<!--quoteo(post=1928360:date=Apr 21 2012, 10:26 PM:name=paradoxum)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (paradoxum @ Apr 21 2012, 10:26 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928360"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Games made for the competitive scene end up being dull and predictable for the sake of balance<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is common knowledge so there's no need to explain it.
Every building/structure should be somehow leverageable in at least one viable winning strategy. If turrets really were/are unnecessary in serious competitive play, then they should be revisited or removed completely.
If turrets are reworked correctly, there should be no need to add a turret count limit -- which seems arbitrary and more of a bandaid than a true fix.
<!--quoteo(post=1928365:date=Apr 22 2012, 12:51 PM:name=Racer1)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Racer1 @ Apr 22 2012, 12:51 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928365"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Every building/structure should be somehow leverageable in at least one viable winning strategy. If turrets really were/are unnecessary in serious competitive play, then they should be revisited or removed completely.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think UWE wants to tailor every aspect of the game towards competitive play. Not everybody that buys this game is going to be looking to play it ultra seriously. You need strategies for noobs as well as pros.
Wouldn't you agree the competitive-scene hasn't been serviced a lot as of yet by NS2, I don't think the lack of casual-play is something to worry about in this game.
<!--quoteo(post=1928326:date=Apr 21 2012, 07:09 PM:name=Strayan (NS2HD))--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Strayan (NS2HD) @ Apr 21 2012, 07:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928326"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's very frustrating to watch public games degenerate into sentry spam. We will need to do something about it, but haven't settled on a solution yet. All suggestions welcome!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
My idea: Give mature Shades an EMP ability that targets power nodes from a distance. The EMP would disable the lights and all buildings in the room for 5-10 seconds, allowing aliens to rush in and break a turtle.
<!--quoteo(post=1928326:date=Apr 21 2012, 07:09 PM:name=Strayan (NS2HD))--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Strayan (NS2HD) @ Apr 21 2012, 07:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928326"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's very frustrating to watch public games degenerate into sentry spam. We will need to do something about it, but haven't settled on a solution yet. All suggestions welcome!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It wasn't, NS1 showed the futility of turrets pretty much. Now I'm not saying they can't be made to work proper, but so far NS2 has not shown this, it feels more like a repeat-mistake of NS1. We're a stubborn bunch aren't we.
Abilities like nanoshield and crag healing can be used to delay things while players respond, without having a bunch of aimbots covering the map. Coincidentally, that's how it worked once the metagame of NS1 was developed (with electrification, defense chambers etc).
To check Hydras against Sentries is not easy in my opinion. Marines can build ARC's and with they the marines can kill many Hydras very fast. Aliens have no ability or tech which do mutch areadamage like this. But I think, after playing a lot of games, the marines need sometimes many sentries to get mapcontrole and get the chance to attack alienbases.
twilitebluebug stalkerJoin Date: 2003-02-04Member: 13116Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
edited April 2012
Aliens just need to learn to use all the tools at their disposal to defeat most Sentry farms.
Lerk (Spores) and Onos (Stomp) can severely disrupt Sentries.
Khammander can activate Cloak to allow most of the team to sneak into the Marine base, now that Observatory no longer removes cloak automatically. Using Cysts and Whips to distract Sentries also work wonders.
There are possible problems I'd like to see resolved, such as Skulks and Gorges being nearly useless against Sentry farms.
I think UWE should just try experimenting, even if it is totally crazy.
I think the fundamental question they raise is:
How can marines have map control without becoming too dominant? I think this is really down to a ranged structure, vs melee alien units and could be solved by doing the following:
<b>1. A very powerful ranged sentry, low FOV, but expensive. Acts more like a door to block corridor paths.</b>
<b>2. A 'Electro post' that fires electricity at alien units who come within range. </b>
This would be a fantastic answer (imo) because the electric posts would allow aliens to move through base areas, and work out weak spots in base without being shot all the time, but yet can't destroy buildings easily with melee attacks. Skulks are really the number one problem in terms of map control, and now the Lerk has bile bomb this could work nicely.
Also, the weaker the power node, the less effective they could be.
Having them as upgrades on buildings would be bad (as per NS1), as it means everything is covered and you have to think more about placement.
The ranged sentry could not be spammed because of cost (and perhaps gets used a lot less in games), and would be only useful in corridors to stop aliens pushing certain paths through the map and force them to take longer routes to get round. They should be like the ones in Aliens. Noisy so you know they are there, but kill anything in front of them.
