Marine Commader Strategy 1.04
trav
Join Date: 2002-11-06 Member: 7417Members
Join Date: 2002-11-06 Member: 7417Members
<div class="IPBDescription">gather it up</div> 1.04 changes to marine commanding strategies
Motion Tracking - the big one. it works and it should be the first upgrade you get. preferably after your second resourse tower
Turret Factories and Sieges - as always these are still important to hold off aliens, but only until your marines can get there. they are NOT going to hold an area on their own without spending stupid amounts of money. Siege cannons are still as efective as ever, you just have to be on the ball and either have a marine patrol the area spotting buildings, or, scan for buildings/hives every few minutes.
The most success i have in my games comes from building only one IP, then the TF, either right next to the CC or in a good corner, good meaning cannot be easily seen by skulks, and can be in los of turrets while turrets still have los for your other buildings.
after TF comes two turrets (one at a time, to minimise risk, placing both doesn't speed anything up and may distract your marines from watching entrances) then an armory, then the other IP
that is the start build. then i go out and get my first outside resourse tower. yes, you should do this BEFORE you build a sat, you're res won't be coming in nearly fast enough and you should try to slam down one or two low traffic (not on an aliens direct route from hive to mspawn) resourse towers next. I also drop one welder before anyone goes outside on some maps (caged and bast) where there are HUGE benefits to welding shut vents or open shortcuts.
when you have your 3 res towers up you should build your scanner and then either push for more res (if the aliens are sleepy/bad players) or save for motion scanning. That's right, still no phase gates!
once you've got motion scanning in the works you should make a big a res push as you can. try to cap ALL of the res points. eventually someone will get to a hive, that is when you should lay down the phases, now you will have enough money to set up a decent turret defense (4 turrets 2 sieges). then move on to the next hive, if you find yourself with two much money either build an arms lab or double up a hives defenses (another tfac, 4 turrets and 2 sieges) this will make it almost impregnible. if you get an arms lab ARMOR is by far the best first upgrade. especially if you are fighting skulks, there is mathematical proof that it gives you an advantage somewhere (i swear i saw it) but just take my word for it
the rest is fairly obvious.
now a word on building placement.
buildings block turrets. so don't build in the middle of the room! build along walls. preferably close together and build turrets in the middle.
the only buildings you can safely get in the middle of the floor are IP's phase gates, and turrets. place your two turrets so they can see the opposite sides of the cc&tf and each other
pay close attention when you see a good commander place his buildings, there's nothing better than a visual aide (can someone post screenshots?)
There. i figured the other strategy posts (sticky ones) were looking a bit out of date now (tactics for a 1.01 server?) so hopefully this can replace it, if not then someone do something better
EDIT
oh I forgot to mention, the best way to compensate for a lacking team is with lots of resourses. and the best way to ensure that a good team wins is with lots of resourses. i see a lot of posts with everyone talking about the "broad marine strategies" of rush/hivelockdown/killgorge, but surprisingly less of "res pwn" strategy. the first time i read about it, they called it the bulldozer. so far i've found it has the highest success rate of all the strategies as it doesn't rely terribly much on your marines (all they have to do is run and build). and motion scanning probably compliments this strategy the best as marines can easily protect multiple res towers because they can see when aliens get close to them
another point on the virtue of resourses is that everything good in the game now costs MORE MONEY, fades, ip's phases turrets. if the aliens have two hives but only two resourse towers, then they are not going to win, because they can only get one maybe two fades for every half hour or so of gameplay, hell, i've taken down alien teams with ALL THREE HIVES because they didn't have enough res to evolve/build defense
Motion Tracking - the big one. it works and it should be the first upgrade you get. preferably after your second resourse tower
Turret Factories and Sieges - as always these are still important to hold off aliens, but only until your marines can get there. they are NOT going to hold an area on their own without spending stupid amounts of money. Siege cannons are still as efective as ever, you just have to be on the ball and either have a marine patrol the area spotting buildings, or, scan for buildings/hives every few minutes.
