Version 1.03 The Marine Rush
Texas_Ranger
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9755Members
Join Date: 2002-11-24 Member: 9755Members
<div class="IPBDescription">A Semi-Scientific Approach</div> Ok I was recently playing with DSSG Nitro who was ranting on and on about how the aliens were getting creamed every game he played if the marines just rushed in within the first few minutes of the game and destroyed the hive.... I will have to say as a commander since 1.03 came out I have won about 9 out of 10 games I have commanded, though some of this can be contributed to my experience, not all of it can...
See his post here>> <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=14933' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...=ST&f=1&t=14933</a>
It was closed due to flaming and whatnot, but the argument is still a valid one, and there are ton of posts for and against different issues on the post
See my post here>> against the alien timer
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=14748' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...=ST&f=1&t=14748</a>
Though I partially agreed with Nitro that there were problems with the new version I did not however agree that the marines could win every single time... So we played.. The aliens were not all newbs and niether were the marines, I would have say both were somewhat skilled and at least for this experiment equal enough .
The main factors involving the 5 games I played
<b>Amount of Players </b> This server Coronas in Space had an average of 22 players at all times.
<b>Map Played</b> We played two maps (i am not good with map names ) the one with atmospheric pressure,feedwater etc(2x) and the one with reactor room, chemical transport etc..(3x)
The first 4 games I played as marine and commanded twice...
In every single game the marines won in 15 to 20 mins flat
Finally I considered that perhaps Nitro was right and that as long as the marines rushed, sieged and whatnot, grabbed the other two hives right off or just attacked the main one, it was near impossible for the aliens to win. Finally on the last game I thought these aliens just suck, right. So I went alien, we made it quite clear there was to be only one gorge so that our resources weren't spread any thinner then they had to be. The one gorge was to build a res node or two and one def chamber then begin on the 2nd hive...
The skulks were told <i>not to rush</i> but instead hold back and prevent the marines from expanding by hiding on walls, ceilings and pounce them as they entered the room. This would also reduce respawn times if the aliens did not die all at once, since the aliens can only respawn 1 at a time and again remember that there were 11 of us. Most all the aliens did exactly this with the exception of a few that rushed and died and respawned shortly. Within about 5 mins the marines had pushed us back past atmospheric and begin sieging our spawn point, feedwater. We did split our forces in two because we were trying to build refinery up and there were some marines wandering around there trying to kill our gorge. Roughly 10 mins or so into the game we lost our first hive, couldn't respawn and were all waiting patiently as the 2nd hive was coming up. Of course a few mins later the marines rolled in and the game was over.
It is almost consisently victory for the marines and really the only chance the aliens had were to rush the marine base in a desperate attempt to take out infantry portals and the cc.
I believe that some of the major deciding factors for the aliens loss were 1) amount of players: the more players, the less resources the aliens have, as they <b>do not share resources</b> and with 11 people it is spread incredibly thin. It litterally took us 10 minutes before just one gorge gathering all the resources at 2x the amount of everyone else, had enough to build a 2nd hive.
2) The timer the aliens now have also was a deciding factor because we lost a lot of players in the inbetween stage where they died from having no hive. Though this is a small one, it is still a factor.
And 3) the respawn time for the aliens, having only one hive and 11 aliens meant a real long respawn time, especially if they all rush at the beginning as they usually do.
I believe this can be fixed rather easily and it isn't all due to version 1.03 though it certainly contributes to the problem.
Possible fixes include:
Shorter respawn time for the aliens
Longer no hive - instant kill timer for the aliens
And the ability for the aliens to give their resources to other aliens if they so choose.
I will have to try this again and use different tactics and strategies to see if they can make a difference. For example, perhaps if we had one gorge grabbing 2 res nodes then moving into a 2nd hive and waiting while another built a wall of lame to slow down advancing marines long enough to get a second hive going. Still the problem is that in 10 mins with 2 gorges how big is that wall gonna be? Even if you get all the skulks to defend that hive, build as many Offense and defensive towers you can, will that really slow down the marines long enough for you to get a 2nd hive?
