The Ergonomics Of Structure Placement
MaxGallagher
Join Date: 2002-12-30 Member: 11627Members
Join Date: 2002-12-30 Member: 11627Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Don't Crowd My Respawn, Man!</div>
I don't know if ergonomics actually makes sense in that title. I'm too lazy to check the actual definition. But anyway.
The point of this post is this: I've played under alot of comms who seem to believe that the best layout for marine structures is to crowd them together as tightly as possible. I think the logic behind this is understandable: the closer everything is together, the easier it is to cover all the angles with turrets.
However, this strategy presents some serious problems, particularly at Marine spawn, when the closeness of the structures actually makes it harder for marines to move around.
No comm likes to see his marines humping the armory. Why? It wastes valuable time. Well, now imagine that before humping the armory for three or four seconds, your marines have to spend an additional six to ten seconds trying jump over or around the obs, arms lab, three turrets and turret fac, all of which have been built directly around the ips. Not to mention having to jockey with the other marines who are doing the same. And once they actually get to the armory, they have to wait because there's only room for three marines to get ammo at a time.
This problem reaches its height when the armory is too close to the ips, and a few HA/HMGers or shotgunners regularly get telefragged because they don't realize they're standing on an ip while getting ammo, or because they have to walk over an ip to get to the armory.
I'm not a pro or anything, but i have played in many games where structure placement issues have slowed down the Marine team considerably, simply because it takes them half a minute just to get moving after respawning. So my advice is this: when you're laying down structures, pay special attention to giving the ips plenty of room, so that the moment a marine pops out he can be running where he's needed. And though humping the armory sucks, there are times when your marines do need to reload, so make sure the armory has space all the way around, and is easily and quickly reached by marines who've just respawned.
This approach can also be extended to phase gates. If you make sure to give a phase gate plenty of room, then you ensure that marines who are desperately coming through the save the outpost from alien attack will come out on the other side with sufficient room to maneouver, and won't die to skulk bites or spores due to getting stuck on structures.
It may be a small thing, but it can save every marine several seconds of frusteration after respawn, and sometimes its a matter of seconds that spell the difference between that vital phase gate, tfac or seige turret being saved or destroyed.
(P.S. maybe this topic has already been covered extensively some time in the past. If so, sorry! Feel free to ignore this in its entirety)
I don't know if ergonomics actually makes sense in that title. I'm too lazy to check the actual definition. But anyway.
The point of this post is this: I've played under alot of comms who seem to believe that the best layout for marine structures is to crowd them together as tightly as possible. I think the logic behind this is understandable: the closer everything is together, the easier it is to cover all the angles with turrets.
However, this strategy presents some serious problems, particularly at Marine spawn, when the closeness of the structures actually makes it harder for marines to move around.
No comm likes to see his marines humping the armory. Why? It wastes valuable time. Well, now imagine that before humping the armory for three or four seconds, your marines have to spend an additional six to ten seconds trying jump over or around the obs, arms lab, three turrets and turret fac, all of which have been built directly around the ips. Not to mention having to jockey with the other marines who are doing the same. And once they actually get to the armory, they have to wait because there's only room for three marines to get ammo at a time.
This problem reaches its height when the armory is too close to the ips, and a few HA/HMGers or shotgunners regularly get telefragged because they don't realize they're standing on an ip while getting ammo, or because they have to walk over an ip to get to the armory.
I'm not a pro or anything, but i have played in many games where structure placement issues have slowed down the Marine team considerably, simply because it takes them half a minute just to get moving after respawning. So my advice is this: when you're laying down structures, pay special attention to giving the ips plenty of room, so that the moment a marine pops out he can be running where he's needed. And though humping the armory sucks, there are times when your marines do need to reload, so make sure the armory has space all the way around, and is easily and quickly reached by marines who've just respawned.
This approach can also be extended to phase gates. If you make sure to give a phase gate plenty of room, then you ensure that marines who are desperately coming through the save the outpost from alien attack will come out on the other side with sufficient room to maneouver, and won't die to skulk bites or spores due to getting stuck on structures.
It may be a small thing, but it can save every marine several seconds of frusteration after respawn, and sometimes its a matter of seconds that spell the difference between that vital phase gate, tfac or seige turret being saved or destroyed.
(P.S. maybe this topic has already been covered extensively some time in the past. If so, sorry! Feel free to ignore this in its entirety)
Comments
It VERY important not to put the PG next to the TF because the onos can just sit on top of the phase gate and kill the TF while stopping your marines from phasing.
I agree with the theme of the thread, clustering just invites onos charges, skulk bombs, and bilebombs.
Plus its screaming BILEBOMB ME in big massive caps.
Second, believe you me, I've got gorge into enemy bases loooong before endgame, and clustering everything only makes it easier for me to take down. Spread out, I've to be picky.
And leading back to the original topic, if you cluster your structures you may find it hard to move in base, let alone try to weld the damaged structures.
But look at it this way.
A wall of clustred turrets just at the entrance.. The aliens take that down and thinks thats was easy.. just to walk in to the base and take fire from everywhere...
like a bad present...
Placing the PG and armory closer to each other and away from the IPs has also been useful when I command.
EDIT: telefragging is also very high on my "do not like" list <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo-->
What I don't get is that even in this game, which is in the future, the turrets are still retarded and can't see things that are 20 feet away. We have turrets that retarded right now......just thought I'd say something about it.....
like a bad present... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
You shouldn't have that many turrets anyways. Go kill something with that res intstead.
Anyway, I like to build the TF, IPS, obs/arms/proto in a cluster, with the ips on the outside. The TF can be electrified, which gives a little extra protection to your squishier structures.
Building things along walls and in corners can work too. Turret coverage for the room is usually better this way, and there's less to trip over. The biggest fallback is that this kind of design can be prone to blindspots which = dead structures.
The armory placement is the most important. It has to be out of lerk/fade line of fire (cuz that's where your marines will be alot), somewhere you won't get telefragged, AND protected by turrets. The armory is prime kharaa feeding ground, so making it easy on them will really hurt you later. If possible (it's often not), try to keep it somewhere that xeno won't hurt too much either. This usually means the back of the base or behind something, but that often means failing one of the other requirements that are more important..
2 ips around a TF in a corner
this provides a small amount of protection(actually kind of big), marines spawning telefrags skulks chomping the TF, or the skulks have to be careful of bitign the TF... :O
nothing else should be crowded