Are turrets actually useful now
Angry Hillbilly 2
Join Date: 2012-03-31 Member: 149741Members
Join Date: 2012-03-31 Member: 149741Members
It says most of the question in the title. Ive not really had a chance to play NS2 since 249 and so with all the balance mod changes comming into effect ive noticed a lot of play with them in NSL/Reddog games for protecting areas. Whats new with them? actually worth it now?
Comments
Turrets are suck protection as they are easily solod. They are however better at lowering the health of aliens giving marines time to rush in.
Aka.. aliens can stick around less long, and marines longer. See turrets as utility assistance rather then on there own.
Don't know about 6v6 but in larger servers it still might be better to spend the money on upgrades instead.
I personally think turrets are now in a really good place. There are arguments why you shouldn't use them, and there are arguments why you sometimes should. That seems the perfect balance, to me.
If your team has terrible aim then you may have to drop some in just to take care of large groups of Lerks or risk wasting a ton of time
Bile Bomb counters them pretty easily though so you need to really be careful where you place them
This. If you have the extra res to spare (in 6v6s), turrets are extremely helpful for holding gates. I feel the usefulness of turrets goes significantly down once you get past 10v10 servers.
Sentries are most effective when placed at the outer limit of the sentry battery range, equally distributed around the circle and all facing towards the battery so that and each sentry covers the other two. You want to make sure no skulk can simply get behind any single sentry without being fired on. Having all three sentries aimed at the battery means skulks die almost instantly if they go straight for the battery. Then you benefit from their fields of fire and I typically use them to cover a techpoint's powernode and/or a phase gate, since those are the structures that lifeforms like skulk and fade need to chomp/swipe for a while, meaning they have to stay in the field of fire to accomplish their objective. At that point the aliens really have to deal with sentries before doing rushes on phase gates or power nodes, so in effect sentries give the marines more reaction time to deal with those kind of events.
They do a really decent amount of damage and they're quite cheap, but you're always better off getting upgrades and unlocks first.
Plonking them down with bad positioning in each room is not tactical, it is just building something for the sake of it. They also ruin the PVP gameplay. This goes for other upgrades in this game that others deem as useless.
I.e. in public and competitive matches, they are rarely used because they take away as much as they add. Thus, we see the same upgrades being chosen.
Anyone on here played TF/TF2 or Quake Weapons Factory? They all have something great, 1 or 2 really amazing sentries that are positioned REALLY well so that they can provide cover for a team for a period until they are dealt with.
The best part is, dealing with them requires tactics and team play. Not just spam (*cough* NS2 *cough*).
There was an idea floating around a while ago, possibly linking purchasable turrets to numbers of CC's that had very small cones of fire, but with unlimited range and were very powerful.
I personally think this should be trialled, as I think it would MASSIVELY improve the tactics used in this game.
Imagine, a marine team drops one in a corridor and cuts off access for aliens. Aliens can no longer traverse the corridor, so they either have to get behind the sentrys or take an alternative (longer) route for a while. This would require aliens to deal with sentrys tactically, and not just spam them.
It would also improve the PVP gameplay.
The idea being that once an alien team knows where the sentry is, they would stop going that route until it was dealt with. So no 'aliens vs turrets' situations would occur. Merely that aliens would have to take time out to flank the defences before getting on with things, and providing marines with extra time to take areas of the map.
Originally, sentries were meant as a defensive structure the commander would use to cover the base most of the time. At least, that was their function in NS1. In NS2 however, they never really fulfilled any purpose other than simply having them because "a RTS game needs towers of some sort." If they are however to be understood as a mere assistance for the marines, then I would deem it more appropriate - and fun! - if marines could place them, just like they place mines and not the commander.
I think sentries would be a nice addition to the repertoire marines currently have available.
Just my 5€s.
In NS2 they provide a little bit of fire-assistance if a marine is there and slow the aliens down a little bit when they destroy the base. But a single skulk can dismantle all of it without too much trouble and a bilebomb gorge just obliterates it. I think it's because they have such limited FOV and must cover both themselves, a power node, a PG and a sentry battery in order for a single skulk not to be able to eat them all, and you cannot place more than three of them.
It is in some ways good that turrets are so useless, else one might be tempted to use them more often. It does however make them a "noob trap".
Lol, genius!