I will have to agree with nitro on this one that on big servers, a marine victory can almost always be guaranteed as long as they rush and siege the first hive within about 5 to 10 minutes into the game. Version 1.03 has literally been beaten to death since it came out and I hope that some of these issues are addressed as they seriously affect gameplay. Until then I hope to see more servers using the mods like the Voogru server uses that allows players to give resources to that one gorge etc..
Anyways I am sure that there are as many that will agree with this that disagree with it.... There are some fixes that I agree with in 1.03 and I don't think it is all necessarily due to v.103. IMHO I think that the marines and the aliens have learned to play much better and this is perhaps one of the biggest factors. When I first starting playing a month or so back, the marines didn't even consider rushing, hell many times they didn't even go for a hive right away... Just grabbed as many nodes as possible. Now it is grab the two empty hives in 10 mins, throw down a good turret array and a phase gate and go siege that last hive. Or in the extreme cases such as tonight, just rush.
Texas Ranger <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo-->
I would like to hear more from people who have experienced the same thing, and maybe even done some testing of their own. This would probably be best tested on a LAN with 18 + players.
See his post here>> <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=14933' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...=ST&f=1&t=14933</a>
It was closed due to flaming and whatnot, but the argument is still a valid one, and there are ton of posts for and against different issues on the post
See my post here>> against the alien timer
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=14748' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...=ST&f=1&t=14748</a>
Though I partially agreed with Nitro that there were problems with the new version I did not however agree that the marines could win every single time... So we played.. The aliens were not all newbs and niether were the marines, I would have say both were somewhat skilled and at least for this experiment equal enough .
The main factors involving the 5 games I played
<b>Amount of Players </b> This server Coronas in Space had an average of 22 players at all times.
<b>Map Played</b> We played two maps (i am not good with map names ) the one with atmospheric pressure,feedwater etc(2x) and the one with reactor room, chemical transport etc..(3x)
The first 4 games I played as marine and commanded twice...
In every single game the marines won in 15 to 20 mins flat
Finally I considered that perhaps Nitro was right and that as long as the marines rushed, sieged and whatnot, grabbed the other two hives right off or just attacked the main one, it was near impossible for the aliens to win. Finally on the last game I thought these aliens just suck, right. So I went alien, we made it quite clear there was to be only one gorge so that our resources weren't spread any thinner then they had to be. The one gorge was to build a res node or two and one def chamber then begin on the 2nd hive...
The skulks were told <i>not to rush</i> but instead hold back and prevent the marines from expanding by hiding on walls, ceilings and pounce them as they entered the room. This would also reduce respawn times if the aliens did not die all at once, since the aliens can only respawn 1 at a time and again remember that there were 11 of us. Most all the aliens did exactly this with the exception of a few that rushed and died and respawned shortly. Within about 5 mins the marines had pushed us back past atmospheric and begin sieging our spawn point, feedwater. We did split our forces in two because we were trying to build refinery up and there were some marines wandering around there trying to kill our gorge. Roughly 10 mins or so into the game we lost our first hive, couldn't respawn and were all waiting patiently as the 2nd hive was coming up. Of course a few mins later the marines rolled in and the game was over.
It is almost consisently victory for the marines and really the only chance the aliens had were to rush the marine base in a desperate attempt to take out infantry portals and the cc.
I believe that some of the major deciding factors for the aliens loss were 1) amount of players: the more players, the less resources the aliens have, as they <b>do not share resources</b> and with 11 people it is spread incredibly thin. It litterally took us 10 minutes before just one gorge gathering all the resources at 2x the amount of everyone else, had enough to build a 2nd hive.
2) The timer the aliens now have also was a deciding factor because we lost a lot of players in the inbetween stage where they died from having no hive. Though this is a small one, it is still a factor.
And 3) the respawn time for the aliens, having only one hive and 11 aliens meant a real long respawn time, especially if they all rush at the beginning as they usually do.
