Tips To Combat Devour
XCan
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 5904Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 5904Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Post them here</div> Until today whenever I'm comm devour had always been my worst nightmare for my HA squads. But today I discovered something, the true power of HMG!
As many of you have noticed there is a lot of whine and junk about the SG's power and how everyone uses SG instead of HMG these days, however the SG is incredibly useless at ranges longer than 3m, and if the onos can't get close you he can't devour you. Therefore I've found the HMG to best weapon vs onos even though the SG has a larger chance of killing one.
Also JPs with SG do wonders however I haven't had any success with them with any other heavy weapon than SG.
As many of you have noticed there is a lot of whine and junk about the SG's power and how everyone uses SG instead of HMG these days, however the SG is incredibly useless at ranges longer than 3m, and if the onos can't get close you he can't devour you. Therefore I've found the HMG to best weapon vs onos even though the SG has a larger chance of killing one.
Also JPs with SG do wonders however I haven't had any success with them with any other heavy weapon than SG.
Comments
It feels so great to see the community(the big lumbering machine that it is) begin to adapt to 2.0's style. So many people complain about the shotgun being the best weapon now over HMG's.....BUT they fail to see the usefullness of an HMG over the shotgun. Range.
An HMG is more accurated now, and way more deadly at a long range than any shotgunner. Redemetion onos wont even make it down a hallway. It takes only 6 seconds to bring an onos to near death with an HMG and make him redem.
I have not lost a HA/HMG squad to a group of pure onos yet. The only thing that beat me HA/HMG squad was a bunch of umbra'd onos and a bunch of skulks...dang those pesky things AND DANG UMBRA...lol.
But all is fair in love and NS.
After I recently starting deploying more HMG's my wins as commander have gone from 1-4/13 to now 11/13 the past 5 days.
A 50/50 mix of HMG to shotgun works well. HMGs churn through all alien subtypes at long range, while shotguns slaughter anything that dares to get too close (especially those damnable skulks) By the time an onos gets to devour range it's lost most of it's health and armour to sustained HMG fire, and the shotguns will finish it quickly enough. It's also a good mix for taking down enemy chambers: HMGs provide cover while shotguns take down the chamber itself.
On the general avoiding devour front, if your squad has a mix of HA marines and light armoured marines, tell the LAs ones to stay in front of the HAs. Let the cheap marines be devoured. If you've got a good team this works a treat; but on many servers you'll be lucky to get a group to follow an order like this.
Combined arms bay-beh! Definitely mix it up (exact percentages up to the comm), but the main reason being: hmgs won't always the get the onos down in time, but definitely won't kill him, whereas, packing a shotgun or two close means that, if the onos gets close, you can bring his arse down fast, possibly killing him, and definitely not being devoured.
Of course, sometimes they get smart and charge instead of swat/devour.
The HMG is supreme when used to support a team.
In 2.0, it seems I'm lucky if I can equip just a third of the team with HMGs, although shotguns are so cheap and useful, it's tempting not to upgrade the armory and give the whole team shotguns.
Although there is still the psychological factor of having HMGs on the kharaa team. As soon as you hand out HMGs, the alien team suddenly get the fear, and don't attack so much.. 'OMG they got HMG!'
So perhaps its worthwhile to hold back the weapon upgrades, and upgrade the armory early to hand out lots of HMGs. HMG combined with Motion Tracking is pretty lethal, as it catches most Onoses even before they come round the corner.
HMGs take all the power of a shotgun and gives it a lot of range, except for that piercing damage thing.....but it's not a problem if your comm has brains and uses combined arms.
It does work on most Onos tho, since the newbs just want to devour.
a) Nab one, and then die straigth away
b) Redeem before it gets close.
Keep alert for onos and keep scanning the way if youre comm so that you dont get nasty surprises.
It's not pure psychology... It's practicality. If you attack an hmger as a skulk, or even two, they WILL kill you. If you attack a shotgunner, one miss and you're through to bite his arse... If there are two of you, with leap, he's dead. Thus, the hmg is a fairly scary weapons. In groups, this means you're extra extra likely to die.
shotty is good because there are a lot of corners, and shotty reloads fast. Where you can pack 10 shots onto an enemy (not onos)
When encountering Onos, best is with HMG, it might sound stupid, but HMG has higher damages and the rate of fire is so fast it can covered the shotty's damage. Of course ranges speaks which weapon is better.
Accurate players = HMG
Not-so-accurate players = better use shotty pls, don't waste my res. =P
The SG is useless at long range, the onos will run towards you, stomp once, devour then redeem. That's why you need hmg to combat onos, make it impossible for them to get close.
Not many comms research jetpacks, and the result is that if one does, the alien team is usually caught by surprise. If an alien is saving to go onos, then the slow *thump* *thump* of HA footsteps doens't mean anything more than slower, more expensive marines to eat. But jetpackers are a completely baffling problem. Unless they're very slow, and not that bright, they're impossible to stomp or devour. Only with a lucky and well-placed jump/gore in a low hallway does the onos have much of a chance of downing one. A couple jetpack/shotty marines can kill or redeem an onos in no time, and it will never touch them. In fact, most of the aliens will run around uselessly, because Jetpack is a brilliant counter to anything that relies on close range attacks.
The only things you really have to fear as a jetpacker are concentrations of OCs and Lerks. Without heavy armour, OCs hurt, and they don't miss so you're speed is only good for getting away from them. Additionally, without heavy armour lerks will be able to fill the air with spores, and skilled lerks will be able to spike you out of the sky. Fades can be a problem, if aliens have three hives and they're using acid rockets.
Though if you get caught in low hallways or corners, anything will kill you.
Mixed weapons in a HA squad are always best.
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and its realistic to equip the whole squads with shotguns and get chewed from distance?
And get banned from many of the servers with picky admins. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
And get banned from many of the servers with picky admins. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would guess they have no clue about mp_killdelay. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
"I've always been saying that the HMG is a support weapon, not a basic weapon like the shotty. I think its unrealistic to equip whole squads of HMG unless they're HA and Welder heavy."
A unit full of HMG will die v. quickly because for all its perks the HMG has a crippling reload and its hard to hit fast moving skulks. Second, its a lot more expensive than a shotty. This means whole squads of HMG die and cost more res than they earn.
Now, your quote
"and its realistic to equip the whole squads with shotguns and get chewed from distance?"
Please do point out where in my original quote I said that you must equip them all with shotties? Additionally, when has a decent skulk player ever parked himself at the bottom of a long well lit corridor? Combined arms, as I state in other posts and hinted at in the one quoted. Support weapons go into basic units to add a bit of punch.
If you think that HMG is going to save you from long distance death, all well and good, but I suggest you check the maps out for the abundance of short corners and general lack of opportunities for EVERYONE to use an HMG.
Oh well..... <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::onos::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tiny.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tiny.gif'><!--endemo-->
Edit: Typo..... <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
Of course it has one major weakness, any alien structure. If you have a squad of HMG's then if they come across an alien structure they immeadiately shoot it till it dies then reload <b>at the same time</b> so along comes a skulk and you have 4 marines trying to weld a skulk....
`
bind "k" "kill"
`
/say onos spotted!!
/say im outta ammo!!, hes trying to devour me
k
suiciding in 3.0 seconds... *currently dancing around trying to live for another 3 seconds*
[FK]Washuu died
/say w00t!
most onos cant seem to gore at the marine and you hardly ever get devoured