1 - Introduction

Welcome to my Tremulous Base guide. This guide is designed to teach new and intermediate players how to become advanced Tremulous players. I believe that the key to this, the key to being one of the players whose presence is decisive on a team, is to understand how bases work. This guide is designed to teach how to think the right way about Tremulous base operations and how to keep your team alive.

Pretty much every game in Tremulous has the same sort of outline. While people may disagree about the particulars, the vast majority of my experience shows that this outline is true for most games. It goes as follows:

• Humans build their base up, often a move of RC is involved
• Aliens attack humans and try to evolve up to dragoons and kill humans during their move
• Humans try to survive until stage 2, leaving base in discrete parties and killing small aliens.
• Aliens try to kill the humans that leave the base. A very good alien team will systematically take out rets and break in.
• Humans reach S2 and suddenly go on the offensive
• Aliens suddenly have to defend against the much more well-armored/weaponed humans until they reach S3
• Humans either get enough kills to reach s3 first, or they feed the aliens enough that aliens go s3
• Aliens reach S3 and tyrants turn the tides so that humans can't leave the base alone
• Humans attempt to form battle groups so that they can leave the base, break in to the alien base, and win
• Aliens attempt to snipe enough base units that rants can run in and kill any defenders and aliens win
• Skirmishes happen back and forth until sudden death, a winner is decided

So, that's the basic lay of the game. You can simplify it this way:

• S1 - Aliens try to crack base
• S2 - Humans try to rush aliens
• S3 - Both try to snipe opponent's base/form rushing parties

So why is all of this important? Well, understanding where you're at in any given game gives you a strong indicator of what action will lead you to victory and what action won't help your team at all. Some examples

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Humans are S2, aliens are S1, I am aliens with 2 evos:
Answer: Ensure that your team has sufficient spawns to constantly repel the human rush. Because you have no booster available, nor any ability to create trappers, your only defense worth talking about is a steady stream of teammates. If you are a good fighter, use either a marauder or a basilisk and make short attacks, hopefully killing one human before running away to prevent humans from getting kills and going to S3, which is sure
death for aliens.

As soon as you hit S2, a booster will be your number one priority, provided you still have eggs/OM, because the poison will keep humans running back to their base, or it will allow your dretches to have 1-hit-kills on naked humans, getting you up to S3.


Aliens are S3, Humans are S2, I am human with no credits:
Answer: You must keep your base safe from snipers and tyrants. If S3 just occurred, do not be afraid to start pulling back turrets that aren't in a cluster, because they will be destroyed very quickly anyways. Try to get your base compact so that all of your turrets are covering all of your base (as much as possible). Your second priority is ensuring that your teammates can heal easily and safely and have mobility to chase down tyrants,
securing you those essential kills to put you on even footing with the aliens


Aliens are S3, Humans are S2, I am an alien with 5 evos:
Answer: Check how many tyrants there are. If there are many, say 50% of your team, evolve to advanced dragoon. This will allow you to fill the essential role of sniping the human base. Very few players can take out a human base as a tyrant without sniping backup. Your sniper goals will depend largely on what the layout of the human base is, but since the humans don't have any large anti-tyrant guns, try to remove clusters of turrets so that the tyrants can just run in and kill enemy units. At S3 your goals will change and it will become more useful to remove the enemy armory because the enemy will be less focused on defending, so they won't rebuild things instantly.



Aliens are S2, Humans are S2, I am a human with 600 credits
Answer: Because you are relatively wealthy, form a quick assault group. At this point, unless you are a terrible shot, your credits will be an asset to any group of players attacking the aliens. No aliens can kill you in a single hit, or even two (mostly) once you buy your armor/helmet. You can also afford weapons that can kill any alien in a few seconds. If nothing else, you can add suppression fire to the group, allowing you
to make headway to the alien base



So, now that you've seen some examples and have a sort of grasp of the basic flow of the game, it's time to move on to the base principles....