Lockdown Or Lose
Meto
Join Date: 2004-04-26 Member: 28216Members
Join Date: 2004-04-26 Member: 28216Members
<div class="IPBDescription">The state of public play</div> It's unfortunate that the quality of players found generally playing NS has sunk so low that you can't rely on your team to follow their orders well. It's resulting in a situation where if you don't lock something down while your team is there the chances are you'll never get them to go back there unless they happen to stumble there after solo'ing it across half the map.
My strategy as a marine commander is based upon speed and flexibility. When I take a hive it usually means that my marines are in good health and have good weapons (because they've just kicked the alien's butts) so I'll drop a pg and the rt then head on to the next hive. With even half competent players this means the aliens are defending attacks back to back and don't really have time to go and take back the hive they lost. If they still building the hive that we took down it's not a problem because they can't build them quicker than we can take them down. This works really well but then we hit a snag... Everyone starts wandering off on their own.
I just played a game on veil which we had in the bag but someone still lost! Having complete RT dominence the aliens were left with 3-4 rts at most all game but they still won. I spotted the hive early and sent the best players to harass the spawning skulks and had the rest cap the res nodes on the map. Then cargo starts going up and we're quite teched up I decide it's time to take the hives. I get a pg set up at their main hive, obs, tf and loads of turrets and then beacon and give everyone shotguns and what happens! Oh no they start wandering. I hadn't locked down pipeline specifically because I expected the hive to go down very easily. In hindsight I would have locked it down because we failed every attack despite 200 res of medspam keeping them alive while they were shooting.
So the morale of the story is lockdown or lose because if your team is crap at working together, even with a commander giving them clear orders, then the alien team will be even worse at taking your fortified positions.
My strategy as a marine commander is based upon speed and flexibility. When I take a hive it usually means that my marines are in good health and have good weapons (because they've just kicked the alien's butts) so I'll drop a pg and the rt then head on to the next hive. With even half competent players this means the aliens are defending attacks back to back and don't really have time to go and take back the hive they lost. If they still building the hive that we took down it's not a problem because they can't build them quicker than we can take them down. This works really well but then we hit a snag... Everyone starts wandering off on their own.
I just played a game on veil which we had in the bag but someone still lost! Having complete RT dominence the aliens were left with 3-4 rts at most all game but they still won. I spotted the hive early and sent the best players to harass the spawning skulks and had the rest cap the res nodes on the map. Then cargo starts going up and we're quite teched up I decide it's time to take the hives. I get a pg set up at their main hive, obs, tf and loads of turrets and then beacon and give everyone shotguns and what happens! Oh no they start wandering. I hadn't locked down pipeline specifically because I expected the hive to go down very easily. In hindsight I would have locked it down because we failed every attack despite 200 res of medspam keeping them alive while they were shooting.
So the morale of the story is lockdown or lose because if your team is crap at working together, even with a commander giving them clear orders, then the alien team will be even worse at taking your fortified positions.
Comments
Where only people you know are good can get on the server?
The game turns when there the aliens have 3 DCs, 3 MCs, 2 hives, and 3-4 RTs, you can expect it to be an uphill battle from there. (Ranging anywhere from 6-10 player team).
HMGs > shotguns.
And uh, on a final note, if you are completely dominating the map, it's either due to poor alien coordination, or über marines. Here's a hint, if 3 minutes into the game, you own over 2/3 of the RTs on the map, look at the score chart. If the Kills to Death ratios of your marines are around 1:1, lock down both hives for insurance. If the Kills to Death ratio is over 2:1, then you can just plop down a PG in their hive room and shotty it to death.
Very rarely do you get either case, assuming the teams are competent. The key to winning the marine game is to detect the second hive in embryo and kill it before it goes up. Scan hives after the 4:30 mark, that's when most hives start to go up, and then send your marines there (bribe them with "FREE HMGS AT WAYPOINT!", and they will go flocking towards there. Try and use your mic more often, I sometimes can't get my marines to follow orders because I only stick with type comm.
2 hives are crucial for the Kharaa, if you can keep them at one hive for the entire game, and continue teching, you'll win the subsequent war of attrition.
