What exactly does ink cloud do
|strofix|
Join Date: 2012-11-01 Member: 165453Members
Join Date: 2012-11-01 Member: 165453Members
In some cases, it seems to block scans and re cloak everything in the area, in other cases it seems to do absolutely nothing. It would be really nice to get a definitive description of what ink cloud is supposed to accomplish, and then it would be even nicer if it was ensured that it would consistently do whatever that is.
I'm getting pretty tired of basing a strategy around the use of things only to have them fail to do what they're supposed to do 50% of the time. As an RTS game, if your structures don't do what they're meant to, it stops being real time strategy and starts being completely random and pointless to even try strategise.
Other example:
Whip Bombard: typically going straight into the closest wall rather than at the target location.
Shift hatch: regularly refuses to spawn any eggs at all.
I'm getting pretty tired of basing a strategy around the use of things only to have them fail to do what they're supposed to do 50% of the time. As an RTS game, if your structures don't do what they're meant to, it stops being real time strategy and starts being completely random and pointless to even try strategise.
Other example:
Whip Bombard: typically going straight into the closest wall rather than at the target location.
Shift hatch: regularly refuses to spawn any eggs at all.
Comments
That having been said, unless you start the ink first, the scan will still reveal stuff and you're going to take at least one hit, making their cost pretty questionable for what you get.
Ink can, sometimes (but don't count on this) disorient marines that are in it because suddenly everything is dark... but mostly what you're doing is announcing that there's a shade there rather than messing with someones head... Still, you might have an important shift nearby that you need to keep alive for a while longer, and its better to just ink up and get the marines hunting for the shade and spending scans rather than letting them stumble on something far more valuable. Again, its pretty thin as far as that goes towards justifying them, but there you go... I've done it just to buy time for something else building/growing on rare occasions with mixed results. YMMV.
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Whip bombards will target melee range stuff first, then throw their goo... I don't know if you can target the goo on stuff specifically, but it always targets enemy structures first from what I've seen... and that might be a power node of nothing else is there. Maybe you're just not getting the full picture of what it's shooting at.
The only time a shift has failed to spawn eggs when I ask it to is when there are already too many eggs in its radius. Yes, I've spammed 70 eggs on the landing pad of docking before because I could... I use shifts all the time for eggs in hotspots... I've never had one refuse to build if it had space to do it.
On the whip issue, I am assuming it's trying to shoot something on the other side of the wall? I know it regularly deflects grenades on the other side of the wall. I am not sure if this also applies to bombard.
Shift egg spawn has a cooldown now to counter egg spamming iirc
Due to the basically zero range of the ink cloud, I always have to put my shades directly next to the hive. When the first volley from the ARCs goes off, it end up instantly killing the shade, and in the process apparently negating the ink effect, because after that the ARCs continue to fire like nothing was there, even though the ink cloud was clearly still present.
And if you, for example, place a shift behind the big red crate in shipping hive, it won't be able to spawn any eggs. Also the ramp leading up the elevator hive will prevent you from spawning more than 2 eggs if you put a shift there.
<!--quoteo(post=2059861:date=Jan 13 2013, 01:04 AM:name=Mestaritonttu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mestaritonttu @ Jan 13 2013, 01:04 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2059861"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Before when scans didn't cut thru ink cloud I guess it was OP and spammed, but they should have just upped the cost of ink cloud instead of making it crap.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was thinking about it, and its actually pretty balanced. The range of ink is absolutely tiny. Maybe 35-40% of the cloaking effect range, which is also tiny. In addition to that, using ink cloud on one shade disables it from being used by all shades in quite a large area. Its basically paying 3 res every 8 or so seconds to cloak a very small area. Sounds fine to me, because line of sight can't be stopped by ink, so it can be countered.
Ink should have the same cooldown as scan so that it can act as a hard counter to arc play. Only seems fair for the Shade to counter the ability required for arcs to fire behind walls while said ability pretty much hard counter the entire Shade tech tree per use. Increae the radius of the Ink cloud to encompass the full range of the Shade as that actually makes sense.
It wouldn't prevent arcs from shooting for me. I saw arc rush incoming and specifically to test this feature I've built 2 shades. I've managed to create permanent ink cloud, but those cheaters were still frying my hive.
Yeah it WAS balanced when ink blocked currently active scans. If a marine commander wanted to seige a hive alone, I could stop his ARCs. Heaven forbid the commander get a teammate to provide LOS because I am swimming in res enough to spam ink.
Halving the ARC volley damage has helped, but still its too easy to 1-shot the shade and make ink a non-ability.
Yeah, its only going to work if there's no-one actually getting LOS to the hive... Ink works well in sorting defending an arc train from deposit for example, because its hard as hell pushing up the stairs enough with marines to get regular LOS on the hive area. It should work to prevent ARC shots from Bar to Lockers too for the same reason.
Ultimately, its not something to build a strategy around though... its wonky and unreliable. If it works, great... don't count on it though.
Sometimes you have to. Like if the marines put everything they have into taking central drilling on mineshaft, then you're basically down to 2 hives without them ever needing to invest the resources in shutting down deposit. In that situation you don't really have any other option but to go shade and hope that ink works for once.
No joke, I'd rather spend that 10+ res on Cysts and shifts/crags that help my aliens be agressive and maybe base trade before I would ever attempt to turtle up a hive and hope for the best.
If they are ARC-Training you, they have the res to rebuild and do it again usually... the alien turtle is notoriously bad in most situations. I have seen one epic alien turtle in sorting once that simply could not be cracked... that choke at the stairs is nightmare fuel. That was actually the first time I ever saw ink used properly BTW. Every other attempt to stall marines within ARC range of a hive has met with disaster... I often have to jump out of the hive and try to ninja a Powernode to force a beacon because the aliens are either egg locked or so focused on getting in the odd bite that the slow death of the hive is guaranteed.
That having been said, If I was going to use a shade defensively, I'd put it as close to the hive/crag combo as possible and just spam it once the scans start coming in. Then get your aliens away from the hive ASAP. You don't have much time, keep one gorge (or onos if you have it) at the hive, and get every one else to fan out to the marine tech points and hit power nodes. Hopefully one will do enough damage for force a beacon and you can get out and kill the ARCs.
10+? You meant 30+, right? Last time I checked shifts and crags didn't cost 2 res each, because 1 crag will not do that much for your higher life forms. Not to mention the cost of emergency eggs.
And taking out an arc train is a huge blow for marines unless it's past mid game and they have map control. If you have bile up, the arc train can be taken out within a minute. Bilebomb does a ridiculous amount of damage to arcs. Again, arcs are an issue usually when marines have the upper hand either way.
It isn't an ARC train, its a typical, close to unbeatable marine strategy on mineshaft. At the start of the game you take operations/drilling (whichever one you didn't spawn in), and then take central. At this point you just turtle, because your territory encloses 6 res nodes that are piss easy to defend, as well as "holding" 3 tech rooms, preventing 3 hive rapage.
The "flaw" is that it is then almost impossible to get line of sight on deposit, which is supposed to mean that a shade can effectively block a scan. Unfortunately, ink rarely if ever does anything to scans, so its not a counter at all.