The resource model means nothing. The game isn't about having the best resource model. You don't win when you get to 1000 resource points. The resource model lies almost entirely in the meta game, which only affects the real game through the things that the resources give you. Change those things, and you don't necessarily change the resource model, but you change its effect on the game, which is all that matters.
You seem to have confused resource model with economic model. This isn't just about how resources are collected and spent, it's about how both teams use 2 resource pools (t.res and p.res) which while seemingly being 'identical' across the factions are in actuality vastly different. Alien p.res use requires no prior t.res investment, when you hit 75 pres you go onos, this is not the case with marines, who require t.res investments for everything they can purchase. Not only does the marine t.res economy thus have to be put to work on expanding marine map control and improving marine performance (like with alien t.res) it also has to enable marines to use their p.res.
If you would look at it in economic terms, this means that the marine t.res is of a higher value (more and qualitatively higher demand) than the alien one, both teams gather at the same rates but one team (the alien side) has a lot less things it needs to spend t.res on, and significantly less CRUCIAL things. Aliens can very well hold on with just a few harvesters, as long as they get a second hive and 2 upgrades they are easily set to stay into the game until marines reach a crucial tech point, provided they reach that point before higher alien lifeforms are available p.res wise. So the alien T.res economy can suffer much harder than the marine one, it's much more resilient because it has less crucial things to be spent on, and as a result aliens have a much easier time staying in a game.
Surely that's not too hard to grasp?
Whether intentional or accidental, this is a case of asymmetric game-play.
The key difference is what each team and its commander is reliant on.
The marine team is largely reliant on resources. After just one additional tech point, they can acquire all the upgrades available to them, and the only thing holding them back is res flow.
Aliens, on the other hand, are territory based. As you said, after just 2 or 3 harvesters they reach sufficient res flow to research all the available upgrades, however they require 3 tech points to do this.
This premise sounds perfectly acceptable to me, and I see no immediate balance problems that may arise. They are just different approaches, potentially ones that make good use of each teams strengths and weaknesses.
I think the primary problem is that, as it stands now, 2 hive aliens are simply too "powerful". Powerful is an odd word to use, because head to head, 2 hive aliens are inferior to marines. However, the alien team's passive capabilities are too extreme at the moment, which is why most games do not end in an explosive head on collision, but rather through a gorge bile bombing a base, or a skulk rush on a power node.
In my opinion, that is where the true imbalance lies.
schkorpioI can mspaintJoin Date: 2003-05-23Member: 16635Members
whats with all of these balance threads? you people do realise that there is an insanely huge difference between player skills - mix that up with at least 12 people playing there is no way you can ever balance a game that balances out peoples skills - and if you could the game would be about as much fun bus simulator.
Aliens, on the other hand, are territory based. As you said, after just 2 or 3 harvesters they reach sufficient res flow to research all the available upgrades, however they require 3 tech points to do this.
This premise sounds perfectly acceptable to me, and I see no immediate balance problems that may arise. They are just different approaches, potentially ones that make good use of each teams strengths and weaknesses.
It's laughable to claim that aliens need 3 hives for anything, heck I'd like to argue the majority of alien games are won before aliens even have those 3 hives. Marines require 2 CCs to unlock their lategame, aliens require no CCs for lategame lifeforms, yes they need 2 hives to make those lifeforms more potent but they certainly don't need the T3 for anything substantial.
So no, not only do aliens need less extractors, they also only need 2 Tech Points to be competitive just like marines.
2 hive aliens are inferior to marines
In which universe? Unless you are talking solely skulks, but carapace, celerity and second tier hive abilities is ALL alien lifeforms need to be on par with late-game marines, even 1vs1. Seems like we are playing a different game.
whats with all of these balance threads? you people do realise that there is an insanely huge difference between player skills - mix that up with at least 12 people playing there is no way you can ever balance a game that balances out peoples skills - and if you could the game would be about as much fun bus simulator.
Skill is no part of the balance equation and balance certainly isn't about 'balancing out' skill, it's about attaining a gameplay state in which skill and strategy (in RTS's) can be considered the SOLE responsible factor for an outcome of the game, and not which side has the most broken mechanics. Better balances games are also simply more fun, and more rewarding for the player. It would be silly NOT to try and attain balance just because there's skill differences.
Aliens, on the other hand, are territory based. As you said, after just 2 or 3 harvesters they reach sufficient res flow to research all the available upgrades, however they require 3 tech points to do this.
This premise sounds perfectly acceptable to me, and I see no immediate balance problems that may arise. They are just different approaches, potentially ones that make good use of each teams strengths and weaknesses.
