Sensory First
Azraiel
Join Date: 2003-01-27 Member: 12868Members
Join Date: 2003-01-27 Member: 12868Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Something I've come up with.</div> This is just something I've come up with for using sensory at first hive, despite the dominance of the defense chamber. The sensory actually provides better defence than the defence chamber. The marines can't hurt what they can't see. Using the Sensory Abilities properly requires a different mind set than is the norm, but following these guidelines, I've found that the sensory isn't as useless as it is put off. The only thing that makes Defense better is the fact that it regens others. But that can be fixed too.
Combat-
In combat, skulks should not rush straight into the marines. Without carapace, skulks fall fast. It takes a different tactic to destroy marines properly. Rush is not your friend when playing with sensory first. Instead, a group of skulks should sit outside the marine spawn, or at vital choke points, and wait. This requires patience and timing on the aliens part. Instead of charging head long, you cloak and wait. You see a marine, you wait. He walks up to you, you wait. You wait for him to turn his back to you, and walk away. Then you charge the unexpecting marine from the rear bite him his two bites, and he is toast. Then you sit and cloak. Rinse and repeat. A group of marines is no different. You just wait until they all pass you by, then you go from back to front. A single skulk can easily take out four or five marines in this manner. I've done it plenty of times.
Gorge-
The gorge is key. Since this works best if done immediatly, he should for go building res towers, and opt to get sensory down fast. At least one, preferably two, then go for res. Any skulks with 23 res should gorge, put down a sensory, then skulk. This can be done so the gorge can cap res. The gorge also provides you with your mobile Defense chamber. A cloaked gorge makes a good healer. He hides unnoticed and heals up any skulks that need some good healing, while he waits for his res. Heal spray also heals offense towers. Defence isn't needed for offense towers, in fact offense towers aren't even needed if pulled off well enough. If the skulks are doing well, the marines will have trouble even walking out of there base.
Lerk-
This presents a good opportunity to lerks. They can sit from a far and spike marines, then cloak. Spike, then cloak. It makes finding his position fairly difficult, if done to a good effect. If you spike, the fly away, and cloak, it sets up a good ambush for those marines that travel out to find you. Sitting in vents provides a good vantage point most the time.
Skulk-
Besides the combat mentioned above, skulks also have a good opportunity to set up parasiting. Many maps have places you can sit and observe the marine base and parasite them as they spawn. They can't find you because of the cloaking. This isn't effective once the observatory goes down, but more on that next.
Dealing with observatory-
Well if the combat is done well enough in keeping the marines inside the base then it gives you a good advantage. First off, it keeps them from expanding, which is one of their biggest advantages. Second, it chokes them out of resources, which everyone needs to survive. And this is the biggest counter to observatory. If they have no rescources then they can't build one. If they do get one up, just move your ambushes back a bit, and wait for a good lerk to take it out. A rush on the observatory by a group is a bad idea, as you need to keep a constant ambush waiting for them outside the base, but a lone skulk or two could make good with a rush on the observatory.
Psycological-
This creates a huge psycological effect on marines. If they get killed by invisible stalkers, then they will become very afraid. Fear is good for aliens to create in their enemies. It will make them nervous and jittery. They will waste ammo firing into random spots. The comm will use up res attempting to ping the aliens. And if a couple lone skulks just wait at random spots on the map, then it will create fear through out the map, as there is always a chance to die if you are a marine, and not know it.
Second hive-
The chamber for second hive should be movement, and you should pass up adrenaline for either celerity or silence. Silence is good for skulks, adrenaline is good for lerks, and celerity for gorges. Silence lets the skulks set up better ambushes, adrenaline lets the lerks spike longer, and celerity lets the gorges respond faster to attacks with his heal spray. Web becomes invaluable at this point. Nothing like walking into webbing and then being eaten by a skulk you can't\didn't see or hear.
Third hive- At this point, game is pretty much over. If a decent job has been done to this point, then the marines have nothing, and you have everything.
Disadvantages-
Requires a high degree of patience, discipline, and orginasation to pull off. If the team lacks in any of these, then this strategy won't work. This is the key factor in this strat, and the factor most players lack.
If if isn't implented quickly, it won't have a good effect. It must be implemented withing the first five minutes or so, before the marines have a chance to expand into heavily fortified positions.
A prolonged observatory operation will limit effectiveness, as you must move farther away from the base to become cloaked.