I believe this can be fixed rather easily and it isn't all due to version 1.03 though it certainly contributes to the problem.
Possible fixes include:
Shorter respawn time for the aliens
Longer no hive - instant kill timer for the aliens
And the ability for the aliens to give their resources to other aliens if they so choose.
I will have to try this again and use different tactics and strategies to see if they can make a difference. For example, perhaps if we had one gorge grabbing 2 res nodes then moving into a 2nd hive and waiting while another built a wall of lame to slow down advancing marines long enough to get a second hive going. Still the problem is that in 10 mins with 2 gorges how big is that wall gonna be? Even if you get all the skulks to defend that hive, build as many Offense and defensive towers you can, will that really slow down the marines long enough for you to get a 2nd hive?
I will have to agree with nitro on this one that on big servers, a marine victory can almost always be guaranteed as long as they rush and siege the first hive within about 5 to 10 minutes into the game. Version 1.03 has literally been beaten to death since it came out and I hope that some of these issues are addressed as they seriously affect gameplay. Until then I hope to see more servers using the mods like the Voogru server uses that allows players to give resources to that one gorge etc..
Anyways I am sure that there are as many that will agree with this that disagree with it.... There are some fixes that I agree with in 1.03 and I don't think it is all necessarily due to v.103. IMHO I think that the marines and the aliens have learned to play much better and this is perhaps one of the biggest factors. When I first starting playing a month or so back, the marines didn't even consider rushing, hell many times they didn't even go for a hive right away... Just grabbed as many nodes as possible. Now it is grab the two empty hives in 10 mins, throw down a good turret array and a phase gate and go siege that last hive. Or in the extreme cases such as tonight, just rush.
Texas Ranger <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo-->
I would like to hear more from people who have experienced the same thing, and maybe even done some testing of their own. This would probably be best tested on a LAN with 18 + players.
Comments
That and it was 11 on 11. All we had was spawn points, armory, and boom we went. An observatory and few phase gates later and we have every point on the map.
The real issue about the marine rush winning every time in 1.03 is the fact that these servers you guys are playing on are quite large.
I must agree that it's just about impossible for aliens to win in such large games cause there's no way to drop marines in such large groups. It takes them a minute to walk to your hive, meanwhile it takes aliens a few minutes just for 1 gorge to get proper resources for more nodes or another hive.
What we saw the most was a queue line of 6 or 7 aliens waiting to spawn, just to die alone. A quick remedy for this is to allow more spawns on the aliens based on the amount of players. Or at least speed them up.
Regardless, I think it's perfectly balance for less than large games. 6 on 6 to 8 on 8. I know perfect balance is impossible for such a large group of people. But in the end, I think they still had some newbie aliens playing too.
The fact of the matter is, a group of any size of skulks short of the entire team does not have the power to rush or even stop a full rushing marine team. If they do manage to get kills on either side, the marines have uber-fast spawn up and aliens have to wait. I think that's the biggest issue that Nitro was against and I must agree with him.
What I would really like to see is how the clans handle this on private servers, What tactics can be implemented, if any, to prevent 8 to 10 marines from decimating the aliens within a few minutes. Comm drops some medpacks, marines respawn 2 maybe even 3 x faster (depends on how many portals you have) and it is all over. There has to be a tactic to stop this, if not, why?
So please if you have a <b>proven tactic</b> that stops marine rushes on large servers (18+) I would love to hear it.
Texas Ranger
This issue has been addressed a million times
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=14327' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...=ST&f=1&t=14327</a>
I am sure there are more posts ... I just haven't had the time to read them all
Especcially with the new respawn times.
The really huge advantage is income though ... all early game income can be put into tech/phasegates/turrets - the swarm of 0-rp marines you have don't cost any resources.
As the income for a 11 player game is about 35% higher than for an 8 player game, the time to get tech - or the effective cost of anything - is cut by 35%. At the same time, the time to second hive for the alien team is cut by perhaps 10% - and that only at the cost of having TWO players spending the first few minutes waiting for resources.