It's laughable to claim that aliens need 3 hives for anything, heck I'd like to argue the majority of alien games are won before aliens even have those 3 hives. Marines require 2 CCs to unlock their lategame, aliens require no CCs for lategame lifeforms, yes they need 2 hives to make those lifeforms more potent but they certainly don't need the T3 for anything substantial.
So no, not only do aliens need less extractors, they also only need 2 Tech Points to be competitive just like marines.
2 hive aliens are inferior to marines
In which universe? Unless you are talking solely skulks, but carapace, celerity and second tier hive abilities is ALL alien lifeforms need to be on par with late-game marines, even 1vs1. Seems like we are playing a different game.
Its weird. I think your intention was to disagree with me, but everything you wrote says otherwise. I think you also see that, one way or another, 2 hives aliens are too powerful at the moment.
As for marines being superior or not. Send 8 Onos against 8 Exos, see what happens.
Seems to me one of the biggest points of this is that the resource models are asymmetric - marines require Tres input to be able to use their Pres, while aliens require none.
As a general rule, marines are EXPECTED to have more RTs than aliens (something that for all the reasons Savant has been talking about is quite a difficult task) in order to keep up with their tech- does this sound like a balanced resource model?
Possible solution - life forms require a comm tres egg drop AND alien Pres, or the comm must buy the ability for aliens to access lerk, fade and onos "life form tiers" using Tres. Maybe even have a structure thats sole purpose is to generate higher life form eggs. This would introduce all the timing and res issues that marines experience into the alien side of play.
Thoughts on this as a solution? Was this never experimented with in previous builds?
Afterthought/mindless babble (please pay less attention to this than the rest of my post) Indeed, introducing this kind of system could even allow for a further modulated alien lifeform tech tree, and a more diverse interface for khamms to navigate (life form technique upgrades found at its respective structure... Perhaps even have the passive upgrades lifeform-specific... Build a celerity spur near Lerk spawning structure to enable lerks to buy celerity etc.
Another thought: Alien upgrades costing a small amount of pres- I've seen this in some mods and although it's different it just seems... Fair? Right?
This is NS right? Marines are in the poo. What are we saving our territory from fluffy pink bunnies? No, we are saving our territory from the freaking BioMass from System Shock 2.
You *have* to be skilled or experienced to win as Aliens, nub Alien teams simply do not own up confident Marine teams.
Plus, as people are starting to point out, 50/50 would be very hard to achieve without placing *even more* pressure on the first few engagements/harvesters for each team. Your desire for 50/50 balance is not congruous with the RTS aspect of the game. Not only is that RTS aspect designed to be asymetrical, 'balanced' RTS games have horribly unique and powerful units, mostly they focus on the mixed roster, as always the question is:
How to achieve a unit roster that contains no one unit which can be stacked into an unbeatable force, yet have a unit roster that doesn't require a specific mix of units to be effective?
As a general rule, marines are EXPECTED to have more RTs than aliens (something that for all the reasons Savant has been talking about is quite a difficult task) in order to keep up with their tech- does this sound like a balanced resource model?
This hasn't been true since Onos eggs were moved to third hive only.
At the moment, one could argue that aliens may actually need more harvesters than marines to be effective, they just don't have the ability to hold them all.
The marine team's reliance on pRes is far less than the aliens reliance on it, which becomes clearly visible when pitting things like skulks and lerks against level 3 marines. Due to the rate at which tRes comes in, and the granular nature and cost of buildings and upgrades, it is far less affected by the number of resource towers. That is to say that, every 8 seconds, a commander will receive something like 20% of the resources he needs for his next upgrade, whereas any one player will receive around 1% of the pRes cost of what they need to get. This time factor means that a single additional res node can make a big difference over the long waiting time required for, say, an Onos, but not for a commander who needs to research level 2 weapons.
Due to this plateu of resources, or avalanche or tech explosion, the alien team is based almost entirely on reaching this point as quickly as possible, which can only be increased with more and more active harvesters. Back when tRes could buy Onos, harvesters were basically irrelevant for the aliens, and it was true that marines needed more of them to compete. However, that is no longer true.
If you see marines win more on larger servers, it is because ther respawn time is way too fast. In large servers with many IPs, the marines can just outzerg the aliens given they are of equal skill. BUt for this you need marines who are willing to charge into enemy territory, shoot stuff and die repeditly.
how about this? keep everything the same, but gorges must be present to build rt's upgrades, whips, hives, etc that the KHAM placed, this will require the alien commander to place down an rt, but the rt will either not build itself OR, build itself very slowly unless a gorge is present heal spraying it,
Great post. I enjoy reading something that is detailed and well thought out.
Another factor that comes into play, imho, is that in NS1 you had electrfied res nodes, and in NS2 you do not. In NS1 this delayed aliens from taking out your extractors, which can be a huge hit to the marine economy.
