You Don't Need A Siege Cannon, **obscenity**!
Rolling_Rock
Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8677Members
Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8677Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Use a bloody grenade launcher!</div> With 1.03 the grenade launcher is surprisingly effective at taking out walls of lame. One clip will usually level a good one - and in faster time than a siege cannon. Plus you don't have to upgrade it.
Gls cost 33 resources. TF + upgrade + siege cannon costs a helluva lot more. Not to mention the aliens can have a banquet while the marines build it.
Has a gorge walled in freight elevator access? Just give a trustworthy marine a grenade launcher, and have him escorted by 2-3 other marines. Problem solved.
That said, save up your money and try to outfit 4 marines with HA, 3 hmgs, and 1 grenade launcher.
Even against fades and umbra, this combo will be a pain in the **obscenity** to the aliens. These 4 men (make sure they all have welders except the GL man - he needs his pistol for close-range encounters) can plow through whatever the aliens have.
Instead of building walls of turrets when I once took over comm on eclipse after the aliens got 3 hives, I armored up 5-6 guys, gave them HMGs and dished out 2 grenade launchers. I told them all to stay in base and wait for the others, then gave them a waypoint for horseshoe.
They plowed through wall after wall of lame. I didn't throw down turrets. I just dropped them an armory at horsehoe and a resource node. Then they pushed on to Maintenance hive.
At the keyhole they plowed through more walls of lame and then decided to ignore my waypoint and split up. Most got owned all by themselves, but a few that did listen STILL managed to start opening up on the hive itself.
Had they stayed together we could have destroyed it and made one hell of a comeback.
So commanders, dont' go turret crazy, and don't get a siege for every wall of lame your men come across. Just give them a grenade launcher. It's a much cheaper solution.
And don't kid yourself. A 2:1 or 3:1 ratio works well of HMG to Grenade launchers. I prefer the 2:1, if the marines know what they're doing.
So quit dicking around with turrets and just plow through the aliens.
Doesn't matter if they have fades. If they get close, the fades get owned by HMG. If they try their Hit-and-Run **obscenity** they get owned by the grenade launchers.
No fear.
Gls cost 33 resources. TF + upgrade + siege cannon costs a helluva lot more. Not to mention the aliens can have a banquet while the marines build it.
Has a gorge walled in freight elevator access? Just give a trustworthy marine a grenade launcher, and have him escorted by 2-3 other marines. Problem solved.
That said, save up your money and try to outfit 4 marines with HA, 3 hmgs, and 1 grenade launcher.
Even against fades and umbra, this combo will be a pain in the **obscenity** to the aliens. These 4 men (make sure they all have welders except the GL man - he needs his pistol for close-range encounters) can plow through whatever the aliens have.
Instead of building walls of turrets when I once took over comm on eclipse after the aliens got 3 hives, I armored up 5-6 guys, gave them HMGs and dished out 2 grenade launchers. I told them all to stay in base and wait for the others, then gave them a waypoint for horseshoe.
They plowed through wall after wall of lame. I didn't throw down turrets. I just dropped them an armory at horsehoe and a resource node. Then they pushed on to Maintenance hive.
At the keyhole they plowed through more walls of lame and then decided to ignore my waypoint and split up. Most got owned all by themselves, but a few that did listen STILL managed to start opening up on the hive itself.
Had they stayed together we could have destroyed it and made one hell of a comeback.
So commanders, dont' go turret crazy, and don't get a siege for every wall of lame your men come across. Just give them a grenade launcher. It's a much cheaper solution.
And don't kid yourself. A 2:1 or 3:1 ratio works well of HMG to Grenade launchers. I prefer the 2:1, if the marines know what they're doing.
So quit dicking around with turrets and just plow through the aliens.
Doesn't matter if they have fades. If they get close, the fades get owned by HMG. If they try their Hit-and-Run **obscenity** they get owned by the grenade launchers.
No fear.
Comments
The only problem is that the GL requires the Advanced armory and the arms lab... Armory placement costing 25 and the upgrade costing 35 RP and the arms lab costing 50. So, if you add that in, it comes to 110 for the prerequisite buildings, and 33 for the GL. That's 143 RP. Early game, if you only have an armory and light armor/LMG, siege is a more reasonable option.
Also, sieging usually ends up being a commitment. You end up with sentries and sieges and a phasegate. Sometimes even an armory. This gets expensive fast, but once it's up, that base is going to stand for awhile. The GL, on the other hand will end up as another assault weapon with your marine squad, moving its way up to the frontlines with the marines, with a possibility of taking out more Walls of Lame. The siege, on the other hand, is stationary and it'll spend eternity guarding the same spot.
It all boils down to situation. Siege is a great option for securing a central location or leading the charge into the second alien hive. The GL helps round out the marines and can be used repeatedly and effectively. Both have their uses.
