The Comprehensive Guide to Ns2 Commanding

chickenboy · May 2012

A Comprehensive guide to Ns2 Commanding
Intro
The role of the Commander in Ns2 is the most essential role to both teams, and in most games it is the skill level of the commander which decides whether your team wins or loses.

Because of that, this guide will not only have the up to date strategies which commanders can use, but will also detail how to command your army, because a lot of newer commanders seem to only build buildings and get upgrades, which is not effective commanding, and many of these games lead to quick losses, with no obvious explanation.

The real role of the commander is to lead. As a commander you need to be talking to your team and directing them around the map, telling them your strategy and how you will complete it, and constantly changing tactics/strategy as the game progresses.

Both Commanders

How to command

Commanding in ns2 takes a lot of skill and it is no easy feat to be able to lead a group of random strangers on the internet.
But, it can be done and as you get better at the simple leadership skills of talking to random people and getting them to attack/defend/build/etc, you massively improve the chances of your team winning. The reason why these skills help teams win is because a team which is in the know and has a plan on how to deal with the other side as well as working together instead of individually makes such a huge difference that often it can mean a weaker skilled or less player team can defeat a better one.

Having played a huge amount of games (both as com and not) i would even go on to argue that games are won more by the leadership of the commander of a team then by the individual skill levels of the players as if the team is coordinated and always has marines/aliens defending and attacking at the same time it is a lot harder for opposing team members to make up for it in just pure "skill".

Here is a quick example game,

<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KIADZbQUmyo"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KIADZbQUmyo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIADZbQUmyo" target="_blank">First Example Game</a>

In the game I constantly direct the marines around the map, organise the attacks, tell my team members about the enemy and keep my team informed about my strategy and what upgrades, weapons I was getting. I did also do the standard commander jobs eg giving ammo/meds, getting upgrades and making structures, but what really got the team together and gave the marines such strong attacks was the teamwork, which came from the constant â€œcommandingâ€ by the commander.

For new players or those not to experienced with commanding it can be daunting, this is why there are so many commanders who say not a single word and build everything, as the pressure of being a commander can be intense, as you have to concentrate on all the players on the map while worrying about tech/structures and your strategy.

It is even possible to command without a microphone, as this game shows here

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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeBSYVEzeDM" target="_blank">Second Example Game</a>

This game had a commander with no microphone , however just with a couple of text comments we were successful in multiple attacks on the alien team, showing not all commanders need a microphone to lead.

My tips for commanding can be broken down into these 4 ideas.

1. Always be commanding
What this means is that the commander should always be organising the team at all points in the game or as much as possible. Doing this in practice can be as simple as using waypoints for your marines, quickly typing into chat things like â€œhold at sub accessâ€ or by using a microphones to tell your team what to do.

Keeping your team organised by telling them what to do, what your strategy is and telling them where to go will always make your team more effective and you will feel the benefits the moment you start making sure the team is more organised.
However it can be difficult sometimes to â€œkeep goingâ€, I have played many games where my team had started losing and there was not much hope left, at these points you may lock up and stop directing the team. This loss of leadership can nail the coffin on your team, and it can take many losses before you can control your likelihood of freezing up.

2. Stay in touch with your team

As the game is played with random strangers on the internet, getting people to follow commands is a lot harder due to everyone being anonymous. This can lead to people simply not following direct orders which can quickly lead to the team being in disarray and nothing getting done.
To make sure people follow your lead, you have to do things like:

- Use the usernames of people. because saying "guy in repair go to logistics" is never as direct as "Acedude get to logistics" , this makes your team members feel important, and also alert them to you telling them what you want them to do, both of these factors make it much more likely that the person will do what you ask them to, and also creates a much friendlier team atmosphere, which is important to keep the morale of the team up.

- Reward your teammates when they do well, simply telling a marine who has somehow killed a fade 1on1 that theyâ€™ve done a great job and have helped the team, gives a friendly team spirit atmosphere which improves the morale of the team. This in turn leads to people following your lead more often, as they have more respect for you as their commander.

3. Keep calm and carry on

If someone doesnâ€™t listen (or canâ€™t hear you), donâ€™t give up instantly on trying to tell them what they need to do, but try to not blow a fuse and rage out at them, or the complete opposite and just forget what you wanted them to do.

As you command the team, you will start to realise which team members are more responsive and you must use this information well. You must be constantly re-organising the team and shifting tactics slightly when team members donâ€™t listen or run of to do their own thing at all points in the game to accommodate your team dying/not listening to orders/ being afk.

Another virtue is to never lose your cool while playing as the commander, either at your own team or at the game (lol balance!). Not only do these make the morale of the team plummet when you do them, but it is much harder to get back into leader mode when you start raging out. If people donâ€™t listen out of their own choice, use this information well, and lead the ones who will listen, the community for ns2 is strong and you will find the most of the time the people in the games are willing to be led only if you do a good job of leading them. Be strong and assertive, but never rage out against the nubs and the Rambos.

