w@flz
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- Nov 6, 2012
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I'd like to start a thread that teaches everyone a few of the intricacies of the game.
Rule number one: Listen to your commander unless they have otherwise proved themselves to be an idiot.
Skulk:
1. Don't jump around marines as a skulk. Your hitbox gets thrown off.
2. Use your wall walking to evade bullets and reposition for a better bite. Most players have trouble aiming up and down.
3.
- Use sneak. Sound is HUGE in this game. If a marine is surprised by a skulk, the skulk has already won 50% of the battle. If a marine is looking away (e.g. repairing or building something) sneak right up to him. He won't turn around if he doesn't hear you usually.
- Use vents, ceilings, walls to flank and be unpredictable. Most marines look at the doorway, not the vent, the ceiling, or behind them. The frontal approach is usually the fastest. It's also the fastest way to die repeatedly.
- Shift(walk key) makes you extra "sticky" to walls/ceilings, so you can walk at an increased angle and you won't "fall off." Not 100% sticky, just more sticky than running.
- If you're setting up an ambush, turn off alien vision and check where the darkest spot in the room may be. There might be a shadow right above you and you might be standing in a bright light. It makes a huge difference.
- LISTEN. You can usually tell how many marines are coming by listening for the footsteps. Outnumbered? Go behind them through a vent and hit their base. Force a beacon. Or wait for your teammates. Don't jump out in front of 5. You will die with little to no effect. If you absolutely can't avoid it, try to jump out behind the last person when he passes. You'd be surprised how few people check the dark spots on the ceilings in rooms, even experienced players.
- Armor 0 marines (at the start of the game) go down to 1 parasite + 2 "good" bites. With glancing bite now in the game, this isn't as huge as it was before, during the beta, but as you run up to a marine or you're ready to attack, you can parasite him and land 2 good bites for a quick death - not 3 bites.
- If you have leap, learn and practice the leap arc so you land exactly where you want to (ideally right next to a marine, front or side). If you're really advanced, you can actually bite a marine during leaping if you time it right, like the middle of the leap arc.
- Damaged in battle and not using regen? Look for a gorge who might be right behind you and eager to heal. Don't go rambo with 10 health into the next marine. You'll probably die. This is especially important early game, when eggs are sparse. It might be more worthwhile to run back to the hive to heal rather than die and waste an egg.
- Repeatedly dying into a group of camping marines? Let them camp. Go around them, hit the other side of the map, hit the observatory in their base (make them beacon), hit everywhere.
- Hit and run. Chomp on an extractor outside of the main action, then when someone comes to shoot you leap away and chomp on another extractor. When he comes to shoot you leap away and chomp on the first extractor again. Rinse and repeat. Killing AR marines over and over amounts to nothing. Kill their resource towers, or take them down if they're coming with a shotgun/GL/Flamethrower and camp the shotgun so they can't pick it back up.
- In a group of marines late-game, try to focus on the person who is carrying the most expensive stuff (jetpack/flamethrower or GL is a good target for skulk). Killing them will cause the most disruption and the greatest res loss.
- Don't chase shotgunning jetpackers if they're kiting you. They want you to chase them. Instead, hide around a corner and wait for them to advance, hoping to surprise them from behind. *Heatsurge
Gorge:
3. If everyone is at moderate health and you have bile bomb use it.
4. If you are alone and hidden and have bile bomb. Use it.
5. If you are only going gorge for a few minutes take the time to drop some hydras and clog a doorway somewhere.
- If someone/something is in front of you with low health, HEAL THEM. Heal everything, heal always. You can build clogs later.
- Jump, slide, slide into a jump, use downward ramps for speed boosts. Always be an aggressive gorge. You're one of two alien units which have a dedicated ranged weapon, even if it's somewhat crappier than lerk. Use it! The gorge spit is blinding to marines, so if you're using it when skulks are attacking, it gives additional synergy to the group. If you're alone, don't get too cocky though, good marines will always chase gorges, so have an escape plan.
- If you find yourself with 2-3 other gorges, be a tumbling ball of heal spray. Heal spray does both damage to marines (8 per spray, directly to health, bypassing armor) and heals the other gorges. You can easily hump-spray a marine or two to death with 2-3 gorges jumping and heal-spraying each other and the marine(s).
- Place your hydras strategically, and stay with them to heal them. If you leave them alone, they'll be shot to death with little to no effect. If you're right next to them, healing them as they're shot, you can defend a position quite effectively with a combination of clogs, other team members, and hydras.
- Whips are your friends. Use whips the same way you use hydras - and keep them alive always. If a marine comes, hide behind the whip, heal it, and watch the marine waste his ammo or rush in and die from the whip attacks.
- Clog up choke points, but leave enough space so your teammates can go through. If there's an onos there, DON'T CLOG UP STUFF. He needs to go in and out (ideally, with you) to kill things, quickly.
- Onos + gorge should be a lot like a heavy + medic relationship in TF2.
- When you get bile bomb, you become a structure/power-node/exo raping machine. So don't sit there spitting at meaningless power nodes or making clog walls, and instead rape power nodes, structures, and exos. Bile bomb is one of the most powerful alien tools. Bile bomb everything which is not defended, and most of all BILE BOMB SENTRIES, MACs and ARCS. Smart marines will not let their shit get bile-bombed easily though, so use your teammates to cover you, or look for openings in undefended positions. Again, always have an escape plan. A single gorge with adrenaline can bile-bomb a power node in about 20 seconds or less, without having to wait for energy to recharge. Get 2 gorges bile-bombing together, and power nodes fall faster than Soulzz' underwear around glory holes.
(HeatSurge)
Onos: A very powerful lifeform , but only combined with his smaller teammates, The onos can take out most marines in 2-3 attacks. The key is NOT TO OVEREXTEND, the one downfall of an onos is they are not exactly very fast and they are HUGE, so they make a big target. When 5 marines point their guns at you, you will die. The key is... *NOT TO DIE* (Angry Child)
- Not much to say here, really. Basically, fuck shit up
. The onos reverses most of the alien gameplay/skills of "ambush/evasion" and instead is a behemoth of armor and pwnajj. Unlike the other life forms, usually it's better to sprint straight into your target, take it down, and then sprint out in a straight line.
- Go for power nodes. Due to the onos' high power, power nodes' high armor becomes irrelevant. In fact, I haven't tested it, but I think it takes less hits to take down a power node than it takes to take down a phase gate or an IP. Thus, your time is usually better-spent on taking down a power node than it is on anything else.
- You take a lot of punishment, but you are NOT invulnerable. If you're outnumbered and completely alone, run to the nearest crag/gorge or even hive.
