Reason why Aliens have such a strong early/ Mid game
Lastdon
Join Date: 2012-06-29 Member: 153767Members
Join Date: 2012-06-29 Member: 153767Members
The reason why aliens are dominating the early to mid game is due to the fact that they do not need to build anything. The alien commander just drops it and it builds itself. Leap being researched right away is not the cause of the alien dominance early game. In small games such as 3 v 3 the marines are require a commander then need 1 to defend and 1 to build, while the aliens require a commander and the other 2 players can just roam map and take out the marines resources or harass the marine base. This drastically slows down marine progression in the early to mid game. Even in larger games this is very noticeable. The alien commander can cap all the resource nodes while the rest of the alien team goes on the offensive. In NS 1 there was a trade off if you sent all of the aliens in for a base rush and the marines were able to hold you off it cost you resources since you didn't have anyone capping resource nods. Now there is zero trade off for aliens having all but one alien zerg the marine base. They do not lose any time capping resource nods which allows them to further evolve with no consequence.
Comments
One one hand, the entire team can focus on attack.
On the other, harvesters take a long time to build while in the mean time marines will nanoconstruct half a dozen of them in the same space of time.
If marines start killing harvesters, it is a massive damage to the alien economy early game. If an alien kills a marine res tower, its just an annoyance more than anything unless the aliens systematically kill all the towers.
Edit: I do agree that leap is a massive factor early game at the moment. Aliens are likely underpowered once they tie it back to two hives.
and on a side note, the game is really not meant to be played 3vs3, combat mode is would be better suited for that :)
and on a side note, the game is really not meant to be played 3vs3, combat mode is would be better suited for that :)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The cost won't change much with this. I play a lot on the HBZ #3 where para did lower the starting res of the aliens to 35. So if you spend 25 for the leap upgrade you won't be able to build a lot of cysts and RTs. It improves it a bit, but even with this values leap is normaly up at the 2min max 2:30min mark.
As it has already been said here, marines can expand their RTs faster as aliens. If aliens want to catch up, they need gorges that speed up RT building. But even with this, they pay more res because of cysts than marines. It is this asymmetric concept that is intentional and leads to the cool feeling of marines having to cover each other while building RTs and aliens descend onto them like no tomorrow.
The balance shifted because Leap is the logical first choice but very powerful in early game. In contrast to every other ability upgrade (beside Xenocide) does Leap give an advatage to every player on the alien team. Spikes for example may give only one or two players an advantage. And even that isn't sure, because when they die as lerk and missing the res, you have payed for an upgrade that does nothing. Leap is always most useful, because it upgrades the default alien.
So the best conclusion seems really to bind it to hive two. But please don't make the mistake of binding Spike/Blink/Stomp to hive two. This is not necessary and will bring us back to the game-deciding hive 2.
I cannot emphasize that enough. "Tier 2" (in fact Tier 1) alien abilities such as Leap, Blink, Lerk Spikes, and Bilebomb are only as powerful Advanced Armory weapons. Thus one or two of them should be researched by the time Marines have GL or FT from the Advanced Armory (usually 3-5 minutes into the game, but that is subject to balance). Stomp may warrant a Two Hive requirement though.
One one hand, the entire team can focus on attack.
On the other, harvesters take a long time to build while in the mean time marines will nanoconstruct half a dozen of them in the same space of time.
If marines start killing harvesters, it is a massive damage to the alien economy early game. If an alien kills a marine res tower, its just an annoyance more than anything unless the aliens systematically kill all the towers.
Edit: I do agree that leap is a massive factor early game at the moment. Aliens are likely underpowered once they tie it back to two hives.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You are not factoring in the time it takes the marines to travel to the RT, build it, then travel to the power node and build it. Mean while aliens have already closed the advancing gap and are right on top of the marines.
The largest problem with leap is not with the rate at which aliens can have it, but rather the ability for marines to actually pull the trigger and hit a skulk while moving. This is a huge disconnect in the game right now. It makes certain mechanics feel far more over powered then what they really are. Once UWE addresses the hit box/Registry problems between the client and server it will allow for proper balancing of mechanics. There is another post on this so I won't beat a dead horse.
Marines can also get certain upgrades extremely quick such as weapons 1 and mines. Yes, it is not as quick as a 58 sec leap but mines can be purchased in just about the same amount of time, if not less.
If ability upgrades are upgraded at the hive and the hive needs to mature 5 minutes before upgrades become available and the leap upgrade takes ~3 minutes to complete, then you will never get leap before 8 minutes regardless of what it costs to upgrade leap.
If upgrades are "blocking" and you can only get one at a time per hive, but you cannot skip tiers(e.g. you can get fade tier 2 and lerk tier 2 at the same time, but not fade tier 2 and fade tier 3 at the same time); this confers a major advantage to securing a second or third hive, which is the ability to upgrade several things in parallel.
But note, just like 3 women can't have one baby in 3 months, but they can have 3 babies in 9 months; more hives confers no "serial speedup". You cannot get to tier 3 abilities faster, you only get more of them in parallel. This allows you to put a hard lower bound on the time it takes to reach endgame.
And you are not factoring in how Cysts currently work. They don't build until the one behind them is built, and then they expand to cover areas slowly. This ends up making them reach areas of the map slower than a marine would get there.
Power nodes practically build instantly (as do res towers when a commander is using nanoconstruct (as they all should)). The only issue for marines is dying, and having to retrace your steps to continue building RTs. Cyst chaining usually isn't pushed back so far.
The structure crap is a secondary issue and has gotten worse since drifters were removed, but are still second to leap (and later fades).
The structure crap is a secondary issue and has gotten worse since drifters were removed, but are still second to leap (and later fades).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Its true you dont NEED celerity if you have leap since it is so effective for mobility purposes. However they are planning to re-tie tier 2 abilities to 2nd hive so this is a temporary state of affairs.
Yeah, definitely. Skulks are probably going to need some of their wall jump power back to be able to hold before second hive. It'll be good having skill reintroduced for the first 5-9 minutes of the game, though.
I was hoping maybe people could learn to play skulk without rushing headlessly down hallways.
This wouldn't fix the problem it would mean that one side is more difficult to play than the other side because marines can stand stupidly at the end of the hallway and shoot anything at the end of it.
When you have a obs or the area is being scanned you cant stealth to them. Sometimes there is no way to go another way to reach them from behind.
Sure skulks can be successful in lategame but it is no comparison to marines.
I did enjoy it in NS1 though. As a marine you got really paranoid wandering around. Now it feels like UT, frantically trying to fight a melee attacker as he bounces around walls and leaps.
Good question. The <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ns2highdesign" target="_blank">high level design doc</a> has a heading for Unit Roles specifically but that section is quite lacking in detail. I'm pretty sure I've seen some unit role ideas in some kind of spreadsheet but I can't find that now, maybe it was just a screenshot of a spreadsheet or in one of ns2hds videos? In any case, it would be great to see that design doc updated with Charlie's current thinking.
Edit: Ohwait there's a link in the doc to the spreadsheet I was thinking of! :D
Hardly surprising. Look at how much trouble they are having with Lerks and that lifeform is still a complete blunder. Onos are a walking... err, crawling mess as well.
I did enjoy it in NS1 though. As a marine you got really paranoid wandering around. Now it feels like UT, frantically trying to fight a melee attacker as he bounces around walls and leaps.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is probably the fault of the all-seeing minimap rather than the map design.