Ambush points must be varied a bit. Most players can't do this properly.
Requires a slightly higher degree of skill than most players have.
Requires open minded players. This is the number one downfall of this strat. Players shoot it down too fast because it is new.
Just some stuff I've worked on for you guys to flame, complement, comment, post randomness here or whatever. Have fun with it and thank you for reading.
Combat-
In combat, skulks should not rush straight into the marines. Without carapace, skulks fall fast. It takes a different tactic to destroy marines properly. Rush is not your friend when playing with sensory first. Instead, a group of skulks should sit outside the marine spawn, or at vital choke points, and wait. This requires patience and timing on the aliens part. Instead of charging head long, you cloak and wait. You see a marine, you wait. He walks up to you, you wait. You wait for him to turn his back to you, and walk away. Then you charge the unexpecting marine from the rear bite him his two bites, and he is toast. Then you sit and cloak. Rinse and repeat. A group of marines is no different. You just wait until they all pass you by, then you go from back to front. A single skulk can easily take out four or five marines in this manner. I've done it plenty of times.
Gorge-
The gorge is key. Since this works best if done immediatly, he should for go building res towers, and opt to get sensory down fast. At least one, preferably two, then go for res. Any skulks with 23 res should gorge, put down a sensory, then skulk. This can be done so the gorge can cap res. The gorge also provides you with your mobile Defense chamber. A cloaked gorge makes a good healer. He hides unnoticed and heals up any skulks that need some good healing, while he waits for his res. Heal spray also heals offense towers. Defence isn't needed for offense towers, in fact offense towers aren't even needed if pulled off well enough. If the skulks are doing well, the marines will have trouble even walking out of there base.
Lerk-
This presents a good opportunity to lerks. They can sit from a far and spike marines, then cloak. Spike, then cloak. It makes finding his position fairly difficult, if done to a good effect. If you spike, the fly away, and cloak, it sets up a good ambush for those marines that travel out to find you. Sitting in vents provides a good vantage point most the time.
Skulk-
Besides the combat mentioned above, skulks also have a good opportunity to set up parasiting. Many maps have places you can sit and observe the marine base and parasite them as they spawn. They can't find you because of the cloaking. This isn't effective once the observatory goes down, but more on that next.
Dealing with observatory-
Well if the combat is done well enough in keeping the marines inside the base then it gives you a good advantage. First off, it keeps them from expanding, which is one of their biggest advantages. Second, it chokes them out of resources, which everyone needs to survive. And this is the biggest counter to observatory. If they have no rescources then they can't build one. If they do get one up, just move your ambushes back a bit, and wait for a good lerk to take it out. A rush on the observatory by a group is a bad idea, as you need to keep a constant ambush waiting for them outside the base, but a lone skulk or two could make good with a rush on the observatory.
Psycological-
This creates a huge psycological effect on marines. If they get killed by invisible stalkers, then they will become very afraid. Fear is good for aliens to create in their enemies. It will make them nervous and jittery. They will waste ammo firing into random spots. The comm will use up res attempting to ping the aliens. And if a couple lone skulks just wait at random spots on the map, then it will create fear through out the map, as there is always a chance to die if you are a marine, and not know it.
Second hive-
The chamber for second hive should be movement, and you should pass up adrenaline for either celerity or silence. Silence is good for skulks, adrenaline is good for lerks, and celerity for gorges. Silence lets the skulks set up better ambushes, adrenaline lets the lerks spike longer, and celerity lets the gorges respond faster to attacks with his heal spray. Web becomes invaluable at this point. Nothing like walking into webbing and then being eaten by a skulk you can't\didn't see or hear.
Third hive- At this point, game is pretty much over. If a decent job has been done to this point, then the marines have nothing, and you have everything.
Disadvantages-
Requires a high degree of patience, discipline, and orginasation to pull off. If the team lacks in any of these, then this strategy won't work. This is the key factor in this strat, and the factor most players lack.
If if isn't implented quickly, it won't have a good effect. It must be implemented withing the first five minutes or so, before the marines have a chance to expand into heavily fortified positions.
A prolonged observatory operation will limit effectiveness, as you must move farther away from the base to become cloaked.
Ambush points must be varied a bit. Most players can't do this properly.
Requires a slightly higher degree of skill than most players have.
