I agree with that, with teams even things are much more tight.
Although i have noticed something very important, in the long term, the marines are almost unbeatable. Thats why early hit and run tactics and rushes work very well for the Khara.
How many games weve won by making a 6 skulk rush against the enemy commander chamber, destroying it and thereby preventing the marines from constructing anything anymore.
But then again,you do need a team to follow you into this motion, and since peole are just getting into the mod, it aint easy.
I do think though that alien towers would be needing a "fire rate up" patch at least to make them something to be reckoned with.
Give it time though people, once a part of the mass gets to know the game better, the tide will surely change.
A tip for new players: there are people out there with already good knowledge of the game and tactics, listen to them, although it may sound weird at first, they probly know what they are talking about...probably...
The only thing I hate about being aliens is that their Offense Chambers are merely horse flies against a bull. Most marines just ignore them and the fact that all of them have HMG and a welder, it makes it almost useless to try and get defenses up. <!--emo&???--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='???'><!--endemo-->
I saw one marine take a whole hive today. I never felt more worthless in my life(Though, in the game before I got 9 kills in a row with the flying thing. That was interesting). Its also the fact that the aliens really have no edge when it comes to defense. But I'm sure that with the patch with economy fix will make this really great. Due to the fact the Admin's can't screw around with the economy anymore. Nothing sucks more than having a army of marines march into an area with 20 sentries already ready to be made.
Im a ####### for not seeing this before. The reason why mot aliens defenses dont work is that most people don't know how to make Defensive chambers(including me). What I realised is that the key to making sure your offensive chambers live long enough to do damage is to have defensive chambers.
Well, but you need at least 2 to 3 defense chambers to keep your Towers alive at least a bit. And with a whole clip well placed nades they will also be history.
And I rarely see the Offensive Chambers killing a marine. They should be modified to fire faster spike like the Lerk.
touche tgire! I totally agree that a little time and effort with the Kharaa will amount to understanding they 0wnZ j00 <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
Yes, the only real bad thing about aliens is taking out turrets. since they can pretty mcuh build millions of them right from start. If they geta hive it will take at least 1-2 hours to get back after taking all the sgs out.
1hive- you buggered you might as well call sgs invinsble 2hives- acid rocket is ok means you can claim a marine defended hive in about an hour, if they have tele there 3hives- it gets easyer no onos can take a fairly large group off em with armour and adren unless a marine is with em with hmg. Bile bomb for fade can be effective with a mass load but you need some gorges or def cham near by
There are issues with the game and I still haven't found an effective way to get hives other than marine incompetance. However if you're ever playing as aliens and you get 3 Hives, you've basically won.
All you need is 2 or so gorges or fades guarding your base. Get one to three lerks with adrenaline, everyone else be onos with carapace or regen and celerity. Lerk + Onos means you can take out any human base in the game. Rush into their base, and umbra. Lerks with adrenaline will have no problem keeping umbra up constantly, the onos can then safely destroy everything in the area, just make sure you get any marines with a grenade launcher first. The only other weapon that can seriously hurt you with Umbra up is the knife. There is next to nothing marines can do against this. It does require a lot of teamwork and like I said, I still dont know a good way to get that far in the game, but if you get it coordinated you're unstoppable.
First some background, I have played/owned just about every Aliens verse Predator game and I've been waiting for a port to the Half-Life engine, and this to me looked like it. In AVP I played alien the most, and was probably best at it. In AVP2, the alien got a bonus with the life cycle, IE the facehugger in Multiplayer. Nothing like getting a kill, then morphing into an even bigger killer.
The chief advantage of the alien is it's blinding speed and ability to walk on walls. The other factor was the fear factor, the ability to suddenly pounce from an overhead shaft onto a marine who was too busy staring at his motion tracker(IMO in NS is a bit too good) to notice my inner jaw come out into his cranium.
In NS, the skulk is roughly the size and capability of the chestburster, the lowest of the low in avp. With the view from inside the mouth, it get's really disorienting trying to nibble marines legs off, especially when they can anhilate you with a quick shotgun burst. And although the wallwalk can get you into small crevices to pounce on a marine, but not onto cielings for even more effect.
The other aliens are reduced to painfully slow(and difficult to hit with lag) projectile attacks, or the inability to get close to a marine because of turrets.
I have a couple of potential ideas to solve some of this: 1) Limit the amount of turrets in one area, IE Tribes. 2) Make a new structure called a 'power generator', when a new building is made, the generator gets stressed a little more. Think like the red alert series, you need to protect the generators to keep your defenses online. That means the aliens have a new way, rather then destroying turrets, they can simply disable them. 3) Make the motion tracker more like the Aliens one, it shows where the motion is, but not what height/what kind of motion. Even make it an item that people have to carry around, with limited range. 4) Make there be an option for team ratios, ie marines to alien ratio. In survivor type games in AVP2, aliens <i>always</i> have the advantage in number, meaning the marines have to stick together. Combines with auto team balance, it will be considered a 'privildge' to be a marine.
A little known game based on subspace2 called infantry had a very very similar game to this, and the chief difference was that the aliens always had the numbers and extra armoured protection, which makes up for their lack in 'firepower'.
well, I dont really know what to say, I dont know for you all, but the lag I have to stand is too big to judge the teams. Aliens get the worst part of the lag, since its hard to keep track of a marine when your in close combat without lag, and its even worse when it "teleports" thanks to lag. but from my experience, if you play for "laughs" as a skulk, laughs meaning, hide in corners, and try to scare them, you'll have fun, and eventually, you'll win. I managed to create a hive when all my team was dead and defend it with a skulk against 3 marines until it was built, just hiding in the ceiling and leaping over them
Wow...11 pages of posts. That's a lot. I guess that means I have a lot of free time? Basically anything I say will have already been said before, I just want to recap so we all know what's goin on. 1) Alien long range attacks essentially suck unless given enormous amounts of time (even assuming that admins didn't alter anything) 2) Alien turrets vs Human turrets = Human turrets pwn. However, it's not nearly as hard to take out human turrets as some people suggest. Like has been said before, and i use this practice as well. A gorge builds Def for healing, then build off tower. The tower will take no damage while it's being built, so it will start at full health no matter how long it sits in the range of fire of the turrets. health spray = gooood. Then you just leapfrog. Build another turret closer. Stand between them and heal one while helping build the other. This all assumes no marines are nearby, but even they can't do a whole lot about it without gren launchers.
