Human Structures & Building

A player can spawn as a builder or trade his gun in at the armory for a Construction Kit. (Note: Proper building techniques must be learned. Watch experienced builders before attempting to build by oneself. Poor building skills will quickly lose a game.) Spawning as a builder will give them a Construction Kit (CKit). Stage 1 CKit will allow basic building. Once Stage 2 is reached, the Advanced CKit is available which allows building of the more advanced structures (Defense Computer, Telsas, etc.)

Using the primary fire button (usually left mouse button) while using the CKit will bring up a menu of available structures to build. Choose which structure is to be built and click the left mouse button again and a type of hologram of the structure will appear. (If the hologram does not appear, there probably are not enough Build Points (BPs) available.) It is movable until you click the left button one more time to fix it in place. When the hologram is green the structure can be built in that position. When it is red, the structure cannot be built as it is too close to another structure or player. If a structure is to be deconstructed (deconned) for moving of upgrading, move up to the structure and press the “e” key on the keyboard. The structure will disappear and the BPs will again be available for building after a short delay.

A structure in need of repairing is shown with a green health status bar above it that is less than full and solid. Structures about to fail will have their health status bar turned red. To repair a structure, walk up to it with the CKit and then press and hold the right mouse button (alternate fire). You will hear the CKit repairing the structure and can watch the health bar rise. Continue to hold the mouse button until the structure is fully repaired. Different structures require different repair times with the reactor taking the longest.

Most standard Tremulous servers allow 100 BPs. Typically this will consist of a reactor, armory, medistation, two spawns and seven turrets, but is the choice of the builder. How and where these are put will cause considerable debate amoung builders. New builders tend to spread turrets out by doors and entryways in an attempt to kill aliens at entry points. Once the aliens are past an entry point though, there will be relatively little defense to protect the critical assets a human base must have (reactor, armory and spawns). For this reason, experienced builders will concentrate as much overlapping turret firepower in and around these critical structures so that any attacking alien is exposed to multiple turret fire when trying to destroy a structure. This type of base will be very dense and compact.

Remember that turrets do not fire through other turrets. So creating a “field of turrets” is rarely useful, since the back ranks of turrets cannot fire. Also, when turrets explode, they damage other structures and humans nearby. This can lead to chain reactions if the other structures are already damaged.

Finally, turrets do not fire through humans. So if the humans are standing and firing in front of the turrets, the turrets are not firing and not aiding in base defense. So think: if I build my turrets here and here, where will the humans end up standing when they fight? The main firepower of your side comes from HUMANS, not turrets. The turrets should be set up to allow the HUMANS to fight. If your turrets block easy access to the medstation or armory, they are doing more harm than good to the human side. Do not make players fight to get to the medstation or armory.

The “ideal” base maximizing firepower and maintainability is probably something where each turret is spaced about a turret width apart from its neighbors. This allows humans to move between turrets rather than having to jump over them, and provides enough distance that one explosion does minimal damage to other turrets.

Turrets are strong enough to kill small aliens, and injure larger ones. Turrets WILL NOT STOP tyrants, or even dragoons. Turrets will generally kill dretches, basilisks, and will kill marauders if they stop jumping around. Often builders attempt to design a “tyrant-proof” turret setup, but there is no such thing. Indeed an advanced dragoon can snipe a turret in 2 shots

A low-maintenance base is one that can't easily be picked apart by aliens. Generally all structures are relatively close together, with no outlying turrets (though if possible, turrets should still have a bit of room between them to reduce chain-reaction damage). This allows the builder to grab a gun and support his teammates. This is the ideal structure on servers with few people playing - the human team cannot afford to have a dedicated engineer sitting in the base.

A high-maintenance base requires constant upkeep. Turrets are spread fairly far out, and the outlying turrets are subject to constant alien attack. A dedicated engineer is required. This is the optimum structure when many people are playing (say, 8 or more per side). The goal of turrets is to keep a large area free of dretches, and keep the human team from being cooped up in their base where their firepower is less useful. Consideration must be given to the traffic flow to and from the armory and medistation - defenses MUST NOT block this pathway. If each human takes a few extra seconds jumping over turrets and cramming into a tiny area, each time they need healing or ammo, effectively the builder has eliminated one or more members of his team permanently. Over the course of a game, each human might spend several extra minutes just fighting to get ammo or healing, which is time that they're not shooting aliens. When builders bury the armory or medistation such that only one human can get to it at a time, the builder has guaranteed a loss for his team. With extra-high numbers of players, the builder should consider extra armories, or medistations, and should absolutely make sure that multiple humans can get in and out to these structures as easily as possible.

