Adrenaline A Requirement?
Bridger
Join Date: 2002-10-30 Member: 1761Members
Join Date: 2002-10-30 Member: 1761Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Are the others *really* options?</div> Think about it, almost every game i've been in defence chamber comes up first and foremost. Why? Because even in early game the marines can do some serious dammage to the off chambers without def chambers to back them up, and most skulks like the carapace/regen in order to attack better and keep the marines pinned.
However, once you get second hive everything now needs to be concenrated on getting that third hive. If the marines are any good they will have tried to secure it already. Now lets think about the upgrades of movement chamber (since this is *always* what comes at 2nd hive).
<b><u>Adrenaline:</u></b> Gives main advantage to lerks, onos and fade, the later game classes.<ul>
<li> Alows the lerk to fly longer, produce more umbra and spikes, and shoot more spore. These are all very important abilities for the lerk.
<li> Allows fade to attack more than 4 *&%*&% times with his acid rocket. Without adtrenaline the fade is almost worthless at taking down turrets from afar (combo with umbra). He just takes too long to reload.
<li> If you've ever tried to use onos you'll know that some of his attacks use a lot of energy. A good tactic is to primal scream before you attack, which uses ALL energy then you just wait a few seconds before you attack. With primal scream on your gore goes very fast and without adrenaline you might run out. Also if you charge your energy needs to come back *fast* if you want to follow up your charge attack. Adrenaline is almost a requirement for onos because without it your left attacking for max 10 seconds then you have to get more energy then attack again, etc.
</ul>
<u><b>Celarity:</b></u> This upgrade mainly helps fades/skulks.
<ul>
<li>Allows skulk to kill marines much more often and dodge past sentries with even greater ease. A great upgrade in early game (if anyone every made movement chambers in early game...).
<li> Allows fade to close in with marines much quicker to deliver the punishing slash attack. Only good for attacking marines however, and not very helpful when attacking buildings (how would a turret miss a target that big? and how effective would the fade be without adrenaline?).
</ul>
<u><b>Silence:</b></u> Good for most any class but skulks/fades benefit most.
<ul>
<li> In combination with cloak turns the skulk into the best ambusher in the game. Can take out any marine without HA almost instantainiously and gives a skulk a fighting chance against HA sometimes.
<li> Fade can benefit from the same things as skulk above
</ul>
Now the problem with this setup is that silence and celarity are only good for attacking the marines. They give almost no advantage when attacking structures. They allow you to kill marines very nicly in the hallways, but not in turret farms where they are expecting you.
The other problem is that these upgrades are never availible till late game and by that time all your doing (as alien) is trying to secure the 3rd hive. If your trying to secure a fortified position the only reasonable upgrade is adrenaline. The other 2 are pretty worthless unless maybe if your a gorge/skulk saving up resourses (and if your saving, why would you be evolving?)
I've never even really used the others as adrenaline has always been a *must have* when attacking structures. There's simply no other upgrade that can come close to the advantages it provides. Can we do something about this?
Maybe increase the base energy regen rate so that lerk/fade/onos are at least partially effective without adrenaline (but people will still want to use adren more to get more attacks in).
Maybe we could up the regen rate and get rid of adren altogether? Put in another evolution that has similer qualities (works good against marines in the open).
Maybe use the idea i had put here:
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=7471&hl=' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...&f=5&t=7471&hl=</a>
I just think maybe something has to be done about this. I feel like i'm forced to use the adren upgrade as it's the only one with advantages against buildings AND marines.
However, once you get second hive everything now needs to be concenrated on getting that third hive. If the marines are any good they will have tried to secure it already. Now lets think about the upgrades of movement chamber (since this is *always* what comes at 2nd hive).
<b><u>Adrenaline:</u></b> Gives main advantage to lerks, onos and fade, the later game classes.<ul>
<li> Alows the lerk to fly longer, produce more umbra and spikes, and shoot more spore. These are all very important abilities for the lerk.
<li> Allows fade to attack more than 4 *&%*&% times with his acid rocket. Without adtrenaline the fade is almost worthless at taking down turrets from afar (combo with umbra). He just takes too long to reload.
<li> If you've ever tried to use onos you'll know that some of his attacks use a lot of energy. A good tactic is to primal scream before you attack, which uses ALL energy then you just wait a few seconds before you attack. With primal scream on your gore goes very fast and without adrenaline you might run out. Also if you charge your energy needs to come back *fast* if you want to follow up your charge attack. Adrenaline is almost a requirement for onos because without it your left attacking for max 10 seconds then you have to get more energy then attack again, etc.