SOoo...basically. If we stop admins from screwing with r/p's, hitboxes, damage, and all the other things that 90% of admins will mess with just to be messing with something because that's what admins on powertrip do, we'll just need to beef up alien long range attacks. I mean, we really don't know if we've been on servers where admins have upped anything, so we can't say that "oh is to hard to kill something" cuz it could have been admin messing with things. But a bile bomb is still uber weak. It's important to remember to use it like a catapult, not a rocket launcher, but it still will take a long time to do anything effective with it. GL's need to be nurfed, as well as hmg, and har. All the aliens are good. All the aliens are useful (although I myself never use lurk, prefering fade or onos) and even a Gorge can hold his own in a battle, if he maneuvers, and doesn't try to play like a tfc fatty, just stand there and shoot it till it dies. That won't work. EVER, so they 2nd and 3rd times people try to do it...they should get kicked in the junk.
One small request. I dunno if this is possible or not, but the skulks REALLY bother me. I'm perfectly ok with them walking on walls, I encourage it. But when a skulk is climbing a wall with his anus, it's really funny, distracting, and unrealistic. As well as when he hangs or walks on a ceiling using only his uber strong back hairs. Is it possible to get the models to turn? so that they're actually upside down when hanging on a ceiling, or verticle on a wall?
Elo, game i played just now resulted in marines immediatly at the start scouting a room right next to our hive and setting up three/fore turrets. At that stage of the game that route was effectively shut off to us aliens, with a short walk for the marines to our hive. Game over. Is this ok?
The game before that. Two mabe three marines came to assualt our hive. Mass alien defence turrets with supporting heal building things. They naded them from around corners/long range without the defence turrets releasing a shot. Because there was so many nades going off there was no way to get to the marines. The alien defence turrets dont shoot long range. Far to easy for the marines. Game over.
<!--emo&::siege::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/siege.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::siege::'><!--endemo--> <-- That gun, I mean wtf take it out the game ffs its just plain silly. On one occasion we had the marines pinned in their command section which was biscally a room accessed via doors. No where near the door i attempt to build a defence turret and it gets blasted by this gun. It dosnt even have some kind of recharge rate as immediatly after i tried to build another which also got blasted. Im not even going to go into walking past it/getting near it. Am I missing something here?
Im hearing that alot of people are having trouble taking down rooms full of turrets. No problem, as a builder set up a defence turret in front of say one of the guns, hide behind it and increase the build speed. when it goes active and shoots back stay behind it still while healing it. Or build two in sight of one/two marine turrets and a heal building thing. just proceed untill you get them all. It works, iv done it countless times.
Waiting for that patch that will even the teams? Not needed, if they dont even the teams when asked to do so everyone join marines. After doing that a time or two I got some ###### off marines and even teams going for the next map.
Having played this much I dont feel you can really go up against marine defence turrets untill you have two hives. By that time you should be getting enough resources to carry out my tactics, or attack with fades. Meaning that marines can set up those lil' resource collecting factories early on supported by a gun turret, which means it cant be taken as you need to be close to attack. While in contrast the same cant be done on the alien side as the turrets have no long range - the marines dont need to be close to attack, the two dont add up.
Im thinking that if you took the developers line of thinking to its extreem the aliens wouldnt have a single projectile weapon, they where added to please the masses. They instead wanted a alien that relied on close hand to hand combat, thats why the weapons are useless and close combat attacks more powerful, think in this way. If your a fade, attack using its claws and ####, just hope theres a gourge thing around to heal you when you need it, but this kind of attack is much more rewarding from what iv seen.
To many times now iv been stuck in buildings and cant move, having to go to the ready room and rejoin. Its possible to build stuff on players and have the two models traped. Not good.
Theres a few other little things that need looking at, things that i probabley havent seen or cant remember such as the fades bile bomb damaging yourself to often. If its something thats produced by your own body why should it harm you anyway? The Unos charge, from what iv seen and other people have said its difficult to hit anything. shouldnt it be the other way around?
Well its late here, and i need some sleep, its a great game you have here and i know its early days and i also know that mods are constantly updated to get that balence, to progress and improve it as in CS. Just trying to point out a few things off the top of my head. Im sure Ill find more. <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->
okay, has anyone here played Tribes 1, yes i used to play it and loved it... Ns is pretty much like it in some ways, now with tribes 2 we got an alien race involved too. Ns is a great game, and all this would take is for admins to lower theyr settings, id like to play as an marine not capable of doing jack, i like playing desperatly.
But the grenades, hell they should be the way they are, except for rate, had one guy carry a single shot mortar like in tribes (yes it had multiple rounds) that should be reloaded and which takes time, and heres where machine gunners kick in, theyll cover the guy using the launcher...
The game balance is very good (IMO it's the best balance of any FPS I've ever played, and considering that it is far more complex than any other FPS, this is a really great achievement). I've been playing NS now since it was released and was forced to play Aliens all the time, except for two times I had a chance to play Marines. As for the marines, we lost 1 game and won the other. As for aliens: I've played about 10 games from the beginning to the end: 5 times we lost because the marines were twice our numbers, the other 5 times we only lost 1.
