Have Some Fun, Everybody!
Timarius
Join Date: 2012-11-15 Member: 171220Members
Join Date: 2012-11-15 Member: 171220Members
I feel that sometimes we get a little too serious about winning... so here are some fun strategies I applied earlier (that did, in fact, win) that may not be very effective if countered correctly, but are serious fun. These are for the alien team
The first is the Instant Lerk [Just add Skulk].
Jump in the hive, drop a Lerk egg, and have your designated Lerk player take it and begin the harass. This will force marines to tech up shotguns and welders... or rush your hive. This means you will be slow on map control, but the harass covers for it. The common response to this is, "WHAT IS A LERK DOING OUT ALREADY?!"
The second is a lot more bold. The Drifter Skulk Rush.
Instant second hive, instant drifter. Send all of your skulks in with the Drifter behind them. Use early res to enzyme them so that they can chew through the enemy team. If they make it to the enemy Command Station, it's GG. One Enzyme Cloud will end the game. If not, well... you did stop their team for some time, and hopefully saved your drifter. You'll be able to grab the RT at your second hive, then start expanding from two directions into open territory, plus you'll have plenty of eggs for more aggressive play.
Neither of these strategies are meant to be for serious play, but they are very fun.
Hopefully, I can avoid the flamers tonight, and plenty of people will try these strategies and enjoy them.
EDIT: These strats won 3/4 games. They are by no means "tried and true", just some fun ideas to play with.
The first is the Instant Lerk [Just add Skulk].
Jump in the hive, drop a Lerk egg, and have your designated Lerk player take it and begin the harass. This will force marines to tech up shotguns and welders... or rush your hive. This means you will be slow on map control, but the harass covers for it. The common response to this is, "WHAT IS A LERK DOING OUT ALREADY?!"
The second is a lot more bold. The Drifter Skulk Rush.
Instant second hive, instant drifter. Send all of your skulks in with the Drifter behind them. Use early res to enzyme them so that they can chew through the enemy team. If they make it to the enemy Command Station, it's GG. One Enzyme Cloud will end the game. If not, well... you did stop their team for some time, and hopefully saved your drifter. You'll be able to grab the RT at your second hive, then start expanding from two directions into open territory, plus you'll have plenty of eggs for more aggressive play.
Neither of these strategies are meant to be for serious play, but they are very fun.
Hopefully, I can avoid the flamers tonight, and plenty of people will try these strategies and enjoy them.
EDIT: These strats won 3/4 games. They are by no means "tried and true", just some fun ideas to play with.
Comments
Either they'd have to camp near an armory or the commander would have to drop them medpacks, neither of which is ideal early game.
You need a second hive for spores. So it wouldn't really be early game by the time you get it researched.
That's what I'm sorting out as far as how it would work. E.g. drop second hive first, have two gorges help build it, drop an RT, drop a lerk egg, and research spores. I've seen similar second hive rushes, but none of them involving a lerk.
I'm thinking it could be done in maybe 3 minutes.
I'd like to do the math first but I can't find any information on just how much two gorges would build a hive and upgrade spores due to the diminishing returns, which are unspecified in the wiki. A one minute reduction in time required is a guestimate. At the very worst it would take 4 minutes. The gorges could also serve as pocket heals for the lerk.
It was annoying as hell, as we all had LMGs and only about two or three of us had any sort of decent aim, so we were spread out trying to hold space until phase gates came in.
The Lerk would swoop in and try to get marines to follow it, and once it had gas at least two other Lerks showed up and pretty much killed whatever hope of expansion. At this point I did have a shotgun, but with three Lerks taking turns it wasn't really possible to kill them myself.
So you're going to fast drop a lerk egg at the start, drop a second hive, and get spores. Where's all the res coming from? You cripple your economy and all other upgrades. I can't see this being a viable strat for any type of pub or comp play unless the teams are stacked. and lol at gorges following lerks around.
Lerk egg not immediate. Drop RT, drop hive (you start with 50 res.) Gorges build hive. Another thread suggests this will take approximately 90 seconds. Drop lerk egg, as soon as the res comes in research spores, gorges help spores research (this works btw, gorges healing something makes it research or upgrade faster.)
Gorges don't follow lerk around, rather they serve as his pocket heals while clogging up a good fortification to block marine expansion. Bonus points if they manage to do so just outside of the marine base and don't even allow them to leave at all.
It's not something I have put serious thought into, rather just sounds funny.
I can't give you the numbers, but even at full HP gorge healing speeds structure growth. Look at the percentage that tells you how close the hive is to grown. Even at full HP you will see it skip a percentage point. ie, it will go from 83% to 85% grown. This is directly due to the boost gorge healing provides.
I've experimented with mutliple gorge's power healing hives, and from what I can tell there are no diminishing returns.
As for early Lerk, in my opinion the Lerk doesn't really have any place in the game before around the 3-4 minute mark. Early on, the marines will be clumped up into 2, maximum 3 groups, and will be very focused about what they are doing. Bunched up marines are deadly to Lerks, and their constant movement makes it hard for the Lerk to harrass, which is all its really good for. It also has negligible abilities to hit harvesters, which is pretty important right at the start.
My opinion: If you really want an early Lerk, just wait the 2 minutes it takes to get enough res, and evolve one yourself.
The horrors
Please do not let fana get a early lerk drop in a pug. hahahaha
Which was my whole point, if the player is good, that will be awsome.
These are tactics to be used in pub servers. I had a friend of mine take the immediate Lerk egg and get to work. He was constantly destroying the marines (they had this bad habit of walking into dark places alone, and not being able to shoot), and able to react to every situation across the map.
He ended the game at 48-0 and 100 Pres.
That's why the immediate Lerk egg has such high risk vs reward. If your Lerk is good and can keep pressure up and not die, you've got the game. But, if your Lerk is bad and flies into a face full of lead... well, that's game over for you assuming your Skulks can't find a way to cover for the 30Tres gone.