Here are some game-mechanics you might not know...
Laosh'Ra
Join Date: 2011-12-09 Member: 137232Members
Join Date: 2011-12-09 Member: 137232Members
<div class="IPBDescription">focusing on the less obvious things</div>here are some mechanics you might <b>not</b> directly figure out simply by playing a few hours.
there are probably some more but these are all i can think of right now. i hope it helps.
just one thing you can probably easily figure out, but it seems to be the most important newbie tip according to a lot of people:
frequently use the map (the big one which fills your entire screen). it will show allied and hostile players and structures in realtime (hostile only if they are in line of sight of course). if you have no direct orders, this will show you where the action is. it can also help you to notice a sneaky attack on your base, because structures also provide a certain line of sight.
(b221)
for a skulk, it takes 3 bites to kill a marine without armor upgrades. or 2 bites and 1 hit with parasite (second ability).
<strike>the carapace evolution slows down your movement speed.</strike>
alien structures start as "newborn" and increase their maximum health and armor every second, until they eventually become "mature".
<i>mature</i> whips whack grenades back, unless they are set on fire by the flamethrower.
structures build faster whenever a gorge uses healspray on them.
whips and hydras can survive without infestation. but whips will not attack and hydras do not grow (build) themselves, you can use healspray to build them up though.
alien structures do not regenerate health on their own. you need a gorge or a crag to heal them. e.g. this also applies to hives, cysts, eggs and upgrade structures. drifters also don't regenerate.
the flamethrower will lower the rate an alien will recharge energy (which is used for attacks and some moves like lerk-flap or skulk-leap) by 40%. the flamethrower can also burn away the lerk-spores (the "gas").
you can hurt fades while they are blinking (you can hit them even if you don't directly see them).
if you are caught in a fade's vortex (you will end up in the blue-ish ether) none of your attacks will do damage so don't bother shooting until it is over. you can still move and reload though.
if you kill a life-form but receive no score, that player is using the feint-death upgrade and will respawn nearby with low health.
if the marines recycle a structure, the amount of ressources they get back from it depends on the remaining health of the structure.
if a ghost-structure disappears (the blue thing which turns "real" as soon as a marine starts building it), no ressources are lost. this means that aliens should not always try to make them disappear, even if they overrun the area: the ressources invested into the structure cannot be used elsewhere until the building has vanished. the commander can recycle ghost structures since b221, but they will only get 75% of the cost back (instead of 100% when you touch it).
<strike>the onos life-form has hide-armor: every projectile he takes will be reduced by 6. this means rifles without upgrades will deal 4 damage per bullet, weapons level 3 (+30% damage) will deal 7 damage per bullet. while shotguns can easily hit an onos with a lot of bullets, each bullet will be reduced in damage. grenades deal very high damage per projectile, meaning the hide armor will hardly help against them. </strike>
there are different damage-types. by default (normal-type), every point of armor blocks 2 points of incoming damage. light-type is less effective against armor: you need 4 damage to take 1 point of armor. this means light-type becomes more effective against targets which were already attacked before.
light-type are: pistol, mines, sentry-fire, xenocide, <strike>lerk-bite</strike>, whip-bombard (against structures) and hydra-spikes.
lerk-spikes and the fade-swipe deal 25% bonus damage against players (marines).
grenades and the axe deal double damage against structures, same goes for the exo claw.
welders and flamers deal 7x damage against cysts and clogs.
there are probably some more but these are all i can think of right now. i hope it helps.
just one thing you can probably easily figure out, but it seems to be the most important newbie tip according to a lot of people:
frequently use the map (the big one which fills your entire screen). it will show allied and hostile players and structures in realtime (hostile only if they are in line of sight of course). if you have no direct orders, this will show you where the action is. it can also help you to notice a sneaky attack on your base, because structures also provide a certain line of sight.
(b221)
for a skulk, it takes 3 bites to kill a marine without armor upgrades. or 2 bites and 1 hit with parasite (second ability).
<strike>the carapace evolution slows down your movement speed.</strike>
alien structures start as "newborn" and increase their maximum health and armor every second, until they eventually become "mature".
