Offchamber Efficiency
SeraphyGoodness
Join Date: 2003-06-05 Member: 17029Members
Join Date: 2003-06-05 Member: 17029Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Or why WoLs are less useful than u think</div> Ok
Everyone should be familiar with the concept of Walls Of Lame (WoL, but if you're not:
Wall Of Lame: a collection of Offence Chambers, usually wide enough to block a corridor/entrance, and tall enough (through building them on top of each other) to stop marines just jumping over. Backed up with numerous Defence Chambers, they can last for a long time, and really block the marines from moving into your territory. - note to newbies, the term Wall of Lame comes from the earliest versions of NS, when they were utterly indestructible, even to multiple siege cannons. the lameness no longer applies in the same way, but the name stuck.
Sounds excellent, doesn't it. The perfect solution.
Wrong.
WoLs have numerous disadvantages which i shall now list...
1) The chambers are clumped together, this means that GLs, Sieges, and random gunfire which is directed at your WoL will be guarenteed to hit _something_. Multiple Somethings in the case of Siege/GL/shotty fire.
2) WoLs are the bane of Oni. any WoL'd up door or corridor is immediately a No Go area to an Onos. A single story WoL can be crouch jumped over, but its slow, and you can get stuck. This is bad if the Onos needs to be somewhere quickly, or is fleeing a group of HMG marines on low health. stuck onos = dead onos.
3) If the marines are approaching from anything but directly ahead, up to half your OCs will waste their fire by striking the ones in front of them.
4) WoLs encourage marines to set up turret-farms and seige outposts. this is not a good thing.
This isn't to say that a WoL is useless in every situation, they have their place...
an example would be securing Reactor Room on ns_tanith. If a skulk gets up on top of the semi-circular outlet with the waterfall beneath it, by gorging and WoLing along the edges (starting at the central point), you can create an effective defence covering roughly 60% of the room, and two of the entrances.
Its just there are other, often more efficient ways to place your OCs
I will highlight two of them here:
<b>Distributed Method</b>
The distributed method is the most effective for avoiding area effect weapons fire.
the key concepts behind a distributed defence are thus:
1) keep the number of OCs shootable from outside the room as low as possible. you want the marines INSIDE your deathtrap, not reducing its effectiveness from beyond its reach.
2) place the OCs in the corners of the room, or in corners provided by room details.
3) Each OC should have its general area covered by the fire arc of at least 1 other OC, preferably 2
Result... marines run into a room. the ocs in front open up, and the marines return fire. meanwhile, the OCs behind them are also shooting them. the crossfire is deadly. This also distributes damage across a whole squad, rather than hitting only the pointman/men. Also, they must split their fire to deal with all the OCs, or concentrate on them one at a time, unable to incidentally damage the OCs neighbours. A seige/GL will only hit one OC at a time, not hit one and splash damage 4 others.
The main disadvantage of this method is that you cannot easily make use of DCs to heal the OCs.
<b>The Reverse WoL</b> - this is not my idea, but i cant remember who coined the phrase. credit to them anyway
the placement method is best shown with a map...
--------|........|--------
--------|door |-------- Basically, anywhere where the door frame juts into the room at least 1/2
OOOO|........|OOOO an OCs width or more, you can place a Reverse Wol. this works like the
Pitcher plant in nature. you can go in, but you sure as hell arent getting out. The marines will look into the room, see no WoL, and run in. immediately they get torn up from behind. the best side effect of this is that Light Armour marine squads oftem place their more expensive weaponry at the back of the group, to buffer against skulks/Wols. guess who's taking the fire now? HA squads often get trailed by LA marines with welders. this formation deals with the welders, making the HAs much more vulnerable.
The down side of the RWoL is that it is susceptible to area effect weapons, just like a regular WoL
Everyone should be familiar with the concept of Walls Of Lame (WoL, but if you're not:
Wall Of Lame: a collection of Offence Chambers, usually wide enough to block a corridor/entrance, and tall enough (through building them on top of each other) to stop marines just jumping over. Backed up with numerous Defence Chambers, they can last for a long time, and really block the marines from moving into your territory. - note to newbies, the term Wall of Lame comes from the earliest versions of NS, when they were utterly indestructible, even to multiple siege cannons. the lameness no longer applies in the same way, but the name stuck.
Sounds excellent, doesn't it. The perfect solution.
Wrong.
WoLs have numerous disadvantages which i shall now list...
