Crates! What to predict.

Discuss winning strategies to slaughter those enemy stickmen!

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Major Cooke
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Crates! What to predict.

Postby Major Cooke » Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:44 am

When it comes down to crates, everyone knows that there are the good helpful ones, and then there are the uber-shitty ones that will wipe your ass out in a heartbeat.

Good crates include:
Flamethrower turret
Minigun turret
Nuclear strike
Airstrike
Napalm Strike
Personal Shield
Rage
Mega rage
Reinforcements

Neutral crates:
Randomiser
Time speed affectors
Dark forest
Magical forest
Eggs
Ant hills

Evil crates:
Plague
Infection Outbreak
Triffids

Game Over crates:
Futurewinians

The good thing about the good crates is once your darwinians open the crates, they will be added to your powerups list and can be used almost anywhere you wish. These are the most relied on to help defend your base and help establish attacks against other opponents bases.
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Neutral crates are crates that are "natural" settings... Most of the time, the moment the crate pops open, the general attitude for this is to just immediately plant themselves right where they spawn, but mostly their class-level dependant... They are much more controllable in harder game modes like Rocket Riot than in normal conquer mode. If these were to be opened in normal conquer mode, they would instantly deploy right where the darwinians opened them. However, stuff like the Magical Forests and time speed affectors never hurt anyone because the Magical Forests just drop a bunch of souls from their limbs, while time affectors either speed things up or slow them down.

However, things like dark forests and ant hills ARE a bad thing, because dark forests are essentially non-moving soul destroyers. If you open a crate of these near a spawn point, you should pack up and move out if your other bases are secure, or fry it with some explosives. Anthills are self-explanatory and are only in this section because they have a tenacity to deploy right where they open, though they do sometimes make their way into the "choose where you want" department. Be warned, the ants attack everyone, even the owner who deployed them.

Eggs are always controllable, it's certain viruses that spawn that are never on your side, in particular the soul destroyer... Just incase, always make sure the eggs are placed somewhere with no turrets, yet close enough to the point where they wont get shot at. If a soul destroyer hatches, then he'll make things a lot easier on you.
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Evil crates are something you do NOT want, but you'd like your enemies to have. The plague happens to be rather a nuisance than an actual evil, as it makes your darwinians sick and shoot rockets at hallucinations in the sky, with sometimes right underneath their feet.

Triffids are evil because you can never control where to lay them. Destroy these as fast as possible. They'll launch black eggs which are pure evil virii, and without your precious squaddies, the spiders can do quite some disastrous things.

Infections... Basically the return of the damned Spam emails, only their not as powerful. The moment the crate is opened, it will explode, releasing the what-was-red-is-now-black sparks into the air and convert all darwinians near into viruses, and into the NEW Evilwinians, who are unordinarily bigger and stronger than normal darwinians. They will not be a threat... if you can keep them away from other crates and spawn points. However, if those dark trees are around, they'll deal with them easily. The evilwinians are just a darker colored version of this next crate I'm going to talk about...
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Game Over Crate: Futurewinians
These are things which no one will appreciate you for opening, not even your most hated enemy, who will only hate you even more. The first phase, a large alien ship descends upon the ground, using a large ray beam to suck any darwinians caught in it's beam up to kill them. It sucks up as many darwinians as it can, but in a narrow cone on the ground. As a last measure of defense, run away from the spawn point and build up as many defense programs as you can and huddle them together. Forget the rest, but just be mindful about those other red darwinians sneaking into your back door...

After the ship inhales enough darwinians, it will spurt out grey glowing darwinians that are as big and evil as Evilwinians... The Futurewinian. These guys have 2-3x the health of a normal darwinian, they can reproduce twice as fast at spawn points, and they move like wind. They shoot needles that can destroy the ordinarily non-destroyable with normal darwinian lasers such as armor. They will eat any team alive if they don't have the power of the fucking Chinese army behind their back door.