30 mins ago I joined a 6vs6 game on a good ping server (I think it was ns_hera), where the aliens had normal RS income while the marines had tweaked income. Everything was working fine for us in the beginning: Two guys evolved to gorges and gathered resources, while we others kept attacking the marine patrols. Our gorges prepared to take over the western hive, while I, as a skulk, protected the eastern hive from human infestation. After a while I decided to set up base and evolved to a gorge. I secured the right enrance with three off chambs and one def chamb (not enough rps to build up a real def, but it would stop any marine attack until help arrives) and the left with simply one off chamb. Then I sad back, collecting RPs for the hive. The marines started to assault our western hive position, but couldn't break through. Eventually I've started the hive, 20 seconds later the 3rd hive was coming up, too. "Great", I said to myself, "with 3 hives up they're as good as dead!". I was wrong. The marines had the whole eastern side under control with lots of turrets. The eastern hive was completely cut off. They soon started to set up siege towers and pounded my precious hive into the ground. Since then we couldn't win a fight. The marines took over one resource point after another, pushing us back more and more. I was starting to think we couldn't win the game with the marines having so much more resources. This was the time I felt in love with the lerk (the lvl. 3 flying thingie, for those who dont know). I decided to make a test run on an enemy forward base, expecting to get shredded by those 4 turrets. Having carapace and adrenaline (both lvl 3) I activated umbra in the enemy line of fire. Those turrets couldn't hit me as long as I've kept strafing in the umbra field! And even if I stood still, they dealt almost no damage to me. Shortly after a fade joined me and while I concentrated on keeping my umbra up and closer to the turrets, he took all out with his claws, taking almost no damage. We quickly advanced to another enemy base and started attacking it. Another fade had joined us and everything was going fine. Then the marines attacked from around a corner. We persued them around it, only to find a well fortified enemy base. Sensing my comrades starting to panic, I jumped out into the enemy line of fire and activated umbra. Following my example my fade buddy's came out too and started to attack the marines (2 LA, 2 HA, all with HMG's) with acid rockets while I advanced with umbra up, allowing us to get into melee range with those turrets. We whiped out all marines and the base without losing anything. Now we destroyed one enemy base after another, freeing the third hive and getting it up, while we cornered the enemy into his starting base. Turrets are completely helpless against umbra. I even took out a 5 turret resource point with melee attacks alone, just using umbra to protect me. Seeing their main weapons (turrets and MG's) completely useless against our umbra-fade kombo, the marines started to use grenade launchers and mines to keep us at bay. The problems with grenade launchers is: They are useless in close quarter combat, and a lerk can fly up close very fast, without danger of getting a direct grenade hit. Also acid rocket shooting fades and needling lerks with def chamber support around the corner can take down an enemy marine ambush very easy. Eventually we attacked their base with onos, fades, lerks, and some xenociding skulks. After the 3rd wave we made the final break through and won.
So you see you can actually win a game with only 2 hives up and the enemy turret spamming you, as long as you play as a team.
As to alien turrets: They arent supposed to kill the whole marine onslaught by themselves. They only have to delay them long enough, so the reinforcements can arrive (aliens reinforce much better because of the hive mind, thats why turrets aint as good as the marine ones). They also provide a save harbor to heal yourself and don't need any maintenance when paired with def chabers. They're really weak on long range, but extremely deadly in close quarter. Have you ever seen a marine running past your offense chambers? Even a HA marine can't get past 3 offense chamber without destroying them first, which takes enough time to get behind him and kill him, even with a skulk.
that post by Gallig is EXACTLY why i love this game. this is WAR. this is a strugle on a grand scale. tactics, TEAMWORK, struggle, that sense of the Hive/the squad, the fear(like when someone mentioned being in the thick of it and having to reload your HMG), the excitement!
after playing a few more games and even a shot at marines(finally), i think a have a slightly better handle on things.
the biggest hit seems to be twofold(and no, this doesnt account for 100% of the alien loses. after all, what the hell is the point if aliens win every time instead of marines??)
1) people dont seem too comfortable with the system yet. thats understandable. just today i was playing aliens and some brave soul jumped over to us to even the teams. he was practically paniced to find that there was no comander, etc. so, one thing thats very important for the aliens is that someone(or two or three or all the people) COMMUNICATE! talk to you team! ask what theyre doing. tell them where the enemy is and how you plan on bringing them down! and for the love of all that is holy, learn to use the Hive Sight! lol. it is so frighteningly useful.
2) people(IN GENERAL) seem to write off gorge and lerk as damn-near useless. and that is just plain untrue(as many of these posts show). believe it or not, a skilled Lerk can be far more devistating than a Fade.
story time:
i forget the map. but there was some sort of Holoroom or something to those ends. at any rate, there was a small hallway that went from the Holoroom and led into another fairly large room with an alcove to one end and an ele/tunnel that led to a Marine base. all i have to say is, the battle for this room was EPIC! over the course of around 30 minutes, the control of that room shifted 3 or 4 times! we FINALLY secured it and established it as a foothold for our assult against the marines when we had a FIVE ONOS CHARGE! all with caprace, celerity, and cloaking! i would have loved to hear the reactions of those marines who were just cooling off from the last scurmish there(in which they were victorious). "wow. that was tough. lets kick back for a minute. heal, reload, build a little, and then we'll be ready to go." *the five Onos uncloak* "HOLY *#%$!!!"
This is the first time I've seen the kharaa start with feedwater as their hive. I didn't even think that was possible because I had never seen it before. I was a little disoriented when I spawned, but after I realized where I was, I made a beeline for the marine base, as did a teammate. Caught 4 people putting up a resource chamber and got them all. <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo-->
We totally kept them from expanding in the beginning. At no point in the game did they even get <i>close</i> to Feedwater. If they tried to build something, they got chomped in the back and had the building destroyed. If they tried to venture out, one of us was on the ceiling waiting.