1) The chambers are clumped together, this means that GLs, Sieges, and random gunfire which is directed at your WoL will be guarenteed to hit _something_. Multiple Somethings in the case of Siege/GL/shotty fire.
2) WoLs are the bane of Oni. any WoL'd up door or corridor is immediately a No Go area to an Onos. A single story WoL can be crouch jumped over, but its slow, and you can get stuck. This is bad if the Onos needs to be somewhere quickly, or is fleeing a group of HMG marines on low health. stuck onos = dead onos.
3) If the marines are approaching from anything but directly ahead, up to half your OCs will waste their fire by striking the ones in front of them.
4) WoLs encourage marines to set up turret-farms and seige outposts. this is not a good thing.
This isn't to say that a WoL is useless in every situation, they have their place...
an example would be securing Reactor Room on ns_tanith. If a skulk gets up on top of the semi-circular outlet with the waterfall beneath it, by gorging and WoLing along the edges (starting at the central point), you can create an effective defence covering roughly 60% of the room, and two of the entrances.
Its just there are other, often more efficient ways to place your OCs
I will highlight two of them here:
<b>Distributed Method</b>
The distributed method is the most effective for avoiding area effect weapons fire.
the key concepts behind a distributed defence are thus:
1) keep the number of OCs shootable from outside the room as low as possible. you want the marines INSIDE your deathtrap, not reducing its effectiveness from beyond its reach.
2) place the OCs in the corners of the room, or in corners provided by room details.
3) Each OC should have its general area covered by the fire arc of at least 1 other OC, preferably 2
Result... marines run into a room. the ocs in front open up, and the marines return fire. meanwhile, the OCs behind them are also shooting them. the crossfire is deadly. This also distributes damage across a whole squad, rather than hitting only the pointman/men. Also, they must split their fire to deal with all the OCs, or concentrate on them one at a time, unable to incidentally damage the OCs neighbours. A seige/GL will only hit one OC at a time, not hit one and splash damage 4 others.
The main disadvantage of this method is that you cannot easily make use of DCs to heal the OCs.
<b>The Reverse WoL</b> - this is not my idea, but i cant remember who coined the phrase. credit to them anyway
the placement method is best shown with a map...
--------|........|--------
--------|door |-------- Basically, anywhere where the door frame juts into the room at least 1/2
OOOO|........|OOOO an OCs width or more, you can place a Reverse Wol. this works like the
Pitcher plant in nature. you can go in, but you sure as hell arent getting out. The marines will look into the room, see no WoL, and run in. immediately they get torn up from behind. the best side effect of this is that Light Armour marine squads oftem place their more expensive weaponry at the back of the group, to buffer against skulks/Wols. guess who's taking the fire now? HA squads often get trailed by LA marines with welders. this formation deals with the welders, making the HAs much more vulnerable.
The down side of the RWoL is that it is susceptible to area effect weapons, just like a regular WoL
Comments
as a gorge with web (well, in 1.04 web was more prominent <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> ) webs from the catwalk down to the rail/walkway that makes the roof of the hive alcove. This makes those last-ditch jp rushes in there fail as they jp, hit web and then die when they take the long fall. the jper then proceeds to say "WTH?!" and get po'd. you place two ocs on the sides of the treadmills (for lack of better word) in the back flanking the back of the RT. Then you drop two ochambers on the inside of the corners of the hive alcove, and four more spaced out along each wall. Marines tend to make it down, but rarely back up. sens chambers in 2.0 make this even more fun as two scs cover that entire area, and they dont see the ochambers littering the bottom. Also, by placing 2-4 of your chambers back near the RT corners, these wont be hit by those pesky sieges that marines put up to hit the hive (red room, around either corner) which means marines have to take them out up close and personal.
refinery hive, ns_bast. At least three ochambers up on the catwalks to prevent marines from standing up there hitting the hive scot-free. Then spread the ochambers out across the entire area to prevent rambos from either end. this hive is really hard to cover well, and if you WoL up the two entrances other than the backdoor to the semi-hidden res, that means once the rines are past it, your hive is dust. always place at least one ochamber on top of the hive in this area.
reactor room, ns_tanith. One ochamber to block the ladder near the nodes, one ochamber in the water to keep track of amphibious marines. place the others on the railings or above the waterfall to cover as much of the room as you can so that rather than having a dome of fire, the ochamber has close to a sphere of it.
too bad the NS mappers remove like ALL of the doors in everymap
tanith rocked, but now I feel it's sorta lame, now that all the doors are gone. it really kills the atmosphere...
