do marines really need arcs?
ph30nix
Join Date: 2013-07-28 Member: 186439Members
Join Date: 2013-07-28 Member: 186439Members
Can someone explain why marines need arcs?
There is no turtle situation the aliens can create that a half decent marine team can not crush with a little effort.
2 exos a gl a fl then either a few macs or welders and any alien base is trashed.
Im not saying that situation is a definate win but skill levels being equal the advantage is defiantly with the marines.
so what need does the arc fill except to be a instant win button If used properly?
There is no turtle situation the aliens can create that a half decent marine team can not crush with a little effort.
2 exos a gl a fl then either a few macs or welders and any alien base is trashed.
Im not saying that situation is a definate win but skill levels being equal the advantage is defiantly with the marines.
so what need does the arc fill except to be a instant win button If used properly?
Comments
Bit of fail as its not a good comparison. I view gl as a better comparison to bile than anything else.
my question is more in line of why do they need it? Aliens have nothing like it. Bile bomb from a low health unit with short range requiring line of sight vs a unit with massive range and can target thru anything as long as any vision of target is available.
I just dont feel they even need to be in the game period.
and nano is just an anti marine hell from which escape is impossible.
Anyway I think a siege unit existing is fine. I don't see why it needs to be movable or why they still glitch around the map and drive over each other / through alien structures.
I have been on both ends of a good team using them and it was horrific.
Have to wait and see I guess
They are both turtle breaking/siege/building destroying tools, hence the comparison. GLs don't do near as much damage to structures as bilebomb does, so the comparison is moot. In fact, a while ago some people liked to complain about how 2 gorges and maybe an onos could take a base out of commission just by focusing the power.
If you want help dealing with arcs just remember this:
With any sort of map awareness you should be able to spot an arc push coming from a mile away and deal with it accordingly.
Arcs are slow, weak to bile bomb because they usually need to be close together to hit the same target, lose their armor when they deploy, and it is expensive to build up enough for a good push. Generally hives are in the center of a room so most common arc positions are just outside of the hive, making it perfectly possible to hit them with bile for any half decent gorge. Remember welders cannot weld everything at once, and if you let that many macs build up along with the arcs you really haven't been putting on enough pressure.
This is assuming you had zero map awareness and just let them roll up to your door instead of spotting them on the map and trying to hit them en route. Or you can easily just backstab the marine base with those gorges while the arcs are moving across the map.
Just take solace in the fact that arcs used to be much faster and had a much longer range before 250 yet many people had no trouble with them whatsoever.
I don't think this is accurate. I think people are still living in the past where letting 1-2 gorges free in your base for 10 sec meant that everything got wrecked.
Bilebomb is HORRIBLY weak nowdays. Just try and remember when was the last time you cursed bilebomb for destroying everything? It doesn't happen anymore. Killing 1 ARC with bile takes like 5 biles. MACs just laugh at bile, while before they used to drop dead from one?
This is just the impression I've got. I've no actual numbers.
lol they should just call it "ARC-o-grid". ARCs are fun but can be an expensive loss for marines if the siege fails. I've gotten in the habit of building them locally at the siege site, much more efficient than slow boating them across the map.
They haven't changed the damage of bile recently, just the range.
Bile does double damage to armor and each hit stacks as well. You also don't have to reload bile but you do run out of energy.
Bile is 22 damage per second splash over 11 seconds and the effect stacks with each bile. GLs are (or were, this is from the wiki) 130 damage with double damage to structures.
You forget about the fact that gorges only cost 5 res and bile can come out ~5 minutes into a round. Bile is pretty ridiculous still, to the point where I know of a few commanders that have quit playing ns2 because of how easy it is to win with bilebomb now. 2 gorges can take out ips + armslab + armory in about 10 seconds flat
What you'll probably find is that most pub commanders/khammanders don't react or change their notional 'build queue' when this kind of key information is uncovered. A classic example is marine commanders keep working on phase gates and upgrades when aliens go for shade upgrades. Instead, marines should spend more money on scans, mines and building obs at forward bases to nullify the advantages created by phantom... There's not much depth to the RTS elements of NS2 but what is there has a substantial influence on the outcomes.
As for OPs question - yes we need arcs. They add some strategic choice to NS2.
Maybe a limit of online arcs discussion is revived?
Marines also have a unit cap, ARCs count for 20
Not a huge fan of surprise ARC train tbh.
ARCs just aren't working for me in their current stage. They look clunky and weird when they move in groups, and don't make much visual sense. How does a gun attack through walls?
I really hated Cargo siege though. Seriously, that's the one I remember most, because ugh...
You can still simulate the experience in NS2, just build the ARC factory locally and pop out 3 ARCs. Also cargo is still hard to siege.
So you are basically saying that Arcs are only useful when the marine team is too incompetent to push with teamwork instead.
They give the marines an alternative strategy to clear alien hive rooms. Instead of going on the offensive and risk losing all your gear and, depending on the situation, having a lower chance of success, you go for the slower, more costly (tres-wise) approach, but this time you get to defend and recycle all your gear. There are many ways for the aliens to counter ARCs, to the point that they're only viable in very specific map locations where the marine team has the clear defensive advantage.
ARCs are mainly used in situations where the aliens have the upper hand in combat, i.e. there are a lot of fades on the field. This forces the marines on the defensive. IF the marines didn't have any alternatives to just rushing a hive, they would be forced to sit on their phase gates and hope to rack up enough fade kills fast enough to be able to push out, something that already happens too much and the comp meta is very stale because of this.
And yes, you are saying ARCs are op. No, they are not op. They are an extremely situational, slow-to-produce and easily-predicted resource hog that the aliens have multiple ways of countering.