While this thread has gone on and on, and just had a little thing I want to ask. Have any commanders tried targetting the alien resource tower at the start instead of the hive? If you're attacking right at the beginning, none of the aliens will have enough resources to go gorge and then build a resource tower. The resource tower has a lot less has a lot less hiotpoints than a hive, and a lot of aliens will probably be a bit slower in responding to "Resource tower under attack" than "Our hive is under attack!". With no resource towers and no resources, the aliens are stuck as skulks, and it shouldn't be too hard for the marines to win from there. I don't want to encourage cheap tactics, but I figure that if this works, some one is bound to figure it out eventually.
Have to say there are some excellent posts here. I know the topic didnt start on the aimbot thing, I myself am a great shot with the LMG,LA i dont need HMG HA, GA, its all about stopping and listening, and leaving large spaces between you and incoming skulks. I do believe a lot of people are getting more skilled and there many, many more skilled than I, but the last couple days I have had some terrible luck vs Marines and LMGs , I will wait and see. I wish I wasnt about to declare bankruptcy, as I would get a couple decent servers up and get some decent people to admin them, cause the cheats will become rampant just as they were in CS, especially with the frustration of them having to work together, instead of running off alone. Im not claiming they are here now. I remember wondering how my own cousin started kicking my but in CS and I wondered WTF, took a bit of coaxing , but he admitted to aimbot, and wallhack, and said once you tried it it was hard to go back. I stopped playing CS with him. And he may come to NS, get the hint?
<!--QuoteBegin--Kilmster+Dec 2 2002, 06:31 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Kilmster @ Dec 2 2002, 06:31 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->This would mean that if you had 2 hives, and your fade times 3 +1 lerk combo rush failed, the aliens could be assaulting the position again faster than you could say "willy-nilly" (ie: you would spawn 4 aliens at once.) <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Not really. A marine can be converted into an HA/HMG instantly; all Kharaa have to wait not only to get their upgrades, but to evolve into a Fade or Lerk in the first place.
Consider: Presume the marines have built 4 IPs, and the aliens have 2 hives.
A group of 4 marines (1 HA/HMG, 3 LMGs) gets killed. They all spawn simultaneously, almost immediately. The commander drops an HA and an HMG and the group is back to full strength. With a phase gate they can be right back in the thick of things in less than ten seconds. Even if they pause long enough to fill up on ammo (which they don't have to), they're out in the thick of things inside 20-30 seconds.
A group of 3 Fades and a Lerk gets killed. Two of them spawn immediately (and in different locations); one of them starts evolving to Fade (assuming he has the RPs), one to Lerk. Some time later two more spawn and start evolving to Fade. When the first two finish evolving they start upgrading (times 2, for the two upgrades they have). They have to wait for the second pair to finish evolving and do <b>their</b> upgrades as well. They don't have phase gates, either, so the Fades have to slog to the combat front.
Measuring the time-to-return for four upgraded marines against four upgraded non-Skulk Kharaa makes it very obvious that the marines get reinforcements vastly more quickly. If Kharaa spawned in pairs, it would alleviate the problem; in the above case, all four Kharaa would have spawned at the same time. They still would all have to evolve and upgrade twice, and still have to walk to the front, but at least they're not waiting on the rest of their backup to be spawned.
Four marines can respawn, re-equip, and transport in the time it takes two Kharaa to spawn, evolve, and start upgrading. It's not a fair balance IMO.
Did it in Bast, but I'm a really good shot and our base consisted of 3 turrets, a spawn and an armoury. I have gotten to the point when I'm not happy If I can't kill 2 skulks on one clip of LMG.
so far...what I have seen especially in 1.03 so far with the armor fixes on aliens...is that most marine teams know the aliens will probably rush off the bat and so sit tight in the spawn for about a minuute or two and wait for the rush. With the alien team decemated in some cases for at least a minute or more the marines are then free to wander the map, lock down a mess of nodes and then assualt the hive. The few times I have been alien the marines rush the main hive or siege it with in the first 10 minuutes of game play. I find this sad because as a commander...I don't like the aliens having two hives...fades chew my troops up and cause problems...so...bugs me : ). But theres something cheap about a game lasting all of 10 minutes so...i don't advocate early rushes...especially since a good alien team will then bum rush the few marines there and slaughter them.
