Mentor Uma Zeppos: The experiance shared

Mentor Uma Zeppos Lessons

This is a page with as soul purpose - to aid and inspire fellow mentors in their mentor tasks.

Formost, Uma doesnt interact with her students on IC basis, expect in the Roleplay lesson. It is very important that yu do not interact with your chars students from behind a mask! The Uma mentoring method exists out of OOC interaction. Make clear to your students from the start that you are the first friend in BM that they have made. allow them to make friends, by sticking up for them.

I compare my chars students to the little chicks of a mother duck. Like mother duck you take your pupils under your protective wings, and shelter them from all the game politics going on. It to my discust that I have to report that many newcomers in the game where banned from new realms they joined afther the fall of Oligarch. Sadly their mentors never took up the request I had made trough Uma for mentors of Oligarch to contact me, so I could help them and their students get savely out of Oligarch. Aftherall the newcommers have no idea what goes on in game. Many of these newcommers are IRL younglings with no real life experiance yet to relativate these events. So they ended up deleting their chars.

Its every Mentors nightmare to see such social disasters hapen to your students. Thats why I beleive that mentors have to have a objective mind in wars like the old Oligarch vs Sirion War. To allow their fellow mentors in Oligarch a safe way out with their students. When a war turns disaster IRL many mentors or Teachers, go trough great length of trouble to insure their young students their safety. Like a mother defending her children. Or a bird species defending her nest.

How I keep order in the chaos:

Personally I prefere to copy existing school systems, like the European Bachelor system existing in many European universities. One can use also traditional American University sytems. Basicly you just take all your lessons that your students are suposed to get and devide these lessons in groups. Deviding the lessons in groups can be done in order of importance, as many students will leave the game, or end up autopaused. But when your realm falls apart or your realm is taken over. Your student will not panic and become a lost little lamb among the wolves.

I gave my stundets a basic knowledge of the game in 3 days time, giving them each day one lesson. When they receive all lessons I placed them in the list of students ready for graduation. Many students remained in the student list and never graduated. Wich can become irritating. I found adding them into the newbie classes - giving them basicly back the very first lessons all over again - a very polite way to make them aware of the fact that they had received all lessons they could ever hope to get from me.

A newcommer in the realm who is in need of a mentor allways receives a report from me. Then when I am made their mentor I give them that same day or the next day the first lesson.

I keep all my lessons saved on my computer. Also to aid me in swiftly copy pasting them into BM - I produced markings in the test as a visual aid, to help me realise how much I could get into one BM message. Often I ended up deviding my lessons over several OOC messages. As All my lessons where OOC send.

The welcome message:

Report from Uma

Hi Im a mentor in this realm.

It is my task to show you the ropes as they say.

I will instruct you on all these things you can do within this realm, with all your options.

All you need to do is sellect me as mentor. Just a formallity that aplies to all who are newcommers. Its to keep mentors from driving students crazy ;-)

Welcome in Sirion!

About the lessons I provide:

The basic knowledge that you will require are shown here as lesson I II and III. Those 3 lessons are vital for getting started in game, you cangraduate right afther those first 3 lessons, or you could stick around untill your have received all the other lessons aswell. Those lessons will be concluded by the Mentor lesson, wich serves as the final lesson. Once these classes have concluded you will have the knowledge of a player who has been in the game for like 100 days. Thats alot of knowhow for a freshmen in BattleMaster. ;-)

I took the liberty of providing you a list of my lesons alphabeticly:

   * BM academy lesson
   * BM Bureaucrat lesson
   * BM Forage and hunt lesson
   * BM Hero and Cavalier lesson
   * BM Hunt and Dig-In lesson
   * BM Infiltrator lesson
   * BM lesson hours and turns
   * BM Lesson Message System
   * BM lesson one
   * BM lesson tree
   * BM lesson two
   * BM looting lesson
   * BM Mentor Lesson
   * BM OOC Medals System
   * BM Rebelion lesson
   * BM RP lesson
   * BM Scouting lesson
   * BM student FAQ
   * BM Tournament lesson
   * BM Wounded and Prison lesson

