Tremulous Basics Tutorial

Summary:

The goal of the game is to destroy all enemy spawns and players, and how you end up doing that is totally up to you and your team, even if it involves using the map crushers or whatever.

Humans excel at long ranged combat. Unless you are using a painsaw, you will want to keep a minimum distance of 2 meters away from the enemy. You should not buy any upgrades or weapons until you have at least around 400 credits. It costs 310 credits to buy a shotgun and basic armour, which is a choice many people do as the shotgun is one of the most reliable close-mid range combat weapon with decent DPS.

Aliens excel at manouvreability - Speed and abilities, and melee DPS. Almost all alien attacks have higher DPS than almost all weapons that humans have.

Most aliens have an alternate way other than "simply running" at a human and should use their abilities to dodge human ranged weapons. For example, the Dretch can run along walls. If a dretch doesn't have access to a wall, dodging horizontally is advised and jumping is not as jumping will give the enemy a momntarily easy-to-predict "flight path" to shoot you.

Tremulous 1.2 GPP is hardly touched so you probably won't need to worry about that.

You can find most of the actual raw values for Tremulous 1.1 here: https://github.com/ZdrytchX/tremulous-derelict/blob/master/src/game/tremulous.h

Conversion rates: 32 units = 1 meter

Aliens:

Aliens as mentioned excel in manouvrability, well except grangers. Advanced granger is still kinda fast though, and can easily out-run humans by strafe jumping. All alien classes regenerate after 2 seconds from not being damaged at a fixed rate ever second (1.1, in GPP it is done smoothly every 0.1 second). Sitting next to a booster or Tyrant (1.1) will double that healing rate. In GPP, if an alien is outside of a creep (not near an egg or overmind) they will regenerate at half rate and basilisks take the Tyrant's healing aura. Boosters and advanced basilisks provide a triple healing rate.

Aliens build timers are much quicker than Humans in terms of waiting time, however some structures will build slower than the waiting timer (e.g. their Overmind takes 30 seconds to mature (even though the build timer is 20 seconds). If an egg gets destroyed, the build points will not be returned for about 5 seconds after they have exploded. An Overmind and hovel will also not be rebuildable until about 5 seconds after it gets destroyed too. The egg, Overmind and Hovel spits out acid that lays on the ground during this time.

Build Classes:

Granger

50 HP. It's smaller and has noticibly thinner front legs compared to the advanced version. Moves at 8 m/s. Cannot walk on walls. Has no attack.

Heals 2 hp/sec

Advanced Granger

75 health, 20 damage swipe every second. Movement speed of 10 m/s and can spit a barb which will slow down humans to 50% speed, or 75% if they are using a battlesuit, dealing 4 damage before modifiers. Can walk on walls. Wallwalking is a must-have for stage-up structures such as the Trapper (floor trappers are frowned upon) and hives (which are best placed on the ceiling where they can get a headshot on a human player)

Heals 3/sec.

Dretch

Dretch guide

Difference between 1.1 and 1.2 GPP dretch is that the 1.1 dretch bite deals 48 damage. A hit to a human head in 1.1 deals double damage, leaving a human with a mere 4 hp after one head bite if he is "naked" (not wearing armour). If you are boosted (touched a booster in the last 30 seconds) you will deal poison damage, likely killing him with just one bite. A 1.1 dretch moves slower than a GPP dretch, at 13 m/s.

GPP dretch moves at 14 m/s and has a slightly bigger model (but the hitbox remains at 0.9 cubic meters) but the GPP dretch only deals 36 damage per bite, and headbites in GPP only deal 1.5x damage, dealing 54 damage to a naked human, leaving a hefty 46 health left requiring an additional headbite to kill the human.

Dretches are unique, they do not require the user to click any buttons to attack. All you need to do is get in close with a human and aim at them. Custom HUDs such as Oticz' will give you an alien crosshair making the aiming process a tad easier. Can wallwalk, and is heavily advised for new players to learn how to use wallwalk to dodge hall camping humans. It may be easier to use "auto wallwalk pitching" as seen in the settings menu.