If you believe you have the ability to challenge the Futurewinians, you will need a lot of grouped officers to proceed slowly, with the rest of the spawn points aimed to back up the army officer squads. They can't make officers like normal darwinians, but they CAN deploy crates against you.

Now for some good news:
-Futurewinians and Evilwinians are not friends. Pray that they open infected crates/plagues. Spiders find them quite yummy for bedtime snacks.
-Their bullets don't hurt soul destroyers.
-Can be easily killed off with Dark Forest trees, just make sure the area is populated.

Some tips and tricks dealing with futurewinians:
-Eggs. Use lots if you can. Save these for when you need them, as Soul Destroyers are their number one enemy.
-Flamethrower turrets. Just like every other darwinian, set a match to their asses and they'll be dead in 15 seconds when they burn out. This saves having to shoot them to death which takes a long time.
-Group power. If your fighting in an FFA match with other real people, suggest a group truce and immediately gank upon the futurewinians before they have a chance, THEN go back to throttling each other.

There is some more crates that I've forgotten, feel free to add below.

Good luck! =P
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Postby immortalnights » Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:24 am

I would say Mega Rage would be more neutral - since it effects everyone, it's not an all out benefit.

Again, some of the Neutral ones, if used on the right map in the right way, can be perfectly Good. Ants nests and Eggs alike.

Finally, you really over dramatise Futurewinians... I've been killed off more due to Ants or Plague at my spawns then I have by Futurewinians - the simplest defence is to remember then are just AI; and therefore, despite all their benefits fail, just like the rest of the AI.

Ants, Eggs or Dark Forest near their spawn and you pretty much have them under control.
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Postby Pinky » Sat Oct 18, 2008 10:30 am

I disagree largely with your list.

Good Crates:
Flamethrower turret
Minigun turret
Nuclear strike
Airstrike
Napalm Strike
Personal Shield
Rage
Reinforcements
Dark forest
Eggs
Ants

Neutral Crates:
Magical forest
Time speed affectors
Mega rage
Futurewinians

Bad crates:
Dark Forest Spawn
Ants Spawn
Triffids
Infection Outbreak
Plague
Randomiser

Bad crates can be good, if they get opened in the right place. My list assumes that your units are the only ones near the crate.

Futurewinians are Neutral becuase they have equal chance of attacking anyone, not just from the crate location.
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Postby xander » Sat Oct 18, 2008 4:08 pm

I would argue that a lot of the crates vary in terms of good/bad based on what gamemode you are playing. For instance, speed up can be very bad if you are defending (where you want the attacker to have to spend more time, not less, in his attack). On the other hand, slow down is great if you are defending. In other game modes, the time alteration doesn't do much other than to break the flow. Also, plague is pretty neutral to defenders on several of the defense maps, because infected DGs will still man the turrets and defend the WMD against reds.

Eggs can be great in KOTH or CTS, where you can drop them on an enemy spawn, but eggs sometimes create soul destroyers, which will go after anyone. Thus, I am hesitant to use eggs in DOM or BLITZ, where I might want to get to a particular spawn point or flag later. Still, these are minor quibbles. ;)

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Postby Ripfang » Sat Oct 18, 2008 11:26 pm

Quick point on the futurewinians... They are not that hard to stop if you can get to them quick enough and the other players don't stop you or get taken over. All you really have to do is set up a formation or two to cover choke points (try to get them on higher ground). If you set it up right the futurewininas will suffer massive losses and can be held off pretty much indefinatly (so long as you keep extra troops behind the formations to take out anyone who gets converted). The trouble with them is their weapons have shorter range than the standard lazer. I think you also get a little range extention when your guys are in formation. The Futurewinians wont be able to get close enough to use their weapons.

If your REALLY fast you can just mass troops right on their landing site.. They will convert a large number of your troops, but because you have more and they are getting shot from every direction, most of the time you can kill them all off right then and there.
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Postby Qjet » Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:42 am

on my two days of playing this game i'd like to weigh in some thoughts.