4. Have a long term plan

Keep a long term strategy in mind and work towards it, as you are the only one on the team with the power to upgrade tech and make buildings. So, be it a push with grenade launchers, defending your side of the map with turrets or even just waiting to see where the next hive goes down for a distress beacon rush get a plan together, and tell your team how you will accomplish it and what you are working towards. This kind of leadership shows you are a capable commander, and your team are more likely to respect you if you at least act like you know what you are doing.

Main Ideas of Ns2

There are a few main ideas in Ns2, and they revolve around the core mechanics of taking and holding territory and resources towers. These ideas are fundamental, and donâ€™t change from patch to patch, so they are good ideas to keep in mind when thinking up your plan.
Pushing is when you send out your team members to attack enemy or neutral territory. In practice this could be as simple as a marine getting a resource tower up in an area close by, or a huge alien skulk rush against the marine base.
When you do push, what you need to think about is how the enemy team will respond to the push, what the push achieves, and whether the cost is worth it. If you waste a marine but kill a harvester, it was worth it. However, killing a load of cysts and 2 harvesters but losing 5 arcs may not be worth it, as you canâ€™t now make a strong push onto an alien hive.

Holding is simply keeping your areas guarded, and is something that not many commanders think to often about, but is very worth mentioning. For example when marines push next to an alien hive, they are â€œdefending the areas behind them as no alien will attack res nodes when the hive may die to a marine assault. Thinking about defence and sometimes leaving marines/skulks to defend certain rooms or chokepoints can dramatically increases your teams chances for winning, because entrenched units are a lot tougher to kill. This is why when a gorge puts down hydras to defend an area, this is holding, and the aliens enjoy having map control this way. Marines however very rarely hold areas with just marines, most opt for just mines and/or turrets or nothing at all. I urge commanders to reconsider, as keeping marines back to defend chokepoints or rooms can hold a lot of the map and create chances for attacks when the marines kill the aliens attacking them.
Without any sort of holding, commanders can often over push, which leads to the marines dying as they over commit and attack an alien hive. Then because the resource towers for the marines are now no longer â€œdefendedâ€ by the marines push, they just get taken down as the marines run back to them from spawn.
In conclusion keeping marines/aliens in certain areas to hold them, is a very important idea as it can keep resource towers guarded, waste the enemies time as they attack your entrenched guys, gives your team map control and makes your team more mobile as they are at the frontlines of the map.

Scouting is simply the act of finding out what your opponent has. Managing to see a hive drop the moment it goes down, can pretty much guarantee a free kill, and in general scouting means you know where the enemy is, which can lead to new attack options as some areas of the map may be completely unguarded from assault. EG knowing the enemy is caught up on the other side of the map might mean your guys can push in another area, with little to no resistance.
Finally, telling your team where the enemies are is very helpful, and I have saved many lives by telling them where aliens were or how many marines were incoming, as it gives your team time to prepare or where they should be looking for enemies.

Infestation and power nodes
There are quite a few important mechanics in ns2 that you need to know about as the commander, two of which are Infestation and Power.
For the Marines, Power nodes are located in every room; they have to be sockected for marine structures to work in those areas. They are essentially nothing but a weak point for the marines, as the only use of power nodes are to â€œpowerâ€ marine structures. Keeping an eye on power is vital in rooms with lots of marines structures (e.g. the marine start) because if they go down, not having the use of Infantry portals/observerties for 15 seconds can easily destroy a marine team, so make sure to tell marines to repair or defend them when necessary. As a commander you can also try blocking the power node from attack using buildings, a well placed robotics bay can stop one or two Onos from walking into your base and taking out your power node.

For the Aliens, Infestation is a kind of gooey muck spread out on the ground and comes from cysts and hives, the purpose of infestation is to be alien territory, as the alien team can only build on infestation, as a commander you must cyst towards areas before being able to place resource towers/structures down. Infestation also gives aliens a small boost to regeneration, and marines often attack any cysts they see, alerting you to their presence.
If infestation is no longer present under alien structures, that structure will start to die very quickly until infestation is spread underneath it. Keep this in mind, because many harvesters can die simply due to forgetting to replace cysts which marines have killed.

Team Resources, Personal Resources and Energy

A very important concept in ns2 is resources, which come in two forms, Team resources and Personal resources. There is also another resource called energy, but this is unaffected by the amount of resource towers your team has.

Personal resources are used for individual needs, be it evolving into another alien species or buying weapons. Commanders have next to no need for them, but it is good to keep in mind the cost for certain things, for example, at the 50 pres mark, a lot of aliens go fade and this changes the game in favour of the aliens. So as a commander, having people saving up for onos/gl rushes can be important, in practice you will have people saving anyway, but keep in mind your res flow, as your team might run low on pres if you do not try to hold onto res nodes for long enough.