So, I'd say a 8v8 game is pretty much even, a 10v10 is a 60/40 marine victory. 12v12 is probably 70/30 or so.
Fortunately, on pub servers this is pretty much drowned by the huge differences skilled players make, especially gorges and commanders.
I'm still predicting a 20% cut in siege range though ... :-)
I think it sucks that a system like this had to be implimented, because some people out there are more interested in acting like 8 year olds instead of playing a damn fine game the way it should be played, but in it's current state, the timer really interferes with the legit players.
I got the feeling a marine was using some sort of aimbot in a recent game I was playing, but I didn't say anything. I don't like to accuse unless I'm <b>really</b> sure, but I swear his aim was impeccable...
Large games have certain particular advantages for marines. Particularly in the respawn system. Even moderate deaths have the marines respawning more quickly, and since distress beacon doesn't adjust its price in larger games, it becomes very powerful (since the marines get more resources as the price stays the same and it respawns more marines).
It's a very good point that a few amount of players on either team favors the aliens while more players favors the marines.
Also ive never seen a hive fall to LMG and knives so fast. Did the devs change the hitpoints of hives or something? As soon as i heard "your hive is under attack" it took 30 seconds of 3-4 marines to shoot down a starter hive.
It would be ok if a gorge could get a couple defence and offence chambers up fast near the hive but there isnt enough resources at the start of the game for them to do this. Possibly increase the starting resources for the aliens would solve this.
Anyway thx guys to come here. Im now playing as a marine only kickin Aliens **obscenity** like 5 consectutive times, and when their all mad,I told them to blame it on the new patch.
The spawn is one thing. Aliens should at least all spam back together, like in DoD. This might help them to retake a dying hive and to coordinate attacks.
But wait a second guys, readin you gives me the impression that marines only win if they rush and if the aliens are kept with 1 hive.
Well yesterday and today again, always on corona server, we tried several strategies for marines. As the commander, I was asking my troops not to rush them, and we were slowly taking ressources and protecting them.
At one point, the Aliens managed to get back the only hive I was protecting and they ended up with 3 hives and onos.
I knew what I was doing, in a way I let them taking that 3rd hive with their fades. And then I gave to all my troops armors, welders, hmg and all the stuff.
We cleared the meance Onos in no time, only saw 2 of them. Then killed 3 hives one after the other. It was a pretty long and fun game because all aliens were really good players, doin some sick ambush traps with webs and offense chambers behind doors.
But I saw it coming and fortunatly my troops were wise enough to react correctly.
Another time I let another guy commanding, it was his 2nd time trying it. We were like 2 marines trying to rush the hive while others were buildin and securing res. But aliens got their 2nd hive pretty fast, we lost most of the battles against skulks and fades arrived pretty quickly in the game.
With Light machine guns, we took all the fades out, running after them forcing them to go back to a defense chamber and then sieged them. And we ,,,, of course won.
Too much people think that fades are the best, but in my opinion, they are weak.
Oh and one last thing... I dont play on 6v6 or 8v8 servers....big servers are much more fun <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
I've seen many games where such rushes were thwarted, but Gorges need to make some sort of a defense matrix or you need to have some good Lerks on your team to wipe out a Marine attack force.
I don't know why people say the marines are so great with this new 1.03 version, but in games where I play, I think Aliens won like 90% of the times. Maybe it's because I'm good at "commandering" the Alien group. I had about 10 games where my group of Gorges made heavy defenses in about 3 or 4 resource nodes, then made ALL THREE HIVES FULLY FUNCTIONAL in 10 minutes flat.
Maybe I'm just good at Gorges, I don't know, but I think this "Marine rushing" is a rare event... since most Marines act like newbies and run around separated with no effort. No wonder I kill 15 marines AVERAGE in any game... even when I'm Gorge.. that's just sad.... <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Basically, to prevent marine rush, you need some good skulks that know how to stalk.
