Ultra-Violent Wednesday

Ultra-Violent Wednesday (or UVW) is a community based event for Hawken which, as its name implies, takes place on Wednesdays. It is based around player-created gamemodes and communication via teamspeak. There is less of a focus on high level play and more on having fun and befriending members of the community.

It is divided into 3 segments: a pre-party, that lasts from 19:00 to 20:00 GMT, the main event taking place between 20:00 and 22:00 GMT, and an after-party of variable length that usually goes on until around 23:00 GMT.

The main UVW forum thread can be found here and a thread containing video compilations of past UVW events can be found here.

History
This event was both inspired by, and created as a European alternative to War Wednesday, an American community event. The first edition took place on September the 3rd 2014, and it's taken place every Wednesday since. Throughout all editions it has been hosted by (KDR) Dr_Freeze001. Early editions were co-hosted by T-Grave and Zuurkern who provided the teamspeak server. (KDR) Batpanda is the current co-host.

The original game server this event took place in was the Critical Assist Server, with access given to them by server admins DaPheel and Houruck. After a few weeks DaPheel was no longer able to attend, and Dr_Freeze001 was made server admin. This situation lasted until The Silence, wherein privately owned Hawken servers were taken down. UVW took place on public servers until Reloaded Games' takeover of Hawken, when CapnJosh gave them access to two servers, Ultra-Violent Wednesday 1 and 2. (KDR) Batpanda is the one who made the arrangements with Reloaded Games.

Currently, UVW takes place on the Officially Unofficial Hawken Teamspeak server in a dedicated section and on two private, password protected, Hawken servers, Ultra-Violent Wednesday 1 and 2. They are both situated in the European region and thus provide the best ping to European players.

To be noted: players have to be in the UVW Teamspeak channel to join the UVW Hawken servers.

Activities
Activities in UVW are divided between classic Hawken gamemodes and "made up" gamemodes, and are usually selected by request as the event goes on. As the UVW Hawken servers are private, the admins can tweak some options to make game experience different from what one would normally find in public play.

Gamemode rules and specificities will be detailled here for ease of reference.

Classic Gamemodes
These usually proceed as they would in public play, with all players sharing the same channel for banter and fun or being separated into team based channels for more serious gameplay. A common modification to these events is to enable friendly fire, but this doesn't happen all the time. Another modification is to play a normal game mode on an uncommon map that was taken out of rotation (example: Siege mode on Bunker or Bazaar, which were taken out of the rotation, either for being unbalanced towards one of the teams in the case of Bazaar or for simply being too small and chaotic for complex gamemodes for Bunker).

Michael Bay
This is one of UVW's most popular and oft-requested modes. It takes place in a normal gamemode and follows the gamemode's normal objectives (to defeat the other team), but with additional rules. Credit for creation of this mode goes to Zuurkern, with (KDR) Dr_Freeze001 and (KDR) Batpanda making modifications over time.

The rules are:

- All players must pilot either an Incinerator, a Rocketeer, or Grenadier. If they do not own any of these, they can substitute by another C-class mech depending on what is in the players' garages or in the free test drive rotation.

- When a pilot gets a kill, they must cry out "MICHAEL BAAAAYYYYYY" into the voice chat. If the gamemode is Siege, everyone on the team opposite a destroyed ship must yell "MICHAEL BAY" when it explodes.

- Friendly Fire is turned on.

- Repair Drones are turned off.

Night Of The Living Fred
Another very popular UVW mode. It's a type of hide-and-seek that always takes place in Deathmatch gamemode (usually on Prosk or Uptown) but follows a very specific set of rules.

- One player only may select a Fred (CR-T Recruit) or an Assault mech. This player will count down until the round begins and then hunt down other players across the map.

- All other players must select any other mech than a Fred or an Assault, and hide somewhere on the map. Predators are not allowed as they can stay invisible indefinitely. Infiltrators are also not allowed.

- When a player is destroyed by a seeking Fred, they respawn as a Fred and help the other Freds in seeking and destroying other players.

- No one may use their weapons or repair themselves besides the Freds. Offense and repair Items and repair internals are not allowed. Barrier items (shield, blockade, heat charge) that don't cause damage to other mechs are allowed.

- The last player still alive at the end of the round wins and gets to be the Fred in the next round.