You get 0.25 P.res every 8 seconds for each Resource tower running.

Team resources are the Commander only resource; they are used for all manner of upgrades for the entire team, and are used for all the structures in the game (excluding the gorges buildings) It is very important to keep track of your Team resources, because if you accidently spend too much res, and lose a couple of extractors, it can cause you to become res locked, this is when you have one extractor and the time it takes to get any more up put you back so much against the enemy team. In general, keeping at least 3 resource towers online at all times is very preferable, any more res nodes should be thought about, as they can either boost your income a lot or simply get destroyed by the enemy straight after being built at the frontline.

You get 1 T.res every 8 seconds for each Resource tower running.

An important thing to note is that a resource tower costs 10 T.res, this means it take 80 seconds for a resource tower to make even, and start giving resources back to the team. So when taking resource towers, consider if you can hold it for 80 seconds, otherwise just donâ€™t build it and save the res.

Energy is the last resource in Ns2, it is used for structure abilities, like for example the nutrient mist which uses hive energy and scan which uses observatory energy. Keeping tabs on energy can sometimes be important, for example not having enough for a distress beacon when the entire alien team base rushes can be an auto-lose is many cases, but also the opposite as having full energy on a structure shows you arenâ€™t using it to its full potential. Most energy uses are powers like nano-shield, nutrient mist and scan, and they all help the team a lot when you use them, so remember to keep tabs on spending energy.

Alien structure maturity

Alien structures "mature" over time, as they mature they slowly increase their max hp, which means newly built alien structures are a lot easier to kill then mature ones. This is less of a thing you can change, but you can increase the rate of maturity a little bit by using nutrient mist as a alien commander. Some alien structures such as the hive use maturity in more ways than just max hp increase. The hive needs to be mature (100% maturity) for the alien team to upgrade augmentations. The whip also must be mature before you can upgrade it with bombard.
Because of this, knowing which hive is mature can make a difference as the marine commander, as killing the mature hive can give your team a significant advantage, as the other hive will be weaker.

Marine equipment

The marines have only one unit type that can be out on the field (the marine), what they spend p-res on is solely equipment,
this makes them a little less versatile then the aliens, as they cannon't "un-buy" something that they purchase, but also means
that the stuff do buy are quite powerful, however all equipment have specific roles, and most do not overlap making tech choices
a big thing to consider as the marine and alien commanders.

Rifle - This is the bread and butter of the marines, and it comes standard to all marines. A good strong weapon which can take on any alien in combat,the rifle is versatile and reliable, and groups of marines wielding rifles with focus fire can defeat any alien threat with ease.
The alternate fire swings the weapon forward, doing minor damage but knocking away skulks, normally leading to the skulks demise as you fire upon them. Cost â€“ Free

Pistol - The standard side arm that goes with every marine, it can do great dps when spam fired and has high accuracy, but it is mainly a backup weapon when out of ammo or when you want to save on ammo. Its alternate fire increases its damage but lowers its rate of fire, making it better for whittling away alien structures from afar, if you have the time for it. Cost â€“ Free

Switch-axe - The melee weapon which comes with every marine, does the highest dps to alien structures of all the marine weapons, but is almost useless when fighting aliens one-on-one unless as a last resort. Having said that, fully upgraded marines with 3 armor and 3 weapons can kill skulks one-on-one in melee with the axe. Cost â€“ Free

Mine - A utility piece of equipment for the marines, researched at the armory and costing 10 p-res for a stack of 3 mines, they are a superb tool for defending res towers and pushing into enemy territory, as a couple of mines can simply kill enemy skulks, giving breathing room for attacks or defending out of way resource towers.Cost â€“ 15 Pres

Welder - Another utility piece of equipment for the marines, this is a simple tool that can fix marine armor and marine structures. A good tool for attacking marines as well, having marines welding each other when out of combat can save lives as well as t-res for dropping armories, as well as that, it becomes essential when aliens try to break base power nodes/ command stations.Cost â€“ 5 Pres

Shotgun - A superb close quarters combat weapon, the shotgun excels in fighting anything that comes to close but it does have drawbacks. The main ones are the firing delay and (because it is beta) hit registration. Having said that, when the shotgun is in the hands of a skilled (or lucky) marine, fades,lerks,skulks,gorges and even onos and be hit with a ton of pressure and get killed of very easily, due to the burst damage of the shotgun which can suprise many aliens in close range.Cost â€“ 20 Pres

Grenade Launcher - A stand-alone grenade launcher which is a must have in every marines arsenal. This gun punishes aliens for not having whips up due to its sheer damage to buildings, and a well executed grenade launcher attack can end most alien teams if they dont have enough whips up. It is however just a grenade launcher, so having marines with regular rifles/shotties is important when marines have this weapon, as they cannot defend themselves in close combat.Cost â€“ 25 Pres