- As an onos, you will probably have to deal with exos sooner or later. Do NOT charge at them mindlessly or in long corridors. A good exo player can take you down in one salvo of a dual minigun exo. A carapace onos does go down to a complete salvo with very few missed bullets, if the guns on the exo are completely cooled. So, how do you deal with that problem? You either wait for the exo to be distracted (use teamwork), or ambush the exo around a corner where he's likely to miss a lot of shots or simply not have enough time to unload enough damage to kill you. Also, try to strafe around the exo as you're hitting him. Even though he's got to be pretty bad to miss, things get kinda chaotic and disorienting sometimes when an onos is hitting your face. If a gorge has weakened the exo with bile bomb, or his guns are overheated, your chances of taking him down improve considerably. Enzyme helps too, but that's the com's responsibility and isn't easy to pull off. Do NOT attack exos alone without a gorge healing you and/or bile bombing if he has 5+ MACs healing him. It won't be a "good time" (tm).
- As with fade, be careful around flamethrowers. While energy management for onos is more forgiving, it is very possible to run out of energy and be unable to gore or sprint out of the room when things start going badly. Flamethrower does that if you're not careful.
- When you sprint, you can't turn, but you can strafe. Strafing doesn't interrupt the sprint, so if you strafe around a corner or two in some maps you can go pretty far pretty fast . Also, if you're sprinting and you hit while you're sprinting, you do increased damage on your first hit. It's pretty hard to pull off though, and not that big of a deal, but it can make a difference.
- Grenade launchers are hell for other life forms, but they're useless against an onos. In a team attack, take out the GL first so your teammates can have a good time too.
- Stomp: Use it when there's a group of marines in front of you. Stomp is a little finicky with people on different elevations from you. I've had success stomping people on higher platforms (i.e. the chair platform on Veil) by jumping into the stomp. Like I say, it's finicky and may see improvement in the future...
- My upgrades of choice for onos are celerity, camo, and carapace. (Heatsurge)
Marine: Space yourself out, do not group up on other marines.
Shotgun: Patients and Aim... wait till your target is closer then usual , take that 1 shot that will kill your target or put all 100% of your buck shot into it.
Flamethrower:Very very effective at clearing buildings and cysts. 1 Marine with a flamethrower is very good at keeping alien creep down.
Grenade Launcher: Very good to use to defend exo's by shooting their feet. If you want to shoot buildings just make sure their is not a whip in LOS or your grenades will be lobbed back at you.
Lerk:
Lerk (imo the most "interesting" Alien life form):
- As with any alien life form, but even more so with Lerk, learn to conserve energy. Glide (hold space or your flap key). If you want to go up, it's MUCH more efficient to go forward and glide up by looking up with the mouse rather than spamming flap to go up. Flap 2-3 times to "take off" but then glide. You can even glide into battle, but it does cause some slower-paced movement, and if you're not careful can leave you hanging (an easy target) around sharp turns.
- The name of the game with Lerk is generally to dodge while in combat and keep a maximum distance. You move incredibly fast, you can fly so you can move in 3 directions, and your hitbox is incredibly small. If you're being shot at, the worst thing you can do as lerk is to not dodge effectively. However, sometimes it's effective to be stationary or to be close to a target. The lerk is very versatile. Read on.
- If you're a lerk early game, spikes are generally OP with armor 0. Spike the shit out of marines. A lot of them will go rambo and keep pushing forward. Kite them backwards, keep dodging (strafe unpredictably, flap, move backwards unpredictably), and keep spiking around corners as you kite them backwards. This is where map knowledge comes in. You have to know the map to kite effectively as lerk, so you know when you're going to hit a wall. Even though marines may be chasing you, they ARE hurting if you land hits, and they will die to you or your teammates eventually, however:
- Remember that you're a 30 res life form, whereas assault rifle marines are 0 res. Don't get too carried away/too cocky. If you're hurt, HEAL. Don't push it, unless there's only one marine and he's very close to death.
- If you're setting up an ambush as a lerk, or if there are other lifeforms attacking the marines, you can attach to any surface, even ceilings, if you press the "movement modifier" key (shift) and just spike the marines from there like a turret. If someone's stupid or distracted, or you're spiking from a great distance and you can't easily be seen (attached to a shadowy area), you can do a LOT of damage before they find out where you are, even kill them. However, this strat is VERY dangerous because a stationary lerk is an easy pistol/AR target if they do find out where you are, which is not hard if you follow the direcitonal damage indicator. If someone discovers where you are, get the FUCK out of there asap. You're likely to take a lot of damage very fast.
- Lerks are extremely fast, extremely silent, and generally unpredictable, so it's even easier to get behind unsuspecting marines with them and bite. Bite is powerful as lerk, because it causes poison (damage over time) on top of the initial bite. However, the power of the lerk (small hitbox) is not well utilized when you're close to a marine, so you should be very careful with bites. If the marine has a shotgun you can be 1-shot in the face without carapace. Be careful when coming in close range. However, due to the lerk's speed and silence, it's sometimes easy to land a couple bites on a marine from behind.
- Recently I found out you can cloak while flying. You couldn't during the beta. This might be insanely OP now that cloak is 100% invisible (you used to show a silhouette at close range before), but I haven't played with it myself to really comment.
- When you get spores, you become a cluster fucker. Find a group of marines and spore all of them. Then spore back on the way to their armory. They'll probably be running back to the armory when you start sporing because they're hurt. The key to successful sporing is to come in at full energy, move unpredictably (do NOT go straight at the marines), try to be close to the ceiling on the approach but move in ALL directions, and get out asap after sporing. They'll be mad and probably trying to shoot you down. Don't forget to keep moving unpredictably on the way out. Spores also obscure marines' vision, so they help your teammates IMMENSELY, especially during base rushes. It might seem like you're not doing much because you're not getting kills, but covering your teammates' approaches as well as keeping the marines clustered around the armory is very valuable.
- When you get umbra, you're probably winning and sieging a marine base. Umbra your teammates, especially oni. Umbra does zero damage by itself, but takes off 50% damage from teammates in the cloud. It also obscures vision somewhat, but not as much as spores. A combination of umbra and spores is essential to breaking the final marine base.
(HeatSurge)
1. Use gas as often as you can whenever marines are distracted.
2. Spam Umbra around vital structures or alien teammates.
Fade: - Sword (thank you)
I go adrenaline and carapace, the shade hive upgrades are negligible and can be fit to the situation (Although I will always go camo because then you turn into the predator).
Reasoning for adrenaline: you need that energy to blink and swipe more during a fight, celerity actually becomes a liability because it makes precise movement during a fight almost impossible due to the amount of distance you cover in one shift step. As far as the argument for faster travel time goes, that's what shift step and blink are for.
Reasoning for carapace: Carapace gives you more armor, meaning you take more damage before being killed, meaning marines waste more bullets, meaning you have more time in between reloads to carve them up. Then there's regeneration... You have 4 ways to heal in this game as an alien: Sit near your hive, sit alone in a corner with a thumb up your ass, solicit a gorge for sex, and finally, crags. You will never, EVER, have a need to go regeneration in a proper match.