Since we blocked Feedwater off so well, they went through the turnstyle and set up defenses in front of the engine room hatch. I ran through them, hit the switch, and built our 3rd hive at the engine room. While the hatch was closed, I loaded up our side with offense turrets and put defense ones behind them. Coordinating with the team, I opened the hatch at the same time they charged from the other directions. A whole room of marines and turrets went down without a loss.
At this point, they finally managed to bring out the big guns and heavy armor. Took awhile since we resource starved them so well. They gained back a little ground, but judicious use of defense towers and Onos hit-and-run tactics eventually won the day.
It was a 12 man server so the teams were usually 6-6. Just coincidence that the screenshots have it was 6-5 all the time. I tried to get shots of the other team complaining, since it's rare to see the marines do that. <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
Hands down, it's no fun at all to play Aliens when you know no matter what you have a 1 in 10 chance of winning agenst a Marine team that even remorely knows what they're doing. The fact that people swarm to the Winning team (Which, as most people see is the Marine team) does'nt make it any better. All the times I've played as the Kharaa (Because I don't like to join already unbalanced teams) have been a frustraiting experience.
One thing I wanna know... How can it go from a balanced game... to a game with 2000+ resource values and that comp initialization thing? Did the installer do it or something? ;_;
So saddening to see NS have this kinda release after all the maticulous work for a near perfect one.
i'd like to hear a real marine player talk about the aliens... nothing here but people defending the game. from what i have played, i've never once seen the aliens win, even with balanced teams. the only reason we, when i played marines once, almost lost was because of commanders who didn't know what was going on... then we won anyways. right now i'm playing only aliens trying to find some good strategies and eventually win an actual game.
I've played at least 10 hours of this game since its release, and I can tell you that in the first 6 hours, I thought that Marines were almost invincible. Then I realized that: a) The config is not the way it should be in almost all of the servs b) Aliens are actually far superior to Marines if skilled players are working together c) Even alone, an alien can build a few offensive chambers backed up with a couple of defensive chambers - making this strategy into an offensive outpost early on near the Marine command base can be devastating - A fully healed Onos that had been near death moments ago coming back at you? Insane. It works well even with skulk alone. Try it.
The biggest issue is configuration balance and TEAM BALANCE, becasue people who can't figure out how to play alien instead go to Marine just so that they can win. I've played in servers where the teams were 12 on 4 for OVER 10 MINUTES. That's ridiculous. Hopefully lamers will not ruin this game.
To conclude this long and rambling affair, GOOD WORK NS TEAM! This game is the BEST mod I have EVER played, and when lag issues are addressed, will easily become the BEST CLAN MOD ever produced. Keep on truckin', LegendX (Shred) <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo-->
Playing as a marine is easy because most of the aliens are dumb. Plus, if you get heavy armor and a heavy machine gun, you're nearly invincible. The common marine strategy of putting 5 turrets in every room is damn hard to fight as well.
The only way the alien team wins is to know the map and be very aggressive early on. If you let the marines take resource nodes and cover the map in turrets, you're dead. If the entire marine team is loaded up with grenade launchers, hmgs, and heavy armor, you're dead. The aliens have speed and stealth and they really need to leverage those abilities as much as possible!
As I said above, turrets are no problem for a 2 hive lerk. Umbra just renders them completely useless. And even a pack of HMG's won't do much harm when facing a strafing lerk with umbra shielding. The only thing that can stop a lerk is a grenade launcher, but a lerk is so fast, he's often gone before the nades go off. Aliens just rely much more on their abilities, rather than firepower.
And no, most of the aliens aren't dumb. They are the same human players like in the marine teams.
Well, after playing NS for more time, I have come to a few more conclusions:
1. In man-to-man combat, the aliens are on equal footing with the marines. They have some good abilities, plus the cloaking and wall climbing, that allow them to scare the crap out of the marines and kill them before they can react. If it were just fighting, the aliens would win 50% of the time.
2. When defending their base, the aliens, while having a rough time, are still capable of doing it. Offensive and defensive chambers, plus webbing and teleport chambers for movement from one base to another make the aliens defense of captured areas formidible, even against nade launchers.
3. The trouble starts when the aliens need to expand or get the marines out of a position they control. Trying to take more than two hives, for example, can prove fatal for the aliens. Marine sentry guns are just too good! And since they are fairly cheap, the marine commander can literally blanket a base with them and then not worry about it any more.
Here is an example of these principles in action: I was playing NS_Nancy, and the aliens were having a rough time. They had two hives, but the marines built some sieges and took one out. I have no problem with this. In fact, the aliens were still doing well, holding their own with the marine forces. Then the marines started building sentries. We could use the ducts to keep the marines away from our remaining hive, and to occasionally ambush a marine on his way there, but whenever we popped out in a resource location or anywhere more then a couple dozen meters from our base, sentry guns. They must have had dozens. Poke head out... BLAM BLAM BLAM. Dead. Try another route or objective. Same result.
And then the real problems began. It bcame apparent that we were caged in our remaining hive and the surrounding area, so we dug in. Built offensive chambers with defensive backup, and held the marines off. The problem, however, is that the aliens without at least two hives are no match for the marines. With two hives they gain things like Umbra, Leap, Web, and a second upgrade trait. In short, a fighting force to be reckoned with. However, as soon as that second hive is gone- BAM. It's already over for the poor aliens. They lose their already meager ability to destroy turrets and, while still a match for marines in straight up FPS combat, the marines don't have to play that way. They can just hole up somewhere near the hive and build a siege cannon surrounded by sentries and then, I dunno, eat a sandwich or something. The sentries can't be destroyed by any one hive alien attack, and the siege cannon is free to wipe out the base from safety. If the aliens never gained a second hive (possible and even likely on a couple maps), they are screwed from the beginning. The aliens can use fades and Onoses, and also the level 3 and 4 attacks of the Lerk and Skulk to take positions away from the marines. However, without that second hive, the aliens get NOTHING. They have no good wya to kill a guy in heavy armor, which the marines will inevitably get because their fighting ability is not based on area of the map they control. They have no way to kill turrets. And they even lack a good way to prevent marines from taking their base down if they don't have Fades or Web.
