Is it ever worth getting a Shade Hive ?
TimmahIsASaint
Join Date: 2012-09-24 Member: 160678Members
Join Date: 2012-09-24 Member: 160678Members
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Needless to say, with the terrible egg spawning system at the moment you have to be careful. Hence shift is preferred in most cases.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
So yea, shade's pretty good in itself, it's just that aliens rely heavily on shift - cele because of unbalances at the moment. Also, shade is almost never a good second hive choice, unfortunately. That IS going to be something they have to address...
I wish they'd replace feign death by focus though. that would REALLY make all three tech paths equally amazing at any stage of the game.
The amount of organization required for the ground troops on the Kharaa side is significant, too. Shade play is best suited to an alien team that expands to cover a number of res nodes and a second hive LOCATION, and then doesn't overexert themselves trying to do more than hold that turf until they get another hive going. Most pub teams, at least, can't make that work, and the nature of competitive play (6v6) means you've got teams that are so small, it's hard to defend a remote location against a concentrated push. In pub play, I've seen Khamms keep the THIRD hive unpicked, feeling that it's more useful to be able to evolve a Shift/Crag hive if they lose one of their first two than it is to have access to Shades. Until we see some kind of change in how Shades operate, I don't see much of a change happening here.
Shift/Crag is always going to be the path of choice due to the way we now use tres for lifeforms instead of 3rd hives. Consider the lack of hive teleportation and you'll understand why play always gravitates around 2 hive vs 2 cc. Shade has no longevity without focus so the question is - are you willing to risk getting stuck on 2 hives without either shift or crag?
Games were people claim to have won because of shade hive, would have been won easier with crag or shift. Shade hives give nice useful things, while the other two give practically game-changing things.
Goddamnit, where do all these "absolutely not" people come from. Shade hive isn't suicide. No hive is suicide, and no, not even close.
Shade 1st might not be optimal, but if your team is so inclined silence skulks can roll over marines. I've gone shade quite a few times in pub today, nobody complains, people quite like silence.
As in such the shade usually tends to come out last and mainly only for the upgrades. While the shade itself can be a fun chamber to use, it’s the upgrades that are really only worth getting.
carapace encourages more head on attacks, celerity encourages hit and run, silence is good for flanking.
I don't see how all these people can say "no" outright, when I've only seen this strategy a handful of times, and it's worked just as often as any other strategy.
Shade 1st might not be optimal, but if your team is so inclined silence skulks can roll over marines. I've gone shade quite a few times in pub today, nobody complains, people quite like silence.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->The only use for a shade hive currently is Silence, which is a very very handy upgrade.
Shades are useless for the most part since a scan counters it so hard. You also can't ninja build structures because infestation still splashes even when cloaked so marines can easily tell when they're walking on cloaked infestation.
If scans no longer broke cloak, and instead just allowed scanned targets to appear on the minimap and gave OBS motion tracking to them, and infestation no longer squishes when walked on while cloaked. Then you have a very viable shade first hive. Sure a scan will reveal that you have players and structures there. But they wont know if that cloaked alien is a simple Gorge, or a giant Onos just waiting to gore you against the floor.
But as of this build, Shades are terrible when compared to the other hive evolutions*
*Assumes you're playing with a decent team capable of minor coordination, as well as assuming the enemy team is of or near the same skill level
With all this being said, I absolutely love shade play. I adore, adore, ADORE sneaky play being well rewarded. But currently NS2 doesn't reward sneaky Shade play. It rewards sneaky play yes, but all of those sneaky plays can be done without a shade, a shade just makes it slightly easier.
I think in pubs it's very effective. Once the marines know you have silence though, they start checking the ceilings and around all corners so it becomes a bit less effective. At least silence is cheap compared to e.g. celerity or cara so you can drop a second hive after silence much more quickly than if you went celerity or cara (which are the two most popular upgrades in the game for aliens).
Basically it comes down to this...
Silence is god damn incredible if used properly and can get you a huge early game advantage.
Of course, this was before the mandatory instant second hive drop, so now even the relatively cheap cost of the upgrade and the shade is far too much to risk. Also the shade itself doesn't provide the benefits it used to.
Shade hive is more easy to counter with good marine play. Scans, observatories, phase gates and mines are all part of the problem of shades not seeing that much play time. The main reason here is that silence and shades are effective for ambushing but do not counter significant marine pushes or defences that well. Mined PGs are something that silence does little to help capture, and those are normal for any marine strategy. Since marines have the map control advantage throughout most games, ambushing is often limited to specific no-man's-land areas. Most marine teams will also have observatory->scans available throughout the game. Also, the shade hive scales badly to late game, where cele/cara and higher lifeforms are almost necessary.
If I'm wrong about this, please educate me ;)
But in pub games, especially come release, I see the true value of shades and the silence upgrade in particular is that it encourages proper skulk play. Celerity and carapace on the other hand will lead to new players charging head-on into marine squads.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
An easy solution would be to allow the commander to drop eggs around any hive for 1 t-res. Shifts would remain viable to create another spawn point outside of a hive and grant faster energy regen. If not, one could simply change the shift-ability from egg-creating to egg-teleporting. (= Teleports X egg from the nearest hive to the area around the shift.) This would disconnect the shift-tech-path from the spawn system restrictions.
The second change would be to disconnect leap from the second hive. The problem with leap is, that it makes skulks (the -by far- most played alien) much more powerful. Thats why all other Tier2 abilities are never a choice. (Spore, bile, etc never comes before leap!) But if leap destroys the tech-tree-options, it should be removed from this tech tree.
The solution is, to create an own building for skulk-abilities. So they don't have to compete with the other tier-abilities. This would slightly decrease the importance of the second hive. More free eggs, 2nd upgrade and tier2 abilities would ensure enough importance to not ignore the 2nd hive.
You only need to watch out, that leap has a minimum-apperance time. (For example the building could only be build near a matured hive.)
To the shade tech tree in detail:
- Silence is powerful enough. I think it is a very good upgrade.
- Camouflage should be slightly changed. It is good, that you get slightly visible while moving. But the slow down while cloaked should be removed. A sneaking or static alien should be completely invisible. But a running one should have this partial visibility, the sneaking aliens have right now. This way camouflage makes it more difficult for marines to track a fast moving alien and allows the alien to sneak completely invisible. Also I like the idea of scan and obs only indicating stealthed aliens by the motion-tracing blips but don't reveal them.
- Feign Death. Could be much more fun, if it was not a cheesy life saver, but a tactical tool. If the player could trigger when to come back to life and he couldn't move while feigning it could work. Marines could counter FeignDeath by shooting the corpse (at least 20 LMG bullets) to kill the feigning alien by wasting ammo. And it would make feign death situational.