Marine Commander Guide
Enhance89
Join Date: 2009-11-04 Member: 69261Members
Join Date: 2009-11-04 Member: 69261Members
Hey all,
The main reason I wanted to do this is simple - I had a lot of questions when I first jumped into the commander chair. In almost every game I played there was not one experienced commander. Perhaps it was bad luck, I'm not sure. Either way this should help those of you are familiar with the old game and unfamiliar with the changes made. I just wanted to get this out there quickly to help people like myself.
Introduction: There are several major and minor changes that have taken place from Natural Selection (NS) to Natural Selection 2 (NS2). This guide is not a definitive way of commanding and is purely a subjective and informative take on the new NS and how to effectively command your marines. Furthermore, this guide won’t tell you how to win. It will however lay the basics down for being a marine commander. Most importantly, it will address major changes made to gameplay.
Also, I realize there are significant holes, possible misinformation, missing tactics and things I forgot. Please post corrections or comments and I will update the OP as necessary.
Starting out: First and foremost, a good commander is a good listener. Never take your marines for granted and always remember to keep an eye out for notifications that appear on screen.
Once you’ve entered the command chair, immediately build an Infantry Portal (IP) close to the commander chair. In my experience if you have five or fewer marines on your team only build one IP. If you have six or more, it is a safe bet that you will need at least two IPs. Once the IP is up, the armory is the next important thing to build.
Once the IP(s) and armory are up, it’s time to start sending your marines out. If you can keep one marine at the starting point for now, as you should try and get an observation tower up as soon as possible.
Getting resources: You can’t expect to win unless you control as many extractor points as possible (the little resources holes sporadically placed around the map). In NS2 you are required to activate power nodes in various sections of the map in order to build turrets and extractors (formerly known as resource nodes). Gone are the days of building a turret factory everywhere if you want turrets.
A brand new addition to the game is the power pack, which is one of the drop-down menus in the command console in the bottom right of your screen. In some areas of a map, power nodes are broken and can’t supply power to an area. Therefore you need to drop a power pack (and have a marine build it) in order to supply power to extractors and turrets in a given area. If you ever see that equipment you have dropped and had built isn’t working, and there’s no power node on the map, then you will probably need a power pack. But remember, both the power nodes and packs can be destroyed so you must keep an eye on these.
Once you have marine start set, send out your marines to start getting those extractors closest to you built. It’s tough to keep two squads organized in a public match, so it’s best to have your marines stick together in my opinion. This game may have the ability to assign marines to squads; unfortunately, I haven’t played enough yet to know how to do this.
Taking control: After the IPs and armory are built in the marine start, and the observation tower, I recommend upgrading your armory to an advanced armory by clicking on the armory and upgrading it. As soon as this is complete, build an arms lab. An arms lab is responsible for increasing marine weapon damage and armor strength. (Don’t forget – in order to get shotguns and flamethrowers you need to research them in the armory. This should be done as soon as possible as well, the shotguns most importantly).
A robotics factory is also a good choice at this time. Robotics factories allow you to build turrets, MACS and ARCS. I’m not sure what an ARC does yet, but a MAC can build and repair equipment for you wherever you need it to. Therefore if you have one of these in base, you don’t have to keep a marine there to build anything like you had to NS.
Once you have the arms lab up, begin researching upgrades by clicking the arms lab and upgrading both weapons and armor. I recommend doing one weapon, then one armor, and repeating until you have researched them to capacity.
At this point the game becomes a chess match. You must take over extractor points and destroy alien hives. Make sure your marines go where you need them to and make sure they stick together. This guide won’t go into this for now as this is extremely subjective and time consuming.
Final tips and info:
1) Welders = non-existent. Only MACS (from the robotics factory) can repair equipment.
2) Marines can now get weapons, health and armor regeneration from the armory. Weapons cost marines their own personal res, so you don’t have to worry about dropping weapons anymore.
3) MACS are your friend. Use them instead of wasting a marine’s time.
