I see only one robotics factory between Hub and Ore processing, and no EXOs in Ore processing. Gorges and Onos would be able to kill that before anything could get there. Send your whole team there. That factory is gone in under 5 seconds. Have lerks ready with spores for any incoming jetpackers. That gets you into Ore processing. From there you can hit either tech point. (Although hitting warehouse is the better option)
Once you take Ore Processing, using the vents in Ore processing, send in skulks and/or lerks to harass, while gorge and Onos peck away at the blockades. I say warehouse is the better option since you can get gorges into the vent to Warehouse, which makes spamming easy. (since the EXO up top won't have proper LOS) The vents that exit under the platform are hard to defend without actually getting down there, and the EXO won't go down there since they lose LOS from the top.
So what was stopping an attack on the one robotics factory in Ore Processing on the exit to hub?
Ok, lets say things go well and you only lose 30% of the players that assault ore. 2 gorges 2 onos 1 skulk, you lost the skulk and the gorge, you have 2 Onos and 1 Gorge in a very small room with only one exit. There are Exos facing both entrances to either tech room and marines coming out of repair into ore processing. What do you do?
This is pointless, you will think of ways to succeed, I will think of ways to fail. Suffice to say the teams were not imbalanced, in fact I think it was a pickup. Either way, we know our players, the teams were essentially fair if not slightly in aliens favour. We couldn't get through. Maybe the skill on our team wasn't adequate enough to organise an effective push, but that would mean the skill on their side wasn't adequate to organise an effective defence, unless defence is easier for marines than attacking is for aliens, which is kind of the point of this thread.
Maybe the skill on our team wasn't adequate enough to organise an effective push, but that would mean the skill on their side wasn't adequate to organise an effective defence, unless defence is easier for marines than attacking is for aliens, which is kind of the point of this thread.
Not particularly. The Aliens are great at attacking. Your instinctively very aggressive as alien, at least till the higher lifeforms. Marines though are more effective defending than attacking as they get to choose the range of engagement and as such it's more instinctive to defend and advance slowly, an extension of which is fortifying positions. Unfortunately this is not the way to win matches but there's always some doing it...And evidently they were able to organise an effective defense against an ineffective assault.
It's less a matter of skill at that stage for the aliens than a matter of coordination & cooperation.
Structure blocking is fine, the problem is that aliens just aren't good enough at base-breaking on 3 hives. Hive 3 abilities should be designed to allow them to deal with turtling marines quickly and efficiently. Right now though Stomp and Umbra are the only ones that really help. Xenocide and Vortex are crap and the Gorge doesn't even have one. The alien comm should also have some more utility here, but right now his active abilities just aren't much help at all.
This thread is why I keep saying bilebomb needs to be changed entirely. It needs to either be weaker and stay at hive 2 or be much stronger and a hive three ability
Not SureJoin Date: 2013-01-06Member: 177758Members
edited January 2013
I think you were just outplayed.
Also gorges keep doing damage when they're not attacking and they cost 10 res; that's why they're better siege than onos. I guarantee you if the players were anywhere near evenly matched in skill, you would have won that game after such a good headstart.
I see only one robotics factory between Hub and Ore processing, and no EXOs in Ore processing. Gorges and Onos would be able to kill that before anything could get there. Send your whole team there. That factory is gone in under 5 seconds. Have lerks ready with spores for any incoming jetpackers. That gets you into Ore processing. From there you can hit either tech point. (Although hitting warehouse is the better option)
Ok, lets say things go well and you only lose 30% of the players that assault ore. 2 gorges 2 onos 1 skulk, you lost the skulk and the gorge, you have 2 Onos and 1 Gorge in a very small room with only one exit. There are Exos facing both entrances to either tech room and marines coming out of repair into ore processing. What do you do?
First off you secure the room. Kill off the res node and establish a presence. Cyst into the room and put chambers in the north west corner. Crags, shift, shade etc. Get some whips and hydras too. Establish your beachhead, and while you do that keep sending skulks and lerks out to harass. Your khamm should have lerk eggs ready to roll for your lerks, and Onos eggs for when you're ready to make a push. Also, once things are built up, your Khamm can pop out and do some runs too. Grab the extra man. Have him do some skulk suicide runs, which keeps him near a hive in case you need something.
Getting Ore Processing is important though, since it is one less node for them, and an important location in which you can use vents to access the two tech points. The significance of that cannot be understated. Since the EXOs can't reach Ore Processing, you only have to deal with jetpackers. Spores, spit, whips and hydras make fast work of them, especially since *they* can only come from two directions.
