How do they do it? Those crazy skulks that jump around, take about 2 bullets and then shred your pathetic body? Those fades that slowly chip away at a squad of shotgunners seemingly unscathed? How do they do it? How do they avoid those deadly shots?

Here's a little secret I've heard from the pro's and discovered myself. People for some reason tend to have their worst aim in the up-down direction. Side to side tracking... bah that's in every fps. Circle strafing (and the aim to counter it) can be found in cs, dod, tfc, hldm, unreal tourney... you name it. Ns is one of the few that involves major up and down tracking. That's my theory why people aren't so good at it.

So how do you put this to good use? Take major advantage of the up and down. One good thing to do is (best example is the hallway near ms in daimos) is to leap to the other side of a doorway (the side away from marines), and then drop down. They have trouble hitting the fast leaping skulk going UP (and towards them), and then the skulk dropping DOWN to bite them.

In short, marines hate it when you climb up the wall and then jump off. It's hard to hit, especially when you're rotating every which way.

Another use of leap and up and downness is to jump WAY above a marine, and then land on his head and bite him. They have so much trouble hitting you. You don't spend much time aiming with your crosshair 90 degrees to the ground do you? That's right.

Another example. Those crazy fades that blink up and down. It's in one of the fade guides floating around here - when you're in trouble, blink UP, and then to safety. And I saw the idea of blinking up and down around this forum a while ago.

And my final example... lerks. A lot of good ones do a big wave up and down while they fly at you, then swoop DOWN very fast and bite you. I can only get these guys with shotty shots up close.

Did I mention as an added bonus that when you leap/blink pointing up, you get more distance thanks to the way arcs work?

So there you are. I'm sure those marines will be 22.4% more owned thanks to your reading of this guide. Actually more of a tip. I'm sure you can think of many situations where this is useful. Dinnertime!

Good guild! I have trouble shooting up and down too :/ I hate it when lerks fly above your head and bite you and then you die...

While its certainly usefull to do it, it's not possible in most situation. Most ceiling are so low that your fade might get stuck instead of avoid bullets... Thats why im using significant fade vertical movement only in some "safe" locations.

Try leap-bunny hop and blink-bunny hop to gain awesome speeds

Actually, I have the most trouble shooting side to side rather than up and down.

A most memorable occasion involved me plastering a skulk in mid upwards leap while moving my mouse right to the center mass.

Actually good players don't become less effective no matter which way you aim. Moving my crosshair is moving my crosshair for me.



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The best way to stay outta the crosshair is to make big movements, as most players have low sensitivities. Leaping over a marine's head, and then leaping back over him, and leaping again... etc. confuses the hell out of a marine and makes it very difficult to kill you.

It isn't just a matter of moving up and down. It's easy to track someone moving horizontally or vertically, but when you start moving both ways, i.e. bunny hop/leap from side to side while moving forward, it's very nearly impossible (for me anyway) to trace you. So...never run straight at someone unless they are running the other way and you have silence (in ns unlike cs, nubs hardly ever look behind themselves on account of moving slower. take advantage of this!!); never run straight at someone while jumping; never run from side to side at someone without jumping. Always run from side to side while jumping at someone. Also, celerity is your friend.

\
hop
/
hop
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munch

My point is simply that dodging up and down is more effective than side to side. As a bonus you can often use doorways for cover.

Buy Tribes 2.
Play Tribes 2.
Get good at Tribes 2.
Pwnz0r anything that can fly or move quickly in NS.

Houston Vehicles 4 lyfe.

(In Tribes 2, every character has a jetpack. Battles take place in wide open spots and everyone's flying around, shooting spinfusors [explosive blue frisbees, lol] and chainwhoring. It's amazing target practice. So is killing Whichbots in 100 grav on NS )

Yeah I still play T2 from time to time... ah the good old times... *sigh*

Nice little tip you got there... and I think it's quite easy to explain why some players have worse aiming up-down than left-right: they move their mouse limp-wristed. With your wrist lying on the mousemat moving and controlling the mouse up-down can be more difficult because you have a smaller "range".
But of course just dodging up-down instead of left-right will not raise your chances to survive that much... be random, use cover and (depending on the situation) get close to the enemy so you can get out of his sight with minimal movement.

