Is Level 3 Weapons Worth It?
CheesyPeteza
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9784Members, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9784Members, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
Well is it? I'm not talking about when you have res flowing in faster than you can spend it, sure of course you get level 3. But when things are tight, aliens are just going fade and you're attacking. When I'm comming that 60 res seems like a lot of res when I could have another HA+GL/HMG? What's your thoughts?
Comments
i've wondered, what about lvl 3 armor first? lvl 2 weapons are pretty powerful and with a lmg on aid a lvl 2 hmg can take down a fade fairly easily. and you sure as hell can last longer against that fade with lvl 3 armor. especially with HA, 290 armor plus a high % of pierce defense. combined with welders and if you have a good team its going to be pretty hard for fades to take on marnies.
regular infantry marines, with lmgs, can hold off 2 hives with maxed out upgardes. so both is nesscary. - (if your team is good)
With level 3 weapons, you can turn the tide, BUT, the time it takes to upgrade to level 3 might spell your doom.
Fully upgraded armour means you will survive 3 bites from a skulk instead of one. It is useful if your team has flashy expensive equipment like JP and HMG's. All the comm has to do is patch them up with med kits and the aliens will almost never bite a JP 3 times in a row. 2 times, yes. They won't even be able to react within 1 second.
A vanilla marine takes 2 bites to kill, with level 1 and 2 armor, 3 bites, and with level 3 armor, 4 bites, I believe.
Speaking of armour upgrades... if you haven't noticed, armour upgrades basically = carapace for marines.. lvl 1 = ~50% increase in 'effective' life, lvl 3 = ~100% increase. So it's deffinately worth getting, even before weapon upgrades. Hand out welders and vanilla marines can be like light tanks <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Also, weapon upgrades barely give a 25% decrease in killing time when maxed out..
Woah! Freaky signature!
But if skulk bites a jp'er three times (he has lvl 3 armor) and then com heals him with medpacks, after that he is as weak as marine with level 0 armor.
Welder will fix the armor, but how many times commander's equips light marines with welders?
is it ok ? will i need to change it ?
i go a1-w1-w2-a2-w3-a3
as lvl1 armor allows rines to take another bite
whereas lvl1 weaps do nothing for no of bullets it takes to kill vanilla skulk and seing as i try to work on getting upogrades asap lvl1 armor is researched 2-3 mins into game
Welder will fix the armor, but how many times commander's equips light marines with welders? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
If I've got lvl 3 armour, you can bet I'll be dishing out welders like candy <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Remember it's not only good for skulk bites... but lerk spikes, acid splash, OCs, gorge heal spray even O_o
There's benifits both ways and quite frankly it probably doesn't even matter most of the time which way you go..
I still normally get weapon upgrades b4 armour, but experimenting with armour upgrades... I dunno - it seems the marines die less with armour upgrades, so they aren't respawning and losing the main squad (less rambos), ending up in marines being a much more formidable patrolling death team. Concentrated firepower (even with only lvl 1 weapons) owns. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Marine upgrades become significantly less cost effective with each level.
Lv3 weapons costs 60 resources, takes 3 minutes to research and has the number '3' in it, which we all know is a larger number than '1' or even '2'.....
This does not make it a worthwhile upgrade. The phrase "You get what you pay for" does not apply here. Lv3 weapons provides very little advantage over lv2 weapons, and comes at an enourmous cost. It is not cost effective.
By this i mean, that in a usual game there are many things you can invest 60 resources in that will provide a greater benefit to you than level 3 weapons. If you do not have lv1/2 armour, if you do not yet have a protolab/upgraded armoury/JP research, if you can equip a few marines with JPs and have them kills DCs/Res towers, these things will benefit you much more than 60 resources spent on the level 3 weapons upgrade.
In otherwords, it does not make any sense to rush for level 3 weapons. It is only cost effective to take level 3 weapons when you have already: Upgraded your armoury/built a protolab/taken lv1/2 armour upgrades/etcetc. It is a late game option that you may upgrade when you have little else to spend resources on. Treat it in this fashion. I'm tired of seeing pub commanders going straight for level 3 weapons without a single armour upgrade :\
The level 1 armour and weapons upgrades are cheap, and very effective for their cost. They provide a noticable improvement over unupgraded marines and so they are always worth taking. After lv1 upgrades, things become debatable. Level 2 weapons and armour are possible upgrades if you have a decent resource flow, they are not as cost effective as the lv1 upgrades and you should not go for level 2 weapons before you have an armour upgrade. Marines at 2/1 can be considered a pretty normal level to be upgraded to towards the end of the game. Level 3 upgrades will not appear in a 'normal' match, but might be taken in certain stalemate situations - where you have plenty of res but aren't really making any progress.
Personally, my choice of first lv3 upgrade if i was ever to get that far would be armour, not weapons. Because of the way the numbers round up, lv3 armour allows you an extra bite, a significant improvement. Lv3 weapons benefits from no such rounding issues and is barely any better than lv2.
A word on heavy armour:
By the numbers, armour upgrades for heavy armour have proportionally less effect than they have on LA marines. Do not become obsessed with armour upgrades if you are using heavy armour, the difference the upgrades make to heavy armour is not dramatic.
IIRC, by Kitsunes number tables, every armor upgrade makes HA take one more bite. I'll go search for his numbers and a link to it right now.
E:<a href='http://www.geocities.com/kitsune/104stats.htm' target='_blank'>Here.</a>
Yep, but since they can survive 8-10 bites anyway, 1 extra bite on a HA is really nothing compared to 1 extra bite on a LA.
We're talking about the difference between an upgrade that may let an ONOs take 10 more bullets, and an upgrade that may let a skulk take 10 more bullets. Which is more impressive?
And you're probably right about not even bothering with lvl 3, it's a whole lot of res (and time) for the passive but very small benifits you get from them.. unless it's a loong drawn out game of course.
Anyways, upgrades rulez!