During Stage 3 Telsa Generators become available. They require a Defense Computer to operate. Current thought is that on a 100 BP server, there is not enough gain from the Telsa to offset their increased cost and cost of the DC. Although the DC will help the turrets track more quickly, its cost usually does not outweigh its benefit. On servers with greater BPs, Telsas are part of a total defense. Teslas have the advantage that they are completely dretch-proof, while turrets can be killed by skilled dretches.

Fixed Fortifications are monuments to man's stupidity.
- General George S. Patton

Given the humans' dependence on structures, one of the best ways to press the offense is to build a “forward outpost”. However, on a 100 build point server, this can be an extremely risky gamble and is usually frowned on by the more experienced players.

Such a “forward outpost” consists of:

• A Repeater
• A medistation

This is sufficient to provide complete upkeep for humans using energy weapons, since they can reload from the repeater. At a cost of only 8 bp, it is quite useful.

On a server or map with high BP, forward bases can be more luxurious:

• 1 (maybe 2) turrets, for basic defense
• An armory (optional)
• NO TELENODES!

The point of an outpost is to save humans from needing to run all the way back to the reactor to restore health/ammo. Outposts are more useful on large maps, where it's difficult for humans to survive the long trek to the OM.

An outpost weakens the main base's defenses (and severely so on a 100 build point server), so it is critical that:

• Your team uses the outpost effectively. Humans have to be constantly attacking/maintaining. If an outpost is not supporting an ongoing attack, it's a liability.
• You'll need enough BP to maintain the outpost without weakening the reactor base.
• With rare exceptions, there should be only one outpost. More than one spreads defenses too thin.

The goal of an outpost is to push forward close to the OM location. This greatly boosts the odds of humans winning.

Builders who are supporting outposts need a jetpack. Things get pretty dicey without one.

The NO TELENODES rule of thumb is because it's important to maintain a human presence back at the reactor (and between the reactor and the outpost). Also, the goal of a outpost is to help keep humans alive throughout the attack. If they're dying often enough to want a forward telenode, the outpost is maybe not such a good idea.

Also, an unguarded telenode can quickly become a rather delicious buffet for the alien team.

Repeaters should be built in in hard-to-reach or hard-to-see places since they are wimpy and defenseless targets.

The payoff for solid outpost-building is:

• Watching your team saturate the OM with grenades.
• Preventing the aliens from waging hit-&-run attacks. One of the aliens' strengths is their mobility and ability to use many areas of the map. A forward outpost greatly restricts the aliens' strategic options.

The disadvantages of outpost-building are:

• On a 100 build point server, the build points required to such an outpost will weaken your reactor base defenses significantly.
• It's possible that the outpost will prove so successful that the entire human team will shift operations to the outpost, allowing aliens to destroy weak defenses at the reactor base, and destroy it before the human team even notices.

The diagram below represents a 4-way intersection. Which Turret Placement is better? Assume enemies can attack from any direction.

     (A)              (B)

  _|   |_           _|   |_       
_|       |_       _|T     T|_
    T T
_   T T   _       _         _
 |_     _|         |T     T|
   |   |             |   |
	

The answer is (B) Most people instinctively “bunch” turrets together, as in (A). But (B) is far superior. Because:

• The turrets have interlocking fields of fire. As military tacticians know, this creates a “kill zone”.

• Having turrets farther apart (but still close enough to defend each other) makes it harder for an enemy to keep track of them. Ideally, attacking a turret should require an enemy to face a wall, so they have no idea what's behind them.

• The turrets are more protected from dragoon sniping. Neither arrangement offers full protection from sniping, but the second setup is better. If the openings have doors, the situation is pretty close to ideal.

• Farther-spaced turrets force the enemy to make false choices (which turret to attack first)

• Exploding buildings damage near by buildings

• Given the safe spot in the center, you might be tempted to plop a medistation there. Don't do it! Structures in the middle of a kill zone hampers its effectiveness. Much better to keep the medistation just outside the kill zone.

