When Did Carapace Become "essential"?
AutumnTwilight
Join Date: 2002-08-27 Member: 1244Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-08-27 Member: 1244Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">It really isn't...</div> When did everyone decide that un-carapaced skulks are worthless? I rarely take carapace as a skulk. I find regen much more versatile, and sometimes just don't worry about taking upgrades, as I can do plenty of damage most of the time with a plain vanilla skulk. (Of course, I really like getting sensory or movement up first too, then it gets fun!)
As others have said, it's all about hiding, surprising, in other words: SKULKING around. Sure, you're in trouble if you charge at a marine from 10 meters without carapace, but guess what? You're in only slightly less trouble with carapace.
My theory is that for many people, carapace only allows people to continue to play sloppily. It gives you more margin for error and allows you to learn, when you're first starting, but it also allows you to keep playing with bad habits, instead of discarding them.
Think about it. If you are playing with the keyboard only, and no mouse or mouselook for you, then carapace is going to help you live longer, but you would do much better by learning to use a mouse.
When I do use carapace, I notice a difference because I can often get 3 or 4 marines, instead of 1 to 3. This is because I am plenty good without it, largely due to my tactics, and I still use these tactics with carapace.
To sum it up, use carapace to extend your already lethal skulk life, not as a crutch to allow you to keep playing poorly...
Twilight
As others have said, it's all about hiding, surprising, in other words: SKULKING around. Sure, you're in trouble if you charge at a marine from 10 meters without carapace, but guess what? You're in only slightly less trouble with carapace.
My theory is that for many people, carapace only allows people to continue to play sloppily. It gives you more margin for error and allows you to learn, when you're first starting, but it also allows you to keep playing with bad habits, instead of discarding them.
Think about it. If you are playing with the keyboard only, and no mouse or mouselook for you, then carapace is going to help you live longer, but you would do much better by learning to use a mouse.
When I do use carapace, I notice a difference because I can often get 3 or 4 marines, instead of 1 to 3. This is because I am plenty good without it, largely due to my tactics, and I still use these tactics with carapace.
To sum it up, use carapace to extend your already lethal skulk life, not as a crutch to allow you to keep playing poorly...
Twilight
Comments
but if you can manage to jump on their head right away, then youre good to go.
Also, by skulking, I don't mean you only have to wait patiently on a ceiling for marines to come by (Although that is well-worth it and very fun), but also drawing marines into ambushes. You know, peek around a corner, and parasite one, then duck back around the corner. He comes charging after you, comes around the corner, and you're gone. Until you drop on his head, etc. See here, you aren't having to wait much at all, and are taking a very active role in bringing them to you, and yet you *still* are playing in a different style than just charging around the corner and down the hall biting wildly and hoping your carapace holds until you get there.
(And yes, silence is *excellent* as a skulk)
Twilight
Also the thought of no upgrades to max out for gorge overflow is a good one for if you can kill 15 marines before you die then you DONT need upgrades. Like the ideas ppl.
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So can someone tell me why everyone choses carapace?
I just wish cloaking came into play more. By the time I usually get it, the Aliens are in mop-up mode.
All this self serving "I am so much better than you guys so I don't need carapace" is a load of rubbish. Try playing a REAL game of NS and you will realise the marines are at a huge advantage.
EDIT:
I should probably add a little more. In clan games the aliens at their current state are either playing full on attack, or full on defense (dictated more or less by the marines choice, do i a) tech rush, b) hive lockdown, or c) hive rush + tech up).
With a) the alien's job is to group up and take down marine res nodes to delay the inevitable. Lesse now, a couple of marines guarding the node. Thats 100 bullets. Let's say they can shoot straight. Thats 80 bullets hitting their target. Let's say 4 aliens are rushing, and none have carapace. They are dead with an overkill of 40 bullets. Ok, let's say they all take level 1 carapace, they are dead within 48 bullets, still 32 left in their collective ammo clips. Ok, let's say level 3 carapace, they are dead within 76 bullets, still 4 left. Keep in mind, it is much harder to kill an alien off completely the higher his carapace level, because he generally dodges off behind a wall when he gets hurt too bad so the next teammate starts absorbing the damage. With no carapace, this is very difficult to accomplish, possibly impossible. Regeneration is absolutely USELESS in this situation as it will have nearly no effect in combat, WHERE IT COUNTS.