Flamethrower - The flamethrower is more of a work in progress weapon at the moment, but still has its uses as it drains alien energy. This makes it great for chasing down aliens like the onos and fade, and even lerk. It can also burn away lerk spore clouds and crag umbra clouds, but its best effect is to stop whips throwing away nades , making them very vulnerable to grenades. Flamethrowers despite being weak one-on-one still have a definite place in any marines arsenal, as they have great utility effects, having one in your squad can make grenade attacks work, and can stop aliens from running away and being as effective. Cost â€“ 20 Pres

Mac - The MAC is a builder unit built from the robotics bay, has no/uselesss attack, and simply builds and repairs marine structures as well as arcs. Good for building behind marines when the frontline is far away, or for keeping bases maintained and high on hp. Cost â€“ 5 Tres

Arc - ARCS are the super siege units of the marine team that come from an upgraded robotics bay. They can either be moving around or can set up into seige mode. In seige mode they charge up a massive cannon which explodes a shockwave at the location they fire at. They can shoot through walls as well, and do terrible, terrible AOE damage to alien structures. Given there cheap cost, ARCS are the best form of siege unit in the game, and good use of ARCS can guarentee hive deaths due to there AOE and damage. Cost â€“ 15 Tres

Jetpack - A high-tier upgrade that gives marines the ability to fly (with a limited regenerating fuel supply),at a low cost of 10 p-res this is the best piece of equipment a marine can get, giving them great survivability as they can avoid aliens a lot more as well as giving them the speed to attack far away hives or chase down onos.The only downside is the steep start up cost of getting the jetpacks, as you need an advanced armory, then protoype lab then you can research jetpacks to get them. Cost â€“ 10 Pres

Alien evolutions

With only 5 alien species in ns2, each alien has a very different role in the game, and often times knowing when your team gets enough res to go for aliens like fades and onos can change the flow of the game as they are so powerful.

Skulk - the standard alien which all alien players spawn as, small, fast and can crawl through vents and over walls, the skulk is a superb melee fighter, and it they can get close to marines via wall jumping and ambushing from hiding spots, they can easily take out huge numbers of marines with their powerful bit attack. They have a secondary attack which is a ranged parasite that makes the target say on the mini map/hive vision, as well as does minor damage. The skulks first upgrade is an ability called leap which flings them forward, being great for getting close to marines or using it as a momentum gainer to jump down hallways very quickly. Cost â€“ Free

lerk - The lerk is the "harasser" unit of the aliens, being able to fly and glide to places extremely quickly makes it great for attacking and defending , much like the skulk. It has a powerful lerk poison bite as its main attack, and can spread poison spores behind it as its secondary attack. The spores are great for distracting marines, as aliens can see through the smoke using hive vision but marines cannont. The lerks "upgrade" are spikes which do decent damage to enemy targets at medium range. Cost â€“ 30 Pres

Gorge - The gorge is the combat medic / engineer of the alien side. He can shoot a bile splat that does slight damage as his main attack, and use a healspray that heals aliens as well as it builds alien structures faster (also does minor damage to marines). His secondary ability is placing down hyrdas and clogs, hydras are small defensive structures that shoot out spikes at marines (marines and structures) for slight damage. The gorge can place three of these down on or off creep, and they cost nothing. clogs are big blocks of goo which can be used to block of choke points, making it incredibly difficult for marines to push through with Grenade launchers or arc support. Gorges are mainly used for defending / creating choke points, cutting of areas of the map to marines and creating safe bases for the alien kham to expand towards. They can also be used for onos rushing, as their healspray can keep the onos alive long enough to destroy many marine bases. The gorge upgrade is bile bomb, a short range bomb attack that damages marine structures and causes them to "degrade" over time. great for sieges and poking into marine bases. Cost â€“ 10 Pres

Fade - The Fade is a great "killer" unit for the Alien team, it can wreck marines in a couple of swipes and then blink out of combat before the marines can react to it. However it is expensive and is more reliant on having the energy to escape the marines before they can focus the fade down. However, fades are still very powerful, and when fades come out during the mid game mark is when the marines have to be on their toes or risk losing all map control. They have two basic abilities, swipe which is their attack which does major damage to marines but not so much to structures, and shadow step which blinks them in one direction. The upgrade' for the fades is "blink", and gives them the ability to fade out of existence and "fly" towards any direction they want. Cost â€“ 50 Pres

Onos - The Onos is the destroyer and the tank for the Alien team. The onos does massive damage to everything remotely marine-esque but is slow and huge, which can lead to it being chased down by marines and killed. He is also very expensive, and even Alien teams with lots of res inflow should try at all costs to keep them alive. The Onos has a basic attack for marines which damages them and knocks them around, and a basic attack that does higher damage to buildings. The Onos can also "charge" (sprint) and increases its speed until it hits a wall or marine, where its speed drops for a moment before going back to normal. The Onos is often the game ender for the Alien team, having 2 or more rushing a marine base for its command station or power can end games very quickly, but Onos on their own can also push back marine teams room by room untill they hole up in there base. The upgrade for the Onos is stomp, this stuns all marines on the ground in front of the Onos for a good few seconds, giving the Onos plenty of time to mop up the marines or run away.Cost â€“ 75 Pres

Marine Commanding

When you first hop into the command station, there are some basics that you need to know. These are the concepts like how to use the GUI to place structures down or get upgrades etc and the general gist of what the structures do and the overall picture of the marine tech tree. Donâ€™t stress too much over learning everything, most of this can be learnt simply by clicking on the buildings or by asking people in game.