Offense is the only thing that gets marines anywhere. There is no way you can defend an RT or hive in a worthwhile manner, so don't bother. Keep your marines attacking, and the kharaa will be forced to chose between killing your rts (which you can rebuild on the cheap), or lose their hives/rts (which the kharaa have a much harder time of rebuilding than the marines). No res = no fades/onos/hives, and then it's just a cakewalk from there.
I think the choice is obvious.
That said, if your marines are not trustworthy, it might be useful to use some mines or whatever to help them keep your stuff alive. Static defenses will never keep your bases alive, only help the marines stay alive, and the marines do the real defending.
Find a better server and comm there. On every other server just be a bog standard private. It'll save your sanity.
Being forceful might not work, and will likely just annoy your team if you're doing highpitched screaming down the mic.
TBH your story sounds like the aliens had a chance to build up some res while you did your holding action. In retrospect this doesn't seem to be a good idea, because if ONE skulk gets out you can expect him to rush up a hive, and two hive aliens are not pleasant if you have scattered rines. Really imho you should have got the hive, went to the next, then went to the last. From my reading of the story you capped nodes, and when the aliens got hive 2 THEN you decided to take the hives. I see that as your mistake.
One hive should have been in your pocket in the first few minutes, and you should have been battling the aliens for control of the second hive, ideally bleeding them of res. Instead of shooting spawning skulks you should have had those guys at the second hive fighting whoever was putting it up. The battle still happens, but this way you know the aliens wont get hive 2, and your boys can still cap nodes.
To me, the way you word the game suggests that although you could move around the map, you didn't have map CONTROL, and thus the aliens managed to sneak up a hive, chambers, and promptly bounce your boys out.
As a closing statement, I also suggest that you inform marines of strats like "get the shotties, ammo on the other side of the phase, go go go". If they don't respond, listen to their reasons (sporing lerks or a devour camping onos party, for instance) and if they don't give any decent reasons then next round don't get in the chair.
This encourages them to put it up, and since your right outside, you can eather seige it or rush it. Thus you just wasted 3 mins of thier time. while you continued to tech up.
Second, aliens will virtually never check OUTSIDE a hive for marine defence. They run into the hive, say its clear, then drop the hive. At which point you seige them to dust. GG. If your minibases/relocates don't directly threaten a hive then you'll be surprised how easy they are to build as long as you are DIRECTLY threatening the aliens elsewhere. Case in point - many clan matches where one group makes a phase in front of the aliens and another group sneaks one up behind. The aliens all rush the same pg because its more obvious, then the hive gets rolled by the sneaky ninja phase. BM did this quite successfully iirc.
Another good reason for locking down NEAR hives but not IN hives is that most hives are horrible to defend. Pick a better location thats near enough to siege and you'll have an easier time of it. The dreaded Red Room and Gen Room are good examples of this.
Just make sure not to stall when locking down. Lockdowns take time to do well, during that time aliens will be all over the map looking for weak spots. This is not good. Second, a lockdown costs a lot and as a result can't really be ignored when under attack - so it becomes a liability. Third, if you stop to lockdown both hives, then aliens who WOULD have built a hive are now sitting on 50 or more res, which means you're facing a lot of fades or possibly an Onos or two. While 1 hive aliens aren't much to worry about, if they happen to have 2 or more types of upgrade chamber then you're going to have problems.
Consider, you spend all your res on locking the hives and then decide to sit back and tech up to HA. The aliens have 50 res each and decide to go fade/lerk/onos with a combination of carapace, celerity, adren, etc. They roll into one of your lockdowns and your turrets get toasted, anyone who phases in gets spored and swipekilled by a fade. You keep sending in rines, they keep dying, the hive goes up. You call it quits and pull everyone back to base.
Your men are demoralised, a whole slew of higher evo aliens are running around, and everyone becomes a minicommander. The team screams for shotties, hmgs, ha, jps, and your coordinated planning goes out the window. This is where most comms go wrong.
You should never be locking down 2 hives. You should barely be locking down 1. Lockdowns stall YOUR progress, not the aliens. You blatter a hive, you go to the next one, you blatter it, you go to the third, then you go back to the first one and continue the circle. Aliens will spend their res on HIVES, and thats a lot of res to waste if you keep knocking those hives down. This is a GOOD thing because if they keep building hives then there's fewer bigger aliens, and you will eventually bleed them dry of res.