My original student list (memory aid):

   * Freshmen Lesson I II & III
    
    
    
   * Bachelors Degree All remaining lessons
    
    
    
   * Masters Degree Ready for Graduation
    
      - Denzen
      - Vinr
      - Logal
      - Simiat
      - Cicero
    
   * Graduated (Obviously Graduated
    
      - Demian 
      - Booter
      - Beleg
      - Bealochi
      - Tobyas
      - Hideki

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Mentor Instructions

As a mentor, you are responsible to teach your students the following lessons:

   * Recruitment and maintainance of units
   * The chain of command - realm hierarchy, general and ruler
   * Basic combat tactics
   * Unit settings

You should attempt to answer any questions they might have about other areas.

Lesson one:

Recruitment and Maintainance of units:

When you recruite a unit you need to be in our Capitol citty wich is Sirion. You can find this on the map in you travel menu. For a bigger map you can allways consult maps in your information menu. Reason for your travel there is so you can put your first lesson to the test.

Each tax day you get a som of money in the form of Bonds wich you cash in a Bank where your bonds get turned into gold coins. You need to be in a Citty region for that to. In Sirion you can then buy soldiers.

In your Orders options menu you can sellect the option Recruite a unit. Then you get a window that shows you the list of available soldiers. You can choose between, Archers, Mixed Infantry (basicly your swordsmen with bows), Infantry, Cavalry, and Special Forces (Commando's). Each recruitment center is named seperatly, and comes from different regions. But you can mix soldiers. This will influence the training and equipment quality (shown as Armor/weapons quality in %). You should not feel forced to buy expensive units. You can always train them to be better. As a youngster in the ranks you might stand to loose soldiers and units allot, but in time you get to loose them lesser and lesser due to experiance of your char.

Each time you recruit your able to give them a unique name free of charge. Later you can rename your unit by selecting the option for it in your orders options menu. But while you recruite your to fill in a number that you wish to recruite, but in the box above the number to recruite is the box where you can add the name for your unit.

Note that you need to check that available number of soldiers in the recruitment center coresponds with the number you wish to recruite. Also note that you check first if your able to pay for the recruites you wish to recruite. You can allways consult the Hint option at the end of each recruitment center line, to see if your able to pay for the minimum recruired number of soldiers that you need to recruite, wich is 5 men. It also shows how many you can recruite from your gold amount and gives you some healthy advice.

Check that you have your units auto payday set to 7 days in your paperworks so the morals dont drop right away. 7 days is how long you need to last with your gold from each tax day.

In the Information Menu you can check your tax share. Its based in many realms on a points system, but your not to worry about it here Sirion is one of the Richest realms on this island.

Maintainance to your unit is basicly simple. It consists of regulary paying them. Training them is time consuming, but when provided with the time you can do this. But note that each training causes moral drops and Equipment damage! This will result to your unit needing repairs and Relaxation fast.

Repairs need to be done in a Citty. You cant do that anywhere else. You need to be in Sirion for this or in an other citty region, like Ashforth or Avamar - some regions that have a smithy can help you repair your units damage to, but in a citty you can cash bonds and pay for larger repairs. Moral drops when your unit is on a mission for the realm. Note that in the realm hierarchy you need to ask permition of the general to move back to the capitol to repair damage or cash in bonds and pay your unit.

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You can not allow your units damage to rise above 70% then your unit can get hurt do to corrupt equipment! +50% Dammage is expensive. Its allways best to allow damage to be minimal. Cohesion rises with your choice of entertainment for your men. You should try save gold on entertainment, by only spending it on entertainment for your men by a Moral that is real low. Between 40% and 60% I advice the 'Pay for Lots of Entertainment' option - but between 60% and 80% I would sugest Basic Entertainment at low costs. Between 85% and 95% I sugest a simple free 'Rest Troops...' option. Bellow 30% and your far from Sirion, I sugest you dont worry about it because you wont be able to save them at all! Since your only able to give them the entertaiment in the capitol. Between 95% and 100% units often restor themselfs.

