Use Of Offensive Chambers
Jett-OMEGA
Join Date: 2002-11-07 Member: 7534Members
Join Date: 2002-11-07 Member: 7534Members
<div class="IPBDescription">my idea and yours welcome</div> Just an insite to what I like to do and so far its awsome. When your in the defending stages of your hive most I have seen that players do is stack or bunch your turrets together creating some sort of blockade. Both from view and from movement. That is the exact opposite I of what I prefer to do.
What I suggest doing is placing your Offensive Chambers about 20 to 30 yards apart staggering them. Place them on inside of bends as to make the path of least resistance longer and generally place them to where view of your resistance is minimal. If you have webs than place one line on the ground behind the O.C. about 3 feet. This prevents them from just rushing that single O.C. and making it that much more valuable. This has a two fold to it. One you slow down the marine advancement from spread shooting all your turrets and taking down a wall of lame in no time flat. Two its a good eliminator for the brave and usually elite players that know how to rush and bounch past O.C.'s. By the time they realize there are more infront of them its to late to turn back cause they are up to their chin in O.C's. Very rarely do I even place a Defensive Chamber in the mix for these buy a great deal of time even if they do destroy them. Next time your a gorg go ahead and give it a try. Lets try to break that bad habbit of stacking cause its relitively useless
What I suggest doing is placing your Offensive Chambers about 20 to 30 yards apart staggering them. Place them on inside of bends as to make the path of least resistance longer and generally place them to where view of your resistance is minimal. If you have webs than place one line on the ground behind the O.C. about 3 feet. This prevents them from just rushing that single O.C. and making it that much more valuable. This has a two fold to it. One you slow down the marine advancement from spread shooting all your turrets and taking down a wall of lame in no time flat. Two its a good eliminator for the brave and usually elite players that know how to rush and bounch past O.C.'s. By the time they realize there are more infront of them its to late to turn back cause they are up to their chin in O.C's. Very rarely do I even place a Defensive Chamber in the mix for these buy a great deal of time even if they do destroy them. Next time your a gorg go ahead and give it a try. Lets try to break that bad habbit of stacking cause its relitively useless
Comments
The other extreme is obviously bad too, with 4 DC's protecting a wall of 4 OC's, and an extra 4 on top of the DC's. This does nothing more than 2 OC's and 2 DC's will do, really, except suck up more space and resources.
Therefore, I propose the middle path. When resources are tight, make little 2OC2DC locations at choke points, and leave it at that. When the late game resource flood comes in, you have to account for jetpackers, and some scattered OC's will prevent them from just skipping your defenses altogether.
And stacking does have a purpose. A DC creates a blind spot when placed next to an OC, but underneath does not. Otherwise, the marines can get behind the DC's and kill them with impunity, then go for the OC's. Just don't block the path in the process of stacking, or go crazy with the spending. An OC in front of and on top of a DC (total 3 buildings) or 2 OC's on top of 2 DC's (pedestal style, 4 buildings) works fairly well. Doors, of course, should have the OC's as close as possible to the door, to minimize reaction time of the marines.
O.
Also don't defend lone RT's at all in NS, it often costs the game. <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
1) OCs do not have infinite range. Placing them at the end of a long hallway allows the marines to shoot them safely out of range.
2) OCs can not shoot though other chambers. You want to focus fire, but don't block your firing line.
3) Place enough chambers to matter. A lone OC will stop no one and nothing. A few staggered OCs can generally be picked off one at a time. A pair of Defense chambers (DCs) with a pair of OCs can safely block off a passage for quite awhile.
4) Think before you place chambers, there is no way to unbuild them. You want to block off the marines, not your team.
5) Don't overbuild in an area. After you clog an area with enough chambers that marines will either go around or siege, stop building there and move on. Anything else is just food for siege cannons.
6) Protect your hives. If you merely place chambers inside the hive, the marines will siege it from outside. If you merely place chambers outside the hive the marines will find a way to sneak in and drop a phase under it.
7) Protect your team. Don't just build defensively. Build forward healing nests for your team to fall back to. The Kharaa are much more effective when they can heal and get back into the action quickly.
8) Don't vertically stack OCs. An OC placed under an OC will NOT fire. Much more effective to place an OC on top of a DC.
9) Remember later in the game you want your chambers to discourage not only rambo llamas, but sneaky jetpackers as well.
10) You can't keep the marines out of an area forever. Make sure you're helping the war effort and not playing a solo building game.
A lot of gorges build walls like this:
xx <- o-towers
oo <- d-chambers
Which is great, since I only take damage on 1 side of the wall... once I jump it, I don't have to worry about that wall <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->.
A lot of gorges build walls like this:
xx <- o-towers
oo <- d-chambers
Which is great, since I only take damage on 1 side of the wall... once I jump it, I don't have to worry about that wall <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thats what I do too, its one of the tricks of getting safely inside the hive, and building a seige or phasegate right next to the defence chambers while they stop you getting shot at by the offence chambers. Once the seige is up, the chambers themselves become lethal to the kharaa so they can't even get close to bite on the phasegate or seige.
I've taken bases apart as a solo skulk on NS caged by charging down biting a marine to death and then charging back to my 6 def chambers in the vent <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
BlueGhost
--O
O--O
With DCs behind if I have enough res coming in. This allows aliens to squeeze through the sides, but marines that try the same will get hurt. If a corridor is behind, I'll build another lot further down. If there's a wide area, I build an OC behind the DCs, to stop sneaky knifers. As for sieges.....well, that's down to the assault aliens to handle.
While I'm not entirely in agreement with your strategy on this, I do think it's important to consider both types of attacks you touched on:
1. A group of marines, doing the "burn a path to Atlanta" strategy. In this case, you want to waste their time and gl/hmg ammo.
2. A lone marine, planning on building a phase gate behind your defense. In this case, you want to physically prevent him from passing key choke points.
When playing marines, I find that most gorges plan for the former, but not the latter.
First, I always build defense turrets under the hive. These heal the hive and make it much harder for rambo to kill it with his knife or welder.
The primary purpose of alien defenses is to keep that lone marine from sneaking into a critical area and building a phase gate and/or siege turret. To that end I build small offense turret outposts, usually two turrets with one or two defense towers, in every open area near a hive. These should be placed so the turret outposts provide cover for each other. The idea is to leave no safe spot for a marine outpost. I want to force the marines to attack my towers if they want a clear spot for building anything. Once that happens, my team can converge and take care of the invaders.
Once web becomes available, I add a few webs here and there within sight of my offense towers. I prefer to spread the webs out and try to make them hard to see. I think this is more effective than putting up a huge, easily spotted web. Remember to put some webs up near the ceiling to catch jetpack marines.
I think giant walls of lame are usually a big mistake. Because of the turret limit, once you build a huge wall of lame you cannot build any other defenses in the area. If a marine manages to evade your wall, he can build a phase gate in the clear area nearby and the entire marine team now has access to an undefended area.
Word.
Like it or not, ye olde siege is getting seriously nerfed in 1.04. That means less turret-farm creep and more direct hive-storming from the marines. Given that, I think point defenses on the hive are going to need to be a standard part of gorge strategy.