Gather All Skulk Lovers!
xBaD_AcCuRaCyx
Join Date: 2002-11-18 Member: 9265Members
Join Date: 2002-11-18 Member: 9265Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Post your tactics or adventures....</div> If any of you are wondering....yes, there is a lurk version of this. I barely play Lerks but i still admire any type of race in the Kharaa because you will always find something useful on them.
I was thinking about if you guys would be willing to post anything on the skulk. Stories, adventures, tactics, strats and stuff like that sort.
To me, I love the skulk with all my NS gaming abilities. I can play any race and species great but the skulk would have to be my most exceptional. I believe that they are cheap, fast and durable. You spawn with them and if you have to de-evolve...it only costs 4 res. They can climb walls and are extremely agile. With the right technques and moves, you can own with them.
If any of you have remembered playing with me, you'll notice I am skulk until i can't handle the HA marines alone. i usually get nice recs and if you don't remember me...i'm probably the one who ate your brain.
most of NS would depend on the skill of players on either side. because a good alien team will own marines and a good marine team will own aliens. rushes with skulks are effective 1/3 times and the other 1/3...they get killed off in the base doing nice dmg and the last 1/3 would be when half the skulks get mowed down at the door. skulks are extremely weak without any upgrades but i only need 2 bites (3 with lvl 1 armor upgrade) to take you down though <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Attacks:
1) Bite- 75 dmg
2) Parasite- 10 dmg...tags any marine/structure (yellow)
3) Leap- 16 dmg....good for traveling
4) Xenocide- more like suicide with a bang....dishes 200 dmg
A skulk with celerity and carapace should be owning marines. if the hives permit, i'll get that and hide at a busy intersection and jump on unweary marines while staying close enough to my hive to cover it. post your stuff here.
I was thinking about if you guys would be willing to post anything on the skulk. Stories, adventures, tactics, strats and stuff like that sort.
To me, I love the skulk with all my NS gaming abilities. I can play any race and species great but the skulk would have to be my most exceptional. I believe that they are cheap, fast and durable. You spawn with them and if you have to de-evolve...it only costs 4 res. They can climb walls and are extremely agile. With the right technques and moves, you can own with them.
If any of you have remembered playing with me, you'll notice I am skulk until i can't handle the HA marines alone. i usually get nice recs and if you don't remember me...i'm probably the one who ate your brain.
most of NS would depend on the skill of players on either side. because a good alien team will own marines and a good marine team will own aliens. rushes with skulks are effective 1/3 times and the other 1/3...they get killed off in the base doing nice dmg and the last 1/3 would be when half the skulks get mowed down at the door. skulks are extremely weak without any upgrades but i only need 2 bites (3 with lvl 1 armor upgrade) to take you down though <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Attacks:
1) Bite- 75 dmg
2) Parasite- 10 dmg...tags any marine/structure (yellow)
3) Leap- 16 dmg....good for traveling
4) Xenocide- more like suicide with a bang....dishes 200 dmg
A skulk with celerity and carapace should be owning marines. if the hives permit, i'll get that and hide at a busy intersection and jump on unweary marines while staying close enough to my hive to cover it. post your stuff here.
Comments
bite = 75 damage
parasite= 10 damage and keeps enemy on hive sight (yellow circles=enemies)
leap= 16 damage good for traveling fast, a great way to quick kill marines (leap at them then bite them to death) and a great way to get to those hard-to-reach areas
xenocide = like suicide, but instead you explode, doing HUge damage, make sure you get enemy near you're xenocide cause range is small. doees frigging 200 damage and double against structures (don't bother xenociding bbuildings unless it's weakened)
upgrades= okay i suggest andrenline/celerity/silence and carapce/regen because with andrenline, i can leap for a long time almsot non-stop and attack the marines quickly. or use celerity and speed towards em. carapace might help if you wanna live a lil longer, but i usually go with regen. O and silence, well good if ya wanna kill unaware enemies. oh yyeah and sensroy chamber. i suggest cloaking/enchanced sight (only for dark areas)
cloaking is good cause i can hide, regen, surprise attack, hide and repeat. enchance sight is only useful on dark areas, as some smart marines like to palnt mines in places you would wanna hide in, and enchance sight alows you to see enemies, enemy building, mines and grenades.
Isn't regeneration next to useless for a skulk? I think it only heals something like 1 or 2 hp per cycle.
I find carapace to be a much better choice - it lets you take another few bullets in battle before fleeing to a nearby healing farm. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Map Caged, the one with Sewer, Generator, and Ventilation system hive.