Firstly the GUI, as a picture helps a lot more explaining this, I made a picture to illustrate the GUI.
<img src="http://i1160.photobucket.com/albums/q488/chickenboy3/Ns2marineGuiimage.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />

I strongly recommend just creating a server, using the commands: cheats 1 , autobuild 1 and addbot and then trying out the marine commander, as in building structures, upgrading technology and issuing waypoints.

The purpose and use of the marine buildings are as follows,

1. Command stations are the log-in stations where commanders go to command, they have energy and can use nano-shield and drop health and ammo packs. They are one of the most important marine buildings as when the marinesâ€™ last station is destroyed they lose the game. Cost â€“ 15 Tres

2. Armories give hp, armor and ammo to marines who are close to and facing it, who can also buy weapons from it with the "e" (default) key. They hold all the main weapons in the game and research them as well, to research higher-tier weapons the armoury must be upgraded to an advanced armoury first. Armouries are vital to any marine base and forward armouries can greatly increase marinesâ€™ survival rates as they can re-heal and restock on ammo (as well as getting mines/welders for defence). Cost â€“ 10 Tres

3. Infantry portals re-spawn dead marines in every 7 seconds; if they are all destroyed/unpowered and no marines are alive then the marines also lose. In most games with teams from 6-10 2 infantry portals at least is a must, and many players have even been experimenting with having 3 or more Ips to re-spawn dead players very quickly. Ips can only be built near un-built/built command stations, and spending 20 tres on 2 spare Ips at a spare base as a marine commander is great for having a backup base in case of losing your main. Cost â€“ 10 Tres

4. Observerties are buildings which research phase gates, use scans which show all the aliens in an area and they distress beacon, which teleports all marines to the nearest built command station and re-spawns one dead marine per infantry portal. They also have a passive detection radius, where all alien things show up on the marinesâ€™ radar and HUD. They are very useful as having as distress beacon can defend the base or group up for heavy attacks, while phase gates are versatile structures which can either attack or defend. Cost â€“ 10 Tres

5. Robotics factory enable the building of sentry turrets, produce and upgrade MAC and they can then be upgraded to an Arc factory to make and upgrade ARCs. MACs are small worker bots controlled by the commander that can repair and build structures, and its good to get a couple late game to help keep the base repaired and maybe go for building extractors. ARCs are mobile siege devices, which despite being costly are deadly when used in pushes. They shoot through walls and so a couple can be kept defended using marines in a room next to the hive while the arcs shoot and kill the hive. Cost â€“ 20 Tres

6. Arms Lab are where you upgrade the weapons and armour level of the marine team. Upgrades from the arms lab are vital to the marines, as the armour upgrades help greatly to survive against fades and skulks (they both need to attack the marine one more time to kill) while the weapon upgrade help kill everything. However upgrades are costly and going for them means you will have a lot less for pushes, e.g. phase or arc tech. Cost â€“ 20 Tres

7. Prototype lab is the place for end-game tech, like Jetpacks and the soon to come Exo-suit, this equipment is also bought at the prototype lab instead of the armoury. Cost â€“ 30 Tres

8. Phase gates, these are structures which let marines travel between and are very helpful in keeping map control for the marine side, as well as pushing as marines can distress and phase through, leading to quick alien hive rushes sometimes. Cost â€“ 15 Tres

9.Sentry Turrets are simply sentry turrets that do damage to anything that goes into their line of sight. About two to three can easily defend a room from skulks/fades/lerks, but they must be covering each other as although the commander can turn around sentries, aliens can easily take down sentry turrets as they canâ€™t turn around fast enough. Cost â€“ 10 Tres

10.Power packs are basically small power nodes that power the closest building to it. They cost a lot, but can be helpful to stop Onos power node rushing, as having a power pack on an observer can mean you can still distress even if the power node goes down, and having them on IPS mean you can still re-spawn if the power goes down. However it is probably better to spend the 30 Tres for power packs on Ips instead on an entire new backup base. Cost â€“ 15 Tres

<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/wiki/index.php/Frontiersmen#Structures" target="_blank">Marine strucutres Ns2 WIki</a>
This picture shows the structures with the numbers in the list above.
<img src="http://i1160.photobucket.com/albums/q488/chickenboy3/Marinestructurepicture.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />

Strategies

Start
First of, the starting phase, this is the earliest part of the game, and goes from as soon as the game begins to the first "contact" (first battle between skulks and marines) that happens in the minute after start. Despite being the shortest phase in the game, this time period can be a decider for some matches if you muck up to much, so it is important to know what you should be doing.