While I do like the idea of marines buying deployable sentries with pres (Engineer is my favorite class in TF2), I think they would have to be a lot weaker than you are implying. I know you're just trying to convey a sentry that is more tactical, useful, and powerful, but I believe a single marine-deployed sentry should only be able to stop a skulk or gorge. Unlimited range + high-dps would be EXTREMELY OP, especially if they can prevent aliens from traversing a corridor entirely. They should still fill the support role they currently do, just with better dps, range (or perhaps 360 degree attack with limited range).
Not trying to attack you personally, I just see many ways unlimited ranged, high powered sentries could be abused unless their cost was equivalent to that of an exo or something.
Yes, a skulk or gorge can wreck turrets. If the turrets do not have marines nearby. Therein lies their strength, and I think you underestimate it! If you have turrets covering a phase gate (even if they have an uncovered side), then aliens have to decide: turrets first, or phase gate? The moment something gets hit, you should have response (actually before it gets hit if you have any game sense at all). That means as aliens approach a base with turrets, wherever that base is, they should be met by 2 or more marines with additional turret support. If the marines are slow getting there, which can happen for a wide variety of reasons, the turrets buy you time to save your base. Sometimes that 25 res loss is worth it... And sometimes the turrets kill gorges, skulks, lerks and fades. Even in comp play
That's why he's the best comm NA, folks
If that's the intent, why do we need a sentry.
We could just give marines the ability to wall off a corridor. It would achieve the same effect with less hassle (and AI processing).
It would also be far less dependent on having long straight corridors.
While this sounds really good on paper, I think it won't work in NS2. Most importantly, because the maps are to small and have a very small amount of alternative routes. And secondly because aliens are mostly melee.
Strong turrets work in TF2 because the enemy team has at any time the possibility to get a free counter to them. Every single (free!) class in TF2 can counter a lone sentry. Even the scout can position himself at a corner and pistol the sentry why it can't fire back. Some classes are even hard counters that will destroy a sentry when there are other players to defend it (demo, spy).
In NS2 the aliens are melee. They rely on finding alternative routes to ambush marines and a skulk can't do anything against a good placed strong sentry like you suggest one. We tried strong sentries multiple times in beta. And even with a strict hard-cap, they would be used to shut down routes completely allowing marines to focus on the remaining route and decimating aliens because they are forced to attack head on. Even as fade it isn't smart to attack a group of marines frontal. But with your strong sentries, marines could force the aliens to do so.
It doesn't help, that the counter to such sentries costs resources. But this is negligible because gorges are so cheap now.
TL;DR:
- A turret that can shut down a passageway doesn't work in NS2, because aliens depend on alternative ways and there are sometimes only 2 to one room.
- Other games can do it, because they make them easily counter-able, mostly relying on ranged weapons.
- Turrets are in a good position now (as support). It was hard to get them there. Changing them could break them again.
If it was balanced it would work perfectly fine.
1 per cc, perhaps with a hard cap
mega powerful
25-35 FOV
With such low FOV they would be useless in rooms, or at least balanced that way. So they would only find good use in corridors, and thus easily flanked.
Combine this with a high cost and you would see teams placing them strategically and tactically both in pubs and comp matches.
It would also boost the pvp side of the game, and I think make it a hell of a lot more interesting.
P.S. I have not seen a single turret triangle I couldn't take down solo as Skulk. The best one took me a minute to figure out, rest you usually find the dead angle in 5 seconds.
Cobra that's the good thing about them! They are not much use if left alone, so you need to use them to complement your marines, rather than as a substitute. As long as you have marines within fairly easy reach of them, ie near phase gates for example, they are a useful addition. If it was impossible for aliens to get rid of them in the absence of marines, they'd be OP.
Commander must be bad at geometry. A no-deadspot triangle can easily be made. But hey, all the folks who played beta can at least appreciate the semi-useful turrets we have now. In beta we had either completely useless turrets or OP turret spam. :P
If you could build turrets without robotics, then we might start seeing 'em.
P.S. Just to clarify, I don't think turrets are in a good place. You just never see them.
EDIT: Like, if I could build turrets anytime, and I'd see like a marine sneaking to a hive, I could just toss him a battery and some turrets. Veil-Cargo hive, in the corner. Yup, that would be a tasty spot. But planning it ahead? Nooope.