Sloopy guide to behaving in Tremulous

[SLAVE|Mietz]

I've myself decided to write a "guide" or, lets better say a few tips, for the newbies out there for moving/behaving in trem.
It was inspired by 2 games that allmost made me crazy (because my team was not cooperating, nor was it listening)

First things first:

Tremulous is not only a shooter, the tactical part is very important, and a player that is only out for kills won't win a match.

Tremulous is all about Teamwork, being aware what is happening around is very important (especially at early stages of the game).

Therefore it is very important to "chat" (talk) much with your team-mates.

Part one: NoNo's on the Battlefield

1. NEVER block Entrances, Doors, Medipads, small Hallways and/or especially Spawns!
2. NEVER by anny means (unless you EXACTLY know what you are doing) go "rambo" against stronger enemies (think before acting).
3. NEVER shoot blindly! (even if FF is off!)
4. NEVER shoot at base constructions blindly in the hope hitting a dretch or sth.
5. As Alien: if you see a tyrant running from humans NEVER jump trying to avoid collision (the tyrant won't be able to jump over you and will die, you loose a tactical advantage)
6. As Human in Stage 3: NEVER EVER shoot blindly with a Lucifer/Granade!! (especially in charge-mode)

Lets discuss these points and give some examples:

1. 2 Humans are running from aliens, the first one sprints to the door and collides with a bad placed turret >> 2 humans dead

2. You try to get a Dragoon with a "naked" Human and a Rifle. Unless you are a precise aimer, and can fitt the whole clip into the goon without being hit yourself, don't even try! (and if you CAN hit the goon with the complete clip without being touched by him, you should not read this tutorial because you are more 1337 than me^^)

3. Example: 2 Humans fight a Dragoon with Lasguns, you are standing behind them with a Chaingun and firing blindly at the Alien. There are 2 effects that I hate when someone does this:

-you wont hit the alien (the bullets stop in your team-mates body)
-you push (if FF off) the team-mate into the direction of the alien, he can't avoid attacks, if he dies, its YOUR fault!

4. I know this is difficult, but if you start shooting blindly, the whole base might be destroyed (especially with grenades)

5. -

6. The Lucifer-Cannon is a powerfull weapon, by hitting a Team-Mate (when FF off) it will STRONGLY push him in the firing direction. This should be avoided at anny cost! The same goes for Granades

Part 2: How to be a good Tremulous-Player

First of all, like I've allready said, it is important to TALK to your teammates. If you are moving the base/reactor etc. tell them (beacause they might be stuck out of ammo etc.).

There are some good Keybind-scripts somewhere at the forums for that.

Second, try to organize your team, and allways be aware what is happening around you (someone needs help? Is there enough base-defense? etc.).

Things usually to do:

-If you see a builder that is moving the base, ESCORT him.
-If you see a Team-mate in trouble, help him (a team-mate not spawning is more effective)
-If you see a special type of alien/human tell the team (like spotting a tyrant or a granger)
-Especially in the later stage of the game it is important to inform your team-mates what you are seeing. It is crucial to hunt down eggs or builders (just as an example).
-Always aknowledge commands, it tells the team you understand and will be doing it.

Try to be flexible, don't try to play as only soldier or builder, try to be everywhere and keep an eye on anything that is happening.
Communicating is really important, so try to talk more next time.

And as last point, don't be too proud to follow orders, loners will not be good at this game.

You will see, by following these rules/tips games will be more effective, fluid and interesting for you and your team-players.

So have fun, and don't let you get caught by my Battlesuite

[Silverius]

Didn't you could could push people with FF, thanks for the tip.

I'll add something: never, ever, use grenades from inside your own base, especially if you're behind the turrets/tesla's.

