Reevaluation Of Chamber Order
Fossa
Join Date: 2002-11-04 Member: 6931Members
Join Date: 2002-11-04 Member: 6931Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Why defense SHOULDN'T be first</div> Everyone tends to think that defense towers should go first. Build any other way and you get bitched at. Lets rethink this people.
Defense towers serve two purposes. They give you heal, carapace, and redemption and they heal structures.
Lerks and skulks die too fast to benefit from heal and carapace, their only chance at survival involves not being shot period. Healing afterwords or taking one more bullet is not the proble, not being hit period it. Redemption never kicks in either. Until you get a second hive individuals do not benefit from the defense chambers.
Now of course you say, they are not ment to let you benefit. Theyre there for the team right? Wrong. If it reaches the point where the marines have enough land to activly attack your buildings you have done something wrong. Especially since their healing is now limited, they are not that useful, and if you need them, its already too late.
What is the order then? Sensory first, end of story.
The ability to cloak as a lerk or skulk and sit near their base and nearby expansions picking them off whenever they venture outside or start to build is priceless. You keep them penned in, let them start to build so when you kill them they lose resources, etc. Cloaking lets you do this. If you can cloak and keep them from expanding they will not be attacking your base and you will have no need for defense chambers.
After sensory depends, movement or sensory depending how the game is going and depends on allot of different things. Still, there is NO reason to not have sensory chambers go up first.
Defense towers serve two purposes. They give you heal, carapace, and redemption and they heal structures.
Lerks and skulks die too fast to benefit from heal and carapace, their only chance at survival involves not being shot period. Healing afterwords or taking one more bullet is not the proble, not being hit period it. Redemption never kicks in either. Until you get a second hive individuals do not benefit from the defense chambers.
Now of course you say, they are not ment to let you benefit. Theyre there for the team right? Wrong. If it reaches the point where the marines have enough land to activly attack your buildings you have done something wrong. Especially since their healing is now limited, they are not that useful, and if you need them, its already too late.
What is the order then? Sensory first, end of story.
The ability to cloak as a lerk or skulk and sit near their base and nearby expansions picking them off whenever they venture outside or start to build is priceless. You keep them penned in, let them start to build so when you kill them they lose resources, etc. Cloaking lets you do this. If you can cloak and keep them from expanding they will not be attacking your base and you will have no need for defense chambers.
After sensory depends, movement or sensory depending how the game is going and depends on allot of different things. Still, there is NO reason to not have sensory chambers go up first.
Comments
Sure, at the start of the game the Marines are going to expand a little bit, but then you'll get the Adrenaline/Carapace Fades and Adrenaline/Carapace Lerks (Cloaking on a Lerk? Yeah right. If I could fly and still Cloak, maybe.) eating expansions like candy.
Sure, for the "early game" Sensory may work as first; but if you're planning to not win by immediate Skulk-rush, Defense is a much better long-term plan if Skulk-rush doesn't win the game for you right away.
You dont need healing at remote locations if you control those remote locations
If you keep the marines from expanding you need 0 defense
for aliens the game is won or lost in the short game. Thats what you need to focus on and for the short game you want cloak. You completely prevent the marines from expanding and you win.
Like I said, at first your Skulks with Cloaking may be more effective than if they had Regen or Carapace...but once your advanced units get out (Fades, Lerks with Umbra) you want Defense and Movement.
Most of the time the Marines will stay in their base until they're decently equipped, and by that time a Skulk with Cloak is still going to die pretty fast to their fire, even if it does get the drop on them.
And there's nothing more wasted than Sensory upgrades on a Fade before Movement or Defense.
Putting all your eggs in one basket by assuming you're going to completely STOP the Marines from expanding is a bad idea, and only cripples you if the game goes on longer and you're stuck with Cloaking Fades who can either a) die quickly because you didn't take Defense or b) barely fire off 2-3 Acid Rockets because you didn't take Movement.
Not having DCs in the early game is a sacrifice. Big or small, it is still a sacrifice and I don't see how you could justify it.
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Every single time sensory is put up first, tha aliens are going to have a really tough time winning that game.
Besides, have you ever tried to keep on rushing the marine base? That's what keeps them on their toes the most, and cloaking won't help a bit with it.
Carapace and even Redemption do help in this situation, and while the skulks keep running towards base, the gorges are able to really claim areas, anything taken without defence leaves it open for marines to attack it and put it down in seconds. What are you doing then? Cloaking in a corner I can only guess.
Have you ever seen a hive get attacked with no defence towers at all? Better hurry if you want to save it, cause it doesn't last a full minute.
