ns_refinery is broken
Eviscerator
Join Date: 2003-02-24 Member: 13946Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-02-24 Member: 13946Members, Constellation
Comments
I have never played in or seen a marine turbine spawn though.
Aliens spawning in containment are sufficiently far away from marine spawn to be safe.
Why isn't the alien team preventing them from walking to said spot? Sounds like you were simply outplayed.
From this point you can deny the 3 resource locations (Containment, Chasm, Lava Falls north) with almost no effort due to line of sight.
If the Marines do not instantly egglock/destroy Aliens, the tactic at this point is to go to pipeline, then exchange and flow, which leaves them on 3 resource points to marines 5.
The changes needed to resolve this are a redesign of the chasm vent/hallway to remove simple shooting gallery. It's a valid tactic, but right now it is simply to easy for Marines to pull off it's almost
The concept of helplessly losing the resource tower in your own hive is quite worrying. If that happens, you have already lost the game, and it has nothing to do with the map layout.
Taking chasm that reliably requires a massive concerted push in that direction. Which means no flow control or transit.
Even if they do get a forward base up in chasm, this doesn't mean they should be able to enter the hive. There is sufficient overhang at the entrance which should allow skulks to continuously fall down onto any marines entering. If that isn't enough, chasm is probably the easiest spore target on the whole map. The marines always clump around that central pillar and res node. One lerk in there flying low and sporing constantly and they will be busy for the majority of their time.
What little forward offensive ability marines gain by being in smelting, they lose through lack of access to the rest of the map. A true problem to compare against would be locker room on docking, where marines have easy and rapid access to 4 of the 5 hive rooms, while being able to completely cut off 4 res nodes.
There is only one thing to do, rush chasm, build an armory, and its GG.
Aliens can take literally every res node on the map, and have hives going simultaneously at every available single hive location, and it wouldnt make ONE BIT OF DIFFERENCE.
I honestly thought this would have been fixed by now as the problem sprang up almost a month ago.
This was why docking had only 1 marine spawn for a long time and is not unique to these maps.
I think the fixed spawn locations of NS1 had some merit...now whilst I dont want to have only 1 spawn location I think we need to find a balance.
Games that are over/decided based simply on spawn locations is frustrating.
@Insane: Thank you for the confirmation Insane, it's much appreciated!
@Daveodeth: Please can you provide locations/screenshots to show where these are it'll aid whom/who ever are making changes in fixing them if you can show exactly where they are!
Yes; you could make this argument for any map in your context. The issue with Chasm is it is a heavily favourable marine location, so if your teams are pretty even in other maps you will easily be able to control and hold Chasm and rapidly defeat an Alien team which was easily matched elsewhere. It's like a strength modifier for the Marine team, against a fairly regular Alien spawn - thus is in my opinion (and apparently the dev teams) overly powerful
I would love to see an Alien start in Control on Veil. ^_^
I think I see where you are going with this - but its complexity far outweighs any tangible benefits (you no longer have a static map per version!)
Indeed, I think it would be very interesting to see Aliens on Control in Veil, I suspect it'd be VERY Marine biased due to Cyst chain mechanics especially because you cannot traverse The Dome properly with out going through C12 (LAAAMMMMEEE!)
But I'd still like to play it!
That's giving aliens a massive nerf on an already heavily marine-biased map. Marines would lock down 3 tech points without much difficulty at all, and also make it extremely difficult for aliens to get nanogrid either. Without either tech points OR resources, there's a problem. Without both, there's no point in playing!
The only two times I've survived/won the strat is very quick 2nd hive drop to Pipe and Spores on a very good lerk player, or a 3 skulk rush to Turbine to bring down the phasegate before they run back to defend it, then a sync'ed push into Chasm from both sides. But this requires an above average level of team play for Aliens compared to the zerg chasm approach from Marines
It's more that some combinations of spawn locations are simply bad. Like Cave vs Repair on Mineshaft or Atrium vs Flight/Data on Summit. Close spawns in general are bad for the gameplay in some maps, I think.
There should be a system in place so that aliens can't get a starting Hive in a specific location if marines already start in another specific location.
This is why you never get Cross roads or Hydro starting points. Let us use a compass to make this simple.
You have 5 spawns, North, East, South, West, Central.
Any spawn which is adjacent will produce a pretty horrible game. You can easily define this in code that spawns cannot be adjacent while maintaining a good random element of rolling the dice to shake up the games/tactics. Right now I feel it is too linear. But I appreciate that the 'combination of spawns available' is probably play tested to provide what are usually "the most even games" (I hope?)
It is such a bad starting position for a first Hive compared to other positions on that map because it takes a lot of cysts to even get close to other RT locations. If I was to play the final match of some grand cup and had the bad luck to start in Pipeline, it would really suck to be at such a disadvantage due to randomness. One of the few reasons it probably exist is so that there is still some randomness involved and marines don't instantly know "Aliens are not in Sub? Then they are in Cargo." and to provide at least one more nuance of different gameplay situations on that map.
But they should really help it a bit to make up for it's bad spot. Having a preset cyst chain that goes from the Hive up to the Dome when starting in Pipeline would be good for starters, so your first expansion is not so expensive and Nanogrid is a bit more in reach.
Somewhat similar to marines already having power nodes on in Repair & Waterpumps... except it would allow instant placement of a Harvester for Aliens which is somewhat OP
I have no opinion either way, but there is no resource spot in or around Dome so that is rather irrelevant.
It suffers from the first thing comp players will do to any map, find and abuse any location that will allow them too, people did this to monorail/plaza RT in descent shooting them from off the screen/draw distance and it was patched almost instantly, check out the random piece of see through glass sitting next to the bottom of the escalator in plaza.
Fun fact with veil right now: If you want to arc double res from west junc, in the hallway leading to west junc the outside of the map is completely black, put arcs up against wall and tell them to move into the vent behind nano, at least 1 if not 2-3 will drive into the black void where they can't be hit and marine comm is safe to arc down nano 24/7.
edit: same people who abuse known 'invincible alien buildings' bug which is still in the game for fuck knows why.
Oh, so I'm not crazy and those spurs I unloaded 5 mags into should have died. I've been wondering about that...