Aliens Always Win
Rodriguez
Join Date: 2002-11-11 Member: 8199Members
Join Date: 2002-11-11 Member: 8199Members
Notice that I don't say that races are unbalanced! I don't know that.
But I do know that all the games I join the aliens win. Always.
And no, it's not because I play marines or commander and I suck, because I play aliens too. And I never play commander (because I suck).
I think that playing Marines is too difficult for the casual players, that thing about the comander and all that. Tood difficult to coordinate.
Well I'm playing less and less. Too bad.
But I do know that all the games I join the aliens win. Always.
And no, it's not because I play marines or commander and I suck, because I play aliens too. And I never play commander (because I suck).
I think that playing Marines is too difficult for the casual players, that thing about the comander and all that. Tood difficult to coordinate.
Well I'm playing less and less. Too bad.
Comments
The most important piece of equipment nobody ever asks for or gets...
Whenever I Comm, most of my team has Welders at all times. Period.
Same map, first round I was marines, second aliens.
Marines were well organized, repaired each others' armor, made sure to have someone guarding critical points and outposts. We kicked their tails.
Aliens were disorganized, barely anyone talked, no one listened, no one used hivesight to their advantage, there was no backup when requested, everyone wanted to be Rambo. One person stuck with me and helped when I was gorge and set up a new hive and its defenses. That hive (which I made sure had all three chamber types) was the last one to be taken out by the marines. And there were TWO of us guarding it. But we worked together.
It was pretty frustrating.
Bottom line?
The team that WORKS TOGETHER will win.
Or at least, the one which doesn't, will lose.
-Brew
The biggest problem I see with marines, is playing with a team that hasnt figured out they need to take an enemy hive location right away. Well thats my opinion. Still take that hive. Upgrade and then swoop on in and WELD WELD WELD. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Same can be said for aliens. In my opinion your job as an alien at the start of a map, unless you are one of the FEW gorges. Should be skulking the bejeebus out of those marines as they try to advance. Just keep trying to thwart their movement attempts. Keep em occupied at home base. Oh ya.....
PARASITE PARASITE PARASITE.
So. No one ever answers me. Has anyone been able to ride an Onos?
<!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::onos::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tiny.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tiny.gif'><!--endemo-->
Time and time again I see marines camping in their base all early game until HMG's and stuff start coming out. This is the worst possibel thing you can do. Go in groups of 2-3 and hunt down some aliens, make progress to a hive, and get your commander to start locking it down. regardless of how skillful the aliens are, they are a much smaller threat with only 2 or even better, with 1 hive.
I have to agree with this statement. I quote from an NSplayer(2) "I can't kill anything unless I am onos" I then watched him take out an entire marine base as Onos. I can agree that a good commander makes all the difference, but it seems to me that difference is only enough to make it so the aliens have more of a challenge to winning as opposed to a clean sweep win. As a Khara player myself, I find it hard to say this, but I wish that v 1.01 was never released. I liked it better when only the select few who had mastered the Khara could play Khara and kick arse. Now it seems anyone who can figure out how to right click into an Onos or a Fade, can win. I know that originally it was stated that aliens are better than marines in all ways except strategy, but in small servers (10 or fewer person servers) It seems that marines simply can not win. Before I started playing alien I was a marine all the way. I got awsome with the shot gun and even the knife. I thought well perhaps its just the people playing marines, maybe thats the reason we win every single time. Me and a few of my NS Newbie Vets switched teams to see if perhaps it was just the players. We then as marines only won 1 out of 7 games. That one win Was on eclipse using a very irrational strategy of abandon the base and start a new one inside of the hive locations. This took the Aliens by the surprise which is why it worked. It didnt work a second time however. I am not saying that aliens are completely unbeatable we beat them once there is your example. But I do think however that marines need to be given a bit more power to make it fun for them again. Since the patch I have noticed that the popularity of the mod has seemed to decrease because I can get in to servers now. This may just be because the novelty wore off, or some other unknown reason, but I would appreciate if perhaps Marines were given a little tiny bit more power once again. As an Alien I need more of a challenge.
Welders heal armour, close vents (and other sundry things), and do a frickin' TON of damage to Aliens and their buildings. It's a great secondary compared to the pistol.
not exactly ,not all in the players , just build a small outpost 5000000 km away with siege cannons and wipe out all the aliens,easy peasy,sifnt TOTALLY UNBALANCED SIEGE!! USE THEM !! BE A LOSER!!
*wtf am i toking about? * <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
What do you guys think?</b> <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::sentry::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/turret.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='turret.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::siege::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/siege.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='siege.gif'><!--endemo-->
<b>You all are prob thinking I play marines all the time, but your wrong. I normally played only aliens because the teams were ALWAYS uneven. GG to the forced team thing. A organized marine group can over come the turret thing, but they have to rush our hive and be really organized.</b>
So no more posts about balancing, and failing that, just stop griping in general.
