Watch Good Players
Watch more experienced players. Most people who have played a lot of games are usually pretty cool about helping newbies out. Try to figure out the way good players hold their guns. If you can't figure it out, ask. Just because one of your arms is crossing a sensor it doesn't make it a good cover, or even a cover for that matter. Try emulating something that works before deciding you've got some revolutionary idea no one has ever thought of before. Figure out who the good people really are. Beware of thinking another player's good just because brags the most. Truly good players know they're good and usually don't feel the need to notify the world of this fact.Learn to Obey the Rules Early
Breaking a running habit after three games is decidedly easier than breaking a running habit after three hundred. Don't waste your time developing a one-handed cover if your Quasar enforces the rule. Why learn how to play twice? If your Quasar allows covers, use covers; don't think you're going to revolutionize the game by playing without them. If your Quasar disallows them, don't use them. Covering in a no-cover arena with the excuse that it's allowed elsewhere is a delightfully efficient way to get yourself banned.Different Skill Levels
Play against players of a variety of different skill levels. Playing against first time players all the time will make you an incredible player, in your own mind. Players so inexperienced they can't take advantage of errors in your style do nothing but help you perpetuate these errors. However, improvement is gradual. If you play only against players so much better than you that even your best moves fail, you will not improve. You discover good moves by stumbling onto things that work. If nothing ever works, you never discover.Variety
Play against a variety of people. Each player has perks: individual strengths and weaknesses that make his style unique. Twenty one-on-one games with the same person are less valuable than ten one-on-ones against ten different people.Packs
Play different packs. Let's say you play with the same pack all the time. You make sure You're always the first one into the vesting room so you can grab green 9. What's the problem with this? Well - if for example green 9's left back sensor doesn't work, assuming you're right handed, that's the side you'll approach people with. Normally players must delicately balance the angle at which they approach other players: rotate too far one way and the back shows, too far the other and the front shows. But here you are with a back that's very difficult to hit from one side.Play one game with this enchanted vest and you'll probably barely notice. You'll think you're just having a good game. Use it for a lot of games though, and bad things will start to happen. Normally you know if your back sensor poked around a wall enough to get hit because, well, you get hit. Normally you know if you're showing your back when you move because you'll get shot there. Take away your feedback for these errors, and pretty soon you'll start making these errors more often. Keep wearing that magic vest and pretty soon your back'll be showing all the time.
Someday, one of two things will happen. Either the tech will discover the packs' little problem, or god forgive, you'll get stuck using a different pack. Suddenly your cover will stop working and you won't know why. You'll think you're having a bad day, or week. Or month. Play a hundred games with a pack with no front sensors and it could take another hundred to forget the bad style you've learned. At our centre our marshals carefully observe all packs during games if any thing is mildly suspicious even if someone is just having an exceptionaly good game we check out the pack after the game or as soon as possible - always on the same day, we find that this limits the amount of times people get to play with advantageous packs
Quasar is Life
Have fun. Quasar can become your life. And that's okay. I mean, Quasar is life. Just don't let it ruin your life. If you play a game and get so pissed off about it that you have trouble sleeping that night, you need to chill out. If you're hitting the walls when you come out of games because you're so angry, take up golf. Or boxing.Or sky diving. Really take up anything, except Quasar, please. Not only are you not having a good time, but those of us who have to play you aren't having a good time, either. Truly, Quasar is supposed to be fun. Let it be that. Not that you shouldn't be competitive: being competitive can be a lot of fun. Get a grip and stop obsessing over that guy's pack that you swear can't be hit. So what. Who cares. Buy in the next game and forget about it.