Wether or not multiple movements further increase the rate of fire I do not know for sure. I think they do, but it will need further testing.
Actually, I believe this was put in, but then taken out in those last days before 2.0 was released.
The changelog makes no mention of it, and from what (little) testing I've done, if it does increase the firing rate, it's by a negligible amount.
That being said, if you have OC's set up, it's likely a place you want to defend.. and movement *does* increase alien adrenaline recovery.
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the best thing is it doesnt require an actual door, just a wide door frame even if it opens directly onto a corridor. as long as the marines are unaware of what they are walking into, it's perfect.
Great war stories to everyone. i like the viaduct web strategy <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> plummeting jps are so funny
unfortuantely, kinslayer, MCs no longer boost fire rate. would that they did. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
BTW, does anyone know if putting more then 3 dcs heal faster?
As for the OCs, I don't play gorge enough in game to effectivly test this, but it does seem to occure. Plus, keep in mind that a dev member told me that they do indeed increase the firing speed. Perhaps its only in the beta, and never got mentioned, I don't know.
As for the RWoL....GJ,I've been using this tactic for a long time and it has worked wonders,and even better is that the GL can't hit it directly (Unless they are masters of bouncing trajectory),meaning that the only way to harm the RWoL directly is with sieges
Another strat of mine for nothing is the Powersilo roof,I get up there as a gorge,lay 2 OCs over there and cover the ground with some webs
Repeat with the other 3 edges and there you have an almost impenetrable roof,and they only way to directly harm it is through a GL or a siege
i might be wrong myself, but i believe the opposite: each DC can heal up to 3 objects, but 8 DCs can heal one object simultaneously;
try it with a heavily injured onos. you'll heal much faster next to 8 DCs
Cargo bay on origin is _great_ for this. Two OC on the box, two OC per side on the ledges, back up the OC on the ledges with a DC each. I've yet to try this in an actual game, since the marines always seem to have the double node every game, but in theory it should cover the entire room.
I've found it makes a lot of sense to be flexible in how you handle offense chamber placement, and make a quick judgement call each time you place an OC. Here's what I usually ask myself:
How will a grenade hit this formation?
Do the offense chambers provide support fire for each other?
What entrances do I want to cover?
What chambers can I use to support these defences?
Do I want chambers attacking anyone who looks in the room, or should they attack anyone entering the room?
Who will be attacking here?
For example, if I don't want the marines to be able to walk up to the entrance of the hive and shoot it without entering the room, I'd better have some OCs with line of fire through the door.
Or, let's say I look at our chamber selection and we only have sensory chambers. These are suited more for ambushing with offense chambers and for providing a layer of protection to aliens than for placing them behind OCs in much attacked positions. So I might be forced to use these offense chambers in more of a "reverse wall of lame" than in a wall of lame fashion.
I've found thinking about the placement is the best way to ensure efficient placement. Chambers can't be moved around once they're put down so it's vital they have the best beggining as possible because their position will be the same the whole game.
I then place another 2 OC's behind it, out of sight, then another around the next corner, giving every OC a large line of sight (LOS) and making sure that nomatter hwere the marine stops moving, he will have at least 1 OC firing at him. The best thing about this plan is how it deals with rambo's and JP'ers, a rambo will commonly run right past a single OC, then when he meets another, he will either start to panis and open fire, or keep charging on hoping for osme cover and a medpack, if he is wearing HA, all the better, as he would just neglect 1 OC, and his slower speed means when he's walking through the wall of fire, he'll be getting pummeled for longer. As for JP'ers, no problem, they cant land anywhere without being shot at, they are quickly delt with and pose little/no threat in an area that has this method of OC'ing.
One very important thing to remember if you choose to do this is dont miss any corner a marine could safely hide behind uncovered, as he could start peeping out and firing at your OCs in safety, while he should be easily dealt with thanks to hive mind, he may have enough time to break a bigger hole in your defence's. If you have all alien territory defended by this method, it will take the marines a good 10minutes to march from marine spawn, to Viaduct hive ns_nothing even with a HA train, and the OCs will allow your team to see their exact progress of the train as they read 'OC under attack', while the defence itself does little to stop a HA train (the main flaw of this defence, but then again, what defence's will stop a HA train?) it will be more than a little benefit to your team on monitering the trains progress. This defence also stops feared 'WTH?! they have 4sieges by our hive?!', as no marine can move without being shot at, he cant set up a surprise base. Another flaw with this tactic is its quite expensive (admittidly not as expensive as most defence's which will cover the whole map), but if your team has a lot of res, and several players have their go at gorge's to secure territory, the price shouldn't be over whelming, and could be safely done in a fairly even game.
