Whats with all the sentry spam?
Price
Join Date: 2003-09-27 Member: 21247Members
What happend to 205?
The last games yesterday was fine, but today on diffrent server, marines spam sentrys.
I had a round, i was late joiner and marines got 14 sentrys in their base.
On another round, which was i don't know 10-15 minutes, marines also got 12 sentrys and later after 10 minutes they spam another 10 in the double res room on mineshaft, next to the powernode which makes impossible to kill it.
Every lerk die in seconds to the sentrys.
What happend to sentrys?
on the second screenshot you can't see them, but its about 5-7 sentrys at central drilling.
<img src="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/6170/2012042100001m.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/3984/2012042100006l.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
First picture:
fly through the marine base as lerk = dead
walk next to the marine base as fade = dead
Same as gorge, onos or skulk.
Onos don't die fast but with marines.
The last games yesterday was fine, but today on diffrent server, marines spam sentrys.
I had a round, i was late joiner and marines got 14 sentrys in their base.
On another round, which was i don't know 10-15 minutes, marines also got 12 sentrys and later after 10 minutes they spam another 10 in the double res room on mineshaft, next to the powernode which makes impossible to kill it.
Every lerk die in seconds to the sentrys.
What happend to sentrys?
on the second screenshot you can't see them, but its about 5-7 sentrys at central drilling.
<img src="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/6170/2012042100001m.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
<img src="http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/3984/2012042100006l.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
First picture:
fly through the marine base as lerk = dead
walk next to the marine base as fade = dead
Same as gorge, onos or skulk.
Onos don't die fast but with marines.
Comments
pleace implement a sentry max. or anything to fix this
+1,
maybe add a cyrcle around the sentries if you are commander, so you can see, where you can place them, and where not
- Sentry'spam' generally only occurs later on in the game when; A. Marine comm has nothing else to spend res on (easy to run through all marine tech fast with 3 - 4 extractors), B. Game is already over (aliens control the map) but marines resorted to sentry spam to drag it out (technically this can be done indefinitely, since aliens have no means to break sentryfarms effectively)
-The use of a handful of sentries is often a necessity to keep marines in the game currently. I.e it's really hard to hold on to map control as marines (once fades and onos appear, which is extremely fast in NS2) without planting down a few sentries. A few sentries supported by a few marines goes a long way in keeping an area secure, at least until BB lerks show up and marines have to resort to spamming the sentries. (Since, until performance and hit reg is improved, BB lerks are a huge problem, not to mention that even if these things were fixed, their mobility combined with massive building DPS allows them to continuously perform 'hit-and'run' flights on all marine RTS and positions))
I suppose it goes back to the issue where Marines have virtually no map control right now.
Yes, or until you slowly conquered the entire map :D
Commander can still rotate turrets. Maybe even use macs to relocate them (allow players to pick them up again and move them as well).
I would even make the whips something gorges put down (and again khamm can relocate them). Move all damage type structures to the players. It scales better.
The gorge bile bomb would be able to slowly push back turret spam with conjunction of teammate support (so the vulnerable gorge does not die). This was a relatively slow process, but a gorge was able to bile bomb turrets from a relative safe distance if marines were successful in killing the gorges support units. This promoted the use of different life forms for different tasks and teamwork.
Now the lerks have the bile bomb ability. It requires lerks to physically enter the base and dive bomb bile bombs onto the structures/marines. Usually, this is a pretty easy process for the lerk as hit registration has not yet been refined. On the other hand, this is an extremely frustrating process for the marines. In return, we are seeing more and more turrets spam to deter lerk bile bomb. It's quite successful since turrets are very accurate and do a lot of damage verses a lerk. This is where the issue arises.
Once an open area has been sufficiently spammed with turrets, the aliens do not have a strong counter to break the turrets. Skulks die almost instantaneously very quickly in a room filled with 4+ turrets, lerk(s) are not able to stay in the room to sufficiently bile bomb the area, fades do not do enough damage before they have to retreat, Onos is a bullet magnet and is in serious danger of being blocked by an armory if it stays long enough in combat. There's nothing to say about the gorge currently.
But I digress...
Also, sentries only aim 45 degrees up/down, so if you fly high enough, you might avoid getting hit.
<b>I suppose it goes back to the issue where Marines have virtually no map control right now.</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, no map control until they build turrets, then all the aliens just whine about "turret spam" as if it's not a legitimate thing to be able to build them. I've seen alien teams equally spam the map with hydras.