[b0rsuk]

The most common errors I see:

- humans going around alone and with only starting equipment.
- humans not using light armor nor helmet. Armor is $70, helmet is $90 and actually worth much more. You get much better protection and immunity to stealth for only $160, you can almost always afford it. There's no reason not to use light armor/helmet if you don't like battlesuits.
- inability to use scanner/alien sense. This is very important and should have entire documentation chapter dedicated to it. With your helmet on, an alien can almost never suprise you. You may be owerwhelmed by more numerous/stronger aliens, but you will always know where to shoot. Helmet cancels stealth. Helmet lets you know when there's a base nearby (multiple signals). Mostly in case of aliens - when preparing an ambush, you can see how many humans are coming. Be sure to wait until all of them pass you before you attack.
- building trappers on floor: trappers are best used on ceilings. They have very narrow arc of fire. Or do you expect humans to come and jump over your trapper ? Clarification: they won't. Many players don't even know what a trapper is and will mistake it for an acid tube. And they will shoot it from afar.
- building boosters in places where no one goes.

- building an alien base the same way you would build human base: all eggs in one room, all defences in one room, etc. Humans have no problems destroying most fortifications, especially on stage2 (grenades and pulse rifle with large clip/damage) and 3 (lucifer).
- not spreading alien bases. Especially eggs are important. If all your eggs are destroyed in one attack, you can't recover. Each egg makes it possible to build buildings (acid tubes, boosters) nearby AND serves as a spawn.
- building alien bases in rooms with only one exit. This means humans can concentrate fire on just one doorway and nothing gets out. You die. This is especially common on the map with glass window. '1337' players tend to move multiple buildings to the small room. Result: deathtrap. As soon as humans get there with stage2/3 weaponry, you can't repel them and you can't escape.
- not using grenades against structures. It may cost $200, but takes out buildings, especially clusters, very quickly and lets you to defend against alien attacks with your regular weapon at the same time.
- building, or even considering building alien structures in clusters. One grenade/lucifer destroys it all.
- building acid tubes and other traps on floors on stages other than 1. Occasions when this is good are very rare. You want humans to guess where your traps are. You want your traps to get the privilege of first strike. All you want is your traps dealing some damage. Because humans have very limited health supply, gradually wearing them down works.

I really think alien defensive structures should be renamed to TRAPS. Mostly because weaponry accesible to humans, alien defensive structures have to be treated like traps. I would even go as far as to rename
acid tube -> acid trap
hive -> hive trap
in the interface.

[DarkRogue]

As my own add on:

Humans:

1. Never. EVER. Move base while it's being attacked. Should be obvious why you should not move the base with a goon bouncing at your turrets but have seen a couple of builders do such and then wonder why the goons poured in.

2. The battlesuit is nice but if you're hunting for that last builder it's WORTHLESS. Unless you can visually check every spot in range of a battlesuits motion when you're hunting down the last bits of alien base get yourself light armor and a helmet with the jetpack.

3. Do not fight with other builders over where the reactor is being rebuilt. Yeah it might be a horrendous spot but you have a TINY window at start with which to move the base, you have ZERO time to be constructing/deconstructing each others work. Doing so only ensures you lose. Despite knowing its a horrendous spot do your best to assist with the base rebuilding.

4. Do not camp some high spot with jetpacks for the entire match (middle ground atcs) goons are just going the alternate route and raping your base. Actively attack or actively defend. Camping a random high spot that the aliens don't even need to use is pointless.

5. Resist the urge to shoot the base, regardless of who does damage your team gets warned 'our base is under attack!' and most good players will return to defend. Nothing annoys good players more than ending a decent offensive strike cause joe newbie put a few rounds into the armory or a turret.

Aliens
1. Acid tubes do damage apparently based on proximity to humans. Thus an acid tube on the ceiling is pointless. The spew erupting from it is just for show get over it. You'll still slow a human down...but won't do alot of damage.

2. Barricades are worthless unless used in groups and that's 20+ points. Or used in a fashion that also hinders the alien team. Again worthless. While they're an ok obstacle any seasoned human player will not be stopped by a barricade. Get over it people.