** be nice or don't post **
Oh well, next time someone puts sensory up, I just congratulate with their loss and move on to another server.
Maybe i should make this my sig; Defence, Movement, Sensory, there is NO other way.
Im not sure, but a little while ago here in Australia every single game you could get was def -> sensory -> movment and aliens lost a lot because their killing power (fades) was semi crippled. One day everyone simultaniously without instruction swapped to def -> movment -> sensory and aliens can kill MUCH better. Constantly costing the marines RP by destroying equipment is more effective and stopping expansion as you can then easily crush the expansion right afterwards costing them even MORE and costing them the time that it took them to setup and maintain.
To compound matters, if it's your hive that your waiting around to protect, you've got big problems because your gorges can't even make defensive chambers to help the offensive chambers push back the marines. At the beginning of the game there's no better defense than a gorge(who can benefit from the healing of DCs; I have many, many times) hiding behind a DC + OC cluster helping with the healing and taking pot shots with spit.
One of my best moments as a gorge was killing 5 la/lmg marines who were being backed by the commander with health and ammo; in fact I think the commander ordered them to my position for a strike. I more than held them off with 5 OCs, 3 DCs, and a lil spit.
Movement > Defensive > Sensory is great for skulks but what about gorges? They are next to defenseless without DCs. And I think everyone will agree that a gorge death is more detrimental to a team than a skulk death.
Besides, skulks and lerks can do plenty of damage without upgrades. I personally don't even bother with upgrades and I still kill a lot of marines because I keep the following things in mind:
- Stay on the walls and ceilings if there's marines near.
- When you are navigating walls and ceilings plan your path ahead of time so you don't run into an offending beam or pipe at the wrong moment.
- As soon as one of your buddies draws their gunfire use the ceiling and walls to move behind and above the marines to attack. Gunfire works a lot like silence and cloak because they can't hear you coming or see you because they are focused somewhere else.
- If the commander is already dropping facilities wait a couple seconds for them to get comfy installing them. Even if they have a lookout theres a good chance you can do a kill and run and escape into the darkness before the lookout sees you. And better yet if you are grouped one of your other buddies can take out the lookout while he's gunning for you (See above hint).
- Go for the neck! Strafe to get around to their back and then try to crawl up their back to their neck. This helps me kill quicker and it makes marines have to pull their guns off the floor which makes them miss even more.
- Before you attack, plan your escape route up a nearby wall or off a nearby cliff.
- As you are retreating after a quick pass, run on top or behind their resource chamber or their turret factory. These are their largest structures and they will protect you from gun fire. Even putting some turrets between you and the marines can hold off a few fatal bullets.
- Oh and something that all deathmatchers have learned for ages. Don't let your health score hamper your determination. Even if you've only got 1 hp left you might still be able to pull off some spectacular kills with a little stealth and guile.
- And finally, skulks working as a team do better than any upgrade. Add a lerk and you are quite formidable.
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Neither chamber is a bad choice.
Sensory first, skluks cloacked, lined up a the door entrances. TUrrets can't seem, marines run out, and bump into the skulks, go huh? and then there dead.
Defenseive first, we all knwo the benefits of that one. Repairs, good upgrades.
Movement, faster skulks, more shots for fades.
Fact is that each chamber requires a diffrent playing pattern depending on what you start with.
You go with sensory first then movement. Ok attacking groups need a offensive gorg to heal them.
Movement defensive, you can glo solo. Which is why this one is so popular.
Defensive and sensory, you have to choose your battles, lie in wait.
I repeat, neither chamber is a bad choice for your start.
1. It costs 30 rp to get complete cloaking. Earlier cloaking versions just doesn't do much. Compare that with defense chambers - even a single def chambers gets a skulk 30-40% more life - ie, instead of dying to 10 LMG bullets, he dies on 13-14 bullets. That counts for A LOT. And it costs less than half of what the cloak costs.
2. A non-noob marine commander will get motion tracking ASAP. Once they have motion tracking, it is very difficult to ambush marines, cloak or no cloak.
A secondary effect is that when they do get motion tracking, they stop looking up, because they know where the aliens is, they think... So you don't need cloak to ambush them.
3. The advantages of having movement chambers as second are both tactical - both skulks, lerks and fades can use movement chambers to great advantage in stand-up fighting - and strategic - you can get to your second hive and defend it QUICKLY, thanks to the movement chambers.
Finally, I'd like to point out that if you ever have all three upgrades, the game is pretty much won. Now, try to win with just two upgrades and two hives.. - becuase that's what good games comes down to. Now, which upgrade can you do without? Yea, you guessed it - sensory.