I tend to only fight no more than 4 marines at once, but if the group has shotties or it's late game and upgrades are up I'm far more cautious. However, numbers don't really matter if they are separated by a few corners as those buy you a lot of time for hit and run attacks. Always go for the straggler first, the guy who is farthest away from the group, then move your way up the line. You should always initiate the fight by attacking the back unless its one or two marines and you feel confident. You should use blink to get into the fight, and to get out, while using your shift step to move between and around targets during the fight. For the most part you just have to make a few on-target slashes, then dance around for a bit, just being tricky and not getting shot (Step 1: draw a circle, Step 2: draw the rest of the owl).
If you are fighting lmg marines it's alot easier to sit still and swipe while only dodging between kills, whereas shotties you should swipe once, shift sidestep, swipe again. I don't really encounter flamethrowers that often so I treat them the same as lmg's since the burn damage takes too long to snowball and actually kill you. Grenade Launchers are an absolute joke and I go out of my way to get in their face and let them know they should feel bad about their weapon choice.
Keep an eye on your health in the bottom left corner, once you drop to ~100 it's time to blink out. Basically if you're getting hit at all you should already be at 100, and if you wait any longer you'll be dead, don't think you can round a corner with 40 hp and live because the server will prove you wrong when you get killed safely behind that wall.
When fighting jetpack marines I step my game up a bit. You basically need to use blink to stay midair at all times, you should blink directly into the marine, swipe him, then let him fly away a bit while you fall, blink into him again, swipe, repeat till he's dead. Just picture yourself as a dog on a leash and the floor is lava. Your energy (with adren) will allow you to keep doing this until the marine is dead. Of course it's important to not miss swipes or you can get screwed over. It actually gets extremely twitchy in practice since stuff gets chaotic but here's an example timeline to get the point across of just how fast this shit needs to go down (probably exaggerating but that's what it feels like when I'm doing it):
0.00s: First Blink
0.50s: First Slash
1.00s: Second Blink
1.50s: Second Slash
2.00s: Third Blink
2.50s: Third Slash
3.00s: Celebrate
When fighting exos it gets even more tricky. You have to keep moving at all times, you need to dance! Use your movement keys and keep running circles around the exo as close as you can get to him, always stay on his back and keep him turning. If he's terrible then this strategy alone will net you the kill, if he's twitchy enough to have aimbot then you need to mix in a few shift side steps on the opposite side of him back and forth so that he is forced to turn 180 degrees constantly without ever seeing you, then swipe, dance a bit, and repeat. If the guy is too good to be dodged and is making you his bitch, blink out, then back in and swipe a few times, then blink back out, don't give him a target to shoot. Guerrilla attacks like that take longer but if no one's there to save that 75 res tin-can you might as well play it safe and get the job done. It's pretty much impossible to take on two exos at once, but I've been in situations where I've killed 2 out of 3 exos in a group simply because the clowns weren't watching each other while they were shooting at some skulks, so sometimes you just get lucky.
Finally, you need to have the frame of mind where the possibility of you screwing up and not killing the marines doesn't even exist. You need to go in there like they are already dead, you're just going through the motions.
Random Bullet Point Time for Readability:
HEATSURGE - FADE
Fade:
- The essence of movement with the fade is shadowstep into jump (maybe followed by a second jump), and a combination of strafe and turning into corners while airborne. It's a bit like strafe jumping actually. If you're a fade, you should mostly be shadowstepping into jump. If done right, you can preserve the shadowstep speed, making you faster than a skulk, and about on par with lerks (maybe even faster in a straight line).
- Playing fade effectively is kind of a mix between skulk and lerk. You're a melee-only unit, so skulk-like skills of strafing/hitting apply. However, you can also fly and double-jump, so vertical gameplay comes into play quite a bit.
- If you want to be effective as a fade, there are basically two options you can pursue. One of them is finding and killing "lone" marines all over the map. If jetpacks aren't up, you should easily be able to find (and silently shadowstep-jump next to) a lonely marine in a room or around a corner and gracefully rip his fucking guts apart for decorative purposes. You should always be able to 1v1 a marine without a jetpack. A jetpack shotgunner with a3/w3 who is good though, can be a nuisance and not always a win. The other option is to use teamwork, so groups of marines are distracted by you or others. Good players tend to shoot at the highest lifeforms in a room, so be careful though - you might end up being the "bait" while skulks eat them while they're shooting at you. If you're taking a lot of heat BUT there are other teammates in the room attacking with you, try to sink as much damage as you can without dying, and play evasively (by blinking and shadowstepping chaotically for example) before getting out. If they're dead, just get out if you're considerably outnumbered and being shot at.
- A few people on the UWE forums were making the argument that the fade is just a "big skulk." I think it's quite a bit different actually, because in addition to the slightly higher damage and much higher health, you're a "taller" unit, which makes bunny-hopping as marine much less-useful. Shadowstep is also huge, because it allows you to nearly instantly close a distance to a marine while disorienting them considerably.
- With fade, because it's a very "fast" unit, everything happens very quickly. The fade is also a very expensive unit, so the negative effects of losing it are also very high and usually by the time you can afford fade marines can have different tech such as high armor/weapon upgrades, GLs, Jetpacks, Flamethrowers, or even Exos. That means you have to be on your toes constantly, which admittedly can get very tiresome after a while. However, you should ALWAYS consider the following things before entering any engagement. Sometimes because you're flying at shadowstep speed into a "fog of war" area you have to make these decisions in a split-second, which makes fade gameplay sort of high-risk, high-reward:
* How many marines am I seeing?
* Are they ready to shoot me - are they looking at the place I'm coming from or do I have the element of surprise because they're looking at some skulk coming from the other side?
* What armor/weapon upgrades to they have - you should be able to kind of "tell" this by the game time elapsed and from previous kills (i.e. how many hits does it take to take down a marine etc.)?
* What weapons do they have? Shotguns / flamethrowers / GLs / Exos / Jetpacks? How many?
* How many teammates do I have behind/with/in front of me?
* What upgrades do WE have as a team? What upgrades do I have as a fade?
The intuitive result of considering the answers of the questions above should result in one of three possible decision paths:
* Marines looking at you, armed to the teeth with a3/w3 shotguns and jetpacks, you don't even have carapace or blink, etc. etc.: Get the FUCK out of the situation. DO NOT LOSE THE FADE. It is not worth pushing alone into a group of fully teched marines ready for a fade with jetpacks etc. They want to kill you, and they probably will. If you go in the middle of 3+ people with shotguns who don't fail at aiming, you ARE going to have a "bad time" (tm).
* Marines somewhat distracted, upgrades about even (i.e. I have blink, they have jetpacks but not many shotguns etc. etc.), chaos: Get in, try to do as much damage as you can, watch your health closely, get out, heal.
* Marines out-teched, shitting themselves, covered in spores, out-numbered, no jetpacks, no shotguns or maybe only one or two, or a single marine somewhere: Make a scarf for yourself out of their lower intestines. Still watch your health though. You never know, someone might get a lucky shot/streak on you.