Requires open minded players. This is the number one downfall of this strat. Players shoot it down too fast because it is new.
Just some stuff I've worked on for you guys to flame, complement, comment, post randomness here or whatever. Have fun with it and thank you for reading.
Comments
edit: ie marines run run run run shoot die run run run run shoot die, the hive barely heals itself atm
am·bush
n.
The act of lying in wait to attack by surprise.
A sudden attack made from a concealed position.
Those hiding in order to attack by surprise.
The hiding place used for this.
A hidden peril or trap.
tr.v. am·bushed, am·bush·ing, am·bush·es
To attack from a concealed position.
Sorry, it just won't work. It'll probably still have trouble even if it does cloak other buildings. MAY be usefull if 1.1 alters the res model so the aliens get a LOT more res so they can do this. In fact, I don't see a reason why not considering the marines can plop down a TF and 4 turrets along with 2 IP and an armory and then keep going around getting res nodes.
<!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> = sneaky
Don't get me wrong - I do love getting sensory first. I dream of a two hive ambush - some skulks hanging around on walls surrounding a lerk, who triggers his umbra when the marines start walking around him. Nearly invincible skulks dropping out of nowhere should kill even a large marine task force. It only seems viable as a surprise move (since almost nobody builds sensory first), and if your team is very welll coordinated.
Also - why doesn't anyone mention the ability of the sensory chamber to spot enemies for you? I thought that was one of the cooler abilities, as if an ambush fails a properly placed sensory should detect a sneaky marine. Ah well.
I've played with Lvl 3 cloaking, it is fun, particularly when parasiting marines and they can't figure out where it's coming from. Against competent marines it's useless, against noobie marines, it's a good laugh.
Sensory does rock...it is 10 res too. On the voogru server's we dish out res right away, and people are like hurry hurry hurry, get 3 DCs. If I don't have all the res I need, I say, screw you, we are cloaking lol.
Combat-
In combat, skulks should not rush straight into the marines. Without carapace, skulks fall fast. It takes a different tactic to destroy marines properly. Rush is not your friend when playing with sensory first. Instead, a group of skulks should sit outside the marine spawn, or at vital choke points, and wait. This requires patience and timing on the aliens part. Instead of charging head long, you cloak and wait. You see a marine, you wait. He walks up to you, you wait. You wait for him to turn his back to you, and walk away. Then you charge the unexpecting marine from the rear bite him his two bites, and he is toast. Then you sit and cloak. Rinse and repeat. A group of marines is no different. You just wait until they all pass you by, then you go from back to front. A single skulk can easily take out four or five marines in this manner. I've done it plenty of times.
Gorge-
The gorge is key. Since this works best if done immediatly, he should for go building res towers, and opt to get sensory down fast. At least one, preferably two, then go for res. Any skulks with 23 res should gorge, put down a sensory, then skulk. This can be done so the gorge can cap res. The gorge also provides you with your mobile Defense chamber. A cloaked gorge makes a good healer. He hides unnoticed and heals up any skulks that need some good healing, while he waits for his res. Heal spray also heals offense towers. Defence isn't needed for offense towers, in fact offense towers aren't even needed if pulled off well enough. If the skulks are doing well, the marines will have trouble even walking out of there base.
Lerk-
This presents a good opportunity to lerks. They can sit from a far and spike marines, then cloak. Spike, then cloak. It makes finding his position fairly difficult, if done to a good effect. If you spike, the fly away, and cloak, it sets up a good ambush for those marines that travel out to find you. Sitting in vents provides a good vantage point most the time.
Skulk-
Besides the combat mentioned above, skulks also have a good opportunity to set up parasiting. Many maps have places you can sit and observe the marine base and parasite them as they spawn. They can't find you because of the cloaking. This isn't effective once the observatory goes down, but more on that next.
Dealing with observatory-
Well if the combat is done well enough in keeping the marines inside the base then it gives you a good advantage. First off, it keeps them from expanding, which is one of their biggest advantages. Second, it chokes them out of resources, which everyone needs to survive. And this is the biggest counter to observatory. If they have no rescources then they can't build one. If they do get one up, just move your ambushes back a bit, and wait for a good lerk to take it out. A rush on the observatory by a group is a bad idea, as you need to keep a constant ambush waiting for them outside the base, but a lone skulk or two could make good with a rush on the observatory.