Now marines are expected to:
Build base buildings
Build power nodes
Secure & build resource nodes
Secure a second tech point
Respond to attacks on power nodes & structures
Gain territory
Attack alien harvesters
All at the same time in the first 5 minutes. Lose two or three early game extractors and you can pretty much kiss the game goodbye.
The aliens are expected to:
Kill marines & marine stuff
That's it.
The alien commander has given the alien team free reign to constantly assault the marines, keeping them on their heels. While the marines try and secure a tech point, you're killing their extractors. If marines try and push to your end to attack harvesters, then you rush their base and take out the power node.
As I was saying in another thread, the game has been flipped on its head since in NS1 the alien team actually needed MORE teamwork than the marine team. You had to coordinate not only who would save for a hive, but what upgrade chamber would be dropped, who would drop what harvester where, what hallway would you put in OCs to choke marines from advancing, etc.
While I like that marines need more teamwork than aliens now, I think the pendulum has swung a bit too far.
You are breaking marine construction into 4 categories when it is still the same action, meanwhile you are grossly oversimplifying the alien players' roles.
Marines have to build, attack, and defend. Aliens have to attack, defend, and only sometimes build (gorges). I get that marines have more to do (IE building) but you blow it way out of proportion.
Keep in mind also that marine buildings go up MUCH faster (nearly instantly with enough marines) and can be built much more readily at the front because of the alien cyst mechanic.
There's kind of too little incentive to be a gorge early game - as far as building goes anyway.
It'd be interesting to see what would happen if all buildings' build speeds were slowed 2x-3x of what they are now, and gorge heal spray sped them up to the current speeds with spray (non-stacking, or diminishing returns to prevent buildings going up too fast).
Basically, everything, except cysts, builds REALLY slow, unless helped by a gorge.
Might give being a gorge to build things some more meaning, and delay higher life forms.
Then again, in that case a lot of the team will go gorge early game, or the com will drop "throw-away" gorge eggs, and the net effect on delaying life forms will be minimal... However, it might help marines take ground more easily early game and not have the entire alien team rush over and over - since part of the team will be gorges.
Building comm structures is already the least interesting part of playing Gorge. It's not particularly fun when you have no actual say in what gets built. It's different for marines because it's only a part time activity for them.
That, and alien structures already build really slowly and come out very weak before they mature. Harvesters in particular are extremely expensive to lose and replace.
As a general rule, marines are EXPECTED to have more RTs than aliens (something that for all the reasons Savant has been talking about is quite a difficult task) in order to keep up with their tech- does this sound like a balanced resource model?
This hasn't been true since Onos eggs were moved to third hive only.
At the moment, one could argue that aliens may actually need more harvesters than marines to be effective, they just don't have the ability to hold them all.
The marine team's reliance on pRes is far less than the aliens reliance on it, which becomes clearly visible when pitting things like skulks and lerks against level 3 marines. Due to the rate at which tRes comes in, and the granular nature and cost of buildings and upgrades, it is far less affected by the number of resource towers. That is to say that, every 8 seconds, a commander will receive something like 20% of the resources he needs for his next upgrade, whereas any one player will receive around 1% of the pRes cost of what they need to get. This time factor means that a single additional res node can make a big difference over the long waiting time required for, say, an Onos, but not for a commander who needs to research level 2 weapons.
Due to this plateu of resources, or avalanche or tech explosion, the alien team is based almost entirely on reaching this point as quickly as possible, which can only be increased with more and more active harvesters. Back when tRes could buy Onos, harvesters were basically irrelevant for the aliens, and it was true that marines needed more of them to compete. However, that is no longer true.
You post so much and so authoritatively and here you are proving yet again that you have no idea what your talking about. Marines need more res then aliens to win, always have always will. A marine team is not doing well unless they have at least 1.5x resflow that the aliens do, if its even they will lose almost every game.
I think this thread has been destroyed. The original poster wanted to discuss what the problem truly is, without suggesting any solutions, suggested solutions have crammed up the thoughts and now we're stuck in an infinite loop.
Anyway, I agree with the original poster. Aliens generally don't have to worry too much about defence as much as marines. Aliens also have a speed advantage, so they can race back to defend areas quickly, then go and attack marine stuff again. Marines are super slow, they have phase gates which are great for defence, but unless the marines are highly organised... phase gates are terrible for offence.
So conceptually it's really easy to be alien, while quite complicated to be marines, and that inherently makes it more difficult to play as a marine than it does to play as a commander.
I notice often that unless the marines are aggressive and actively team up and destroy alien structures, aliens can sit around and get really high level creatures and then just stomp on the marines.
Finally, I'd like to bring focus back to what I think is a huge part of the problem: The conceptual complicatedness of aliens vs marines.