<i>mature</i> whips whack grenades back, unless they are set on fire by the flamethrower.
structures build faster whenever a gorge uses healspray on them.
whips and hydras can survive without infestation. but whips will not attack and hydras do not grow (build) themselves, you can use healspray to build them up though.
alien structures do not regenerate health on their own. you need a gorge or a crag to heal them. e.g. this also applies to hives, cysts, eggs and upgrade structures. drifters also don't regenerate.
the flamethrower will lower the rate an alien will recharge energy (which is used for attacks and some moves like lerk-flap or skulk-leap) by 40%. the flamethrower can also burn away the lerk-spores (the "gas").
you can hurt fades while they are blinking (you can hit them even if you don't directly see them).
if you are caught in a fade's vortex (you will end up in the blue-ish ether) none of your attacks will do damage so don't bother shooting until it is over. you can still move and reload though.
if you kill a life-form but receive no score, that player is using the feint-death upgrade and will respawn nearby with low health.
if the marines recycle a structure, the amount of ressources they get back from it depends on the remaining health of the structure.
if a ghost-structure disappears (the blue thing which turns "real" as soon as a marine starts building it), no ressources are lost. this means that aliens should not always try to make them disappear, even if they overrun the area: the ressources invested into the structure cannot be used elsewhere until the building has vanished. the commander can recycle ghost structures since b221, but they will only get 75% of the cost back (instead of 100% when you touch it).
<strike>the onos life-form has hide-armor: every projectile he takes will be reduced by 6. this means rifles without upgrades will deal 4 damage per bullet, weapons level 3 (+30% damage) will deal 7 damage per bullet. while shotguns can easily hit an onos with a lot of bullets, each bullet will be reduced in damage. grenades deal very high damage per projectile, meaning the hide armor will hardly help against them. </strike>
there are different damage-types. by default (normal-type), every point of armor blocks 2 points of incoming damage. light-type is less effective against armor: you need 4 damage to take 1 point of armor. this means light-type becomes more effective against targets which were already attacked before.
light-type are: pistol, mines, sentry-fire, xenocide, <strike>lerk-bite</strike>, whip-bombard (against structures) and hydra-spikes.
lerk-spikes and the fade-swipe deal 25% bonus damage against players (marines).
grenades and the axe deal double damage against structures, same goes for the exo claw.
welders and flamers deal 7x damage against cysts and clogs.
Comments
Explains so much!!!
pistol = 10 bullets = 200 damage
50 cara skulk = armour (200 hp) + base life (70hp)
= 270 hp
You don't have enough bullets!!
update: pistol only needs 5 bullets.
I mean not everybody does, but still, you'd think more people would notice by now.
this is rather effective if you combine it with sprint, because sprint will also cost you a small amount of time until you can shoot. so you can just switch back to your primary weapon as soon as you stop sprinting.
one thing i am not sure about is wether the currently equipped weapon has an influence on your jumping heigth or not, but i don't think it does.
You can speed animations by rapidly moving or jumping.
You can kill unbuilt blue/ghost buildings as aliens to prevent the marines from getting money back.
An unbuilt hive heals at a faster rate than a built hive.
You can get knocked back by alien attacks if you are jumping when hit.
Yup.
An unencumbered marine (drop all weapons except axe) sprints at the same speed as a skulk runs.
Marines move faster when they have the axe equipped, as opposed to any other weapon. This also affects jetpack speed.
Skulks can reach 20 speed (almost triple the base speed of a skulk) by abusing walljumping.
you mean with ranged projectiles? because touching it as lifeform will give them all ressources back...
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->An unbuilt hive heals at a faster rate than a built hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
as in heal itself?
btw i am now certain that a built hive does NOT regenerate it's healthpercentage on it's own at all (will gain maximum health/armor by maturing though). it has to be healed by crags/gorges.
also, thanks to everyone for contributing.
having tutorials is nice, but people could figure that stuff out on their own (sooner or later). and hidden mechanics like these can take much longer, i learn new things even after 700+ hours of game time...
With your axe in hand, hold attack until you finish two swings and then click again the instant the animation is finished (about when the axe leaves your screen on the right-hand side). You will be able to swing your axe faster if you click at the right moment.
You can also abort your rifle reload animation early, right before your marine pulls the action on the gun (not by firing though). Instantly switching to another weapon and back doesn't seem to be faster than waiting for the animation to finish though, so it's not overly useful. It may be used to switch to pistol and quickly empty its clip and switch back to a full rifle clip. This should at least net higher DPS.
This may seem obvious, but try to time jumps before and after shadow steps to retain your speed gain from it for a longer time. If your starting position is on higher ground, you can use double jump in the fashion of jump-shadowstep-jump without touching the ground.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marine structures cannot be recycled if their power is destroyed<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
they changed this afaik, you can now recycle with the power being out and even for something which has not finished building (unless it is still a blue ghost structure)
another thing which might not be obvious: when you have a welder, you can weld (left click) a building to build it instead of pressing use (for your standard builder tool). this is actually much faster than pressing use.
as for the Exo Suits:
their miniguns deal heavy-type damage: this means each point of damage destroys one point of armor (normal weapons like the rifle need two points of damage to destroy one point of armor). this makes the weapon very effective against targets with a lot of armor, such as the onos.
the exo claw deals double damage against structures. you can use it simultaniously with the minigun (they are not alternate attack modes but two seperate weapons, the same obviously goes for dual-minigun).
exos cannot be recalled by a distress signal (beacon) and they can neither use phase gates nor the armory.
exos can walk on eggs to instantly squish them.
edit: exo-minigun is not improved by weapon upgrades, but the exo armor is improved by 90 per armor upgrade.
