Mobile Sentries & Tech
aNytiMe
Join Date: 2008-03-31 Member: 64007Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2008-03-31 Member: 64007Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">MAST :D</div><a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=104981&st=0&gopid=1691186&#entry1691186" target="_blank">I've discussed it a bit in this thread.</a>
The goal of this thread is to suggest an idea for sentry turrets which will be as fun for the aliens to fight as it is to fight the marines.
Sentries should have weaknesses as well as advantages. There has to be an absolute hard counter to this on the alien team in order to prevent the aliens from being zerged by hundreds of turrets backed by marines. I will take that into consideration.
<b>Mobile Sentry Turret</b> (300hp, (4 skulk bites) building, 10 damage/sec) Make the cost substantial so using them in an evenly matched game at the professional level is extremely difficult at best and so that suiciding to kill a turret as a skulk is worth it, but also affordabe so that they can be used in public games.
<b>Requirement:</b> Turret factory
<b>Method of control:</b> The turret is on a hover chassis so it never needs to turn to change direction. Give move orders to move the turret around, an attack move will cause the turret to stop and fire its weapon. The weapon takes .2 seconds to warm up, moving the turret before the .2 seconds are up causes it to cancel the attack. It accelerates to top speed instantaneously. The top speed is equivalent to the speed of a non-celerity skulk, providing no alien movement techniques are used. The turret always faces the enemy.
Building: Remote Warfare Control Center (requires turret factory)
Upgrades:
Electric discharge - Costs energy to use, alien attacks do 2/3 damage. Lasts .2 seconds. Cooldown time is 1 second.
Fuel injection - Turret moves 2x faster for 15 seconds. Costs energy. Requires advanced turret factory and arms lab.
Rocket propelled grenade - Requires advanced armory. Permits the purchase of grenades for the turrets. Each turret can carry one grenade. Each grenade costs 3 res and deals 50 damage. Select the turret and cast the RPG ability, this will cost you 3 res. Next, use the ability again and select a target. (you're going to need tech, a large bank account, godlike skill and a masochist team in order to fight fades with sentries, but it can be done, onos is GG though unless you've been secretly building up like 30 turrets and the alien team is brain dead)
<b>Advantages:</b> Completely impervious to lerk attacks, unless the lerk wants to risk flying up and trying to bite one down.
<b>Disadvantages:</b> Gorges. Spit hurts them from far away + bilebombs <i>exterminate</i> them. Late game, the only good strategy against turrets would be to back a gorge with a fade and pick off sentries with bombs. The commander will either be forced to retreat and lose a few sentries or lose all sentries. (sentry with the injection ability can outrun a celerity gorge, so it is salvageable)
<b>Mr. Zaps</b> (150hp, building, 2 skulk bites, receives armor upgrades, where each armor level adds 60hp)
<b>Requirement: </b>Advanced turret factory
<b>Method of control:</b> Mr. Zaps will listen to marine orders (follow me/weld me) unless the hold position order is issued by the commander. Hold positioned Mr. Zaps will automatically weld all marines in welding range. Move commanded Mr. Zaps won't listen to any marine orders and won't weld anything until he gets to his destination. To repair turrets, the commander has to specifically target and right click on each damaged turret unless the damaged turret hovers into welding range. Attack moving Mr. Zaps will order him to seek out all damaged marines in his sight range and to repair them.
Marines can also use Mr. Zaps to access a remote armory, when not in a DI controlled room. Marines can buy anything from guns, armor to medpacks and ammo.
Upgrades:
Flamethrower - Will cause Mr. Zaps to seek out and burn all infestation and alien structures, except for OCs, for for 15 seconds. Energy cost to use the ability. Requires arms lab.
Motion tracking - Gives marines motion tracking in 2(radius) of Mr. Zaps' vision. Costs energy/second of use. Requires observatory.
Resupply - Costs money and energy, will call down a storm of nanites which heal marines for 20hp/sec, give 1 clip of ammo every 3 seconds and repairs structures for 30hp/sec.
