Movements At Hive 1
Quaunaut
The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
The longest seven days in history... Join Date: 2003-03-21 Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Just try it.</div> Ok, with how 2.0 works now, silence is probably the most deadly of the movement upgrades for a skulk. It used to be celerity, but now, at least for me, celerity is too fast. But silence, it makes it MUCH easier to kill marines. INSANELY easier.
Just try it, and after you do, post here. I'm sure you'll favor the outcome if you try movements first, and you do it right.
Just try it, and after you do, post here. I'm sure you'll favor the outcome if you try movements first, and you do it right.
Comments
If 3 MC come up straight away and then I evolve to fade, I can easily cripple their expansion on my own, even without metabolise. It just simply isn't possible without adren because you can't blink *into* battle and then start swiping...
Blink is fine for escaping, and other defensive strats without adren, but with the extra energy, it becomes your most powerful offensive tool. You can blink into marine bases, kill the armoury humpers and blink out before they knew what hit you... With sens first, we're forced to sit outside the base and wait for them to come to us...
Which is exactly the same problem cloaking had in 1.x It's an awesome defensive tool, but it's limited to that. It simply doesn't do anything for your team's offensive power...
Actually it would provide an advantage against marines who actually listen for sound. The hard headed ones who just ignore the environment would be unaffected by silence.
I've played plenty of games and have tried.. tried my damnest to get movement/defense as a first and second chamber. Yet these newbie gorges throw down a sensory the second they have the chance! Can't they understand that sensory, while good for scent of fear and cloaking, isn't exactly that practical on something like an expensive and offensive lifeform like the Onos and Fade, and Lerk? I love having Silence and Regen as a skulk now. Silence and Celerity are awesome upgrades for skulks, and adren is just to have on lifeforms like the Lerk and Fade.
Movement is perfect for a 1st Hive ability. Sensory is good as a 3rd hive ability. With movement as a 1st and Defense as a 2nd, you can easily get severely potent Onos' at a 2nd hive instead of having to wait because some idiot put sensory 1st. Not to mention that skulks are even deadlier at the first hive with movement.
But no, so many people are stuck on "OMG! TEH SENSORY IS TEH CLOAKZ0RZ UV BUILDINGS!!!!!!!!1111" Who gives a crap? The only things you're gonna want cloaked is a healing station outside of the marines base. Offense chambers are basically useless to have cloaked, since they become uncloaked right as soon as they fire. Granted that they do give you a field of cloaking.. but 9 out of 10 times, you won't be anywhere near a sensory chamber when you're attacking a marine.
A friend and I have both been gorging at the begining of rounds now, just to make sure we get the good chambers/upgrades first. Not to mention, me and him usually can dominate a map pretty easily. And what's the cause of that? It's the fact that we don't get sensory first. We leave it for a 3rd hive, where we belive it belongs.
I swear, I'm about ready to start hunting down these people that go for sensory first and beating them with a lead pipe. The thing that made me really hate this "tactical standpoint" is the fact that some gorges will ask what people want for the first hive, about 3/4 of the team will say movement, a few people won't say anything, and 1 person will say sensory.. And guess what happens.. Yup, the stupid gorge gets sensory. <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Oh well, I'm done. Movement first, FOREVER! ^_^
You are forgetting the biggest advantage with sensory. well placed sensories efficiently negates marine autoaim aka motion tracking.
Of course, this'll be mostly effective until marines starts plopping observatories everywhere, however, even then you can just kill their MT if it's not protected and have autoaim negation everywhere except in marine outposts.
Movement is by far the best choice at hive 1
Stop the madness in sensory first!
A more sensible debate is sensory vs DC, but I'm not even gonna start <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->.
Do you see alot of comms building obs all over the map, and scan when there is not a seige cannon involved? I don't see alot of it.
Of course, this'll be mostly effective until marines starts plopping observatories everywhere, however, even then you can just kill their MT if it's not protected and have autoaim negation everywhere except in marine outposts.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A simple scanner sweep will take out the usefulness of having sensories as a 1st hive. Not to mention, that the lack of flow from res, will leave it to where you absolutely can't cover the map with sensories right away.
Generally, by the time you could accomplish something like covering the whole map with sensories, you could easily have 2-3 hives and a team ready to kill (Onos', Fades, a lerk, battle gorge). With the needed upgrades such as carapace, redemption, silence, adrenaline, and celerity.
Granted that Scent of fear is very nice and the cloaking radius that the sensory chambers innately provide are nice as well. They just aren't nice enough to set your whole team back until you can get the other two hives. By the time you'd pull off any type of superb miracles with sensory, the marine team could easily have a full HA train, decked out with HMG's, GL's, Welders, a few shotties, and atleast level 2 upgrades on either weapons or armor, Level 1 on the other. That's just a generalization, some comm's can pull off better, while others can't.