Sort of like the ARC but for aliens, and when placed cause a real nuisance.
I imagine the units numbers you may see in an average game at any one time would be:
Sentry - 1/2 max Electro Post - 4 in each marine held room
Also, I think the 'gattling gun' sound before they fully spin up sounds so much cooler.
How about the powernode has only a limited amount of power. So if you build too much buildings in one place the light starts to flickr and new buildings won't be powered anymore.
mybe giving the turrets to the fps players isnt a bad idea, especialy in pub games, you would most likely see randomly placed single turrets and lets face it, a lone turret is no threath to anyone. even skulks run and jump past them from the front.
a mine is enough to kill a skulk for 5 pres and has roughly the same use as a turret, taking into account that a turret covers a bigger area and is less deadly i would say 10pres is a good starting price, also taking into account that i am biased, because i like turrets in general it most likely would be something like 20-30 pres.
carrieing a turret should slow the marine, which makes him easy prey. wether or not the turret should be droped on death so another marine can pick it up is open for debate.
as a bonus i would like the following tweaks for turrets: 1. more range(they dont even cover a hallway from one end to the other) 2. less accuracy(im thinking like lerkspikes) both make sense in my head seeing that the model clearly indicates a gun that has a range greater than 15 meters and the short rotating barrels say: high dps, low accuracy. just imagine a skulk or lerk moving fast infront of a wall and all the cool decals behind them from missing shots, quite cineastic.
PS: it should also remedy the fact that turrets are only used lategame for turteling. with them costing pres you would more likely see some midgame and in the lategame when marines are loosing and down to 1 extractor it takes four times as long (now 80sec. > then 320sec at 10pres or 640sec at 20pres) to get the res for a turret. thereby negating lategame turteling.
UWE should really not be touching sentries until they address hit reg/performance and higher lifeform dominance. Marines often NEED sentries to stay in the game, to not acknowledge that would be a grave mistake. Sentries can keep marines in the game against the onslaught of bilebombing lerks, and they can keep marines in the game in face of multiple early fades or onos. Maybe when they address 3 min fades and 8 min onos should they also look at sentries, but until they do, marines need them.
Sentry spam is without a doubt THE most frustrating thing with Natural Selection 2 and has been since I first started playing. It wasn't so noticeable when gorges had an overpowered bile bomb but that was understandable.
The simple solution which I think dePara actually made a mod for once on the HBZ servers is to only be able to construct 2 or 3 sentry guns max in each area (DC, FC, Atrium etc). I think the devs/play testers often miss the sentry gun spam issue because they don't play with pub commanders as often as us. This is a simple fix which should have been introduced a long long time ago.
As a side note, the only time I use sentry guns is for defending a phase gate that is outside of a marine spawn point, it is needed as aliens can easily lock it down camping inside the phase gate which is another issue I think the devs need to look into.
2-3 sentries can not even cover most entrances into a room usually, and often you need at least 2-3 sentries aimed at one entrance to provide enough deterrence for fades and onos. I think 4 - 5 per area is a much more reasonable cap to be honest. That's still far from 'spam'.
IMO the biggest problem with sentries is the fact that not all aliens can kill them. If you are a skulk and you run across 2-3 sentries you just need to run away. IMO sentries should be weak without any marines supporting them, so if they leave them unattended the aliens can easily clear them out. Marines can kill hydras with every weapon and they are fine and don't seem to be much of a problem. Aliens need to have specialized units to kill sentries and even then, the sentries do too much damage and take too long to kill.
I remember when the only valid weapon for killing hydras was the GL and it pretty much forced the marines to get it every game because 3 hydras with a gorge healing them was unstoppable. People complain that the hydras are underpowered now but I think they're fine. If you position them correctly then they can really create choke points for the marines and with a few aliens covering they are pretty effective.
IMO sentries should be nerfed big time. They are the biggest pain in the ass on public games. They just turn every game into a stalemate situation and it is extremely frustrating and boring to play.
The thing is Wilson, the design needs to be fundamentally changed.
If you make them more useless, people will just spam them a lot more. Cost will have to drop as they will not be as useful, and that will have to happen otherwise using them becomes pointless.
<!--quoteo(post=1928412:date=Apr 22 2012, 10:30 AM:name=Runteh)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Runteh @ Apr 22 2012, 10:30 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928412"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->.... Also, the weaker the power node, the less effective they could be. ...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That sounds really awsome and should be tryied out! A damaged powergenerator can provide 100% energy. Would bring more depth in the power/nanogrid system.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Lets think about another way.
