The New Sentry (219)
Blasphemy
Join Date: 2008-05-02 Member: 64201Members, NS2 Playtester, Subnautica Playtester
Join Date: 2008-05-02 Member: 64201Members, NS2 Playtester, Subnautica Playtester
<div class="IPBDescription">Sentry batteries meets Ammo?</div><b>For those who will see this wall of text and not be bothered, here is a guide on how to skip through quick.
Read the headers and the first sentences. But I suggest you read all of "My Suggestion" as the rest of the post are arguments for that.</b>
So now that build 219 has rolled out, and after I have had time to formulate an opinion on the new use of the Sentry, here are a couple of my thoughts on the matter. A lot of these thoughts are from a commander perspective. Mostly because I can never see sentries when on alien, or as a foot soldier.
<u><b>Sentry Batteries</b></u>
I like them. They are very much like the turret factories in NS1 and I definitely do not mind the need of those as a prerequisite. Maybe one problem is that the range the batteries have to connect the sentries are hard to see so I don't really know how close to the battery I need to place the Sentry. The other problem which partially stems from the first is the battery range may be a tad too far on the small side.
<u><b>Damage over time for Anti-Structures</b></u>
I don't know if I really like this. One of the things I like to compare these new sentries to are Void Rays from Starcraft 2. My major problem with this new revision to the sentries is that there is a lot of setup time for the sentries to engage the structure. And then once the structure dies, you would have to recycle the sentry. Having a Void Ray that you need to build only for a one time use seems very awkward and you could always just use an ARC to do essentially the same job. The difference being you can just pack up the ARC and move it further once it is done.
As in Starcraft, one of the purposes of the Void Ray is to snipe out the big units. Battlecruisers, Ultralisks etc. Going back to NS2, an easy transition would be it to engage the Onos. Is this good? Personally I always imagined sentries as the anti-swarmer type of thing. Like in Aliens how it would shoot the wall crawlers as they come down that long dark corridor, shooting like crazy while the ammo counter quickly depletes.
<u><b>My Suggestion</b></u>
Keep the Batteries and drop the DOT. Sentry health values the same so they are easy to kill. Maybe as a far stretch, we could have the batteries be like an automated dispenser. I do remember a previous build where the Marine Commander would have to keep refilling the Sentries as they run out of ammo. I suggest something similar along those lines but leave it to the Batteries to keep them charged. If the battery were to go down, the sentries would still have a very small amount of ammo in the gun but would shortly run out as they shoot.
With this in mind, the Battery replenishment amount could be a determinable constant (changing across builds). If the Sentry fires too much beyond that constant, it would run out of ammo. If you wanted to, you could put two Batteries to replenish the same sentry, leaving it able to fire perpetually, but that would make it a priority target for aliens. In the other way, you could put two sentries next to the battery. They could dish out the damage like crazy, but run out of ammo very very quickly.
<u><b>--Pricing</b></u>
Sentries with this new ammo battery system could be fairly cheap. Maybe around 5-8. But here is the kicker. Make the Batteries the pricey one. Make them somewhere around 15-20. Sentries are the ones that do the damage, but the batteries are what keeps them in check. If you wanted to spam sentries, go for it. They will do the damage, but they will not be able to last under a lengthy engagement without the proper supply.
<u><b>--Health and Damage</b></u>
I don't know too much about the damage system because with the current hit detection, they don't really shoot, therefore not providing accurate results. But I do know that their health is perfect. Skulks can get in there fairly easily with leap and knock down a sentry in a couple bites. I love this. It makes sentries a useful fire support, but not a base defender or a Marine replacement. Often when I command and I see the fades fly around the base ripping marines apart, I keep wishing that there were something more to help my soldiers shoot those fades. They just get free reign. But returning sentries to a player wounder would make those fades think twice about diving in by themselves.
Mix that with the Mac EMP Blast (I was trying to use that too), and fades could be in big trouble. Alone the Mac Blast might do something, but whenever I use it, the Fade just flies away before my Marines can do anything about it. And with 3 res a pop, and how frequently fades come in, it seems very expensive for very low results.