Let's say you're not making a “kill zone” - you're just building generic defense. Should you put turrets in the middle of a hall, or hide them around corners? The answer depends on what you want the turret to do, and how many BP you have to spare:

• Putting a turret in the middle of a hall says “this is our turf”. This will cause weak aliens to back off. But a single turret doesn't communicate the message well - in fact, a single turret may be seen as a weak spot. Even weak aliens (basilisks) can attack or run past a single turret. To communicate strength requires two turrets at least. In order to present a defensive challenge to most aliens, ideally 3-4 turrets should be built in an area. Don't stick a single turret out by its lonesome.
  Also, turrets in the middle of halls are snipable and pounceable by advanced goons.

• On the other hand, placing a single turret behind a corner is a good way to surprise dretches that come zipping around that corner. Dretches hate surprises, and they also hate being shot full of holes.

To make anti snipable turrets you must build them around corners in tunnels or like this:

     |  |
   __|  |__
  |T      T|
  |        |

or:

   _|  |_
  |T|  |T|
  |      |
__|      |__

When placing defensive structures at a strategically important choke point, say at a door or base entrance, it is not advisable to place a large amount of them in the same location (i.e. lined up directly in front of the door). A good alien player knows how to spot these emplacements and knows how to defeat them: even if you have placed ten turrets at a crucial choke point, a skillful (and daring) Marauder can simply jump over them all and continue on to destroy valuable base assets (armory, medipads, repeaters, reactor, etc). With Teslas, the situation becomes more manageable, not only because teslas are taller, but also because teslas do not have a tracking time.

Regardless of what stage the humans are at, however, it is not a good idea to spread defensive structures out by concentrating at choke points and doorways and dwindling back towards the valuable base structures. Aliens will easily bypass these structures leaving little defenses for the critical structures (armory, reactor and spawns) at the base itself. Turrets are not to kill aliens, they are to protect the human assets and allow humans to retain their base while they kill the aliens.

(most stats come from tremulous.h)

Stage 1

Name	Cost (BP)	Strength	Building time	Notes
Reactor	0 (only 1 allowed)	930 pts	20 seconds	* Powers all other human structures * Zaps aliens for up to 40 pts of damage at the bottom, 2 pts of damage at the top, decreased at a distance
Telenode	8	310 pts	10 seconds	* Humans spawn from these, with a 10 second cooldown. * Spawning can be blocked by any player (human or alien) standing on top.
Medistation	8	190 pts	10 seconds	Regenerates health for 1 human at a time. Two medis next to each other can heal a human at double speed. Once health is regenerated to 100%, the medkit is replaced. The medkit is replaced even if another human is currently being healed!
Turret	8	190 pts	10 seconds	* Automatically shoots aliens (4 pts / hit) * Can aim 360° in x/y plane * Can tilt vertically up to 60° * Will not shoot through friendly structures or players
Armoury	10	280 pts	10 seconds	Allows humans to buy weapons & upgrades, and refill ammo.

Stage 2

Name	Cost (BP)	Strength	Building time	Notes
Repeater	0	250 pts	10 seconds	* Extends range of human power grid * Can't be placed within power range of reactor or other repeater NOTE: You can place multiple repeaters in the same area if the second (third, fourth, etc) is started before another in-range repeater is up. While this takes teamwork, it makes the repeater a less attractive target. * Will self-destruct after 90 seconds if not powering any structures.
Defense Computer	8 (only 1 needed)	190 pts	10 seconds	* Required for teslas to function at stage 3 * Lets turrets target multiple enemies. * Turrets turn slightly faster

Stage 3

Name	Cost (BP)	Strength	Building time	Notes
Tesla Generator	10	220 pts	15 seconds	* Zaps aliens (9 pts per zap) * Can target aliens straight up * Cannot target aliens below (range is computed from top of generator), although this does not matter unless it is hanging off a ledge * Can zap around corners * Cannot function without a Defense Computer

Brief heads-up of defensive structures

Name	Cost (BP)	Strength	Building time	dmg/shot	shot/s	dmg/s	range	Notes
Reactor	0 (only 1 allowed)	930 pts	20 seconds	40	1	40	100	* Zaps depending on the distance from the base: 40 pts of damage at the bottom, 2 pts of damage at the top
Turret	8	190 pts	10 seconds	4	10	40	300	* Automatically shoots aliens (4 pts / hit) * Can tilt vertically up to 60°
Tesla Generator	10	220 pts	15 seconds	9	4	36	250	* Cannot target aliens below (range is computed from top of generator) * Can zap around corners