When getting into the command station, think of what structure set you want to start with, for me this is an armoury, an IP and an observatory. However variations such as 1 armoury and 1 IP are common, as leaving the observatory out gives an extra 10 res just in case an extractor goes down to the first skulk rush.

With a structure set in mind, get your structures down ASAP when you hop in and then move on to quickly organising a split push for your marines to take the first few extractors on the map (you can also leave one guy in base to build). Remember to use the names of your marines to guarantee they know that you are talking directly to them and try to be as friendly of a commander as possible.

The last thing to consider in the start phase is where the alien team is, as you will want to make extractors away from the alien base because you are much more likely to hold them as there will be less skulk aggression.

Early Game

The early game is the first 5-7 minutes, in this time frame you will want to be as aggressive as possible, taking as many resource towers of the map as possible. In this phase, aliens will only have skulks to combat marines, and in groups marines can easily fend of skulks, this is why you will want to quickly gain as much territory as possible in this phase, or cause as much damage to the alien team as possible because it will be much harder when the fades come out.

Forward mining/Defensive pushing â€“ Rush forward with marines to take about half the map, then put down forward armouries, research mines and start mining up your res nodes, This is a good solid strategy as it leads into the mid game, where you will want to consolidate your territory. Marines can also start to attack when the res nodes have been mined up, as they no longer have to worry about dying and losing res nodes as much.

Shotgun/Marine Rushing - If the alien side spawned close by you could try upgrading shotguns and rushing their base, however this is prone to failure and so I do not recommend it unless your team is vastly superior in skill to the aliens. However, having marines split up and go straight for alien res towers while keeping up only 1-3 res nodes for yourself is a good tactic, and res locking the aliens by killing their harvesters in the early phase can give the marine side a snowball advantage, as the aliens have no Tres to get up harvesters, and so catch up to the marines Tres income.

Save up res - You can also simply save up your Tres for tech, letting marines push out and hold choke points instead of directly attacking the alien base with just med/ammo spam and nano shields as support, you must be more cautious however, as losing 2-3 marines which are far from the base can mean undefended resource towers are up for grabs to the aliens. However saving up can help massively mid game, where your tech comes at a much faster pace.

Base switch â€“ Another useful tactic is base switching to somewhere close by to the Alien start hive. Although risky, sending your entire team to get a base up has huge rewards, by being close to the alien base you can deny the aliens there res towers and since you now have two bases, you have a lot more map control and can get more res nodes up around the start base. Good locations for base switches for marines are crossroads on summit due to it being close to every room on the map, and mineshaft/crushing machine/refinery on mineshaft, due to being closer to the alien hive for attacks. Other maps also have good base switching spots, so think about it while playing commander. Base switches can also be done later on in game, not just the early phase.

Mid Game

Whatever early strategy you've taken, now is the time to make the game changing decisions, from the time 7-20 minutes is the bulk of the game, and will involve the aliens getting fades/augmentations and a second hive and the marines getting higher tier-weapons and upgrades.

The marines must either cut the aliens res supply, kill a couple of evolved life forms or kill an alien hive to really get forward in the game. Alternatively they can save up and defend, getting as many tech upgrades as they can and simply reaping the benefits of the resource towers they have while holding back the aliens (maybe even killing some higher-life forms).

Hold the line - The strategy is to keep your res towers that you have and simply save up for tech that will overpower the aliens in the long run.
-Robotics factory build - building a Robotics factory will help with this strategy , as turrets , although expensive, can make sure that
ground will be held, and getting 3 down in any one area is enough to thwart any attack without Onos support.
-Phase tech -Getting phase tech from an observatory helps with holding the line, getting multiple phase gates down from your base to
other key areas,chokepoints will get marines to where they need to be instantly, and keep your resource towers guarded.
-Switching base - On maps like Summit, getting a base in Crossroads and building Ips there dramatically helps your defence, as
marines will spawn equidistance from all other areas, and can attack or defend as soon as they re-spawn.
-support armouries/obs - these help marines defend areas with hp/mines/armour and sight of enemies. So this is a great idea to
consider as it costs much less than turrets and allows further pushing.

The overall Goal of this strategy is to consolidate all of your resource towers and areas while getting armour/weapons upgrades and higher tier tech. keeping everything guarded is a lot easier than attacking, and I recommend doing this if you have managed to gain early ground in the early game.

Aggressive attack â€“ The idea of this strategy is to keep hounding the aliens down, not going for many resource towers (1-3) but instead constantly hitting the alien resource towers, cyst chains and hives (if you can).

