Cysts Redundancy Cysts

FriskFrisk Join Date: 2012-11-20 Member: 172623Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Good habit?</div>I've been playing a lot of alien kham because there is more meta to being a kham than a regular old human commander, the kham just has so many toys that the person sitting in the hive can use to influence the game over that of its comm counterpart. One thing I have been trying out when my team is forgiving (not all a bunch of shouty jerks) is highly redundant cyst chains. For obvious reasons this can be a good thing since it is much harder for one jerkbag marine to jerk down the hallway swinging his axe and disconnect my cyst chain...

However...

I noticed that putting a bunch of cysts down seems to drive marines crazy, when building towards them and placing the cysts out of LOS of their corridors but where the infection is visible, they cannot help themselves and must stop to shoot and chop the cysts. What does this do for me? Well, it acts as an early warning system, it allows me to keep track of marine movements, it slows them down and it makes them waste ammo.

Having a pile of cysts (think of the cyst radius, how we place them as far apart as possible to get as much infestation per Tres as possible, I was placing them 4-6 per single cyst radius) made the environment so bloody infested and confusing that even my alien team mates were having a hard time keeping track of where they were.

\/ TL;DR \/
What are your thoughts? When you kham, do you go nuts with the cysts to slow the marines down, keep track of them, provoke them to waste ammo, and distort the environment to make it more difficult to navigate?

Comments

  • tarquinbbtarquinbb Join Date: 2012-11-03 Member: 166314Members
    edited November 2012
    i was playing around the other day dropping extra cysts around doorways, so when marines came through and were jumped by skulks etc i popped the cysts in their face.

    i hear it blinds the marines in quite a big range (can see the goo texture splashed on them), but because i havent seen anyone else do it i have no idea how disorienting it is from a marine pov.

    if it's a blind like the gorge spit or worse it could really tip the fight in your skulk buddy's favour.
  • VeNeMVeNeM Join Date: 2002-07-13 Member: 928Members
    edited November 2012
    i do it , especially around com chair areas. make them wait even longer to get that extra com chair up and it makes knife happy marines easy targets for attackers
  • PHJFPHJF Join Date: 2005-07-13 Member: 55898Members
    Having too many cysts on a map renders my framerate unplayably low.
  • marsvinmarsvin Join Date: 2011-03-22 Member: 87920Members
    Depends on how many rts are available but generally yeah it's a good idea. If only to make the chain less vulnerable. Not had much chance to try burst yet though, but slowing down axe-happy rambos is great.
  • sdelcossdelcos Join Date: 2005-01-11 Member: 34994Members
    What I generally do as a commander, if there are several entrances to a room (Central drilling, crusher, nanogrid to name a few) is that I build redundant cyst chains around them so that if one is cut off my RTs do not suffer from a single ###### marine. Though by the time I do this I have more res than I care to count.
    I've been on the recieving end of an exploding cyst and it does cover your view quite a bit, added to the surprise of 'what just blinded me?'.
  • FriskFrisk Join Date: 2012-11-20 Member: 172623Members
    <!--quoteo(post=2030394:date=Nov 20 2012, 01:12 PM:name=VeNeM)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (VeNeM @ Nov 20 2012, 01:12 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2030394"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->i do it , especially around com chair areas. make them wait even longer to get that extra com chair up and it makes knife happy marines easy targets for attackers<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    In the early game I like to spread a nice thick chain to the tech point I am not going to take and thicken it up nice and fat throughout the room so it take the marines forever and a day to clear the room, just so they can't walk in and start throwing up buildings. I don't think the average player considers just how vulnerable marines really are when they are clearing cysts with axes or guns.

