Big Red/Solaris Defense Thread (engineers only normies stay out)

[OatzAndHoes]

So we finally got the engineering update, and a beautiful new map to go with it. Lets post our ideas and experiences in here so eventually we get a FOB meta so good that they'll be forced to nerf us again. So far I've only played a few rounds and all of them at LZ1 FOB, but I've found that building defenses outside the LZ tend to get overrun by boilers because of how open the area is and how enclosed your defensives will have to be. I think a solution is to move it indoors and build something along these lines.

I don't see a lot of weaknesses in doing this other than the inevitable r-wall melting when the aliens get frustrated, but that can be dealt with if you have enough men.

[Jalleo]

crushers can crush through R walls as well. You can only really make defenses that last a while but not forever when it comes to this map. This sort of defense is good but overall you also need defences over at tcomms too.
Also the lower turret would have to be manned as half the time it will end up shooting at the Rwall. One tile up and that shouldn't be a issue.
Sniper will not have great LOF due to the amount of plasteel barricades you put down at the top right.. It might be easier just to put them at the topleft of the green barricades while they arent doing long range sniping to take out boilers.
Edit: Also you will need a lot of lights to do prevent any issues with the marines being unable to see anything. Aka flashlights setup and then it should be fine.

[Halinder]

What about C4'ing an r-wall somewhere towards the left and replacing it with a false wall, to be used as a sally port?

[Karmac]

I prefer the outside defense for LZ1, means you don't have to worry about walls being acided, also most xenos haven't figured out to just melt in through T-Comms yet so that's a plus, and if they do you can just block off the entrance to LZ1, leaving you stuck outside, but still defended.



my standard defense for the LZ1 area

[Yohyung]

Whoever made that M56D stays close... ur bad

[OatzAndHoes]

I prefer the outside defense for LZ1, means you don't have to worry about walls being acided, also most xenos haven't figured out to just melt in through T-Comms yet so that's a plus, and if they do you can just block off the entrance to LZ1, leaving you stuck outside, but still defended.



my standard defense for the LZ1 area

That was the best engineering round I've seen in a long time. Those outer defenses held for hours, and when they finally fell to the boilers we held them at the the gate for another solid 30 minutes. They then breached west of the entrance and we held them off with a gun emplacement, a turret and a whole lot of blood. Finally they break through, enter the final layer, and half the hive dies in the killzone.

[Karmac]

Engineer pride station wide *salute

[RedOktober12]

Alright, so from what I've seen we've managed to crack the Eastern LZ1 defense. Frontal fortifications usually tend to last fairly well, and the internal killzone displayed above has proven pretty effective. Increasingly, however, xenos will just ignore a robust fortification and just go around the back in tcomms and give marines the ol' acid reacharound. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I'm sick of being maginot lined by the ayyys after all the effort at the main FOB.

The task before us is therefore a grand undertaking. How do we secure tcomms in an equally effective manner to East LZ1? The priority is naturally securing the landing pad, but preserving marine comms would be a solid benefit.

Also, before we start discussing whether it's meta to know about the cave system, I believe it's more or less been okayed for marines to be aware of the weakness. Even if not, by taking a meson scanner we can plainly 'discover' the flank. We're not here to discuss the state of the meta regardless. We're engineers, we solve problems. Right now this is a pressing one.

So, let's see some designs and ideas for West LZ1! I'll submit some idea shortly, when I get to toy with the it for a little.

[Steelpoint]

The best defence for the west LZ is taking advantage of how tight the entrance to it is.

The main hanger is a viable area to assault mainly because you have a very large area to maneuver and attack from, whereas the telecoms area is a straight tunnel with no cover whatsoever and is very small.

The reason telecomms falls to Aliens is because there are no defenders or defences there to stop the Aliens breaking through, in the precious few times I've seen the Marines set up defences around the south r-wall where the alien breach from, it has always held. Some barricades, sentry gun and a few men can turn that chockpoint into a remake of the Battle of Thermopylae.

[OatzAndHoes]

Alright, so from what I've seen we've managed to crack the Eastern LZ1 defense. Frontal fortifications usually tend to last fairly well, and the internal killzone displayed above has proven pretty effective. Increasingly, however, xenos will just ignore a robust fortification and just go around the back in tcomms and give marines the ol' acid reacharound. I think I speak for all of us when I say that I'm sick of being maginot lined by the ayyys after all the effort at the main FOB.

The task before us is therefore a grand undertaking. How do we secure tcomms in an equally effective manner to East LZ1? The priority is naturally securing the landing pad, but preserving marine comms would be a solid benefit.

Also, before we start discussing whether it's meta to know about the cave system, I believe it's more or less been okayed for marines to be aware of the weakness. Even if not, by taking a meson scanner we can plainly 'discover' the flank. We're not here to discuss the state of the meta regardless. We're engineers, we solve problems. Right now this is a pressing one.

So, let's see some designs and ideas for West LZ1! I'll submit some idea shortly, when I get to toy with the it for a little.

Personally I've taken to bringing down a turret every time and putting it facing the tcomms cave wall with some barricades or sandbags right up against the wall. I then C4 the corner rwall so you can travel from the SE entrance to tcomms easier. I then secure all the entrances with a couple layers of false walls. The turret isn't enough to hold the aliens off for any extended period of time, but it makes enough noise usually to alert anyone nearby that aliens are flanking, which should allow defenders time to get over there and hold off the aliens.

[TopHatPenguin]

The cave directly below south T-comms is an incredible defence position due to how it's really narrow and boilers will have a damn hard time firing.