For maintainance you need Paraphernalia also. In the buy Paraphernalia option in your Orders options menu you can sellect to buy lots of goodies.

To protect your Units Moral you need from per 25 men 1 banner and per every 30 a cart (wich helps moving the wounded and your soldiers equipment wich helps with travel time when the going gets though and your with wounded soldiers.) You need healers to who are quite nifty when your char is wounded or when your men are wounded. They save your soldiers. Scouts are important to know whats ahead and to help our general get some Scout reports in time for him to base his orders on. Seige engines you dont need unless the general ordes them. They give mayor lag. The more you have the slower you travel. They just are used to get over high walls.

Scouts you just dont need more then 3. With one you get quite far to. Note that Scouts can run away or get captured.

Each Paraphernalia will demand of your unit an amount of soldiers, like banner 1 soldier, and Cart I think is 1 or 2 (not sure). Since your prestige and honour is still quite low youll have trouble getting high numbre of men in your unit. No worries though that passes. In time youll have high hopnour and prestige like the rest of us. You gain this in battle, or doing other noble work. As Soldier youll gain these points by battle. At each battles end youll get a small battle sumurary that shows how mauch honour you gained.

Do note that your only allowed to attack in this realm an hostile realm by moving with the army into battle. The general will tell all the players in one region to move to the next. He will end up telling you to be in a hostile region. The general will give you then instructions on what unit settings you have to give.

Lesson two will contain The chain of command - realm hierarchy, general and ruler... Thats sort of things ;-)

I sugest for now we try to get our first lesson put in practice? Let me know how it went? Note that It will take a few turns before your in Sirion Citty!

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Lesson two:

Mentor Instructions

As a mentor, you are responsible to teach your students the following lessons:

   * Recruitment and maintainance of units
   * The chain of command - realm hierarchy, general and ruler
   * Basic combat tactics
   * Unit settings 

You should attempt to answer any questions they might have about other areas.

Lesson Two:

The Chain of Command - Realm hierarchy, general and ruler:

Sirion Is a republic. Its also affectionately called the United States of Sirion. Our Prime Minister is Doc. Doc is a Real Estate Agent in the Usa, he sells houses. This job leaves him with very little time to answer all his fan-mail on BattleMaster. But if you have a question for Doc, make it out to the entire Council and your bound to get a reply sooner then with Sending it to one Council Member.

Our Prime Minister is devoted to see to the destruction of Oligarch. A Realm that has a bad reputation with all Sirionites. Basicly Sirion is not the place to talk about peace with Oligarch.

Our Prime Minister serves as represantator of our realm. He is our Commander in Chief. His authority is the highest in the realm, and his orders are above those of other council members.

In Sirion Doc doesnt undermine the authority and respect of his Council, but he will use his authority over them to call them to order if they do wrong by the realm. Doc is one of the most beloved leaders in the Game, but also the most hated by realms hostile to Sirion. He can be compared to President Lincoln of Old America.

Doc will allways respect your freedom of opinion and your rights as human been and as player. But he will not hesitate to point out to you your duties. You can get fined for not being Active in the game. Or for Disobeying Orders. His Policy is to have the Judge send you a warning first, and then a Fine! Your allways expected to act responsible and social with your realm mates. Cheating gets punished severely! Having multiple Accounts in this Game is agains the rules. Thus if your caught with a multiple Account you can get kicked from the realm and reported to Tom, and Tom can Ban you from the game. There are players who turned themselfs in with Tom as owners of a multiple account, and offered to delete their multiple account in the game keeping only one. These where the only players with Multies that where pardonned by Tom. The reason why I add this is so you can be awhere of this when your witness to a Kick Ban in the game.