Advantages: Makes lerks hurt less. Can keep sentries alive, this will be especially important if attempting to fight fades.
Disadvantages: Powerless by himself and will die to anything with an attack if unprotected. OCs will also demolish Mr. Zaps so commanders need to be careful not to move order him through an OC's sight range.
So you might ask, but since the commander is paying all attention to the turrets he won't care about the marines right? Well in NS2 the marines will have perfect ability to care for themselves. A good commander will take care of both, his marines and his turrets. If the marine team is good though, the advantages of focusing purely on marines should outweigh the advantages of sentries.
The goal of this thread is to suggest an idea for sentry turrets which will be as fun for the aliens to fight as it is to fight the marines.
Sentries should have weaknesses as well as advantages. There has to be an absolute hard counter to this on the alien team in order to prevent the aliens from being zerged by hundreds of turrets backed by marines. I will take that into consideration.
<b>Mobile Sentry Turret</b> (300hp, (4 skulk bites) building, 10 damage/sec) Make the cost substantial so using them in an evenly matched game at the professional level is extremely difficult at best and so that suiciding to kill a turret as a skulk is worth it, but also affordabe so that they can be used in public games.
<b>Requirement:</b> Turret factory
<b>Method of control:</b> The turret is on a hover chassis so it never needs to turn to change direction. Give move orders to move the turret around, an attack move will cause the turret to stop and fire its weapon. The weapon takes .2 seconds to warm up, moving the turret before the .2 seconds are up causes it to cancel the attack. It accelerates to top speed instantaneously. The top speed is equivalent to the speed of a non-celerity skulk, providing no alien movement techniques are used. The turret always faces the enemy.
Building: Remote Warfare Control Center (requires turret factory)
Upgrades:
Electric discharge - Costs energy to use, alien attacks do 2/3 damage. Lasts .2 seconds. Cooldown time is 1 second.
Fuel injection - Turret moves 2x faster for 15 seconds. Costs energy. Requires advanced turret factory and arms lab.
Rocket propelled grenade - Requires advanced armory. Permits the purchase of grenades for the turrets. Each turret can carry one grenade. Each grenade costs 3 res and deals 50 damage. Select the turret and cast the RPG ability, this will cost you 3 res. Next, use the ability again and select a target. (you're going to need tech, a large bank account, godlike skill and a masochist team in order to fight fades with sentries, but it can be done, onos is GG though unless you've been secretly building up like 30 turrets and the alien team is brain dead)
<b>Advantages:</b> Completely impervious to lerk attacks, unless the lerk wants to risk flying up and trying to bite one down.
<b>Disadvantages:</b> Gorges. Spit hurts them from far away + bilebombs <i>exterminate</i> them. Late game, the only good strategy against turrets would be to back a gorge with a fade and pick off sentries with bombs. The commander will either be forced to retreat and lose a few sentries or lose all sentries. (sentry with the injection ability can outrun a celerity gorge, so it is salvageable)
<b>Mr. Zaps</b> (150hp, building, 2 skulk bites, receives armor upgrades, where each armor level adds 60hp)
<b>Requirement: </b>Advanced turret factory
<b>Method of control:</b> Mr. Zaps will listen to marine orders (follow me/weld me) unless the hold position order is issued by the commander. Hold positioned Mr. Zaps will automatically weld all marines in welding range. Move commanded Mr. Zaps won't listen to any marine orders and won't weld anything until he gets to his destination. To repair turrets, the commander has to specifically target and right click on each damaged turret unless the damaged turret hovers into welding range. Attack moving Mr. Zaps will order him to seek out all damaged marines in his sight range and to repair them.
Marines can also use Mr. Zaps to access a remote armory, when not in a DI controlled room. Marines can buy anything from guns, armor to medpacks and ammo.
Upgrades:
Flamethrower - Will cause Mr. Zaps to seek out and burn all infestation and alien structures, except for OCs, for for 15 seconds. Energy cost to use the ability. Requires arms lab.
Motion tracking - Gives marines motion tracking in 2(radius) of Mr. Zaps' vision. Costs energy/second of use. Requires observatory.