Ok, with b) the alien's job is to do both a) and attempt to recapture a hive. The marines will either use most of their marines defending the hive or pop down a TF and a few sentries and use a few marines. In either situation, you are attacking a target EXPECTING you to come. There is none of this "sneaky" "come through the vent" "hide up on the wall" crap, the ALIEN HAS TO ATTACK, else the marines will gradually tech up and become impossible to kill. Turrets are a **** to kill with no carapace, obviously. Same marine combat scenario as in a). Regeneration as before, is absolutely USELESS in this situation.
On to c). Aliens play defensive, but also have to play offensive at the same time. What do I mean? Well, the marines will be constantly sending a pack of 4 or so marines to the alien hive/upcoming hive to take out defence chambers/gorge/hive. So yes the "camp up in the corner" can work in this situation, but guess what, marines will be expecting you to be camping in the corners, so before you can do your sneaky ninja elite skills with your elite lack of carapace, you will be dead from a short burst of LMG. Regeneration is useless here again, because 1. you have a hive right next to you and 2. it does nothing but help the marines pinpoint your exact position. Also in this situation the aliens have to play offensive at the same time to deny marines resource nodes, usually undefended. This is the only time where regeneration may come in handy, but it's usefulness is short lived.
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Because maybe the marines on your server aren't particularly good? Definitely doesn't sound like they would be, the scoreboard tends to be something like 30/7 or so for marines on the server I frequent before the aliens finally get defense chambers as even if a skulk could sneak up to marines* they're still often dead meat thanks partly to current hitbox, throwback and other issues but mostly due to the total lack of HPs the skulks possess. If I have more kills than deaths before getting lvl 3 cara I tend to draw the conclusion that the marines are damned awful.
*which they can't thanks to both the extremely loud noise they make [why is it that an alien designed to be sneaky makes a much more audible noise than a marine?] and motion tracking which the marines can have within a few minutes if they choose to get it)
Regen: You give a marine a parasite or a quick chomp, but he spots you and blasts you down to near-death. You run away to heal while he follows, and gets taken out by you, a fully healed skulk, ready for another hit-and-run.
OR
A group of 4 marines is setting up a base. You start hitting them with parasites, but you get hit and have to retreat. 2 marines try to follow you, so you start luring them away from their objective, allowing your teammates to destroy the other two who decided to follow their orders. They clean up what the marines had started building, then you and your teammates crush the two foolish marines who went after you.
Carapace: You spot a group of 3 marines and move into an attack position. As they pass by, you jump out and hit the one in the back. During the chaos, the marines are trying to hit you, but they end up blasting each other, acting as shields for you. As the rear marine dies, you become more vulnerable, because the marines have a clearer shot at you. A few shots manage to hit you, but it doesn't matter too much, because you can take a bunch of bullets with your carapace. As you finish off the second guy, the last one is too busy switching to his pistol or reloading, because he sprayed his gun all over the place. That's your opportunity to finish him off. You leave to go and heal, and head to another ambush spot, ready to take out another group.
So, it depends on how you fight. Carapace gives you more staying power, while Regen is best suited to a hit-and-run/luring style.
So can someone tell me why everyone choses carapace? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
People choose carapace because you take literally twice the hits with it. If with regen you can take out "a few" marines without stopping, then double that number and that's how many you should be able to take with carapace. Also, marines with any aim can waste you before you regen... it only takes 9 LMG bullets. Oh, also while you're regening your 3 HP / second the regen sound is yelling to the marines, "I'm over here and I'm hurt!"
As for silence, I think the words "motion tracking" need to be taken into account. The only real counter to carapace is upgraded guns, and it would take 120 resources and a lot of time to get level 3, where it is only a 30% damage increase. It would need to be 100% to completely negate it.
Also, I think the argument to not use carapace to get better is dubious at best. A tougher skulk means you'll get more practice biting marines, and you still have the incentive of ambushing and avoiding damage. It's just that you're not made of paper. And who came up with the "don't use carapace, just ambush instead" thing? You can easily ambush marines even if you're not cloaked or silenced.