Not to mention the fact that once you attack in a cloaked field, you're visible. And really, who's gonna stop attacking to wait the 1 second to be re-cloaked? You'll be dead before you know what hit you.
Maybe it's just me, but sensory is/was/always will be only good for a 3rd hive chamber. But that's just my opinion.
I'd go into my whole rant on the situation with people slapping sensory down first.. But there'd be way too much swearing. I don't think the mods would like that <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
The sensory cloak only works when you're not attacking.
Cloaking adaptation only works when you're not moving, aka not attacking.
Scent of Fear is nice to know when you're going to be attacked, but does nothing for you when you're attacking, as you're too close for it to be used.
Pheremones can be used to help you attack, but if you're in a bunch of them, it's not much use, and if you're with a single marine, you should be able to take him out or get away without them.
When you think about it, if you start the game off on a defensive footing, you're giving the marines an advantage in letting them have time to set-up, tech-up, and choke off important routes to your third hive. Plus, that opening voice says "Cleanse the intruders" not "Hide from the intruders"
Don't get me wrong. I suck at fighting, and I like gorging. I like the feeling of a well-placed sensory network that lets the rest of my team move about invisibly. This is cool. Sitting undetected on top of the turret factory in the middle of the turret farm that the marines think is impregnable is a laugh. But it's not the way to win - especially as commanders wise up and start dropping more observatories and do more scanner sweeps.
Movement Chambers, on the other hand, are the most offensive. They allow you to be offensive and not worry about the hive as you can teleport back. They also boost your adrenaline around them (letting your lerks and gorges to mucho damage to the early outposts the marines set up)
Celerity: Lets face it, if you're on the offensive, you're going to die. Celerity lets you get back in the action quicker. Plus makes you harder to hit when you're in it.
Silence: You can be within earshot while you're still out of sight. But not with this. Plus makes attacks from the rear truly nasty.. the only thing they hear is the sound of a marine falling down, and by then, you're gone.
Adrenaline: In the early game, you're trying to take over the map. They don't have their heavy armor yet. Hmm.. this sounds like a job for spore spam! Adrenaline helps you do that.
So if you get the movement chamber first, instead of letting the marines hem you off in your invisible network, you can get around and maybe get to those choke-points first, maybe get to that third hive first.
I'm still not sure about the second chamber. Defensive gives you the Devour/Redeem combo (that is apparantly going to be adjusted somehow.. I don't know how yet) and the healing, but the sensory lets you set up better choke-point blocks now that you've presumably grabbed them using your movement enhanced kharaa. Again, I think the sensory will become less viable as commanders wise up. Do you really want to bet your team on them having a comm who hasn't wised up?
Yeah, there are plenty of strategies where you can ambush marines with a cloaked Onos or Fade. But, how are you going to use your cloak to go on the offensive and take out turret farms and marine outposts? You can't. D-Chambers are useful both offensively and defensively. Defensively, because they can heal you in the field, and Offensively, because they provide you with evolutions that can be used to go on offense effectively.
As for Movement chambers... I'm not convinced they are all that useful until Hive 3. Again, Silence isn't going to help you absorb more damage from turrets. Adren can be great for Lerks and Celerity is good for Onos, but wouldn't you rather have Redemption instead of Celerity with Onos, just to protect your investment of resources? I know I would.
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Nullzero
Try gorging and having to depend on your team, and your team depend on you, and keeping your alien children alive and winning. That is why sensory is used so much. As a gorge, I'd rather give everyone a advantage, then 2 people who think they are "elite" with their celery. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Believe me, every skulk can be "elite" with celerity or silence, they just have not explored the upgrades. And anyhow, even if they are not so good with movements yet, whats wrong with getting them used to it, and bringing out their full potential?
And the movement ugprades are great for the gorge too - celerity is great for getting you out of trouble spots quick, silence makes building COMPLETELY silent , great for sneak attacks/overall cover from marines, and adrenalyn enables you to constantly heal without running out of energy, or use bile bomb to a devastating effect vs marine structures.
Movement is the future, sensory is the spanky new toy in the store which isnt so hot in reality.
IT is all personal preference. Each chamber has its own advantages and disadvantages, and each requires the right responses from the commander of the Marines, or "uber pwnage" does ensue. But please don't go on and rant about the ultimate combination of chamber setups... it simply isn't that linear any more.