In short: at optimal capacity (on both sides) the aliens can match the marines. However, all it takes is one lucky push to deprive the aliens of their second hive, and once that happens, it's a virtual autolose for the aliens.
I've played 30+ hours since release, and just until recently I thought the aliens sucked completely. Then I got on a server with some other skilled people and learned the joys of umbra (which can allow you to kill an entire base of turrets by yourself if you're good).
Grenades aren't that bad, really, because usually you can just run away from them and then wack them while they reload. Alien offense towers simply own when you have webbing.
I agree 100% with Tgire. The second aliens are reduced to one Hive it's just a matter as they no longer have the ability to expand.
Also this talk of how the aliens will become better as people learn to use them well is stupid. There will always be n00bs or just plain stupid people on servers and that will never change.
<!--QuoteBegin--01Chrono+Nov. 01 2002,23:06--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> (01Chrono @ Nov. 01 2002,23:06)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin-->4) You look out of a skulks freaking mouth and its impossible to see where your going and bite at the same time. This REALLY pisses me off.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> That can be easily solved, I can make 2 simple cylinders as placeholders.
But I fear that people would expect something more creative.
The problem im having with nades is the way marines can just stay far away from a hive not to be attacked by the defence turrets and still smack it no problem. In combat against aliens I dont have a problem with them its just the attacking hive thing, far to easy imo.
I know how effective alien defence turrets can be as atm my fav. alien is that gorge (builder) thing. But the one time i played as marines i walked up to three of them with a blow tourch and took them all out no problem.
As I've said in another post the only thing unbalanced are the team restrictions i don't think it's fair to play against 8 marines as 3 aliens <!--emo&:(--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('><!--endemo--> but else the aliens kick ### <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
Well here is what i suggest that you would change...
-Much better turrets to aliens and faster -Gorges spit should be more efective and faster... -Fades Bazooka thingy... cmon it looses to a normal machine gun.. and aliens all ready got 2 hives... CMON!
Comments
Although i have noticed something very important, in the long term, the marines are almost unbeatable. Thats why early hit and run tactics and rushes work very well for the Khara.
How many games weve won by making a 6 skulk rush against the enemy commander chamber, destroying it and thereby preventing the marines from constructing anything anymore.
But then again,you do need a team to follow you into this motion, and since peole are just getting into the mod, it aint easy.
I do think though that alien towers would be needing a "fire rate up" patch at least to make them something to be reckoned with.
Give it time though people, once a part of the mass gets to know the game better, the tide will surely change.
A tip for new players: there are people out there with already good knowledge of the game and tactics, listen to them, although it may sound weird at first, they probly know what they are talking about...probably...
Jack Fenris, Over and out.
I saw one marine take a whole hive today. I never felt more worthless in my life(Though, in the game before I got 9 kills in a row with the flying thing. That was interesting). Its also the fact that the aliens really have no edge when it comes to defense. But I'm sure that with the patch with economy fix will make this really great. Due to the fact the Admin's can't screw around with the economy anymore. Nothing sucks more than having a army of marines march into an area with 20 sentries already ready to be made.
just as a general rule of thumb cloaking and regeneration is invaluable when you need to hide and heal up when your along way from base.
adrenalin lets you attack more, however celertiy lets you move faster for avoid those shots.
the other upgrades are kinda useless as the lerk has too few HP to be redeemed successfuly, and so on...
Hurrah!
And I rarely see the Offensive Chambers killing a marine. They should be modified to fire faster spike like the Lerk.
I totally agree that a little time and effort with the Kharaa will amount to understanding they 0wnZ j00 <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo-->
DJ.
1hive- you buggered you might as well call sgs invinsble
2hives- acid rocket is ok means you can claim a marine defended hive in about an hour, if they have tele there
3hives- it gets easyer no onos can take a fairly large group off em with armour and adren unless a marine is with em with hmg. Bile bomb for fade can be effective with a mass load but you need some gorges or def cham near by
All you need is 2 or so gorges or fades guarding your base. Get one to three lerks with adrenaline, everyone else be onos with carapace or regen and celerity. Lerk + Onos means you can take out any human base in the game. Rush into their base, and umbra. Lerks with adrenaline will have no problem keeping umbra up constantly, the onos can then safely destroy everything in the area, just make sure you get any marines with a grenade launcher first. The only other weapon that can seriously hurt you with Umbra up is the knife. There is next to nothing marines can do against this. It does require a lot of teamwork and like I said, I still dont know a good way to get that far in the game, but if you get it coordinated you're unstoppable.
The chief advantage of the alien is it's blinding speed and ability to walk on walls. The other factor was the fear factor, the ability to suddenly pounce from an overhead shaft onto a marine who was too busy staring at his motion tracker(IMO in NS is a bit too good) to notice my inner jaw come out into his cranium.
In NS, the skulk is roughly the size and capability of the chestburster, the lowest of the low in avp. With the view from inside the mouth, it get's really disorienting trying to nibble marines legs off, especially when they can anhilate you with a quick shotgun burst. And although the wallwalk can get you into small crevices to pounce on a marine, but not onto cielings for even more effect.
The other aliens are reduced to painfully slow(and difficult to hit with lag) projectile attacks, or the inability to get close to a marine because of turrets.
I have a couple of potential ideas to solve some of this:
1) Limit the amount of turrets in one area, IE Tribes.
2) Make a new structure called a 'power generator', when a new building is made, the generator gets stressed a little more. Think like the red alert series, you need to protect the generators to keep your defenses online. That means the aliens have a new way, rather then destroying turrets, they can simply disable them.
3) Make the motion tracker more like the Aliens one, it shows where the motion is, but not what height/what kind of motion. Even make it an item that people have to carry around, with limited range.