Oh and please mark this day in the calendar as the day Forlon disagreed with something without using the word "skill" in his reply

I would say that T2 is very different.. no hit-scan weapons.. well ok, laser.. but still different from say lmg :-)
I like T2, but Quake3 seems more similar and better for target practice..

Heh I play cs and ns with a sensitivity of 11!! I never have a problem of getting circle strafed, and I can still hit those headshots pretty well.

your hl sensitivity is unique to you and only you. someone may have sens 5, the other guy something like 20, yet both mouses behave the same.

yeah...I was gonna say that...There's also your mouse sensitivity in windows too

Trying to hit aliens in AVP makes for good target practise as well.

Regardless of the numbers, I do have a high sens for hl players. Friends have to tune it way down after I play.

HL sensitivity is same on different systems if you use HL command line switches everyone should use anyway (I dont remember them exactly, I dont have HL on this PC, something like -nomaccel, -noforcemparms and etc..)

Here's a little secret: you can't aim straight up (since they locked cl_pitchup and cl_pitchdown) - at the 89th degree you have to literally turn around or move slightly to accomodate for the target's position. This doesn't seem very significant, but because marines have to turn around to aim, you can exploit this with little tricks.

The skulk is too fragile to the tricks don't do much good unless you have leap and aren't hit badly when you manage to pull this off. Leap over the marine's head but hold your backpedal key so that you end up right above the marine's head as he turns around. Then simply bite and continue moving forwards (where he just looked). Now, the marine will either try to move out of the way or he'll do another 180 to try to find you. By this time you'll have at least 3 bites in.

Same idea can be used with fade and lerk.

However, the whole bit about dodging a whole squad of shotgunners.. that's either bad shooting or bad hitboxes.

two solutions:
1. go onos (bullets don't matter any more)
2. get cloaking (don't walk right into them though)

cloaking is great for ppl that have low skill
and makes em deadly still. Moving to fast obviously makes the hl engine react bad for hit boxes, along with ping. And shotguns do make 0 damages shot sometimes especialy on celerity anything. Shooting up and down is harder maybe yes maybe no, but the things the way are now, i have to shoot before when a fade goes up and down, to get a clear shot. On skulk leaping i got 4 zero damage shot in a row from my shotgun, and yes it sucks...well not for lucky ppl

One tip when playing as skulk is to try and curve your leaps, for a gentle curve hold left or right strafe and your forwards key, and for a sharp curve use only the strafe after the initial leap, this kind of movement is harder to aim t than a skulk just leaping in a straight line.

Also i find using leap or blink to close even small distances is much more effective than jumping, after the first bite try leaping/blinking up then back down again, you'll find you can kill marines while taking minimal damage, this does require practising leap/bite blink/slash to do well though.

Stop the mouse sensitivity! NOooo!!!

In CS forums this is a discussion ALL THE TIME. Make it stop!

Many good players surprisngly have a problem shooting skulks which are simply strafing left and right very quickly, or circle strafing whilst staying stuck on the ground around the marine.

Up and down pose no problem to me, side to side does, its harder to track/predict.

Also dont get caught up in trying to learn bunnyhopping - as a skulk , being able to bunnyhop well means nothing if you cant track a marine effeciently and hit him with most your bite attempts. Bunnyhoppin is nice, but it isnt essential, and sometimes just concentrating on killing the marine as quickly as possible rather than concentrating on dodging bullets is the difference between life and death as a skulk.

A skulk who can bunnyhop or dodge bullets well isnt necessarily a good one.

lol my y axis aim is so easy with my supermat :>

Try to kill a whichbot lerk flying round your head and stucking you , is really annoying, good practice btw