First minute tends to reward stacks too much

gungorge

And by stacks I mean games that end early with a high K:D imbalance. Not people intentionally trying to stomp on rookies.

We've all seen this (in my opinion extremely boring) strat:
1. Rush to first RT
2. Kill RT
3. Delay other team leaving base until early tech ups are complete
4. Lock in team
5. At this point the other team either gets a base rush in and wins or hopes there's enough non-rookies to concede at 7 minutes

While aliens can (and often do) pull this off this seems to be more problematic with stackers in the context of marines being the winning team. Though judging from ns2stats if Marines don't attempt this strat they have a good chance of losing. The more I play with the last balance pass the more I'm convinced this is a balance problem and not NS2 being the home of every gamer troll on the planet.

I don't think we'll ever get perfect balance. Most games I've played that get close achieve it by making things boring. Instead I'd like to try and achieve an improvement to the FREAKING AWESOME/GOOD/BORING/BAD game ratios. (As an example, I've never had a BAD mmo pvp match. But I've also never had a FREAKING AWESOME one)

Some ideas:
1. Nerf armor penetration until PGs/Armor1/Weapons1/Bio{2or3}. This will let rookies get out of base and jump around trying to kill stuff while still providing good players an opportunity to excel once armor's been worn off. (Might need to reduce the cost of welders to keep them from being an early drain on marine personal res)

2. RT armor starts high and degrades over time. This makes it worth a good player's time to secure non-natural RTs instead of stomping on newer players. Later in the game this could do interesting things as rifles/skulks can make losing higher lifeform/tech a lot more painful. (Can't keep towers up for replacement res)

3. (Marines only, don't have a good idea for an Alien counter-balance) Start with cat packs and make them much cheaper, but the cost scales with tech level+weapons. This makes it easier for marines to recover from losing a major engagement, but shouldn't affect late game very much.

Note that the merits of these ideas aren't as important per se as trying to find a way for both rookies and good players to enjoy the first 10 minutes of the game *on the same server*

Woehler

I see no reason why the game should be unnecessary complicated or skewed as any of your ideas would do. As the basic of the game rely on teamwork. And thus, you should solve your predicament with teamwork.
And as always. Try and start with fair teams.

MuckyMcFly

It doesn't happen that often but its always been part of the game and for the most part if a rush is thwarted its a pain to come back from so can be risky.