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krapht
Join Date: 2003-04-28 Member: 15915Members
Join Date: 2003-04-28 Member: 15915Members
<div class="IPBDescription">I am a newbie comm.</div> How do you get around with almost no res in small games? Everything is tight. The big problem I have is with guarding my res nodes. Often, in the first few minutes, the team will go grab every res node in sight. Then, I order them to lock down a hive. Phase gate, tf, 2-3 turrets, then march on to the next hive and repeat. I then slowly tech up, try and get upgrades and weapons for the whole team, but I can't. The skulks will eat every rose node that isn't actually in the base or hive. I can't move marines to the res nodes before they get eaten. I end up trying to kill lerks/skulks with 2 or less res nodes, with vanilla lmg marines because all my res is going to getting upgrades, welders to repair the turret farms. Also its hard to get new rts up once the aliens get carapace, so I can't just go out and rebuild the rts: also my lockdowns always get pressured hard with skulk rushes and lerk harassment.
What do I do?
a bad example is when I had power silo and viaduct locked down.. tf, 5 turrets, phase gate, a few siege because a fatty started offensive towering us. it was looking good, we had 3/3 weapon and armor upgrades, jetpacks.... but no res to upgrade my marine's peashooter lmgs. the lerk harassment got so bad since they had cargo that we couldn't hold viaduct. My tf, my phase, everything just went. I had only 2 res nodes because of the constant skulking.
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What should I have done?
What do I do?
a bad example is when I had power silo and viaduct locked down.. tf, 5 turrets, phase gate, a few siege because a fatty started offensive towering us. it was looking good, we had 3/3 weapon and armor upgrades, jetpacks.... but no res to upgrade my marine's peashooter lmgs. the lerk harassment got so bad since they had cargo that we couldn't hold viaduct. My tf, my phase, everything just went. I had only 2 res nodes because of the constant skulking.
<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
What should I have done?
Comments
There are a few things that your post lists here:
Either your marines with level 3/3 upgrades couldn't kill hive 1 aliens, couldn't shoot their way to stay alive without the aid of your turrets in the hive, or simply got wickedly ambushed everytime they left.
The power of the marines is in the fact that they've got ranged attacks. Quite possibly, motion tracking would have assisted them, as they at least know the general range to shoot if they're not experienced players or good shots.
The other deal is, nothing has 12 res nodes. You had 3 with marine spawn, and 2 hives., and I imagine the aliens had at least say 5 or 6. By them being able to outresource you, no matter how far teched up you are or how equipped your army is, the aliens only have to wait you out, make you lose that cash, and then hit you in the pocketbook.
Lastly, there is a sorta flaw in your general strategy, that is all too common with commanders. Way too many commanders wait for their marines to be upgraded/equipped, before they even start assaulting the aliens. The way to win the game is keep the ball in your opponent's court, remaining on the offensive. Improved teamwork and communication make this possible.
A 2 hive lockdown usually ends after completely teched (level 3/level 3, motion tracking) and nicely equipped marines hit the alien's last hive with a giant blast of HA/HMG/GL/JP/Welder combos in various groups. The problem with this is, instead of being on the offensive, you are now on the defensive, but with 3 places to defend instead of 1 as opposed to the aliens only having to defend 1 hive - your troops are scattered when they attack, but when you attack their troops are focussed at the only point worth defending. The turrets help you defend those positions, but your marines can't sit on their arses waiting for full upgrades. Hit the aliens in their resources too. Make them spend resources and lose them. A killed lerk, or gorge, or even mess of chambers hurt them a little more.
Compared to other Real Time Strategy games, if you ever play StarCraft or WarCraft against a human, they don't wait for you to have the highest level strongest armies, they'll do cheap rushes to kill your resource gatherers, kill your expensive stuff you just built. The objective is to cripple your opponents economy early rather than attempt to completely obliterate them immediately or all at 1 time.
