt hit. think about it: the worlds' most powerful nuclear bombs don't do that kind of damage, and Maxis has nothing to gain by destroying the world. Instead, the rockets are filled with 935 mined on the moon, and explode long before impact, dusting the surface. More zombies to control.

then this would be more of a solo strategy, no? If you're in multiplayer and one of the many not running the war room, then the MS's utility would be greatly diminished either way

they can be used to kill, but they can't be used in their "normal" capacity as a clearing weapon for running trains. If the Mustang and Sally are in a player's normal arsenal, then sure using them to knock off the Thief too is a bonus use. I meant this tidbit more for the players that keep them as a substitute of a wunder weapon

nope, for multi. Taking time doesn't matter, since mis-stepping can cost you big time. Yes, the Mustang and Sally can work wonders for this map, but really why bother? You can't use them like you can in other maps to clear paths because there is no flopper, so you are holding them just for the thief round. If you hold onto a wall gun, even pack a punched, you have a gun that you can willingly just let go, and something actually useful during the regular rounds. I keep a wall gun as my third gun anyway so I don't have a real loss if I end up going down.

I'd still say NDU is the hardest map, but what makes it so hard is that skills gained on any other map have no application.

not really "budding", I made my first strategy guides on this forum about 7 months before you joined