However what I recommand is shorter alien respawn times...in case the team is decimated like that...would help to some degree. This spawn time could be expanded to the normal amount as the second and then third hive goes up. Would make more sense for it to go the other way but...considering the need right now. Second to change the resource set up for the aliens...would be easier if there was a way for the rest of the alien team to give thier RP's to a gorge...I have seen a mod of types for this in some servers...where by skulks can either hit F4 and dump thier RP's and then return or give them to the hive...which stores them till someone else picks them up.
I don't think it's a balance issue as much as a play issue...I can tell you know that a good alien team working together would easily demicate marines trying to rush or siege...the problem still is that a lot of them are new or still don't work to well together...
Marine rushes are terribly unbalanced right now. As it is, marines can win a game in a matter of minutes, and there is little to nothing the aliens can do about it. I've come to this conclusion after being involved in quite a few games on a private server where the main hive is rushed and killed before the aliens have any chance of putting up a second one. Marines move to a point just outside the alien hive, set up a comm chair, lay down spawn after spawn, and rush the hive until it is dead. There is little the aliens can do to prevent them from getting the buildings up, so the only counter seems to be building turrets in the first hive right away. The problem is that the aliens don't have enough resources at the beginning of the game to put up a solid defense, and certainly can't save for hive or even defend a second hive space well enough. Basically, the aliens can protect the hive they have, or protect one of the hives they don't have, but not both. Each defensive strategy also requires a comittment at the outset of the game, often too early to tell if the marines are rushing an empty hive or the live one. If the aliens pick the wrong one, they have lost the game before it has even begun.
Building a new command chair needs to be looked at very closely, as marines are currently abandoning the base given to them as if it were (and in these rush strategies is) completely unimportant to them.
Well since I originally posted this, I have played a few games., Though I think that with 1.03 and a few other factors, marine rushing is now too powerful, I have seen it stopped dead. A few times as commander I have had some not-so-L33t troops and the skulks continued to decimate us even though we vastly outnumbered them after the initial rush. Because many were still respawning. The aliens played it incredibly smart and halted our initial attempts at a rush, of course after a few mins I changed gears and we grabbed two hives (apparently they were preparing for the rush at the main hive) and after many long battles upgraded to hmg/ha and the occassional Gl and wiped them out. But they did stop the rush, It took all of them working as a team and holding key points. I think that now the main problem is, apart from the intial problems I already mentioned, that a well skilled team of marines can rush and win almost every time. Ok so maybe its a good thing that the dev team says newbies should go marines first... <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> Anyways before the patch I would expend an entire round to take down a skulk, now I can take down two and still have a few bullets leftover. Texas Ranger
<!--QuoteBegin--DrFurious+Dec 4 2002, 12:00 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (DrFurious @ Dec 4 2002, 12:00 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Building a new command chair needs to be looked at very closely, as marines are currently abandoning the base given to them as if it were (and in these rush strategies is) completely unimportant to them.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Hmmm... That's a very interesting point. The fact is, while the command chair is one of the more expensive structures, it really isn't prohibitively so. It might be worth it to make building a new command chair higher up in the tech tree or even raising the cost a little. Other than that, there's no real motivation for the marines to stay in the spawn other than the distress beacon. Making them build a couple of support structures before they can build a new base would indeed slow down the so-called marine rush, but I'm not entirely sure that this is the only way to go.
I'm pretty sure you can come up with a variety of ways to make the marine spawn more vital and important to the marines. Right now it really is just a corner of the map with a resource node.
I have played against and with some GREAT aliens. ]l[, -=GDI=-, some of the XP ppl are above average.
On a larger server, on eclipse/nancy, there just arent enough places to hide the 7 skulks you are going to need to _all_ ambush (attack at the same time) the 9 marines with shotguns. Which will only end up killing 4 marines at most anyways.
Logically, you should be able to 'rush the marine spawn' as a counter, but on eclipse or nancy it's not feasible...and even if you do manage to kill off all the marine buildings after 4-7 aliens are wasted on the way in, 5+ marines with shotguns will destroy the hive regardless if they have a spawn or not.
On the Ep!k servers, I have seen 12 on 12 seriously good people play. The marines dont even have to discuss how to win. They just do it and it's not difficult.
][gz members, Drew, sigma`, kiwi[ts], Justice, Mercy, ]F3n1x[ members, etc. These ppl play on the Ep!k server all the time and they have no trouble overrunning the aliens every time. I'll set up a 12v12 server specifically for demonstrating this, this weekend and post some demos.
Comments
right click > resorce management > gather / dont gather
or something...