The marine commander has a lot of work to do, if he wants to build a structure, he must either first get macs set up, or convince a player to do it. If he gets macs set up, that's time/resources spent, if he gets a player to do it, that's a player taken out of the battle for a while.
Aliens: If the alien commander wants to build a structure, all he has to do is plonk down the structure on some infestation and done. Can optionally ask a gorge to help but not really needed, that gorge is better off helping the troops harass marines.
Aliens have a much simpler job to do and a lot more time to do it. Less stressful, easier to focus.
Alien's resource model is only half the problem. It's the lack of, and stagnant, scaling system aliens have.
Aliens are "balanced" on the fact that they don't scale. 75 damage on a skulk early game is pretty devastating, but on the same note the 75 damage coupled with piss poor health scaling and they practically become gnats to marines late game. Then you have onos who are just a bulldozer that you can't balance for early game because they too become crap late game (as was seen in beta) or balanced for far late game because they're nigh impossible to kill when they show up on the field - all do to the non existent alien scaling system. So how do you balance aliens when scaling is practically nonexistant? Half the alien tech is worthless or useless (adren, or regen that gives you away to marines) and the other half is a strong one drop for full upgrade (carapace for example).
It's the same reason why lerks are skipped by the majority of the alien player base because their terrible late game presence coupled by poor lifeform tech (crop dusting spores is a joke). Even then, it's hardly a research priority. Tried to get range spores back in (and umbra) but there were just too many cry babies crying rivers at the very mention of it.
Another thought: Alien upgrades costing a small amount of pres- I've seen this in some mods and although it's different it just seems... Fair? Right?
It was done in beta and there was a reason why it was removed. It was a joke wasting 1-3 p.res on a life form that could be killed instantly by a shotgun or w3 lmg marine. So players ended up running around as zero upgrade skulks the entire match.
I think this thread has been destroyed. The original poster wanted to discuss what the problem truly is, without suggesting any solutions, suggested solutions have crammed up the thoughts and now we're stuck in an infinite loop.
This thread seems like it's a "only reply if you think the games horribly unbalanced", according to some of the OP's post. So, following post just add to the OP's original statement. The OP can go on claiming a "majority" of players think the games horribly unbalanced.
Also, the OP did suggest solutions to their problem with NS2.
These balance topics, claiming to representation of large portions of the community, then suggesting large changes (some overhauls), are going overboard. On top of it, they want UWE to figure it out, off a few sentences (as a guide), and implement it in a timely manner.
There's a modding system, supported by UWE. Some features in NS2 are based off mods. Why can't players, who want these changes, put some effort into producing a mod with those changes? If it's great, it will be widely adopted.
Make aliens harvesters take 20 additional seconds to build alone. If a gorge helps to build via heal spray, it goes back to previous values.
I like the idea of requiring a gorge or two to build harvesters more quickly. As long as the asymmetry police don't have a problem with it it should be at least tested out. It would at least slow the alien economy down a little or benefit the marines by taking a skulk or two out of the first few confrontations.
These balance topics, claiming to representation of large portions of the community, then suggesting large changes (some overhauls), are going overboard. On top of it, they want UWE to figure it out, off a few sentences (as a guide), and implement it in a timely manner.
There's a modding system, supported by UWE. Some features in NS2 are based off mods. Why can't players, who want these changes, put some effort into producing a mod with those changes? If it's great, it will be widely adopted.
You're missing the point, firstly. Of course I intend to suggest ways to improve the topic, just not right now.
Secondly, there's a very poor level of documentation on how to mod ns2. Unless you're already good at modding other games and already know lua, modding ns2 is near impossible. I'm working on it, it's very difficult.
Having the game start with both commanders has been a good step forward in combatting this out of control alien economy problem. There is still some polish that needs to go into extractor build/rates and times though I feel, both to encourage gorge building help and to make it more comparable to the out of combat time marines suffer from building structures.
As a general rule, marines are EXPECTED to have more RTs than aliens (something that for all the reasons Savant has been talking about is quite a difficult task) in order to keep up with their tech- does this sound like a balanced resource model?
This hasn't been true since Onos eggs were moved to third hive only.
At the moment, one could argue that aliens may actually need more harvesters than marines to be effective, they just don't have the ability to hold them all.
The marine team's reliance on pRes is far less than the aliens reliance on it, which becomes clearly visible when pitting things like skulks and lerks against level 3 marines. Due to the rate at which tRes comes in, and the granular nature and cost of buildings and upgrades, it is far less affected by the number of resource towers. That is to say that, every 8 seconds, a commander will receive something like 20% of the resources he needs for his next upgrade, whereas any one player will receive around 1% of the pRes cost of what they need to get. This time factor means that a single additional res node can make a big difference over the long waiting time required for, say, an Onos, but not for a commander who needs to research level 2 weapons.
