Hey, I just wrote a bit on clip management over at tremwiki.com, and I figured I would also post it here to see what people thought and add it to the resource pool.
I've also written the sections about medkit use, dretching, soloing as a human, building as alien, and fighting rants with a luci cannon, so you can comment here on those as well, if you read them.
Any suggestions or changes? Head over to tremwiki.com and make them yourself, if they are minor and reasonable!
Clip Management
This section assumes you are fighting on your own - when you are in a group of humans, you will need fewer rounds in your clip to fight effectively, because you can count on damage from your teammates.
By using manual reloads (default keybinding ‘r’) before aliens are within striking distance, you can survive longer by minimizing the amount of time you are both defenseless and in immediate danger. Clip management should always take priority over total ammunition management when you are soloing, because you’re far more likely to die due to an untimely reload than you are to die due to running out of ammunition.
Clip management and reloading is very similar to HP management and medkit use. You should make decisions on when to reload considering how many rounds you have left in your clip, how many clips you have left in total, and what enemies you expect to be facing.
Know your weapon’s damage per round and the HP of the enemies you expect to face. You will need these two bits of information to calculate whether you can kill approaching aliens with the number of rounds remaining in your clip. If you know that you don’t have enough shots remaining in your clip to kill an alien class that you can hear coming down the hall, you should reload.
For example: you are holding a shotgun with four rounds remaining in your clip and you hear a goon approaching. At this point, you should reload immediately. You would need near 90% accuracy to kill the goon before having to reload - an extremely difficult challenge considering the shotgun’s large spread. To be able to kill a dragoon with a realistic accuracy level, you should always have 5+ or 6+ shots remaining in your clip. Yes - this means that you will often waste up to four rounds in your clip by manually reloading, but remember: four wasted rounds is an attractive alternative to the almost certain death that accompanies a reload in the midst of close-quarters battle with a dragoon.
Skilled alien players will wait for a human attacker to exhaust his clip on a building, and then charge in while he is reloading. Keep this in mind when you are assaulting an alien base - don’t stand in one place to shoot and reload, instead unload your clip, retreat slightly to reload, and then return to keep firing.
When soloing with clip-based energy weapons (mass driver and pulse rifle), a battery pack is essential. The mass driver’s entire standard clip of 5 shots at 38 damage each is not enough to kill a dragoon, and although the pulse rifle’s clip of 50 shots and 9 damage each is more than enough, its slow projectile speed means that against a skilled dragoon you will have extreme difficulty achieving the 46% accuracy necessary for the kill. Ultimately, these figures mean that once the alien team has dragoons, you are always better off buying a shotgun if you cannot afford a battery pack to go with either of these weapons.
The blaster has a very slow rate of fire and projectile speed, but it offers unlimited ammunition and is always in your inventory. If you bind an easy-to-reach key to “itemtoggle blaster” you can use that key to easily switch between your blaster and default weapon. Pulling out your blaster can be useful in several situations:
* Switching to the blaster from your default weapon is quite fast, and if you hold down mouse1 while switching, you will begin to fire immediately with the blaster once it is equipped. On some very rare occasions, pulling out your blaster for a quick shot may be better than reloading with your default weapon. Be warned, though: if you toggle your blaster immediately when your clip runs out, when you re-equip your default weapon you will have to wait for it to reload before you can use it again.
* If you have a limited-range weapon such as a chaingun, shotgun, flamer, or painsaw and absolutely cannot approach an alien structure or return to base for a more appropriate weapon, stand at a distance and use your blaster to damage it.
* Aliens listen for the blaster’s distinctive sound and hear an easy kill. Sometimes you can bluff with a few blaster shots and then pull out your default weapon to surprise an attacker who took the bait. This is a risky technique, however, as switching back to your default weapon will leave you defenseless for a short time.