We have different types of coms right now: These are the two basic ones:
"The supporter": He do everything to keep his marines alive (drop ammo and medpack, scan, give nanoshield, build forward obs and armory,..) Supporter coms didnt build much turrets, cause the marines are there "turrets". These coms are the real coms for me, cause they have an eye on the situation normally.
"The builder": As the name said, he build turrets, turrets and turrets. Normally these coms didnt support the marines. Marines are only building-drones for him. "Builder" send you to every RT under attack and are unable to finish games. With a builder-com, games took forever cause he think its important to secure every resnode. He normally do that with: .... tattaa .. turrets.
How about extra abilitys for "supporter"? Maybe something like: If an defined amount of pres was spend on picked up ammo or medpacks the supporter com get an extrabuff on something. Dont know, something like that. So, builder coms have an disadvantage and try to be an supporter hopefully. Or every build turret lowered the pres income for the team.
<!--quoteo(post=1928433:date=Apr 22 2012, 06:33 AM:name=Xarius)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Xarius @ Apr 22 2012, 06:33 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928433"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Marines often NEED sentries to stay in the game<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can attest to this in terms of playing in public servers. Every single game I've commanded has either been successful because I used some amount of turret farming (for map control and/or to compensate for ineffective players), or has been unsuccessful because I tried to forego turrets completely and rely on getting all the guns/upgrades people cry for all the time.
In the few scrims I've played, turret farming would have been impossible (because the aliens actually attacked our resources effectively unlike in a pub), and useless (because they'll kill us with bile/spores/stomp, just later on).
<!--quoteo(post=1928495:date=Apr 22 2012, 11:04 AM:name=peregrinus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (peregrinus @ Apr 22 2012, 11:04 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928495"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->3 per node is a fair number, and gives aliens a challenge if they're placed well.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"N per node" doesn't work because it creates a dependency in how maps are made, and that end of the bargain won't be kept up by mappers. The power node system is already really unclear (look at the server room/control/elevator/observation part of tram and try powering different spots from the 'obvious' node...)
Like Runteh said, you have to look at the design of turrets from the ground up, and <i>then </i>come up with your solutions.
Well, bile bomb is, while it is effective, still not that useful against sentries. It just takes to long to take them down, even if you can hit them without taking damage, you'll have to be bilebombing them all the time.
The problem comes into play when we are talking about a large base, it is hard to avoid the marines and take down the sentries. This is often due to a lack of teamplay on public servers (hero lerk goes into the base and thinks he can take down everything with 8 marins sitting there) insteading of having some sort of organized rush. Also there is a problem with onos vs sentries, he still takes considerable damage, I am not sure how to balance that, but it could be looked into aswell.
Sentries should not be nerfed or removed to uselessness. Even right now, it is a heavy investment to place a sentry; those 10 Res you'd rather be spending on upgrades. However, once everything is maxed, there is not much to do with TRES, everything that is there involves some sort of spam: ARC Spam, Sentry SPAM, MAC Spam. Some late game res sink could help with the problem.
Lastly, a solution could be to have some heavy hitting anti-building thing on alien team again (Tier 3 tech!). Probably something that has a AoE, so you NEED to space out sentries, which means less sentries, or easily loose all. Another solution might be xenocide... skulks running in to blow up sentries?! :D Basically some ARC type thing on alien team, whatever it may be.
<u>@ aritifcal sentry limit:</u>
A 4 sentry limit is very superfical and pretty bad. The most important reason is that depending on the map the limit may work very well or may not work at all.
To effectivly place sentries, you'll need at least 2 covering each other and maybe some extra ones covering the power node.
In addition, depending on the layout of the room you may not be able to cover it at all with 4 sentries, because there are a lot of obstacles and sentries have very limited effectiveness, the room also may be very large as it streches half accross the map, so 4 sentries may not be enough. On the other hand you might also have a open, box like room which you can easily cover with 2 sentries, or maybe even one.
<!--quoteo(post=1928479:date=Apr 22 2012, 04:29 PM:name=dePARA)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (dePARA @ Apr 22 2012, 04:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928479"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Lets think about another way.
We have different types of coms right now: These are the two basic ones:
"The supporter": He do everything to keep his marines alive (drop ammo and medpack, scan, give nanoshield, build forward obs and armory,..) Supporter coms didnt build much turrets, cause the marines are there "turrets". These coms are the real coms for me, cause they have an eye on the situation normally.