It shoots through walls within a sphere of influence
Depending on the map and geographical location, a siege is infinately more effective than a squad of gren launchers due to the fact the siege could have been located in a easy to defend spot/chokepoint and/or the defense for that set of fortifications rips apart even HA marines like nothing on earth....and given that you couldn't bounce grens off walls towards the defenses...
Granted, initially, siege appears to be a very specialised weapon/tool that has gained high levels of respect and use and for good reason. However, as it appears, it is specialised and in some situations as many pointed out beforehand, a few grens could be more effective in the same situation....
Major difference though: You can have siege as you rush the hive in the beginning of the game...you can't do that with grens
Grenades are multipurpose tools that help exterminate packs of those kharaa, flush out walkways, act as mobile mortars against buildings and best of all, can in theory last indefinately if recovered. As powerful as they are, their disadvantages is that there is VERY little ammo avaliable for it and it only works well in the hands of an experianced marine
Siege are specialist equipment with a single purpose in mind: Denial of Territory. Nothing more, nothing less.
Pick what you use for what you need
#1 The siege is more powerful, but stationary. It requires defence.
#2 The GL is less powerful, but more versatile and mobile. It also requires defence [typically HA for the user, and HA/HMG for 2 other marines].
IMHO...
Siege:
- Use it for taking a hive.
- Use it as an extra form of hive defence.
- Use it for last-gasp defence of your base.
- Use it for sneaky & confusing hive attacks.
- Use it to prevent the aliens building hives that are hard to defend from within.
GL:
- Use it against lerk+fade combos.
- Use it against 'walls' blocking corridors.
- Use it as a weapon.
They only have 6000 hp. Time spent setting up seige could be spent punching through the defenses and just shooting the damn thing.
Nothing quite as amusing as watching a group of marines stand outside a hive that has like 4 OC's protecting it waiting for siege.
Whole purpose of this thread is to cut back on all the siege reliance so many marines have grown accustomed to. Like they can't shoot an OC to kill it. Like babies they need to be pampered with siege guns, when that money could be spent in other more beneficial places, such as weapon upgrades or little toys like grenade launchers.
The problem with siege cannons is that they are static. Marines with GL's are mobile and can move anywhere. All they need is a supply of ammo. Siege cannons can be used to deny areas to aliens...or seige a hive from a distance to reduce casualties...but don't use them to clean a random point of the map unless it is absolutly nesseccary.
its annoying for a gl guy to run around to check for new walls of lame popping up etc..
Once up, the ST will also deny aliens the ability to build within its' (rather large) area.
The most common version however is of course to start building a siege turret and then see your marines wasting all their ammo shooting at structures that would be taken out by the turret, only to then be chomped by skulks while they are reloading.
But is the GL really capable of taking down walls of lame that quick? Don't they just do 90pts per shot or so? I usually only deploy GL's to spam an area or agains fade/lerk combos, so I am not knowledgable about it's anti-wall-of-lame capabilities <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Altogether too true. Give me a GL, and I'll make up for their inadaquecy in no time.
On public servers its a different ballgame, especially when soldiers are whining for weapons and armor that they are just going to lose. On public servers I try to give everyone waypoints and make forced moves and see who is listening and who is just running around like a spaz. The people that are listening, following orders, and generally have some kind of aim will get the first GLs, HA, and HMGs.
Siege turrets also play a great role in defence, especially if you are into the 2 Hive rush (ignore main base, take a hive, barely defend it (rely on Marines), take second hive, then turtle up with sentries and siege turrets until strong enough to take other points and the final hive.
seems fairly obvious that the general opinion is that gren launchers are sometimes ok, which is fair enough, but they aren't cheaper than sieges, with the amount of pre-req buildings you need for them the time upgrading, then the limited space you can drop them in i'd say they are more of a hastle than sieges. of course i haven't played in 1.03 yet so things may have changed with sieges back to reasonable cost
Nothing quite as amusing as watching a group of marines stand outside a hive that has like 4 OC's protecting it waiting for siege.
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There is also nothing more humiliating than watching your four marines die as they all fire on the hive and don't save ammo to kill the one or two skulks that come and defend the hive, point being siege will take it out for sure because sometimes despite orders the marines will get trigger happy and all shoot the hive. But if you build siege and can afford to which you probably can since you took the time to build an arms lab, upgraded armory, and grenade launcher, then just use the siege and get a 'for sure' takeover of the friggin hive, don't try and elevate grenade launchers beyond what they are and that is a late game tool, as a couple skulks can still own your light armor marines with hmgs and gl's. And if you got heavy armor you probably already control two hives so it doesn't matter if you siege or GL the last hive. Siege are more usefull for taking the hives in the early game.
At the endgame sometimes its best to use the GL to keep the aliens away from you while ur building the siege.
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On the other hand, grenade marines don't sneak anywhere. Silence just isn't an option for explosives.
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