Here's Your Imbalance...
Adrenaline
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6278Members
Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6278Members
<div class="IPBDescription">I'll say what I believe</div> Ok, here's my thoughts on the whole situation. Many of you may say the "resource imbalance" is the problem. It does make sense, but I'm still not sure it's the answer.
Every alien starts with 10 resources, and the marine commander with 100. Technically it's fair, but there's two things that mess it all up.
1) The amount of people on teams. The commander starts with 100 resources no matter what. Even if he's alone, or with 14 other teammates, he still has 100 resources. The aliens however, each get 10. What if there's only 5 members on the alien team? That's only 50 resources total, and the commander still has 100. Now this does work in reverse, if there's more than 10 people on the Alien team, but here's where problem 2 comes in...
2) The commander can technically build a 100 resource building from the start, because he posesses all of the resources. However, even if the Alien team has 50 teammates, they can only make buildings that cost 10 resources each. Maybe if there was a way to let Alien team members give all of their resources to other people, who need it more?
In basic overview, when aliens do not have 10 team members:
a) The marines will have more total resources.
b) The marines will have all of their resources in 1 place, allowing you to start off, by building a 100 resource building. The aliens no matter what, will always have 10 each. Anything that costs more than 10 resources, will require you to wait.
The next problem is turrets.
Ok, we've all seen this in every single game. Aliens are 1 Hive away from getting their so very much needed Onos (which I myself dubbed "Ownos"), and every Marine already has heavy armor, and nade launchers.
Now here's the trick to all of this. If the Aliens built a huge offensive fortress around the Marine's base, the Marines could just sit in their base, wait for their resources to build up, and when they had enough, everyone would have the best armor, and the best weapon. The only reason Marines ever even leave their main base, is because they want to get more resource nodes.
But, if (and it always happens), the Marines built a huge fortress around the Alien's base, the Aliens could NOT just sit in their base, and wait for resources to accumulate, so they could bust out with Onos. Why? Because they need all 3 hives to truly stand a chance against grenades, and heavy armor.
You may say this is all "fair and balanced" or "this is how it's supposed to be", but it's really not. All the Marines have to do to win, is secure their main (not very hard to do), and then choose 1 hive spot of their liking, and fill it up to its *** in turrets. The Aliens could have all the resources in the world, and it won't matter, because they're never getting their 3rd hive, and they're never getting Onos, or for that matter, level 4 weaponry (Xenocide and Bile Bomb, anyone?). Skulk doesn't stand a chance in a room with 50 turrets, Lurk sure as hell doesn't either, and Fade's Acid Rocket takes forever to kill turrets, and that's WITH other teammembers helping you out. Meanwhile, the turrets are doing all the work guarding that last Hive, and the Marines are safely securing more resource nodes.
If you've read all the way through, then I commend you. I apologize for taking many lines of writing, to get my points across, and my only excuse is that I'm tired. I hope many of you agree with these ideas, and for those of you who don't, I'd appreciate you responding in a mature manner. Thanks.
-Adrenaline
Every alien starts with 10 resources, and the marine commander with 100. Technically it's fair, but there's two things that mess it all up.
1) The amount of people on teams. The commander starts with 100 resources no matter what. Even if he's alone, or with 14 other teammates, he still has 100 resources. The aliens however, each get 10. What if there's only 5 members on the alien team? That's only 50 resources total, and the commander still has 100. Now this does work in reverse, if there's more than 10 people on the Alien team, but here's where problem 2 comes in...
2) The commander can technically build a 100 resource building from the start, because he posesses all of the resources. However, even if the Alien team has 50 teammates, they can only make buildings that cost 10 resources each. Maybe if there was a way to let Alien team members give all of their resources to other people, who need it more?
In basic overview, when aliens do not have 10 team members:
a) The marines will have more total resources.
b) The marines will have all of their resources in 1 place, allowing you to start off, by building a 100 resource building. The aliens no matter what, will always have 10 each. Anything that costs more than 10 resources, will require you to wait.
The next problem is turrets.
Ok, we've all seen this in every single game. Aliens are 1 Hive away from getting their so very much needed Onos (which I myself dubbed "Ownos"), and every Marine already has heavy armor, and nade launchers.
Now here's the trick to all of this. If the Aliens built a huge offensive fortress around the Marine's base, the Marines could just sit in their base, wait for their resources to build up, and when they had enough, everyone would have the best armor, and the best weapon. The only reason Marines ever even leave their main base, is because they want to get more resource nodes.