My expirence? I use Vcom. I'm not like you lot. I get crap organized, i joke around and have a good time biting Frontiersman butt off and LMGing Fades down.
I cant see the problem with the mod that you all seem to blatantly keep bitching about.
EDIT: *pays Doug Adams two pennies for coining a Ford Prefect phrase*
LM
1. When the game starts and if you happen to be the commander, spam your team with this text: "GUARD THE DOORS!" Spam it around 10 times and your team should listen to you
2. Once you stop the skulk rush, you should be finished with building everything in your base. Highlight everyone, drop a med pack or two, and give them a waypoint to a resource node.
3. Once you get to the resource node, make sure everyone stays there and secures it. Build the resouce center, turret factory, and 2 turrets.
4. By the time you take over the first resource nozzle, maybe one or two disobeying people would accidently find open resource nodes. They usually get killed, but we sometimes secure a node or two.
5. Highlight everyone, set waypoint to hive. Easy to fortify if no one is there, or watch the hive go "boom" if its their main hive. By this time I usually have HA, HMG, and 4 resource nodes taken over.
6. Go secure other hives. You will have some marines you can't get to the waypoint finding open resouce nodes in the process.
7. Take over the second hive location. Make sure to keep dropping ammo/health in the heat of battle.
8. Go for the third hive, make 16 siege turrets around it, and enjoy.
The "key" for the marines to win is by having a good commander. Simple enough.
Yes, they are very strong, and they win alot of the time, but not always. Whenever I see arguments about balance issues like this, I think back to my days of playing Warcraft 2 on kali. In War2 the races were very evenly matched in the early/mid game, but once you get to the late game (fortress/castle) the balance of power shifts towards the orcs very quickly. *Unless* the human player is very good and knows how to take advantage of the tools he is given. In the hands of a good human player there is nothing that an Orc player can do to stop him with the one deminonsal lusted orgre attacking mindset. This does not translate directly to Natural Selection, but there are some large similaraties.
As I said I am pretty new at this, but I have made some pretty good observations in my short time here. First off, organization, moving in groups and making full use of the commander and his abilities is the bread and butter of playing marine. A single fade can wreak havoc on a marine base and the jarheads defending it, but a single marine (even with heavy armor and HMG) will do little but **obscenity** off the kahraa in that hive. *But* 3-4 marines working as a team with their commander will make short work of an alien encampment.
I saw evidence of this marine strength last nice on two occasions. In the first I was playing Kahraa, now I know very little about playing this race, I was just keeping the teams even, but the other members of my team were very organized and knew what they were doing. Even with this organization and knowledge we had alot of trouble killing off these jarheads because they moved in small, tight groups. Then in the next game I was on the marines team. We had 5 people (1 comm and 4 others) and we did the same thing. Sticking together, when we would come up on an alien settlement we would fall back behind the corner and our commander would drop a turret factory and we put up siege turrets and would rip the place apart. We made liberal use of the welders our commander was so good about supplying, even to the point of having one marine in heavy armor advance with a light marine constantly welding him.
I believe this game had a pretty rigiorous testing period, so I'm sure the testers know all this. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of the abilities/equipment you are given and use them to their fullest and you will always do well. This goes for all games, not just NS.
I have give 3 or 4 marines HA HMG weilders and seen them all go there own ways forgetting i gave them waypoints and told them to travel as a group. Or had a group of 4 marines at a locaton told them watch door ways for skulk while 1 of them build to have them all build and die to one skulk. man I can go on forever with the dumb stuff i think marines do.
PLEASE anyone that reads this, Try to stick in 4 man groups travel as a group and guard/build as a group! dont run off solo or with one team mate. it makes it a lot easyer for aliens!
PS I HATE FADES, I HATE ACID ROCK!
1. Welders are your friend. Its amazing what can happen if an entire heavy squad has welders, and then one of them, in the heat of battle, becomes a Weld-Monkey and starts welding everyone and everything in sight. Add to that a commander who drops medkits and ammo like candy from the heavens, you've got one hard to beat squad.
2. The Commander: If theres an idiot in the chair at any time, your team is screwed, plain and simple. In almost every single game I've played where our commander has been switched mid-game, we've lost within the next twenty minutes. If the commander is smart, he'll build a resource outpost, and then fortify at least one hive as quickly as possible. From there, we launch attacks on other ones.
