Non-rush Tactics
Kid-A
Join Date: 2002-12-17 Member: 10908Members
Join Date: 2002-12-17 Member: 10908Members
<div class="IPBDescription">No option but to rush?</div> Are there any other good (ie that work) tactics other than a form of rush?
Every decent comm knows that you need to secure two hives or you'll usually lose. This is usually done by phase at base then phases and tf's at hives. Then just wait till you can get the last hive.
The other option seems to be rush the aliens hive right away generally leading to (imho at least) boring games.
These seems to be the only strategies that marines can use and expect to win. Someone posted a 'slow expansion' but that generally fails. Is this the only option for marines if so it's a little limiting.
Can you come up with anything?
Every decent comm knows that you need to secure two hives or you'll usually lose. This is usually done by phase at base then phases and tf's at hives. Then just wait till you can get the last hive.
The other option seems to be rush the aliens hive right away generally leading to (imho at least) boring games.
These seems to be the only strategies that marines can use and expect to win. Someone posted a 'slow expansion' but that generally fails. Is this the only option for marines if so it's a little limiting.
Can you come up with anything?
Comments
You're always going to need to move out of your base asap to get things done, the alternative is to not move out.. but not moving out allows the aliens free run of the map and then they'll just expand get fades and munch you.
You can rush the res points (and repeatedly assasinate their gorge)
You can rush the empty hives.
You can rush the main hive.
From a clasical RTS point of view the only real 'rush' is the rush of the main enemy hive. Everything else is just fast expansion and fast expansion is a key part of any NS stratagy. Any other stratagy isn't going to work because you're not denying your enemy eather of the two main resources (resource points and technology).
Apprently the reason rushing their first hive is so popular is that if its a 'draw' in clan matches the people who finished the game first win, this seems wrong to me..
Afterall then if your confidend of your ability to perform a rush on your enemy (or if you've pulled off a rapid rush yourself) the best tactic is to have your gorge immidiatly run to the vents and build up lots of def towers so he can stay alive after their rush is completed drawing out the game at the end and giving your team the win.
Personally I think they should have an anti rush rule:
'If you attack the starting hive within 5 mins of game start, you lose.'
Fun > Tactical versatility.
BlueGhost
Basically you're racing HA/HMG tech against 2nd hive tech if you can kill their gorge and drop them to one or two res points by sending out a Shotty and LMG/wealder pair to take down res towers that stratagy seems as viable as capturing two hives (especially if the aliens don't realize what your upto), hey you might even get HMG/HA befor they get their fades.
At which point you can storm their first hive (Which will have the least def) kill the remaining fades and laugh, the one thing you cannot allow is aliens with level two hive tech AND lots of res, because then you will end up facing a gorge+lurk+fade+fade combo which will abolutly chew its way through anything less than a HA+Shotty, HA+HMG * 2, HA+GL combo.
BlueGhost
If aliens have 2 hives ad you have 1 then it is basically a battle for who has more resources. My suggestion is if you get the 1st hive, and don't want to rush the 2nd one start grabbing resource nodes and defending them with turrets. Defend with turets mainly so that Fades can't just walk around at whim, and so that you buy some time while your fighting force moves over to where the fades are attacking.
It's easier to win without having to deal with fades, but HMG+HA and a guy welding will usually win any battle. you just have to have enough res nodes to support this kind of battle.
Sumtimes u lose of course but..
Fades are cheaper
Fades are quicker
Fades dont have spread at long ranges
Fades are more powerful close range
Fades get
Fades get healed and armour repaired at same place automatically without help
2 fades Vs a GL + HMG combo, now that gets tricky.
Rush
Push
Hold and Counter Push
Eagle
Porcupine
Octopus
Tech
Tech and Tank
Rush-we all know
Push-rush a bit later with a bit better stuff...(prolly not effective in NS)
Hold and Counter Push-wait for initial rush, stay alive and then when they're all dead race to their base and slaughter them
Eagle-attack all the time, like mad
Porcupine-put up so many turrets any sane person would run.
Octopus-put parts of your base everywhere. Makes you very hard to kill... as well as able to stage attacks from a lot of places.