- Energy conservation comes into play with the fade probably the most out of all alien units, even more than the lerk or onos. With fade, it's extremely easy to spend your energy. All you have to do is shadowstep a few times, while keeping hitting, or hold blink for about 3-4 seconds (double with adrenaline). You have to watch or "be conscious" of your energy at all times, as well as to watch or "be conscious" of your health at all times and make split-second decisions whether to stay in the fight or get out (if you're not going to kill them all). Coupled with the high cost of the fade, this makes it probably the most difficult life form to play effectively. In reality, most if not all the skills you'll need as fade apply to all alien life forms, but with fade everything seems to be "amped" to the highest degree in the game (so far).
- Speaking of energy conservation, and the mid-late game role of a fade, something else comes into consideration: flamethrowers. Flamethrowers are not only a "damage" weapon, but they're also an "energy sapping" weapon. This means that if you're being shot by a flamethrower, you're losing energy as well as health. As a fade, that can have disastrous results. Just be extra careful around flamethrowers.
- Use blink sparingly - it's a huge energy sink at the moment, and you can actually move with shadowstep-into-jump-jump faster and much more cheaply than with blink in most situations. However, blink is a MUST for vertical gameplay, since as of now shadowstep is "2D" (you can't shadowstep upwards). You used to be able to in the beta and it was really nice, and I keep hoping for it to return but no dice so far. So, if you have jetpacks up or if you want to get on a high ledge (e.g. on the second floor of mineshaft central area), you have to tap blink for at least a fraction of a second to get upward momentum. Blinking up to the ceiling of a room, and then falling or shadowstepping into a marine is also extremely disorienting for marines, so that's somewhat of an advanced "skill" to practice too. However, like I said, energy management is extremely important as a fade, and since blink is also a really good "emergency escape" tool, there's nothing worse than finding yourself with 50 health, being shot at, and with no energy to blink out of the room into safety.
- Speaking of emergency escapes, remember that you CAN be shot while blinking, so try to weave unpredictably as you blink in/out, the same way that you would fly in/out as a lerk. Never move in a straight line - common sense for any alien life form except the onos really.
- Upgrades are a matter of preference. Personally I prefer carapace, because it greatly prolongs the combat time of a fade, and makes a fade go down to three perfect shotgun shots instead of two. I've seen people play with regen, I just dislike it. I find that with the movement speed of the fade, it takes a comparable amount of time to go to the nearest gorge/crag/hive rather than waiting to regen. Shade upgrades, I prefer camo. The fade, like the lerk, is already pretty silent, so not much to be gained by silence really. Shift upgrades are sort of a matter of contention right now: Question (mostly towards competitive crowd) regarding Fades - Unknown Worlds Forums . Personally, I prefer adrenaline, because I feel like celerity is only useful if you're walking when not in combat, and with fade you hardly ever have to walk when not in combat. I suppose it helps to get close to the marines initially, but I feel like I get plenty of speed with shadowstep-into-jump anyway, and adrenaline allows me to stay in a fight longer. In fact, lately I find that I'm as constrained by energy as I am by health in fights, especially if blink is up. However, if blink is not up, celerity MIGHT be a better choice. With adrenaline, you should also be mindful of the shifts on the map, because you'll probably need energy as much as you need health...
- Vortex is kind of moderately useless as of now, even though they reduced its energy cost, so it's now somewhat viable actually. The most creative things you can do with it (apart from trolling some poor marine by repeatedly vortexing him) are to probably disable an exo or an observatory (which turns off a beacon) so your teammates can go in somewhere. I guess you can also vortex an onos as he closes the distance to an exo (protecting him while he can't hit), but that might kind of backfire, lol. However, it's very situational, and by the time it's researched the game is probably already over anyway. Rumors are, UWE is still looking at redesigning the ability, and ironhorse said he's pushing an agenda where vortexing someone puts you into "1v1" mode with him instead of taking him out of the game. Stay tuned, I suppose.
Jet pack: Increasing mobility for a marine 10 fold, just make sure you dont run out of fuel in a bad time. Use your jetpack in short bursts, if you find yourself using it to go straight up to avoid skulks, your prolly going to come back down and die. Use it to get from point A to B not up and down.
Exo Single Chain Gun:
- Only purchase if you absolutely have to, good to use as TANKS, stand out front take hits.
Exo2: Dont over heat both your weapons, dont group up with other Exo's. If your within hive range, try to use most of your shots into the hive.
General
- Learn the maps. Go in an empty server and walk everywhere as a skulk with alien vision on and off. Go in and out of every vent. Notice the power node locations in rooms. You can also get this knowledge by just playing, but in game it's a lot more chaotic.
- Teamwork. Look for your teammates and try to coordinate with whatever they're doing. If someone goes in, go all in. DO NOT GO ONE BY ONE as aliens OR marines. With marines, it's very beneficial to keep some distance from your teammates due to ranged weapons, but don't go in one by one in a pack of skulks, outside of line of sight of each other. Working together defeats even the most insane rambo opposing player.
- Cause resource losses - either in the form of personal tech (weapons/life forms/jetpacks/etc.) or resource towers. Killing skulks and assault rifle marines amounts to nothing, except more map control. This is a FPS AND a RTS game. You can very well lose with a 40:0 KDR, camping in your base. It's about resource domination. If you don't keep up resource-wise, or cause the other team enough res loss, you will, mathematically, lose.
- Be aggressive, especially as marines. Aliens' nature is more "guerilla/hit and run," unless aliens outnumber marines somewhere in which case you can definitely be extremely aggressive, but as marines you HAVE to be aggressive no matter what. If you camp near your armories the entire game, you will usually get owned, hard. However, be smart about it, especially when res is at stake. An example of playing stupidly would be to buy a grenade launcher and go rambo into one of the hives. You will die and lose your grenade launcher. If there's no res at stake, however, you can cause HUGE havoc by even dropping all your weapons and running into an alien hive to axe upgrades.
- Learn to be patient. There's a time to push and a time to fall back - yes, fall back. Strategically, you can even let a hive die if necessary instead of losing 2 oni. The hive is MUCH cheaper than an onos. You can buy 4 hives for the price of 2 onos eggs. What you're losing on one side of the map, you might be gaining double on the other side of the map. Often the game ends because marines make a HUGE push for a hive (involving exos) and successfully take it down while oni take down their last 2 positions because exos can't beacon. If you're not winning in your "area," don't despair. The team might be winning big in another area. Listen to your com and be patient. If res is at stake, fall back to safe positions rather than go desperate rambo into a clearly bad situation. *Heatsurge
Rule number one: Listen to your commander unless they have otherwise proved themselves to be an idiot.
Skulk:
1. Don't jump around marines as a skulk. Your hitbox gets thrown off.
2. Use your wall walking to evade bullets and reposition for a better bite. Most players have trouble aiming up and down.
3.
- Use sneak. Sound is HUGE in this game. If a marine is surprised by a skulk, the skulk has already won 50% of the battle. If a marine is looking away (e.g. repairing or building something) sneak right up to him. He won't turn around if he doesn't hear you usually.
- Use vents, ceilings, walls to flank and be unpredictable. Most marines look at the doorway, not the vent, the ceiling, or behind them. The frontal approach is usually the fastest. It's also the fastest way to die repeatedly.
