Sensory Chambers
olright
Join Date: 2003-04-21 Member: 15722Members
<div class="IPBDescription">and why they should come first</div> First off, let me say this. When I picked up NS for the first time I was confused. Greatly. I read the manual, thought I was ready to go, but nope. This game is a wee bit over the top for the younger crowd, hence the mature community. I like it. But back to this post...At first, I thought traditionally. D, Movement, Sensory, in that order. It worked, but I wanted something more. Recently, while playing LAN with some friends, I found it. Sensory rules first, and if used correctly, can get you the win in under 10 minutes. First of all, cloaking + skulks = win early on. What an lmg rine cant see, it cant hit. By initiating unseen attacks, marines will be paranoid, especially new ones. This is good, instantly putting them on the defensive. This alone is good enough, but cloaking for gorges works well too. A marine cant see the health of a Chamber or RT from far away, so the Gorge can be building while cloaked to ensure safety...well, just had to say it...Sensory goes first! <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
By the time you get the res to drop chambers, you really want DCs with large teams, so the skulks can get that cara and have an advantage against early marines.
They'll get an observatory up and send a big squad toward your hive, often with a few shotguns tossed in. The comm will scan every room the marines enter, immediately uncloaking all skulks and rendering your upgrade useless. The comm can afford to do this (even though he shouldn't have to do it more than 5 times, for a total of 15 res) because he knows the rush will win the game or cripple the aliens beyond recovery (like killing the gorge multiple time and knifing down their only RT.)
The marines will push their way forward to your hive, quite quickly and easily I might add due to the marines' complete ownage of early skulks, and then they'll be in a defensive position VERY uncomfortably close to your hive (read: within siege range) that you will HAVE to assault. This is assuming they won't just waltz into the hive room and start spawn camping and shooting at the hive, which will heal itself at a pathetic 2 HP per sec since you didn't get DCs. Problem is, you chose the absolute worst upgrade path for assaulting. Going cloak assumes that your team will manage to NEVER let a single marine get anywhere close to your hive. I'm sorry to say, but this is living in a fantasy world. It WILL happen unless the aliens utterly outclass the marines, and it will happen soon. Then you're screwed.
Assuming the aliens somehow manage to get a second hive up (newbie marines most likely), you'll still be disadvantaged compared to the regular DMS build order. If you pick defense, your lerks will be very inefficient due to no adrenaline and you'll either have castrated acid rocket spamming fades, or slow melee fades with no celerity. If you go movement, you'll have offensive power alright, but next to no survivability in combat. Lose/lose situation. Cloaking won't compensate for any of these deficiencies as the marines will most certainly have motion tracking by then.
Besides, what the hell is so good about cloak for ambushing anyway? Unless you're standing directly in the marines' path, you'll get next to no surprise effect. As soon as you move, you'll uncloak with a BIG audio cue (the uncloaking sound), then you'll just be a plain old regular uncarapaced skulk with no celerity -- in other words, no upgrades to help you live longer in battle.
sensory first is not weak its just misunderstood. I would like alot of servers to enforce sensory first only on their servers, atleast for a little while, so that these stratiges can be perfected.
Marines don't even have to move to empty hives to easily beat sensory first aliens, but even if they do, what are you gonna do to stop it? Your OC will die in 3 LMG clip. Warning or no warning, how will you dig the marines out if they decide to mine/turret it up? You purposefully didn't choose the upgrade path that would actually help you assault a defended location.
Then they move to the second empty hive, or hell, maybe even your main hive. Again, what will you do to stop it? DCs are not only essential for the carapace upgrade, but also for the healing they provide. It's VERY hard for vanilla marines to assault a location defended by carapaced skulks being healed by nearby DCs, whereas a single scan will uncloak all cloaked skulks in an area and they'll have neither the extended longevity granted by carapace nor the handy healing DCs provide.
If sensory first were only "misunderstood", you'd see top clans using it at least once in a while in match.
My god! Using sensory chambers first! Give this man a Nobel Prize! That's NEVER been though of before! Why, I bet the hundreds of other posts about the benefits of sensory chambers which one can easily find by searching have never even SUGGESTED that one might venture to build sensory first! Who would have thought?</sarcasm>
Now that I've got that out of my system...
First of all, this is moot anyway, since 1.1 is going to change everything. Second: Cloaking. Is. USELESS.
Why?
1: It does not provide total invisibility. A sharp eye can pick you out.
2: As soon as the marines realise you are using cloaking, the commander will scan areas before the marines move in. Therefore, cloaking only works on stupid commanders.
3: Ambushing marines with cloaking still relies on you finding a good spot. Most of the time, it's easy to find a good spot to ambush from without cloaking! Seriously, an ambush doesn't depend on you being invisible. Carapace and DCs first doesn't stop you from ambushing, whereas cloaking and SCs do stop you from normal combat.
