Interesting Anti-Turret Strat
Katana-
Join Date: 2008-11-25 Member: 65575Members
Join Date: 2008-11-25 Member: 65575Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Changes in 181 made this possible</div>Here is a way we broke a marine turret farm late game, though I figure it would work mid game too.
When a room is turreted up, have the alien comm drop a cyst right in the field of view of bunch of turrets (preferable the turrets covering the power node in the room)
Changes in build 181 make it so turrets won't change targets, so now aliens can move into the room with out being shot
Turrets appear to deal very little damage to cysts, so one cyst can actually tank a lot of damage, have a gorge heal the cyst to make it last longer if needed.
Turrets also run out of ammo in this build, so it is possible to deplete their reserves with just one or two cysts. (depending on the number of turrets firing on them)
Rush in and destroy the power node with skulks.
If you need to, the alien com can drop a number of cysts to distract many turrets at once, and if the cysts die you can just get every one out of the room and drop a new cyst.
It seemed to work pretty well, it was even practical for a fade to battle marines to cover a gorge healing the cyst, and in that way maintain the assault.
When a room is turreted up, have the alien comm drop a cyst right in the field of view of bunch of turrets (preferable the turrets covering the power node in the room)
Changes in build 181 make it so turrets won't change targets, so now aliens can move into the room with out being shot
Turrets appear to deal very little damage to cysts, so one cyst can actually tank a lot of damage, have a gorge heal the cyst to make it last longer if needed.
Turrets also run out of ammo in this build, so it is possible to deplete their reserves with just one or two cysts. (depending on the number of turrets firing on them)
Rush in and destroy the power node with skulks.
If you need to, the alien com can drop a number of cysts to distract many turrets at once, and if the cysts die you can just get every one out of the room and drop a new cyst.
It seemed to work pretty well, it was even practical for a fade to battle marines to cover a gorge healing the cyst, and in that way maintain the assault.
Comments
Distracting Sentries with Cysts is akin to distracting anti-air defense in Starcraft 2 with mass Overlords, Hallucinations, or Defense Drones. It's good to see the new Sentry changes are effective at making them more vulnerable to coordinated attacks.
Sentries do switch target under attacked, but they twitch to their right when taking damage. Their turning rate is limited, so if they are under constant attack (2 per sec or more), they won't be able to hit anything on their left side.
was the comm dropping them in MS, because that might have been me ;]
Allowing other classes to attack.
Would be more interesting than just dropping sentry power imo, and creates an interesting dynamic.
Im ok with this if empty black space stops the di radius (e.g. no placing from rockdown center area trough the small gap into marine base, or you need some changes in the mapping guidelines so this doesnt happen)
-> Aliens would need a real path into marine base => marines dont have map control and should be punished for this anyways. (but you can still counter it with an arc)
was the comm dropping them in MS, because that might have been me ;]<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think you were the comm! :-D
Keep up the good work.
In that particular game, I'm pretty sure we took SA and then pushed into MS from there with gorges and fades slowly pushing up with crags/hydras, while we had AS (crev and reactor) secured with hydra/crag laming on both sides. I would say that the game would have been pretty un-winnable for the marines at that point, and the sentries were just delaying the inevitable.
Edit: I failed to mention that this could work in places other than MS, like if a marine team has locked down one of the expansions. I think I'm going to play around with it next time I comm and see how strong it is in those situations.
In that particular game, I'm pretty sure we took SA and then pushed into MS from there with gorges and fades slowly pushing up with crags/hydras, while we had AS (crev and reactor) secured with hydra/crag laming on both sides. I would say that the game would have been pretty un-winnable for the marines at that point, and the sentries were just delaying the inevitable.
Edit: I failed to mention that this could work in places other than MS, like if a marine team has locked down one of the expansions. I think I'm going to play around with it next time I comm and see how strong it is in those situations.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
gorges can drop unconnected cysts IIRC, hence why it's exploitable early game.
I like this, but how about make it so that flash (where the drifter explodes in a flash of light) also blinds turrets for 30 seconds?