But, if (and it always happens), the Marines built a huge fortress around the Alien's base, the Aliens could NOT just sit in their base, and wait for resources to accumulate, so they could bust out with Onos. Why? Because they need all 3 hives to truly stand a chance against grenades, and heavy armor.
You may say this is all "fair and balanced" or "this is how it's supposed to be", but it's really not. All the Marines have to do to win, is secure their main (not very hard to do), and then choose 1 hive spot of their liking, and fill it up to its *** in turrets. The Aliens could have all the resources in the world, and it won't matter, because they're never getting their 3rd hive, and they're never getting Onos, or for that matter, level 4 weaponry (Xenocide and Bile Bomb, anyone?). Skulk doesn't stand a chance in a room with 50 turrets, Lurk sure as hell doesn't either, and Fade's Acid Rocket takes forever to kill turrets, and that's WITH other teammembers helping you out. Meanwhile, the turrets are doing all the work guarding that last Hive, and the Marines are safely securing more resource nodes.
If you've read all the way through, then I commend you. I apologize for taking many lines of writing, to get my points across, and my only excuse is that I'm tired. I hope many of you agree with these ideas, and for those of you who don't, I'd appreciate you responding in a mature manner. Thanks.
-Adrenaline
Comments
The squashing of the resource bug. <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
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As an alien, you need to accumulate 13 resources before you can upgrade to a Gorge, wait x amount of seconds gestating, and then accumulate the resources for a building.
But honestly, until this resource bug is fixed, we shouldn't judge.
Aliens have their offensive towers which suck royally! I placed 10 in a room one and even saw the Marines type "OMG, look at the towers!" However the marines leveled the base in a matter of minutes with LMGs and Grenaders in Heavy Armor. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> Also, ANY marine can assist in a build. Thus the commander drops like 15 items and all the marines go to work. Now, since aliens get penalized for too many gorges, the gorge # is quite small. Thus you only have maybe 2 gorges building a base. Even with all the aliens working together, marines can put up a base far quicker than an alien horde. (With better defense as well.)
The only viable solution to taking out SGs by aliens is Onos, Xenocide or the Fade Suicide/Lob ability. However these only come at Hive 3! One map the marines always SG camp one of the hive spots. (Last time I checked, there were 15 SGs in the room.) Guess what, no Fade or amount of Skulks is going to cut through that!
So what I think it comes down to is that Marines can build and go! Aliens have to build and stay because of the lousy defenses. (Yes, even with Web a couple aliens have to stay back to attack the crippled marines.)
Now, in final words, my friend and I LOVE THIS GAME! However once the Marines get Heavy Armor, LMGs, and the aliens are stuck at Hive 2... the game is over. At least when the aliens get Onos, the marines can still have Heavy stuff. But if the aliens don't get that 3rd Hive, it'll be a serious problem.
Read the "Ns_playerresourcescalar Considered Harmful" thread. It explains it.
It takes about 2 - 3 min but you can take out 2 - 3 towers if you work hard on it.
Now that’s all good and great but the down side it you can’t do this with more than one person at a time effectively.
2 reasons.
1 you bump into each other
2 if you alternate turns at running/healing the turrets never wined down and they are more prepared for you.
So if the 3rd hive is guarded by only turrets build 2 - 3+ defense towers and call me. You go fight the marines and me by the time you’re getting somewhere I will have the hive cleared... 15 - 20 min tops..... BLEH
EDIT: GAH! in the time it took me to write this looks like 4 other posts have been made and now this looks like it came from nowere! lol I believe this does still have some point pretaining to the first post... please dont slap be for posting off topic! <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
It takes about 2 - 3 min but you can take out 2 - 3 towers if you work hard on it.
Now that’s all good and great but the down side it you can’t do this with more than one person at a time effectively.
2 reasons.
1 you bump into each other
2 if you alternate turns at running/healing the turrets never wined down and they are more prepared for you.