I've played with all three chamber setups plenty of times already, getting more than 16 hours of gameplay per day. Movement may give you more melee capability for the fade and silent ability for skulks, amongst other things - but there are counters to that. Marines should start playing smart and handing out more shotguns in response, and being more aware of the surroundings - as most clan members are. In response to movement chambers come weapon upgrades, motion tracking (very important, be it sensory or motion first), and careful organization of marines. While you may pull of a few kills if the marines slack, and you may even own everyone with your elite movement setup - on servers filled with completely new players at least you will, with a decent marine squad you will encounter tough resistence.
Also, while redeem is wonderful for onos, chances are you won't be able to go onos very long before the 2nd hive goes up anyway (assuming a reasonable gorge). Why not give those who *aren't* just saving up for the Onos something that can be really useful?
Basically, I tend to think that the movement abilities are more useful to the aliens in the early game and less useful to the aliens later on. At the same time, the other abilities are as useful (if not more) later on in the game, as the battles become more intense. So why not use movement when it's most useful?
Until comms starts to put down more than one obs, this isn't much of a problem since they have to use energy from a separate pool and not res anymore to ping early on. On top of this, each observatory has a separate pool and it takes about one minute and fifteen seconds to generate enough energy for a scan. each scan is 25 energy and there's probably a max limit on how much energy each obs can store.
If you have defense or motion, the comm doesn't have to do anything but the normal, watch some of your troops and occasionally spam some med packs. However, with sensory first, they'll have to keep pinging ahead, spend res on multiple observatories which require additional protection if used to negate cloaking out in the field. They have to find an obs with enough energy every time they want to make a scan, etc. Essentially, cloaking steals time and resources from the comm if properly deployed. (sens near the choke points, especially near marine base)
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Granted that Scent of fear is very nice and the cloaking radius that the sensory chambers innately provide are nice as well. They just aren't nice enough to set your whole team back until you can get the other two hives.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I beg to differ. Sensory, if deployed right, guarantees that either the comm is kept busy scanning and the marines are gathered in one space (the comm can just watch ahead for one or two troops, more and he'll not only have to spend a lot of resources on observatories, he'll also have a hard time doing much else)
And if the comm can't be bothered to protect his troops, sensory is a guaranteed first-strike, first-hit weapon and guaranteed at closing the distance, as opposed to the two other chambers which provides tools for closing the distance, but at the same time allows the marine to start shooting at you early.
SoF is superb to the other upgrades from the other chambers in the fact that it provides you detailed troop movement information. It tells you exactly where the marines are (provided they're not too far off) and how many there are, so you can choose your battles. Combined with being in range of a sensory tower which blocks their motion tracking, you have a very powerful tool.
And i'd just like to add that in regards to the energizing from the movement towers, I have casually observed (ie, I may be wrong, not tested) that the range seems to be *very* short. Much, much shorter than the range offered by sensory and unless your gorge builds the tower right next to where the troops are fighting, it's not going to be of much use. (It will, obviously) be built in range when it comes to turret farms.
Bottom line, I'm a hunter-type player (as opposed to camper-types) And I feel that as of right now, properly deployed sensory is the best chamber to start with. The tripple bonus of negating marine autoaim, guaranteed closing of the distance combined with suprise attack and granting tactical information on marine movement near you is superior to what any of the other two towers offer. Even if the other two upgrades on the sensory chamber are slightly less usefull than advanced hivesight.
Movement has it's advantages, most being offensive, but are you saying you want to be on the offensive and leave gaps open for attack?
I don't mind getting either first, as I find it more interesting to try new stuff, but I gathered 25 kills on ns_tanith by my one well placed sensory. Not only was I getting these kills, it was defending 2 very important res towers.
Because of the fact reactor room is a double res, so many marines try to secure it, or use it as a route to cargo or waste.
You'll probably say SCREW going for RR, I woulda just gone somewhere else and been "elite" and screwd your strat. Doing that lets us have more res, and not everyone came my way, the smart ones went other ways into the traps of mobile cloaked skulks.
5 Minutes later, I was onos before a second hive and we won within 11 minutes.
- All chambers slowly regen themself.
- each movement gives one nearby alien +10% energy refill speed.
- Gorges and lerks with adrenaline are evil.
- The flexibility of faster aliens makes them a deadly guerillia army (always waiting for a weak spot, fast retreat, just "fading" around).
- Redemption just sucks, if you like it to rambo off, use it.
4 scans is NOTHING
Then again, this is the point if there is a debate on movement or sens first. EVERY chamber is viable as a first chamber. We just need to, as player, learn how to use each one of them and deploy those ideas and strat to suit the current conditions. Find that the marines are great with their weapons BUT they lack that tight glue of squad level teamwork? Get sens and ambush the strays. Do they have great squads but then to leave a small hole in their colelctive FoV? Get movement and take 'em out before they even know you were comming. Got a mixture? They have decent squad play and can hit stuff with decent regularity? Get defense and take a few more hits before they can wipe you out. We have 6 different ways to play out the game with the upgrades avaliable.