Lastly, the other issue is, when you immediately take a defensive position in taking over a hive, it is much more expensive than by keeping the aliens out of the hive by simply killing them and assaulting their primary hive early. A TF and 5 turrets + welders + phase gates in each hive is roughly 160-200 res per hive depending on what gets killed or not. That comes close to 400 resources that could be spend on 1) a quicker arms lab, proto lab and upgrades. 2) mines. as it's obvious these aliens didn't have 2 hives, you'd be suprised how well a few packs of mines will defend a position. they're cheaper than turrets and although you have to replentish them, your marines have a better chance killing hive 1 aliens in a mine field than they do with turrets that don't often shoot too well.
These are just my thoughts, and you can take them as you want to take them. Most of the stuff I've said is general strategy that most commanders that have winning records take. I know how bad it is commanding marines that can't shoot the broad side of a barn, and as a commander, you can't make much of a difference there. It's in those situations that skilled rambos can make more of a difference than a complete group of inexperienced players. As a commander, you have to assess your player's ability and your opponent's ability. From there, make advantages.
Common trait among new players of any RTS game:
Instead of attempting to "win", you appear to be trying to "not lose".
The goal you should be working towards at all times is to kill all of the opposing team and prevent them from respawning, or to prevent the opposing team from respawning and then kill them all. Either tends to work. This is how you win, if your efforts at any point are not focused towards this goal then you are doing something wrong.
You cannot defend your opponent to death.
Now to get a little more specific:
The main failing of most public server strategies lies in their poor (or non-existant) use of manpower. This is quite understandable, because getting a team of random human beings to do exactly what you want them to do is difficult. As difficult as it may be, it's essential that you make good use of manpower if you want a high chance of winning.
Marines are not turret-support units, they are your primary means of acomplishing anything. The only essential component of a win is a team of marines. You do not need turrets, you do not need sieges, you do not need phase gates.
Marines, organised effectively can be your offense and your defence. They cost nothing, so there is no problem employing them in a small low-resource game.
Aliens in a public server game are rarely seen defending, yet they have vulnerable assets just as the marine team does. Aliens have upgrade chambers, resource towers and wandering res-packed gorges - All are killable by marines, and killing any will set the aliens back considerably. So, why do you not seen aliens nervously protecting their assets? Because a public server marine team often spends so much time defending their own assets against oncoming skulks, that they make no attempt to attack back.
The more resources you invest in static defence, the weaker your offense becomes. By planting turret after turret your marines are forced into a defensive nature due to 2 reasons:
1. Every resource point you spend in defence is a resource point that hasn't been spent somewhere else. By investing in static defence you are sacrificing offensive strength.
2. Your static defence becomes your investment, you have invested a great deal of your resources in that turret farm, and an investment has to be protected. Ironically, you end up having to defend your static defense. Your turrets are protecting your turret factory, your turrets and turret factory are protecting your phase which is in turn also protecting your turrets, your marines are stuck defending this little bundle of 200 res sitting on the floor, and the combined entity of marines and 200 res defence clump is stuck defending a hive room.
Why are you defending the hive room? To prevent the alien gorge walking in and dropping a hive. Do you know what else can prevent a gorge walking in and dropping a hive? An alert commander, and some marines ready to run into a hive room and kill said gorge. 0 res. And you don't have to stay in a defensive position to acomplish this - you can be offensive, infact it benefits you greatly to be offensive yet the concept of offensive marines is completely foreign to some people.
Marines play offensively by pressuring anything the aliens are afraid to lose. See a gorge building a res tower at the start of the game? Send 2 marines after it. See a gorge starting to place defence chambers up for carapace upgrades? Send some marines to kill the DCs. You don't need the full team of marines, you only need a subset of it. And when you try it, you'll see the advantages this offers over attempting to play pure defense - The aliens spend less time attacking you and more time defending against you.