Due to this plateu of resources, or avalanche or tech explosion, the alien team is based almost entirely on reaching this point as quickly as possible, which can only be increased with more and more active harvesters. Back when tRes could buy Onos, harvesters were basically irrelevant for the aliens, and it was true that marines needed more of them to compete. However, that is no longer true.
You post so much and so authoritatively and here you are proving yet again that you have no idea what your talking about. Marines need more res then aliens to win, always have always will. A marine team is not doing well unless they have at least 1.5x resflow that the aliens do, if its even they will lose almost every game.
Your evidence and or reasoning is quite convincing.You will also notice that out of every poster on this forum, I probably use the terms "in my opinion" and "I think" about 1000 times more, just to get the point across. Sometimes you do come across people who can't grasp the concept that everything anybody says is their opinion, and you actually need to explicitly explain that to them. It can get quite tiring at times.
Alien's resource model is only half the problem. It's the lack of, and stagnant, scaling system aliens have.
Aliens are "balanced" on the fact that they don't scale. 75 damage on a skulk early game is pretty devastating, but on the same note the 75 damage coupled with piss poor health scaling and they practically become gnats to marines late game. Then you have onos who are just a bulldozer that you can't balance for early game because they too become crap late game (as was seen in beta) or balanced for far late game because they're nigh impossible to kill when they show up on the field - all do to the non existent alien scaling system. So how do you balance aliens when scaling is practically nonexistant? Half the alien tech is worthless or useless (adren, or regen that gives you away to marines) and the other half is a strong one drop for full upgrade (carapace for example).
Adrenaline is leaps and bounds beyond celerity for every evolution(Except maybe the Lerk. Maybe.), even skulk once you've gotten leap.
Regen is "Okay", if you have silence.
I've gone against W3 marines as a Silence/Regen/Adrenaline skulk, and done decently well at it.
They don't hear you coming, and you have enough Adrenaline to leap away once they hit you a couple times.
It's the same reason why lerks are skipped by the majority of the alien player base because their terrible late game presence coupled by poor lifeform tech (crop dusting spores is a joke). Even then, it's hardly a research priority. Tried to get range spores back in (and umbra) but there were just too many cry babies crying rivers at the very mention of it.
Lerk is skipped over because most people want to be the onos, or the fade.
The Lerk is awesome when played correctly.
Ie: Not sitting on the floor/wall/ceiling trying to spike things down.
Another thought: Alien upgrades costing a small amount of pres- I've seen this in some mods and although it's different it just seems... Fair? Right?
It was done in beta and there was a reason why it was removed. It was a joke wasting 1-3 p.res on a life form that could be killed instantly by a shotgun or w3 lmg marine. So players ended up running around as zero upgrade skulks the entire match.
In NS1 it cost two team res to get upgrades, and they were only as powerful as the amount of upgrades of that specific type.
It'd be like having to have three carapace shells to get maxed out carapace in NS2.
If anyone has 1,5 h to spend, give this video about Sun Tsu's the Art of War a watch:
I feel the marine vs alien situation similar to the US Army vs Vietcong situation in the video. The marines try to force a decisive battle with superiour weapons while the aliens are hitting their bases all around the map. I think the game was designed to run this way and I like it but this means there is an imminent disandvantage for the marines in terms of strategy.
To make matters worse, the aliens are too strong at defending their bases while the powernodes multiply the efficiency of their strategy of guerilla attacks. Too strong at defending because of a) wavespawn b) free cloggs + whips.
Even in games where the marines cut off alien expansion (1 RT aliens) the game usually drags on for 10 more minutes because marines cannot shoot down a hive while multiple skulks spawn at the same time. Shooting the eggs (egglocking) is a terrible mechanic of spawncamping that is caused by the wavespawn mechanic. If it works out for the marines, you have extremly frustrated aliens and it still drags out the game compared to just killing the hive. If it doesnt work out, the game drags on and on, until the marines get arcs or some alien magically gets enough res for onos.
Cloggs and whips counter the only personal weapon the marines have to assault a hive properly - the GL. Whips were nerfed recently, so I'm not sure how it will play out. As for cloggs, shouldnt a wall of cloggs evaporate if I put 4 grenades in it? Why do grenades do less damage vs cloogs, it doesnt seem logical.
The powernode mechanic makes it laughably easy to punish the marines for concentrating their forces at one point. The missing notification is just the icing on the cake, as soon as the aliens manage to force a beacon, they have a) wasted a lot of marine tres b) forced all marines to stop what they were doing at the moment.