If you stop to lock down a hive "in case they come back" then you put your team in a hard to defend place where the advantage is to the attacker (lets be honest, no hive is impenetrable otherwise marines would never win) and the aliens go for higher evos to CLEAR the hive. Which means your boys are facing higher evos. If you leave the hive clear, perhaps with a nearby PG, then those aliens will attempt to build a hive - a hive is a lot easier to kill and will cost a lot more res, especially if the aliens start building a hive then throw down 3 upgrade chambers and 2 oc. You kill all that and it puts aliens in a bad position - all the gorge players have no res, so other players have to save instead. Instead of one res-starved player you have a whole team who have to save up 50 res.
In the final analysis you'll keep the team together as long as things are seen to be going well. If the team can't stick together despite a solid well communicated plan and no real counterattack from the aliens........ then tbh your team suck and its time to move to a better server.
However having commed quite a few pub games, which can be fun, I still stand by what I said in my first post that you have to take advantage of the general ns player mentality which is to build up masses of turrets and move in groups. Anything that requires changing tactics quicker than 1 minute at a time will only work if your players have attached themselves to the good players and follow them around loyaly.
The lockdown I refered to in the game I described was at the PG at their main hive (not one we had just taken) and was put up by the players who set up the PG while they waited for their team mates to use the damn phase gate. I expected this wouldn't stand up to any kind of hive assault but I did expect it to buy enough time for my players to shoot the hive <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
NS has really deteriorated to such an atrocious state where servers that are ran by one of our main Devs has such uneducated and unskilled players. The lack of respect for more experienced and skilled players is just sad and their unwillingness to learn and change is even sadder. I'm afraid of what NS is slowly turning to, especially if the higher ups, even up to Flayra, tries to help change the attitude that more than half of the NS playing community has, not just the forum community.
Where only people you know are good can get on the server? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
SCRIM HELLO
Join a clan, please. I dont understand this attitude: "pubs suck nobody uses teamplay! but I'm not gonna join a clan"
Sorry if that came off as mean/arrogant, I did not mean it to, just come on. In any other community, people join clans if they want more organized gameplay. I don't understand why NS is so different.
NS has really deteriorated to such an atrocious state where servers that are ran by one of our main Devs has such uneducated and unskilled players. The lack of respect for more experienced and skilled players is just sad and their unwillingness to learn and change is even sadder. I'm afraid of what NS is slowly turning to, especially if the higher ups, even up to Flayra, tries to help change the attitude that more than half of the NS playing community has, not just the forum community. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
ding ding ding
The problem isnt that newbies are bad or don't know anything about the game. The problem is that 90% of pubbers are 'newbie' by the definition above, and REFUSE TO LISTEN TO ANYTHING BUT THEIR OWN OPINION. I got banned from #<span style='color:orange'>online "location" removed</span> just for trying to start a discussion about how maybe scripts aren't OMFGWTHEVIL. It's the same on every server, if I ask him to drop an arms lab, everyone says WHY DONT YOU COMM, ARE YOU COMMANDING? NO BE QUIET.
Nothing will change if this stays the way it is. 99% of pubbers refusing to even listen to a clanners or more experienced player's viewpoint is the downfall of NS.
The nice guys at #<span style='color:orange'>online "location" removed</span> said "we're banning it, thats final" and nothing I said could change that. It's just closedminded circular logic **** at it's best.
It's like a huge closed minded cult that won't listen to anyone but themselves. IT'S TERRIBLE. TERRIBLE TERRIBLE IGNORANCE.
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It's easy to see why people have this mentality. It's already common in most of the pub servers, especially those with mp_bs on that clanners are evil, they script, they exploit. This rather retarded ideology has spread to a lot of servers and now people, even if they want to find more teamwork and skilled games, won't turn to clans since they would be labeled a, OMGOHNOS, "clanner".
The euro scene has some fairly decent pubs, however the clan scene is decidedly lacking.
To name a few high(er) level pubs from the top of my head:
YO Clan Servers (CO and Classic)
Generally regarded as one of the highest (if not the) skilled pubs in europe. Lots of high level clanners play here such as .BM, #ariadne, LcZ.
Bry's NS Server
Fairly highish level of play, coms are listened to by the majority of the team, a fair few mediumly skilled clanners play there such as rG and i've even seen some config.ns players on here. Come to think of it I saw a couple of terror players on there not long ago :x (WTHbbq)
The Surftown pubs also have some highly skilled players, but are lacking in the aforementioned department of actually listening to people and using teamwork. Some of the top euro clan players pub there, such as a lot of .BM and i've even seen some #ariadne pubbing there.
