Newbieguide: starting as human

[iaredragoon]

How to become a decent human player


S1)
In the beginning the humans are quite weak, because the dretches can do headshots that cause 96 damage. Pay attention and keep moving. One very important thing is, that you never never never stand at one spot, because more experienced alien players will kill you in seconds.

If you are a newbie never build a human base. You don’t know what can happen in the late game and you will do big mistakes at the beginning. Another absolute no for not experienced builder is a base move, where you must destroy the reactor. I have been in hundred of games, where silly base moves caused a loss for the humans.

So take your rifle and be ready to fight!
First try to kill aliens in long range, because they have no ability to shoot. Use this for your advantage and stay at distance from them. Run backwards and shoot at them, if they approach strafe to the open side of the battlefield, not towards a wall. Avoid being stuck on a wall, a pipe or something like this. Aliens will jump on your head and you will die.

If you got your first kill, buy yourself light armour, but remember that this does not protect your head! Use your next money to buy either a lasgun or as an experienced player the shotgun or even the massdriver.
The lasgun is useful, because you don’t have to aim that much, just shoot until you must buy new ammunition at the reactor. If you prefer the shotgun, you have to be in close combat, so care about your movement! Jumping is quite useful, too! But remember the stamina system, if somebody builds turrets you must jump over, it can be a deadly decision to jump.

Keep away from dragoons, they can instantly kill you! Their pounce is a deadly weapon, try not to be in their range! Stay behind turrets to kill those big spiders.

Always keep in mind, that marauders can destroy your base, if you don’t pay attention. So have an eye on your defence and alert your team mates, if the base is under attack.
Against marauders, I prefer the shotgun, but I also have good results with the chaingun.
I usually don’t use the massdriver, because the shotgun is better in short range and also cheaper. But a experienced player with railgun skills will rock with the massdriver.

S2) Stage 2 doesn’t change a lot, but now you should prefer the pulse rifle against dragoons and the shotgun against marauders and advanced marauders. Sometimes a jetpack is useful, but I prefer the battery pack, so I don’t have to go back that often.
Keep your hands from the flame thrower, especially when friendly fire is on. If you run forward or shoot against walls or enemies you also get damage. Without a battlesuit the chance to toast yourself or a team mate is quite high.

S3) Now it’s quite easy: take a battlesuit and a Lucifer cannon and attack the alienbase!
You will get tons of kills if you know how to use the Lucifer! Don’t aim directly at smaller aliens, but charge your cannon and shoot on the ground. The splash damage will kill those small bastards in masses.
Also charge your weapon if you see dragoons. One hit with your kick-ass-gun and they will die. Also tyrants need just 2 hits, but you must aim quite good, you won’t get that much chances to attack them before you are dead.

€: will edit this post on the weekend, but i have to pass my law test at saturday to have more time...

[PIE]

Keep your un-defended sides to the wall when possible, and move away from the wall if you get attacked.

Adv goons can shoot... and it does hurt.. so if a big alien spits something black at you... beware.

... I also seem to find light armor a waste of money a lot of the time.

Buy new ammunition.. at the armory....

For big aliens with a pounce (goon/tyrant) running towards them and to the side to get away from their front is a good idea if you don't think you can out-run them. Try to strafe around them and RUN if you think you have them disoriented and don't have the ammo or life to finish the job.
Chaingun isn't all that great for noobs unless you have a b-suite.

If you use a flamethrower.. make sure noone is going to run in front of you.. you will get damaged if your teammate pushes the flames back on you.... DON'T run infront of someone (close) that is shooting a flamethrower as well..

Glad we are going to have noobs exploding themselves with the lucifer cannons now though.....

[Stof]

Well, let's continue about a tutorial in how to select the best weapon for the current job.

