Building gameplay
Contents
Building gameplay
Unvanquished is a game which adds RTS (Real Time Strategy) elements on top of relatively classic (despite the Alien's mechanisms) FPS (First Person Shooter) game-play. It is derived from tremulous, which also had those RTS elements, but tried to improve by changing a lot the gameplay.
So, this page is for both tremulous' veterans and complete newcomers to Unvanquished. It aims at explaining the basics of how resources are gathered and spent, and what every player should know, without covering advanced base creation tips.
Momentum
Completion of buildings increase a team's momentum. Deconstructing a building reduces a team's momentum.
Destroying an enemy building increase your team's momentum and reduces enemy's momentum.
The Momentum bar in the bottom
- actual value
- each step allow or disallow equipment for Humans, or Forms for Aliens.
Build Points
Each team have a shared (by the team) amount of Build Points (BPs).
BPs are gathered by building Drills for humans or Leeches for aliens.
Each gathering building of a team allows the team to gather resources in an area. Resource areas of a team are merged. Area "conflicting" with enemy team are shared with other team, giving both team half the volume. Volume is multiplied by a specific value (as of 0.51, a gatherer at 100% efficiency provides 50 BPs) and that represents the amount of BPs available to the team.
When a team looses a gathering building, it looses the area and thus, BPs provided by said area are *lost*. This is important because without enough BPs, buildings except Overmind, Reactor, Egg, Telenode, Leech or Drill will be disabled, starting with buildings further from reactor, making bases defenseless.
Starting the construction of a building immediately spends the corresponding amount of the team's BPs stock.
Loosing a building makes the team which owned it *slowly* recovering build points (several minutes per BP).
Basic building hints
Building efficient bases and outposts is very different depending on the team. Humans and Aliens having very different strategies. I will try to explain the most basic hints here.
Humans
Outposts
Complete outpost (also called forward base), usually require at least 3 buildings:
- an Armoury
- a Telenode
- a Medistation
This imply a total cost of 26 BPs, which is a rather high cost, so it's usually better to first build defenses to cover while building.
Defensive build
Keep in mind that turrets need to rotate toward their target to start firing. This means a lone defense will be of little use, especially against a skilled alien player.
Defensive buildings will not fire if that would imply damage allied structures or players.
Machinegun Turrets have a short range.
Rocket Pods have a minimum range: if enemy reach it, it's good for the scrapyard.
Alien
First and most important hint for aliens: your base is weak. Don't let any human find or enter it. When you finally unlock advanced granger, do not hesitate to move as many buildings as possible on walls and roofs, if only to avoid grenades and flamers destroying everything in the blink of an overmind's eye.
Overmind can not, though, be built on walls and roofs.
Outposts
Aliens only requires 2 buildings to build an outpost: and Egg and, if evolved enough, a Booster. This allows aliens to spread bases everywhere and keep putting pressure on enemy's base.
Those outposts will also provide faster healing: x4 for any building, x8 for booster, which also poisons your weapons for 30s.
Those buildings have cost, though. Unlike Leech, which still provide the healing bonus.
Defensive build
Barricades are defensive and don't attack, humans can fly or jump over them. They also have a rather high cost, thus are mostly useful behind small doors. Their only point is to delay enemy long enough for an ally to come (but no-one will be informed that they are attacked before they are destroyed) and to protect Acid Tubes behind them. They can't be built on walls and roofs.
Trapper can immobilize enemy, but for that, it needs to reach enemy, which means it can only be built in few places.