"The builder": As the name said, he build turrets, turrets and turrets. Normally these coms didnt support the marines. Marines are only building-drones for him. "Builder" send you to every RT under attack and are unable to finish games. With a builder-com, games took forever cause he think its important to secure every resnode. He normally do that with: .... tattaa .. turrets.
How about extra abilitys for "supporter"? Maybe something like: If an defined amount of pres was spend on picked up ammo or medpacks the supporter com get an extrabuff on something. Dont know, something like that. So, builder coms have an disadvantage and try to be an supporter hopefully. Or every build turret lowered the pres income for the team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can do both easily. Turrets ARE required to hold postions, maybe not every single RT, but at the very least you need 2 turrets, a pg and an armory if you want to secure a tech point. They can also provide good support when people siege a hive, so they can fall back safely to an armory without having to worry about getting raped by skulks.
Also it's not true that building makes game last forever, IF he absolutly doesn't support his team, you can easily take map control, take marine RTs down and/or rush their base (with turrets: lerk rush).
Despite that, supporting is very powerful already. Medpacks, ammo, scan and nanoshield provide massive boosts and I dont think that we need another powerful ability.
How about introducing <i>support</i> to NS2? Every other RTS game have it. In a way, now when I think of it, there already is; the cap on how many "units" (players) there can be in a game... So why not restrict the amount of structures (at least the damage-dealing ones)? This could be done in a lot of ways I guess, but why not use the already existant Power Node system? A Power Node could be made to support X amount of structures at the same time (viewable in the Comm's GUI). Sentries could use <b>a lot</b> of <i>power</i>. Voilá. As a bonus there will be no more insane Marine turtling to prolong a lost game until the server crashes.
In general I think the amount of structures should be decreased because fewer structures means less cluttered maps and increased performance (even if the performance is going to increase anyway with more optimization, it won't hurt). To achieve this you could make Sentries (and ARC's), Hydras, Whips cost a lot more, but also have more health and do more damage. Two Sentries being as effective as four or something like that. Remember the movie <i>Aliens</i>? Just two well-placed sentries sealed of a corridor, they didn't need a room full of them...
What if the turrets could heat up? After 40 shots they are too hot and need a cooldown to shoot again. As far as I can see the only have 1 barrel so heating up could really happen.
So if they can not nonstop shoot and the aliens could provoke a masscooldown on the sentrys and then bring in the mass.
Comments
This is common knowledge so there's no need to explain it.
If turrets are reworked correctly, there should be no need to add a turret count limit -- which seems arbitrary and more of a bandaid than a true fix.
I don't think UWE wants to tailor every aspect of the game towards competitive play. Not everybody that buys this game is going to be looking to play it ultra seriously. You need strategies for noobs as well as pros.
My idea:
Give mature Shades an EMP ability that targets power nodes from a distance. The EMP would disable the lights and all buildings in the room for 5-10 seconds, allowing aliens to rush in and break a turtle.
<a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=113956&hl=" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...=113956&hl=</a>
I like how your suggestion was utterly refuted in the first reply
But I think, after playing a lot of games, the marines need sometimes many sentries to get mapcontrole and get the chance to attack alienbases.
Greetz Cetme
Lerk (Spores) and Onos (Stomp) can severely disrupt Sentries.
Khammander can activate Cloak to allow most of the team to sneak into the Marine base, now that Observatory no longer removes cloak automatically. Using Cysts and Whips to distract Sentries also work wonders.
There are possible problems I'd like to see resolved, such as Skulks and Gorges being nearly useless against Sentry farms.
I think the fundamental question they raise is:
How can marines have map control without becoming too dominant? I think this is really down to a ranged structure, vs melee alien units and could be solved by doing the following:
<b>1. A very powerful ranged sentry, low FOV, but expensive. Acts more like a door to block corridor paths.</b>
<b>2. A 'Electro post' that fires electricity at alien units who come within range. </b>
This would be a fantastic answer (imo) because the electric posts would allow aliens to move through base areas, and work out weak spots in base without being shot all the time, but yet can't destroy buildings easily with melee attacks. Skulks are really the number one problem in terms of map control, and now the Lerk has bile bomb this could work nicely.
Also, the weaker the power node, the less effective they could be.
Having them as upgrades on buildings would be bad (as per NS1), as it means everything is covered and you have to think more about placement.