It does not build faster than the builder. It <b>repairs while building</b>, so the health/armor percentage will be 100% before it is built.
And yes, the animation bug for the axe has been fixed. I'm kinda sad, I somehow liked that little skill element in the axe, even though it's unintuitive. Now axing stuff is boring again.
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=121069&st=0&#entry1977238" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...p;#entry1977238</a>
the damage-over-time effect from the gorges bile bomb does not stack!
so no matter if you drop one bomb every few seconds or have five gorges spamming it like there is no tomorrow does not make any difference in terms of damage-per-second.
so while your target(s) are affected by the bile bomb, you can switch to your standard spit attack and land a few hits before throwing out another bile bomb. if you time it nicely, you can constantly keep up the bile bomb damage.</strike>
edit: another thing: the stomp ability (the one that knocks marines prone) of the onos triggers mines if you hit them with it.
the damage-over-time effect from the gorges bile bomb does not stack!
so no matter if you drop one bomb every few seconds or have five gorges spamming it like there is no tomorrow does not make any difference in terms of damage-per-second.
so while your target(s) are affected by the bile bomb, you can switch to your standard spit attack and land a few hits before throwing out another bile bomb. if you time it nicely, you can constantly keep up the bile bomb damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not sure this is entirely true.
1. Even if you have adrenaline, you will run out of energy bile bombing and spitting.
2. I can kill an extractor faster than normal with enzyme cloud while only spamming bile bomb. Enzyme cloud only changes the animation speed of the view model, so it doesn't affect the damage over time effect.
Edit: I just did a test with 5 times normal attack speed. I killed an extractor in 5 seconds as opposed to a normal ~17.
updated the initial post as some things became obsolete (hide armor, carapace slowdown).
here are some new ones, possibly a bit too in-depth:
camouflage and regeneration apply to eggs as well. since you are able to chose new evolutions when changing your lifeform, you can get camouflage and/or regeneration as a skulk, then evolve again to something bigger (e.g. onos) while chosing different evolutions (e.g. feign death and carapace). your egg will still be cloaked and regenerating.
hyper mutation does not only allow you to upgrade your lifeform by "recycling" your current one, you can also switch any evolutions at will (except the shift-spot which is kept by hyper mutation itself). this means:
1. you can start out as gorge, go lerk when you reach 20 res, then go fade if you reach 20 res again, then go onos if you reach 25 res (unless you die inbetween!).
2. you can switch your evolutions depending on the situation. e.g. when injured, you can switch from carapace to regeneration until you are at full health, then switch back to carapace.
when evolving carapace, you keep the percentage of your armor, not the absolute value. this means that you might want to heal up your armor before evolving carapace because it will take longer afterwards.
This isn't true in b220 as they removed the jump sound along with the need for timing. They also completely changed wall-jump so it works on how far you fall or something. I don't really understand the new implementation, I just know it is awkward and doesn't seem to be very effective anymore.
Just found out Onos can only stomp if you're stationary.
Lerks can "roost" hang onto the ceiling if you hold "shift" key. Nifty, but limited uses though, makes you prone to being sniped, unless you can find a high ceiling to spike from.
Gorge Clogs (the goo wall) stick to each other. Good to build marine chest-height connection to block marine movement with only 1 row of clogs.
Shade Ink stops Arcs from being able to fire on the inked region.
Arcs lose armour when deployed, making them very easy to kill. The armour comes back at their last value if the Arcs become mobile again.
Apparently it's been changed so that Distress Beacon only works if both an Observatory & Command Chair are in the same room.
didnt know about observatory+cc change either.
another thing for onos: you can attack without interrupting your charge (this might not be intuitive to figure out). e.g. you can charge down a corridor and hit a marine, keep on charging and attempt to escape through the other end of the corridor. even if you dont kill the marine, chances are you slip by next to him instead of getting blocked.
One could write a long story about all the "hidden" physics bugs/features in the game.
I'll start with
When two marines walk towards each other there's about 50 % of chance they will go through each other instead of colliding. This happens often with other lifeforms too. Could depend on ping, tickrate, etc.
You can walk on most non vertical surfaces even if they are aligned about 80% degrees with the floor. You can use this to get to some corners in the ceiling in many rooms. You can also run over mountains of clogs because of this.
A marine can jump on top of other marine's shoulders. No crouching needed. Works best from behind and sides of the marine.
You can run over a crouched marine with any lifeform.