ARCs

PowerfuryOA

<div class="IPBDescription">Haven' t seen them used in a long time</div>I have not seen ARCs utilized for quite some time. I am not sure if they are used in competitive play, but in public games I have not seen a push with ARCs since a couple of patches.

RobustPenguin

I use arcs all the time, its I would far rather have a mobile JP force than exos anyday

Squirreli_

I think there are several reasons to the decline in ARC popularity. Some of the reasons (in no particular order of importance):

1) ARCs tend to melt to bile bomb, which is among the most important and used alien upgrades.
2) ARCs cost 20 tres a piece and require an upgraded turret factory. Both the ARC factory upgrade and building the robo factory take their time. Also, an effective ARC push usually requires that the ARC factory is somewhat close to intended target, since otherwise you are forced to divert part of your team to babysitting ARCs moving through the map. Thus, for an ARC push to be effective, you are forced to invest 100+ resources into a forward base, on top of all the normal stuff (marine attention, mines, PG, armory).
3) Exos are a crowd pleaser and a supported dual exo is great at taking down hives and eggs. You can negate much of the Exo slowness by building a forward prototype lab in a forward base next to the intended target.
4) Skulk nerfs have made turtling aliens a normal sight, and early game marine pushes can down a hive with shottys, LMGs and GLs. Thus games don't often progress to a stage, where ARCs are called for.
5) Performance increases have allowed for huge servers, where LMG rushes down hives in a matter of seconds. It is really hard to counter 7-8 pushing marines in the early game. Hives just go down without arcs. Since CC/hive health doesn't scale with player count, CC/hive rush tactics become much more effective with growing player count.

6) EDIT: Alien economy is currently struggling and alien build orders are very strict and lean. This means that the hive areas often contain only the bare necessities plus some hydras and clogs. Any early whip spam etc. will come at the cost of upgrades and personal resources.
7) EDIT: Crags don't really heal hives any more, so you don't have to clear crags from around the hive. You can just focus on the hive.


So, even though ARCs are still useful and a viable choice, marines have other more efficient (or at least popular) tactics available throughout the game. This leads to ARCs being neglected until marines have all upgrades and are swimming in extra tres.

Know pain

Number 5 said it, exo's replaced arc's as the siege weapon for the game. Most games I've seen where arc's come out are 2 command stations and 3 hives, where it's been a stalemate for 10+ minutes. At this point arc's come out and get close enough to take out healing stations for aliens or shoot thru walls to get a lucky hit on a hive.

Bacillus

Just out of interest, how many gorges it takes to outheal an ARC? In NS1 2 gorges could roughly keep up with 3 sieges and 3 sieges was roughly the average you could afford (and sometimes fit) in a siege situation. I think it created a pretty nice dynamic where gorge's adren, gorge's survivability, scan energy and possible additional/lost sieges created a pretty tense back and forth fights.

Know pain

Right now I think like 1 arc could take out a hive full of gorges if it was left alone. As it stands with adrenaline only giving more not regaining faster the 1 arc will take out the hive while the gorges have no heal spray. If adrenaline went back to the way it was I think it’s something like 3 gorges to 1 arc. Hence why gorges will bile bomb the arcs if they can since it’s far more effective.

antacid

Exos kind of replaced arcs in terms of roles.

Raven_XI

Its not just ARCs, its the Robotics Factory in general.

I made a HUGE post about it here:
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=121145" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=121145</a>

For the time I spent on it it didn't spark much of a discussion, I was rather pissed off!

Yotopia

<!--quoteo(post=1982288:date=Sep 24 2012, 09:57 AM:name=Squirreli_)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Squirreli_ @ Sep 24 2012, 09:57 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1982288"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->7) EDIT: Crags don't really heal hives any more, so you don't have to clear crags from around the hive. You can just focus on the hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Hmm i missed this change and i dont find it good.Marines got MACS and Welders for repairing their structures.
And defense chambers in NS1 placed at hives made the battle for them with some gorges very exiting.

I would implement the good old Sieges from NS1 anyway instead of ARCs.Battles for hives where more strategically and thrilling with sieges.
The only problem with sieges would be that they are dont fit together with the power node system.

FrankerZ

arcs can shoot trough wall which sounds OP in theory but somehow in practice its not useful at all, most of the time they need to get too close to the hive and they become an easy target for gorges. You cant really raise their range cus then its gonna break the balance on all the maps (they were all designed with the current range in mind. all the problems with the pathing makes them eve harder to use, when you try to siege them, sometimes some of them dont and then you have to siege them one by one because theres a problem with the interface (you can only unsiege if you select multiple unsieged and sieged arcs.

I cant think of a single good sieging spot on any maps except onosbar to locker room, behind tram (impossible to get to though) refinery in shaft.

A simple rule should be : Every hive location should be exposed to a spot from where it can be siege without a gorge bilebombing it and being within healing range of the hive.

Xarius

What raven said, the turret factory as a whole is simply an non-viable tech path, because of the terribad sentries. But ARCs are in need of some love as well. (too expensive) You also rarely see impenetrable alien defences any more, hydras die incredibly easy to focussed fire, gorges can only build 3 of them and you don't see that many whips. Doesn't help that a few whips don't manage to hold off GL spam, they simply get drowned if you bring enough gls, so there is never really a need for ARCs.

statikg

I would imagine you would see them alot more commonly if sentries were a viable defence at forward bases. It makes it much more economical if you already have that infrastructure installed at your forward base, and then theres much more incentive to have that forward base be in seige range. If your going to be defending your base mainly with marines anyway, then why bother with the really expensive path to ARCs when you could just use grenade launchers to seige the HIVE instead.

VeNeM

<!--quoteo(post=1982351:date=Sep 24 2012, 06:25 AM:name=FrankerZ)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (FrankerZ @ Sep 24 2012, 06:25 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1982351"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->A simple rule should be : Every hive location should be exposed to a spot from where it can be siege without a gorge bilebombing it and being within healing range of the hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->


... no

stop. hand-holding.