Psycological-
This creates a huge psycological effect on marines. If they get killed by invisible stalkers, then they will become very afraid. Fear is good for aliens to create in their enemies. It will make them nervous and jittery. They will waste ammo firing into random spots. The comm will use up res attempting to ping the aliens. And if a couple lone skulks just wait at random spots on the map, then it will create fear through out the map, as there is always a chance to die if you are a marine, and not know it.
Second hive-
The chamber for second hive should be movement, and you should pass up adrenaline for either celerity or silence. Silence is good for skulks, adrenaline is good for lerks, and celerity for gorges. Silence lets the skulks set up better ambushes, adrenaline lets the lerks spike longer, and celerity lets the gorges respond faster to attacks with his heal spray. Web becomes invaluable at this point. Nothing like walking into webbing and then being eaten by a skulk you can't\didn't see or hear.
Third hive- At this point, game is pretty much over. If a decent job has been done to this point, then the marines have nothing, and you have everything.
Disadvantages-
Requires a high degree of patience, discipline, and orginasation to pull off. If the team lacks in any of these, then this strategy won't work. This is the key factor in this strat, and the factor most players lack.
If if isn't implented quickly, it won't have a good effect. It must be implemented withing the first five minutes or so, before the marines have a chance to expand into heavily fortified positions.
A prolonged observatory operation will limit effectiveness, as you must move farther away from the base to become cloaked.
Ambush points must be varied a bit. Most players can't do this properly.
Requires a slightly higher degree of skill than most players have.
Requires open minded players. This is the number one downfall of this strat. Players shoot it down too fast because it is new.
Just some stuff I've worked on for you guys to flame, complement, comment, post randomness here or whatever. Have fun with it and thank you for reading. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
sYn did this about 1-2 months ago, its nothing new. Also Sensory chambers are cheap enough to block yourself into most hives, so that JPers cannot get through. It is tough, but i would still recommend defense over sensory or movement.
1. Marines fully expect the defense chamber first EVERY game. There is no exception. The first cloak ambush you make always takes them by surprise and usually every marine falls to it.
2. When the marine team realizes you have cloak instead of defense, it's demoralizing and scary for them. They don't know where you are. I myself destroyed a 5 marine squad inside an empty hive by killing 2 of them then hopping up to the ceiling to re-cloak, and then took out the rest. After I ate the first 2 marines the rest of them used ALL of their ammo to shoot the walls, floors and every place where I wasn't.
3. In response to Twisted master who wrote that "You can't chomp three times before a marine can shoot 9 bullets into you." Yes, you can, if you do it the right way, and that is waiting for that marine to put his back to you. When you engage a running marine from behind and start chomping his backside, he won't turn around to see you before he's dead.
4. Yes, when the motion tracking goes up you lose a bit of your invulnerability, but again, as stated before, by the time motion tracking is going up or shortly after, the gorge should be well over halfway towards saving for the second hive, if not having it already building. Defense chambers appear shortly after.
Everytime my team goes sensory first has been a win. Mind you I only play at a server that I would conjecture to have 90% regulars at any given time of the day. Regulars I have known since 1.0 .
I do miss the advantages of cloak, but the problem is, the only advantage (pre 1.1) of the SC is cloak (feel free to prove me wrong), whereas a DC has regen, cara and redemp, and MC Adren, celerity and silence, all useful at different points in the game.
Thinking about that though, it might be an idea to get MC or SC first, for silence or cloaking respectively, and then get the other when the 2nd hive is up, finally getting DCs if and when you get the final 3rd hive. Cloaking + Silence = THERE'RE COMING OUT THE WALLS! ARGHHHHH
am·bush
n.
The act of lying in wait to attack by surprise.
A sudden attack made from a concealed position.
Those hiding in order to attack by surprise.
The hiding place used for this.
A hidden peril or trap.
tr.v. am·bushed, am·bush·ing, am·bush·es
To attack from a concealed position. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
its called scanner sweep... cough
Hive cannot heal itself fast enough with no dc's, meaning that if the marines ever broke through your 1st defense line it would be gg.
It would be somewhat impossible to take out expansion rsr nodes since you have no cara to take on the marine.
They jp rush and you cant heal hive/have lerkers because all your skulks went gorg at 23.
