sentry and battery

Sharp-Shooter

Sentry Batteries: I think it should be removed or changed, personally I think the whole thing with the batteries at this state is just plain dumb an frustrating, you spend about 20 res on a sentry farm per room to have a gorge bile bomb it away, I think sentry batteries should be "structure batteries" where you can tie a battery to lets say a phase gate, this means you can place a phase gate in ore processing place a battery to it, so when aliens cut the room power the phase gate will still be powered by its own battery until either the battery/phase gets destroyed or the battery runs out of juice ~30 seconds for a phase gate, I think the duration of the battery powering a build should vary for building to building, multiple batteries could be tied to one building for more battery duration or have aliens destroy 2 batteries, I think this can buff marines by a bit but also make it intuitive and fun for instance players complain about power nodes going off because of a gorge rush and the game is lost by surprise, just imagine if the power goes out but you have a battery tied to your observatory that lasts 45 seconds and you can becon, this will make power nodes less frustrating and dependant, your thoughts?

I think sentrys themselves should be powered by either room power or ofcourse, battery, I think marines should be able to place 3-4 sentrys per room, ANYWHERE in the room with any source of power (battery not required) ofcourse where there is no battery and power goes off, sentrys will too. lets face it, the sentry requiring a battery where theres power in the room is downright dumb, it was done because sentry at first was for "hive harassment" without marine needing to put up room power, "quick to build, DPS builds up over time as sentry's shoot down the hive" too bad people use sentrys for defensive purposes now and not offence, did we forget to remove battery tie requirement when we went from offensive to defensive? your thoughts?

Mc_Intire

Hi there! Originally I wanted to make my own thread to suggest a few things about Marine gameplay, ut since this thread is recent maybe it's better if I post here.
After reading a few recent threads about the Sentry I have come to the following conclusion: I do agree that they can be golden, given they are placed properly. However I also agree the battery system does not work well. I would not go ahead and try to boost armor and firepower. Instead I would attempt to tinker with the battery system, and change the buildings as follows:

Sentry battery:

-prerequesite: none
-supported Sentries: 1
-Placement range: normal (like now)
-requires power: no
-battery load: low (10 seconds of continous fire per Sentry, reload time while idle 5 seconds from 0 to 100%, battery does not reload while shooting, once the battery is depleted all Sentries shut down for 5 seconds)
-available upgrade: advanced Sentry battery: 15 res, global
-available upgrade: Sentry 2, 10 res, global
-cost and HP stay the same from the current battery

Advanced Sentry battery:

-Sentry batteries are automatically upgraded after the research has been done
-supported Sentries: 2
-placement range: double range
-requires power: no
-battery load: high (20 seconds of continous fire per Sentry, reload time while idle 5 seconds from 0 to 100%, battery does not reload while shooting, once the battery is depleted all Sentries shut down for 5 seconds)
-available upgrade: Sentry 2, 10 res, global
-cost and HP stay the same from the current battery

Sentry 1:

-Stats and cost are the same as current Sentry
-Can be powered by Sentry battery or advanced Sentry battery only

Sentry 2:
-Sentries are automatically upgraded after the research has been done.
-Stats and cost are the same as current Sentry
-Can be powered by Sentry battery, advanced Sentry battery or Power node.

Like right now, each room can field a max of 1 battery and 3 Sentries. As you can see, in a room secured by marines, with power on, there will be three Sentries like before, and since there were no changes in firepower they will act the same as right now. What is different now is the fact that one Sentry can be placed apart from the battery (you can also place more of them away from the battery, or skip the battery entirely, but if Gorges or Lerks manage to snipe your power node you're in trouble). Also the larger battery range permits a little more free room to keep the battery away from the bile and other AOE attacks.

The smaller battery capacity on the other hand means that even if marines deploy early forward bases (which would be easier, as Sentries would have no prerequisites) aliens can still counter. A lone marine has some trouble off his back while building with the battery and that one Sentry there, but he has to stay alert for that skillful Skulk or a sniping Gorge. Also, if aliens manage to snipe power in a marine controlled room they will automatically cut Sentry defense in that room in half until power is back.

Xarius

There's really no reason why sentry batteries are needed, they should be removed. All it does is make it even easier for gorges with BB to counter sentries when sentries are already pretty much redundant in the mid and late game.