Resupply - Costs money and energy, will call down a storm of nanites which heal marines for 20hp/sec, give 1 clip of ammo every 3 seconds and repairs structures for 30hp/sec.
Advantages: Makes lerks hurt less. Can keep sentries alive, this will be especially important if attempting to fight fades.
Disadvantages: Powerless by himself and will die to anything with an attack if unprotected. OCs will also demolish Mr. Zaps so commanders need to be careful not to move order him through an OC's sight range.
So you might ask, but since the commander is paying all attention to the turrets he won't care about the marines right? Well in NS2 the marines will have perfect ability to care for themselves. A good commander will take care of both, his marines and his turrets. If the marine team is good though, the advantages of focusing purely on marines should outweigh the advantages of sentries.
Comments
screw Mr.zaps >.> weld bot ftw
Your ideals for a sentry are good, but I'm not a fan of a robot army, easy to kill or not. The turret factory should be renamed, and get a nice new model, and be called Robot Factory, only if stationary seiges are gone, and COMPLETLY replace them with the M.A.S.C.
.2 seconds is no way possible for any use of damage reduction, it must be upgraded, then used WHEN attacked.
screw Mr.zaps >.> weld bot ftw<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The devs jokingly called it Mr. Zaps in one of the podcasts.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Your ideals for a sentry are good, but I'm not a fan of a robot army, easy to kill or not.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, I'm not a fan of NPC units in NS either, but it has the potential to stop commanders from banging their heads against the wall due to a terrible team.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The turret factory should be renamed, and get a nice new model, and be called Robot Factory, only if stationary seiges are gone, and COMPLETLY replace them with the M.A.S.C.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Robotics Facility <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
So when do I get to make reavers?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->.2 seconds is no way possible for any use of damage reduction, it must be upgraded, then used WHEN attacked.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you time it right, you can use it 150ms before a skulk bite. Although instead of attacks doing 2/3 damage, they should probably do 1/2 damage to make it more realistic to extract benefit from it.
Or at least give him something to do while the team loses map control, right?
If NS1 showed us anything, with the ability to highly concentrate turrets (aka turret farm) reduced, Kharaa easily neutralize stationary defenses if Marines are not present to inflict greater amounts of damage. Turrets as they currently stand in NS1 are more of a force multplier and a temporary blocker.
So, should a Marine team win if the players are wearing pants on their heads during that match because the "sentries" have become mobile? IMHO, no.
Why not just replace the sentries altogether? Perhaps the marine could have a upgrade: little hovering robot that follows him around that is a little auto gun, still get the force multiplier and the mobility, but severely limit the number, to like one per marine. Just a thought.
Something to do about losing map control*. So if a commander loses the game, he will no longer be able to blame his team for sucking, even though it is a huge factor.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If NS1 showed us anything, with the ability to highly concentrate turrets (aka turret farm) reduced, Kharaa easily neutralize stationary defenses if Marines are not present to inflict greater amounts of damage. Turrets as they currently stand in NS1 are more of a force multplier and a temporary blocker.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Turrets, as they are in NS1, are 100% useless. Mines > turrets. Shotgun > turret. Late game tech > turrets.
In a 6v6, if the marine team attempts to lock down 2 hives with turrets, aliens can get <u>3</u> fades, a gorge, a lerk, and a skulk and raze marine start.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So, should a Marine team win if the players are wearing pants on their heads during that match because the "sentries" have become mobile? IMHO, no.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hey, the commander is the Korean with the pants, ok? The players are bad. Plus the commander can't really win with those sentries above unless he has skill, aliens can counter with more skill.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why not just replace the sentries altogether? Perhaps the marine could have a upgrade: little hovering robot that follows him around that is a little auto gun, still get the force multiplier and the mobility, but severely limit the number, to like one per marine. Just a thought.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is completely different from giving a commander 100% control over a unit. In your example, the commander is still dependent on his [bad] marines.
Plus since micro is involved, it's not like a commander has a button which kills a random alien for 2 res.
Elaborate.
Basic elaboration.