25 hp, heals 1/sec

48 damage every 0.5sec

The following video is a guide for 1.2 GPP dretch but it more or less still applies.

Basilisk

Basilisks are kinda like sneaky assasins or a simple support class, although they aren't very sneaky in 1.1 as their footsteps, jumping and attacks makes a lot of noise. Grabbing a human prevents tem from turning 90 degrees to the side from the moment you grabbed them. Grabbing is NOT latency compensated unfortunately so it is not advised for people with a latency higher than 100 ping to use this class. In GPP, the basilisk has less health (60, 80 adv) but has double and triple regen auras respectively, and that their attack vs grab range has been reversed.

Swipe damage 32 every 0.6 sec, range 3 meters/

Grab range of 2 meters.

Can wallwalk.

Runs at 12.5 m/s.

75 hp, heals 2/sec

Adv. Basilisk

Same as above, but has 100 hp with a gas attack. Gas attack works on naked (unarmoured) humans but also by default ironically works on helmeted humans but not light armoured. This has been fixed on several 1.1 servers. The attack is instantaneous and ranged. Works through walls. Re-gassing a player that has already been gas and is already poisoned by that gas will do nothing. Gas attack will stack with poison from a booster. The gas disorientates humans with a rather severe bobbing animation.

Gas damage: 4 DPS, range 6.25 meters.

Heals 3/sec

Unfortunately there are no low latency games where I can demonstrate my use of the basilisk in Tremulous, but I did record some footage back when Unvanquished was mostly just Tremulous GPP. Fastforward to 0:27:

Marauder

A fast, nimble alien. While it can be hard to hit, it can be easily hit wit ha shotgun or mass driver if aimed at the peak of a jump or as it lands. The maruader hitbox is quite wide but it's quite low so humans may have a tendancy to overshoot it. This class has  the highest jump height in the game and specialises at wall jumping as a way to gain speed and dodge. Unlike 1.2 GPP marauder, 1.1 marauder actually jumps off walls and is harder to use. Like the class name, the marauder is the type to "run past and steal something." In tremulous that would mean health. So you basically do a lot of hit and run with this class, kinda like the Fade from Natural Selection.

150 hp, heals 4/sec

40 dmg swipe, every 0,5 second, range 3 meters.

Walking speed 12 m/s but has an air acceleration modifier of 2x so strafe jumping and walljumping with this class can gain you up to 40 m/s horizontal speed very quickly. Also can use ramps as a consecutive jump platform to launch upwards.

Adv. Marauder

Has a zap attack that must be aimed at the enemy player. Unfortunately due to shit netcode, the zap is started with latency compensation but does not continue with latency compensation so high latency users will have to stick very close and probably predict the position of the enemy as well to have the zap continue. Adv Marauder also jumps higher than the regular marauder.

Zap attack deals 80 damage over 1.5 seconds however deals only 20 damage against armour.

Health 175, heals 5/sec

Bites every 0.4 second.

Dragoon

Perhaps the most commonly used alien class in the game. Although significantly bigger than the regular Marauder, it generally feels quite tanky although can be killed by Shotguns easily as the hitbox is quite huge if not careful. The regular dragoon is avialable at stage 1 by default and is capable of instant killing stage 1 humans as humans will not have helmets. Pouncing deals up to 100 damage, or 20 damage against armour. To use a pounce, the user must aim up a bit and hold the pounce attack, then let go after at least around 0.4 seconds of holding down. Because the full charge time is only 0.7 second,s it is advised to just hold it for the full duration before releasing in most situations. Dragoons are known for destroying structures. Unlike the Advanced Dragoon, the dragoon will fit in the  space between the reactor and the ceiling on A.T.C.S.

80 damage chomp every 0.7 seconds, range 3 meters.

Health 200, heals 6/sec.

Speed 11 m/s

Adv Dragoon

The advanced dragoon has a noticeably larger hitbox to the advanced dragoon but it makes up for this with a bonus 50hp rather than 25, effecitvely survivng an extra shotgun hit. The range has also inreased to 4 meters. Pounce speed is also increased by 3 m/s. A barb attack is also included which flies at 31.25 m/s. You can timb the barbs with the time you evolved as the barbs regnerate every 10 seconds since you evolved, so you can effectivelyl rush in to lay down 4 barbs instead of 3.