Tips on defending Refinery hive (ns_bast):
This hive is well known to be a bugger to defend, as the large open area is a heaven for any JP'er, however it is very easy to defend if you know how to do it. The first important thing is the ramp into the hive has a small walkway over the top, if you put 2 or 3 OCs at the back of this along the edge (the edge closest the hive) they can cause a lot of damage, and are VERY hard to kill without a GL or siege and more often than not, they will never be seen, as their out of view, up high and the walkway itself makes them virtually invisable as the marines approach (if you have SC's it only adds to the fun). If you back this up with another 2 or 3 OCs at the top of the ramp you can get the marines cut up in cross fire as they approach the turn in the ramp, as both sets of OC's will fire at similar times. This defence will REALLY slow down a HA train, how long it slows them down for will depend on how many OC's you placed, a total of 8 OC's (4 in each area) will take 4 HA's a good 5minutes to break through, plenty of time to get reinforcements, if you back these OCs up with a DC or 2 it will increase their life span by quite a lot, but never backup the OCs on the walkway, as DC's are very tall and will attract attention to the walkway and the marines will then likely spot the OC's (however, if you have SC aswell, feel free to do it). if the marines are coming from the other side, the ideal place to defend is by the res tower outside, as you will be defending the RT aswell as the hive, defend that side whatever way you see fit, I dont know of any specific tactics to defend it, however just as they enter the hive from that direction there are two small walls, put an OC on both of these hugging the main wall, their quite hard to spot and should cause a good bit of damage. To deal with JP's is much easier than most people think in refinery, just place an OC on every beam on the roof, 1 on each, and make sure the OCs cover the top of the hive, and the two dark corners that are near the hive(their ideal spots for a JP'er to land for refuel/reload). As for the other entrance (the high one) just 2 OCs at the top of the ladder just outside the hive is more than enough as this route is rarely used as much more than for a JP'er to reload and refuel.
And a final general note to gorge's:
siege is your enemy, learn to stop it before it starts, you can lame a room to hell and back (reactor room on tanith is a good example,as is any hive in the game really), but if you leave large open, OC free area's outside the room your expensive defence will get sieged quite easily, always remember to defend outside the area and only leave limited defence's in the room itself (just enough to cover all possable hiding spots, usually only takes 1 or 2) as this way if they plan to siege you they will first need to siege the hive, then they will need ANOTHER siege (unless they plan on LMG'ing your hive, which can take a while) to kill your hive/double res, by which case you should have more than enough backup.
A marine runs round (assume hes LA/LMG) the corner, he sees an oc, he tries to run past round the next corner. Another one is in position, he'll either keep running to the next oc or try turn round. He should die either way, or come close in lvlv 3 armor situations.
OCs have a limited range- they cannot shoot you if you are too far away. Placing an OC in an open area with ample space for marines to shoot is a waste of 10 res. I usually place OCs beside walls whilst being spread out across the room at the same time. The room should appear empty when seen from a distance. When the marine enters the room, two "doorman" ocs start to spike him. If he ignores them and runs further into the room, sooner or later he will come under fire from all the other OCs. As a rule of thumb, I usually make sure that at each OCs firing radius is covered entirely by other OCs.
Also, try to cover vents with OCs so as to stop JP/Shotty vent campers.
--------|door |--------
OOOO|........|OOOO <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The best thing about this formation is that marines have to stand in the doorway to shoot the OCs. Even if the OCs don't actually hit him, it'll be real easy for a skulk to drop down and eat him. However, there are a few things you can do to improve it. First, more than 2 on each side is usually a waste unless you stack them a bit (without blocking the path, remember). If the OCs will never shoot, it wasn't worth the res. On that note, here's a way to allow more OCs to shoot at once: don't put them in a quite straight line with the wall. The one closest to the door should hug the wall, and the ones after that should be a foot or so out so they don't have their view of the doorway blocked. If you do it right, all of your ocs can hit the marines at once, making it very hard to shoot around the corner for a kill. If your throw in a sensory chamber, the marine will likely die before he knows what hits him.
On DCs: 1 DC heals 3 objects, AND only 3 dcs (+ 1 hive) can heal something at once. Both of these measures prevent the indestructable WoL that existed in 1.00 (and 1.01, I think). It's usually silly to build more than 3 dcs in one place, unless you have a LOT of traffic.