- Dretch => anything works but Mass Driver and Lucifer really shine here. Shootgun is good too.
- Marauder => very obvious : the shootgun is the perfect Marauder killing weapon. Lucifer works too with some skill
- Dragoon => ChainGun is in my opinion the best weapon to kill a dragoon. It's good at close range and very good to kill a fleeing dragoon. Since all dragoon you'll face will be either chomping your head or fleeing in terror, that's the best weapon. In the case of a particularly bold dragoon who never flees, Lucifer if better though
- Tyrant => see dragoon.

Now, those are the best weapons to kill aliens in my opinion, but killing aliens isn't the only thing you need to do. And it's not like all fights will be some kind of 1vs1 where you know all about your oponent. You also have to kill alien buildings. For that, you need at least the armor or else acid tubes will eat your health very quickly.

The building killing weapons are :
- painsaw
- pulse rifle
- lucifer

Buildings have lots of HP and so will use a lot of ammo to kill. Also, you want accurate weapons for when you need to snipe a far away building. And last, since most of the time you'll be in the middle of the alien base to kill the buildings, the faster you do it the better. Of course, painsaw can only be used against ground buildings and only if there is no pesky trapper on the way. If there is no acid tubes around, you can also kill eggs on the ceiling with painsaw + jetpack.

In my opinion, except for the lasgun and the flamer, all other weapons are horrible at killing buildings.

So, let's see now the second best weapons for the job of killing aliens. That way, when the oponents have mixed aliens and you have to go alone, you can better chose a weapon that can be used against a large range of oponents

- dretch : machinegun, lasgun, pulse rifle ( close range only )
- marauder : chaingun, pulse rifle ( against agressive marauders only )
- dragoon/tyrant : shotgun, pusle ( close range only, long range for suppresive fire )

So, what do we learn about that ?
At stage 1, there isn't a good weapon that can be used both to kill a base and to kill aliens. Teamplay or painsaw rush is required at that point if you want to kill the alien base. Also, weapon choice has to be very careful depending on the state of the alien players. If most of them are still dretches of basilisks, use the massdriver if you can handle it, or else use lasgun or shotgun. If there are quite a few dragoons around, use chaingun. If the dragoons are good players, you will need teamplay and go at 3vs1.
At stage 2, the best all around weapon is the pulse rifle. It can be used efficiently to kill any alien and to kill a few buildings on the way. Most annoying are dretches who do not get in close range and marauders which can avoid easily the pulse fire.
At stage 3, lucifer is better in my opinion because it's devastating to dretches on the way ( to the alien base ), can cripple an alien base in no time ( you only need 1 fully charged shot + one least charged shot to kill an egg for example ) and can be used to scare away the bigger aliens too. Chaingun only works against bigger aliens and is a pain to use against dretches.

Note :
- painsaw can be used to destroy any alien but it needs good skills to do, and it only works in defensive ambush situations agaisnt good players
- I still have difficulties understanding what happens when I use the flamethrower. Not that I can't kill with it but that weapon feels weird and unreliable for me so no mention of it either. Although it is a viable base killer I must say.
- Basilisk isn't mentioned either because I do not have enouth data on that one Anyway, it feels like any weapon is good enouth to kill a Basilisk with the lucifer beeing by far the best in that case : a lucifer jump will not only get you out of it's grasp, it might also kill the basilisk in the process.

[kozak6]

Interesting.  I also have some advice.

S1)
Just sit on top of a turret, and shoot at any alien that goes by.  If you see anything more fierce than a Basilisk, retreat into your base and stock up on armor and better weapons.

If you are moving the base, keep a close eye on who gives the deconstruct command.  It's a simple matter for an alien or spectator to type, "decon reactor now!11!"  If someone who is not on your team gives the decon command, don't do it.  Seriously.

S2)
The aliens will probably be s1 at this point still, so there is a good chance of winning if a well coordinated attack is executed properly.

Also, if a Marauder jumps past your defences, keep in mind that the chaingun and especially the flamethrower and hand grenades aren't the best choices to "defend" the reactor and armory with.  If there is a marauder chewing on the reactor, you must fight the urge to throw a grenade at it.  Don't do it.

