How do I Babbler?

11monkeys11monkeys Join Date: 2013-01-01 Member: 177001Members, Reinforced - Shadow
in New Player Forum
Short, I'm new-ish to ns2, I haven't played ns1 and joined in January.
I love the gorge (supports in general, everywhere), and I like to think I'm decent.
Now, we have babblers.
And I just can't figure out what exactly these things do.

Can you guys enlighten me, please?
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Comments

  • dragonmithdragonmith Join Date: 2013-02-04 Member: 182817Members, Reinforced - Diamond
    At this point, the AI is not very advanced, so your best bet is to make armour for your buddies (use 4, hit allies). I'm not quite sure of the maths, but it gives a very large amount of extra health and armour, making that skulk last for one extra bullet :)
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  • ritualsacrificeritualsacrifice Join Date: 2012-11-14 Member: 171148Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    They're incredibly bugged right now, and aren't particularly useful for anything, but here's how to use them once they're fixed:

    The way you use them, is press 2 to bring up the build menu, 3 to select babblers, then mouse 1 to lay babbler eggs down. Each egg hatches 3 babblers, and you can put down 3 eggs. After the eggs have hatched, you can control them by pressing 4 and spitting the pheromone ball where you want them to go. They aren't a particularly large threat to marines and are prone to falling through floor/walls, and if applied as armor they can actually attach to spots where they will prevent the wearer from doing damage with attacks.

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  • eliotmateliotmat Join Date: 2002-12-01 Member: 10350Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    I hope babblers work out in the long run. I believe the babblers in NS1 were based on the snark which was one of my favorite weapons in HL1 deathmatch.

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  • shonanshonan Join Date: 2013-01-28 Member: 182562Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    yeah, theyre pretty much worthless right now
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  • PaajtorPaajtor Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168634Members
    Build 241 (out today):

    - Increased Babbler run speed from 5 to 7.
    - Fixed bug that prevented an Alien from evolving if they had Babblers attached to themselves.
    - Fixed bug where Alien attacks got blocked by attached Babblers.
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  • DazkoDazko Join Date: 2013-03-05 Member: 183699Members
    They don't cost to much res so they are totally useless

    What you can do is if you are more of a forward harassment gorge you can spit the babbler ball against a wall so that they attach to you and boost your armour and use the remaining babblers to harass a marine base combined with spitting at them from a distance.
    You can also put them on lerks and fades, I personally don't really put them on onos unless absolutely necessary because the fades and lerks can do with a bit of an armour boost.

    Babblers can also help speed up with taking down an RT. If a skulk is attack an RT you generally don't want to stick around unless you have bile so unleash babblers onto the RT to help the skulk take down the structure faster.
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  • Mattk50Mattk50 Join Date: 2013-02-04 Member: 182824Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    their best use is for throwing into a base during a bile rush to take care of mines, distract and harrass. Also armor, but they fall off for no reason atm and have lots of hidden timers.
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  • XariusXarius Join Date: 2003-12-21 Member: 24630Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    They no longer fall off and the timers were increased so they're a lot more useful now. (Either as armour or as distraction)
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  • NordicNordic Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
    Either armor or seiging
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  • Super_GorgeSuper_Gorge Join Date: 2013-03-22 Member: 184212Members
    Babblers are pretty useful now. Just takes some getting use to them.

    As armor, 9 babblers are pretty awesome, especially on a Fade. He looks hysterical thought with babblers all over him.
    Plus, babblers are useful for taking out structures across a techpoint base that you don't want to get close to. For instance, in the Cave map, in operations if the Marines have taken the RT and power, but you don't want to get close to the RT as they can come through and shoot you, dropping 9 babblers and having them attack it while you stand on the other side bile/spitting is a good way to limit your exposure while still managing to take down structures.
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  • HypergripHypergrip Suspect Germany Join Date: 2002-11-23 Member: 9689Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
    Babblers are still a bit too slow and agressive to be used to directly attack Marines, but the extra armor for Aliens is quite useful. You can use them to damage Extractors or Powernodes with/for you. Using them to trigger mines can be useful.
    I like to send my Babblers into rooms before other Aliens attack. Quite a lot of Marines will shoot them on sight, so when the real danger arrives they have less bullets before they need to reload (or are already reloading). It's a small advantage but it can really help.
    I still wish I could order my Babblers to "guard" an area and wildly attack any enemy that gets too close, like a swarm of hungry Piranhas
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