The tipping point is getting your foot in the door in Ore Processing. I think that was the place where you underestimated its importance. Tactically it's a great position, since you split their team and can hit either side. You can also start lerk spiking the power node in Warehouse from the hall to Ore Processing. Send in skulks to harass both sides, then send the lerks in to gas them. Spores kills marines FAST if they stay in it, so they won't. While the lerks are gassing, your gorges are bile bombing the crap out of the blockades. At this point you only need one or two Onos, since you just need them on D to hold Ore Processing.
Even with jetpacks, the marines can't be everywhere at once. They're not gonna be able to deal with lerk gas. Meanwhile the EXOs are stuck at the tech points since the same blockades that keep the Onos out keeps them *IN*. Peck away at both sides and see which is weaker.
Warehouse is usually an easier kill since it's roomier and has the vent under the platform. However the south hall to Repair Room has Lerk written all over it. Fly through and gas, and when you enter Repair Room head straight for the west wall vent. Rinse and repeat while gorges clean house. Other lerk can be flying though the vent to warehouse to harass as well. If they camp it fly though from Ore Processing. Gas the power node while a gorge tosses bile at it from the hall. Keep an Onos nearby if a jetpacker comes through.
Again, it all starts in Ore Processing. That was the weakest link.
Ore processing was so comprehensively covered by ARCs that the only place that wasn't instantly ARCd out was right next to the power node, in clear line of sight of repairs exit. As if the marines even had to shoot the structures though. They just killed the cysts that were right at their feet, and I couldn't spread any further. The outpost lasted like 3 mins of pretty intense fighting, but since they respawned like 2 feet away as fully upgraded marines, and we spawned into grenade fire as vanilla skulks, we eventually lost it through attrition.
You should have been able to build up the path from logistics with crags/whips, out of reach of the arcs, fairly easily and had a few gorge's bilebombing there. It's fairly easy to bilebomb there without exposing yourself for more than a fraction of a second if you know what you're doing. Which isn't enough time to die from exo fire with the crags there.
I would say your Alien team got outplayed if you couldn't do that.
Ore processing was so comprehensively covered by ARCs that the only place that wasn't instantly ARCd out was right next to the power node, in clear line of sight of repairs exit.
Even if you couldn't drop any chambers, you can still hold the room with Onos and Lerk gas.
As if the marines even had to shoot the structures though. They just killed the cysts that were right at their feet, and I couldn't spread any further.
If they were inside Ore Processing uncontested then aliens were doing something wrong. If you had control, that place should have been gassed repeatedly. No marine should have been left alive since what the spores don't kill the Onos does. Alien vision for the win.
The outpost lasted like 3 mins of pretty intense fighting
They had no EXOs on the assault, which means you were TWO players up on them. Heck if I was khamm I would have made a rush too to make it a 3 player advantage. The entrance from Repair to Ore Processing is so tight they shouldn't have been able to get through the spores. That just leaves Warehouse, and if you have gorges with you Onos, the marines are toast.
I'm not trying to make it sound easy, but the problem wasn't the structures. It was allowing the marines to build up that huge blockade uncontested, and not hitting them earlier. I've been on the other side of that, and I've never seen a blockade that held off aliens more than a couple minutes. All it takes is spores to cause chaos, and bile bomb to clear things away. Onos covers the gorges, and skulks keep them off guard.
Ore processing was so comprehensively covered by ARCs that the only place that wasn't instantly ARCd out was right next to the power node, in clear line of sight of repairs exit.
Even if you couldn't drop any chambers, you can still hold the room with Onos and Lerk gas.
As if the marines even had to shoot the structures though. They just killed the cysts that were right at their feet, and I couldn't spread any further.
If they were inside Ore Processing uncontested then aliens were doing something wrong. If you had control, that place should have been gassed repeatedly. No marine should have been left alive since what the spores don't kill the Onos does. Alien vision for the win.
The outpost lasted like 3 mins of pretty intense fighting
They had no EXOs on the assault, which means you were TWO players up on them. Heck if I was khamm I would have made a rush too to make it a 3 player advantage. The entrance from Repair to Ore Processing is so tight they shouldn't have been able to get through the spores. That just leaves Warehouse, and if you have gorges with you Onos, the marines are toast.
I'm not trying to make it sound easy, but the problem wasn't the structures. It was allowing the marines to build up that huge blockade uncontested, and not hitting them earlier. I've been on the other side of that, and I've never seen a blockade that held off aliens more than a couple minutes. All it takes is spores to cause chaos, and bile bomb to clear things away. Onos covers the gorges, and skulks keep them off guard.