Under certain conditions, an Adv Marauder can one-hit kill an unarmored human with a single zap.  Otherwise, it will do 80 damage and a second zap will end it rather quickly.  Be careful.  There's nothing I love more than pouncing into a group of flamers and plasma riflers and eating the one unarmored rifleman before bouncing back out again.

The marauder zap also has more range than the psaw.  Be careful.

S3)
Buy a Lucifer and just shoot it randomly down corridors aliens are likely (or unlikely) to frequent.  If FF is off, why not?  You will kill tons and tons of Dretches you can't even see, which will propel you to the top of the scores table.

Also, keep in mind that the Lucifer (and hand grenades still) are poor choices for taking out that pesky Marauder chewing on the armory.

[Stof]

About the onehit marauder zap kill, it is a bug and it is fixed in the SVN version

[kozak6]

I know.

 :evil:

[stahlsau]

make this sticky and force the new players to read this...best way might be an ingame-quiz with insta-ban for a wrong answer

[Juno]

did you miss out buying a helmet at s2?

and also, the bit where newbies MUST learn how to use team speak , and pay attention to more experienced players

its a joke trying to win when the newbies make the worst base youve ever seen and just dont listen when you tell them not to

also, resist the urge to chase down dretches in maps such as ATCS, as chances are, the dretches are waiting in thier masses behind the large rectangular wall or are ontop of the middle building


if your feeling lucky and your shooting a goon and it whines and runs away and your pretty sure its alone, chase it down as if it runs down a long corridor you can probably kill it or nearly kill it

[Howitzer]

To be honest, the only thing i've found to be really effective against (Adv) Marauders is a pulse rifle with BSuit(or light armor + helmet) -in close combat-.(the time it takes from shot to hit doens't matter much then)

For long range, chaingun won't do much either because of it's inaccuracy.(and the fact Marauders are quick to avoid)
I would suggest gearing up with armor and pulse against a wall.

(This comes from my own experience as an Adv Marauder, constantly jumping over and beside your foe and zapping him slowly.)

[Lava Croft]

No Mara, Adv. or not, escapes a few well-aimed Shotty-shots  

[KorJax]

I laugh at those who think the pulse rifle is effective against Mara's.  They are only effective against them if they are shot in a long and narrow corridor.  The dretch becomes the most effective against pulse's in this case, because of wall walk (otherwise its useless too), and if your trying to escape.  Remeber a dretch will most of the time loose against a good pulse player if they try and attack the player.

Otherwise, the Mara (preferably Adv. Mara) is the BEST alien weapon against S2 humans because they can easily dodge pulse shots (atleast I can), and have enough health to sustain good hits from it.

Ive once taken on 2 Bsuits with pulse rifles and one with a lucy in the room above the human base in Arachnid as an Adv. Mara, and survived atleast 10 minutes, and constantly damaging them (but because they were close to base they just ran off if they got too hurt), and eventually i just ran off.

[vcxzet]

run run crouch fire run fire reload crouch fire run
! level up

[PIE]

run run crouch fire run fire reload crouch fire run
! level up

You bring up a good point.. crouching is really sort of useless... Its more of a defence against other weapons to make you a smaller target(..which is useless in trem), or sometimes can allow you to see just a little bit lower.. but when you have all of the aliens on the floor.. why would you want to get closer to them and limit your mobility?

[stahlsau]

with massdriver or rifle i found it easier to hit dretches while crouching. You're nearer to the ground so you don't have to adjust your aim in y-axis so much.

[DieFamilyGuy]

i find it, with skill, the las gun to be perfect for those early game base rushes. high accuracy and better power, plus never needing to reload makes it a all purpose gun, even when the aliens are s3.

get real skilled with it, and you have a very powerful weapon to use.