4: Cloaking does not work while you move. Therefore, it does not help you in combat. It doesn't make a difference if you can use cloaking to ambush successfully if you don't have the armour to take down your target.
5: Because cloaking does not help you in combat and does not work on turrets, it does not help you destroy marine outposts. It offers no advantage to ATTACK, only to defend. No battle is ever won by remaining on the defensive all the time. If you cannot stop marines from securing resource nodes, if you cannot stop them from setting up forward bases and you cannot stop them from securing hives you will lose. No question. Cloaking does nothing to help you retake captured locations.
6: The sensory chamber's built-in feature of reporting enemy incursions pales into insignificance compared to the defense chamber's healing properties. Anyway, skulks have parasite right from the first hive. A competant team of skulks should be able to track the movements of the marines using parasite without the need for SCs.
7: As with the above point, sensory chambers will not help heal the hive if it is being attacked. Nor will they provide ANY benefit to offense chambers in a Wall of Lame. Again, this will change in 1.1 - time will tell whether it will be effective or not.
Even clan members don't know the power of leap? This is a preposterous claim, but irrelevant whether true or false. You will not survive long enough to get a second hive, ESPECIALLY if you go sensory first. Against good marines that is. Against crappy ones, you can do pretty much whatever you want. Like gorge rushing. Doesn't mean it's actually a good strategy, now does it?
DCs give you the best chance at actually winning the game. It allows you to make defensive positions (carapaced skulks + DCs) very hard for regular marines to crack, it helps you assault defended positions by improving your survivability, and it makes you much tougher to kill, allowing you to kill more marines in a fight than you normally would. What does cloaking offer? A very iffy "advantage" that is easily negated by a comm who knows how to scan.
No matter how good a marine I am, you will kill me if you have cloaking? Well I can say that no matter how good a skulk you are, I will kill you if you don't have carapace! See? I can say stuff like that too!
But whatever. You're dodging my points. This is going nowhere. Good bye.
im just praying its ALOT more viable in 1.1
the biggest set back to sens is that you must travel back to the hive for health, very time wasting (well, that and the lack of cara), and MT, and turrets... uhhh
perhaps if a dedicated team assigned 1 or 2 players to continually keep the obs down sens would be better.
if you can stop MT half way through youv annoyed the comm, kept cloaking viable a little longer and wasted alot of marines res. 5 bites each, its not a crazy idea, allthough rines would get wise fast.
on the subject of taking areas back, its very possible to work your way into an area a little at a time, (prolly not on clan games tbh), even if its just to get information about what the enemy are doing! (yes i think this matters most in NS, information!) single kills dont really compare to an easy parasite in every marine that passes.
anyway, im arguing a lost cause really cos carapace will always rule cloaking, its just that cloaking is SO much more fun.
This is why silence > cloaking for skulks.
As a skulk, you don't have ranged weapons. You have miserable health and armor. You don't have phase gates. Movement is the key to attacking, defending, and controlling the map. Any ability that is incompatible with rapid movement is a liability for a skulk.
Silence lets you stay mobile, but helps you get the jump on travelling marines. With a little bit of practice, you're pretty much guaranteed one free bite. And unlike cloaking, silence works pretty well on stationary (building, welding, guarding the wrong direction) marines.
<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
/Flame shield deactivated due to irreperable damage <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Seriously though, in 1.1 I cannot WAIT for silence upgrades. Leaping silent carapaced skulk... Muaahahahha
If you want to know how to really use leap, read my guide in this forum.
Roo
sesory first is valid if you have a team of non retards/noobs. ive already said all of this in other posts. read them
Too true...
Worst of all is the inevitable relocation to Cargo Bay in ns_nothing...
This unstoppable migration instinct of the marines is making the game predictable and... un-fun <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
--EDIT--
P.S. a wall of lame in 1.1 should be really fun... build the normal wall, drop some DCs in (assuming you have 3 hives), and drop an SC or 2 behind it... marine walks along a corridor and BOOM, 10 or 20 OC-spits come flying at him, but where from?
^)^
\_/
--EDIT #2--
BTW, sensory does work sometimes... the other day aliens won a game w/ SC, against some pretty well organized marines, but, since most ppl. get p/o'd when you start dropping SCs, it's best to keep them out of the public servers <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
LOL, yes, clanners do not know ANYTHING ABOUT LEAP AT ALL, nothing, none whatsoever, 0. Read my sig plz and start playing against people that know that they are doing <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Then one of them told us that they had lvl3 weapons, which sounded crazy, because they had been at their base for whole game, but sad for us, it was true. Our fades pressed the attack with lerk support against the satellite outpost with no results. The aggressive marines <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> killed a non-carapaced fade with one lmg + pistol clip, and their one GL made a short work of all umbra support. If we wanted to get healing we had to travel long way to fusion hive.
Well, eventually we won the game, I found a blind spot behind their TF, where sentries didn't even start humping the tf hitbox, and I cloaked behind it and ate it when marines were busy killing the fades in satellite hallways.