4) LEARN KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS. You may notice a letter next to everything in the command console. It means that when you hit that letter on the keyboard, that specific tab or equipment can be selected. This is a great way to speed up reaction time and save marine lives. Also, if you know them well, you can drop everything important you need right at the beginning of a round.
5) New item – power packs. As mentioned earlier, some places don’t have a power node or if they do it’s broken. You must build a power pack in that area in order for equipment to work.
6) Phase gates are a great way to transport marines quickly from one area to another. They’re not an absolute necessity, but they are a good investment later in the game when you’re trying to destroy the alien start and don’t want your marines having to back track all the time.
<b>Also, if you just have general questions, this would probably be a good place to ask.</b>
The main reason I wanted to do this is simple - I had a lot of questions when I first jumped into the commander chair. In almost every game I played there was not one experienced commander. Perhaps it was bad luck, I'm not sure. Either way this should help those of you are familiar with the old game and unfamiliar with the changes made. I just wanted to get this out there quickly to help people like myself.
Introduction: There are several major and minor changes that have taken place from Natural Selection (NS) to Natural Selection 2 (NS2). This guide is not a definitive way of commanding and is purely a subjective and informative take on the new NS and how to effectively command your marines. Furthermore, this guide won’t tell you how to win. It will however lay the basics down for being a marine commander. Most importantly, it will address major changes made to gameplay.
Also, I realize there are significant holes, possible misinformation, missing tactics and things I forgot. Please post corrections or comments and I will update the OP as necessary.
Starting out: First and foremost, a good commander is a good listener. Never take your marines for granted and always remember to keep an eye out for notifications that appear on screen.
Once you’ve entered the command chair, immediately build an Infantry Portal (IP) close to the commander chair. In my experience if you have five or fewer marines on your team only build one IP. If you have six or more, it is a safe bet that you will need at least two IPs. Once the IP is up, the armory is the next important thing to build.
Once the IP(s) and armory are up, it’s time to start sending your marines out. If you can keep one marine at the starting point for now, as you should try and get an observation tower up as soon as possible.
Getting resources: You can’t expect to win unless you control as many extractor points as possible (the little resources holes sporadically placed around the map). In NS2 you are required to activate power nodes in various sections of the map in order to build turrets and extractors (formerly known as resource nodes). Gone are the days of building a turret factory everywhere if you want turrets.
A brand new addition to the game is the power pack, which is one of the drop-down menus in the command console in the bottom right of your screen. In some areas of a map, power nodes are broken and can’t supply power to an area. Therefore you need to drop a power pack (and have a marine build it) in order to supply power to extractors and turrets in a given area. If you ever see that equipment you have dropped and had built isn’t working, and there’s no power node on the map, then you will probably need a power pack. But remember, both the power nodes and packs can be destroyed so you must keep an eye on these.
Once you have marine start set, send out your marines to start getting those extractors closest to you built. It’s tough to keep two squads organized in a public match, so it’s best to have your marines stick together in my opinion. This game may have the ability to assign marines to squads; unfortunately, I haven’t played enough yet to know how to do this.
Taking control: After the IPs and armory are built in the marine start, and the observation tower, I recommend upgrading your armory to an advanced armory by clicking on the armory and upgrading it. As soon as this is complete, build an arms lab. An arms lab is responsible for increasing marine weapon damage and armor strength. (Don’t forget – in order to get shotguns and flamethrowers you need to research them in the armory. This should be done as soon as possible as well, the shotguns most importantly).
A robotics factory is also a good choice at this time. Robotics factories allow you to build turrets, MACS and ARCS. I’m not sure what an ARC does yet, but a MAC can build and repair equipment for you wherever you need it to. Therefore if you have one of these in base, you don’t have to keep a marine there to build anything like you had to NS.
Once you have the arms lab up, begin researching upgrades by clicking the arms lab and upgrading both weapons and armor. I recommend doing one weapon, then one armor, and repeating until you have researched them to capacity.
At this point the game becomes a chess match. You must take over extractor points and destroy alien hives. Make sure your marines go where you need them to and make sure they stick together. This guide won’t go into this for now as this is extremely subjective and time consuming.