But we'll see if my preference changes in 1.1 . If they keep the current carapace system it will be hard to beat though.
All this self serving "I am so much better than you guys so I don't need carapace" is a load of rubbish. Try playing a REAL game of NS and you will realise the marines are at a huge advantage. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, read my signature, the part where people talk about their skill.
Twilight i recommend you test your theory on 65.170.14.110:27025 -=STD v1.04 NS Server=- <--------------- this server. We shall see whether you are playing against good marines or sloppy marines, and plz use regen! <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
All these "shotgun guides", "upgrade guides", "lerk guides" etc where people claim they can use **** tactics/upgrades to kill enemies and brag about how good they are while implying everyone else is either mentally retarded or a bunch of idiots just fills the forum with utter crap.
It has always and always will be essential, if it stays the way it is. Skulk without cara is deadmeat nothing more.
I am *not* trying to claim I am so "uber-"elite"" that I don't need upgrades, that carapace is useless, etc. If you'll notice my post count and my join date, you'll see that I joined before NS was released, but I also have not posted very often. I mean, people who have joined a month ago usually have more posts than I do. This is because although I read posts on here quite often, I usually don't have time to post myself (Full-time work and school).
When I *do* post, it's because I really feel a need to point something out. As in this case:
Carapace is always a handy choice, as mentioned, since you it helps you to live longer, no matter what you do. I wasn't saying that I recommended not taking carapace to better your skills, although this might work. I was saying that many people use it as a crutch and it keeps them sloppy. They get killed all of the time, and so they use carapace exclusively because they last longer with it. The problem is that they then decide that skulking with level 3 carapace is "useless" or "suicide" or that you might as well type kill, etc. There are times when these things are true, but often a re-evaluation of your tactics would help you to live longer.
In other words, if you are dying a lot, then try different tactics, think a little more before you jump, etc. This will help you to become better, regardless of whether you have carapace, and if you do, you'll be just that much more deady.
My NS playtime has been almost exclusively public servers, and so yes, I agree that things are probably very different in clan matches. I am not very qualified to judge on how things are in those. But I have noticed in playing pubs that regen can be very effective as a skulk also, especially for taking down turrets (chomp once or twice, pull back to heal, and repeat), killing a couple of marines before retreating, parasiting, etc.
Of course carapace is useful. I only go without upgrades when I desperately need the resources, or I can see that they're not helping me very much in the current situation (Rarely happens and usually only against less experienced opponents).
I'm starting to ramble, so I'll quit, but I wasn't trying to claim I was so good that my way is the best, or that anyone needing carapace is lame, etc. I was just trying to get people to break out of the "I'm getting trashed, must be because we don't have carapace" way of thinking. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it isn't. When I stop and re-evaluate my approach and technique, I usually find that I can do much better if I try to adapt, and I was trying to help others try this too.
Twilight
so dc's give u the ability to regen so why bother taking regen when there are dcs nearby
when u need to defend the hive carapace works best (with hive healing or dcs)
when u need to be offensive carapace works the best with a gorge or dcs nearby
but if u need to defend whole areas by skulking then regen is best
when u need attack them like u described (surprising and stuff) regen is best
Other things are :
rine camping hive from good angle (all doors in sight, like in satcom and viaduct)
2 rines camping hive
So basicly the best tactic is to have skulks with regen and carapace in one team <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
I prefer carapace and u prefer regen, problem solved dont u think? <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Back in 1.0 it wasn't needed, now you need at least 3 skulks to reach a marine who isn't ambushed, maybe 2 with carapace.
I really am not convinced that carapace makes people "sloppy". Sure, a bad player might pick it because it helps him, but that doesn't mean at all that the upgrade is causing him to be a bad player or stay that way. Even with carapace you get advantages from ambushing and dodging, so there are still huge incentives to get better. I just don't see how getting carapace could prevent a player from getting better.
Having carapace doesn't make you sloppy. I just see some people using it as a crutch, and getting so used to having it that they can't play effectively without it. Only some people do this, and it increases your effectiveness no matter what your skill level, agreed.