So, if marines are slaughtered by cloaking skulks when they roam around the corridors, one good thing for their commander is to do, is upgrade to lvl3 weapons asap and lock down one of the hives, because sensory aliens usually get movement second (as far as I have seen) and non-carapaced fades are so damn easy to kill with lvl3 lmg + pistol.
sesory first is valid if you have a team of non retards/noobs. ive already said all of this in other posts. read them <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
cloaking is what I like to call a pre-engagement ability. It allows you to set up for an attack, but during the actual fight, it does nothing. Trying to cloak in the middle of a fight will get you murdered like O.J. Simpson's wife.
So one can say that while cloaking is efficent at stalking and in the pre-engagement phase, it will not help you in the middle of a fight.
Level 3 Carapace on the other hand allows a skulks to absorb 19 bullets before dying. Now the key difference between carapace and cloaking is, carapace is useful during the fight, not before it, hence its an engagement ability.
Cloaking can work out great if your team works well together, and does not let the marines out of their spawn. However, with cloaking, since its a pre-engagement ability, it is very difficult to retake lost ground, skulks are simply too weak to absorb a lot of damage from a few marines camped in an area.
Carapace on the other hand allows skulks to close the gap a lot better. Being able to absorb more bullets is absolutely key during an engagement vs marines that can actually AIM.
Unless in 1.1 skulks can take more of a beating, I do not see sensory as a viable chamber, because it is very difficult to go offensive with a carapace-free skulk.
Valid enough?
That's a pretty big if. Marines spawn faster, are ready for action as soon as they poof in, and only need to walk 20 steps to reinforce a breakout attempt. Skulks spawn slower, need to wait through their cloaking evolution, and need to cross 1/3-1/2 the map before they can engage the marine spawn.
IMO, if the marines are getting rocked under those circumstances, they have bigger problems than the cloaking.
sesory first is valid if you have a team of non retards/noobs. ive already said all of this in other posts. read them <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Here they are again. You seem to have missed them:
<!--QuoteBegin--SoulSkorpion.+Apr 26 2003, 03:34 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SoulSkorpion. @ Apr 26 2003, 03:34 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->1: It does not provide total invisibility. A sharp eye can pick you out.
2: As soon as the marines realise you are using cloaking, the commander will scan areas before the marines move in. Therefore, cloaking only works on stupid commanders.
3: Ambushing marines with cloaking still relies on you finding a good spot. Most of the time, it's easy to find a good spot to ambush from without cloaking! Seriously, an ambush doesn't depend on you being invisible. Carapace and DCs first doesn't stop you from ambushing, whereas cloaking and SCs do stop you from normal combat.
4: Cloaking does not work while you move. Therefore, it does not help you in combat. It doesn't make a difference if you can use cloaking to ambush successfully if you don't have the armour to take down your target.
5: Because cloaking does not help you in combat and does not work on turrets, it does not help you destroy marine outposts. It offers no advantage to ATTACK, only to defend. No battle is ever won by remaining on the defensive all the time. If you cannot stop marines from securing resource nodes, if you cannot stop them from setting up forward bases and you cannot stop them from securing hives you will lose. No question. Cloaking does nothing to help you retake captured locations.
6: The sensory chamber's built-in feature of reporting enemy incursions pales into insignificance compared to the defense chamber's healing properties. Anyway, skulks have parasite right from the first hive. A competant team of skulks should be able to track the movements of the marines using parasite without the need for SCs.
7: As with the above point, sensory chambers will not help heal the hive if it is being attacked. Nor will they provide ANY benefit to offense chambers in a Wall of Lame. Again, this will change in 1.1 - time will tell whether it will be effective or not. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They're all valid reasons. Now YOU refute them, instead of simply repeating the mantra "sensory is good, you just need good players".
1) marines can't shoot for love nor toffee
2) marines don't know the map and have monitors so dark they could hardly see the corridor
3) marines don't see the big blue letters saying "Enemy: Roobubba" then they look at you, cloaked or not
4) marines have no upgrades ESP MT or just an observatory
but let's face it under those situations, no game is fun <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Roll on 1.1
1) marines can't shoot for love nor toffee
2) marines don't know the map and have monitors so dark they could hardly see the corridor
3) marines don't see the big blue letters saying "Enemy: Roobubba" then they look at you, cloaked or not
4) marines have no upgrades ESP MT or just an observatory
but let's face it under those situations, no game is fun <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Roll on 1.1 <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
First of all...I agree..Roll on 1.1...
But I have disagree that in the situations you mentioned when sensory works like a charm, are actually great fun and quite entertaining. Watching the marines slowly creep out of the the spawn looking at every little corner hoping to see something...or cloaking on top of their badly misplaced turret factories or armory then watching them build or get ammo right in front of you only to bite their face off when they least expect it...good times...