- Shift(walk key) makes you extra "sticky" to walls/ceilings, so you can walk at an increased angle and you won't "fall off." Not 100% sticky, just more sticky than running.
- If you're setting up an ambush, turn off alien vision and check where the darkest spot in the room may be. There might be a shadow right above you and you might be standing in a bright light. It makes a huge difference.
- LISTEN. You can usually tell how many marines are coming by listening for the footsteps. Outnumbered? Go behind them through a vent and hit their base. Force a beacon. Or wait for your teammates. Don't jump out in front of 5. You will die with little to no effect. If you absolutely can't avoid it, try to jump out behind the last person when he passes. You'd be surprised how few people check the dark spots on the ceilings in rooms, even experienced players.
- Armor 0 marines (at the start of the game) go down to 1 parasite + 2 "good" bites. With glancing bite now in the game, this isn't as huge as it was before, during the beta, but as you run up to a marine or you're ready to attack, you can parasite him and land 2 good bites for a quick death - not 3 bites.
- If you have leap, learn and practice the leap arc so you land exactly where you want to (ideally right next to a marine, front or side). If you're really advanced, you can actually bite a marine during leaping if you time it right, like the middle of the leap arc.
- Damaged in battle and not using regen? Look for a gorge who might be right behind you and eager to heal. Don't go rambo with 10 health into the next marine. You'll probably die. This is especially important early game, when eggs are sparse. It might be more worthwhile to run back to the hive to heal rather than die and waste an egg.
- Repeatedly dying into a group of camping marines? Let them camp. Go around them, hit the other side of the map, hit the observatory in their base (make them beacon), hit everywhere.
- Hit and run. Chomp on an extractor outside of the main action, then when someone comes to shoot you leap away and chomp on another extractor. When he comes to shoot you leap away and chomp on the first extractor again. Rinse and repeat. Killing AR marines over and over amounts to nothing. Kill their resource towers, or take them down if they're coming with a shotgun/GL/Flamethrower and camp the shotgun so they can't pick it back up.
- In a group of marines late-game, try to focus on the person who is carrying the most expensive stuff (jetpack/flamethrower or GL is a good target for skulk). Killing them will cause the most disruption and the greatest res loss.
- Don't chase shotgunning jetpackers if they're kiting you. They want you to chase them. Instead, hide around a corner and wait for them to advance, hoping to surprise them from behind. *Heatsurge
Gorge:
3. If everyone is at moderate health and you have bile bomb use it.
4. If you are alone and hidden and have bile bomb. Use it.
5. If you are only going gorge for a few minutes take the time to drop some hydras and clog a doorway somewhere.
- If someone/something is in front of you with low health, HEAL THEM. Heal everything, heal always. You can build clogs later.
- Jump, slide, slide into a jump, use downward ramps for speed boosts. Always be an aggressive gorge. You're one of two alien units which have a dedicated ranged weapon, even if it's somewhat crappier than lerk. Use it! The gorge spit is blinding to marines, so if you're using it when skulks are attacking, it gives additional synergy to the group. If you're alone, don't get too cocky though, good marines will always chase gorges, so have an escape plan.
- If you find yourself with 2-3 other gorges, be a tumbling ball of heal spray. Heal spray does both damage to marines (8 per spray, directly to health, bypassing armor) and heals the other gorges. You can easily hump-spray a marine or two to death with 2-3 gorges jumping and heal-spraying each other and the marine(s).
- Place your hydras strategically, and stay with them to heal them. If you leave them alone, they'll be shot to death with little to no effect. If you're right next to them, healing them as they're shot, you can defend a position quite effectively with a combination of clogs, other team members, and hydras.
- Whips are your friends. Use whips the same way you use hydras - and keep them alive always. If a marine comes, hide behind the whip, heal it, and watch the marine waste his ammo or rush in and die from the whip attacks.
- Clog up choke points, but leave enough space so your teammates can go through. If there's an onos there, DON'T CLOG UP STUFF. He needs to go in and out (ideally, with you) to kill things, quickly.
- Onos + gorge should be a lot like a heavy + medic relationship in TF2.
- When you get bile bomb, you become a structure/power-node/exo raping machine. So don't sit there spitting at meaningless power nodes or making clog walls, and instead rape power nodes, structures, and exos. Bile bomb is one of the most powerful alien tools. Bile bomb everything which is not defended, and most of all BILE BOMB SENTRIES, MACs and ARCS. Smart marines will not let their shit get bile-bombed easily though, so use your teammates to cover you, or look for openings in undefended positions. Again, always have an escape plan. A single gorge with adrenaline can bile-bomb a power node in about 20 seconds or less, without having to wait for energy to recharge. Get 2 gorges bile-bombing together, and power nodes fall faster than Soulzz' underwear around glory holes.
(HeatSurge)
Onos: A very powerful lifeform , but only combined with his smaller teammates, The onos can take out most marines in 2-3 attacks. The key is NOT TO OVEREXTEND, the one downfall of an onos is they are not exactly very fast and they are HUGE, so they make a big target. When 5 marines point their guns at you, you will die. The key is... *NOT TO DIE* (Angry Child)
- Not much to say here, really. Basically, fuck shit up
. The onos reverses most of the alien gameplay/skills of "ambush/evasion" and instead is a behemoth of armor and pwnajj. Unlike the other life forms, usually it's better to sprint straight into your target, take it down, and then sprint out in a straight line.- Go for power nodes. Due to the onos' high power, power nodes' high armor becomes irrelevant. In fact, I haven't tested it, but I think it takes less hits to take down a power node than it takes to take down a phase gate or an IP. Thus, your time is usually better-spent on taking down a power node than it is on anything else.
- You take a lot of punishment, but you are NOT invulnerable. If you're outnumbered and completely alone, run to the nearest crag/gorge or even hive.
- As an onos, you will probably have to deal with exos sooner or later. Do NOT charge at them mindlessly or in long corridors. A good exo player can take you down in one salvo of a dual minigun exo. A carapace onos does go down to a complete salvo with very few missed bullets, if the guns on the exo are completely cooled. So, how do you deal with that problem? You either wait for the exo to be distracted (use teamwork), or ambush the exo around a corner where he's likely to miss a lot of shots or simply not have enough time to unload enough damage to kill you. Also, try to strafe around the exo as you're hitting him. Even though he's got to be pretty bad to miss, things get kinda chaotic and disorienting sometimes when an onos is hitting your face. If a gorge has weakened the exo with bile bomb, or his guns are overheated, your chances of taking him down improve considerably. Enzyme helps too, but that's the com's responsibility and isn't easy to pull off. Do NOT attack exos alone without a gorge healing you and/or bile bombing if he has 5+ MACs healing him. It won't be a "good time" (tm).
- As with fade, be careful around flamethrowers. While energy management for onos is more forgiving, it is very possible to run out of energy and be unable to gore or sprint out of the room when things start going badly. Flamethrower does that if you're not careful.