Frankly, sensory chambers need to be upgraded a fair bit to make it a viable pre-third hive choice. At a minimum, motion tracking shouldn't be able to track an alien with any sensory upgrade.
Because nobody has ever killed 4 marines simply by the virtue they were invisible.
I kept a marine from building a turret factory as a Lerk for 10 min just by flying down attacking him and vanishing back into the roof Cloack and def was essental but Movement is needed aswell but Id say movemend and regen are most needed for sure, The guy **obscenity** him self i'm sure the last time i came in i Took his head out <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> and then his turret factory.
Every single time sensory is put up first, tha aliens are going to have a really tough time winning that game.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
n3g.Yesterday, we won three times in a row, within 15 minutes, using sensory as the first upgrade.
Actually carapace is the single most useful first hive upgrade for a skulk. Alot of people don't know how carapace works. Myself included. Someone told me, i dunno if its true or not, that there is a base absorbtion rate. 30% of the damage is just rounded off, so you are left with 7, which over half (about 60%) Is put to armor. You are left with only taking 2-3 points to your actual life. (It differs each shot since ns takes decimals into consideration, even though you dont see them.)
Now again, im not positive if this is true, But i am sure that the end result is true. I can take about 10 bullets more as a level 3 carapace skulks as i could with out it...
That said im not one of those 'omg you put sensory up first, stupid newb' people, its really just a matter of preferance. I personally perfer defense or movement first, and sensory or movement last (which ever second, depending.) Though its also dependant on maps, cloaking helps alot on eclipse thanks to the lack of nooks and crannies, and low celings in most rooms, but on bigger maps with places to hide and high celings, cloakings usefullness becomes overshadowed by taking 10 extra bullets. In the end though its just preferance. Dmers like carapace, ninjas like cloaking, everyone loves movement. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Cloak doesnt let you rush. If you rush you arent cloaked. Cloaking lets you castrate them. You sit outside their two entrances/exits and just keep them from expaninding, hiding in a different spot every time. Drop down, kill them, kill buildings, repeat.
Screw four or five kills. Ive gotten a half dozen at once, single handedly, by dropping down on a squad that was building well one guy guarded.
Order should be sensory, movement, defensive. There is no reason to have it otherwise.
It is nice to have some great offense at the start, but as soon as the marines decide to expand, they will plow through your turrets. Your rush had better be crippling or else it will be for naught. You will need the regeneration for your structures anyway, so I figure that they should be around first.
What's with all these blanket statements?
There is no "best" order, people. Get used to that fact. If there was a supreme overpowering order of upgrade chambers everyone would play exactly the same way. But, guess what? People have different play styles, so time to adapt your play style to use any order that comes along. Limiting yourself to being able to play with only one type of chamber just screws your team over.
I have to wonder.. what kind of marine teams are you facing? The marines can set up 3 turrets and run off to take a hive in much less time than it takes for gorges to get 3 sensory chambers, and once they get a phase gate you won't need to keep them confined, you'll need to get them out of your hive, and what helps with that? Defense chambers near the hive that's been taken. Once you get your other hive online your fades will need to attack and kill their tfacs and sensory sure doesn't help with that... It sounds to me like you've been facing too many turtling commanders.
6 sensory chambers (3 on ground, 3 above others), 2 defense chambers as far to the sides as you can go, then within that place one more Defense chambers and 3 offense, stack two more OC's on top of those. and line up as many DC's as possible right behind that... It's very very hard for marines to kill.
Now I believe that the chambers should not be built just for upgrades, they serve purpouses and because of this I like to do Offense first, then quickly place defense behind them, build a few Oc's on the ground and place sensory chambers on top of them. That way if the grenade gun is used, it will destory the sensory chambers first and there is more of a chance that they will die from the OC's.
so I think Offense chambers should be first always since they provide offense, but I also like to do the DCs at the same time to keep them healthy.
Don't forget sensory chambers can parasite.
Maybe you like the upgrades better, but if you dont have defense chambers at your base you will not be able to protect it safe... You cant build sensory until you have 3 hives
Scent of fear : U can pick marines one by one without any problem. I got 4 of em cuz they were all allready dmg... and since none of them were parasited, they were sure I cheated ! <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Enhanced hive sight : what about being able to see marine far off! (like end of a vent, or in dark places, or when u are chomping around them.. .u know where to head!)
Cloacking is only good in maps where u don't have high celling (IE : eclipse). Or else just be a skulk in high place... same effect.