3. To re-itterate what was stated above: dretches, basilisks and such: When a goon/tyrant is on the retreat GET OUT OF THE WAY. In fact when the large classes are attacking dretches should be NOWHERE NEAR the human base entrances. You do nothing but slow momentum, if you lack the evolve points stay back and pick off any humans that might be returning to the base to help defend or any builders hoping to sneak out. Otherwise STAY BACK and OUT OF THE WAY.

4. If you're at 9 evolution points and you come across a basilisk grappling a grunt DO NOT STEAL THE KILL FFS. At 9 points you do not gain any more and are in fact ensuring that the basilisk either cannot go basilisk again or join you as goon in the offense. Again: If you're evolution points are maxed you really have no business assisting to kill a weak target that is well handled already.

5. Like humans five above: do not strike your own structures. With aliens it's even more important that heavy units return to base to defend since the alien defensive structures are at best to most human players an annoyance. To find out that a basilisk took a swipe at a barricade just cheeses people off.

[Silverius]

Actually it can be useful to move base while being attacked. If you can't hold your base it's better to send a team out to build a new base than to stick around and lose the game.

However when you can keep the base on the short term but can't defend it in the longer run it's better to wait with moving until after the attack when everybody has full health and ammo again.

Fighting over the reactor is in general a bad idea. However having witnessed the abonimal relocations of some people I can asure you it is sometimes better to move the reactor back and state in teamchat very clearly why that move was bad. If the person in question moves the reactor again other measures are in order, possibly even a kick vote (if a person acts in such a way that normal gameplay becomes impossible and doesn't respond reasonable to teamchat it's griefing in my book (though I would be interested in the opinions on that of some of the admins here)).

[next_ghost]

In fact when the large classes are attacking dretches should be NOWHERE NEAR the human base entrances. You do nothing but slow momentum, if you lack the evolve points stay back and pick off any humans that might be returning to the base to help defend or any builders hoping to sneak out. Otherwise STAY BACK and OUT OF THE WAY.

Dretches may have good use in combination with goons/tyrants when the alien team needs to starve humans. Bigger classes lure bsuit guys into narrow corridors and start figting. For a few seconds of fight, bsuits concentrate fire on bigger aliens so dretches can sneak behind them and block their retreat. And then nothing prevents the final hit from goon/tyrant. :lol:

[KorJax]

I think the point is that dont feed them by attacking the base when your a dretch (and even basalisk), because Dretches cant attack bases, but people tend to still try and jump into a base with one just to kill one.  Like I always say at S1 aliens... Hit+Run tactics ONLY and use STEALTH ALWAYS!

If you dont, you will lose the match, simple as that, because all your doing is feeding them.

At S3 its a different story.  If your a dretch and most of your team is attacking the base as a higher evolution, then it would be a good idea to jump in and help by killing off agressive humans in-base while the big guys concentraite on thier defenses, armories, and other vital structures.

[Workaphobia]

All of this advice is great in general but there are cases when it's great to go rambo style on a human base as a dretch. I'm thinking in particular of Transit, where a human team that is slow to build turrets is doomed.

[Survivor]

All of this advice is great in general but there are cases when it's great to go rambo style on a human base as a dretch. I'm thinking in particular of Transit, where a human team that is slow to build turrets is doomed.

These are guidelines, at least that is how I see them. When people get experienced they will decide for their own when rambo actions or base moves are necessary in certain situations but this is a guide for the new people.

[Paradox]

This needs its name changed. I read it, and thought that it was about BASE moving, not character motion.

[SLAVE|Mietz]

done

[Neo]

If you can get skilled in using it, marauders are excellent for base runs in S1, as you can take on a group of humans with little to no damage.

[KorJax]

Adv. Maradurs are also great support units later in the game that are fairly easy to use to screw the enemy base over.

The problem with Tyrants is that they are not very manuverable, they are large, and are HUGE targets to eveyrthing, and most humans WILL shoot at a tyrant before anything else, because they are not only easy to hit, but destroy eveyrthing in thier path.