4) Make there be an option for team ratios, ie marines to alien ratio. In survivor type games in AVP2, aliens <i>always</i> have the advantage in number, meaning the marines have to stick together. Combines with auto team balance, it will be considered a 'privildge' to be a marine.
A little known game based on subspace2 called infantry had a very very similar game to this, and the chief difference was that the aliens always had the numbers and extra armoured protection, which makes up for their lack in 'firepower'.
1) Alien long range attacks essentially suck unless given enormous amounts of time (even assuming that admins didn't alter anything)
2) Alien turrets vs Human turrets = Human turrets pwn. However, it's not nearly as hard to take out human turrets as some people suggest. Like has been said before, and i use this practice as well. A gorge builds Def for healing, then build off tower. The tower will take no damage while it's being built, so it will start at full health no matter how long it sits in the range of fire of the turrets. health spray = gooood. Then you just leapfrog. Build another turret closer. Stand between them and heal one while helping build the other. This all assumes no marines are nearby, but even they can't do a whole lot about it without gren launchers.
SOoo...basically. If we stop admins from screwing with r/p's, hitboxes, damage, and all the other things that 90% of admins will mess with just to be messing with something because that's what admins on powertrip do, we'll just need to beef up alien long range attacks. I mean, we really don't know if we've been on servers where admins have upped anything, so we can't say that "oh is to hard to kill something" cuz it could have been admin messing with things. But a bile bomb is still uber weak. It's important to remember to use it like a catapult, not a rocket launcher, but it still will take a long time to do anything effective with it.
GL's need to be nurfed, as well as hmg, and har. All the aliens are good. All the aliens are useful (although I myself never use lurk, prefering fade or onos) and even a Gorge can hold his own in a battle, if he maneuvers, and doesn't try to play like a tfc fatty, just stand there and shoot it till it dies. That won't work. EVER, so they 2nd and 3rd times people try to do it...they should get kicked in the junk.
One small request. I dunno if this is possible or not, but the skulks REALLY bother me. I'm perfectly ok with them walking on walls, I encourage it. But when a skulk is climbing a wall with his anus, it's really funny, distracting, and unrealistic. As well as when he hangs or walks on a ceiling using only his uber strong back hairs. Is it possible to get the models to turn? so that they're actually upside down when hanging on a ceiling, or verticle on a wall?
The game before that. Two mabe three marines came to assualt our hive. Mass alien defence turrets with supporting heal building things. They naded them from around corners/long range without the defence turrets releasing a shot. Because there was so many nades going off there was no way to get to the marines. The alien defence turrets dont shoot long range. Far to easy for the marines. Game over.
<!--emo&::siege::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/siege.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::siege::'><!--endemo--> <-- That gun, I mean wtf take it out the game ffs its just plain silly. On one occasion we had the marines pinned in their command section which was biscally a room accessed via doors. No where near the door i attempt to build a defence turret and it gets blasted by this gun. It dosnt even have some kind of recharge rate as immediatly after i tried to build another which also got blasted. Im not even going to go into walking past it/getting near it. Am I missing something here?
Im hearing that alot of people are having trouble taking down rooms full of turrets. No problem, as a builder set up a defence turret in front of say one of the guns, hide behind it and increase the build speed. when it goes active and shoots back stay behind it still while healing it. Or build two in sight of one/two marine turrets and a heal building thing. just proceed untill you get them all. It works, iv done it countless times.
Waiting for that patch that will even the teams? Not needed, if they dont even the teams when asked to do so everyone join marines. After doing that a time or two I got some ###### off marines and even teams going for the next map.
Having played this much I dont feel you can really go up against marine defence turrets untill you have two hives. By that time you should be getting enough resources to carry out my tactics, or attack with fades. Meaning that marines can set up those lil' resource collecting factories early on supported by a gun turret, which means it cant be taken as you need to be close to attack. While in contrast the same cant be done on the alien side as the turrets have no long range - the marines dont need to be close to attack, the two dont add up.
Im thinking that if you took the developers line of thinking to its extreem the aliens wouldnt have a single projectile weapon, they where added to please the masses. They instead wanted a alien that relied on close hand to hand combat, thats why the weapons are useless and close combat attacks more powerful, think in this way. If your a fade, attack using its claws and ####, just hope theres a gourge thing around to heal you when you need it, but this kind of attack is much more rewarding from what iv seen.
To many times now iv been stuck in buildings and cant move, having to go to the ready room and rejoin. Its possible to build stuff on players and have the two models traped. Not good.
Theres a few other little things that need looking at, things that i probabley havent seen or cant remember such as the fades bile bomb damaging yourself to often. If its something thats produced by your own body why should it harm you anyway? The Unos charge, from what iv seen and other people have said its difficult to hit anything. shouldnt it be the other way around?
Well its late here, and i need some sleep, its a great game you have here and i know its early days and i also know that mods are constantly updated to get that balence, to progress and improve it as in CS. Just trying to point out a few things off the top of my head. Im sure Ill find more. <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->
But the grenades, hell they should be the way they are, except for rate, had one guy carry a single shot mortar like in tribes (yes it had multiple rounds) that should be reloaded and which takes time, and heres where machine gunners kick in, theyll cover the guy using the launcher...
Hello, my name is era, i play cs
30 mins ago I joined a 6vs6 game on a good ping server (I think it was ns_hera), where the aliens had normal RS income while the marines had tweaked income.
Everything was working fine for us in the beginning: Two guys evolved to gorges and gathered resources, while we others kept attacking the marine patrols. Our gorges prepared to take over the western hive, while I, as a skulk, protected the eastern hive from human infestation.
After a while I decided to set up base and evolved to a gorge. I secured the right enrance with three off chambs and one def chamb (not enough rps to build up a real def, but it would stop any marine attack until help arrives) and the left with simply one off chamb. Then I sad back, collecting RPs for the hive. The marines started to assault our western hive position, but couldn't break through. Eventually I've started the hive, 20 seconds later the 3rd hive was coming up, too.