Our General is the leader of the Army, he organises all Soldier Activity. If your not of any other social class your expected to take your orders from him. He passes his order out each turn telling you with a bright red message what your expected to do. He will give you the Unit Settings your required to have. In Sirion these settings are Dictated by the General. This to keep you from loosing your unit in battle. Just to synchronise the settings of all troops to the best settings possible. The general is a player who is the best at judging what settings are the best for upcomming battles. With Handow we have not lost yet.

Our Judge is the man with the power to fine and to ban. But he has authority over all the Bureaucrats. His job is to make sure that allour regions are in good shape. If you become region Commander you will have to answer in Sirion to Our Judge Wowure or Hyraltic (two most ellected judges) Our Banker has also a say over Region Commanders, a limmited say at that. If you change class to Bureaucrat you will have to ask the judge for his approval before doing that. The realm is only allowed a limmited numbre of Bureaucrats. Therefor you need to ask the Judge first for his approval before changing. Preventing that we end up with more Bureaucrats then we can handle.

Our Banker Circle is a fair but firm leader. He is also the only one with a chance at beating Doc in the Ellections. Circle is our banker what means that he is commander over all our Merchants, and the man behind all trade done in Sirion. He also has the responsabillity over ballancing our food reserves, so all region get fed. On matter of Food stores and sale prices Region Commanders have to obey him. I had once a char serving him as Merchant. It was the biggest game adventure that I had in this Game untill now. My Char served as Blockade runner to feed a starving realm. Part of Sirions charity program to feed starving children in realms condemed to death by the Southern Alliance of old. The so called SA. That SA alliance was a real cruel alliance. Tom ended it by declaring it against game rules. Circle trew at times 200 gold in our merchants purses to buy food and sell food.

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Our Realm Hierarchy is simple! The President is the Commander in Chief over the whole realm. The General is his Right hand man and in the chain of command he is the officer of Security! To compare it with Star Trek next Generation: Our General equals Loutenant Worf - Our President equals Jean Luc Picard (and this in more then just ways of rank, he is his equal in Wisdom and leadership also!) - Our Judge equals Diana Troy - our Banker in Rank is equal to Commander Data, but Circle has also the equal in rank and personallity to Numbre Two or Commander William Riker. Our little cast is quite loved in Sirion and hard to compete with in ellections as our realm is just NUTS about these chars. ;-)

To Sumarise the Hierarchy:

   1. Prime Minister Doc
   2. General Handow
   3. Judge Hyraltic or Wowure (wich ever is in office)
   4. Banker Circle

I hope you may come to know and love them just as much as we all do.

We got a simple rule in Sirion that says: Enjoy yourself, but never at expenses of an other player!

Enjoy yourself my friend and Student? That will be your test in this lesson! Enjoy yourself, and get to know our council and Realm. Have a chat? For if your sillent they wont have the oppurtunity to get to know you! Speak out and be recorgnised as one of us. Enjoy yourselfs without violating 'Da Rules', and you pass this test?!

Next lesson will be Basic Combat tactics! I will know it when your done with your test. But let me know when your ready for the next lesson so I dont overwelm you with a large message like this at an inconveniant time for you?

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Lesson Tree:

Mentor Instructions

As a mentor, you are responsible to teach your students the following lessons:

   * Recruitment and maintainance of units
   * The chain of command - realm hierarchy, general and ruler
   * Basic combat tactics
   * Unit settings

You should attempt to answer any questions they might have about other areas.

Lesson 3:

Basic combat tactics and Unit Settings:

In our battles the General allways tells you your settings. But this is not done in all realms. Some realms they leave you to pick your own Combat tactics. The best Tactic is allways Unity among your units. A well trained unit can last you in the field longer then a bad trained one. Most generals send your units out to their death. Wich is only your loss. But in Sirion our army has been structured by the best of generals in BM.