Instagib
This is based off of server mods put in place by the UVW server admins. In a TDM mode, by turning friendly fire on and increasing the percentage of damage received, any friendly fire becomes a one-shot-kill. The admin then places everyone on the same team. The goal is to kill as many people as possible.

Variations on this mode include (but are not limited to):

- All mechs and weapons allowed.

- TOW Rockets only.

- Non-Hitscan weapons only (Weapons allowed: TOW Rockets, Grenade Launcher, Heat Cannon, EOC Repeater, Predator EOC, Seeker Missiles, Redox, Rev-GL, Hellfire Missiles).

- Sabot Rifle only, no HUD (the hawken HUD and aiming reticle can be turned off by pressing F5 and entering 'togglevisor', then pressing F5 again to close the input window).

Death Race
Usually played in Deathmatch mode, it can take place on several maps such as Wreckage, Bazaar, Last Eco, and Uptown. Dr_Freeze delineates a starting area and a finish line. All players must race between these two points while eliminating all contestants, as only the last mech standing at the finish point wins. After the first race in one direction, all destroyed mechs respawn as "turrets" that pick a place to stand near the race itinerary and shoot all contestants passing by.

The mechs race back and forth between the starting and finish areas until they're all destroyed or the last mech standing crosses the finish line.

Rules: no shooting inside the starting and arrival areas, no shooting the turret mechs, no repair items or internals, no dropping turret items.

Reaper Vs Tech
A TDM variant, usually played on Frontline. One team goes all Technician and one team goes all Reaper. Proceeds like a normal TDM. All weapons, items, and internals allowed. Halfway through the match, both teams switch, the techs becoming reapers and the reapers becoming tech. This leads to more balanced results.

Titan
A TDM variant made possible by private server mods. By turning on friendly fire and enabling the damage taken to be in the negative values, a server admin can give a massive HP boost to any mech they shoot. The admin picks a number of players (usually between 1 and 4) and boosts their HP until it reaches the thousands or tens of thousands of points (by contrast, most mechs have a few hundred HP).

This small team of "Titans" is then set to square off against a numerically superior team of normal mechs. The team with the most kills at the end of a given time wins.

This may sound biaised in favour of the Titans, but if their HP has been bought down and they're destroyed they respawn as regular mechs, and then find themselves in a position of being strongly outnumbered.

Tunnel Race
A mode played exclusively on TDM Origin. It involves two teams, one composed only of Scouts (or Techs, or any A-Class if need be) and another composed only of Predators. The Predators all lay their Predator EOC mines inside one of the tunnels leading from the top level to the lower levels of Origin, and all the Scouts have to try and cross the tunnel without being destroyed. Credit for this mode goes to Seth.

At the end of the round (1 or more Scouts make it through, or all Scouts are destroyed) the roles are reversed.

(Note: only mines from the Predator EOC are allowed, not mines from the EOC repeater).

Chase The Bunny
One player (the bunny) plays as Scout, while all other players pilot a Rev-GL equipped Grenadier. The goal of the Grenadiers is to kill the bunny. If the bunny kills a Grenadier, the Grenadier respawns as a Scout. Similarly, if a Grenadier kills a Scout, the Scout respawns as a Grenadier. The goal is to only have one mech type left on the map.

Convoy
A team based mode played on Missile Assault, usually on maps with lots of cover. One team has to defend a turreted Rocketeer as it makes its way from Missile Silo 1 to Missile Silo 3 while another has to destroy the Rocketeer. The game ends when the Rocketeer is destroyed, when the attacking team is destroyed, or when the Rocketeer reaches the destination. The teams then swap roles, attackers becoming defenders etc.

No respawns allowed during a round.

Predator Hide And Seek
One pilot uses a Predator while all other pilots (in different mechs) group up at a starting point. Meanwhile, the Predators goes to cloak itself and hide somewhere on the map.

The other pilots have to hunt it down and touch it (approach very close with their mech) to win the round, then they stay around the hidden Predator.

The last player to find the hidden Predator loses and becomes the hidden Predator the next round. Note that one must always stay close to the predator to win, not just find it once. It's thus possible to find it early on but still lose if it manages to get away.

VIP Mode
Regular TDM, with one major variation. One player on each team is promoted to VIP. This player must be protected from the other team at all costs. The first team to lose its VIP loses the game.

Note that non-VIP players can respawn at will as long as their VIP is still alive.

1v1 Duel
Players take turns fighting each other two by two in a predetermined section of a map, all other players spectate from a safe distance.

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