    I've only had the opportunity to use the infestation to 'scorch the earth' so to speak when the game was already to the point where it was impossible for the marines to win so any time I have ever spread infestation into a marine base with the intent of limiting their building or rebuilding space the game was usually over.
  • xen32xen32 Join Date: 2012-10-18 Member: 162676Members, Reinforced - Supporter
    And then flamethrower comes along.
  • JuomariJuomari Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167141Members
    edited November 2012
    well, let me correct you, marine commander has more influence in battlefields than khammander ( not saying khammander doesn't have any influence... it just seems waste of resources the way khammander is influencing, or atleast too pricy ).

    that being said, i totally agree with you how fun khammander toys are, my most faivorite is hallucination and cyst spamming, nothing is more hilarious that ninja marine axing down cysts and spamming cysts around him, he axe's one down BAM, there is 2 more cysts just around he's feet, he who thinks this is waste of resources think again, cysts costs 1res, and getting 1 marine out from game because he's wasting time is NOT waste of resources =D. I've had so many "f*ck you alien commander" messages from marines who tries to break cyst chains <3 and it's just so hilarious. You can easily spam more cysts than 1 marine is able to kill solo.

    i loved egg spamming with shift's too, but that is impossible now with the cooldown, but hallucinations are funny as hell too, just launch 10 fake onoses with 1 or 2 onos in middle of them and marines goes ape###### ^^.

    not to mention if you're winning the game, try to cyst in their base and spam whips all around, marines have hardtime to clear theirbase giving your team time to raise havoc.

    yeah.... good times ^^
  • FriskFrisk Join Date: 2012-11-20 Member: 172623Members
    edited November 2012
    <!--quoteo(post=2030546:date=Nov 20 2012, 03:18 PM:name=Juomari)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Juomari @ Nov 20 2012, 03:18 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2030546"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->well, let me correct you, marine commander has more influence in battlefields than khammander ( not saying khammander doesn't have any influence... it just seems waste of resources the way khammander is influencing, or atleast too pricy ).

    that being said, i totally agree with you how fun khammander toys are, my most faivorite is hallucination and cyst spamming, nothing is more hilarious that ninja marine axing down cysts and spamming cysts around him, he axe's one down BAM, there is 2 more cysts just around he's feet, he who thinks this is waste of resources think again, cysts costs 1res, and getting 1 marine out from game because he's wasting time is NOT waste of resources =D. I've had so many "f*ck you alien commander" messages from marines who tries to break cyst chains <3 and it's just so hilarious.

    i loved egg spamming with shift's too, but that is impossible now with the cooldown, but hallucinations are funny as hell too, just launch 10 fake onoses with 1 or 2 onos in middle of them and marines goes ape###### ^^.

    not to mention if you're winning the game, try to cyst in their base and spam whips all around, marines have hardtime to clear theirbase giving your team time to raise havoc.

    yeah.... good times ^^<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    A man after my own heart <3

    I fell in love with cysts last night when I was throwing them down in front of marines who were trying to fight just to piss them off, we were winning the game of course otherwise I wouldn't have wasted res. When I spent something like 100 res spamming cysts up the ramp and into/around their base the entire marine team was busy chasing cysts and there wasn't a single alien being shot in the entire game because they panicked.

    Screwing with marines is my favorite part about being an aliens :3

    edit: I don't mean to imply they were shooting cysts over marines, oh no, they did the lovely marine 1 base turtle and we had just wiped/retreated, so I commenced the cyst rain to contain them and somehow it worked
  • SpaceJewSpaceJew Join Date: 2012-09-03 Member: 157584Members
    edited November 2012
    Cyst spam is ok enough, but for an early warning system Drifters are still by far the best since <i>good</i> Marines will just clip one or two cysts that causes a cascade failure across half a map. Redundancy helps, but there are very few situations where killing two cysts doesn't cut off at least an entire room of structures.

    It can keep a Marine occupied for sure, but it also keeps the commander occupied fixing the Cyst chain instead of using your other tools and expanding in other locations.

    Bad Marines go down a hallway knifing every cyst they see, a good Marine goes to the source of the Cysts and cut it there, or simply goes for your expensive structures in the hive itself (Or god forbid a resource node).

    Usually there's only one place the commander can drop a replacement cyst to keep the chain connected, and a marine camping that spot can keep you busy all day unless a team-mate comes along and kills him. (Which they should.)

    I don't even want to get into situations where you can't keep a cyst chain connected, such as a flamethrower trooper. Those guys will easily wipe the floor with pretty much anything you can build or do as commander.
  • SopsSops Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17894Members, Constellation
    Cyst into marine base during an attack just to screw with them.
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