Have any commanders tried targetting the alien resource tower at the start instead of the hive? If you're attacking right at the beginning, none of the aliens will have enough resources to go gorge and then build a resource tower. The resource tower has a lot less has a lot less hiotpoints than a hive, and a lot of aliens will probably be a bit slower in responding to "Resource tower under attack" than "Our hive is under attack!".
With no resource towers and no resources, the aliens are stuck as skulks, and it shouldn't be too hard for the marines to win from there.
I don't want to encourage cheap tactics, but I figure that if this works, some one is bound to figure it out eventually.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not really. A marine can be converted into an HA/HMG instantly; all Kharaa have to wait not only to get their upgrades, but to evolve into a Fade or Lerk in the first place.
Consider:
Presume the marines have built 4 IPs, and the aliens have 2 hives.
A group of 4 marines (1 HA/HMG, 3 LMGs) gets killed. They all spawn simultaneously, almost immediately. The commander drops an HA and an HMG and the group is back to full strength. With a phase gate they can be right back in the thick of things in less than ten seconds. Even if they pause long enough to fill up on ammo (which they don't have to), they're out in the thick of things inside 20-30 seconds.
A group of 3 Fades and a Lerk gets killed. Two of them spawn immediately (and in different locations); one of them starts evolving to Fade (assuming he has the RPs), one to Lerk. Some time later two more spawn and start evolving to Fade. When the first two finish evolving they start upgrading (times 2, for the two upgrades they have). They have to wait for the second pair to finish evolving and do <b>their</b> upgrades as well. They don't have phase gates, either, so the Fades have to slog to the combat front.
Measuring the time-to-return for four upgraded marines against four upgraded non-Skulk Kharaa makes it very obvious that the marines get reinforcements vastly more quickly. If Kharaa spawned in pairs, it would alleviate the problem; in the above case, all four Kharaa would have spawned at the same time. They still would all have to evolve and upgrade twice, and still have to walk to the front, but at least they're not waiting on the rest of their backup to be spawned.
Four marines can respawn, re-equip, and transport in the time it takes two Kharaa to spawn, evolve, and start upgrading. It's not a fair balance IMO.
However what I recommand is shorter alien respawn times...in case the team is decimated like that...would help to some degree. This spawn time could be expanded to the normal amount as the second and then third hive goes up. Would make more sense for it to go the other way but...considering the need right now. Second to change the resource set up for the aliens...would be easier if there was a way for the rest of the alien team to give thier RP's to a gorge...I have seen a mod of types for this in some servers...where by skulks can either hit F4 and dump thier RP's and then return or give them to the hive...which stores them till someone else picks them up.
I don't think it's a balance issue as much as a play issue...I can tell you know that a good alien team working together would easily demicate marines trying to rush or siege...the problem still is that a lot of them are new or still don't work to well together...
Building a new command chair needs to be looked at very closely, as marines are currently abandoning the base given to them as if it were (and in these rush strategies is) completely unimportant to them.
Anyways before the patch I would expend an entire round to take down a skulk, now I can take down two and still have a few bullets leftover.
Texas Ranger
Hmmm... That's a very interesting point. The fact is, while the command chair is one of the more expensive structures, it really isn't prohibitively so. It might be worth it to make building a new command chair higher up in the tech tree or even raising the cost a little. Other than that, there's no real motivation for the marines to stay in the spawn other than the distress beacon. Making them build a couple of support structures before they can build a new base would indeed slow down the so-called marine rush, but I'm not entirely sure that this is the only way to go.
I'm pretty sure you can come up with a variety of ways to make the marine spawn more vital and important to the marines. Right now it really is just a corner of the map with a resource node.
On a larger server, on eclipse/nancy, there just arent enough places to hide the 7 skulks you are going to need to _all_ ambush (attack at the same time) the 9 marines with shotguns. Which will only end up killing 4 marines at most anyways.
Logically, you should be able to 'rush the marine spawn' as a counter, but on eclipse or nancy it's not feasible...and even if you do manage to kill off all the marine buildings after 4-7 aliens are wasted on the way in, 5+ marines with shotguns will destroy the hive regardless if they have a spawn or not.
On the Ep!k servers, I have seen 12 on 12 seriously good people play. The marines dont even have to discuss how to win. They just do it and it's not difficult.
][gz members, Drew, sigma`, kiwi[ts], Justice, Mercy, ]F3n1x[ members, etc. These ppl play on the Ep!k server all the time and they have no trouble overrunning the aliens every time. I'll set up a 12v12 server specifically for demonstrating this, this weekend and post some demos.