Relocation To A Hive
pulsedsn
Join Date: 2002-12-18 Member: 11095Members
Join Date: 2002-12-18 Member: 11095Members
<div class="IPBDescription">why is it not done more?</div> This is probably the smartest thing a commander can do. This will prevent aliens from getting bile bombs and onoses and spore clouds, which are the end of any marine. If you do lose, you will lose facing much less odds.
Just start with 1 or 2 IPS, an armory, and an observatory, and scan nearby unoccupied hives. After the initial rush, order all your men to go to one hive. Order 1 man to stay at base and do defense until all your men reach the hive destination (of course grabbing 1 or 2 RTS along the way). While your men are going, dont forget to upgrade motion tracking. Now, once your men reach the destination, just rebuild your CC and recycle your entire old base. As long as your men can hold the hive for that critical minute your chances of winning will increase exponentially. You will have 3 RTS (if the hive has a RT, which it almost certainly does), enough resources to get underway.
Of course on several maps (ns_hera mostly) it is difficult to relocate. But even if the base is cramped i would prefer that to having to deal with losing the hive because some fools wont phase through because they keep getting ammo. This way your mariens will spawn and immediatly deal with any threats anyway. No phase gate nonsense.
One note i must make is that if your base in the beginning is under attack and your marines are away and your defense marine dies, log out and kill the attackers, sometimes they will be munching on the IP and not expect you.
Another important thing is to take the hive farthest from the enemy. It is very difficult for the marines to hold the hive closest to the enemy hive long enough for the whole base to go up.
So now the question is - why is it not done more often? Of course this will be much more expensive to do in 1.04, but it is still quite attainable.
Just start with 1 or 2 IPS, an armory, and an observatory, and scan nearby unoccupied hives. After the initial rush, order all your men to go to one hive. Order 1 man to stay at base and do defense until all your men reach the hive destination (of course grabbing 1 or 2 RTS along the way). While your men are going, dont forget to upgrade motion tracking. Now, once your men reach the destination, just rebuild your CC and recycle your entire old base. As long as your men can hold the hive for that critical minute your chances of winning will increase exponentially. You will have 3 RTS (if the hive has a RT, which it almost certainly does), enough resources to get underway.
Of course on several maps (ns_hera mostly) it is difficult to relocate. But even if the base is cramped i would prefer that to having to deal with losing the hive because some fools wont phase through because they keep getting ammo. This way your mariens will spawn and immediatly deal with any threats anyway. No phase gate nonsense.
One note i must make is that if your base in the beginning is under attack and your marines are away and your defense marine dies, log out and kill the attackers, sometimes they will be munching on the IP and not expect you.
Another important thing is to take the hive farthest from the enemy. It is very difficult for the marines to hold the hive closest to the enemy hive long enough for the whole base to go up.
So now the question is - why is it not done more often? Of course this will be much more expensive to do in 1.04, but it is still quite attainable.
Comments
I.e. on tanith Ecilpse nothing caged, go for fusion ccore viaduct and ventilation respectively.
The 30 res for a comm chair and the soon to be changed cost of the IPs really make it very hard to employ.
Plus, if you're team can't make it to a hive, your strategy just got aced.
It can put the aliens at a disadvantage, but it allows them to concentrate their attacks later on. Rather than splitting forces up between the main base and the secured Hive, they just have to worry about one.
Keep in mind, hives are for Aliens, not marines, they will always favor aliens hence another reason not to ditch the main base.
It is a good strat in theory, but most clans games do not even get onos or need bile bomb, 2 hive fades are powerful enough, to murder.
If so thats not to bad, until u need a gren launcher. I would prob keep a couple of marines there until it has turrets. And no obs at start means cant do a PG rush.
As for the tactic in question; relocating your base to a hive in the early game is too expensive; late game is pointless if you are winning, too costly if you are drawing even and fairly vital if you are losing badly.
Anyway no need to relocate just view the old base as a secured res point. For this stratergy to work I think you'll need both rp's to make up for the lost res.
EDIT:
Also it means distress beacon doesn't work so well. Distress beacon is SO underused.
Building 2 IPs, armoury, observatory and then relocate? That is a waste of time and resources.
The other reasons mentioned and this one is why i don't relocate. Although it may be useful in small games.
2 res nodes, or somewhere centrally located.
the main reason why i do this now is because it is difficult to defend two bases, especially with crappy marines that keep getting ammo and ignore the command "PHASE YOU FOOLS!!". It is basically a response to the marines on the servers that i play ;p. I agree that having less bases does reduce the attention, but usually the aliens will want to group attack on one single base anyways, so why not have less bases so the marines can concentrate on their defense more as well?
I dont know, every game i've done this it worked perfectly, but then the aliens were only averagely good. Only on the last game i really had some resistance, and lost the initial base, but instead we moved to the other hive and relocated there. We were very quick about sieging so they only had a few fades when we began sieging. I dont know... it seems there are alot more defeat stories than success stories.
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First off, this gambit does not work at all if you build anything at the starting base. With the exception of a single Infantry Portal (IP), to provide the illusion that you are keeping the main base, and to spawn marines that die during your relocation.
Single out one marine to stay behind then, grab all your collected marines that are still inside the base, and send them to a hive to build up. If as they rush that hive, they discover it to be the alien startinghive, and encounter the enemy skulks one of two things will happen.