Adv. Dragoons are great for sniping defenses.  But, many players know this, and will give "secondary" fire to Dragoons if there are no tyrants nearby, or have the opportunity to do so.  This is especially going to happen if the alien team is only S1+S2 (which means no Tyrants), as they become the main base attackers.

However, many players tend to ignore Maradurs more, especially if the human base is being pestered with Adv. Dragoons+Tyrants, and little attention will be paid to you as you make your approach.

Also, Marauders are relitivly small, and VERY fast and manuverable, making it easy to dodge things if fired upon.  I can often jump into a base and leave it again and by the time I leave the base, I still have full health.  And because they are considered "less dangerous", if there are Dragoons+Tyrants trying to attack, there is going to be little opression.


Lets put this into perspective.



I was playing as an Adv. Marauder as an S3 alien on Karith(I already had 9 Evo points however).  THere was one or two Tyrants attacking the front of the human base, but constantly having to retreat due to all the concentraited human fire was on them.  Plus or minus an Adv. Dragoon, depending on who was there.

I managed to jump across the defenses realtivly easily (Adv. Marauder's speed and jump ability help alot), and hop around trying not to get hit.  NEVER STOP HOPPING ONCE YOU HAVE INFILTRATED A BASE!  Luckily, the Tyrants were still the star of the shows, so many people just continued defend against the Tyrants "teasing" the human defenses.  With my shock attack and claw, I was able to comprimise one of thier armories, all of thier spawns, thier Defense Computer, and finally eneded in me dieing whilst attacking the reactor.  Needless to say they were not expecting my "surprise" attack, and concentrated on me and killed me after I already killed thier spawns, and thier DC, which then resulted in the Tyrants breaking into the base and cleaning up afterwords.

It was great  

[DarkRogue]

I think the point is that dont feed them by attacking the base when your a dretch (and even basalisk), because Dretches cant attack bases, but people tend to still try and jump into a base with one just to kill one.  Like I always say at S1 aliens... Hit+Run tactics ONLY and use STEALTH ALWAYS!

If you dont, you will lose the match, simple as that, because all your doing is feeding them.

At S3 its a different story.  If your a dretch and most of your team is attacking the base as a higher evolution, then it would be a good idea to jump in and help by killing off agressive humans in-base while the big guys concentraite on thier defenses, armories, and other vital structures.

Actually the point was to re-itterate that jumping dretches and grangers just get in the way of the bigger attacking alien players. I've lost count of the times I've attacked a base, been seriously hurt tried to escape and been slowed down enough to be killed all because a couple of idiot dretches think they could pick up my scraps.

99% of the time 'assisting' dretches are assisting the humans by blocking the bigger aliens. At S3 and base attacking dretches have NO PLACE on the front lines. Grangers should be obvious, but noticed two idiots yesterday trying to 'lure' out humans by dancing their builders just outside the human base....but also blocking the hell out of any goons, marauders and tyrants that wanted to get by.

Thankfully in this case was on tjw's server. FF is so very useful for clearing the stupid off the battlefield.

[hodge]

This is certainly a very good guide for human players, it contains a lot of helpful advice that every human player should know, Expecially how its very important to team chat with your team, using team chat well could prevent disaster like it could inform every player that your going to move the reactor or om and they should be careful for the next minute.

DarkRogue also posted some good "NoNos" espesially how when a player who has 9pts or 2000 likes to focus completely on himself rather then his team sometimes to the point where he causes his team to loss (I have seen this happen before to both aliens and humans before and I once was guilty of stealing points from other players to the point where our team lossed the game).

[Neo]

I knw you might feel otherwise with the '99% of dretches', isn't accurate unless you play on a really bad server player-wise. On the servers I play on it rarely happens, as everyone knows their role. Dretches do work however for stopping humans from using the 'run backwards' method of avoiding damage by blocking their escape. Another use for them is meat shields for lucifer fire, so the bigger aliens get more time to do their work.