The Exos didn't waste their time with ore processing. They literally didn't move from the spots illustrated on the map.
However, the Onos can be as bad ass as he wants to be, and kill all the marines he wants to, but they spawned 5 seconds away and kept coming. What does the Onos do when he gets down to 50% HP? What would you do? Just stick around in ore and hope for the best? Most people would retreat for healing, at which point ore is once again blocked.
Also, bare in mind that they didn't actually control ore. They had blocking structures in there, but it wasn't their territory. Yet it still took a lot of effort to try and take the area. As soon as you are fighting over territory the enemy doesn't even possess, and anywhere they go they are hitting your territory, that's when you start losing ground.
It's not like marine turtling on 2 bases is very hard to break ...
once w3/a3 is researched you can spend your tres on arc trains.
I'm always amazed by comments like ' yeah a gorge squad/synchronized team would have taken this down easily' because it takes no skill at all to turtle like this but requires great coordination on the alien side ...
One of the key problem of this situation is the unlimited ress flow. You can turtle as much as you want on SC2 on a 2/3 bases but having limited ressources rewards the other team which owns the rest of the map and can overcome the turtle ( even if it's not cost efficient )
The never-ending res flow is a big problem, yes. If you turtle in SC you run out of minerals and can't do anything. Maybe a third-hive ability could be to corrupt res nozzles. The Khamm can do it to any nozzle at a great cost, destroying the Marine Extractor and sending weird tentacles out of the nozzle that wriggle around and look nasty. The tentacles will take a while to destroy and the Marines have to spend res to rebuild the Extractor. If it's an even game it's probably not a viable tactic since it will cost the Alien team res better spent elsewhere.
It's not unlimited resources though... they have 3 res towers at most. I have never seen a marine turtle on 2 base last more than about 5mins, then they are usually down to 1 base, and that final last stand turtle will be down within 6-7min. 2-3 onos plus 2-3 gorge plus 1-2 lerks with umbra woulda won this game easily, but sadly the aliens weren't coordinated enough to pull it off. Even if the single marine got the phase gate up, when the bulk of the marines were assaulting the hive that would have left one or both their turtled bases empty enough (with say 1 exo) for an alien rush to take out. Reading this battle report from original poster I can think of a multitude of ways with which aliens could have won. Maybe he was tired or not experienced enough to think of them or execute them.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
That one spot at ore is indeed very very weak.
In random order:
* gas
* umbra
* bilebomb
* gorge heal
* bombard crags
* illusions. (send in with your team, preferably from multiple sides so the exo can only focus on one)
* Xeno rush a bit perhaps
* crawl under cover and 'vortex' the blockage when your gorge army under umbra comes bile bombing in, also waiting under cover next to you.
* gang the exo, see previous suggestions. A whole team (minus gorge) leaping in from the side with cara, celer and silence, would do it, with a bile gorge.
* find blind spots inside there base with a cyst spam (during your team pushing), and echo as much whips in as you can. Spots outside base are under arc range? then inside is not.
And surely much more.
This list has only taken me about 30 seconds.
Blocking is fine.
In NS1 Xeno was the game ender. 2-3 xeno in base and the rest is easy. I think xeno now work but it should be more effective (delay is to long and i dont realy know when i will blow up. Its a hard to use ambility and it counts as death so no one wish to use it).
Comments
Ok, lets say things go well and you only lose 30% of the players that assault ore. 2 gorges 2 onos 1 skulk, you lost the skulk and the gorge, you have 2 Onos and 1 Gorge in a very small room with only one exit. There are Exos facing both entrances to either tech room and marines coming out of repair into ore processing. What do you do?
This is pointless, you will think of ways to succeed, I will think of ways to fail. Suffice to say the teams were not imbalanced, in fact I think it was a pickup. Either way, we know our players, the teams were essentially fair if not slightly in aliens favour. We couldn't get through. Maybe the skill on our team wasn't adequate enough to organise an effective push, but that would mean the skill on their side wasn't adequate to organise an effective defence, unless defence is easier for marines than attacking is for aliens, which is kind of the point of this thread.
The fact the aliens lost is just so amusing to me.
It's less a matter of skill at that stage for the aliens than a matter of coordination & cooperation.
Also gorges keep doing damage when they're not attacking and they cost 10 res; that's why they're better siege than onos. I guarantee you if the players were anywhere near evenly matched in skill, you would have won that game after such a good headstart.
