To win as an alien?
JRPereira
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 4778Members
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 4778Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Is this actually possible?</div>In every single game I've played so far I've seen the aliens at a loss, with humans being able to kill any of them in less than a second and usually killing groups with grenades and other such weapons. I've also noticed it's so hard to keep a hive up and defended to the point where it's nearly impossible to keep 3 for even a minute. I've been in a couple of games where 2 marines are able to beat back groups of aliens and continue to build and fortify. The alien defensive buildings seem to do nearly nothing, while the marine sentry guns are something you'd want to avoid even if you're an onos.
Also, in every game when I'm a marine I have no trouble killing masses of aliens. Is it just me?, or are the aliens at a huge disadvantage? I've also noticed at the end of these games when I play as the marines I usually have hundreds of resource points and can't seem to spend fast enough to run out.
Also, in every game when I'm a marine I have no trouble killing masses of aliens. Is it just me?, or are the aliens at a huge disadvantage? I've also noticed at the end of these games when I play as the marines I usually have hundreds of resource points and can't seem to spend fast enough to run out.
Comments
I believed myself that its not possible to win at aliens till yesterday. But then we won. As aliens.
The key to success are the gorges. If you have trouble defending your hives or experience the marines taking down your offense chambers like they are out of butter, try building a few defense chambers. Just place one DC next to three OC and the OC are much harder to kill. Same goes for the hive.
I used this yesterday, and it worked. Our team was nearly destroyed and at the end we won.
Also, if anyone would care to read the playtester stories, I remember at least half of them being the marines getting their ##### womped by the Kharaa.
They have a commander doing everything and giving orders, while the aliens must decide themselves in which type they should evolve and what to build where and stuff.
I'm sure that once everyone gets the hang of it; the aliens will take over and dominate those ####### marines <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo--> .
i think you just gotta know when to evolve and when to build...
btw the colony is recruiting ^^ <!--emo&::onos::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tiny.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::onos::'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::onos::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tiny.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::onos::'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::onos::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tiny.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::onos::'><!--endemo-->
the only reason why the commanders dont command is again because we are all n00bs.
Then they have to learn how to win as the alien team.
A few pointers, of the easy to learn and damn I wish people would think about them variety:
First, keep in mind the nature of the game. Its not an FPS. Its an RTS with FPS elements. One of the basic rules of an RTS is EXPANSION. You need to do it, and not let your opponent do it.
Expansion is not just grabbing resources and teching up. Its also KEEPING those resources. If a hive is under attack, GET THERE NOW. It would be better if you never let them get into the hive. When the game says 'structure under attack' LOOK around. Look for the red circle. You can see across the map, people, use that ability. If the attack is near our hive, go defend it. (BTW, Skulks, that's the message for a cheap if not free lunch, marines focused on killing buildings aren't looking for you, hint hint)
Second, like any RTS, you do things differently at different stages of the game. Learn that, love that, live that.
Stage 1: Early in the game:
Skulks need to scout, find the marines and PARASITE THEM. Then try to kill them. If you succeed, great, if you fail, your entire team now knows exactly where that marine is, and for the people on your team that don't know the map, they now have a waypoint to try and find. Get into the enemy base area, and sniper em, parasite the entire enemy team while they build up. Constantly harass, its better if you slow them down than if you rush in and kill one, then die to the others. Frightened marines are slow marines. Slow marines are our friends.
Gorges need to be expanding hard and fast. Stay skulk at first, and run to the farther hives. Evolve there, and dig in.
Middle stage: You've got a second hive, the marines probably have an expansion or two. Try to take them away. Keep hammering the marine resource points, force them to defend and repair them constantly. If you can keep them tied up doing that, then they aren't pushing out attacking us.
End stage: stop worrying about digging in and grabbing resources. Gather as groups, and use the abilities from three hives to stomp marines. Don't kill their teleport pads if you can avoid it, use them to group rush into the middle of their bases. Work as a team, if you rush in with a lerk laying umbra, and a gorge spraying healing, those two onos will stay alive a LOT longer.
But regardless, even just one day later, I'm seeing huge leaps forward in alien playability.
Offensive chambering, especially with 3 defensive chambers at a time (for onos to fall back to, should things go badly) is a useful tactic.