"Great", I said to myself, "with 3 hives up they're as good as dead!". I was wrong. The marines had the whole eastern side under control with lots of turrets. The eastern hive was completely cut off. They soon started to set up siege towers and pounded my precious hive into the ground. Since then we couldn't win a fight. The marines took over one resource point after another, pushing us back more and more.
I was starting to think we couldn't win the game with the marines having so much more resources. This was the time I felt in love with the lerk (the lvl. 3 flying thingie, for those who dont know). I decided to make a test run on an enemy forward base, expecting to get shredded by those 4 turrets. Having carapace and adrenaline (both lvl 3) I activated umbra in the enemy line of fire. Those turrets couldn't hit me as long as I've kept strafing in the umbra field! And even if I stood still, they dealt almost no damage to me. Shortly after a fade joined me and while I concentrated on keeping my umbra up and closer to the turrets, he took all out with his claws, taking almost no damage. We quickly advanced to another enemy base and started attacking it. Another fade had joined us and everything was going fine. Then the marines attacked from around a corner. We persued them around it, only to find a well fortified enemy base. Sensing my comrades starting to panic, I jumped out into the enemy line of fire and activated umbra. Following my example my fade buddy's came out too and started to attack the marines (2 LA, 2 HA, all with HMG's) with acid rockets while I advanced with umbra up, allowing us to get into melee range with those turrets. We whiped out all marines and the base without losing anything.
Now we destroyed one enemy base after another, freeing the third hive and getting it up, while we cornered the enemy into his starting base. Turrets are completely helpless against umbra. I even took out a 5 turret resource point with melee attacks alone, just using umbra to protect me. Seeing their main weapons (turrets and MG's) completely useless against our umbra-fade kombo, the marines started to use grenade launchers and mines to keep us at bay. The problems with grenade launchers is: They are useless in close quarter combat, and a lerk can fly up close very fast, without danger of getting a direct grenade hit. Also acid rocket shooting fades and needling lerks with def chamber support around the corner can take down an enemy marine ambush very easy. Eventually we attacked their base with onos, fades, lerks, and some xenociding skulks. After the 3rd wave we made the final break through and won.
So you see you can actually win a game with only 2 hives up and the enemy turret spamming you, as long as you play as a team.
As to alien turrets: They arent supposed to kill the whole marine onslaught by themselves. They only have to delay them long enough, so the reinforcements can arrive (aliens reinforce much better because of the hive mind, thats why turrets aint as good as the marine ones). They also provide a save harbor to heal yourself and don't need any maintenance when paired with def chabers. They're really weak on long range, but extremely deadly in close quarter. Have you ever seen a marine running past your offense chambers? Even a HA marine can't get past 3 offense chamber without destroying them first, which takes enough time to get behind him and kill him, even with a skulk.
after playing a few more games and even a shot at marines(finally), i think a have a slightly better handle on things.
the biggest hit seems to be twofold(and no, this doesnt account for 100% of the alien loses. after all, what the hell is the point if aliens win every time instead of marines??)
1) people dont seem too comfortable with the system yet. thats understandable. just today i was playing aliens and some brave soul jumped over to us to even the teams. he was practically paniced to find that there was no comander, etc. so, one thing thats very important for the aliens is that someone(or two or three or all the people) COMMUNICATE! talk to you team! ask what theyre doing. tell them where the enemy is and how you plan on bringing them down! and for the love of all that is holy, learn to use the Hive Sight! lol. it is so frighteningly useful.
2) people(IN GENERAL) seem to write off gorge and lerk as damn-near useless. and that is just plain untrue(as many of these posts show). believe it or not, a skilled Lerk can be far more devistating than a Fade.
story time:
i forget the map. but there was some sort of Holoroom or something to those ends. at any rate, there was a small hallway that went from the Holoroom and led into another fairly large room with an alcove to one end and an ele/tunnel that led to a Marine base. all i have to say is, the battle for this room was EPIC! over the course of around 30 minutes, the control of that room shifted 3 or 4 times! we FINALLY secured it and established it as a foothold for our assult against the marines when we had a FIVE ONOS CHARGE! all with caprace, celerity, and cloaking! i would have loved to hear the reactions of those marines who were just cooling off from the last scurmish there(in which they were victorious). "wow. that was tough. lets kick back for a minute. heal, reload, build a little, and then we'll be ready to go." *the five Onos uncloak* "HOLY *#%$!!!"
thats what im talkin' bout!
<!--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-->
this game ROCKS!
This is the first time I've seen the kharaa start with feedwater as their hive. I didn't even think that was possible because I had never seen it before. I was a little disoriented when I spawned, but after I realized where I was, I made a beeline for the marine base, as did a teammate. Caught 4 people putting up a resource chamber and got them all. <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo-->
We totally kept them from expanding in the beginning. At no point in the game did they even get <i>close</i> to Feedwater. If they tried to build something, they got chomped in the back and had the building destroyed. If they tried to venture out, one of us was on the ceiling waiting.
<img src="http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg849b/images/ns/bast0.jpg" border="0">
So while this was going on, the other members of the team expanded resources and got our 2nd hive up.
<img src="http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg849b/images/ns/bast1.jpg" border="0">
Since we blocked Feedwater off so well, they went through the turnstyle and set up defenses in front of the engine room hatch. I ran through them, hit the switch, and built our 3rd hive at the engine room. While the hatch was closed, I loaded up our side with offense turrets and put defense ones behind them. Coordinating with the team, I opened the hatch at the same time they charged from the other directions. A whole room of marines and turrets went down without a loss.
At this point, they finally managed to bring out the big guns and heavy armor. Took awhile since we resource starved them so well. They gained back a little ground, but judicious use of defense towers and Onos hit-and-run tactics eventually won the day.