Twilight
It's easy to construct examples where regen is superior, but it's generally only if the marines are perfectly cooperating with you to make your scenario happen. Flee just in the nick of time with 1 health so you can heal back up? Not too likely. Unless the marine has pretty bad aim, by the time the first bullet hits you, it's too late to get away. Never mind if it's more than one marine - even if you're ambushing and they don't spot you until you drop, you've got about a 50/50 chance of surviving the encounter. And if it's a really good marine who has motion tracking, well, without carapace, you're dead before you even know you've been spotted.
And as far as munching turrets go - regen is all well and good as long as no marines are going to show up while you're chewing on them. Without carapace, you'll be able to get in one or two bites before you need to go heal up. With carapace, you can take out an entire turret without pausing, which is often enough to make a blind spot that lets you take down the factory at your leisure - and since you don't need to stop to run off and heal, your chances of getting the turrets down before the marine with the welder arrives are pretty good.
Now, add to all of this the fact that as a skulk you can probably get back to the hive from anywhere on the map in under 20 seconds (and hopefully your gorge has put DT/OT farms around the map so you don't even need to go that far), not to mention that if you just fight to the death all you've lost are 2 res and 8 seconds most of the time, and how much is that regen really benefiting you?
As you can probably tell, I almost always take carapace as a skulk. Regen I reserve for acid-spamming fade tactics, lerking in vents without DC support, or onos rampaging. For anything else, I'd rather be able to cause 3x the damage and then just run home to heal.
That said, I have found situations to use the other defensive upgrades very rare indeed. Carapace increases the damage you can take by almost 200% (varies with the type of alien, I believe). Without carapace even if I successfully manage an ambush (they don't know i'm there till I bite), I only get about 2 bites average in. If the marines even have one armor upgrade all I will have done is wounded one. I bite once, they almost instantly jump in the air and open fire on me. I'll bite him again and he'll fly off a little distance. This is the point where the rest of his fire will kill me. It's even faster if he has a teammate nearby. Not a whole lot of people are this skilled - sometimes I'll bite a marine and he'll look around trying to figure out where I am while I finish him off. It happens regularly enough though.
The only reason I would consider taking regeneration is if I'm keeping far away from marines. A skulk with regeneration parasiting marines from afar by just barely peeping around the corner and running like crazy after firing. Perhaps a Lerk or fade if I know the terrain I'm fighting in will allow me to stay away from marines.
Getting redemption often keeps me out of the fight too long. I'm not dying, but I'm not doing any significant damage. With Carapace I don't die also, but I stick around long enough to do some damage and suck up some bullets. I'm able to actually go into melee when the odds aren't too much against me. The only time I'd think about doing redemption is as a gorge. In general a gorge wants to stay away from combat, and he's tough enough to have a chance at being redeemed. The other aliens seem to be at the other ends of the spectrum.
Perhaps if the alien were slightly tougher I'd take the other upgrades, but carapace is the only way I can figure to survive even when I'm at my trickiest. Any other way seems to get my butt shot off most of the time before I can get three bites in.
Even with carapace at times I feel too delicate. I was turning a corner at the same time as four marines with lmgs. I was a fade with carapace. I ran backwards spraying acid at them. The only reason I survived was because two ran away shortly after I started firing. If I have any other upgrade
From reading what people have described, when carapace works and when it doesnt, I think I've found the real difference. Carapace is great when the skulks are in groups attacking a marine outpost or base, as the marines can't take all of the skulks out without re-loading by which time you can probably kill them. So if you have a well organised Alien team that will attack the marines together than carapace should work well as an overall stratergy. Regen seems to work better on skulks if they are operating, more or less on their own, and/or behind enemy lines, as they don't have to return to alien terriorty to regenerate. These skulks can take out undefended marine targets (ok no clan server is going to have them so thats probably while regen is used less on clan servers).
I've only ever played on pubs so from my experience I can see both upgrades are useful in their particular situation. However from what I know of clan servers I don't think regen would any where near as useful, as you can call to your gorge, and your going to be attacking with everyone else.
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That is very true, but an experienced player will still perform best with carapace. Practicing with a weaker weapon such as TMP in CS or Carbine in DoD will improve your game immensely because you have to play on another level tactically to compete with the superior firepower. If you do this then move back up to the normal weapons you will improve greatly.