[Stof]

I laugh at those who think the pulse rifle is effective against Mara's.  They are only effective against them if they are shot in a long and narrow corridor.  The dretch becomes the most effective against pulse's in this case, because of wall walk (otherwise its useless too), and if your trying to escape.  Remeber a dretch will most of the time loose against a good pulse player if they try and attack the player.

I said the pulse is ok against Mara only at very close range, it doesn't mean it is a weapon used to kill the marauder. Remember that in the end, you have much better odds of winning if you kill the eggs and the grangers first, and *then* the remaining aliens. In that situation, if a pulse rifle team of humans can scare marauders to the point that they do little damage to the humans on their way to the alien base, humans stand a good chance to kill vital structures and get away with it. Marauder also stands a very good change to get away alive but it doesn't matter

Ive once taken on 2 Bsuits with pulse rifles and one with a lucy in the room above the human base in Arachnid as an Adv. Mara, and survived atleast 10 minutes, and constantly damaging them (but because they were close to base they just ran off if they got too hurt), and eventually i just ran off.

Your Lucifer player was a crappy player then :p And anyway, humans should have traded one or two pulse for a shotgun as I've said ( shotgun >> mara )

[PHREAK]

Well, Kozak6's suggestions make the hair on my back stand up.

What you're saying is that a hummie should camp, camp, camp. Then, once s3 comes, oh so magically, rapid-fire-lucy-spam!

*sigh*

Grab a shotty and be carefull. Go for goons, and watch out for dretches.
To me, goons are predictable while dretches are not.
Also, I never use the flamer so I can't comment on it much. I do hate the flamer in good hands though, so I guess it can be effective.
Lucy....the only time you'll see me with one is for supressing tyrants and goons so builders can repair or rebuild. Kinda slows down the rush.

To me, shotty is the best weapon in the whole game for the following reasons.
1 shot for a dretch or two, 1 clip is just right for a goon, and 2 clips to bring a tyrant down, if you know how to move.
Lasgun is for perfect for maras and good for goons and distant dretches.
Add a battery pack and it's fun for the whole family.
Pulse is great for killing buildings and fighting off the little ones trying to prevent you from killing that OM/Egg/booster but not really for a 1v1/1v2 fight.

Now, for all the noob defenders out there. Do not defend basw with the bloody lucifer. You'll cause more damage then a horde of aliens ever could.
If you wan't to defend against goons and tyrants, grab a bsuit and a painsaw. You won't believe how effective that is.

[kozak6]

I meant it jokingly.

It's what they are going to do anyways.

This thread will die in a week, and then it won't matter, but if you want, I can go and remove those parts.

Defense with the psaw is tricky.  You need some fancy footwork, but it's absolutely hilarious to watch them panic if they weren't expecting it.

[Teiman]

DONTS:

 - Dont shot turrets. Shoting turrets wit blaster is stupid, shoting with lucy is suicide.
 - Dont defend with lucy, blaster, flame.. from inside base. You will kill your own base.
 - Dont feed. Rambos that always die feed the other team. The next thing is 3 adv maras and 1 goon eating base.
 - Dont camp. Camping always mean aliens will achieve S3, then your base will be undersiege, and finally take over by adv goons and tyrants. And will be somewhat boring. Please learn to play and attack!.
 - If you are newbie, dont base move, learn from more experienced builders.
 - Dont build the DC in snipable area.
 - Dont build a Tesla only defense, except if you are elite and know what are doing.

DO:
 - Read the team messages, and follow the advices of vets. If a vet guy shout "OM is down, egg hunt!". Move your ass and egg hunt, use helmet and jet and blaster (egg hunt with battlesuit+painshaw is lame).

[Pie Puncher]

You can destroy acid tubes as basic rifle and only lose half try it at beginning of game good way to make Quick credits

[Stof]

You can destroy acid tubes as basic rifle and only lose half try it at beginning of game good way to make Quick credits

True that basic rifle can easily be used to kill any alien building. But don't forget that only eggs and OM give credits when killed IIRC ! Killing acid tubes is worth nothing.