Battlezone 1

In game press "M" to see names and numbers of players. Then press "Y" (you will see ally chat box) and number of player you want to ally with. For example "Y3" to ally with player #3. If you want to unally press "U" then player's number.

For ally to become mutual both players have to do it, same goes for unally.

In strat there's "silo bug" when players are allied. Your scavengers see your ally's silo as their own silo so they drop scrap in both silos, depending on which one is closer to them. "Silo bug" appears in the moment when your scavenger drops scrap in ally's silo, that scrap then disappears. Same thing happens when opponents scavenger drops scrap into your silo.

To avoid this bug, pro stratters ally when all initial scrap is collected and after that they recycle silos and simply stop building them. After that they use only recyclers which are not affected by the bug, because each scavenger goes to its own recycler.

If silo has to be built at some point of the game, players unally for the moment and split their forces while that scrap is being collected, and then ally again.

In DM ally doesn't work at all. When playing team DM just agree on teams and forget about the "Y" key.

Excellent Tutorial!!!

I noticed that new players learn to ally before they learn about the ally/silo bug. That's very wrong. And like that isn't enough, they try to enforce an ally game every time they see a 4 way strat (sometimes even in a 3 way strat).

Battlezone isn't silly Combat Commander (falsely called BZ2), where one is commanding (the one with strategic skills, but slow reflexes) and other is fighting (the one with DM skills, but no brains). In BZ you have to be skilled in both genres - FPS and RTS, and even in a team game it is basically every man for himself. The only thing teams share is supply and hangar, and unfortunately - the silo. Then there's an issue when only one side allies...

Remember, every game is FFA (free for all) if ALL players didn't agree otherwise BEFORE the game was launched. If the game already started no need to ask for a team game.

Team game in 1.4 is only for pro stratters who effectively do what I described in the first post. Both bugs (silo and one-side-ally) have been fixed in 1.5, so if you are new and you wanna play team strat, learn to ally/unally right, or go play 1.5. But remember, it's still in a beta phase.

Thank you ^

how did they fix it? are scavengers able to use allied silos or do they just ignore them?

Check the bug topic in the patch section. Answer to your question is on 1st page. Bug fix is also documented in the bzone_changelog.txt that is included in 1.5 beta.