Specific Advice
Most of this stuff is fairly basic in nature. The main reason being that some things in Quasarar just can't be taught, especially in writing; Find some good players and learn from them.Peeking
There are no shoulder sensors as in many other laser tag games; peek around corners before you actually go around them. If somebody is there, it's fairly easy to pop your gun out for a second, shoot him, and pull it back. If the person is close, try covering your speaker with your free hand. This makes it much harder for a player to tell where he was hit from (this tachnique is only effective in my opinion in a faily open arena where shots can come from everywhere,our arena is quite closed with many panels, we feel this makes it a better "competition" style arena because you litarally have to take someone on in order to shoot them rather than sniping from a distance). Another idea is to cover the outcoming laser with your finger; this is more effective with long distance shots where sound isn't likely to be a factor.Your Back
When facing off with other players feel where your back sensor is. Assume you're taking on a player from your left. If you're next to a flat wall, press your side up against the wall. This prevents bounce shots and direct shots to your back. If you're next to a corner, press your back to the corner such that your back sensors are right of the corner, the opposite side of the corner from your opponent. You can "hook" your back sensor on the corner and rotate right. Because your back sensor is stuck on the corner, it won't show. Because you're rotating right, your front sensor is even further around your body. A player properly set at a corner has a decided advantage over players advancing on him from open areas.The Receiving End
On the front of the gun, above where the actual laser comes out, is the spot where the infrared comes out. It's also a place to be tagged. You'll notice that this rectangular opening is split in two: one for receiving, the other for sending. It just so happens that the left half is the receiving end. If you're right-handed this setup is simply perfect: right hand on the trigger, left thumb in the receiving end. This technique is used in some arenas however it is not allowed in ours because we feel it is cheating, our definition of a fair cover is this; your sensors are allowed to be obscured from the person(s) that are trying to shoot you, however they must be open to be shot from other angles ie it is not allowed to totally obstruct any sensor on the pack or gun so that it can't be shot at all. We find this rule is the same in most centres in the UK. and it gives everyone a fair chance, in order to dodge someones reflex you have to be really goodCancelling
Ever notice when you come around a corner, face to face with somebody on the other team, and you both fire that neither of you gets hit? This comes from a limitation in the equipment that it can only process one signal at a time; while it's sending a tag signal, it can't receive one, so on the instant that you fire you cannot be shot. In two shots per second games, cancelling is easy in that once you shoot someone keep pulling the trigger as fast as you can whilst covering and everyone will find it extremely difficult to shoot you. In one shot a second games the application of this technique needs a great deal of skill and timing. A reflex is just slightly longer than one second. Many players delay their reflex as long as they can, so they can take as long as possible to aim and find a sensor.So, if you shoot someone, duck around a corner, then fire again as soon as possible, you'll often "cancel" their shot; because your pack is firing again, thei r reflex doesn't hit. Constant use of this technique forces players to fire their reflex against you sooner than they'd like. Less time for a reflex means less aiming time means less chance for a hit.
You can also fire as you walk through the energizer to prevent yourself from being energized. This may or may not be useful at your Quasar - it doesn't have any advantage in ours! but in some arenas it can allow you to ues the energiser as a cover.
Double Tags
Or double kills. Whatever you want to call them. The idea is this: after a player is shot and he's going for his reflex, right as he pulls the trigger he's vulnerable to be shot again. Let's say there's two players on red and one on green. If the red players time their shots correctly the green guy can get messed up bad pretty quick. The first red shoots. Next the green player goes for his reflex. The second red player watches this: as soon as green is about to shoot, the second red player shoots. The first red player also fires as soon as he can. Four things can happen. the first is that the green player gets doubled, he loses two lives, either the first red player gets him twice or the red players get one kill each. The second is that the red player that the green is shooting at gets "donged" ( the sound the laser makes when shot by its own team) right before the green shoots (and thus won't get hit). The third is that the player gree n was going for cancels red's shot. The fourth is that maybe, just maybe, green manages to get one or both of the red players with his reflex. If you are in the situation of getting double-teamed, I recommend not even covering. Get set up to shoot one of the players. I mean aimed and everything. The instant you get shot, shoot him. The other guy will most likely time his shot for when you lunge for a reflex: if you're already in position, it's hard for him to time his shot. Because you're exclusively aiming at one of the players, the other is less likely to be covered well. Often even if the player you are aiming succesfully covers against your shot, the other guy will get hit by a bounce having said that what you do is dependant on your skill level, for example an average or even a very good player would be wise to follow this tactic, but there are certain players in the world that are of an exceptional standard, I don't mean to brag at all here, but I know for a fact that if I was taking on two players 90% or more of the times I would get them both and I'd fancy my chances of not getting hit by either of them although to be honest One of them would probably get me. .