That diagonal cave system means the boiler has to go and be in visible range to fire at you meaning you can probably donk pocket the boiler.

Sentry, two Cades and two marines could probably hold that area for ages.

The trick with t-comms is that once that wall is broken it's easy for the boiler to glob acid over you, rendering your defences useless.

In short sitting behind the walls at t-comms will only ever get you bombed by acid until you can't hold your defences, instead hold the southern cave area pictured where it's highly narrow, will cause xenos to push into each other and boilers will have a ridiculously hard time firing as thy have to be so close, meaning the sentry and marines will be able to light them up.

[Karmac]

Honestly have to agree with Steelpoint on the T-Comms regard, it's a kill corridor, the xenos just don't know it yet. Make sure to remind them of that whenever you can. And listen to Wooks, fugg boilers mang.

[OatzAndHoes]

I might start C4ing the rwalls at tcomms then and moving the defenses up to the chokepoint. Though it will require SLs to start assigning grunts to the boring job of watching a cave that could be empty the entire round.

[TopHatPenguin]

I might start C4ing the rwalls at tcomms then and moving the defenses up to the chokepoint. Though it will require SLs to start assigning grunts to the boring job of watching a cave that could be empty the entire round.

Leave a sentry with defences there and make sure it's at least got a high cap or better in it, then periodically check the cave chokepoint, if they are attacking there radio in for backup.

[Telegnats]

I good idea with this may be (If you can find the materials) the introduction of proximity sensors/tripwires. Slap a few of them in the caves, maybe cover them up with debris, you'll instantly know that something is up when they go off. Of course it only alerts you if anything is there and doesn't tell you who or what, so the sentry is still needed to actually defend unmanned tables and barricades until help arrives. Still, the move alerts we have the quicker we can react to any would-be assaults.

[Karmac]

Xenos move too quickly for that idea to be any kind of useful, plus more often than not it'll just be sporadic movement from Runners with nothing better to do.

Against humans? Yeah that'd be very useful, not so much here though.

[Telegnats]

True, whenever I can be bothered to use them they usually only alert me to the random runner, though they have given me an early warning to larger forces every now and then when it spams my chat for a few seconds. And for what it's worth the sentry shooting away is typically only for the random prodding xeno anyway so they're both unhelpful in that respect. If these WERE to be used in any meaningful way, they would have to be placed a full screen away with their sensors set to completely cover the tunnel, and even then it's just to say 'there may be something there' so you can listen for the sentry to fire.

[Swagile]

I saw a defence today as SL made by Talon that was p sick.

Not sure if they took a screenshot, but they basically cut down every 4th R-wall near Hangar Entrance and made "pill boxes"; think of WW2 Beach Raid. There was enough cover for two or three marines to sit there and spam bullets down a corridor, but it made it really difficult for boilers to accurately boil inside, while marines have three of these pill boxes to shoot from as well as having cover. It solved the acid problem because boilers wouldn't be able to get close enough to acid the walls down unless they want to be shot down.

[Karmac]

I've used pillbox style defenses before on Ice Colony, didn't think I'd get much use out of them outside of that, so this is good news.

[OatzAndHoes]

I saw a defence today as SL made by Talon that was p sick.

Not sure if they took a screenshot, but they basically cut down every 4th R-wall near Hangar Entrance and made "pill boxes"; think of WW2 Beach Raid. There was enough cover for two or three marines to sit there and spam bullets down a corridor, but it made it really difficult for boilers to accurately boil inside, while marines have three of these pill boxes to shoot from as well as having cover. It solved the acid problem because boilers wouldn't be able to get close enough to acid the walls down unless they want to be shot down.

I think I get the idea of what you're talking about, would love to see a screenshot or mspaint pic of it though if anyone has it.

[RedOktober12]

I saw a defence today as SL made by Talon that was p sick.

Not sure if they took a screenshot, but they basically cut down every 4th R-wall near Hangar Entrance and made "pill boxes"; think of WW2 Beach Raid. There was enough cover for two or three marines to sit there and spam bullets down a corridor, but it made it really difficult for boilers to accurately boil inside, while marines have three of these pill boxes to shoot from as well as having cover. It solved the acid problem because boilers wouldn't be able to get close enough to acid the walls down unless they want to be shot down.

When I saw the bunker set up, I was certain it'd immediately get overrun, but it proved incredibly resilient. It's central value came from forcing the xenos far back if they wanted to recover. They couldn't get boiler shots through the south wall, or use it to recover after a push. Unfortunately it was built at the cost of zero telecoms reinforcement. It was still really impressive that a contingent of twenty or so marines with near-zero ammo held for as long as they did. I'm tending to find that a strong fob tends to live and die based on the fallback LZ position since boilers and crushers are completely dominant in the open plain between medical and the LZ.

[Steelpoint]

Any good defence needs an answer to Boilers, you won't always be able to rely on a good Sniper Spec being on hand.

[OatzAndHoes]

Any good defence needs an answer to Boilers, you won't always be able to rely on a good Sniper Spec being on hand.

The thing with Big Red is if you send a patrol out to southern research you can get like 3-4 marksmen rifles. The issue is getting those back to the FOB, as the patrolling squad will usually take them for themselves and then die or lose them.

[Steelpoint]

There are Marksman Rifles on big red?

I guess people lose them since I've never seen them before.

[OatzAndHoes]

I mean M4RA battle rifles, not marksman rifles. They are almost as good at keeping boilers away though, they have scopes and decent accuracy.