</ul>
<u><b>Celarity:</b></u> This upgrade mainly helps fades/skulks.
<ul>
<li>Allows skulk to kill marines much more often and dodge past sentries with even greater ease. A great upgrade in early game (if anyone every made movement chambers in early game...).
<li> Allows fade to close in with marines much quicker to deliver the punishing slash attack. Only good for attacking marines however, and not very helpful when attacking buildings (how would a turret miss a target that big? and how effective would the fade be without adrenaline?).
</ul>
<u><b>Silence:</b></u> Good for most any class but skulks/fades benefit most.
<ul>
<li> In combination with cloak turns the skulk into the best ambusher in the game. Can take out any marine without HA almost instantainiously and gives a skulk a fighting chance against HA sometimes.
<li> Fade can benefit from the same things as skulk above
</ul>
Now the problem with this setup is that silence and celarity are only good for attacking the marines. They give almost no advantage when attacking structures. They allow you to kill marines very nicly in the hallways, but not in turret farms where they are expecting you.
The other problem is that these upgrades are never availible till late game and by that time all your doing (as alien) is trying to secure the 3rd hive. If your trying to secure a fortified position the only reasonable upgrade is adrenaline. The other 2 are pretty worthless unless maybe if your a gorge/skulk saving up resourses (and if your saving, why would you be evolving?)
I've never even really used the others as adrenaline has always been a *must have* when attacking structures. There's simply no other upgrade that can come close to the advantages it provides. Can we do something about this?
Maybe increase the base energy regen rate so that lerk/fade/onos are at least partially effective without adrenaline (but people will still want to use adren more to get more attacks in).
Maybe we could up the regen rate and get rid of adren altogether? Put in another evolution that has similer qualities (works good against marines in the open).
Maybe use the idea i had put here:
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=7471&hl=' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...&f=5&t=7471&hl=</a>
I just think maybe something has to be done about this. I feel like i'm forced to use the adren upgrade as it's the only one with advantages against buildings AND marines.
Comments
Skulk:
Silence is beautiful for hunting marines.
Celerity allows you to close *insanely* fast, or dodge defenses to attack a CC, IP, or other important structure.
Adrenaline's only real use is with leap - it gives you an extra leap and a half or so per energy bar.
Gorge:
Silence: nah.
Celerity: make a quick escape if you're discovered.
Adrenaline: good for setting up webs or as an offensive gorge (babblers and healing spray).
Lerk:
Silence is golden in the early game; flapping wings make a lot of noise.
Celerity can be difficult to control with the already fast-flying lerk.
Adrenaline is probably the best choice here.
Fade:
Silence isn't really useful, since it's not an ambush class.
Celerity combined with swipe is deadly to both marines and turrets.
Adrenaline is if you plan on using acid rocket more than swipe.
Onos:
Silence - nah.
Celerity can be fun, and can be nice for getting out of unexpectedly difficult situations
Adrenaline is well-combined with Charge and Primal Scream.
Yes, Adrenaline is the most useful across the board, but the others have their place. It depends what you're planning to accomplish.
I think it's safe to say that most FPS players are more comfortable using ranged attacks, so they will love adrenaline. Deciding whether to smack or shoot also depends on the availability of level 3 cloak. Sometimes darkness and waiting around corners aren't enough to surprise a skilled marine.
This is irritating, in fact. If the aliens ever GET three hives, the game is pretty much over if we are talking even teams. In order for it to become a tense game, the marines need to deny a hive to the aliens, and therefore an upgrade.
Thus sensor chambers will never help you win a game, because once you get them you are so far up the winning path it's all over but for the fat Ono singing.
Would be nice if the upgrades weren't so tightly bound to the hive count. Perhaps you could build another kind of chamber that allowed access to new chambers without having to have a hive. Making it a 100pt chamber might be enough...
Oh well, it doesn't really matter - while defense and movement chambers gives you real advantages, sensory chambers are basically "nice to have". You can easily do without, especially considering motion tracking.
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.sig steal.
Adrenaline is an ABSOLUTE must for Onos, because when you have primal scream on, you will empty your energy bar just from the basic attack in like 5 seconds. Plus, you have a longer effective primal scream since you dont have to wait as long after scream before attacking. AND you can charge for longer, seeing as charge lasts until your energy goes away, and adrenaline greatly slows the energy drop from charge.
When i do play lerks (not all that often) i get silence in early game, and (you guessed it) adrenaline late game. Early game its invaluable to be able to sit somewhere dark and pick at marines as they go by. They just cant find you, its great. However, late game the lerk exists solely for his precious gasses, which you use constantly, and they drain a great deal of energy.