[BabyAlien]

I knw you might feel otherwise with the '99% of dretches', isn't accurate unless you play on a really bad server player-wise. On the servers I play on it rarely happens, as everyone knows their role. Dretches do work however for stopping humans from using the 'run backwards' method of avoiding damage by blocking their escape. Another use for them is meat shields for lucifer fire, so the bigger aliens get more time to do their work.

I think the target audience for the post is new players, so it makes perfect sense to tell them to NEVER do something.  Later when they are experienced they can try to help as a dretch on the front lines.

Of course, if there is lots of open space, a dretch can be very useful.  A good dretch is very hard to hit, but it is so tempting for humans to try so they can get an easy kill, meanwhile they aren't concentrating fire on a the bigger guys.  Or if they do concentrate on the big guys, the dretch can soften them up or finish them off.

Excellent guide btw.

Perhaps another way of stating some things:

1. Formation is important
- humans: inacurate weapons out front, accurate weapons behind.
- aliens: don't block each other.. dretches don't forget the WALLS and CEILING

2. Mixing up units is important
- humans: don't run at the alien base all with the same weapon.  Remember grenades
- aliens: the reason you couldn't polish off the camping humans was you didn't have a mix of units.  A tyrant, goon and marauder should probably all be used in concert.

3. Communication is important
- humans: yeah, I mean "C'MON!"
- aliens: GraWWrrr!!!

[BabyAlien]

Oh yeah my 2¢ about baricades.

I have noticed that they do a good job at defending against grenades.   They can suck up the dammage without dying and keep your acid tubes safe.  Then the human has to take more time to finish it off by hand or toss more grenades.

Of course they are very expensive (perhaps too expensive).  On a server with more build points available, they can be useful.

[Stasis]

I found a few things that were missing/didnt exactly agree with..I'll start from the top.

1)  NEVER shoot blindly! (even if FF is off!)
--- Usually ammo is a concern, but in the early game, I usually find it best to "shake the tree" by spraying some ammo in areas where I think there may be aliens. You'd be suprised the things you find that way.

2)  As Alien: if you see a tyrant running from humans NEVER jump trying to avoid collision.
---On ANY team and as ANY class, if you see a retreating ANYTHING coming back home, try to cover as much as possible without making a clusterfuck. I see more aliens do this by gangbanging chasers on weaker teammates.

3)  As Human in Stage 3: NEVER EVER shoot blindly with a Lucifer/Granade!!
---In base, yes. Out of base, anything is fair game. I'm not saying expend all of your ammo as fast as possible, but it NEVER hurts to fire a Lucifer blast ( at nothing ) and walk behind it to cover yourself.

4)  The Lucifer-Cannon is a powerfull weapon, by hitting a Team-Mate (when FF off) it will STRONGLY push him in the firing direction. This should be avoided at anny cost!
--- While this is a fun (lol) thing to do to screw with teammates, I find it useful to shoot at teammates feet/ground area. This boosts them a great distance forward/in direction of movement and spares them precious stamina. Its most useful in chasing down fleeing aliens.

5) --- As either team, know which doors open faster than others. I know I've whored many people as they cant get past a slow door before being smoked.

[tuple]

I've found it useful to hide near the battle (on a ceiling or wall, off of the ground) and wait for retreating goons or tyrants that are low on health and being chased by humans.  The humans will run right by you (not paying attention to thier helmet) in their urge to kill.  If you don't pick off the human, you can distract them long enough for the goon/tyrant to get out and heal up, plus if the human kills you they make less than if they kill something larger.

[kozak6]

I would also like to reenforce that the Lucifer cannon is definitely not the best weapon to use if it is a matter of seconds before Sudden Death and an Advanced Dragoon is nibbling on your armory.

I'd also like to point out that if circumstances dictate that you must fire upon a bug nibbling on your armory, you do not fire a salvo of 3-6 poorly aimed Lucifer blasts in the general direction of the armory.

How frustrating.