2 skulks at the first chakepoint mean -2 marines in that first rush. (maintnance corridor on hera)
2 more skulks at the second chokepoint, -2 more marines (maintnance on hera)
Now, they are either stopping or going on with 11-2-2-2=5 guys. 5 guys, marching into 5 skulks, are dead, if the skulks have any skill at all.
Hell, I've taken out 4 marines at one time before. On your way down from the ceiling, you bite one, by the time he's dead, you can kill one more before they react, then you just have to dance. Just takes t3h m4d 1337 sk1llz!
If you blunt their first rush, then they will be delayed a good minute. BLunt their second, and the commander says "screw it," and goes for fortifying another hive and doing it the hard way.
Again, its true...sticking together is just good game play. But dang, it takes so long to get the rp's coming in, and with that long wait...a good large marine rush seems dam near impossible to stop. it is possible if you have a truely awesome team of skulks, but that is so rare....I dont know...maybe we just need the kharaa players to get better again. like they did when the marines were said to be too strong WAY back in that premitive age of november.
Again, I can't blame the patch entirely, but I can blame a good deal of it. The timer thing.. is utter crap. Yeah.. I know there's those jerks that like to hide in vents. The timer doesn't even affect hiding marines which is also crap, since scent of fear doesn't always work. Anyway, I suggest either taking it out completely, or allow 3 minutes to pass after the last hive is destroyed, then kick in the timer.
Second, the "armor" bug for Kharaa. The dev team must've changed something else along with it because now as a skulk, I get easily dispatched whereas before I could take out 1 or 2 marines in a group of four, and that's from charging straight at them. Now, even if I drop from the ceiling, or hide until they pass me, I can't seem to take out one because a GOOD commander will watch his marines and just hotkey the health drop and drop a bazillion health kits. This doesn't always happen, but no matter what I do now, it seems a lone marine can easily kill me now and I KNOW for a fact people didn't just become gods over night. (Most of these people friends too <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->)
The long respawn time for Kharaa. This has been a complaint for several patches on big servers. I'm not sure why people play on small servers like 5vs5 or even 8vs8, because 10vs10 or 12vs12 is exciting! But now instead of the Kharaa rushing, the marines are rushing because they can respawn faster than aliens, and if they stick in groups, they can easily take out any number of aliens, even if they hide. As a commander on Coronas in Space, I wondered how fast we could win.. seven minutes and 46 seconds. EIGHT MINUTES!! I dropped a single infantry portal, then an armory, then an observatory. Told my team to move out and hold a single nozzle. The aliens were just about rushing, and my team of marines easily destroyed them all. I pressed TAB and saw almost all aliens were dead except for two. I told one person to defend base and the rest to rush a certain hive. Well, I got motion tracking as my big group of marines were moving towards the aliens' main hive. I dropped a phase gate for the defender to build, and then when the marines arrived at the hive, I told them to build the phase gate. We won shortly after completing the phase gates. Ahem.. now after all that, I suggest the dev team either increase the respawn drastically when a lot of aliens are dead(not the respawn itself, but if there's like more than half of the team dead, the hive should go in a kind of "distress" or "worry" 'mode', kind of like distress beacon for the marines and start respawning the aliens two by twos) or just double the respawn so one hive = two respawned players, two hives = four respawned, and three hives = six respawned. This would help prevent marine rushes, and also help the skulk rush, which can easily be stopped by a few turrets and one or two marines while the rest go secure nozzles and hives.
The "shared" resources between the Kharaa. This is not right. I've been a gorge all by myself at some points and I STILL get slow resources. Now, to fix this, I suggest making marines resource points themselves. So if a REALLY good alien player like PneumaticCrab(who is a god at NS) killed a huge group of marines, he'd get an influx of resources and if he had the max, like 33/33, then it'd go to everyone else. Now I suggest maybe 2 resources per marine, and 4 for Heavy-Armor marine(that's a lot of steel and stuff for resources!) This would also force marines to stay in groups, because some still do go rambo, and it'd help HA marines weld each other rather than just go off and die like again, some players do.