Final tips and info:
1) Welders = non-existent. Only MACS (from the robotics factory) can repair equipment.
2) Marines can now get weapons, health and armor regeneration from the armory. Weapons cost marines their own personal res, so you don’t have to worry about dropping weapons anymore.
3) MACS are your friend. Use them instead of wasting a marine’s time.
4) LEARN KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS. You may notice a letter next to everything in the command console. It means that when you hit that letter on the keyboard, that specific tab or equipment can be selected. This is a great way to speed up reaction time and save marine lives. Also, if you know them well, you can drop everything important you need right at the beginning of a round.
5) New item – power packs. As mentioned earlier, some places don’t have a power node or if they do it’s broken. You must build a power pack in that area in order for equipment to work.
6) Phase gates are a great way to transport marines quickly from one area to another. They’re not an absolute necessity, but they are a good investment later in the game when you’re trying to destroy the alien start and don’t want your marines having to back track all the time.
<b>Also, if you just have general questions, this would probably be a good place to ask.</b>
Comments
First off, relo's are still possible and viable in NS2, and there are some excellent locations to relocate to. Unfortunately it is also very high risk. If you are going to pull off a relo you need to yell at your marines to march straight to the destination, no loitering at base, no building IPs (if your marines die on the way to the relo it's game over anyway).
Either way, my build order is generally:
- IP
- armory
- cap some nodes
- shotgun upgrade
- obs + phase tech
- robotics factory
(at this stage I start locking down tech points with phase gates and turrets)
- arms lab, depending on wether fades are out or not I will generally do armour 1 then weapons 1.
- probably upgrade the armoury now and get flamers to combat fades.
then as you said it's just a matter of teching up and gaining ground.
I would say phase gates are essential in holding lots of key areas and should be one of the earliest techs to research. The good thing about phase gates is that it allows you to continuously pressure key areas with rapid transport of marines. As a commander your primary goal is to stop aliens from getting a second hive (thus enabling fades), once the second hive is up the battle becomes much more difficult.
Generally what I do when a hive is found to be in contruction is send all of my marines to it with shotguns. Hives have little health when they are first built so the quicker your marines get there the better. YOu will also find that they are quite undefended because there is no infestation down yet in order to build crags, whips etc.
Why? Aliens have melee 2 after 2 min (atleast when I am com).
A marine with armor 0 is down with 1 Para and 1 Bite then!
A better Buil order is (my opinion and expiriences):
-IP
-IP
-Armory
-RT
-Armslab
-Armor 1
-SG
-RT
-Armor 2
-Robolab
-Weapons 1
-AA
-(flamers as soon as is hear a Fade, always having res for flamer as soon as i got AA, I want to prevent Marines using Flamer till a Fade comes, I know it is strange, but there is a reason)
-Obs
-Phasetech
-Weapons 2
-Armor 3
-Weapons 3
-GL
-Mac speed
-IP
-IP
-IP
-IP
It is important to build logical.
For Summi as an example.
Place the thing on the right side of the com chair. And build it so tgat the marines just have to look right when they spawn to see the Armory,Phasegate, Armslab, Obs and the Power node.
And try to build so that buildings that don't interact but are important (Armbslab, Obs, RoboLab) close to each other.
And never forget to have enough Powerpacks and your Obs has scan so use it!
Get sometimes out of the CS and look at your base and walk a bit around to find blindspots and stucking ares to correct them, and having best cover from Lerks and less but more effective sentrys!
And place the PG's at Walls and turn the Front (blue half circle) so that when you enter the 1. PG you get out right at the 2. PG and the same with all the others and use the natural corners to have best cover for the PG.
Think about the correct placing of sentrys! Always use more than 2 sentrys! Use geometri to place the sentrys (for covering bigger areas) like a triangle, Square, pentagon, hexagon....
A simple line of sentrys (unlike in NS1) is weak.
Correct placement of buildings is one of the most important things. A chaos will cause chaos and big Problems in mobility of Marines and NPCs!
The resource node in crossroads on summit doesn't work without a power pack, there's no power in that area, so all the people who drop that extractor, remember to power it.