So if the 3rd hive is guarded by only turrets build 2 - 3+ defense towers and call me. You go fight the marines and me by the time you’re getting somewhere I will have the hive cleared... 15 - 20 min tops..... BLEH
EDIT: GAH! in the time it took me to write this looks like 4 other posts have been made and now this looks like it came from nowere! lol I believe this does still have some point pretaining to the first post... please dont slap be for posting off topic! <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You forgot to see the number of SGs I've come across. 2-3 guns is fine, but if the marines send reinforcements via a teleporter, your little run is squashed. Also, if the marines know what their doing, they'll spread the SGs in a way that you'll have serious problems. (The sheer number of bullets in the air will nullify the lack of accuracy of the guns themselves.) Now that marine hunts down those def towers and eliminates them quickly. Back to square one.
It takes about 2 - 3 min but you can take out 2 - 3 towers if you work hard on it.
Now that’s all good and great but the down side it you can’t do this with more than one person at a time effectively.
2 reasons.
1 you bump into each other
2 if you alternate turns at running/healing the turrets never wined down and they are more prepared for you.
So if the 3rd hive is guarded by only turrets build 2 - 3+ defense towers and call me. You go fight the marines and me by the time you’re getting somewhere I will have the hive cleared... 15 - 20 min tops..... BLEH
EDIT: GAH! in the time it took me to write this looks like 4 other posts have been made and now this looks like it came from nowere! lol I believe this does still have some point pretaining to the first post... please dont slap be for posting off topic! <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You forgot to see the number of SGs I've come across. 2-3 guns is fine, but if the marines send reinforcements via a teleporter, your little run is squashed. Also, if the marines know what their doing, they'll spread the SGs in a way that you'll have serious problems. (The sheer number of bullets in the air will nullify the lack of accuracy of the guns themselves.) Now that marine hunts down those def towers and eliminates them quickly. Back to square one.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yea I get that to but the guns seem to all tract at once so for the most part the same tactic can be used against 2 or 20 SG's. They just take a whole lot longer to kill. Last night I successfully took out approximately 23 guns in our hive 3. The downside to that is by the time I got it cleared we had lost hive 2 and hive 1 was dieing.......
I just have my fingers crossed that the patch will fix the resources so they will have to start being picky on there SG’s.
What I would [b/LOVE[/b] to see is a power source for the turrets. You could make the turret factory have like a HP of 3 times what it currently is but make all the turrets not function after its been destroyed!
Sure build 20 SG’s around a turret factory and they will be for the most part effective but at least we would have some way of getting rid of them without spending almost a hour getting rid of them! Plus if you come along and rebuild the turret factory all your turrets would come back to life! Weeeeeee!
In games I rarely see anyone else but me using Spores and Umbra as a Lerk. And when I do use Umbra to try and help out my teamates, I don't think they know what it is and does. Hell, I think they think it's teargas or something from the Marines -- it's not! That yellow gas is preventing bullets (most bullets anyways) from hitting you, don't run from it!
And Spores is great! It only does 30 damage per second, but it's a big as$ cloud that can hurt multiple people. That plus the fact that you can usually get a few clouds going - three maybe four of them, and you can do a lot of damage. Especially if theres a group of Marines.
Think about it:
If the aliens work together and simutaneously attack having Lerks use Umbra as a shield & 2 Gorges using Healing-Spray + some Skulks, Fades maybe a Onos to do the damage - that's a VERY STRONG force to deal with. And if everyone is using redemption, you can use that force over and over, and over.
Now about the Onos and the Paralysis Dart....
I took that as they didn't like what I said lol.
I think the patch might unbalance the game too far in the favor of the aliens.
They simply build the 5 buildings the commander just dropped, build 100's of turrets and they load up with HA, HMG's and go off on their own to kill stuff.
Soon as the RP is fixed, the Marines will be in for a rude awakining, then the forums will explode with complaints the aliens are too strong.
THAT IMO is how it should be.
The changes don't appear very drastic at all to me and I think the slight difference will make pub server playing MUCH more enjoyable.
As has been mentioned, MANY marines will whine that aliens are overpowered now that they have to learn a bit about teamwork.
I think the patch might unbalance the game too far in the favor of the aliens.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What you are saying is poor marine play lost you the game and 2 well played aliens (atleast) was needed to do it... that is not "balanced" IMHO.