3. Side Doesnt Matter-Teams Do: Last night, I had inadverdently found my way into a public semi-clanmatch. The two clans always switched sides after each game. When I entered, I joined the marines, and we fought hard..but we always had someone on voicecomm spamming "WELDWELDWELDWELDWELD" (Yeah, I'd like to weld ya. Weld your mouth shut.) They were in general just running around in semi-groups, holding off the enemy, dying alot, losing ground, ect.....finally, the commander got fed up with everyone, and just logged out. A new one jumped on, and quickly drained the bank. Within a few more minutes, we had onos trapsing through our base, and I was hidden in a corner taking shots of opportunity before the fades noticed and hacked me to bits. Next game, I decided to stay marines, and I got to fight on the side of the other group there. They were alot quieter, alot more controlled. They worked together. They covered each other. They LISTENED to the commander. I had parked myself atop the Command Console in the beginning and had been keeping the skulks off of him at first, until finally we had enough resources and defenses for me to join the hunting parties. Unfortunately, we had moved slow..and they got the third hive. Or lack of speed, however, didnt make too much difference--Through teamwork and determination, we took them apart, hive by hive. Whenever we entered ferocious battle, the commander would spawn ammo and medpacks atop us....alot of them. PILES of them. We had worked efficently, so we had resources to burn. Eventually, we had torn the aliens up. Game over, we switched sides...once again, working together, we coordinated our building and kept the marines locked in their base as much as we could. Working together, we crushed them before the third hive finished growing.
The moral of the story? Aliens dont win. Marines dont win. Your TEAM wins.
Whew, longer than I expected.
That is exctally what I was wanting to say. =)
Adressing the good commander avoiding a clean sweep. I dont know how you see it but when I play marines my whole goal is never to see an onos. Or some deadly green gas. Not to mention a crazy xenocide run. Yes i have seen both sides maxed out and marines holding their own. Yet, I really do think the point of this game is to keep the aliens from ever evolving past a certain point.
Once that gas starts seeping out of the vents, you can be sure an Onos is on the way. My tip for when that starts is to grab your combat knife, try to fashion some sort of a saddle and ride teh Onos off into the sunset. All the while, keep sticking that knife in his pretty little back.
Not too easy, it just forces the commander to pick a good spot to put the factory. If the factory is hidden from corners, lerks/fades cant shoot it out from afar. If the commander is careful that theres at least one turret on each side, skulks can't hide behind the factory and chew it.
A Fade can rain acid shots on a HA marine forever, as long as someone keeps welding up his armor. Oh, and a healthpack every few minutes (you need a healthpack for every 1000 pts of damage taken, about).
Oh, bw. A welder does twice the damage of a knife, and has about a step longer range to boot.
So weld the butts of those Onos SHUT!
Aliens can easily lose a game because of dumb gorges. (Ie: gorges building a lot of towers at the very start, poor tower formation, too many gorges, etc. etc.) Don't think aliens are just about running around biting stuff as a skulk <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Good comm + Good soldiers = Great marine team.One without the other is useless.
The probelm with aliens is,that in a laggy situation,aliens have advatnage.Try hitting a skulk with a ping of 500 ms in CQB....try biting a marine with a ping of 500 ms in CQB.....compare the difficulty.Acid rockets and bile bombs are also WAY easier to use than guns in lag,due to 1 projectile only that does splash damage.Ive seen a 3 fades take out 5 max armour/weapon upgraded marines with power armor and hmgs/shotguns in an equal battle,because the marines kept missing due to the lag.Oh yea dont forget the "negate damage" bug.
Yea, I saw an impressive pair of gorges. Both of them spent the first 10 minutes of the game spending 200+ RP on building defenses for the original hive. They _may_ have built one resource tower. But I doubt it.
Of course, once the marines got there (at about the 15 min point), they had HA and HMG. Took them about 20 seconds to wipe the defenses.
Offense, not defense, is what wins this game.
The most important piece of equipment nobody ever asks for or gets...
Whenever I Comm, most of my team has Welders at all times. Period.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Omg so very very true, commanders never give me welder because they think its not usefull unless theres HA. I try to explain that I want to weld vents closed but they usually ignore me. Don't get me wrong, but if a mapper creates a map with weldable vents, theres a purpose to that ability. Funny thing is we had same comm for like 5 games and lost everyone because he was too concerned about not giving me the welder. When he finally did we magically advanced into the map and won.
After in was playing marines when the mod got released, i mainly played aliens and somehow loved their independance.
Then some days ago i went back to marines because aliens seemed to win 80% of all times recently. And i wanted to know how it was like to be a marine again.
I noticed that aliens got their 2nd hive way before the marines even had HMG. Also we were all busy defending our 1 or 2 extra nozzles/bases which kept us under pressure all the time. It seems easier for aliens to advance faster because their skulks are fast and get to our outposts quite quick, so their gorges have all time in the world to secure their 2 hives. Marines cant just roam around killing some alien outposts. Theyre too slow and theyre overpowered by the skulks. Also they cant carry enuff ammo to kill a resource tower or even a hive without the commander dropping ammo, but hes busy doing the general build-up.
What i mean is the aliens seem to have a much more relaxed build-up time than marines, who are constantly harrassed, thrown back, etc.
I was playing on my favorite server the other day, and it was the time when most of the regulars were on it, thus no newbs but good and experienced players. Aliens always won, no matter what map or on which side what player was. Players changed teams from round to round but aliens always won. So it cant be about the players being n00bs on the one side.
I really think that marines have it too hard atm.