Now I'm sure none of my ideas will be considered, let alone looked over. But at least consider this Flayra and the rest of the dev team, consider your big servers and small servers. If you can't concentrate on making a patch for both to be balanced, make a separate patch for each. Make a patch for those "bigger" servers, and a patch for those "smaller" servers. All you would have to do is change around the resource intake and such, and it'd be good. Anyway.. I'm a little PO'd at losing several times today at Coronas in Space.
And for those you don't use HL to look for servers, or those that simply can't find Coronas in Space, the IP address is 129.21.122.105:27015. Please be considerate to other players and they'll (try) to be considerate to you as well. (You may get cussed out or something if you do something wrong, because sometimes the players are seriously playing(which is rare, and only happens when both teams are at a stalemate) and get PO'd easily if they think they may lose) So don't be scared though, if you see myself or FiRe=LMNTL= or Crode or a few others, we'll treat you right and try to tell you how to play in a big server. (It's a LOT different)
I always thought it was rather silly to allow for marines regulating spawn times via IPs when they have the specific ability "emergency beacon". What's the point of a special ability if you put up 4 portals? It costs about the same as 2 uses and it's permanent. I would think, that players are realizing how SMALL these maps really are, tactically. The only defense skulks can put up include mass suicides which the incredibly long respawns make ineffective after 1-2 tries.
The idea of hit-n-run/harassment is not even good in theory. With map design, it doesnt take much to figure out that one hall is dangerous and one is not. Where the aliens are spawning with a 60% probability from alien approaches and timing.
As a final note, this game has a direction. Flay has to decide if he likes it being popular for the reasons it is. People want LARGE games with action and flurry and masses of aliens and marines. FPS servers and RTS games are popular when there are lots of pretty things, not when there are few (12 : 6v6). Hardcore "competition" will play what they are given because the fun is not about pretty lights, but about ability and research and tactics and all the extracurricular things associated with the game. Having a solid "competitive" fanbase relegates a mod to "quickly forgotten" and I would hate to see that happen as so MANY great mods have...not to say any compare to NS <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
On another note, Ive noticed that before the 1.3 patch a skilled alien, if he were to sneak up to a group of marines he could take out 2 of them at least, where on the marine side, 1 marine couldn't take out 2 aliens at a time. Now on the 1.3 patch, ive seen a lot of people mention that them, as an alien can no longer take out 1 or 2 marines whom are on a group of 3 or 4 of them, on the marine side is just the same as in 1.2patch. To me it just seems that the game play is more balanced and even. This should force for the entire alien team to work together more. Before this latest patch, the entire marine team needed to work together to win pub games. Where for the aliens ( 1.2 patch) if they had a decent gorg builder and a couple of skilled skulks, they would win the game. Now it seems that the aliens too, have to work as a team and have their skulks attack together, if they want to succeed in killing a group of marines.
Even with an increased rate the marines who are camping the room can eaisly pick off the newly spawned skulk if they look.
With two you could have a chance at taking some of them out as they split their attention.
Hmm. How about the time to respawn on the Kharaa side is dependent on how many total structures they have? I know this sounds weird, but think about it. Resource towers could count as 3x more than a chamber does, and a hive counts as 10x.
Of course, that still doesn't really adress the rush issue. How about any active hive under attack goes into an extra-fast spawn mode, as an analogous (but not the same) function to the distress beacon?
Just my opinion, could be wrong, but I'm not <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
There's no reason the Kharaa can't compete against us because of player skill. Plenty of Coronas regulars switch between alien and marine (myself included) and proceed to shoot and chomp up a mighty portion of the players. As an alien though, skulks survivability has all but disappeared. Tazol is right about skulks dieing rapidly to LMG fire, as its happened to me on both sides of the coin.