As skulk, ill crawl up the pipes leading from Sewer Vestibule to Sewer hive, sit up there (after a while into game, and after having most of my team parasite every marine) Then wait for a nice juicy Marine melon to pop into view, As hes usually looking down the vent or the pipe exit, i hit Control (crouch, makes skulk non stick to walls) fall down and chew him to bits, got 6 marines this way, before they started to look up. They thought i was in the vent or cloaked. Anyway, is a good place to ambush, even if you ge two up there, then sue one to lure the marine in, Works a treat. but now that most marines are starting to look up down in corners and whatnot, I find hiding in plain sight (they buzz around a well known corner and instanly look at the dark spots) then jumpign up and eating his face worsk well (Gotta have paranoid marines though, wont work with noobs who look straight ahead, so i suggest a guerilla war from the shadows, parasite tehm, cloak and chuckle, make em really wet their pants everytime they leave base)
When you are attacking your opponent, theres no need to keep him in your sights, instead of wasting time trying to face him, just listen for his footsteps and gunfire, and use your ears to pinpoint his location. For example, I often run past my opponent, but I don't bother to turn 180 degrees to face him, if I know they are behind me, I just reverse into them while biting. You can do this sideways aswell.
You have to remember that biting is not a range attack so it doesn't matter whether you have him lined up in your sights or not as you have to be 'inside' him for biting to work.
For those who like the taste of HA, remember that they move slower, stay close to them, its easier to shoot past them. Remember that they won't be moving that much, stay close but not facing their gun.
Listening is the most important thing as a skulk, moving quickly in a fight is often a blur, your ears will tell you more of whats going on than your eyes. The worst thing that a marine can do during a fight, is to jump up and down on metal grating, it just helps you find him faster.
One thing people often overlook in the game is using a Skulk as a scout. Often times, a lone Skulk is all it takes to make sure your hive-area is empty before you bring in the Gorges. Or, Skulks can also be great spies with aid of the cloaking ability.
If a head-on confrontation is NOT a good idea, either due to the awareness, skill, or teamwork of the marines, then find a nice area from which to fall on their heads.
Do not be afraid to take out parasite. In large rooms, you can sometimes wait for a few marines to pass you before starting to parasite them. Even if you die, they're marked men and they'll know it. (If they are attentive.)
If you find a marine outpost, and you want to make sure the rest of your team knows about it, parasite no more than two or three of the major structures.
If you see some teammates retreating from a marine advance, and none of them are skulks, get into a position so that you can ambush marines who follow. (They may not be expecting attack from above.)
When you get two hives, LEAP is a wonderful tool. Attacking with it isn't quite worth the effort or accuracy required, but as a tool for traveling around it does wonders. If you find yourself fighting in a comparatively large area, and have leap, consider getting adrenaline instead of celerity, so that you can leap more often.
As a skulk, your best tools are fear and overconfidence. Marines who are afraid are generally not effective, they become too interested in their own kill/death ratio, and will be careful, and slow. And when you DO drop in for a visit, they can be disoriented. If they are overconfident, they may not be watching for a small clawed form that drops down by their ankles.
Instilling fear into marines is a worthwhile use for a skulk, inactive, exceessively safe, or slow marines can often be worse for a marine team than enthusiastic ones who die often.
As for a skulk, I must say dropping on top of turrets is a wonderful way to take out individual ones... Especially if one just moves a little bit while doing this as the turret will have a next to impossible time acquiring its aim on you.
As a skulk, I often think it is best to wait around long corridors and start parasiting, sure you give away your position, but with a quick dash backwards, and hiding behind a corner, the blitz attack with celerity whoops...
<!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
I'm gonna try fighting blind next time i'm skulking. should be fun <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo-->
They can also remain cloaked when dropping out of the ceiling shadows- latch on to the roof, cloak, press crouch and you'll drop onto the floor, remaining cloaked...
Big sharp pointy bity things coming to eat your brains... weeee!
Its possible to fight blind, once I manage to get close enough, and I'm facing a particularly evasive marine, I just go full auto on chomping, and I can't see a thing, I just use my direction keys, constantly moving up/down/left/right, locating his position using my headphones. I remember facing one marine who kept jumping, I managed to jump sideways and bit him with my right ear mid-air. I wonder how that would have looked?
Any good marines, know that in a confined space that moving at the speed of a skulk can be confusing. If you are using your direction keys at the same time as re-orientating your view, you will get lost pretty quickly. <b>When you are attacking, you should hold a mental view from above, as if you are a commander.</b> If you are facing one direction at the beginning of the attack, and you don't rotate your view, you won't get disoriented so quickly. I will only rotate my view, if I feel that the marine is outside my immediate range and I have to find him again.
As for the question about biting structures, I wouldn't know, I've only eaten structures while facing them, I would have thought that to destroy structures you would usually have to be facing their energy bar to register the damage?