Its rough to get all three hives though. And being able to see a red circle of something under attack or whatever really is sort of limited in usefulness. The maps are large and mazelike, and I generally find myself wandering aimlessly in circles trying to find that location to plant a hive, or to find that teammate under attack...
I'm thinking that once the maps are learned and we know our way around, things will change drastically.
For now, we're all n00bs, and I agree with the statement "give it a month". Let's see what happens once we practice a bit.
Even losing, i'm having a blast. Although It pisses me off to no end to see 7:14 games, with marines refusing to join the aliens side to balance it out.
-Brew
And, for those 7:14 games, i just leave the server... i know they will never change... (AUTOTEAMBALANCE IS NEEDED!!!<!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->
Relic, that is so true.
Yes, I believe the marines are too strong. Maybe you're right, maybe in a month we'll all be saying "Oh poor marines." I don't think so, but maybe.
I see a lot of statements to the affect that aliens are ambushers, and should let the marines come to them. That's nice and all, except to have any chance at winning you have to prevent the marines from expanding, and you have to do it right away. Except that means rushing, and getting turned into sushi. I've tried "sneaking" as a skulk to defend key areas, but the little jackasses always come in a cluster, and I can't deal with 2 or 3 or sometimes more. By the time I've respawned and gotten back, they already have a full-fledged base with 3 or 4 or so turrets. So what options are there? Have the skulks stick together, defend an area, and probably pick the wrong one, or spread out and defend all areas, and be vastly insufficient. Or rush and get turned into sushi. A few times a big skulk rush will win the game quick, but that isn't even satisfying.
As an alien, I hate turrets. I mean I REALLY hate turrets. Marines set up a mini-base, throw down some turrets, move on. And they can completely ignore it from then on. Aliens can't even begin to consider handling turrets until 2 hives are up(umbra and bile bombs), and even then it takes so much effort that it will absorb msot of your time trying to deal with 3 turrets while the marines continue storming through the map, throwing down even MORE turrets. I hear some of you say aliens have OC's. But the OC attack is slow. I can outstrafe it unless I'm sitting on the dang thing, and my guns have greater range and can take it out relatively quickly. Sentry turrets are smaller and you can pack more into a small space, with more targeting at the same time. Aliens can only reasonably go on offense with 3 hives, and that's nearly impossible if the marines have turreted the other 1 or 2 hive locations to death.
As a Gorge, nothing I hate more than a grenade launcher. SOB Marines can bounce those things around corners and take out all my hard work without breaking a sweat. I can try and chase him down but he'll just pistol my fat little butt, and destroy the rest of my work while I respawn.
And nothing like spending 70 resource points to become the pinnacle of alien evolution, the ONOS, to end up getting taken down by one marine in heavy armor with an HMG. Not always, but too often for comfort. That and I can't ever seem to hit with charge... but I chalk that up to inexperience.
And to add insult to injury, grenade launchers with jetpacks. Nothing like making my OC's completely useless.
In the end, it's the feeling that marines have an easy and efficient counter for every alien attack and defense, and unless the aliens have 3 hives, they simply don't have any effective ways of dealing with the marine equivalents. An HA+HMG marine can trounce nearly everything short of an ONOS, and even then it's not hard. And it doesn't even really cost that much to supply an HA and HMG.
In the end my biggest beef is just those damn sentry turrets. I walk into a room and expect atleast 3 ST's, and the sure 'n' happy knowledge that unless we're already winning anyway I can't really do squat about 'em.
a idea, but lets see that in a week or so, when the aliens know about the siege turrets, make the range of a siege les big...
I wont play marines anymore as theres no challenge to it.
I've played about 20 games and only had aliens win once, because all the best players joined the alien side and the rookies on the marine side. Its like vampire slayer but the if vampires have to hit about 10 times to kill instead of instant. How can you be "sneaky" enough to attack 10 times without someone noticing?
In damn real life the turrets would simply break or (fall over) if something like an onos were to bash it.Is the freakin turret screwed into the damn ground or something, pretty measly looking for a few support sticks and moving parts. This is plain ridiculus and it needs to be that the turrets have less hp or something. Dont give me that "oh I dont know how to play as alien" **IT! All I have done is alien. I have not even touched marine side of playing.