The average distribution of ranges encountered in real game scenarios. Or, if you prefer, any range that could feasibly be instigated by the players themselves. Which isn't entirely fair. The Exos can just send a single Exo ahead, while 7 stand back and cover him. 7 Exos will output enough damage to kill one Onos every +-2 seconds, and they can do it from anywhere.
There's kind of too little incentive to be a gorge early game - as far as building goes anyway.
It'd be interesting to see what would happen if all buildings' build speeds were slowed 2x-3x of what they are now, and gorge heal spray sped them up to the current speeds with spray (non-stacking, or diminishing returns to prevent buildings going up too fast).
Basically, everything, except cysts, builds REALLY slow, unless helped by a gorge.
Might give being a gorge to build things some more meaning, and delay higher life forms.
Then again, in that case a lot of the team will go gorge early game, or the com will drop "throw-away" gorge eggs, and the net effect on delaying life forms will be minimal... However, it might help marines take ground more easily early game and not have the entire alien team rush over and over - since part of the team will be gorges.
Gorge early is usually great for blocking off an otherwise easy marine expansion. If you can buy enough time to set up, it takes a large chunk of the marine team (without upgrades) to break past a single gorge wall+hydras+the gorge himself. After you hold that for a couple minutes you can go build the hive, then you get bile bomb.
Comments
Whether intentional or accidental, this is a case of asymmetric game-play.
The key difference is what each team and its commander is reliant on.
The marine team is largely reliant on resources. After just one additional tech point, they can acquire all the upgrades available to them, and the only thing holding them back is res flow.
Aliens, on the other hand, are territory based. As you said, after just 2 or 3 harvesters they reach sufficient res flow to research all the available upgrades, however they require 3 tech points to do this.
This premise sounds perfectly acceptable to me, and I see no immediate balance problems that may arise. They are just different approaches, potentially ones that make good use of each teams strengths and weaknesses.
I think the primary problem is that, as it stands now, 2 hive aliens are simply too "powerful". Powerful is an odd word to use, because head to head, 2 hive aliens are inferior to marines. However, the alien team's passive capabilities are too extreme at the moment, which is why most games do not end in an explosive head on collision, but rather through a gorge bile bombing a base, or a skulk rush on a power node.
In my opinion, that is where the true imbalance lies.
It's laughable to claim that aliens need 3 hives for anything, heck I'd like to argue the majority of alien games are won before aliens even have those 3 hives. Marines require 2 CCs to unlock their lategame, aliens require no CCs for lategame lifeforms, yes they need 2 hives to make those lifeforms more potent but they certainly don't need the T3 for anything substantial.
So no, not only do aliens need less extractors, they also only need 2 Tech Points to be competitive just like marines.
In which universe? Unless you are talking solely skulks, but carapace, celerity and second tier hive abilities is ALL alien lifeforms need to be on par with late-game marines, even 1vs1. Seems like we are playing a different game.
Skill is no part of the balance equation and balance certainly isn't about 'balancing out' skill, it's about attaining a gameplay state in which skill and strategy (in RTS's) can be considered the SOLE responsible factor for an outcome of the game, and not which side has the most broken mechanics. Better balances games are also simply more fun, and more rewarding for the player. It would be silly NOT to try and attain balance just because there's skill differences.
Its weird. I think your intention was to disagree with me, but everything you wrote says otherwise. I think you also see that, one way or another, 2 hives aliens are too powerful at the moment.
As for marines being superior or not. Send 8 Onos against 8 Exos, see what happens.
As a general rule, marines are EXPECTED to have more RTs than aliens (something that for all the reasons Savant has been talking about is quite a difficult task) in order to keep up with their tech- does this sound like a balanced resource model?
Possible solution - life forms require a comm tres egg drop AND alien Pres, or the comm must buy the ability for aliens to access lerk, fade and onos "life form tiers" using Tres. Maybe even have a structure thats sole purpose is to generate higher life form eggs. This would introduce all the timing and res issues that marines experience into the alien side of play.
Thoughts on this as a solution? Was this never experimented with in previous builds?
Afterthought/mindless babble (please pay less attention to this than the rest of my post)
Indeed, introducing this kind of system could even allow for a further modulated alien lifeform tech tree, and a more diverse interface for khamms to navigate (life form technique upgrades found at its respective structure... Perhaps even have the passive upgrades lifeform-specific... Build a celerity spur near Lerk spawning structure to enable lerks to buy celerity etc.
Another thought: Alien upgrades costing a small amount of pres- I've seen this in some mods and although it's different it just seems... Fair? Right?
This is NS right? Marines are in the poo. What are we saving our territory from fluffy pink bunnies? No, we are saving our territory from the freaking BioMass from System Shock 2.
You *have* to be skilled or experienced to win as Aliens, nub Alien teams simply do not own up confident Marine teams.