- When you sprint, you can't turn, but you can strafe. Strafing doesn't interrupt the sprint, so if you strafe around a corner or two in some maps you can go pretty far pretty fast
. Also, if you're sprinting and you hit while you're sprinting, you do increased damage on your first hit. It's pretty hard to pull off though, and not that big of a deal, but it can make a difference.- Grenade launchers are hell for other life forms, but they're useless against an onos. In a team attack, take out the GL first so your teammates can have a good time too.
- Stomp: Use it when there's a group of marines in front of you. Stomp is a little finicky with people on different elevations from you. I've had success stomping people on higher platforms (i.e. the chair platform on Veil) by jumping into the stomp. Like I say, it's finicky and may see improvement in the future...
- My upgrades of choice for onos are celerity, camo, and carapace. (Heatsurge)
Marine: Space yourself out, do not group up on other marines.
Shotgun: Patients and Aim... wait till your target is closer then usual , take that 1 shot that will kill your target or put all 100% of your buck shot into it.
Flamethrower:Very very effective at clearing buildings and cysts. 1 Marine with a flamethrower is very good at keeping alien creep down.
Grenade Launcher: Very good to use to defend exo's by shooting their feet. If you want to shoot buildings just make sure their is not a whip in LOS or your grenades will be lobbed back at you.
Lerk:
Lerk (imo the most "interesting" Alien life form):
- As with any alien life form, but even more so with Lerk, learn to conserve energy. Glide (hold space or your flap key). If you want to go up, it's MUCH more efficient to go forward and glide up by looking up with the mouse rather than spamming flap to go up. Flap 2-3 times to "take off" but then glide. You can even glide into battle, but it does cause some slower-paced movement, and if you're not careful can leave you hanging (an easy target) around sharp turns.
- The name of the game with Lerk is generally to dodge while in combat and keep a maximum distance. You move incredibly fast, you can fly so you can move in 3 directions, and your hitbox is incredibly small. If you're being shot at, the worst thing you can do as lerk is to not dodge effectively. However, sometimes it's effective to be stationary or to be close to a target. The lerk is very versatile. Read on.
- If you're a lerk early game, spikes are generally OP with armor 0. Spike the shit out of marines. A lot of them will go rambo and keep pushing forward. Kite them backwards, keep dodging (strafe unpredictably, flap, move backwards unpredictably), and keep spiking around corners as you kite them backwards. This is where map knowledge comes in. You have to know the map to kite effectively as lerk, so you know when you're going to hit a wall. Even though marines may be chasing you, they ARE hurting if you land hits, and they will die to you or your teammates eventually, however:
- Remember that you're a 30 res life form, whereas assault rifle marines are 0 res. Don't get too carried away/too cocky. If you're hurt, HEAL. Don't push it, unless there's only one marine and he's very close to death.
- If you're setting up an ambush as a lerk, or if there are other lifeforms attacking the marines, you can attach to any surface, even ceilings, if you press the "movement modifier" key (shift) and just spike the marines from there like a turret. If someone's stupid or distracted, or you're spiking from a great distance and you can't easily be seen (attached to a shadowy area), you can do a LOT of damage before they find out where you are, even kill them. However, this strat is VERY dangerous because a stationary lerk is an easy pistol/AR target if they do find out where you are, which is not hard if you follow the direcitonal damage indicator. If someone discovers where you are, get the FUCK out of there asap. You're likely to take a lot of damage very fast.
- Lerks are extremely fast, extremely silent, and generally unpredictable, so it's even easier to get behind unsuspecting marines with them and bite. Bite is powerful as lerk, because it causes poison (damage over time) on top of the initial bite. However, the power of the lerk (small hitbox) is not well utilized when you're close to a marine, so you should be very careful with bites. If the marine has a shotgun you can be 1-shot in the face without carapace. Be careful when coming in close range. However, due to the lerk's speed and silence, it's sometimes easy to land a couple bites on a marine from behind.
- Recently I found out you can cloak while flying. You couldn't during the beta. This might be insanely OP now that cloak is 100% invisible (you used to show a silhouette at close range before), but I haven't played with it myself to really comment.
- When you get spores, you become a cluster fucker. Find a group of marines and spore all of them. Then spore back on the way to their armory. They'll probably be running back to the armory when you start sporing because they're hurt. The key to successful sporing is to come in at full energy, move unpredictably (do NOT go straight at the marines), try to be close to the ceiling on the approach but move in ALL directions, and get out asap after sporing. They'll be mad and probably trying to shoot you down. Don't forget to keep moving unpredictably on the way out. Spores also obscure marines' vision, so they help your teammates IMMENSELY, especially during base rushes. It might seem like you're not doing much because you're not getting kills, but covering your teammates' approaches as well as keeping the marines clustered around the armory is very valuable.
- When you get umbra, you're probably winning and sieging a marine base. Umbra your teammates, especially oni. Umbra does zero damage by itself, but takes off 50% damage from teammates in the cloud. It also obscures vision somewhat, but not as much as spores. A combination of umbra and spores is essential to breaking the final marine base.
(HeatSurge)
1. Use gas as often as you can whenever marines are distracted.
2. Spam Umbra around vital structures or alien teammates.
Fade: - Sword (thank you
)I go adrenaline and carapace, the shade hive upgrades are negligible and can be fit to the situation (Although I will always go camo because then you turn into the predator).
Reasoning for adrenaline: you need that energy to blink and swipe more during a fight, celerity actually becomes a liability because it makes precise movement during a fight almost impossible due to the amount of distance you cover in one shift step. As far as the argument for faster travel time goes, that's what shift step and blink are for.
Reasoning for carapace: Carapace gives you more armor, meaning you take more damage before being killed, meaning marines waste more bullets, meaning you have more time in between reloads to carve them up. Then there's regeneration... You have 4 ways to heal in this game as an alien: Sit near your hive, sit alone in a corner with a thumb up your ass, solicit a gorge for sex, and finally, crags. You will never, EVER, have a need to go regeneration in a proper match.
I tend to only fight no more than 4 marines at once, but if the group has shotties or it's late game and upgrades are up I'm far more cautious. However, numbers don't really matter if they are separated by a few corners as those buy you a lot of time for hit and run attacks. Always go for the straggler first, the guy who is farthest away from the group, then move your way up the line. You should always initiate the fight by attacking the back unless its one or two marines and you feel confident. You should use blink to get into the fight, and to get out, while using your shift step to move between and around targets during the fight. For the most part you just have to make a few on-target slashes, then dance around for a bit, just being tricky and not getting shot (Step 1: draw a circle, Step 2: draw the rest of the owl).
If you are fighting lmg marines it's alot easier to sit still and swipe while only dodging between kills, whereas shotties you should swipe once, shift sidestep, swipe again. I don't really encounter flamethrowers that often so I treat them the same as lmg's since the burn damage takes too long to snowball and actually kill you. Grenade Launchers are an absolute joke and I go out of my way to get in their face and let them know they should feel bad about their weapon choice.