The ranged sentry could not be spammed because of cost (and perhaps gets used a lot less in games), and would be only useful in corridors to stop aliens pushing certain paths through the map and force them to take longer routes to get round. They should be like the ones in Aliens. Noisy so you know they are there, but kill anything in front of them.
Sort of like the ARC but for aliens, and when placed cause a real nuisance.
I imagine the units numbers you may see in an average game at any one time would be:
Sentry - 1/2 max
Electro Post - 4 in each marine held room
Also, I think the 'gattling gun' sound before they fully spin up sounds so much cooler.
So if you build too much buildings in one place the light starts to flickr and new buildings
won't be powered anymore.
a mine is enough to kill a skulk for 5 pres and has roughly the same use as a turret, taking into account that a turret covers a bigger area and is less deadly i would say 10pres is a good starting price, also taking into account that i am biased, because i like turrets in general it most likely would be something like 20-30 pres.
carrieing a turret should slow the marine, which makes him easy prey. wether or not the turret should be droped on death so another marine can pick it up is open for debate.
as a bonus i would like the following tweaks for turrets: 1. more range(they dont even cover a hallway from one end to the other) 2. less accuracy(im thinking like lerkspikes)
both make sense in my head seeing that the model clearly indicates a gun that has a range greater than 15 meters and the short rotating barrels say: high dps, low accuracy. just imagine a skulk or lerk moving fast infront of a wall and all the cool decals behind them from missing shots, quite cineastic.
PS: it should also remedy the fact that turrets are only used lategame for turteling. with them costing pres you would more likely see some midgame and in the lategame when marines are loosing and down to 1 extractor it takes four times as long (now 80sec. > then 320sec at 10pres or 640sec at 20pres) to get the res for a turret. thereby negating lategame turteling.
The simple solution which I think dePara actually made a mod for once on the HBZ servers is to only be able to construct 2 or 3 sentry guns max in each area (DC, FC, Atrium etc). I think the devs/play testers often miss the sentry gun spam issue because they don't play with pub commanders as often as us. This is a simple fix which should have been introduced a long long time ago.
As a side note, the only time I use sentry guns is for defending a phase gate that is outside of a marine spawn point, it is needed as aliens can easily lock it down camping inside the phase gate which is another issue I think the devs need to look into.
I remember when the only valid weapon for killing hydras was the GL and it pretty much forced the marines to get it every game because 3 hydras with a gorge healing them was unstoppable. People complain that the hydras are underpowered now but I think they're fine. If you position them correctly then they can really create choke points for the marines and with a few aliens covering they are pretty effective.
IMO sentries should be nerfed big time. They are the biggest pain in the ass on public games. They just turn every game into a stalemate situation and it is extremely frustrating and boring to play.
If you make them more useless, people will just spam them a lot more. Cost will have to drop as they will not be as useful, and that will have to happen otherwise using them becomes pointless.
Also, the weaker the power node, the less effective they could be.
...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That sounds really awsome and should be tryied out!
A damaged powergenerator can provide 100% energy.
Would bring more depth in the power/nanogrid system.
We have different types of coms right now:
These are the two basic ones:
"The supporter": He do everything to keep his marines alive (drop ammo and medpack, scan, give nanoshield, build forward obs and armory,..)
Supporter coms didnt build much turrets, cause the marines are there "turrets". These coms are the real coms for me, cause they have an eye on the situation normally.
"The builder": As the name said, he build turrets, turrets and turrets. Normally these coms didnt support the marines. Marines are only building-drones for him. "Builder" send you to every RT under attack and are unable to finish games.
With a builder-com, games took forever cause he think its important to secure every resnode. He normally do that with: .... tattaa .. turrets.
How about extra abilitys for "supporter"?
Maybe something like: If an defined amount of pres was spend on picked up ammo or medpacks the supporter com get an extrabuff on something. Dont know, something like that.
So, builder coms have an disadvantage and try to be an supporter hopefully.
Or every build turret lowered the pres income for the team.
I can attest to this in terms of playing in public servers. Every single game I've commanded has either been successful because I used some amount of turret farming (for map control and/or to compensate for ineffective players), or has been unsuccessful because I tried to forego turrets completely and rely on getting all the guns/upgrades people cry for all the time.
In the few scrims I've played, turret farming would have been impossible (because the aliens actually attacked our resources effectively unlike in a pub), and useless (because they'll kill us with bile/spores/stomp, just later on).