Tech-climb up tech tree as fast as possible.
Tech and Tank-hold your base for a long time and get all the way up tech to the point where you're indestructible. (SC: Ultralisks CCRA2 Prism Tanks, WC3 DOTC, Chimeara, Frost Wyrms, etc.)
If they're effective in NS is another question. But the tactics do exist.
One of these ways is rather risky. It all depends on how the aliens to the marines. I think it is safe to say that in most servers, alien players expect the marines to take the hives, or try to. How the alien react to this common sceanario is to simply keep marines out of hives.
But now say you're an alien and you don't see any marines in any of your hives after the first 5 minutes. You might be thinking to yourself 1)The marines are stupid 2) Must be a noob commander 3)easy win for us. "Easy win," Why the easy win? Because you expect to get two-three hives up and fade then win. So you guard your gorges with your life and only hang around the hives for any marine invasion. Occasionally you'll patroll around and see whats up and maybe do a few suicide rush to their spawn or two. But after the second hive is up and you were waiting to reach that 44 resources to get fades you find marines in heavy armor chewing your chambers up and then destorying your hive. Even if you did get a chance to fade, they're nothing without umbra when its against ha/hmgs. After your first hive was destroyed, say your third hive was almost finished, you'll find marines all equiped and heading into your other hives. By the time you get another hive up and fade, there are probably a marine minibase coupled with siege/phase gates near your second hive. Eventually you lost.
I am describing this sceanario from the alien side because it is strickly depended on how the alien view their opponent. What the marine did was that they secure 3-4 resouce nodes enought to tech up fast without being near a hive. As everything else goes, it all depend on teamwork. You rely on your marines to defend those nodes rather than wander off and getting killed. I know this is sacriligious to most commanders but if you don't want the game to be a 10 minute sweep (note the thread topic, I'm not writing on how to rush) and you want to win, then you should lightly defend your resource towers. Preferably defend the whole nine yards on double resource points. ie on NS_hera, head to hera and weld all the vents shut then sit at holoroom. You have 3 nodes right there, teching up fast won't be hard. Or on NS_tanith, get the node under waste handleing and waypoint 2 marines to watch the long passage with some turrets near it then heavily guard reactor room after welding vents. (note again, if you want a sure win, don't defend your nodes too much) But if you want to have some fun, you better make sure you got money to equip your fun.
One of the many advantages of the frontiersman is that they can tech up and equip fast as long as they got the money to. Whereas theres a long gap between 1-2 1-3 or 2-3 hives for the aliens.
Anyway if you want to tech up fast and remain a rushing game, try the jetpack/lmg upgrade rush I designed couple days ago.
Try to get 2 more resource nozzles and defend them only with marines, nothing else. Then proceed to build armslab -> prototype. While jetpacks are upgrading, upgrade the cheap 20 resource weapon upgrade too. once you get jetpacks, drop like 5 and order the marines to go to the hive and unload. A welder or two wont hurt either. Usually if the aliens aren't aware enought as they are concentrating on making another hive, the hive will go down in less than 10 minutes from the start of game. That is if you can manage to defend your base with no turrets/phase gates/observtory. Rather risky but fun way to win. I must say sometimes people get too cought up on winning they forget how to have fun <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->. Jetpacks are FUN! Did I forget to mention its nearly impossible to kill an average skilled jetpacker as a skulk? <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
(edit) oh the build order of that is like this:
infantry portal,armory, infantry portal, 2 resource towers, armslab, prototype lab. Try to do this in a noob-free server. You can tell how risky this is from the build order. Also get the nodes closest to your base...like I need to say.(edit)
Sumtimes u lose of course but..
Fades are cheaper
Fades are quicker
Fades dont have spread at long ranges
Fades are more powerful close range
Fades get
Fades get healed and armour repaired at same place automatically without help
2 fades Vs a GL + HMG combo, now that gets tricky.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, a single HA guy is just dead meat walking, but a pair of HA's that keep welding each other can't be killed by one or even two fades - as long as they keep welding each other and the commander drops a health pack now and then.