I agree that the state of most pubs is pitiful, but my advice to anybody hacked off enough to post on ns.org, would be to either find some higher-level pubs, or join a clan. The attitude of 99% of pubbers is absolutely atrocious.
The amount of servers I've been banned from for simple things (such as getting w2 instead of locking down a hive, dropping an arms lab in the first 30 seconds instead of a TFac) is quite impressive.
Most pubbers' attitudes towards clanners are equally bad, being accused of speedhacking because you can actually bhop, aimbots because you can actually aim, and exploiting (WTHbbq) because you know how to bhop as marine.
To be fair, I used to be an avid anti-scripter - <b>until I took the time to find out what they do and how they work</b>. It was merely a coincidence that this was the same time I decided it was time to join a reputable clan.
But why does the entire community immediately associate scripts with clanners?
I scripted way before I joined a clan.
Its important to remember that if you are going to put some defenses in an area, slowing down the game only works in your favor if you have a resource advantage. A very common mistake you see is commanders who go for a hive lockdown before they have the upgrades or resources to benefit from that lockdown.
And aliens.
seriously, that pg tf and turrets could be a 5 man shotgun rush whilst still teching.
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You know how in CS there is a lot of hackusations tossed around when one person owns another repeatedly? Like, "omg you hs me 4 times in a row, you f'ing hacker, burn in hell!!!!" Well, it's the same in NS except the n00bs have made scripts the excuse instead of hacks. What makes it worse is that the same group of people have the misconception that devs also thinks that scripts = h4x because of mp_blockscripts, so they keep accusing people of scripting. Now, the reason why that associate the scripts with clanners because it's usually the clanners tearing it up on pub servers that they choose to visit. I'm not saying all pubbers suck, far from it, but I believe I am correct to say that 85% of the people tearing up servers skillwise are clanners/vets. Thus its easy for them to say that all clanners script, looking for excuses to make themselves feel better upon getting destroyed repeatedly.
EXACTLY. 99.9% of rational people will find out that scripts are fine, if they actually get educated about them. The problem that exists today is that the newbie pub communities are so entrenched in their view that even mentioning scripts is TABOO^MAX, and they refuse to even consider the possibility that scripts aren't bad. Hell, they won't even hear the evidence. They refuse to even listen to facts about scripts. It's just so assbackwards stupid I can't stand it.
Scripting is kinda like makeup. If your an ugly woman, and use make up, your still ugly, but not as much. If your a hot woman and you use make up, you still hot, but even better looking. And if you dont know how to put on makeup correctly it makes both look worse. Same goes for scripting as well.
The best thing I'll do is go into a hive that's the easiest one to take (meaning my marines have walked in with no opposition) and I'll drop an rt/pg/tf. I'll electrify the RT and boom that's what I consider a hive lock down. It'll fend off the skulks and that's all I need, because by the time they get fades, they'll be trying to defend or probably take back the second hive. The key is to have a pressure team and a cap team. This generally works out for me in most games (I'll admit I'm blessed with a decent skilled server, not only skilled in aim but the people have ears <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo--> ). The top skilled players on the team tend to push aliens cause they want kills and instead of fighting that I go with it. I look for the people who will listen to me and I say "go cap me these RTs please." At the end of the game, if we've won, I'll say to that person "Congrats, you won us that game." That encourages them to do it more because they get a good feeling from helping the team win.
But yeah, I'll admit it, I used to be a noob comm. I would get in the chair and say "OMG! A HALLWAY! TURRET FARM!" I've learned more now, a shotgun in the right hands is worth 10x more than a turret. If I have a really good player (say, one of the top clanners), I'll tell them "Wait up at base, I'll drop you a shotty". They pretty much become a mobile RT.