Plus, as people are starting to point out, 50/50 would be very hard to achieve without placing *even more* pressure on the first few engagements/harvesters for each team. Your desire for 50/50 balance is not congruous with the RTS aspect of the game. Not only is that RTS aspect designed to be asymetrical, 'balanced' RTS games have horribly unique and powerful units, mostly they focus on the mixed roster, as always the question is:
How to achieve a unit roster that contains no one unit which can be stacked into an unbeatable force, yet have a unit roster that doesn't require a specific mix of units to be effective?
This hasn't been true since Onos eggs were moved to third hive only.
At the moment, one could argue that aliens may actually need more harvesters than marines to be effective, they just don't have the ability to hold them all.
The marine team's reliance on pRes is far less than the aliens reliance on it, which becomes clearly visible when pitting things like skulks and lerks against level 3 marines. Due to the rate at which tRes comes in, and the granular nature and cost of buildings and upgrades, it is far less affected by the number of resource towers. That is to say that, every 8 seconds, a commander will receive something like 20% of the resources he needs for his next upgrade, whereas any one player will receive around 1% of the pRes cost of what they need to get. This time factor means that a single additional res node can make a big difference over the long waiting time required for, say, an Onos, but not for a commander who needs to research level 2 weapons.
Due to this plateu of resources, or avalanche or tech explosion, the alien team is based almost entirely on reaching this point as quickly as possible, which can only be increased with more and more active harvesters. Back when tRes could buy Onos, harvesters were basically irrelevant for the aliens, and it was true that marines needed more of them to compete. However, that is no longer true.
It would suck if NS2 was theorycraft'd to death.
There is a classic mod (I think in beta?).
There is a classic mod. No one plays it because RfK ruined NS1.
You are breaking marine construction into 4 categories when it is still the same action, meanwhile you are grossly oversimplifying the alien players' roles.
Marines have to build, attack, and defend. Aliens have to attack, defend, and only sometimes build (gorges). I get that marines have more to do (IE building) but you blow it way out of proportion.
Keep in mind also that marine buildings go up MUCH faster (nearly instantly with enough marines) and can be built much more readily at the front because of the alien cyst mechanic.
It'd be interesting to see what would happen if all buildings' build speeds were slowed 2x-3x of what they are now, and gorge heal spray sped them up to the current speeds with spray (non-stacking, or diminishing returns to prevent buildings going up too fast).
Basically, everything, except cysts, builds REALLY slow, unless helped by a gorge.
Might give being a gorge to build things some more meaning, and delay higher life forms.
Then again, in that case a lot of the team will go gorge early game, or the com will drop "throw-away" gorge eggs, and the net effect on delaying life forms will be minimal... However, it might help marines take ground more easily early game and not have the entire alien team rush over and over - since part of the team will be gorges.
You post so much and so authoritatively and here you are proving yet again that you have no idea what your talking about. Marines need more res then aliens to win, always have always will. A marine team is not doing well unless they have at least 1.5x resflow that the aliens do, if its even they will lose almost every game.
Anyway, I agree with the original poster. Aliens generally don't have to worry too much about defence as much as marines. Aliens also have a speed advantage, so they can race back to defend areas quickly, then go and attack marine stuff again. Marines are super slow, they have phase gates which are great for defence, but unless the marines are highly organised... phase gates are terrible for offence.
So conceptually it's really easy to be alien, while quite complicated to be marines, and that inherently makes it more difficult to play as a marine than it does to play as a commander.
I notice often that unless the marines are aggressive and actively team up and destroy alien structures, aliens can sit around and get really high level creatures and then just stomp on the marines.
Finally, I'd like to bring focus back to what I think is a huge part of the problem: The conceptual complicatedness of aliens vs marines.
The marine commander has a lot of work to do, if he wants to build a structure, he must either first get macs set up, or convince a player to do it. If he gets macs set up, that's time/resources spent, if he gets a player to do it, that's a player taken out of the battle for a while.
Aliens: If the alien commander wants to build a structure, all he has to do is plonk down the structure on some infestation and done. Can optionally ask a gorge to help but not really needed, that gorge is better off helping the troops harass marines.
Aliens have a much simpler job to do and a lot more time to do it. Less stressful, easier to focus.
Aliens are "balanced" on the fact that they don't scale. 75 damage on a skulk early game is pretty devastating, but on the same note the 75 damage coupled with piss poor health scaling and they practically become gnats to marines late game. Then you have onos who are just a bulldozer that you can't balance for early game because they too become crap late game (as was seen in beta) or balanced for far late game because they're nigh impossible to kill when they show up on the field - all do to the non existent alien scaling system. So how do you balance aliens when scaling is practically nonexistant? Half the alien tech is worthless or useless (adren, or regen that gives you away to marines) and the other half is a strong one drop for full upgrade (carapace for example).