-Phase tech - Getting phase tech from an observatory is great for attacks, as it can get marines right to the door step of enemy hives and/or key chokepoints (for cutting over the aliens res nodes)

-Weapons (like shotguns/gls) are great in this style of play as you will be constantly going for structures and need shotguns for fades/lerks/skulks. Gls also open up rushes, as 5 marines with Gls can easily kill the main hive of the alien team if they have only one or two whips which are focused down by rifle fire.

-Jetpack rush - Rushing jetpacks is an interesting idea not often seen, going for jetpacks can be a huge boost, as your team will be very mobile so even a couple of marines can snipe hives in faraway places while the rest of the team attacks from the front and deal with aliens such as Onos and fade.

-Arc push - Getting a couple of arcs can do wonders for any push, they can shoot through walls and do huge damage to alien structures, meaning marines just have to concentrate on killing aliens, and not the hive you want to kill. Even more so as setting up a forward base in the room next to the hive (or sometimes even chokepoint) can be guarded with turrets or phase gates, and the arcs can sit down in this base and wither away at the alien hive.

The overall goal of this strategy is to stay on the offensive against the aliens while staying on fewer res towers. Going for the alien harvesters/hives and not worrying about taking loads resource towers. Of course you will have quite a bit less Tres in the long run. But a couple of great attacks can put you way ahead of the alien team.

Of course a combination of these two strategies is the best strategy, and knowing when to shift from being aggressive to defensive is a key skill and comes from a lot of experience from playing many games as commander.

Long game

If itâ€™s past 20 minutes and you still have 3+ resource towers up and running, you pretty much have the game in the bag, from then on its either just playing it safe and getting all the tech in the game or just destroying the alien team with attacks using ARCs/GLs/JPs.

Room by Room - If you have been upgrading all of your tech and holding onto your resource towers as best as possible, now is the time to take back the map
-Turrets and mines can lockdown areas of the map for the marine team, force aliens through chokepoints and defend resource towers. In the late game if you have no more upgrades to spend Tres on, Turret spamming rooms when you take them is a great idea to simply ensure you hold that room even with no marine presence nearby.

-Phase gates, weapons and Arcs are what your marines need to get the front of the battle and start pushing back the aliens room by room. Clearing each room one by one is a safe and easy, and when a room is clear locking it down with turrets and mines ensures your marines can push up without worry about defending, while phase gates can get reinforcements quickly back to the battle.

-Jetpacks, getting a couple of marines to get JPs and rush a hive works wonders, not only that but every marine with a JP live way longer and are more mobile.

Example Marine commander Games

Here are a couple of my own Marine commander games, and the explanations of my tactics.

<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DFmSUMUCliE"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DFmSUMUCliE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFmSUMUCliE" target="_blank">First Marine Game</a>

In this game I use a mixture of defending and rushing, I rush extractors along the bottom side of the map (time 0:00-3:00), as I know that not many skulks will go down all the way from atrium to attack those areas. On the other hand, I keep marines in crevice to distract the alien team, deny them a harvester and stop any sort of rushes from skulks coming from the alien base (time 0:00 â€“ 12:06). As the aliens expand along the right hand side from atrium to data core, I use phase gates to get a lot of marines quickly clear out data core (time 5:00 â€“ 8:00). When this works, I quickly switch my attack target to the original atrium hive, as I know the aliens will not be as entrenched there due to them trying to clear data core to get there next hive up. I finally use a distress beacon and Gl rush the main alien hive (time 8:55-12:06), resulting in victory.

<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wutLE2_1AO4"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wutLE2_1AO4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wutLE2_1AO4" target="_blank">Second Marine Game</a>

In this quick game I also use a mixture of defensive and offensive strategies, I use a couple of marines to get extractors across the bottom of the map, while I have

Talesin · May 2012

An excellent write-up; very well done!

player · May 2012

I busted my bandwidth-cap opening this thread, damn...

TrC · May 2012

Impressive :)

JuCCi · May 2012

Did not read this yet. But looks very nice. I think this should be a sticky!

Master Blaster · May 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (chickenboy @ May 23 2012, 03:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1938524"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>A Comprehensive guide to Ns2 Commanding
Intro
[Ph.D. Thesis]</div>

You need a job or something.

But yea looks good...

However if you spent as much time working on a cure for cancer as you probably did on that doctoral thesis then you might have won a Nobel Prize by now.

DJPenguin · May 2012

i'd move evolution upgrade to early game. as of this update, carapace is easily attainable within the first two minutes.

bEEb · May 2012

Excellent job.

comp_ · May 2012

Don't have the time to read it now, but definitely seems awesome and I'll be sure to read it when I find the time. Thank you very much for the work!