Sorry, you want us to build only 1 or 2 so you can get behind them and kill them while being out of sight of the others? lol.
now lets compare costs 1 TF with 4 turrets then 55 res, to 4 turrets now 40 tres. somewhat in the right ballpark due to blind spots.
now, take turret farms back then with at least 2 TFs with 10 turrets each and 230 res, and now just 10 turrets with 100 tres to have a good lock down 100 tres. It skews quite a bit but there is definitively more diminishing values with our current sentries than those of the days of old, and of course our friendly power node acting as room wide power source is quite a weak link cause yea... no electrify.
turret farms were easy to beat back then with an onos/gorge/bilebomb combo... the same should hold true now, just needs 3 members onos/gorge/lerk-bilebomb combo. either picking out each turret individually or the node... which irrefutably the sentries hold more weight seeing as the node is free and fast to repair
<!--quoteo(post=1928323:date=Apr 22 2012, 01:00 AM:name=ShadowFang)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ShadowFang @ Apr 22 2012, 01:00 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928323"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Remember in NS1 how the marines main way of holding areas was turret factories with at least 4 turrets, which albeit fired slowly, had 360 degree view, but were quite weak on their own... well that's what hydras are now and turrets got a re-imagined and have their intended flaws thus still needing more than 1 per room to ensure good security.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sorry to burst your bubble, but using turrets for pretty much anything was a terrible strategy in NS1 and you'd only see it happen with bad comms on low skilled public servers.
This was a good thing. Most multiplayer fps gamers don't want to play against AI controlled units, that's what singleplayer and mmos are for. They want to play against other players. Any and all AI controlled units should be weak compared to the players themselves and should be limited in use.
This was a good thing. Most multiplayer fps gamers don't want to play against AI controlled units, that's what singleplayer and mmos are for. They want to play against other players. Any and all AI controlled units should be weak compared to the players themselves and should be limited in use.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Eh, I pretty much stopped playing Classic after 2.0 but I vividly recall turrets being used at important choke-points (eg. messhall) and to secure a hive from lower level lifeforms. I played almost exclusively on FR31NS which back in the day was a server famous for the high level of player skill (I believe it was the first server to ever get mentioned in a news post on the NS site), so I'm pretty sure it was a valid strategy. Not sure if turrets fell out of favour later on however.
Turrets were never used seriously in competitive play, outside of the rare weird round where they had some particular use. That should tell you all you need to know about it being a "valid strategy". I guess I shouldn't have specified "lowskilled public servers", because they were still used by clueless commanders even on the "better" public servers.
I hate turrets, but if I have to rely on people on publics to defend rooms i've locked down with phasegates and armories, I'd lose every one of them in seconds. just two or three turrets covering each other combined with turning and nano shields means I can yell at players to finally phase by the time they are almost down, thereby usually saving a location.
I never ever ever ever have turrets in my main base though, if the marines can't hold the main base without turrets, they don't deserve to win anyway.
anyway, in ns1 i think sentry use was mostly map-dependent. i saw it a lot in critical chokepoints or double res points like the elevator room in ns_nothing, or waste in ns_tanith. a lot of maps didn't see much turret use at all, though.
<!--quoteo(post=1928328:date=Apr 21 2012, 05:17 PM:name=fanatic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fanatic @ Apr 21 2012, 05:17 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928328"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->bad comms on low skilled public servers.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So basically 99.9% of all games played every single day then? What an arrogant thing to say.
Making changes to the game based on the intricate playstyles and tactics of serious competitive teams playing against eachother is only going to alienate the vast majority of players on these so called "low skilled public servers"
Making changes to the game based on the intricate playstyles and tactics of serious competitive teams playing against eachother is only going to alienate the vast majority of players on these so called "low skilled public servers"<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nope. This is a common misconception. Plenty of games (Quake 3, CS:GO, DOTA 2, LoL, SC2, any Capcom fighting game...) are designed primarily with competition in mind, but they're still huge successes with non-competitive players too. If someone is a bleeding-heart pubber, but you don't tell them a game was made for competition, they won't throw a fit. However, as soon as you mention competitive play on any gaming forum, or describe the mode of thinking of competitive players, you're basically hitler. Sorry fana!
Games made for the competitive scene end up being dull and predictable for the sake of balance
starcraft is pretty exciting actually.