Health 250, heals 7/sec

80 damage chomp every 0.6 seocnds, range 4 meters

110 damage barb every second, up to 3 barbs. Regenerates 1 barb every 10 seconds periodically.

Tyrant

The tyrant is the final class for regular Tremulous. Some mods out there like KoRx include further upgrades such as an advanced tyrant with acid bomb spits, but regular Tremulous only has one tyrant class. The tyrant is so fat that it is is prone to blocking hallways. So if you have friendlies in the same hallway, please stick to the sides to allow dragoons fleeing combat to pass you. The tyrant includes a double healing aura which works on itself passively. Because it runs at 12 m/s, you can gain quite a lot of speed through strafe jumping to the point that using the trample/charge attack becomes point less in large areas beyond ATCS size.

Heath 400, heals 7/sec (14 hp.sec with passive healing aura)

100 damage maul every 0.75 seconds, range 4 meters.

Speed 12m/sec

110 damage trample attack every 0.5 second, however assuming you can touch and un-touch soething, it has a theoretical average DPS of around 730, starting at around 1000 DPS. However practicality wise you can probably hit twice at most to a single target, dealing around 150 damage. Combined with the mauling attack you can basically rush in and instant kill one turret. Suprisingly not many people do this and prefer using the dragoon to destroy bases.

Humans

As mentioned earlier, humans excel at ranged combat. Their structures are rather tanky compared to alien structures. Build timers are a lot longer however structures will build faster than the waiting period. Reactors for example take 20 seconds to build with a 30 second wait period.

Armour

Human light armour / helmet in a nutshell modifies damage to around 30% of the initial damage, though light armour has regions ranging from 25% to 35%. Ironically despite the visual novel, the programmers got it wrong and made the back have 25% (so the human receives less damage) and haves the front receive 35% damage (receigiving more damage). A head shot from a dragoon consequently deals 48 damage. Light armour and helmet will cost you 160 credits which is rather cheap. In fact due to the way the reward system works, if you use a shotgun and basic armour, you will only feed one "evo" (frag/credits that aliens use) to the alien that deals most damage to you when you die.

Battlesuit, rather a rare upgrade due to its restrictin on what a human can do (cannot buy jetpacks or battery packs and cannot crouch) but it has a modifier of 20% so you will survive 3 head shots from the strongest alien, the Tyrant (100 damage swipe)

Weapons

Human weapons are pretty self-explainatory, but here are the following damage statistics for 1.1 servers:

Blaster: 9, shoots every 0.7 sec

Rifle: 5, 10/sec

Painsaw: 200 DPS, range of 40 units (1.25 meters, you will need to crouch to hit anything under you.)

Shotgun: 56 DPS, 4 dmg * 14 pellets every second

Lasgun: 45 DPS, 9 dmg * 5/sec. Has 100% accuracy so it's great for chasing down aliens.

Mass Driver: 38 DPS, 38 * 1/sec (One of the weakest weapons in the game, but kills dretches and grangers with ease)

Chaingun: ~75 DPS. 6 dmg * ~13/sec I can't rmemeber actual values. Good for mowing down dragoons.

Flamethrower: 100 DPS, 20dmg * 5/sec. You can burn yourself.

Pulse Rifle: 90 DPS, 9 dmg * 10/sec

Lucifer Cannon: 127.5 DPS, 255 dmg / 2 seconds. Variable, and you might be able to "rocket jump" with it if you have armour. Instant kills all aliens excep tthe Tyrant on full charge. Uses 10 ammo on full charge. If you overcharge past 2 seconds it will blow up in your face, dealing 15 damage if you are wearing full armour, basic or battlesuit.

Grenade: 310 damage, range 6 meters. Be careful when using it near friendly structures and players.

Battery pack adds 50% ammo to a clip, but rounds down (MD 5 ->7)