FunkyFungus · May 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (JuCCi-PuCCi @ May 24 2012, 02:47 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1938551"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Did not read this yet. But looks very nice. I think this should be a sticky!</div>

+1

vote for sticky!

or merge with: Webbed: General NS2 Commander strategies and guides

hapro · May 2012

Calling out people's names explicitly really does help a lot.

chickenboy · May 2012

Thanks guys for the positive comments , took quite a bit of solid work to write up this guide.
I will definitely try to constantly update it as much as possible in the future, and i am hoping for a sticky or merge with the Ns2 commanding thread by god of thunder.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Floodinator @ May 24 2012, 04:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1938645"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>What a looong good read! You missed only 1 little thing, the Drifter and Enzymecloud. 2 very important things for Aliencommander regatding scouting and RoF increasment.</div>

yep, good point, I will add that as well as some more stuff detailing the marines equipment and alien lifeforms ASAP.

Floodinator · May 2012

What a looong good read! You missed only 1 little thing, the Drifter and Enzymecloud. 2 very important things for Aliencommander regatding scouting and RoF increasment.

Locklear · May 2012

Nice effort! Well done!

XeiZ · May 2012

Good read, but this would be better off in the new players section wouldnt it?

chickenboy · June 2012

Update for Build 209!
I updated the thread and added two new sections on the equipment for marines as well as the alien species, and also added my alien example commander games. I will also continue updating the strategies in the near future, but i'm sure this was worth the bump.

Edit : Thanks for the great feedback Khyron, ill be updating ASAP.
The reason why i included sections on the aliens and marines is because i wanted to relate them to things the commander should keep in mind when playing against or as them.
This is what you have done more of, and i must say a great thanks for helping me out with that.

Khyron · June 2012

I suggest trimming down the first post in order to make it more accessible. Keep your points brief and to the point and link to the relevant pages of the wiki where appropriate. This will also make your post easier to maintain as costs & values change. One correction: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/wiki/index.php/Personal_Resource" target="_blank">personal resources</a> are collected at a rate of 0.25 per extractor per 8 seconds.

On the alien roles
I'm not sure why you've included this stuff in a commander guide. It would be appropriate to say something like "A commander can benefit enormously from playing and understanding both sides and all lifeforms. This is the best way to develop a sense of the worth, strengths & weaknesses of everything in NS." In any case, keep in mind who your target audience is. If they've seen or played NS for 1 hour they already the basics of each unit, but not necessarily how to use it effectively. To that end, I would write something more like...

The skulk is for ambush & recon. Against a marine, the skulk does best when he can close distance to the marine without the marine realising it, whether by dropping from the ceiling or climbing up from underneath a walkway. Skulks should by design be slaughtered if attempting a frontal assault, so to speak. You should also mention the importance of parasite, particularly marine buildings since that recon data is never lost. Parasiting marines can be effective to reduce the number of bites required for a kill down to 2 (in teh early game) but is also effective in providing hive sight on that marine until a) the marine asks for a medpack and b) the commander actually delivers one - which in effect puts strain on the co-ordination of the marine team.

The lerk is a harass & support unit. At the moment it's a solopwnmobile but only in the hands of a skilled player. In general, it uses spores to obscure marine vision, disorient sentry turrets and also deal damage over time to marines. This is particularly important when participating in an assault: A lerk can draw fire into the flight space which can allow skulks to move in along the floor and walls, closing the distance on marines in what woud otherwise be a frontal assault scenario. All the while, the lerk is laying down spores to further obscure any other advancing units or create area denial. The harassing aspect comes from its ability to traverse the map quickly and get some damage on extractors.

The fade is the assassin. He can easily pick off a lone marine, but will easily be gunned down by a squad of marines. The fade is very poor at taking down buildings so he should genearlly avoid attacking extractors since he'll be standing there a very long time and will frequently run out of energy, which in turn impedes his ability to blink away to safely. Also note that going up against a lone shotgun marine is still risky. At first sign of a shotgun blast, blink away to safety to reconsider your plan. Use your regeneration.

... but again, that would be something that belongs in a general guide rather than a commander guide.

Victory conditions
Somewhere down the page you've listed victory conditions as byproducts of various buildings. The victory conditions should be first and foremost in a commanders mind and so should be right at the top of your post under their own heading.

[u]Strategies[u]
To my mind, the first phase of the game lasts until shorty after both teams know the other's starting location and have adopted expansion policies in response to that. During this phase the marines build starting structures like obs, 2nd IP & Armoury. Let's say the first 2 minutes of gameplay. The second phase is all about economy. During that phase both teams are expanding furiously, protecting their own resources and trying to attack the enemy resources. In that time, each commander chooses various upgrades/research or mutations that either support their immediate goals, longer term goals or riskier end game strageties. An example of this is a marine team that researches shotguns and mines is taking a safer route that helps them immediately vs phase gates or arcs which are aimed at an early hive raid (but if they fail, they lose a lot of investment). The remaining phases of the game are probably dictated by the presence of alien lifeforms more than anything else, particularly the Fade and the Onos.

The Comprehensive Guide to Ns2 Commanding

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