Jetpacks in ATCS

[Rippy]

In ATCS, if the humans get to stage 2 before the aliens get to stage 3, it's gg. Why? Because jetpacks in ATCS can reach far past the jumping reach of all aliens, and the fences prevent aliens from crawling up the walls. And, since advanced Dragoons aren't available until stage 3, a smart human team (fortunately there don't seem to be many of those) can completely hole up the alien team in their base. All it takes are a couple jetpackers and a ton of turrets guarding the indoor side route, and the humans can't lose unless they feed like crazy.

To fix, maybe there should be a metal cage around the top of the map, to restrict jetpack height? Or maybe jetpacks should stall at a certain height, with a little "jetpack nearing stalling height" warning?

Or, better yet, advanced dragoons should be hp nerfed slightly, then moved to stage 2. There needs to be a way to fight jetpacks in open areas.

[PIE]

http://tremulous.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1282

[Rippy]

ah my bad, I'll just reduce this to the second issue. (so, for reference, there used to be a ping issue in this thread too, lol)

[Stof]

I do not agree with you on that topic. it's true that jetpackers are hard to kill on that map but the situation is far from desesparate for aliens as you seem to imply :
- Aliens can base camp too if they want. It works as well as human camping and can easily give them the kills to reach stage 3
- A jetpacker on ATCS can hardly hit anything on the ground, all aliens have to do is rush through the open sky room into the human base entrance and camp here. Jetpackers will have to get down to kill them. But it's true that aliens cannot control the open room as they do at stage 1 and so they lose part of their advantage on that map
- If aliens have the control of the open room, it isn't uncommon that they deny completly the access to that room for jetpackers. In that situation, the jetpack advantage is moot.

[Neo]

I've never seen the point of jetpacking up there as a.)its incredibly hard to hit anything that movies and b.)you'll run out of ammo and be stuck there as retreating = death.

If you played more on ATCS you'd see that s2 doesn't equal gg for humans, only pulse rifle + grenades do that and eve then it's far from 100%.

[Howitzer]

I've managed to get down quite a few jetpackers with the Marauders zap..
(This is when the jetpacker is near the fence and i jump from the main building)

[stahlsau]

just as Stof said, you don't have to care about them. They can't do any damage from that height, and if they come down they get pounced or zapped. You could sit on the middle building the whole day walking 5 feet to the left and 5 to the right, and barely someone would hit you. Just ignore them, it's only one more player who can't defend the human base if you attack.

[StVald]

I have been in more than one game where aliens were smart enough to cage the humans in with tubes above their main entrance in s1. Aliens can expand their base in s1, while humans have to wait till s2 for repeaters. Anyway, any body trying to jet pack out got melted by the tubes.

[trigger happy]

Several things:
It's not as easy as it sounds to hit aliens from max height
Goons can hit you
You are very vulnerable when taking off
Aliens can just camp or use hallway

[PHREAK]

Jetpacks are good there if hummies move to the center room. Otherwise it's pretty useless. (unless there's a moron granger building on top of the center building).

Yesterday we moved to center and managed to do so without too trouble but got stuck there as S1 hummies really can't do too much against s1 & s2 aliens.
Anyone that peaked out was chomped from one of the 3 directions (mostly above.
But once we got to S2, 3 of us got jetpacks and pulse rifles, trew out nades and jumped on them. They threw us just high enough past the goons and adv maras so we could start the jets.
Once we got up, we just started spraying and killing the booster and 2 eggs.
I don't think we killed more the 5 aliens all in all but it was just enough to scare the rest away long enough for a counter attack. After that, jetpacks became useless again so we went grounbound.

As for your joe shmo jettard, ignore him. I always ingore jettards since they can't do anything at that hight but annoy you. If your bored and have an adv goon, jump and snipe him, although leaving him be is a much better choice since I'd rather have him in the sky then in base, defending.

[Paradox]

Why a metal cage, why not that wierd force field thing. Have it pulled out, and short out any jetpack instantly for 2 minutes.

[Rippy]

Ok, I take back the gg thing. I was kinda distracted at the time >_> I guess what I mean is, though it isn't a game-winning tactic, there's just something wrong with having an upgrade that prevents a player from being killed.

I also disagree with them being useless. In one game I was in, the aliens had us pinned down (how they were still s2 I couldn't say) in our base, and we were just doing good old human camping. Then a guy snuck out in a jetpack during a lull, got up high, and proceeded to pulse rifle all the forward structures the aliens had built up. We got another jetpacker out, too. I'm pretty sure we still lost, cause they just ran through the jetpackers with tyrants, and they ran out of ammo somewhat, but we still delayed the game by a good 10 mins.

Another game, a jetpacker was just out there chaingunning dretches. That might not have changed the game by itself, but the creds from that dretch-raping probably earned him top equipment. Even for bigger aliens like Dragoons, you can't exactly do much damage to the human base if you know your return journey's going to involve getting slowly chaingunned. It'd just mean that that player would need to spare that much more hp before retreating, doing less damage to the enemy.

Even if it were utterly useless, there just should never be a situation where there are two equal teams and one can't take out the other's units.

(heck, a coordinated team could just reach s2 before the aliens, all buy jetpacks, and sit up there until the game ended)

note: I know I'm making this sound like a huge issue, but it really isn't. If advanced dragoons were stage 2 (it bugs me now dragoons are the best aliens for the first 2 stages, lol), that would solve this oompletely. Even so, it's not horrible as it is, I just figure it could be better.

[Survivor]

or aliens would take down the reactor and the jetpackers would plummit from the skies; if they were up there earning points good to them, but they need to go down to spend them; chaingunning dretches from jetpack at high altitude would be too hard.

[Stof]

Wow, your jetpacker must have been using a chaingun mk2 with aiming bullets since it'd probably take 150-200 bullets to kill a non moving dretch from that position with a chaingun !

[Neo]

yeah, especially considering you can't really crouch to improve accuracy.

[[UG]Plague]

I don't see a problem with it.  A solution is to just bring out a granger and spit them out of the air.  Although it does get very tiring when you have 5 jetpacks in the air that have run out of ammo and use the blaster instead of reloading.  

As for that being gg, completely disagree.  I for one have never seen that happen, the humans never act when they have the chance.  Usually Aliens get S3 and win it.

[Rippy]

Look, this isn't about how effective it is anymore. All I'm saying is that in ATCS, humans have a means to become completely unreachable, and that shouldn't be possible at all.

[kozak6]

Look, this isn't about how effective it is anymore. All I'm saying is that in ATCS, humans have a means to become completely unreachable, and that shouldn't be possible at all.

If it's not effective, then why does it matter?

It's possible to pounce snipe them, I might add, but it can be difficult.

[next_ghost]

Look, this isn't about how effective it is anymore. All I'm saying is that in ATCS, humans have a means to become completely unreachable, and that shouldn't be possible at all.

If humans start camping the sky, just run into their base and destroy reactor. They'll fall down like rotten pears.

[Lava Croft]

When will you people learn to just ignore Jettards camping the ATCS outside area, they are only annoying when your Grangers have been dumb enough to build outside.