It's the same reason why lerks are skipped by the majority of the alien player base because their terrible late game presence coupled by poor lifeform tech (crop dusting spores is a joke). Even then, it's hardly a research priority. Tried to get range spores back in (and umbra) but there were just too many cry babies crying rivers at the very mention of it.
It was done in beta and there was a reason why it was removed. It was a joke wasting 1-3 p.res on a life form that could be killed instantly by a shotgun or w3 lmg marine. So players ended up running around as zero upgrade skulks the entire match.
This thread seems like it's a "only reply if you think the games horribly unbalanced", according to some of the OP's post. So, following post just add to the OP's original statement. The OP can go on claiming a "majority" of players think the games horribly unbalanced.
Also, the OP did suggest solutions to their problem with NS2.
These balance topics, claiming to representation of large portions of the community, then suggesting large changes (some overhauls), are going overboard. On top of it, they want UWE to figure it out, off a few sentences (as a guide), and implement it in a timely manner.
There's a modding system, supported by UWE. Some features in NS2 are based off mods. Why can't players, who want these changes, put some effort into producing a mod with those changes? If it's great, it will be widely adopted.
I like the idea of requiring a gorge or two to build harvesters more quickly. As long as the asymmetry police don't have a problem with it it should be at least tested out. It would at least slow the alien economy down a little or benefit the marines by taking a skulk or two out of the first few confrontations.
You're missing the point, firstly. Of course I intend to suggest ways to improve the topic, just not right now.
Secondly, there's a very poor level of documentation on how to mod ns2. Unless you're already good at modding other games and already know lua, modding ns2 is near impossible. I'm working on it, it's very difficult.
Your evidence and or reasoning is quite convincing.You will also notice that out of every poster on this forum, I probably use the terms "in my opinion" and "I think" about 1000 times more, just to get the point across. Sometimes you do come across people who can't grasp the concept that everything anybody says is their opinion, and you actually need to explicitly explain that to them. It can get quite tiring at times.
Regen is "Okay", if you have silence.
I've gone against W3 marines as a Silence/Regen/Adrenaline skulk, and done decently well at it.
They don't hear you coming, and you have enough Adrenaline to leap away once they hit you a couple times.
Lerk is skipped over because most people want to be the onos, or the fade.
The Lerk is awesome when played correctly.
Ie: Not sitting on the floor/wall/ceiling trying to spike things down.
In NS1 it cost two team res to get upgrades, and they were only as powerful as the amount of upgrades of that specific type.
It'd be like having to have three carapace shells to get maxed out carapace in NS2.
I feel the marine vs alien situation similar to the US Army vs Vietcong situation in the video. The marines try to force a decisive battle with superiour weapons while the aliens are hitting their bases all around the map. I think the game was designed to run this way and I like it but this means there is an imminent disandvantage for the marines in terms of strategy.
To make matters worse, the aliens are too strong at defending their bases while the powernodes multiply the efficiency of their strategy of guerilla attacks. Too strong at defending because of a) wavespawn b) free cloggs + whips.
Even in games where the marines cut off alien expansion (1 RT aliens) the game usually drags on for 10 more minutes because marines cannot shoot down a hive while multiple skulks spawn at the same time. Shooting the eggs (egglocking) is a terrible mechanic of spawncamping that is caused by the wavespawn mechanic. If it works out for the marines, you have extremly frustrated aliens and it still drags out the game compared to just killing the hive. If it doesnt work out, the game drags on and on, until the marines get arcs or some alien magically gets enough res for onos.
Cloggs and whips counter the only personal weapon the marines have to assault a hive properly - the GL. Whips were nerfed recently, so I'm not sure how it will play out. As for cloggs, shouldnt a wall of cloggs evaporate if I put 4 grenades in it? Why do grenades do less damage vs cloogs, it doesnt seem logical.
The powernode mechanic makes it laughably easy to punish the marines for concentrating their forces at one point. The missing notification is just the icing on the cake, as soon as the aliens manage to force a beacon, they have a) wasted a lot of marine tres b) forced all marines to stop what they were doing at the moment.
The average distribution of ranges encountered in real game scenarios. Or, if you prefer, any range that could feasibly be instigated by the players themselves. Which isn't entirely fair. The Exos can just send a single Exo ahead, while 7 stand back and cover him. 7 Exos will output enough damage to kill one Onos every +-2 seconds, and they can do it from anywhere.
Gorge early is usually great for blocking off an otherwise easy marine expansion. If you can buy enough time to set up, it takes a large chunk of the marine team (without upgrades) to break past a single gorge wall+hydras+the gorge himself. After you hold that for a couple minutes you can go build the hive, then you get bile bomb.