The simple truth is sentry guns and grenade launchers are WAY overpowered.... if you look at the patch notes I think the changes are minor enough with the resource fix to correct the problem. I mean 6 GL rounds in 4 seconds doing double dmg to structures is a tad much don't you think. Especially when right now 1 GL marine can take out a large radius of structures in 4 seconds at a cost of less then 50 resources... even Onos can;t do that and they cost 70+. Added to the fact that we cant even have our best units without first blowing a minimum of 160 pts and protecting 3 locations. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
But the main thing that aliens are doing wrong I think.. are letting marines expand in the early game.... usually there are 2 exits to a base.... cover those 2 with skulks and build up defences around them... this goes without saying with alot of the guys I play with... Often the marines only have 1 or 2 nodes. And rarely have heavy armor. Its all a matter of strategy and how well you work together as a team.
Aliens tend to be more independent... as I often see groups of 3 or 4 marines.. yet unless its an organized attack I never see that amount of alien players together.
I think the patch might unbalance the game too far in the favor of the aliens.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The only way two fades could take out an entire marine base is if your team sucked. <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo-->
Also I would like to add that I was one of the expected fans that thought aliens would be almost impossible to kill, the team that could win easily... boy was I wrong, though it is fun being a alien!
Marines = the teamwork based side. You have to work WITH your commander and follow his orders, you have to travel as a GROUP with your teammates and execute your commander's orders. As it is right now, marines are getting away with being able to hot-dog it and go out on their own for the prize, surprisingly, this is actually working, when I feel it shouldn't be.
Aliens...most people jump into the alien seat and feel powerful, so they're doing their solo thing. This works, mostly, but it would be working much better if people were at least semi-aware of what else was going on. As it is right now, they're ignoring attacks on their structures, even if the attack is going on half a meter away from them, and they're not helping out teammates under attack. Yes, aliens are meant to be the more independant race, but it doesn't mean you can just do your own thing and have not a care in the world as to what else your team is doing. I'm always amazed when I jump on alien side, which has 4 members, and they're ALL gorges. Then again, I guess this can be attributed to noobieness, it'll get better with time.
I guess to fall back into line, yes I think marines should not be able to clear entire bases with just two guys loaded up on heavy armor and grenade launchers. Yes I think marines should have a limit on how many turrets they can put in an area. I'm a lil hesitant to say that the alien team needed the boosts that they're receiving in the next patch, but I'll make a final judgment on that when I see it in action =)
The only way two fades could take out an entire marine base is if your team sucked
DiscoJoe
The reason the Fades wiped out a base was because they had Defense Chambers established behind them. 1 would cloak in a hallway and wait until it was a good oppurtunity to strike and then take out like 1 turret and retreat to the chambers. The other one would then do the same thing so it was a never ending barrage of Bile Bombs. Since this is mid-game, and all we had was HMG it was very possible for the two of them to take us out. Also, we just played a game together (I hope you remember) and I didn't suck in that at all.
Second,
What you are saying is poor marine play lost you the game and 2 well played aliens (atleast) was needed to do it... that is not "balanced" IMHO.
Atziluth
Listen to what you just wrote, SKILLFULL alien play beat UNSKILLFUL marine play, isn't that the way thay ANY game, chess NS, CS, is supposed to be?
Don't get me wrong, I am a bigger fan of the aliens than of the marines, but I feel the patch helps the aliens to the extreme. The species doesn't need to get better the players need more experience. But I do think that the GL is way to powerful against structures and such and should be toned down.
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Just to gestate takes more time... then if ther is no resorse towers this can take 3 min's+ to make 1 new tower. By then the Mrines have lots of things bult. The Aliens should start with 100 resorses and the Mrines start with 10.
Bah, I can't WAIT to see that happen. Cries of "WtF? why cant we get our 1337 HA+HMG for our 10 man team?!" and "OMG!! those ****** ****ing aliens are actually winning, I wish we could exploit server commands still!!!!"
Oh boy oh boy, those will be the days. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Another thing: What I feel is stupid, is marines playing the game how it is now, with their 12v6 teams and all, saying stuff like Fades need to be toned down. Now, honestly, for 23 resource points, an HMG, which does 20 default damage, with 150 rounds in a ...magazine U-shaped thingamajigger, completely destroys almost anything there is to fight,not to mention ammo upgrades. On the other hand, the poor little Fade, who can do 80 damage with a swipe in close range. <-----CLOSE RANGE Or 50 with a medium energy cost NON-HITSCAN(read:projectile must actually hit target,instead of being in the area when a weapon is fired) attack. Not to say HMGs are unbalanced, but with the messed up resource system, whole teams of them are, indeed, a little too much.(After all, it's simple math, a single magazine has the potential to do 3000 points of damage, non upgraded)