Do not rush the marine spawn at the start of the game. Instead, hide outside the entrance to the marine base furthest from the hive. DO NOT ATTACK MARINES, INCLUDING PARASITE. When they stop to build something somewhere, run in and chomp. A skulk with carapace is a frightening sight. If you can get up near them without dying, you are almost guaranteed to get away. NOTHING scares marines more than run-by bitings on attempts to fortify hives. Run back inside the hive, and heal. Getting back to the fight is easy as a skulk. Carapaced skulks are nearly invincible. In my experience, marine accuracy decreases EXPONENTIALLY as you get closer. I.E. if you can get past the initial damage threshold (usually enough to kill a skulk without cara), then you get to do some munching.
Another thing that needs mentioning is attacking their back. If you see marines leaving their spawn, let them go. Follow a ways back, and kills are guaranteed. If you let the commander place stuff before you go for the marines, then it is even more of a setback to the marines. Take a squad of four for instance. They ALL look forward 99% of the time, due to the crazy slow speed of movement backwards. Take advantage of that.
Example:
You are hiding above a doorway.
Marine enters.
You drop down, kill that marine, but get killed by the other marines following behind.
You wait for the marines to walk through the door and on to somewhere important. You drop down and get em from behind. Guaranteed kills.
Hiding-
DO NOT HIDE IN IMPORTANT LOCATIONS
That being said, I will tell you why.
Marines look at the ceilings of hives, and resource node spots, but 99.9% of the time not in some useless corridor ON THE WAY to the useful spot.
If you are high up, make sure to hit a wall on the way down, to avoid that LOUD sound when you hit the ground.
Examples:
-Under the horseshoe vent hives in eclipse on the way to maintenance.
-On the pillars/middle blue electric thingy in triad generator array.
-Vent in Data Core hive has GREAT potential. You drop down right on top of the marines, and they can do almost nothing about it, plus a lof of the time they do not even know a vent is there, or just do not care...
There are more in eclipse, but I am tired of typing, and you get my general idea anyway.
I usually play as an alien, partially because everyone else want to be marines, but mostly because they are fun to play. Anyway, sometimes It's refreshing to play as a down-to-earth honest human with a gun, and that game it seemed everything were fallling into place. We had a decent commander, people seemed to act like a team, and the main base were up in no time. It was time to bring the fight to the alien scum, and we advanced towards the sewer vestibule with the goal of taking the sewer hive in mind.
We were 4-5 marines moving in team, covering each other and moving fast towards the objective, with me as point man. Suddenly something moved in the darkness before us, and I thought "Ahh, target practice!", since when did mere skulks pose a threat to an organised marine team? So I opened fire, I and my felow marines saturated the area with a hail of bullets, and expected the familiar icon of "x killed y with an lmg" to show immediatly. But nothing showed, and I realised that neither I or my buddies were hitting anything even as 3-4 little monsters raced towards me inside the tunnel. I panickly started walking backwards and adjusting my aim, but it was too late, and the screen went black with a *chomping* sound. At least, I thought, my fellow marines will avenge me? But then I saw the kill icons, and they showed that my squad were being slaughtered to the last man.
"What happened?" We asked ourselves? It was just skulks, right? So we went out again, intent of slaughtering the **obscenity**. Five marines, covering each other a little more careful this time. I placed myself in the middle of the squad this time, just in case there were some sneaky freaks out there. There were. Suddenly they gushed forth through the pipe in front of us (about the same spot as last time), and we fired like madmen, to no avail. Most of my bullets were wasted on the backs of my fellow marines as they obstructed my aim dodging back and fourth, and they slaughtered us again. This time it was even more humiliating, as one skulk called "Silverback" ate 4 of us all by himself!
This went on and on, we tried getting the generator hive instead, but they already had that bagged. then at last they got fades and mopped us up. They didn't even bother waiting to get the third hive, but went directly for the snack pack.
The morale of this story? Remove the skulk. It's too powerful! replace it with a fluffy bunny or something a little less dangerous than a hamster.
Fear the skulk!
<!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> Yaaaa!
My reasoning is that if one skulk pops out the marines are likely to expend more ammo on the one while it is dodging than on five in a small area. Thus the first one sacrifices itself while the next 4 rush a few seconds later hoping to catch the marines either reloading or half out of ammo. This trick of course is only best against prepared marines, and I doubt it would work against a HMG, and would likely have moderate effects on a SG.
If <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> Have one skulk chill on the ceiling while all the others charge in and attack the farthest one... That way the one turret that starts shooting the closest enemies will be the one that is swarmed and the rest will miss. (If you have two hives the one on top should use adrenaline and fall down cause the turrets to aim back at it and leap back up... (A trick like this is on Hera where a lone skulk can chill outside the marine base behind the grating door and the turrest will try and blast it to no avail. Perfect for causing paranoia and also great for skulks approaching from the other side. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->