It took 11 hits before as a skulk right? 21 with carapace? Anyone feel like testing how many shots it takes now to take down a non-carapace skulk? I know it's rediculously easy to take down skulks. For example: Rushing as 5 plus skulks at the beginning of a game usually nets less than 5 marine deaths and all of us waiting to respawn. That was also the ill-fated map where someone rushed our hive and we sat around watching 10 marines swarm our hive as it pumped out a skulk every 200 years only to be shot in less than a second. I think two of us were alive total out of 12 players. The map lasted under 3 minutes, I believe. Some people didn't even know it was over.
Tonight we, as always, pounded the aliens to dust without even breaking a sweat. Fades are simply ineffective to a HMG/HA toting marine with a vengeance. So consider squads of three of them roaming around tearing apart fades, skulks, gorges and lerks. It was about 10 minutes into the game and we had already secured 1 hive and we marched to the 2nd and 3rd without pause. Wave of death indeed.
For whatever reason, it is pretty much impossible to win as an alien right now, at least on Coronas. If they have a good or even decent commander (Like Fire or Nitro) the aliens are as good as dead. Even if they're stupid and let me in the comm chair, its pretty much over. I at least give the aliens a fighting chance before we automatically win.
So respawn time is a factor. Skulk survivability took a nose dive. Something happened to the skulk "bite" too. Its just acting weird, as marines aren't dieing like they should. (This might be because I'm dieing far quicker now). Rushing marines in this game could conquer a land war in Asia in the winter.
On a sidenote, 1.02 seemed to be pretty balanced in terms of power. It just depended if the Marines had a competent commander or not. Aliens are a little lucky in that regard.
I noticed that, but blamed it on lag(>150ms). What is your average ping?
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1.03 took down lvl 3 carap skulks from 20 to 18 shots. Not too bad an effect, but notice that 10/14/17/18 means that a skulk doesn't gain much from going from lvl 2 to 3 carapace. However, commanders have probably wisened up to the fact that upgrading armor just one level gives a 50% longer life to their marines. And THAT makes a huge difference.
Also, sieges and GL working was a great boost to the marines as well ... getting a working bilebomb and xenocide doesn't really help the aliens much, as the game is pretty much over by then.
As to team sizes, with 24 player servers, each resources nozzle gives you about 30 resources each. Grab those 11 players, split them into 3 groups, just sit on a nozzle each ... 120 resources per minute. That's just ... a lot.
In an 8 player game, you can only control two res in that fashion, and it would net you only 60 resources per minute.
So, in a 12v12 game, the marines not only get MORE resources per nozzle, but they can also more easily CONTROL more resources.
There is a fundemental difference between the value of resources to the Kharaa and the marines. If the kharaa gets lots of resources, they can use it to build ... eh, chambers?. The marines, on the other hand, can use it to build tech, turrets and siege guns. Guess who wins?
So, there is a fundemental imbalance in the game, making large games very much balance towards the marines. In 1.0, the game was balanced pretty much around 4v4. 1.01 made it balanced for 8v8. 12v12 is still a marine win barring an incompetent commander or a huge skill difference out on the field.
I have a hard time seeing how to avoid this without adding some kind explicit team-size resource multiplier that make marines have more resources for small teams and relativly less resources for large teams.
That would keep the pace of the game down a bit.
Alternativly, one could ensure the Kharaa can keep pace with the increased marine speed by somehow increasing the number of resources the gorges gets. But this would increase the game pace - to compensate for the increased marine speed in a 12v12 game, the second hive should be going up at the 5 minute mark, about. Not much left of the early game then.
I don't think an increased pace is called far, so I'd say slow down the marines instead.
In my opinion the only solution is to get rid of the teamsize-based resource scaling <i>altogether</i>, and live with the fact that high-tech equipment will be more limited on large marine teams. It doesn't matter much for aliens, their rps are wasted in large quantities anyway.
To combat the marine rush (which is independent from the resource problem) I would start out the first hive with a couple of pre-built O-chambers. Anti-rush measures are a pretty standard thing in RTSs these days. (e.g. towncentres in AoE/AoM)