<!--quoteo(post=1928495:date=Apr 22 2012, 11:04 AM:name=peregrinus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (peregrinus @ Apr 22 2012, 11:04 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928495"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->3 per node is a fair number, and gives aliens a challenge if they're placed well.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"N per node" doesn't work because it creates a dependency in how maps are made, and that end of the bargain won't be kept up by mappers. The power node system is already really unclear (look at the server room/control/elevator/observation part of tram and try powering different spots from the 'obvious' node...)
Like Runteh said, you have to look at the design of turrets from the ground up, and <i>then </i>come up with your solutions.
The problem comes into play when we are talking about a large base, it is hard to avoid the marines and take down the sentries. This is often due to a lack of teamplay on public servers (hero lerk goes into the base and thinks he can take down everything with 8 marins sitting there) insteading of having some sort of organized rush.
Also there is a problem with onos vs sentries, he still takes considerable damage, I am not sure how to balance that, but it could be looked into aswell.
Sentries should not be nerfed or removed to uselessness. Even right now, it is a heavy investment to place a sentry; those 10 Res you'd rather be spending on upgrades. However, once everything is maxed, there is not much to do with TRES, everything that is there involves some sort of spam: ARC Spam, Sentry SPAM, MAC Spam. Some late game res sink could help with the problem.
Lastly, a solution could be to have some heavy hitting anti-building thing on alien team again (Tier 3 tech!). Probably something that has a AoE, so you NEED to space out sentries, which means less sentries, or easily loose all. Another solution might be xenocide... skulks running in to blow up sentries?! :D
Basically some ARC type thing on alien team, whatever it may be.
<u>@ aritifcal sentry limit:</u>
A 4 sentry limit is very superfical and pretty bad. The most important reason is that depending on the map the limit may work very well or may not work at all.
To effectivly place sentries, you'll need at least 2 covering each other and maybe some extra ones covering the power node.
In addition, depending on the layout of the room you may not be able to cover it at all with 4 sentries, because there are a lot of obstacles and sentries have very limited effectiveness, the room also may be very large as it streches half accross the map, so 4 sentries may not be enough.
On the other hand you might also have a open, box like room which you can easily cover with 2 sentries, or maybe even one.
<!--quoteo(post=1928479:date=Apr 22 2012, 04:29 PM:name=dePARA)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (dePARA @ Apr 22 2012, 04:29 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1928479"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Lets think about another way.
We have different types of coms right now:
These are the two basic ones:
"The supporter": He do everything to keep his marines alive (drop ammo and medpack, scan, give nanoshield, build forward obs and armory,..)
Supporter coms didnt build much turrets, cause the marines are there "turrets". These coms are the real coms for me, cause they have an eye on the situation normally.
"The builder": As the name said, he build turrets, turrets and turrets. Normally these coms didnt support the marines. Marines are only building-drones for him. "Builder" send you to every RT under attack and are unable to finish games.
With a builder-com, games took forever cause he think its important to secure every resnode. He normally do that with: .... tattaa .. turrets.
How about extra abilitys for "supporter"?
Maybe something like: If an defined amount of pres was spend on picked up ammo or medpacks the supporter com get an extrabuff on something. Dont know, something like that.
So, builder coms have an disadvantage and try to be an supporter hopefully.
Or every build turret lowered the pres income for the team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can do both easily. Turrets ARE required to hold postions, maybe not every single RT, but at the very least you need 2 turrets, a pg and an armory if you want to secure a tech point. They can also provide good support when people siege a hive, so they can fall back safely to an armory without having to worry about getting raped by skulks.
Also it's not true that building makes game last forever, IF he absolutly doesn't support his team, you can easily take map control, take marine RTs down and/or rush their base (with turrets: lerk rush).
Despite that, supporting is very powerful already. Medpacks, ammo, scan and nanoshield provide massive boosts and I dont think that we need another powerful ability.
In general I think the amount of structures should be decreased because fewer structures means less cluttered maps and increased performance (even if the performance is going to increase anyway with more optimization, it won't hurt). To achieve this you could make Sentries (and ARC's), Hydras, Whips cost a lot more, but also have more health and do more damage. Two Sentries being as effective as four or something like that. Remember the movie <i>Aliens</i>? Just two well-placed sentries sealed of a corridor, they didn't need a room full of them...
So if they can not nonstop shoot and the aliens could provoke a masscooldown on the sentrys and then bring in the mass.