Ive noted that futurewinians are affected by bias.

that is, they go after the strong. Ignore the weak. I noticed this when someone got futurewinians JUST as i was about to die.

they abducted everyone attacking me. which was thousands of MW

beamed down in the middle between my spawns and the enemies, went after the enemy and took his spawns.
They weren't working with me, they attacked me, but they strategically went for my opponent.

Also on the futurewinians. Please dont make up statistics.
From what i can tell their behavior is basically like MW with a permanent subversion bonus. They die just as easily as any MW.
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Postby RabidZombie » Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:39 am

They're as bias as the CPU, since essentially, they are another CPU team. Just with permanent subversion.
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Postby Qjet » Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:07 am

CPU's bias towards stronger players?

Do they include other CPU's in that decision? Because ive found 1v1v1's with two cpu's to be very odd games.
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Postby Major Cooke » Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:53 pm

Qjet wrote:Also on the futurewinians. Please dont make up statistics.
From what i can tell their behavior is basically like MW with a permanent subversion bonus. They die just as easily as any MW.


I'm not making up statistics. They act like their on fucking steroids to me. I've tried the choke point trick, they still annihilated me first and then went and raped the opposite team, and it was a 1 on 1 game too.

I made this list because of what I feel is my judgement on how they behaved for/against me, and the worst of the worst experiences I put there by what I know.

Don't hype up about it, god...
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Postby Shwart!! » Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:09 pm

I'm not making up statistics.

Err- actually, you are.
The Futurewinians are no stronger than a regular MW. They have permanant subversion, and that is their only benefit. All other statistics are the same.

Don't hype up about it, god...

I don't even know what you were referring to.
The only hyping being done here is by you.

Shwart!!
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Postby Major Cooke » Sun Oct 19, 2008 11:24 pm

Not really. Whenever I try and fight a group of futurewinians, even if my group is stronger in numbers, I end up loosing every time, unless I have a personal shield/rage.

I must have a very jipped version of the futurewinians then... Unfair.
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Postby Ripfang » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:09 am

Major Cooke wrote:Not really. Whenever I try and fight a group of futurewinians, even if my group is stronger in numbers, I end up loosing every time, unless I have a personal shield/rage.


You lose because they are more or less zombies. heh. One of your guys gets hit and he immedately turns around and hits another one of yours, and so on. You get weaker a lot faster because every loss for you is a gain for them. You end up fighting your own guys. Normally fighting when they have more to start is almost certainly a losing fight. Even numbers usually lead to them winning (especially if they get any momentum going). Even when you have more to start your not always going to win. Thats why subversion is such a powerfull crate in the right situation.

If you cant beat them in the first fight you have with them they will be considerably harder to fight because of all the coverts who started out on your team.
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Postby TheRileyDuo » Mon Oct 20, 2008 4:34 am

Ripfang wrote:
Major Cooke wrote:Not really. Whenever I try and fight a group of futurewinians, even if my group is stronger in numbers, I end up loosing every time, unless I have a personal shield/rage.


You lose because they are more or less zombies. heh. One of your guys gets hit and he immedately turns around and hits another one of yours, and so on. You get weaker a lot faster because every loss for you is a gain for them. You end up fighting your own guys. Normally fighting when they have more to start is almost certainly a losing fight. Even numbers usually lead to them winning (especially if they get any momentum going). Even when you have more to start your not always going to win. Thats why subversion is such a powerfull crate in the right situation.

If you cant beat them in the first fight you have with them they will be considerably harder to fight because of all the coverts who started out on your team.


But they don't have grenades, so you can exploit that.
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Postby Major Cooke » Mon Oct 20, 2008 6:55 am

And how do you exploit that?
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Postby TheRileyDuo » Mon Oct 20, 2008 7:04 am

Major Cooke wrote:And how do you exploit that?


Get a formation up, and you have longer range than them. Then get to a range where you can shoot them, and they can't shoot you.

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