Getting Ore Processing is important though, since it is one less node for them, and an important location in which you can use vents to access the two tech points. The significance of that cannot be understated. Since the EXOs can't reach Ore Processing, you only have to deal with jetpackers. Spores, spit, whips and hydras make fast work of them, especially since *they* can only come from two directions.
The tipping point is getting your foot in the door in Ore Processing. I think that was the place where you underestimated its importance. Tactically it's a great position, since you split their team and can hit either side. You can also start lerk spiking the power node in Warehouse from the hall to Ore Processing. Send in skulks to harass both sides, then send the lerks in to gas them. Spores kills marines FAST if they stay in it, so they won't. While the lerks are gassing, your gorges are bile bombing the crap out of the blockades. At this point you only need one or two Onos, since you just need them on D to hold Ore Processing.
Even with jetpacks, the marines can't be everywhere at once. They're not gonna be able to deal with lerk gas. Meanwhile the EXOs are stuck at the tech points since the same blockades that keep the Onos out keeps them *IN*. Peck away at both sides and see which is weaker.
Warehouse is usually an easier kill since it's roomier and has the vent under the platform. However the south hall to Repair Room has Lerk written all over it. Fly through and gas, and when you enter Repair Room head straight for the west wall vent. Rinse and repeat while gorges clean house. Other lerk can be flying though the vent to warehouse to harass as well. If they camp it fly though from Ore Processing. Gas the power node while a gorge tosses bile at it from the hall. Keep an Onos nearby if a jetpacker comes through.
Again, it all starts in Ore Processing. That was the weakest link.
Ore processing was so comprehensively covered by ARCs that the only place that wasn't instantly ARCd out was right next to the power node, in clear line of sight of repairs exit. As if the marines even had to shoot the structures though. They just killed the cysts that were right at their feet, and I couldn't spread any further. The outpost lasted like 3 mins of pretty intense fighting, but since they respawned like 2 feet away as fully upgraded marines, and we spawned into grenade fire as vanilla skulks, we eventually lost it through attrition.
You should have been able to build up the path from logistics with crags/whips, out of reach of the arcs, fairly easily and had a few gorge's bilebombing there. It's fairly easy to bilebomb there without exposing yourself for more than a fraction of a second if you know what you're doing. Which isn't enough time to die from exo fire with the crags there.
I would say your Alien team got outplayed if you couldn't do that.
I'm not trying to make it sound easy, but the problem wasn't the structures. It was allowing the marines to build up that huge blockade uncontested, and not hitting them earlier. I've been on the other side of that, and I've never seen a blockade that held off aliens more than a couple minutes. All it takes is spores to cause chaos, and bile bomb to clear things away. Onos covers the gorges, and skulks keep them off guard.
The Exos didn't waste their time with ore processing. They literally didn't move from the spots illustrated on the map.
However, the Onos can be as bad ass as he wants to be, and kill all the marines he wants to, but they spawned 5 seconds away and kept coming. What does the Onos do when he gets down to 50% HP? What would you do? Just stick around in ore and hope for the best? Most people would retreat for healing, at which point ore is once again blocked.
Also, bare in mind that they didn't actually control ore. They had blocking structures in there, but it wasn't their territory. Yet it still took a lot of effort to try and take the area. As soon as you are fighting over territory the enemy doesn't even possess, and anywhere they go they are hitting your territory, that's when you start losing ground.
IMO, You got beat by a quirky, one off strategy. And a funny one at that.
once w3/a3 is researched you can spend your tres on arc trains.
I'm always amazed by comments like ' yeah a gorge squad/synchronized team would have taken this down easily' because it takes no skill at all to turtle like this but requires great coordination on the alien side ...
One of the key problem of this situation is the unlimited ress flow. You can turtle as much as you want on SC2 on a 2/3 bases but having limited ressources rewards the other team which owns the rest of the map and can overcome the turtle ( even if it's not cost efficient )
In random order:
* gas
* umbra
* bilebomb
* gorge heal
* bombard crags
* illusions. (send in with your team, preferably from multiple sides so the exo can only focus on one)
* Xeno rush a bit perhaps
* crawl under cover and 'vortex' the blockage when your gorge army under umbra comes bile bombing in, also waiting under cover next to you.
* gang the exo, see previous suggestions. A whole team (minus gorge) leaping in from the side with cara, celer and silence, would do it, with a bile gorge.
* find blind spots inside there base with a cyst spam (during your team pushing), and echo as much whips in as you can. Spots outside base are under arc range? then inside is not.
And surely much more.
This list has only taken me about 30 seconds.
Blocking is fine.