I want to preface this with a disclaimer that opinions on ideal cades are going to differ and some things are actually very situational. You can’t rely on rote memorization to make good cadelines, you need to be smart and adapt them as necessary.
For the past couple rounds I’ve been spending some time taking screenshots of people’s cadelines and criticizing them in mspaint. I wanted to share these mspaint masterpieces in the CM louvre for everyone to enjoy, and also so I can blow hot air for awhile and explain why I like or do not like certain cade designs.
Our first cade is actually excellent. I’d barely change anything. Maybe also remove the solaris sign and move that doorway up one tile.
This next cade has a few more quibbles. A couple doors ought to be moved, and the entire wall in the back should go (but you don’t always have time to do that). Pushing the left cadeline south slightly improves line of sight and traffic flow.
This is still pretty good. I’ve got some confusing orange circles about not caring about something - I’ll get into that more later. These cades continue to show good non-interfering traffic flow. Xenos crawling through holes in the wall will find themselves trapped and probably dead if anyone happens to be at the cadeline when they climb through - strictly speaking a better situation than flush to the wall so long as the cadeline is manned.
A door should be placed at the top doorway to make travelling easier.
This cadeline is OK at the bottom, but the top needs a LOT of work. Walls need to be destroyed, and a throughway needs to be created. This spot on solaris is always attacked by xenos, so it’s VERY important that it gets opened up. 3-tile doorway in this spot really isn’t necessary, but it does still see a fair amount of traffic so it’s not bad.
Don’t go under 2 doorways though, and don’t do 2 doorways spaced a mile apart from each other (I’ll get into that more later).
Once again funny orange circle…
This cadeline should have the doorway offset (moved north), and can be pushed west without any big issue, although ideally you would spend more metal and build further outwards, not stopping just at the doorway. It depends on how much you want to spend on this spot.
The red scribbled containers block the 2 cades marked with red X’s. Either those cades should be put somewhere else, or the empty spots beside them should be filled in to complete the cadeline. This halfway situation is actually the worst possible for it to be - either the mats on those cades are wasted, or the containers get destroyed and there’s a gaping hole in the cadeline now.
Here we see how you should protect an omni-turret. I see this a lot, and I understand what people are trying to do - but the problem is that the mechanics don’t work like you all think they do. Wired cades do not prevent xenos from attacking over the cade. These sentries will always die faster being slashed directly over the cade, than if the xeno slashes the cade first and then the sentry - so guess what? Xenos always just slash the sentry, kill it, and move on - leaving the cades behind as they didn’t actually do anything.
For this reason you should always create a space around the sentry as shown (with side benefit being safer for medics) as this FORCES xenos to go through the cade first, and THEN the sentry. YES it’s 3x more expensive, it’s also 3x more effective. Please always try to do this and never the 4 tile cade.
If you don’t have the time, or the mats, just don’t cade the sentry at all. Upgrade its HP 20% with 5 metal and move on; a couple marines near a sentry is almost as good as a cadeline anyway, and pfc’s and medics tend to stand around sentries because they are safer than not standing around sentries.
This cadeline is pretty good at the back, but very bad at the front. Please do not ever evenly space doors on high traffic cadelines like this. In my next image I will articulate why:
At the bottom of the image you can see what happens to spaced out doorways when 20 marines all try to get through them at once. It’s a disaster. You know it’s a disaster, you’ve been in this situation before and you’ve died because of it. You want to avoid this as much as possible and stick with 2 or 3 tile doors anywhere there’s a lot of traffic.
This gets into another reason that evenly spaced or centred doorways often suck: They hamper traffic flow and the attack angles of marines on the cadeline.
Here’s how we can improve the above cadeline. Traffic flow is smoother - there’s less cross traffic for dumb reasons (I want to get ammo, I want to see a medic, I am flouride staring and wandering aimlessly). When someone is running to the doors, it is easier for people on the cadeline to shoot aliens following, because they are off at a wider angle.
With doors offset like this, you can have a squad leader preparing a charge on the left side, without interfering with anyone on the cadeline firing from the right side. When the left side pushes out, the right side can offer supporting and covering fire without interference, and has more time to stop firing if it might cause friendly fire.
Here we see again, 2 doorways, but on opposite sides of the cadeline. This often results in shuffling at the doors, and shuffling people in the middle trying to shoot. People in the middle also have a shallower angle against aliens chasing someone heading for the doors, making helping more difficult and friendly fire more common.
Now if we offset the doors and put them together we:
- Improve firing angles for marines on the cadeline
- Increase traffic throughput through 2 doors instead of 1 door that may cause a traffic jam
Finally we get back around to why I was circling spots in orange earlier. There is a very common belief that having cadelines flush with a wall, as you see here, is extremely bad and of no benefit whatsoever.
I actually disagree with this, but I know I’m not about to change minds.
Here is the classic “ideal” cadeline, which moves it back 1 tile so a xeno cannot sit behind the wall and safely slash the cade - only, wait a second. That is still exactly what they do.
There is no meaningful difference between a cadeline set 1 back and a cadeline that’s flush with the wall, because a xeno is fast enough to come around that corner and slash with you hardly being able to do anything about it, and even if you do land a buckshot PB, it’s a tile away from immediate safety anyway.
No, no. There is a better way to do this…
Don’t move the tile back 1 space. Move it back 3+ tiles. The further back, the better. This exposes the xeno for much, much, much longer. Now getting slugged or buckshot is lethal. Getting grenaded is lethal. Running at that HPR to fling them is lethal. Only T3’s can hit this cade and get back relatively safely.
And if you want to expand the cadeline - don’t build in the tunnel. Build outside it. Eliminate the corner camping xeno’s advantage by exposing the corner to gunfire with a cadeline that’s pushed out. There are still unfortunate blindspots, but they’re MUCH riskier to occupy and you have MUCH better sightlines everywhere.
