Offensive chambers = useless
fgStratus
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3122Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3122Members
Quoted from the manual:
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Function: offense chambers are the Kharaa equivalent of turrets. Any creature entering their area that is not hooked into the bacterium (i.e., an alien) is attacked with projectiles similar in strength and speed to the Gorge's spit attack.
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The Alien offensive chamber's attack deals a pitiful amount of damage, has a low rate of fire, and its shots are not hitscan (ie: the projectile has to actually fly to the target for damage to be dealt, whereas marine turret bullets travel instantly.) As a result, marines at medium-long range can dodge almost all the offensive turret's shots simply by strafing left and right. Even when a battle is taking place around a turret, the amount of support it gives is minimal. The majority of the turret's shots miss, and the ones that hit deal about as much damage as a Gorge's attack (~25)- which (if you take into account its pitiful ROF) is lower than the amount of damage a marine with a LIGHT machine gun can pump out.
As of now, I'm hesitant to propose a solution to this imbalance because I have not played the game long enough to full comprehend it.
PS: Did the NS team intend for strafe jumping to work? For those that don't know, it involves jumping with only the strafe keys alternating and turning so that you're always strafing towards the direction you want to go as u jump. Strafe jumping causes you to constantly accelerate until you're flying at about the speed of a Lerk's spine-launching attack.
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Function: offense chambers are the Kharaa equivalent of turrets. Any creature entering their area that is not hooked into the bacterium (i.e., an alien) is attacked with projectiles similar in strength and speed to the Gorge's spit attack.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Alien offensive chamber's attack deals a pitiful amount of damage, has a low rate of fire, and its shots are not hitscan (ie: the projectile has to actually fly to the target for damage to be dealt, whereas marine turret bullets travel instantly.) As a result, marines at medium-long range can dodge almost all the offensive turret's shots simply by strafing left and right. Even when a battle is taking place around a turret, the amount of support it gives is minimal. The majority of the turret's shots miss, and the ones that hit deal about as much damage as a Gorge's attack (~25)- which (if you take into account its pitiful ROF) is lower than the amount of damage a marine with a LIGHT machine gun can pump out.
As of now, I'm hesitant to propose a solution to this imbalance because I have not played the game long enough to full comprehend it.
PS: Did the NS team intend for strafe jumping to work? For those that don't know, it involves jumping with only the strafe keys alternating and turning so that you're always strafing towards the direction you want to go as u jump. Strafe jumping causes you to constantly accelerate until you're flying at about the speed of a Lerk's spine-launching attack.
Comments
The web will slow down marines so they can't strafe jump dodge the projectiles, and healing spray keeps the turret alive a lot longer.
But the damage could be upped just a little.
re bunny-hopping: umm... you hit the wall. a lot. and it's hard to aim when you're constantly turning around and strafe jumping.
Those grenades really need to be tweaked.
Atziluth
The aliens are EXTREMELY hard to play with, during ALL of my games the aliens have been slaughtered mercilessly, this, and the added factor of their weak offensive turrets, really make an alien's life a living hell.
My current worry is that since the 2nd, 3rd game, everyone started to stack marines, because once they've tried aliens they're all amazed at how weak they are compared to the marines' weaponry.
<!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/asrifle.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::asrifle::'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo-->
All it takes is a little mind opening, and people will realize that aliens are fun, aliens are balanced, and aliens a <i>freaking strong.</i>
BTW I was a gorge protecting 2 hives with offensive turrents and a pair of momvent chambers. I was doin perfect with my webs until everyone decided to join the marine side, resulting in 13vs4. It wasnt laggy though, then suddenly , it froze for about 5 seconds, then when it returned everyones ping was 1000+, then decreased to 500 then stood there. A crappy ending to a great hour.
When the aliens are losing, and marines advancing, taking over all the nodes, the only way for the Aliens to get back on their feet is for them to rush a node/hive to grab it back, but since they're already losing most of them will be either a skulk or gorge, and the hives/nodes will for SURE be laced with those dreaded turrets.
The problem is that, for most Alien players they found it almost impossible to take over 2~5 turrets with only skulks and gorges. That's why Aliens seem to be a lot weaker than Marines.
There are a lot of PTs here, wanna give me some insight as to how to resolve that "stalemate" problem?
PREVENT MARINES FROM EXPANDING - rush!
Imagine 10 extremely fast skuls attacking an enemy base. Right now all i see are lone skulks running around. GROUP GUYS!!