Being that the batteries would be the pricey guys with such high importance, I would suggest their health be higher than the Sentry. In TF2, a proper Engineer knows that his Dispenser is more important than his Sentry. Sentries are expendable but a LVL 3 dispenser is what keeps the Engineer in the fight. Batteries alone do not do any damage, so making them a tougher nut shouldn't prove too much of a problem. They will also be less of a priority in an urgent situation, but a very expensive kill if you can knock it out.
Well these are my ideas. As per usual, your thoughts are welcome. Obviously when I pull these new ideas out, I have a very strong bias towards them, so any counterpoints you guys could make would be very enlightening.
Read the headers and the first sentences. But I suggest you read all of "My Suggestion" as the rest of the post are arguments for that.</b>
So now that build 219 has rolled out, and after I have had time to formulate an opinion on the new use of the Sentry, here are a couple of my thoughts on the matter. A lot of these thoughts are from a commander perspective. Mostly because I can never see sentries when on alien, or as a foot soldier.
<u><b>Sentry Batteries</b></u>
I like them. They are very much like the turret factories in NS1 and I definitely do not mind the need of those as a prerequisite. Maybe one problem is that the range the batteries have to connect the sentries are hard to see so I don't really know how close to the battery I need to place the Sentry. The other problem which partially stems from the first is the battery range may be a tad too far on the small side.
<u><b>Damage over time for Anti-Structures</b></u>
I don't know if I really like this. One of the things I like to compare these new sentries to are Void Rays from Starcraft 2. My major problem with this new revision to the sentries is that there is a lot of setup time for the sentries to engage the structure. And then once the structure dies, you would have to recycle the sentry. Having a Void Ray that you need to build only for a one time use seems very awkward and you could always just use an ARC to do essentially the same job. The difference being you can just pack up the ARC and move it further once it is done.
As in Starcraft, one of the purposes of the Void Ray is to snipe out the big units. Battlecruisers, Ultralisks etc. Going back to NS2, an easy transition would be it to engage the Onos. Is this good? Personally I always imagined sentries as the anti-swarmer type of thing. Like in Aliens how it would shoot the wall crawlers as they come down that long dark corridor, shooting like crazy while the ammo counter quickly depletes.
<u><b>My Suggestion</b></u>
Keep the Batteries and drop the DOT. Sentry health values the same so they are easy to kill. Maybe as a far stretch, we could have the batteries be like an automated dispenser. I do remember a previous build where the Marine Commander would have to keep refilling the Sentries as they run out of ammo. I suggest something similar along those lines but leave it to the Batteries to keep them charged. If the battery were to go down, the sentries would still have a very small amount of ammo in the gun but would shortly run out as they shoot.
With this in mind, the Battery replenishment amount could be a determinable constant (changing across builds). If the Sentry fires too much beyond that constant, it would run out of ammo. If you wanted to, you could put two Batteries to replenish the same sentry, leaving it able to fire perpetually, but that would make it a priority target for aliens. In the other way, you could put two sentries next to the battery. They could dish out the damage like crazy, but run out of ammo very very quickly.
<u><b>--Pricing</b></u>
Sentries with this new ammo battery system could be fairly cheap. Maybe around 5-8. But here is the kicker. Make the Batteries the pricey one. Make them somewhere around 15-20. Sentries are the ones that do the damage, but the batteries are what keeps them in check. If you wanted to spam sentries, go for it. They will do the damage, but they will not be able to last under a lengthy engagement without the proper supply.
<u><b>--Health and Damage</b></u>
I don't know too much about the damage system because with the current hit detection, they don't really shoot, therefore not providing accurate results. But I do know that their health is perfect. Skulks can get in there fairly easily with leap and knock down a sentry in a couple bites. I love this. It makes sentries a useful fire support, but not a base defender or a Marine replacement. Often when I command and I see the fades fly around the base ripping marines apart, I keep wishing that there were something more to help my soldiers shoot those fades. They just get free reign. But returning sentries to a player wounder would make those fades think twice about diving in by themselves.
Mix that with the Mac EMP Blast (I was trying to use that too), and fades could be in big trouble. Alone the Mac Blast might do something, but whenever I use it, the Fade just flies away before my Marines can do anything about it. And with 3 res a pop, and how frequently fades come in, it seems very expensive for very low results.