Youve got 3 type of settings:

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Line: There are 4 lines Front, Middle, Back, Rearguard. Fast moving units get allways lined up on the rear of the army. In our Sirion you can allways find 2 or 3 lines used. This because the Army only consists out of 3 parts Archers, Infantry, and Cavalry. You got other units to. But most are rare to be found in BM. Big realms like Sirion got the most money and are better able to get the best cavalry and Special forces Recruitment Centers. Our troops are lined up based on the type of unit you own. Like Archers now are on Frontline.

Behavior: You can set also how your men are to behave. There are 5 types of behavior: Murderous, Agressive, Normal, Defensive, and Evasive. Its imortant to know that with some type of behavior settings you can get unwanted effects. Like Murderous, can result in your men attacking their own allies, they dont make a difference between friend or fow. Aggresive, could result in them attacking like madmen, they will most definetly not respect line settings and are at first like in line waiting for the order to attack, then they strike and exterminate. With Normal you get them to act like soldiers, killing what they are told to kill, but not going into heroism. They wil stick with the line settings and move in formation. Defensive, will cause your unit to stand their ground and not move at all, they will hold their line. The only time they will move with Defensive is when they run away. Evasive means they will avoid detection from the enemy. Know that this will only work when your unit is 10 men strong or less. With 11 men you stand a chance to be detected. But if you get into Battle you will stand your ground and fight only to get away. You basicly will fight a hit and run. Causing severe loss if your fighting in the army. This is a setting used alot for the Merchants. My char EbionII Junior has used this alot in the past as Merchant of Sirion. He was Blockade runner, and suplied food to allied realms in the south. The Evasive setting was quite usefull, and with 10 men I had enough fighting power to secure the caravans. I sugest when your traveling trough enemy land as merchant, that you allways take 10 men units and go on evasive! Also this setting will cause you to be attacked by your allies and friends. This because Agresive settings kill Evasive settings. Allways be on gaurd for the region your in! Know who it belongs to, its a key of sucses.

Formation: There are in all armies formations in wich your men will take place on the field. There are 4 Formations You can select from. Line, Box, Wedge, And Skirmish. Line, Box, Wedge, and Skirmish say already for themselfs how the formation would look. For in case you didnt know how these would look like here is the discription. Line means that they form a human wall. This was one of Napoleons favorits, he even perfected this formation. Box is a line up that forms a square of soldiers whoes wall of soldiers is a formation in square. This is used IRL in old days to fend of Cavalry attacks. It was used by Fallanx since Renaisance times. But Alexander the great already used a formation like it but this was vunreable on its flanks and rear, the modern one isnt. Wedge is a formation that Hannibal used alot against the Romans. A Wedge beats Line, but is not effective against Box formation. A Wedge is a common used tactic for the Calvary. Calvary beats Archers but is also a great line breaker. Wedges are called this not because of a point like formation, but because of it splitting armies up like that, its called afther the stone cutters tool that is used to split huge rocks in quaries. Skirmish is the oldest tactic used. Its called afther the oldest soldiers in ancient armies. Like in the Roman Army Skirmishers where used like Scavengers. They where send out to kill of units already severly suffering Severe wounds. In Caesars Battle with BoduUgnatus of the Nervian tribe, Caesar reported having send in skirmishers to kill the last resistance in the Nervian Capitol, wich was raised to the ground. This Formation is a stand in Wich soldiers usualy spread out equally to take on the enemy one on one! Romans kept their Skirmishers together and gave them projectiles called Javalins to trow at the enemy. Basicly Skirmish stands are a stand in wich the soldiers are not standing in a shoulder to shoulder formation, but leave gaps delibratly for the enemy to go trough.

The way you could compare the code here is that it works like Rock Paper and Sissors. Wedge Beats Line - Line Beats Skirmish - Skirmish beats box - Box Beats Wedge! Although you need to use a bit of imagination to ;-), but these formations are a sure thing, based on their military history.

If you got further questions about combat and Tactics, you can allways ask. ;-)

Next lesson will be about any subject you wish to have further education in. Your welcome to come to me with all your problems until you feel like your fully educated.

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