Edit: <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/unknownworlds/topics/drifter_flare_blinds_turrets" target="_blank">http://getsatisfaction.com/unknownworlds/t..._blinds_turrets</a>
how about big guns that shoot through walls. oh wait.
which have to have line of sight to fire and cycle time is long, also pathing for arcs is garbage atm and are completely unusable, arcs are also very vulnerable to skulks, this aliens strategem is much more viable than using arcs.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Sentries no longer change targets once they've acquired one, unless they are attacked, which causes them to target that entity<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
try and keep up.
Also, this isn't even that good, did a test last night, 1 mini-cyst with a gorge healing only uses up about 180 sentry bullets, each sentry has 250 at full capacity. So if there are 3 turrets in a room you will need 4 cysts to deplete all the ammo... and you need to be in cyst range... and it only takes 2 res to refill the turret, and the refill happens instantly.
just because a strat is unorthodox, or non-obvious doesn't mean it is a bug, exploit or a cheat.
try and keep up.
Also, this isn't even that good, did a test last night, 1 mini-cyst with a gorge healing only uses up about 180 sentry bullets, each sentry has 250 at full capacity. So if there are 3 turrets in a room you will need 4 cysts to deplete all the ammo... and you need to be in cyst range... and it only takes 2 res to refill the turret, and the refill happens instantly.
just because a strat is unorthodox, or non-obvious doesn't mean it is a bug, exploit or a cheat.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
180 rounds, hm, by the time they are down 40 each three skulks will have killed killed the power node and proceded to face ###### the rest of the room, fair? I think not. The change was made so that heavyier armor units could move in and soak up damage while smaller units or gorges moved in to take out the sentries, not so you could spam cysts and walk in taking 0 damage. rendering the turrets a waste of resources, that is EXPLOITING, an AI controlled thing.
Also, if the alien team wants to devote, 4 players, 1 gorge to heal cyst, and 3 skulks to byte the power node, and the energy or res it takes to place the cyst, AND the marine team doesn't respond in time, don't you think its fair for the aliens to break the turret siege? Under which conditions is it okay for the turrets to be broken.
You act like just placing a cyst in the room means the aliens can take it for free. The strat doesn't work that way. It takes a coordinated team work between the comm, and the players, or some players and a gorge to do this. And it can easily go wrong, if the marines respond.
yea coz cysts are totally not vulnerable to marines. im sorry but all you did was list all the attributes of an arc and point to pathing problems in previous builds. You might think this is an exploit, but is it unduly unfair to marines? i think not.
In general, I think sentries should only target units (excluding alien structures). Their purpose is anti-unit, so it makes little sense that they would also attack structures. That is what the ARC is for.
Besides flamers through walls, of course. :p
Ain't a sploit, ain't a glitch. Totally plausible (sentries aren't people, they are dumb machines, they shoot anything alien) in my book. By design, even, as the targeting change was explicitly mentioned in the changelog.
So the only question is: is it OP?
Given the crazy teamwork needed to pull it off, and how easy it is to counter, I don't think it is OP. Gorge mini-cysts cost more than the ammo does, so there's no res advantage. If the alien comm can drop constant hive cysts into your base, then you SHOULD lose.
(Besides, the aliens need SOME kind of siege breaker in the months before the Onos gets put into the game.)
Paying 2 personal res to lock down an alien player for 25 sec is actually not a bad thing, IMO.
Aliens have no area denial to speak of, and they bought that by not having to use team res to expand. This means that marines can go full out on alien infrastructure and give the alien commander a big headache that he might not be able to come back from if he wasted all his hive energy on sentry cysts.
If that's not design intent, then it's easily fixable by making sentries do more damage to cysts. I don't think anybody will complain about that change.
-> Aliens would need a real path into marine base => marines dont have map control and should be punished for this anyways. (but you can still counter it with an arc)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, the new no-need-for-line-of-sight connection is based on the new pathing system. But the problem is that is somehow uses the direct distance (and not the actual path length) to restrict cyst placement. So from central access to marine start the cyst is calculating a path somewhere across the whole map to marine start --> OK, then calculates the direct distance through the wall --> OK. Will be sorted out once cyst connection uses the actual path length instead of the distance. Maybe needs some time cause they would need another visual indicator for where the cyst can be placed than the simple radius graphic. Maybe something like the connection path being displayed live when dragging the cyst over the screen and disappearing/changing color when it's too long?