<img src="http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg849b/images/ns/bast2.jpg" border="0">
It was a 12 man server so the teams were usually 6-6. Just coincidence that the screenshots have it was 6-5 all the time. I tried to get shots of the other team complaining, since it's rare to see the marines do that. <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
Hands down, it's no fun at all to play Aliens when you know no matter what you have a 1 in 10 chance of winning agenst a Marine team that even remorely knows what they're doing. The fact that people swarm to the Winning team (Which, as most people see is the Marine team) does'nt make it any better. All the times I've played as the Kharaa (Because I don't like to join already unbalanced teams) have been a frustraiting experience.
One thing I wanna know... How can it go from a balanced game... to a game with 2000+ resource values and that comp initialization thing? Did the installer do it or something? ;_;
So saddening to see NS have this kinda release after all the maticulous work for a near perfect one.
from what i have played, i've never once seen the aliens win, even with balanced teams. the only reason we, when i played marines once, almost lost was because of commanders who didn't know what was going on... then we won anyways.
right now i'm playing only aliens trying to find some good strategies and eventually win an actual game.
a) The config is not the way it should be in almost all of the servs
b) Aliens are actually far superior to Marines if skilled players are working together
c) Even alone, an alien can build a few offensive chambers backed up with a couple of defensive chambers - making this strategy into an offensive outpost early on near the Marine command base can be devastating - A fully healed Onos that had been near death moments ago coming back at you? Insane. It works well even with skulk alone. Try it.
The biggest issue is configuration balance and TEAM BALANCE, becasue people who can't figure out how to play alien instead go to Marine just so that they can win. I've played in servers where the teams were 12 on 4 for OVER 10 MINUTES. That's ridiculous. Hopefully lamers will not ruin this game.
To conclude this long and rambling affair, GOOD WORK NS TEAM! This game is the BEST mod I have EVER played, and when lag issues are addressed, will easily become the BEST CLAN MOD ever produced. Keep on truckin',
LegendX (Shred)
<!--emo&::skulk::--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/skulk.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='::skulk::'><!--endemo-->
The only way the alien team wins is to know the map and be very aggressive early on. If you let the marines take resource nodes and cover the map in turrets, you're dead. If the entire marine team is loaded up with grenade launchers, hmgs, and heavy armor, you're dead. The aliens have speed and stealth and they really need to leverage those abilities as much as possible!
And no, most of the aliens aren't dumb. They are the same human players like in the marine teams.
1. In man-to-man combat, the aliens are on equal footing with the marines. They have some good abilities, plus the cloaking and wall climbing, that allow them to scare the crap out of the marines and kill them before they can react. If it were just fighting, the aliens would win 50% of the time.
2. When defending their base, the aliens, while having a rough time, are still capable of doing it. Offensive and defensive chambers, plus webbing and teleport chambers for movement from one base to another make the aliens defense of captured areas formidible, even against nade launchers.
3. The trouble starts when the aliens need to expand or get the marines out of a position they control. Trying to take more than two hives, for example, can prove fatal for the aliens. Marine sentry guns are just too good! And since they are fairly cheap, the marine commander can literally blanket a base with them and then not worry about it any more.
Here is an example of these principles in action: I was playing NS_Nancy, and the aliens were having a rough time. They had two hives, but the marines built some sieges and took one out. I have no problem with this. In fact, the aliens were still doing well, holding their own with the marine forces. Then the marines started building sentries. We could use the ducts to keep the marines away from our remaining hive, and to occasionally ambush a marine on his way there, but whenever we popped out in a resource location or anywhere more then a couple dozen meters from our base, sentry guns. They must have had dozens. Poke head out... BLAM BLAM BLAM. Dead. Try another route or objective. Same result.
And then the real problems began. It bcame apparent that we were caged in our remaining hive and the surrounding area, so we dug in. Built offensive chambers with defensive backup, and held the marines off. The problem, however, is that the aliens without at least two hives are no match for the marines. With two hives they gain things like Umbra, Leap, Web, and a second upgrade trait. In short, a fighting force to be reckoned with. However, as soon as that second hive is gone- BAM. It's already over for the poor aliens. They lose their already meager ability to destroy turrets and, while still a match for marines in straight up FPS combat, the marines don't have to play that way. They can just hole up somewhere near the hive and build a siege cannon surrounded by sentries and then, I dunno, eat a sandwich or something. The sentries can't be destroyed by any one hive alien attack, and the siege cannon is free to wipe out the base from safety. If the aliens never gained a second hive (possible and even likely on a couple maps), they are screwed from the beginning. The aliens can use fades and Onoses, and also the level 3 and 4 attacks of the Lerk and Skulk to take positions away from the marines. However, without that second hive, the aliens get NOTHING. They have no good wya to kill a guy in heavy armor, which the marines will inevitably get because their fighting ability is not based on area of the map they control. They have no way to kill turrets. And they even lack a good way to prevent marines from taking their base down if they don't have Fades or Web.
In short: at optimal capacity (on both sides) the aliens can match the marines. However, all it takes is one lucky push to deprive the aliens of their second hive, and once that happens, it's a virtual autolose for the aliens.
Grenades aren't that bad, really, because usually you can just run away from them and then wack them while they reload. Alien offense towers simply own when you have webbing.
Also this talk of how the aliens will become better as people learn to use them well is stupid. There will always be n00bs or just plain stupid people on servers and that will never change.
That can be easily solved, I can make 2 simple cylinders as placeholders.
But I fear that people would expect something more creative.
I know how effective alien defence turrets can be as atm my fav. alien is that gorge (builder) thing. But the one time i played as marines i walked up to three of them with a blow tourch and took them all out no problem.
-Much better turrets to aliens and faster
-Gorges spit should be more efective and faster...
-Fades Bazooka thingy... cmon it looses to a normal machine gun.. and aliens all ready got 2 hives... CMON!