Ok I'm rambling on but my main point is, I don't lock down hives with turrets. Partly because I have learned that upgrades would be more effective, and partly because 2 hives with turrets in them really makes the game boring and stagnant to the alien team. However that's a whole nother topic, so let's not talk about that here <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Aliens hives on all maps have a similar layout. There's two outer hives and a middle hive. Once you know what hive the aliens have, think about what you should do. The aliens have the left or right hive, which one do you think they will go for? The obvious answer is the middle hive. If they have the middle hive, simply start scanning every 30 seconds or so both of the hives. There is absolutely 0 need to lock down anything, at almost any time. You are wasting your team's resources and negatively affecting the game of NS if you do this, no joke. Don't electrify, don't turret farm, in fact you should almost never drop a regular turret. Turrets require a certain number to be effective, and a shotgun is far more effective than a turret can ever be. If you like to drop turrets and electrify everything and you're reading this: STOP BEING LAZY. Lazy commmanders are the cause of the current stale gameplay on certain servers. Expand your abilities by actively moving marines around and defending your RTs. Do not lame hives up, defend them by mowing down any alien that is in them. Don't turret lame, upgrade. I commonly have lvl3 weapons on most pubs by the time the second hive is going up. Do you know what lvl3 HMGs do to fades? They kill them, incredibly fast, along with every other lifeform the aliens have. Multiple HMGs are nearly unstoppable, and combined with accurate medpacking they're damn difficult to stop. So the next time you want to turret farm something, stop and look at your base. Is your armory upgrading? Did you drop an obs and a second IP yet (Because we all know that dropping 2 IPs initially is a terrible waste of res that would be better spent on Armor1)? How about Weapons2 or even Weapons3? A proto maybe? All of those things cost the same or less than a decent farm. Please, for the love of NS, stop KILLING, yes KILLING, the Natural Selection pub scene by locking down hives in an incredibly wasteful and shortsighted manner.
Note none of that applies versus sensory. Please feel free to turret farm and electrify everything versus sensory.
I like it, I like it a lot.
But.. in order to keep nub marines doing what i want...
I simply say no to any shotgun/hmg request... and SPAM THE **** out of waypoints.... eventually ppl go there (coupled with me yelling over voicecomm)
However.. generally.... if you keep the game fun, backtalk anynoe who doesent listen (e.g rambo's, like Turin, but we wont get into that funny lil story) you can get marines to do anything up to and including.... well...(people that know me will agrree) ANYTHING..
I find changing the game up often keeps marines entertained, and therefore more likely to do what you want... meh whatever
I have my ways of dealing with noob rines.... Bacon, Catpacks, or Voicecomm spam..... field armories tend to keep moron idiot marines at the waypoints better than anything else (they go OMG OMG ARMORY WE R SAVVED) and then wont leave that point.... EVER...:-P
~Jason
Your men are demoralised, a whole slew of higher evo aliens are running around, and everyone becomes a minicommander. The team screams for shotties, hmgs, ha, jps, and your coordinated planning goes out the window. This is where most comms go wrong. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
That right there... is more deadly than the ping of death....
As a comm.. i know it to be true...
~Jason
And the other thing that's really annoying is clan stackage on rines, while your ailens, and mass spawn camping. What's the point in playing? There's nothing you can do b/c all the beginning alien attacks are melee, not ranged. I usually just leave the server.
hmmm... im trying to think if that was meant to be a joke or not.
Anyways, I really like the concepts you all have shared. The only thing I wanted to add regarding pros. cons. of tf farming would be to serve as the marine injection of common sense. When a turret starts firing, it usually gets the attention of nearby marines to fire at the fade that is melting it. I understand, the rez wasted for this is stupidly high, 1 tf and 2-3 t's just to alert nearby rhines of danger... and if you are a good comm you would consider yourself capable of alerting them to aliens.
But thats the thing, most pub players are clueless to the idea of 'command'.. for them buildings just magically appear and shotguns seem to fall from the sky if you pray to the shotgun gods enough.
No-way is a tf ever a valid choice for _defence_ but I do believe being such a point of hatred for skulks when they grow up they will want to destroy them at all costs. In my view, they serve as decoys. Expensive Decoys. But against players who are still bowing on the floor to the gods that drop shotguns these Decoys can prove effective for buying time. Time that your marines would otherwise waste in their ceremonial chanting.
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On a related note, Scripts are great.... I have just yet to find one that actually lets me do something better than I already can when I attempt to learn it. Build, Pistol firing, BHop etc etc tend to be perfectly accomplishable without, and with only reach the same level of proficiency. Those that think scripting is such a negative thing could almost thank me for using them against my usual k:d.