Keep an eye on your health in the bottom left corner, once you drop to ~100 it's time to blink out. Basically if you're getting hit at all you should already be at 100, and if you wait any longer you'll be dead, don't think you can round a corner with 40 hp and live because the server will prove you wrong when you get killed safely behind that wall.
When fighting jetpack marines I step my game up a bit. You basically need to use blink to stay midair at all times, you should blink directly into the marine, swipe him, then let him fly away a bit while you fall, blink into him again, swipe, repeat till he's dead. Just picture yourself as a dog on a leash and the floor is lava. Your energy (with adren) will allow you to keep doing this until the marine is dead. Of course it's important to not miss swipes or you can get screwed over. It actually gets extremely twitchy in practice since stuff gets chaotic but here's an example timeline to get the point across of just how fast this shit needs to go down (probably exaggerating but that's what it feels like when I'm doing it):
0.00s: First Blink
0.50s: First Slash
1.00s: Second Blink
1.50s: Second Slash
2.00s: Third Blink
2.50s: Third Slash
3.00s: Celebrate
When fighting exos it gets even more tricky. You have to keep moving at all times, you need to dance! Use your movement keys and keep running circles around the exo as close as you can get to him, always stay on his back and keep him turning. If he's terrible then this strategy alone will net you the kill, if he's twitchy enough to have aimbot then you need to mix in a few shift side steps on the opposite side of him back and forth so that he is forced to turn 180 degrees constantly without ever seeing you, then swipe, dance a bit, and repeat. If the guy is too good to be dodged and is making you his bitch, blink out, then back in and swipe a few times, then blink back out, don't give him a target to shoot. Guerrilla attacks like that take longer but if no one's there to save that 75 res tin-can you might as well play it safe and get the job done. It's pretty much impossible to take on two exos at once, but I've been in situations where I've killed 2 out of 3 exos in a group simply because the clowns weren't watching each other while they were shooting at some skulks, so sometimes you just get lucky.
Finally, you need to have the frame of mind where the possibility of you screwing up and not killing the marines doesn't even exist. You need to go in there like they are already dead, you're just going through the motions.
Random Bullet Point Time for Readability:
- Use the 'c' map, it's maphack #1
- Use your ears, they are maphack #2 and #3
- Thanks to maphacks 1, 2, and 3, you should never be in a situation where you don't know exactly where your enemy is. This is 90% of consistently getting kills while minimizing deaths.
- When in a fight, keep a mental image of where every marine is around you so you can swipe before you even fully finish turning.
- Always be using shift step to travel around the map, only use blink if you need to change elevation. You need to conserve energy in case a fight breaks out.
- Don't kill buildings unless you're the only alien in the room, the room is empty, and it's a phase gate or an obs. Otherwise haul ass to the nearest fight.
- Crags/Hives/Gorges will heal you, shifts will replenish your energy. Know where these things are and blink to them in-between fights.
- Fades can double jump... there will never be a situation where this is preferable to blinking since you gain minimal air and just look silly while you're getting shot.
- You don't need blink until marines start getting upgrades or shotties (shift step is all you use during early-game fights anyway), so don't be scared to evolve early.
- Don't miss swipes. If you do miss, blame the server tickrate or connection, and keep the confidence at an all time high.
- Always track how many bullets each marine has fired (Listen, and go Rainman on that shit). Turn this into a John Woo movie. Get used to doing this and eventually you know EXACTLY when to pop out of that corner and catch the clowns desperately trying to reload while you carve them up.
- Notice the complete lack of vortex anywhere else in this post. I can only ever see it being useful to lock down a phase gate and an obs in tandem with another fade. Until comp play starts, don't bank on seeing this ability get any love.
- Improvise.
HEATSURGE - FADE
Fade:
- The essence of movement with the fade is shadowstep into jump (maybe followed by a second jump), and a combination of strafe and turning into corners while airborne. It's a bit like strafe jumping actually. If you're a fade, you should mostly be shadowstepping into jump. If done right, you can preserve the shadowstep speed, making you faster than a skulk, and about on par with lerks (maybe even faster in a straight line).
- Playing fade effectively is kind of a mix between skulk and lerk. You're a melee-only unit, so skulk-like skills of strafing/hitting apply. However, you can also fly and double-jump, so vertical gameplay comes into play quite a bit.
- If you want to be effective as a fade, there are basically two options you can pursue. One of them is finding and killing "lone" marines all over the map. If jetpacks aren't up, you should easily be able to find (and silently shadowstep-jump next to) a lonely marine in a room or around a corner and gracefully rip his fucking guts apart for decorative purposes. You should always be able to 1v1 a marine without a jetpack. A jetpack shotgunner with a3/w3 who is good though, can be a nuisance and not always a win. The other option is to use teamwork, so groups of marines are distracted by you or others. Good players tend to shoot at the highest lifeforms in a room, so be careful though - you might end up being the "bait" while skulks eat them while they're shooting at you. If you're taking a lot of heat BUT there are other teammates in the room attacking with you, try to sink as much damage as you can without dying, and play evasively (by blinking and shadowstepping chaotically for example) before getting out. If they're dead, just get out if you're considerably outnumbered and being shot at.
- A few people on the UWE forums were making the argument that the fade is just a "big skulk." I think it's quite a bit different actually, because in addition to the slightly higher damage and much higher health, you're a "taller" unit, which makes bunny-hopping as marine much less-useful. Shadowstep is also huge, because it allows you to nearly instantly close a distance to a marine while disorienting them considerably.
- With fade, because it's a very "fast" unit, everything happens very quickly. The fade is also a very expensive unit, so the negative effects of losing it are also very high and usually by the time you can afford fade marines can have different tech such as high armor/weapon upgrades, GLs, Jetpacks, Flamethrowers, or even Exos. That means you have to be on your toes constantly, which admittedly can get very tiresome after a while. However, you should ALWAYS consider the following things before entering any engagement. Sometimes because you're flying at shadowstep speed into a "fog of war" area you have to make these decisions in a split-second, which makes fade gameplay sort of high-risk, high-reward:
* How many marines am I seeing?
* Are they ready to shoot me - are they looking at the place I'm coming from or do I have the element of surprise because they're looking at some skulk coming from the other side?
* What armor/weapon upgrades to they have - you should be able to kind of "tell" this by the game time elapsed and from previous kills (i.e. how many hits does it take to take down a marine etc.)?
* What weapons do they have? Shotguns / flamethrowers / GLs / Exos / Jetpacks? How many?
* How many teammates do I have behind/with/in front of me?
* What upgrades do WE have as a team? What upgrades do I have as a fade?
The intuitive result of considering the answers of the questions above should result in one of three possible decision paths:
* Marines looking at you, armed to the teeth with a3/w3 shotguns and jetpacks, you don't even have carapace or blink, etc. etc.: Get the FUCK out of the situation. DO NOT LOSE THE FADE. It is not worth pushing alone into a group of fully teched marines ready for a fade with jetpacks etc. They want to kill you, and they probably will. If you go in the middle of 3+ people with shotguns who don't fail at aiming, you ARE going to have a "bad time" (tm).