Being that the batteries would be the pricey guys with such high importance, I would suggest their health be higher than the Sentry. In TF2, a proper Engineer knows that his Dispenser is more important than his Sentry. Sentries are expendable but a LVL 3 dispenser is what keeps the Engineer in the fight. Batteries alone do not do any damage, so making them a tougher nut shouldn't prove too much of a problem. They will also be less of a priority in an urgent situation, but a very expensive kill if you can knock it out.
Well these are my ideas. As per usual, your thoughts are welcome. Obviously when I pull these new ideas out, I have a very strong bias towards them, so any counterpoints you guys could make would be very enlightening.
Comments
Another few problems are:
- Sentries require both Sentry batteries and a Robotics Factory. Why not just the batteries?
- Sentries have to be very close to a sentry battery to work during my testing.
Conclusion - For Defense they are a complete waste of a good amount of res in their current state in Build 219.
I will test them against a hive later. It may be interesting..
I tried to look in the lua files to find any mention of sentry fire rate or damage, but I unfortunately got lost in the code and couldn't really find anything conclusive. So all of these values are completely theoretical and probably not to the game's values.
Assuming the sentry spins at 120 rpm, that would leave 2 revolutions per second. The sentry has 6 barrels, that would be 12 shots per second, therefore being 720 shots per minute.
120 rpm == 2 rps
6 barrels == 12 shots/sec == 720 shots/min
I don't imagine the sentry has a very large ammo cache, so prolonged firing just doesn't look very appropriate. Let us assume the cache is fairly small, and could only shoot for about 4 full seconds. That would mean it would need 48 bullets in storage.
12 shots/sec == 48 shots/4sec
This doesn't seem very large on its own, but lets add a dispenser. Let us say it generates 12 shots every 3 seconds. Assuming the dispenser was supplying as it went, and didn't have a resevoir of its own, and supplied at 12 bullet intervals, it would add an extra 2 seconds of firing time to the sentry before it runs out making it 6 seconds of fire time. After the sentry depletes and the alien either dies or leaves, it would take 12 seconds to fully resupply the sentry.
If the battery had a resevoir of its own and had 24 bullets before having to generate more, it would add an extra 2 seconds to the sentry making it 8 seconds of fire time.
<u><b>Summary</b></u>
1 Sentry without Battery == 4 seconds of fire. No replenishment.
1 Sentries/1 Battery without storage == 6 seconds of fire.
1 Sentries/1 Battery with storage == 8 seconds of fire.
1 Sentries/2 Batteries without storage == 10 seconds of fire.
1 Sentries/2 Batteries with storage == 14 seconds of fire.
2 Sentries/1 Battery without storage == 6 sec:4 sec for the two sentries respectively. (Would try to fill first before filling second)
2 Sentries/1 Battery with storage == 7 sec:5 sec (Would give ammo to the sentry with the least ammo, therefore alternating)
2 Sentries/1 Battery would take 24 seconds to refill both sentries.
2 Sentries/2 Battery w/ and w/o storage == same as having 1 Sentry/1 Battery
However, I just can't justify all the hoops you jump through for one marine's worth of damage. ARCs are just plain better for demolishing.
Using 4 Sentries I took down a mature hive as quickly as <b>38 seconds and as long as 1:15</b>.
Sometimes the Sentries would target eggs and junk before the hive.
I did not assist the sentries in any way besides building them.
Using 4 Sentries I took down a mature hive as quickly as <b>38 seconds and as long as 1:15</b>.
Sometimes the Sentries would target eggs and junk before the hive.
I did not assist the sentries in any way besides building them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem is that Marines already have fifty bazillion methods of besieging an enemy position but they lack any kind of real defense outside of the Marines themselves. Aliens can at the very least delay a Marine assault with Hydras, Whips, and Clogs but Marines only have Mines...which are easily avoided and the higher lifeforms can just tank their way through them anyway. They don't need another anti-structure weapon, they need defensive structures.
On top of that, mines are costly when defense is of importance. Alien structures do a great job of deterring marines from wandering out without proper equipment/backup (which also sways more people towards buying a shotgun/gl/flamethrower than mines), while marines must stay in groups to defend anything half the time, decreasing the amount of marines that could be pushing the aliens back.
Remember you need to build:
<ol type='1'><li>Robotics factory - 15 res</li><li>Sentry battery - 10 res (can be built anywhere including infestation, not just near a Robotics Factory!)</li><li>Sentry Gun - 5 res each</li></ol>