Dongs
Dong is the onomatopoetic term for what happens when you get shot by your own team. While you are being donged, you can't be hit. If you're on warning and you get donged, your warning cycle ends. Keep in mind you lose points for donging, so judicious use of this technique is essential. In classic scoring, two dongs kill the points you get for tag, and three dongs are enough to erase the entire team difference for one. In high score, one dong is enough to erase your points and two is equal to the team difference.Bounce Shots
Ah the beauty of infrared. Carpet reflects infrared, so do walls; so do marshals. In fact everything in a Quasar arena reflects infrared. So - let's say a player shoots you and covers. You can't see any sensors, what do you do? Shoot the floor. Shoot the wall behind him, Shoot the player standing near him even. Quasar bounce shots are so effective that in games of very experienced players, thirty-percent or more of tags are from bounce shots. Any good cover must account for bounce shots.One important concept about bounce shots is how infrared bounces off a surface. Smooth, shiny surfaces bounce infrared like a mirror does: angle of incidence equals angle of reflection; in other words, like a pool ball does. Rough or cloth surfaces however, are a different story. When infrared hits these surfaces it scatters in all directions. If a player is hid behind a wall such that you can't see him, often you can shoot behind where he' s standing and get him. If you're in an arena like ours, with a lot of walls and not much space between them, players must cover as much for the bounce shot as for the direct one.
Bounce shots can be very frustrating. You sneak up behind someone, shoot him in the back and step behind a corner, only to have him make a complete guess, shoot the floor a few feet away and hit you. In our arena all the panels are black with flourescent paint splashed on this makes them quite hard to bounce off unless you are standing very close, the perimeter walls however are brickwork, and these bounce infrared very well - some places better than others, so you have to know where the best places to bounce are. In some arenas that I've played in every single panel and wall is reflective and it is too difficult to cover from a reflex, from experience we have found that players from such arenas can't develop good covers because they can never find one that works because they always get shot from bounces, and consequently they never stumble on to a good technique, also because they have learnt to rely so much on bounce shots, when they play in an arena with less bounce they get "hammered" and wonder why!!
This is not to say that I don't use bounce shots. I use them a lot. Bounce shots are one of the elements that makes Quasar such a rich and complicated game. I've met people who have played almost 10,000 thousand games of Quasar, while the most I've seen for any other laser tag game is about five hundred. Harder to learn, but funner, especially in the long run.
In other words, spend some time learning how to use them and how to avoid them.
Wiggling, Jumping, and Kneeling
The idea of wiggling goes something like this: holes in a cover are harder to hit if you move them around quickly enough. Wiggling works so well that sometimes it seems that sensors quit working when jiggled.Shoot someone. When he goes for the reflex, rotate back and forth like crazy, not too much, only about an inch or two. Also, if you're facing off with someone and you're both down, slowly turn back and forth. Given six seconds to stare at your cover, it's fairly easy to see some place where sensor lights are glowing through. However, if he can't ever get a good look because you keep turning back and forth, it'll be much harder.
Related to this are kneeling and jumping. If just when your opponent goes for a reflex you drop from a standing position to a kneeling one, most likely the angle he's aiming at will be bad. If he doesn't react very quickly, he'll miss. Shoot and jump. Shoot and twist. Sh oot and lean backwards. You get the idea.
Beware, though. If your moves start to get predictable, you'd have been better off sitting still. If your opponent knows you're gonna wiggle, he can sit still, wait till you rotate your back sensor into view, and tag you easily. As always, mix it up.
Covering
No matter how much you wiggle, jump, kneel, shake, or twist, There is a limit to how good you can become without covering. There are many many covers that different players use. Many however are variations of the three or four most common covers :