I never play skulk with movements available, as i'm always fade with 2 hives. I suppose i would choose silence if someone forced me to be a skulk though, theres nothing he really needs adrenaline for.
I never play gorge, but i suppose celerity would be my choice.
Without Aderlaine, Fades run out of breath quickly, even with claw swipping.
My reason for this is because marines almost NEVER attack the first hive before we have the 2nd hive. Cloaking also makes it easier for Skulks to hide and keep the marines at bay.
Adrenaline is good for continous attacks.
Silence is good for sneak attacks if combined with cloaking.
Celerity is good for quick closing in and quick get aways.
As to the Adren, Celerity, Silence debate:
Celerity: only useful for Skulk in my experience, and since we always have a 2nd hive, I'm about to go Fade anyway.
Silence: I've almost never used it, because I find the others much more useful.
Adren: My vote for the best alien upgrade in the game. Helps Fades move faster (Blink), keeps Onos going on the Primal+Gore+Charge set ups, helps Fades Bile, and Acid, Gorges Spray and Babbler, Skulks Leap (Great for movement if you don't mind the noise), Lerk Spikes, Umbra and Spore. No upgrade benefits all classes as widely.
Although the orders may not be set in stone, I just find them so much more useful in the above order. Playing a fade or lerk without adren its crippling, and scent of fear or cloak doesn't help much when node busting, which is my main occupation mid-game.
Even if it's only when I'm playing. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
Silence is invaluble to my style of play: Solid Skulk.
It's a lot easier for me to kill marines that don't know I'm right behind them than to charge them outright (which is what carapace makes plausable).
Now that's just wrong.
I agree that Adrenaline is the "most used Upgrade", but one thing that makes Natural-Selection so special is that there is no "best Upgrade" and so the movement chamber does NOT always come after 2nd hive.
You can do as much damage with cloaked skulks (and 2nd Hive) as you can do with Fades on adrenaline (and 2nd Hive). Some people prefer this style, some another and that's how it should be. The only thing i don't like is when people start telling you how you *must* play this game and what *everyone* should do...
Sorry for saying that in a ranting way, it shouldn't be taken personal <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Only if 3rd hive is not sieged by Marines
Def > Move
If Marines are skilled players and have taken 3rd hive.
Tell me how are you going to take back heavily turreted zones with sensory upgrades?
Sensory upgrades are only useful vs marines.
Aderlaine is useful for Fade/Lerk vs buildings.
Anyway, my suggestion? Make it so if you have silence at level 3, and cloaking(the default for cloaking would remain, so it'd be better to have level 3 cloaking then level 1), you stay cloaked until you attack. So you can run everywhere cloaked, but soon as you attack, you're visible. Now this could be "unbalanced" because a skulk or something could get by turrets invisible and take out the turret factory. Yeah.. well, build an observatory. They uncloak any nearby enemies, so it'd make it harder.
I just think it'd be fun to actually have a use for cloaking and silence by combining them.. and sneaking up on teams of marines.. now THAT'D be sweet.
Now that's just wrong.
I agree that Adrenaline is the "most used Upgrade", but one thing that makes Natural-Selection so special is that there is no "best Upgrade" and so the movement chamber does NOT always come after 2nd hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ramses, i so totally agree. Movement Chambers almost never come with the second hive when i'm playing Gruesome Gorge. It's just horrible, and if people back off and wait, the power bar recharges fast enough anyway. What comes second with me is ALWAYS the Sensory Chamber, if not first.
Why? Aliens are not a race of rambos. I hate to see people playing as Skulks, Fades and Lerks and just totally depending on he adrenaline kick for support. Cloaking/Scent of Fear/Advanced Vision are much more useful ambush tactics and thats what Aliens should be doing. Anyway, i think its funny to see people yelling at me for building Sensory Chambers and not Movement Chambers XP
LM
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Ambush tactics do NOT get you control of a hive room. And by the mid-game, marines have Phase Gates out the wazoo that they are using to move around with. And when marines are ported instantly from A to B, there is no opportunity to ambush them between those spots.
Sure, you can wait and ambush along the path the marines are advancing, but they will be more focused and centralized at this point in the game. More so than when they are running around trying to secure nodes. And when you are dealing with Heavy Armor and HMGs, you will often still get stomped even when you ambush them. You can certainly take a heavy with a couple of fades, or a fade and lerk, but that's two of your team you are giving up to stop someone who is just going to Phase right back into Hive 3.