If you drop a pile of static defence on the floor, then stand your whole team of marines in the middle of it and wait, what happens? Aliens start looking for something to do. The alien team for some reason is not docile enough to sit on its **** and wait for marines to attack it, so given nothing better to do they are going to attack anything that they think is worth chomping. You now get an entire alien team, quite possibly grouped and organised bearing down on your little pile of marines and static defence. By being defensive, you have created a need for static defence that wouldn't otherwise be there. You've spent resources on structures, and then sat back and basically asked the alien team to attack you.
- If the opposing team is on the defensive, you don't need defense.
- If you don't invest obscene amounts of resources in a location, it doesn't matter as much when you lose that location.
- Marines are your primary form of offense and defence, resources spent on marines are therefor useful in either situation.
<b></Philosopical rant on strategy fundamentals></b>
Now to apply this slightly to your situation. You are playing a small game with limited resources, the sloppy strategies marines may get away with on larger servers are less likely to work here. I'm reluctant to actually outline specific strategies, but try and get the message from my ranting. Survival is not your goal. Turrets, sieges, phase gates are not necessary structures. Marines do not have to be defensive. Try some strategies that don't involve turret farming 2 hives and then sitting in defense, I guarantee there are better ways to win a game. Certainly when res is tight.
You don't sound like a COMMANDER, you sound like a guy sitting in the chair.
Make your MARINES guard your res; if they don't like it, they're not being good soldiers, and you can't be blamed for losing if no one is listening to the ONE PERSON everyone is supposed to be listening to.
Let's talk about Nothing, because that's the map you specifically talked about.
The first node you should take is Docking Wing 02; it is right next to your base, and since you should always have at least one PERMANENT BASE DEFENDER/BUILDER, they can go save that node whenever it's under attack. The next node you should get is Miasma Walkway, as it is also very close to base and the base defender can guard that as well. Do this no matter what hive they have, there's NO GOOD REASON not too!
The next thing you need to know, is hive specific tactics. If they have Cargo hive, like they did in your game, you'll need at least 2 base defenders because of how close they are; they'll be hitting your base and two nodes very often.
(You only NEED two extra nodes to go jp+hmg, if you wanted to, not saying you have to or anything.)
Let's continue with this assuming they have cargo. Foreboding antechamber and powersilo nodes are on the other end of the map, and are closer to the marine spawn than the alien hive; these are good nodes to take, and 1-2 marines can hold both.
If you're playing in games with more than 5 people, 2 base d, 2 power/foreboding d, you can send ALL THE REST TOGETHER, to go assualt cargo hive. Have them attack any alien nodes they find, and the gorge who is building them.
Now let's say they have Powersilo hive. Well guess what? Cargo hive with its 3 res nodes, is on the entire other side of the map, you easily take Cargo in this situation! With 6 res nodes, you can easily get 3/3 upgrades and ha/hmg, if that's how you want to do it. You could of just jp+hmg their hive in HALF THE TIME and saved everyone a long drawn out game, but it's your choice; you're comming <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
You asked how to get around with small res; the obvious answer is not to get to small res. Take the best res nodes, and hold THEM. Don't let your marines run all along the map; you;ll just end up losing.
Also, try not to rely on turrets, they're really not very effective unless you have lots of them; and that's lots of res you could upgrade with.
Locking down is usually silly, you have to defend 3 spots+ all your other res. Why not just defend your res? HMG/GL/SIEGE/JP/HA kills hives, holding hive locations does not.
Play offensively, but more importantly, get the marines to listen to you or you've got not a chance in the world.
Marines really shine in big groups where they can cover each other. It was 5v5.. I was comm, 1 base defender, that left 3 marines free. The base defender often got killed so I had to pull assaulting marines back to defend base.
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Well, I will keep in mind to always keep assaulting.
Also, marines only ever NEED 1/1 upgrades vs level 3 cara skulks; both lvl 2 or 3 anything is pretty much considered a luxury. MT is either part of your strat or a luxury.