The most success i have in my games comes from building only one IP, then the TF, either right next to the CC or in a good corner, good meaning cannot be easily seen by skulks, and can be in los of turrets while turrets still have los for your other buildings.
after TF comes two turrets (one at a time, to minimise risk, placing both doesn't speed anything up and may distract your marines from watching entrances) then an armory, then the other IP
that is the start build. then i go out and get my first outside resourse tower. yes, you should do this BEFORE you build a sat, you're res won't be coming in nearly fast enough and you should try to slam down one or two low traffic (not on an aliens direct route from hive to mspawn) resourse towers next. I also drop one welder before anyone goes outside on some maps (caged and bast) where there are HUGE benefits to welding shut vents or open shortcuts.
when you have your 3 res towers up you should build your scanner and then either push for more res (if the aliens are sleepy/bad players) or save for motion scanning. That's right, still no phase gates!
once you've got motion scanning in the works you should make a big a res push as you can. try to cap ALL of the res points. eventually someone will get to a hive, that is when you should lay down the phases, now you will have enough money to set up a decent turret defense (4 turrets 2 sieges). then move on to the next hive, if you find yourself with two much money either build an arms lab or double up a hives defenses (another tfac, 4 turrets and 2 sieges) this will make it almost impregnible. if you get an arms lab ARMOR is by far the best first upgrade. especially if you are fighting skulks, there is mathematical proof that it gives you an advantage somewhere (i swear i saw it) but just take my word for it
the rest is fairly obvious.
now a word on building placement.
buildings block turrets. so don't build in the middle of the room! build along walls. preferably close together and build turrets in the middle.
the only buildings you can safely get in the middle of the floor are IP's phase gates, and turrets. place your two turrets so they can see the opposite sides of the cc&tf and each other
pay close attention when you see a good commander place his buildings, there's nothing better than a visual aide (can someone post screenshots?)
There. i figured the other strategy posts (sticky ones) were looking a bit out of date now (tactics for a 1.01 server?) so hopefully this can replace it, if not then someone do something better
EDIT
oh I forgot to mention, the best way to compensate for a lacking team is with lots of resourses. and the best way to ensure that a good team wins is with lots of resourses. i see a lot of posts with everyone talking about the "broad marine strategies" of rush/hivelockdown/killgorge, but surprisingly less of "res pwn" strategy. the first time i read about it, they called it the bulldozer. so far i've found it has the highest success rate of all the strategies as it doesn't rely terribly much on your marines (all they have to do is run and build). and motion scanning probably compliments this strategy the best as marines can easily protect multiple res towers because they can see when aliens get close to them
another point on the virtue of resourses is that everything good in the game now costs MORE MONEY, fades, ip's phases turrets. if the aliens have two hives but only two resourse towers, then they are not going to win, because they can only get one maybe two fades for every half hour or so of gameplay, hell, i've taken down alien teams with ALL THREE HIVES because they didn't have enough res to evolve/build defense
Comments
You say to skip the Observatory until you've got an additional resource tower. I like to get it up ASAP, because it's pretty cheap, and it gives you a radius that lets you see incoming aliens on your minimap, even if you don't research MT.
This is critical for fending off the initial alien rush. If you get it up right away, you can say to your troops, "3 coming from the right door, and one in the vent" to get them ready.
Firewater - that's a great strat, but it rarely works on pubs. People aren't organized enough, and if they don't play/watch clan matches, they assume that locking down 2 hives is the ONLY way to win.
Firewater - that's a great strat, but it rarely works on pubs. People aren't organized enough, and if they don't play/watch clan matches, they assume that locking down 2 hives is the ONLY way to win. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I use the strat FireWater outlined, and I have about a 70% win ratio, which I think is pretty good for a pub. The only difference is that one (or two or three depending on the map) of my res towers is usually a locked down hive. The biggest thing I don't like about hive rushing is that your win or loss depends on the first 10 minutes of the game, even though it may stretch on for another 30 minutes. That is, of course, because either if you succeed or fail at the 2nd hive lock down, you've inevitably spent about 150 - 300 res trying it, res which could go towards tech.
And I sort of disagree with your statement that organization is the failure of the pubs. A hive rush takes the whole team working in concert against the whole alien team. Everyone is focused on that second hive. Teching up (although I wouldn't call it a tech rush) only requires about 2-3 people grabbing and securing res nodes (with their bodies or mines, not turrets) and the rest of the team (hopefully competantly) keeping the alien team occupied. It depends a lot more on the ability of the marines to shoot. That being said, I hope my win ratio of 70% makes it clear that there ARE skilled people on the pubs, albiet maybe farther in-between than clan matches.
You can claim his strats work, but I play on big servers, small servers, and that strat is simply based too much on marine skill. On clan servers, I tend to win, but in pure pubs... I'm not talking completely nublike marines, it's I can't find a solid strategy. I know build orders don't work, I'm a flexible commander, but there simply isn't a basis I work with.