In response: Building sensory can lead to an easy hive camp on hives such as powersilo, cargo, viaduct, maint... etc... A very ineffective way to guard the jp rush because of two reasonse: No hive healing and all your skulks went gorg which was listed above!
As for sensory towers blocking the ways in *listed by firewater* This could be an effective use, although they can always siege.. which would in effect slow down their marine victory, you would have to be sure not to let them rsr expand to much.
Marines get heartattcks and die from the first ambush.
Short period of confusement from Marines, Marines wander out and die some more.
Marines get assertive (haha, they went sense first, n00b gorge).
COM starts scanning ahead of marines advances, skulks drop like flies, OR a Marine has managed to put up a phase somewhere and skulks drop like flies trying to take the mini-base down.
Marines either just go kill your hive with whatever they got or secure both hives and tech up.
Even in the rare cases where we have gotten two hives we have usually lost. Fades and Lerks without either carapace or adrenaline aren't even half as usueful as with it. Sens first guarantees a fun game, but almost guaraantees a loss as well, unfortunately. It takes *Way* more out of your skulks, not just skill but tactical thinking as well and it makes it impossible to *attack*. Defense is (ironically) the strongest for attacking and pretty much as good as sens for defending, which is why it is tthe most popular choice.
Move has the advantage that once 2:nd hive is up you are good to go, and if used strategically the first hive will be easy to defend (getting MC's up at good places means that skulks can teleport back when hive is under attack). It also makes the lerks great, now a lerk can take down structures really fast.
As much as I would like to believe that anything other then D-->M is a valid choice, I can't. It just cripples the teams offensive (sens) abilities as well as the defensive (move, other then hive). I'd rather go with Movement if I couldn't get D.
Celerity is great for combat skulks and gorges.
Adrenaline gives you machinegun lerks, who can sit on the hive and spam endless spikes at intruders.
Silence is perfect for ninja skulks.
By comparison, Defense seems clunky and inelegant.
In response: Building sensory can lead to an easy hive camp on hives such as powersilo, cargo, viaduct, maint... etc... A very ineffective way to guard the jp rush because of two reasonse: No hive healing and all your skulks went gorg which was listed above!
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This would only be one or two skulks max, as it is just a way to accelerated the 3 sensory aquirement, and to allow the gorbe to save for more res or for the second hive.
And scanner sweeps would only be a problem if they built observatory after their ip and armory, because if the marines are contained enough they will have limited resources, and marines won't always realize that the aliens went sensory first off.
And needing carapce to off marines. In a lot games, dc's aren't even built until the second hive is up and going anyways, so you are without it for that part of the game, and skulks seem to not have a problem killing marines then.
The only big problem that can't be thought a solution is that of organization. In a pub, this would be near impossible to do, as organization is minimal most of the time. However, a clan that practices regularly can get great organization, and would benefit this greatly.
Just some more stuff to chew on. Keeps post coming.
Sitting duck.
I can see movement first as being doable in the near future (*cough* 1.1 *cough*), because of speed for certain skulks, silence for others, adrenaline for gorge and early lerks (OMG, 1 HIVE Lerks USEFUL!).
Sensory still just doesn't cut it, maybe some of the 1.1 changes with sensory remain unannounced though...
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Best fun I've had with cloaking was in ns_bast. I found a dark corner on a wall in the marine base and cloaked, then spent twenty minutes parasiting each and every one of them as they spawned. It took them a *long* time to find me because I was careful only to shoot when their backs were turned, and with full cloaking you're only visible for a fraction of a second.
sensory si teh r0xzors!!!!1!
Defense second:
This looks like the 100% sure choice chamber to be able to keep your forces healthy, and your towers. The problem now arises that without motion... fades and lerks suck. Maybe people just need to learn how to fade and lerk without adrenaline, but until then this fact is true. Sure you can now sit around defending your base like nobody's business, but assaulting a marine encampment is NOT going to be easy without being able to spam attacks as you would be able to with adrenaline.
Motion second:
So you now have motion, and you can hide and kill like nobody else. You stated earlier that after getting cloak, most likely the 'rines would go for motion tracking. Without defense, and them being able to find you, you reeeeallly need to kill them before they get many shots off. Attacking is relatively easy as you can spam, but youre going to need a gorge for healing backup.
Can sensory first be done? Sure. Is it the best "tech-tree" path? I can't answer that. IMO, until the next patch comes out, I'm sticking with defense first.