Welding repairs 100 pts of ARMOR every second. That's 200 pts of DAMAGE negated. So, the 60 dps from acid rockets is basically just an itch you scratch with a welder. In fact, two HA marines can stand in a shower from THREE fades acid-rocketing them, and as long as they keep welding, they can't be killed (with a bit of health-packing from the commander - each acid rocket does 3 hits to health).
IMO, HA marines is never killed by enemy action - they are killed by friendly inaction.
How to hold the res points though?
each one is 22 res and can be taken out by a skulk so obvioulsy needs defending. However that requires a tf and minimum 3 turrets which is 82 res! All in all that is 104 res.
The other option is a phase you'll need good (disciplined) marines for that though. That costs 42 per res point and you'd want a welder to keep them up.
Really the only options?
How long do you need to hold the res points to make a profit? I don't know the figures, if someone could post them we could work out the viability of the tactic.
If by rush, you mean attack the hive, then yes. You can win with only 1 hive as well. All you have to do is take one hive and hold an extra 1-2 nodes (for 3-4 total) depending on the map and the situation. With only 3 phase gates at 3 locations, quick response is trivial (though 1.04 will make this much more difficult). After that, you respond to attacks, spending as little as possible on defense and as upgrading as much as possible. By the time fades are making a real push, you can have an HMG or 2 and can handle them (unless your team sucks).
The most important part is to focus on upgrades and defending your territory, not dropping turrets.
It really depends on the map and your marines. Some maps you can hold consecutive resource towers by just choking one point. Like anything, practicing and fooling around with them will make it easier.
If you want to know what those choke points are you will have to do your own working out...
Welding repairs 100 pts of ARMOR every second. That's 200 pts of DAMAGE negated. So, the 60 dps from acid rockets is basically just an itch you scratch with a welder. In fact, two HA marines can stand in a shower from THREE fades acid-rocketing them, and as long as they keep welding, they can't be killed (with a bit of health-packing from the commander - each acid rocket does 3 hits to health).
IMO, HA marines is never killed by enemy action - they are killed by friendly inaction.
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Two HA guys will become absolute dog food against a good two fade 1 lurk combo.
Basically it works like this:
Lure them to close combat,
Umbra the area.
Munch them with claws (if they try and run hit them with acid from the saftey of your umbra)
You can also just sit back and have a fire fight, but this gives them the oppertunity to run which isn't good.
The ONLY way to defeat this is for the marines to have one GL.
My personal view is:
HMG/HA group is good for newbie marines vs newbie fades. (no one is specialized no-one has to be good, but they cant stop the fades running so have to hope they can ambush)
HMG/HA group with ONE shotgun is good for killing fades without lurk support (the shotgun can chase down running fades much better than an HMG)
HMG/HA group with ONE shotgun and ONE GL is good for wiping out any level 2 alien group. (The grenade launcher will have any lurk running its life and nullify umbra)
Basically HA+HMG+GL+Shotgun is capable of dealing with any level two hive tech team the aliens can put together.
HA/HMG WILL go down to good team work from the aliens (hell even a fade and a skilled webbing gorge will munch it up)
BlueGhost
Basically it works like this:
Lure them to close combat,
Umbra the area.
Munch them with claws (if they try and run hit them with acid from the saftey of your umbra)
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Whip out the welders, weld each other and try to get the lerk. Yes, its quite likely that the 3 aliens will beat the marines, but it is by no mean certain... and after all, its a 3 on 2. Make it three marines or just a fade/lerk pair, and the aliens will be more likely to loose than not.
Welders are the PRIMARY weapon of the marine - the GL or HMG is really secondary :-)
a friend and i even totaled 6 fades that died at our guns.
Secondly ,
of course there are non-rush tactics
like posted a billion times
the normal 2 if 1 obs and armory then phase gate
then sweep for their first hive
then move out to the one furthest from them only make a phase and RT there
then move to the next hive and pahse first
then RT and TF and turrets
when money allows TF and turret ur first hive.
then whlie doing all that claim random resource nozzles and also the arms and prototype lab. Bascially u hold them outa nd tech
then storm them and watch them die <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->