* Marines somewhat distracted, upgrades about even (i.e. I have blink, they have jetpacks but not many shotguns etc. etc.), chaos: Get in, try to do as much damage as you can, watch your health closely, get out, heal.
* Marines out-teched, shitting themselves, covered in spores, out-numbered, no jetpacks, no shotguns or maybe only one or two, or a single marine somewhere: Make a scarf for yourself out of their lower intestines. Still watch your health though. You never know, someone might get a lucky shot/streak on you.
- Energy conservation comes into play with the fade probably the most out of all alien units, even more than the lerk or onos. With fade, it's extremely easy to spend your energy. All you have to do is shadowstep a few times, while keeping hitting, or hold blink for about 3-4 seconds (double with adrenaline). You have to watch or "be conscious" of your energy at all times, as well as to watch or "be conscious" of your health at all times and make split-second decisions whether to stay in the fight or get out (if you're not going to kill them all). Coupled with the high cost of the fade, this makes it probably the most difficult life form to play effectively. In reality, most if not all the skills you'll need as fade apply to all alien life forms, but with fade everything seems to be "amped" to the highest degree in the game (so far).
- Speaking of energy conservation, and the mid-late game role of a fade, something else comes into consideration: flamethrowers. Flamethrowers are not only a "damage" weapon, but they're also an "energy sapping" weapon. This means that if you're being shot by a flamethrower, you're losing energy as well as health. As a fade, that can have disastrous results. Just be extra careful around flamethrowers.
- Use blink sparingly - it's a huge energy sink at the moment, and you can actually move with shadowstep-into-jump-jump faster and much more cheaply than with blink in most situations. However, blink is a MUST for vertical gameplay, since as of now shadowstep is "2D" (you can't shadowstep upwards). You used to be able to in the beta and it was really nice, and I keep hoping for it to return but no dice so far. So, if you have jetpacks up or if you want to get on a high ledge (e.g. on the second floor of mineshaft central area), you have to tap blink for at least a fraction of a second to get upward momentum. Blinking up to the ceiling of a room, and then falling or shadowstepping into a marine is also extremely disorienting for marines, so that's somewhat of an advanced "skill" to practice too. However, like I said, energy management is extremely important as a fade, and since blink is also a really good "emergency escape" tool, there's nothing worse than finding yourself with 50 health, being shot at, and with no energy to blink out of the room into safety.
- Speaking of emergency escapes, remember that you CAN be shot while blinking, so try to weave unpredictably as you blink in/out, the same way that you would fly in/out as a lerk. Never move in a straight line - common sense for any alien life form except the onos really.
- Upgrades are a matter of preference. Personally I prefer carapace, because it greatly prolongs the combat time of a fade, and makes a fade go down to three perfect shotgun shots instead of two. I've seen people play with regen, I just dislike it. I find that with the movement speed of the fade, it takes a comparable amount of time to go to the nearest gorge/crag/hive rather than waiting to regen. Shade upgrades, I prefer camo. The fade, like the lerk, is already pretty silent, so not much to be gained by silence really. Shift upgrades are sort of a matter of contention right now: Question (mostly towards competitive crowd) regarding Fades - Unknown Worlds Forums . Personally, I prefer adrenaline, because I feel like celerity is only useful if you're walking when not in combat, and with fade you hardly ever have to walk when not in combat. I suppose it helps to get close to the marines initially, but I feel like I get plenty of speed with shadowstep-into-jump anyway, and adrenaline allows me to stay in a fight longer. In fact, lately I find that I'm as constrained by energy as I am by health in fights, especially if blink is up. However, if blink is not up, celerity MIGHT be a better choice. With adrenaline, you should also be mindful of the shifts on the map, because you'll probably need energy as much as you need health...
- Vortex is kind of moderately useless as of now, even though they reduced its energy cost, so it's now somewhat viable actually. The most creative things you can do with it (apart from trolling some poor marine by repeatedly vortexing him) are to probably disable an exo or an observatory (which turns off a beacon) so your teammates can go in somewhere. I guess you can also vortex an onos as he closes the distance to an exo (protecting him while he can't hit), but that might kind of backfire, lol. However, it's very situational, and by the time it's researched the game is probably already over anyway. Rumors are, UWE is still looking at redesigning the ability, and ironhorse said he's pushing an agenda where vortexing someone puts you into "1v1" mode with him instead of taking him out of the game. Stay tuned, I suppose.
Jet pack: Increasing mobility for a marine 10 fold, just make sure you dont run out of fuel in a bad time. Use your jetpack in short bursts, if you find yourself using it to go straight up to avoid skulks, your prolly going to come back down and die. Use it to get from point A to B not up and down.
Exo Single Chain Gun:
- Only purchase if you absolutely have to, good to use as TANKS, stand out front take hits.
Exo2: Dont over heat both your weapons, dont group up with other Exo's. If your within hive range, try to use most of your shots into the hive.
General
- Learn the maps. Go in an empty server and walk everywhere as a skulk with alien vision on and off. Go in and out of every vent. Notice the power node locations in rooms. You can also get this knowledge by just playing, but in game it's a lot more chaotic.
- Teamwork. Look for your teammates and try to coordinate with whatever they're doing. If someone goes in, go all in. DO NOT GO ONE BY ONE as aliens OR marines. With marines, it's very beneficial to keep some distance from your teammates due to ranged weapons, but don't go in one by one in a pack of skulks, outside of line of sight of each other. Working together defeats even the most insane rambo opposing player.
- Cause resource losses - either in the form of personal tech (weapons/life forms/jetpacks/etc.) or resource towers. Killing skulks and assault rifle marines amounts to nothing, except more map control. This is a FPS AND a RTS game. You can very well lose with a 40:0 KDR, camping in your base. It's about resource domination. If you don't keep up resource-wise, or cause the other team enough res loss, you will, mathematically, lose.
- Be aggressive, especially as marines. Aliens' nature is more "guerilla/hit and run," unless aliens outnumber marines somewhere in which case you can definitely be extremely aggressive, but as marines you HAVE to be aggressive no matter what. If you camp near your armories the entire game, you will usually get owned, hard. However, be smart about it, especially when res is at stake. An example of playing stupidly would be to buy a grenade launcher and go rambo into one of the hives. You will die and lose your grenade launcher. If there's no res at stake, however, you can cause HUGE havoc by even dropping all your weapons and running into an alien hive to axe upgrades.
- Learn to be patient. There's a time to push and a time to fall back - yes, fall back. Strategically, you can even let a hive die if necessary instead of losing 2 oni. The hive is MUCH cheaper than an onos. You can buy 4 hives for the price of 2 onos eggs. What you're losing on one side of the map, you might be gaining double on the other side of the map. Often the game ends because marines make a HUGE push for a hive (involving exos) and successfully take it down while oni take down their last 2 positions because exos can't beacon. If you're not winning in your "area," don't despair. The team might be winning big in another area. Listen to your com and be patient. If res is at stake, fall back to safe positions rather than go desperate rambo into a clearly bad situation. *Heatsurge