But sadly that will not go into effect for at least another month, because nobody will know WHERE to rush to hahaha...I've spent A LOT OF TIME running in a large circle as an alien <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
I've also noticed that there is a lot more teamwork going on with the marine side, what with the commander and all. Which is <b>awesome</b>. Unfortunately when i play alien its like deathmatch, everyone for themselves... Thats probably another reason why we suck so much at it...
btw, does the default font in this forum <i>have</i> to be so small? <span style='color:red'>Yes.</span>
<!--EDIT|Greedo386|Nov. 01 2002,02:59-->
My current worry is that since the 2nd, 3rd game, everyone started to stack marines...<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You hit the nail on the head.
My current worry is that since the 2nd, 3rd game, everyone started to stack marines...<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You hit the nail on the head.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Unfortunately, you were using a slimy trout, and the nail was not on a board.
I've played a number of games today. I've seen 2 marine victories, and about a dozen alien victories. One marine victory, I joined aliens when the game was already nearly over, and the other marine victory I was the commander.
Every single other time I've played the game, I've played aliens, and I've won. I'm not playing with a team of PTs. Hell, I've only played one game in a server with a PT, and he was an alien when I was commanding. IF YOU LEARN HOW TO PLAY THE ALIEN TEAM, YOU WILL NOT BE COMPLAINING ABOUT BALANCE ANYMORE.
Yes, I have noticed that the skulk's eyes are in its mouth, a little to the left of the toungue. I make this observation because when the skulk bites, he can't see anything. Seems like an odd evolutionary trait, and if this is not the case, maybe something like a transluscent mouth would be in order so that we could still see the thing we're attacking?
The current lag (yeah, I know, being fixed) only serves to emphasize the "running around like a blind man" and makes attacking moving targets very difficult.
The aliens have a very weak defense in comparison to the marines.
Also, aliens have a very poor distance attacks. It is near impossible to take out 1 turret alone where the mairnes can wipe out multiple with 1 well equiped man.
Something to think about. BTW, I have yet to see the aliens win 1 round.
At the beginning, I too was peeved at how ineffective alien turrets were. Then a realized there were more of a delay. They're still enough of a threat to kill a marine, so they'll stay out of its range, or out of view. This delays an attack enough for the aliens to run to the position, and burst out of vents behind the marines and ambush them. Since the marines have their concentration on the base ahead, they won't be looking behind.
Also noted is how amazingly cheap and quick to build the alien turrets are.
The main problem right now is that no one knows the maps, so the aliens are finding it hard to react quickly enough stop the attackers. If you get to know a map, you'll be amazed at all the many crawlspaces you can use to cut travel times and make ambushes from. One of my recommendations was for a semi useful map for the alien players. Something that obscured their view when called up, and didn't show hivesight. It would show the map layout with crawlspaces, and would mainly be used to help new alien players quickly learn maps.
Also, aliens need better weapons. Clear and simple. Currently, the aliens best weapons are close combat. Well, good luck reaching them before the marine and sentries take you out from a distance.
What do the aliens have that is equivelant to the grenade launcher? Nothing.
I'd say that aliens are fun as either a gorge or lurker (spl). Everything else is either boring or worthless really.
So, here we are... a great MOD, fun gameplay, but totally unbalanced races. I look forward to playing the next release.
Not sure if that was supposed to be sarcastic or not.....anywho, I trust in the PTs enough to believe that the game is balanced, but many people will be peeved at the "relative inbalance" and stop playing before they learn the tricks, is THAT what u want?
I've gotten kicked my armor by some aliens, though, I must admit <!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->
As for turrets, they are extremely effective when coupled with a couple of skulks or a fade. They are not supposed to replace players, they are meant to delay the marines for long enough so as to both alert the team and distract the marines while you bite them in ze behind.
We had a panicky moment where a single Lerk took out 6 of our turrets. Might just have been a good player but it was a scary moment.. he weakened our defences to the point where if a big alien attack had come then we would have had to fall back to our starting base. I had to spend about 90 resources on HMGs to fight off the threat.
So in my experience as a commander, individual aliens can be a huge threat if used correctly.
On offencive chambers - in a way I believe they are underpowered, but I've _never_ seen anyone use webs... which look to me like they could seriously do nasty things for a marine. When I was commanding I usually had a nade guy toss some love in to unexplored corridors before my HMGs went down, which usually cleared anything in the way.
Maybe the offencive chambers could have more armour? I've found myself, as a marine, capable of rushing a chamber, firing a clip of LMG into it then destroying it with a knife. On one occaision I ran into three chambers, and managed to take two down with a knife before a Skulk got me. I had 50 armor when I started..