1) Your marines will win and kill the skulks, and proceed to their spawn hive, and shortly win the game. (32%)
2) Your marines will die (68%).
(11 out of 34 successfull relocation gambits were won in the intial rush) (1.03 patch)
However, before this even finishes, and as soon as you notice them fighting, you should plunk down a cc at the farthest hive from their spawn one, which you can figure out based on what direction the skulks are coming from.
Next, get out of your chair, grab that spare marine, and run to that hive and build it yourself. If while your running your marines win, excellent, if not dont worry, it usually takes the aliens a bit to figure out your not actually in the chair, and by then youve got your new cc up with a pair of spawn portals. (tangent: I always build 1 infantry portal for every 4 marines)
Quick note on res:
Do not stop on the way to the second hive and secure resource, if you secure two hives, the game is prety much yours anyhow, and the faster you get into that second hive the higher your chances of successfully taking it. (The five games we lost, while trying to secure a second hive I felt went slower, and because of that the aliens were able to take in their surrounding dangers more accutely)
Outcome:
At this point, the aliens will probably figure out you move your base to a hive, and will try their hardest to attack it, and/or secure the second hive from your reach. I suggest skipping base defence alltogether, get a quick phase up, and send all your marines to the next hive with a quick phase system. (to distract their main focus) -- their spawn time is 8 seconds, which is faster, but still not fast enough to stand up to your 2-3 IPs.
As soon as you have 2nd hive it's game over unless they get really lucky. (see below)
Signifigant data:
32 successful games with the relocation gambit
9 unsuccessfull games with the relocation gambit
- 3 after we relocated and took 2 hives
- 5 after we relocated
- 1 as we were relocating
Notes:
Best used on ns_nothing to the cargo hive.
Try to avoid relocating on ns_nothing: powersilo.
Does not work well on ns_eclipse if they have the core.
Do not relocate to sewer, on ns_caged unless their main hive is _not_ ventilation.
Never relocate to a hive w/o a resource. ex: ns_caged: cargo.
Try to avoid relocating to central hives: Computer Core, Viaduct etc.
I'd avoid using this strategy on ns_hera altogether because of the current issue with being able to seige two hives from one location. (just relocate to that location: processing)
The hives are in many cases harder to defend (hives on bast). Wehras the main marine base has two primary entrances, the hive has 3, and these are sufficiently harder to defend due to size in refinery and gweneral latyout of the hive in feedwater. Engine room is too restricting, with only 1 real way in/out. It can go eiter way, and you are basicly givign the alens a free res node. Sometimes it works, sometimes it dsnet. From waht ive seen, its main effect is to **** the aliens off horribly. From eaht ive seen the succes/fail rate fro both sides isnt that that different then noraml- but thats just me.
Without fades the aliens can almost entirly not break a base. With fades they can easily hit and run a base to death, as per odvious.
That said, the longer you wait to get two hives, the harder it is, and locating your base anywhere other than a hive will just slow it down. You can always expand there after you have the two hives.
But thats just my call, you may find different as I have not actually experimented with locating mainbase in the double-res rooms.
Bad idea, because once the Computer Core Hive was up, we were able to attack them with Fades from 4 different angles, as opposed to the 2 they would have had if they had stayed in their base.
Much like base relocation, in the phase rush you don't spend time and resources turret farming your main base. After the armory you drop an observatory and phase gate and then send a team out to secure a hive. The advantage over the base relocation plan is that you get to keep your main base. This saves you the cost of a command chair and allows you to keep your initial resource tower. The drawback is the same as the delayed base relocation plan: If the aliens successfully attack your base while your marines are enroute to the new hive you're forced to recycle and relocate anyways.
The advantage to base relocation over the phase rush is that you will more likely succeed in taking your first hive since you're putting your entire team on the job and you get there faster. I don't consider this much of an advantage since taking the first hive is usually easy, it's the second one that's the trick.
If you think about it the marine base is not really worth defending. <b>If you already control a hive, you are already spreading your team thinly to defend 2 locations</b> (the marine start and the hive). It works out cheaper to get rid of the marine base, and put the defences into the hive.
I play Kharaa alot, and one of the strategies is often to attack the marine base so that <b>the marines will be too busy defending their main base to keep an eye on any hives they might have secured</b>. The Commander will scream, 'Get back to Base now, our base is under attack!!!'. Then all the marines are back at their Start defending their useless base, while the aliens reclaim any hives that the marines have taken.
Relocation definitely is the way to win the game, the Marine Start is more of a hindrance than anything.
The advantage over the base relocation plan is that you get to keep your main base.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It takes 30 more resources, yes, but I'd spend much much more than 30 setting up a turret factory, phase, and min 3 turrets. So there is immediate savings, on top of that.. micromanagement of ones less base.
Why would you want to keep your main base, all it has at the start is a res and a cc. = basically worthless. the only reason it is your main base is because you create it. So why not create it.. somewhere else.. at the measly cost of 30 resources.
And every so often, the aliens forget about your main, and leave the resource intact.. meaning bonus res, plus a hive.
And the whole point is to controll the hives.
BlueGhost
<b>Distress beacon summons your marines at the original base location.</b>
It's a long haul back to the hive...