Explain to us how ambush tactics obtain control of your third hive room, and then people may consider using Sensory Chambers over Movement or Defense. Remember, marines can still tech up the tree while playing tag in the corridors. All they need are a few nodes and time. Aliens HAVE to get that 3rd hive to tech up. Time is against them.
As for sensory vs movement... sensory is PLENTY of help in claiming that 3rd hive. If you have several Sensory chambers and the marines haven't yet turreted up the hive location, Cloaking + Hivesight lets you pick off Marines easily, making it extremely difficult for them to ever take the hive location. If they already have turrets in the 3rd hive, you can use Cloaking to help take them out. Regeneration + cloaking lets you do the extremely annoying strategy of coming out, biting the turret factory a few times, cloaking, regenerate, and then come out and bite the turret fac some more. Even without using that, the ability to hide lots of aliens in plain sight right on top of human turrets makes it much easier to regroup your team for an assuault against a turreted hive location. Yes, adrenaline is a much more assault-friendly upgrade, but Cloaking gives skulks MUCH better chances out in the open and is not completely useless for assaults. (unlike what some people believe)
The only time movement is much better than sensory is if you have several good Lerk players on your team; the extra Umbra power is awesome.
The answer is, it doesn't. And good marines will fortify that 3rd hive as such. You can do all the hit-n-run in the world without adrenline, but it'll take so long. Plus marines will eventually come after you, so then you'll need to get out of observatory range to slash them in the back. That's passive playing. Passive doesn't get you any possessions unless your enemy is stupid.
Last night, I played a game where the marines had fortified the Computer Core hive in ns_eclipse as such, but without an observatory. They were able to secure it because they hit it and Eclipse at the same time (our main hive was Maintenance). I did my best skulking, killed many, was able to keep the Generator room clear, but they got Computer Core. Slowly but surely, with the work of 1 gorge and 3 awesome skulks, we eventually fortified everything on the Horseshoe-side of the map, and eventually claimed the untouched Eclipse hive.
Someone then built a Sensory.
**obscenity**!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Siege Turrets were constructed inside the Computer Core hive. We lost 2 outposts and 2 resource nozzles due to that. They got a Siege Turret up in Generator, and started blasting Eclipse. How, exactly, does one get past THIS with CLOAK?!?!?!?!?!
We took care of the Eclipse problem, and eventually (after about 30 minutes of skirmishing) had one of the Fades go second gorge because we were rich in the monies, and our main gorge was simply too busy (plus not that intelligent) to handle the map by himself. We double-fortified everything the marines weren't going to, or could go to, and built as close to the Computer Core hive as could be allowed with those siege turrets there.
It took over 15 minutes to take down that hive, with 3-4 Fades. The marines weren't that smart at all, because during the course of the battle I'd say only 3 specific players had Phased in constantly to defend it. God knows what the rest of the marines were doing. That base would have been leveled in under 5 minutes if we had had Adren, because 3 Fades could have Acid Rocket bombarded 2 times as fast, killing the welderers instantly. Then, 3 Fades slashing and clawing at everything in sight, NEVER HAVING TO STOP TO RECHARGE, would devastate everything.
My point? Sensory is passive. Passive doesn't gain you anything. If the 3rd hive is secured by the marines at the time of 2nd hive completition, DO NOT build a Sensory chamber. Make a movement, for the sake of the alien race. If the 3rd hive isn't secured, you've already won the game, because the marines are dumb. You're then allowed to build whatever stupid stuff you wish to impair your team with.
(the game was 7vs7, with 3 completely useless alien teammates. And I'd say about roughly the same for the marine side)
And how praytell are ambush tactics going to work against an immobile enemy base?
edit: havok beat me to it!
The reason(in my opinion) for defense chambers first is because they allow for reinforcement of offense towers.
The reason(in my opinion) for defense chambers first is because they allow for reinforcement of offense towers.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
yes, exactly, but i havn't seen sensory chambers as being very useful. Does it have a large radius? Does it even matter? You can't tell exactly which of the blobs is a parasited marine and which is a sensory detected and you can't tell if they are near your base.
If I go fade, I like adrenaline, since I can blink to run away faster, and launching acid rockets/bile bomb rapidly is more useful in killing marines without dieing yourself.
<!--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-->You can do all the hit-n-run in the world without adrenline, but it'll take so long. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Its not true, main targets for attacking a base are turrets, phase gate, or the turret factory. You have ample energy to take one down as a fade(claw) or ono (gore) without running out of energy. However in most cases, if you get adrenaline, can you really survive long enough to use it up?
I?m almost certain that it doesn?t remove the attacking sound, if so, everyone would use it......