Kharaa from my view are not a team of massive speed and flexibility. We have individual specific upgrades which enhance a certain field of our gameplay by a massive margin, but as we are limited to what we choose by the development of the game, we have to choose what will suit us for the current situation and not for every situation. Adaptation, speed and dexterity of gameplans is our weapon. Keep the marines guessing on what you will pull out of the hat and victory is easier. If marines begin to anticipate that sens will go up first and thus place light outposts with obs and SGs everywhere, that nullifies one of our advantages and we then must wait for the next upgrade level before we can gain another edge, and thus is a nullification of the gamestyle we are probably supposed to adhere to.
Mix stuff up. If they (the marines) make a wrong guess to what they have to get to counter us, they waste potentially 100 or more res in the deployment of such counters.
Think outside of the one strat to rull all mentallity. A gift of flexibility and diversity is on offer. Take it and run for it
First, the facts - every game in which sensory has went up first has been a win. The game where movement went up first was a loss.
I am sure that maybe *one* person in a team of 7 might be the business with his 3 movement, however I can assure you that everyone else who is bobbing along with gorges and skulks will NOT be the business. And in the games I play, the battle's never been won yet by a sole uberleet fade with his 3 movement.
I read people saying sensory sucks for onos - well at game start I've not seen an Onos yet. When someone spawns beside me as an onos, THEN I'll start spamming up movement towers. I only see onos shortly before hive 2 goes up and even then its only onos in the hands of expert killers. Your average player will struggle to pull up a Onos at that time.
Sensory first, everyone sees benefits. You can cloak the whole map, something which has little to no relevance in the late game because motion trackers and competent pinging will show up our hidey holes. With a sensory, even the most nubbish skulk can get at least one hit on a marine.
So my choices are - Build sensories for the dozen skulks, some of which are new, some of which are good at their job and rush for Onos and the stomp devour combo
OR
I listen to one fade claiming his uberleet pwnage will win the game with movement alone.
On pub servers I'm going sensory every time. In a clan game where you know whos' beside you then sure, knock yourself out, but on a pub you'll only lose the game.
*whine whine* the team gets more benefits with sensory
heh sure.
doug
Also, I think the real argument is, "which 2 chambers do you want?" Eventually aliens will not get all 3 hives easily, because a marine team that allows that to happen is giving most of the evolutions their best attack, and all three upgrades. So instead, it is important to decide which 2 are the best.
Movement is usable in all situations. Every evolution can use it in multiple ways, you can use it for hit and run attacks (silence or celerity) and you can use it for the heavy assault (adrenaline and in some cases celerity.) When the hive is in danger, you can use it to book it back, instead of watching the hive flash for 45 seconds as you run accross the map. Used properly, it can back up an assault to great effect.
Sensory is good for a hit and run, defensive game. The upgrades on it, are not as good as the other chambers, but the chamber effect is definately better (especially with that absurd radius.) Early in the game, before the resource chambers are up, it can be difficult to lay as many of these down as you would like, but by the second hive, the res is coming in fast enough that these can be dropped almost with impunity. There is a relatively easy counter for it, but even with that in place, the marines cannot use motion tracking to see movement behind the lines. Unfortunatley, this does not have what you need to defeat a hardened emplacement.
Which is where defensive comes in. Defense allows you to create a healing outpost, and beef the damage taking capacity of all your friends. You can use the silly redeeming onos (for now) to keep any stray marines out of your territory, and you can use the other upgrades to last longer under a hail of gunfire.
So really, when I look at it, movement is the best first choice, with the second chamber chosen after you know how the marines are playing the game. If they have turreNt farmed the double res node, their spawn, and the third hive, and have observatories in all of them, and are slowly but surely teching up, you are going to really wish you hadn't taken sensory. If on the other hand they have tech rushed, and control several areas, but not any of them well and are trying to expand, sensory will make sure they have to go really really slow.
Each chamber has its merits, and rather than making a set build order, you should react to the game and change how you play to defeat your opponent.
i'd much rather get sensory first, then move or dc's second.
As a marine though sens is the scariest as sadly enough most comms arent smart enough to scan, you can ask for it all you want but it never happens. Silence is scary as well but not as much as.
All the chambers are viable as a marine though I'd rather you stick with movement first and I'll do my best to make sure thats all you get. I've won plenty with mov first and with sens first, even d first.
Oh yeah scent of fear is great for every class but especially gorge so you can check out a base before going in to bile it.
Moving while cloaked = best spawn defense.