In this case your best bet would be 2 base defenders/node guards for docking+miasma+base. Drop them mine packs; they're cheaper and more efficient than turrets are in v1.04.
The two remaining marines should be sweeping the map together looking for nodes and the gorge, or pressing the hive; it depends on how hard the aliens are pushing you.
Simply wait for the res to upgrade 1/1, jp+hmg, then take the hive out.
Always stay on the attack. Keep attacking...draw the aliens away from the hives...hit them all over and at once...and as often as possible. The more you attack the more they defend. If they are defending, then they are not attacking you.
Work more on regrapping res nodes. When I play...I expect to lose open ones like that. I tell my marines...try and get them there. But if all else fails I'll rebuild it, try and get some mines by it...or a couple turrents if I can.
Also, marines only ever NEED 1/1 upgrades vs level 3 cara skulks; both lvl 2 or 3 anything is pretty much considered a luxury. MT is either part of your strat or a luxury.
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Something to point out here is that you two are thinking in completely different time periods.
Krapht, the match you are describing had clearly gone on for an abnormal amount of time and become a stalemate - Basically, marines never reach 3/3 in a 'normal' game, because early battles and the 2ndhive/JP period will typically decide the game before marines have a chance to upgrade that far.
Instead of discussing the late game stalemate situation where your marines were at 3/3, take a closer look at what you did in the early game. The first 5-10 minutes of the game are crucial. From the beginning of the game, marines have a strong combat advantage because the aliens do not yet have carapace. How you make use of this early advantage can set the scene for the remainder of the game, any offensive move at this point is powerful. Killing gorges/res towers/defense chambers at this point in the game also has a large effect on the alien team.
To give you a sense of scale: In a clan match, aliens having full carapace can basically be considered 'mid-game'.
the first 5-10 minutes was free season on res nodes for my team. Since they were in cargo the skulks were constantly trying to eat my ip and base res. Actaully they did at one point eat my base res, and I was quite ****. My base defense person couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. There were 2 good players on my team, and they went to power silo and grabbed the 2 res nodes there. At that point I had no res problems, so I got obs, phase, tf, 4 turrets, then went on to viaduct.
The aliens couldn't beat us from viaduct. I locked it down too. Now, since they had cargo, and couldn't break our hive lockdowns, they started to eat my res. Once they ate my res, they started suiciding on the tfs. Their gorge started putting up dcs and ocs around my hive lockdowns so i had to get siege.
I couldn't keep it up because I had no res. Viaduct disappeared because of 2-3 lerks. 1 skulk to eat my res, and gorge.
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Yes you (did). Thankfully i jumped ship before it all went down in a horrible, flaming mess.
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What do I do?
a bad example is when I had power silo and viaduct locked down.. tf, 5 turrets, phase gate, a few siege because a fatty started offensive towering us. it was looking good, we had 3/3 weapon and armor upgrades, jetpacks.... but no res to upgrade my marine's peashooter lmgs. the lerk harassment got so bad since they had cargo that we couldn't hold viaduct. My tf, my phase, everything just went. I had only 2 res nodes because of the constant skulking.
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What should I have done? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm just addressing your res node problem. Res nodes shouldnt be a problem since its very hard for the aliens to make a rsr node not pay for itself if the commander is atentive. ie: you place a rsr node and it ticks about 30 seconds. This gives you ~15 rsr, then a skulk comes and starts biting on it! Now most commanders would just ask a marine to help it... *even if nobody is around it* and leaves it like that which will prolly lose the marines rsr... since the skulk will kill it in 5 ticks *guess*. The key here is to recycle the rsr for ~10-12 rsr's back + whatever you made out of it. This means you only really need a rsr to be alive for 30 seconds for it to pay itself off, if you commander can recycle. Then whatever comes after 30 seconds is ++ to your bankroll <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->.