I love this mod and hate it to death at the same time because of "issues"
Dont tell me bile bomb is good because it isn't compared to grenades.
Yeah skulks are good against the marines but damn tell me whats good against the upgraded marine who seems invulnerable to everything.
If onos is a rhino sized killing machine with "weight" behind its legs then it should be able to "throw" a freakin marine across the goddamned room not have to bite the marine who is just blocking you like he's just as strong as the onos.
The skulk as I imagine it is like a pitbull, but more dangerous...Then why the **** cant it do more damage?
(THE ONLY TWO WAYS)I repeat [B]THE ONLY TWO WAYS...
to beat marines is by rushing at start which is stupid because then its not a full on match. Or by slowly evolving and grouping onos on marines which is harder than it sounds because marines have grenades by the dam time aliens have only one hive.
Telling me i dont know the aliens is an insult to me and all of the dedicated alien players.
All today i was playing on a FREINDLY FIRE ENABLED server and still marines launched grenades at one another on accident with little damage to their teamates.
I saw a guy today on freindly fire server launch 3 grenades on accident at his turrets and machinery and not one or the marine were killed.
This is plain BS and as of now I am "returning" to a atleast decently balanced game called CS until issues are recoded or fixed. Four other players in the same room were convinced after ours of play that they too were returning to the boring CS because some things were unbarable. This isn't even a threat but a reminder that if people arn't happy they wont play. Its probobly not so hard to just reduce turret hp in coding by like 200hp. Even just that will balance the freakin gameplay. Or fix the supposed rumor that Marines resources are jacked up by coding mistake.
Do something, I'm just frustrated and its only been three freakin days! three days but MANY hours of play to realize the obvious problems. Dont make excuses just fix problems...or dont... and lose the community. I'm actually saddened more than angry that such good ideas that went into this mod might get spoiled.
I loved this mod for the first two days just saying to myself that I had to become experienced with aliens everytime the marines beat my team...BFS! Know I say screw that. Just like a bum on the streets, I will simply run to marines with skulk attempting to do something to hurt them.
I have hid effectively and killed effectively with the wall climbing skulk and have bben successful at killing marines that are not upgraded. One time I killed 5 marines in a row with the skulk. BUT OUR TEAM STILL LOST BECAUSE ONE GUY WITH GRENADES BLEW THREE HIVES AWAY IN 3 MINUTES!
You say the skulk in the scout of the hive then waht is a marine equivalent alien...The Fade? Please? its blink ability is overrated and its bark er looks are worste than its bite er slash. The hal-life headcrap is more effective at killing than any of the aliens in NS.
I am simply coming to post this because You will continue to give the excuse that aliens havn't been learned by players yet and the truth is that a TINY TINY adjustment can be made to fix all the games balancing problem.
And now... A stupid excuse or point will be made after my post. <!--emo&::siege::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/siege.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::siege::'><!--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&::gorge::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/pudgy.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::gorge::'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::onos::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tiny.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::onos::'><!--endemo-->
Sentry turrets > alien turrets
Marine destructive powers vs buildings > aliens destructive powers vs buildings
That happens if the marines got a bad commander.
Same happened to me on the marine team.
The thing that really needs fixing are hmg's and gl's with jetpacks
Two guys go gorge and build resource points and hives and def chambers, the rest attack like mad. The marines have no chance. Shure you must be a good player, but alone i made that no marine go out of theyr base... just strafe and jump around the marines.. command, aliens are stronger than marines, just play as team and use the abilites....
I know some people are loyal and want to defend the MOD, and it is a fantastic game. But face it, aliens don't compare to either Marines' offense or defense. And if aliens are that much harder to play, maybe they should have a few BETTER skills here or there to compensate for an inevitably mixed team of rookies and vets. I'm not saying turn the Skulk into a killing machine, but little damage/defense boosts here or there like giving the aliens a better way to deal with enemy defenses(turrets).
One minor gripe. Why as a Skulk do I feel like a shark with legs? <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo--> Don't get me wrong, their bite looks VERY cool. But I bite once and half the time I lose the marine by the time my mouth has opened again. Very confusing.