Melting the Cheeze: Elevator Room

[Silverius]

Ok, so the map screen comes up, it's Karith. You groan as you know that means the humans will relocate to the elevator room again and the game will be one long boring draw.

However it doesn't have to be that way, here are a few tricks to prevent that cheeze play.

Basically you have two options: preventing the relocation and dealing with it. Obviously you'd want to prevent a relocation first, though that often has the disadvantage of making the game very short.

To prevent relocation there are two things you can do. First of all you can kill the hummies when they are going to the elevator room. Often enough humans will try to relocate at the start, in which case it tends to be fairly easy to score a few kills. A couple of aliens spread over the usual route (through outside) can really make a relocation hell.

Second you can build a base yourself at the elevator room. Just bring a granger along while some others keep the humans away. Build an egg and some tubes along the door. Sure, tubes don't stop hummies for too long but they will make a relocation much more difficult unless a human builder knows the high art of getting through the vent shaft without jetpacking (or the hummies have jetpacks). Not that one can't control the vent shaft though.

If the humans are in things become much harder. Typically in such games both sides get to s3 and the humans come out of their base once in a while to scare the aliens away.

Now the main thing to realise is that the tyrant is not the greatest creature for tackling the elevator room. A tyrant can only clean up the lower level and even that only at short range. The advance dragoon however is a different beast. Sure, it may only have 250 health compared to the tyrants 400, but it has two crucial abilities.

Snipering makes the difference between storming the elevator room and taking out the tesla's from a relatively safe distance. A few barbs are usually enough to take out a tesla and as most humans build at least a few tesla's where you can shoot from the corridor it's a great trick to getting their defenses down quickly.

After the easy tesla's are gone and a few humans are shot it's time to invade. You can't conquer the elevator room by staying outside. You have to go in and stay in.

Humans have long range weapons but if you're under the big balcony (with the reactor) they have to go to ground level or the other balcony to use them. Advanced dragoons can easily make that an unpleasant option.

At this point the humans will have tesla's at their upper level and defend from there. Counter their tesla's with tubes. Build them on the ceiling of the balcony and on the floor. I just found out in a testing run that tubes will not attack through the balcony, however they are very effective at forcing jetpackers down.

Now you'll need to kill humans to drain their funds and sniper the tesla's. After that pounce up and finish the job.

[Howitzer]

Making tubes IN the human base?
That won't really work i think :s

[Silverius]

Under it. They can't shoot through the floor of their base.

[Arcozelo]

Nice sneaky trick

[Catalyc]

Its kinda retarded how everyone thinks you need tyrants to end a game where humans have a decent base, or that elevator room is an OMGz awesome++ human spot. The common error humans make is that they don't focus on building elsewhere whenever a big group of them has been killed by another group of aliens while trying to relocate to the new spot. If you don't secure it the first time, move somewhere else. Karith has 2 or 3 other good known base locations, the small hallway with stairs thats on the other side of the slow opening door in the big room, the dark sprial staircase near the alien base (this one is quite tricky, but it often works to relocate there when aliens think you're tryiing to move to elev), and the small hallway thats right in the front entrance of the default H base (yes a base does fit there!). I'm sure theres still a few undiscovered spots, but old players found most of them anyways.

Honestly I think Karith is much more of an alien map lately just because people don't get creative with base building anymore. when theres a good attacking human team, alien bases ussually dont hold up for long, and games end with A loosing after 5 relocations and a lot of egg spamming, and ussually in those games H doesn't even relocate.

[Silverius]

Addendum: what also works quite well is using advanced mauraders during a raid. Use tyrants and adv dragoons to clear the floor, then hop into their base with a few adv mauraders. Inside their base they don't have much room, so if you can jump around a bit they'll likely shoot their own stuff too. And once you're in use that lightning attack to electrocute both the hummies and their base. And try to find their defense computer, it's weak and without it their main defenses will probably be down.

[b0rsuk]

Elevator room can be a bitch to take down.
If humans build teslas a bit farther, it becomes very hard to snipe them. And as soon  as you jump up there, teslas push you back and hit hard. Having turrets a bit farther means it's no longer a pleasure to get into their base. Very hard for marauder, especially if you concentrate teslas near walls (you have to use walljump to get there).
With right weaponry (pulse rifle, shotgun, flamer but you need to be careful with this one, cskit, GRENADE) it's still very hard to beat.
If I see aliens under balcony, I throw a grenade there. Boom. In worst scenario (where you just buy a grenade and make a suicide run) it only takes $200, and often earns you much more.

If you're dealing with elevator room, be sure to seal the vent with a tube/hive and an alien (marauder) or sth. It's quite unpleasant otherwise, and humans can relocate.

[Silverius]

In such a case dealing with the room can be a major pain, yes. Of course the aliens can resort to strategy two: if you can't get in make sure they can't get out either. A few well placed hives and tubes make coming out very unpleasant for humans (the door to the ele room has some very nice spots for tubes and hives that humans can't shoot without being attacked by the tubes and hives).

Basically that ensures a stalemate, I recommend waiting a few minutes then initiating a mapvote.

[b0rsuk]

Basically that ensures a stalemate, I recommend waiting a few minutes then initiating a mapvote.

If aliens concentrate their efforts around defending the elev. room, stalemate doesn't happen. this, on the other hand,  makes it hard to protect the Overmind unless you relocate it somewhere. I think preventing it from happening is the best you can do.

[Silverius]

Indeed. Luckily one can combine the two, relocate to the elevator room as aliens. It's not that bad a spot as you can sneak out as dretches if the humans aren't spamming the vent shaft and, well, if the humans have a chance to attack the alien base with more than a few men the aliens aren't playing very well.