The reason people aren't aggressive with camo is that it is hardly ever used at first, which is sort of a shame. Shade first is very interesting, and basically gives you a free kill everytime you see a marine. Turn camo on, walk up to him, and instant 3 bite before he knows what is going on. If you are camping marine exits, or are good with map coverage, you can basically make the comm waste a crapload on scans almost all the time. Aliens will almost always get a 2nd hive, so you really only have camo in the start, which is the most appropriate time for it.
I understand the OPs point, but just like a lot of other things in this game, there is a learning curve, and discouraging people from discovering different strategies is probably not a good idea. The comm was merely trying to get his guys to move around more, or camp more important areas. The key to camo is continuing to be mobile, while sneaking up when appropriate. Forcing people to sneak is a really important skill for skulks.
Celerity is easy, you go faster. Regen/Cara is easy as well, you can get hit more. Camo/Silence is devious but isn't as simple as the other two, but arguably do a lot more hurt to even players who are able to _really_ track skulks (ie: guys who can kill 2 skulks on 1 clip). They can't do that against skulks they can't see.
A recurring theme in this thread is that cammo is good and so it should be good as a first tech option. Supporting arguments hinge on individual skill of skulks in getting to aggressive positions and taking out lone marines. Some posts suggest you can (easily?) go 1v2 and prevail most of the time. In my experience, this is simply not the case.
Well, let me clarify... cammo is indeed very good. In the right hands, its borderline OP because you can move while invisible and set up some excellent engagements. My point isn't that cammo is bad... my point is that cammo is a sub-par first tech option for the reasons outlined in my posts. Is shade first fun? That's a question for the individual player to decide... but the fact is that when you play a large number of matches you see lower success rates and lower aggression from average players when all you equip them with are stealth upgrades.
The arguement that low skill players would fail no matter what you give them doesn't hold water. Blind, club handed button mashers will fail no matter what you do for them, but everyone who isn't completely handicapped will perform better or worse according to their skill set and experience. Even first game rookies will have some positive effect on the game if you feed them the right tech at the right times to counter what the enemy is up to. In fact, as an alien commander, your job is primarily to read the situation and make strategic choices that have the greatest effect on your troops since you can't very well micro manage the war effort.
So, if you see the marines have no weapon upgrades, you can go shift hive to enable your units to close the distance faster. If you see the Marines have no Obs early on, you can safely go shade hive and capitalize on their mistake. If you see they are going fast weapon upgrades and shotguns, you're killing your team if you don't get crag hive first. There are many permutations of tech decisions that include crag or shift first tech decisions... but in my mind the only reasonable shade tech first strategies hinge on there being no early obs at the marine base.
Aggressive cammo play has been suggested more than once here as "strong". If there is an obs at the marine base within 3 minutes of the start, I assure you you're wrong unless your players are natural born ninjas.
Consider the walking speed of a skulk in cammo can't keep up with a sprinting marine... forcing you to break cammo to execute an ambush from ranges beyond "guaranteed first strike". Lone plodding marines won't be the norm after the first time this happens because the marine team will be alerted to the presence of shade tech, and the obs will be built in short order to ensure that the marines are able to move out aggressively.
Now, when we talk about individual "but you can always..." sorts of argument and counter argument there is always in someones mind a specific example or experience that seems to contradict what other people are saying. If you are reading this post and thinking to yourself about that one time you went 1 v 6 as a sneaky skulk or lurk and won... I'm never going to convince you that this was a fairly uncommon event. "It was so easy, anyone could do it if they just practiced it..." isn't valid unless it repeatable across many games with a variety of skill levels on display.
I've played a lot of games since launch... 109 hours so far. Most of my time has been spent in the alien command chair. In my experience, not only do I get lots of groans from my team when I drop shade first, I also get far worse returns on that investment than going anything else. This includes 229 and 230. I can't claim to have tried all the gimmicks in the book yet, but I'm far less experimental in this game than I would be in something like Dawn of War because 6+ real people depend on me making good decisions and not being excessively experimental with my strategy. So, going hallucinated units under 4 minutes just feels excessively foolish with other peoples time.
However, in the interest of being fair about this I'm going to do nothing but shade first tonight (assuming I don't get ejected for my troubles) to see if there's something I've missed. I'll report back if it seems I've been overly harsh...
I have been going shade first for the last couple of times I have been khamm. Though I generally ask my team before I do it, a veil is generally the first building I build, followed by RTs while its building and finally cloak which is usually up before the marines even think of getting an obs. It does however slow down the Alien expansion but not by much. In pubs 2 groups of cloaking skulks outside the marine base's obs range are incredibly deadly. I'm not sure if I just had really good skulks or if the marine commander was terrible (Probably the latter) but I had the whole map to do as I wanted. A skulk's element of surprise is the best weapon early game as long as they don't hide in the same places.
As a skulk its incredibly useful for hit and run attacks on 2v1, kill one run and recloak, then hit the marine thats looking at the hallway you escaped to from behind.
At this point in time I consider all three alien upgrade paths to be viable at the first hive, each encouraging a different style of play and I don't mind if my commander drops any of them.
I like camo first, works well for all the reasons mentioned above. No one has mentioned the two real counters though, which are marines rushing the hive and egg locking the aliens, or the marines quickly blocking the easy 2nd hive location.
Shade first is viable, fun, but more easily countered. Seems ok.
shade first is useful if your team plans on an early win, if not it does nothing but completely screw over alien mid game.
With shade first, fades/lerks are denied far, farrrr more useful upgrade combinations, were for example cara & celerity won't be a possible choice because one of them wont be available until the third hive.
I think in time new players will realise it's better to have upgrades that are constantly useful rather than situational like camo. Sure it will allow you to mop up other new players in the early game, but as players get better and against experienced marines with good reaction times the boost you get from getting the first bite in quickly deteriorates, and thats before the like of a2 come out.
After some testing, I'm comfortable standing by my assessment. With highly motivated, skillful players, shade first (cammo and silence) does work. I've watched a few good skulks clear out 2 marines single handedly and had some success with it myself when not commanding.
I'm not at all surprised by this.
However, when watching less skilled players use it, they stall out. They get a few more kills than you'd expect otherwise, but overall they don't move around much. Worse, if the commander that goes shade first isn't on top of their game, the 2nd hive decision making process can cripple you. The reason being that if they misread the flow of the game an pick incorrectly on the second hive, it tends to swiftly go against the aliens because shade has more or less run its course by mid game. The Marines adjusted and secured 50% of the map while pressuring our hives with scans a plenty.
Now, to be fair... most of these shade-first games were victories. My personal opinion was that it felt like an uphill struggle to close the deal going shade because I was inclined to drop shades at various points on the map to secure our holdings. This delayed the second hive and tech considerably while doing very little for our forward progress unlike putting down a shift to help gorges build and spawn eggs at critical locations. Map control relied on slowing down the marines and creating some confusion, but if they were competent, this wasn't happening at near the pace we needed it to.
FWIW, while playing marine vs. shade first aliens (all too many IMO) I was winning most of my matches. In fact, I think I only lost to aliens when they were swarming Onos due to their economy being too strong (and having our commander brain freeze in one match) and never due to any shade presence that I was aware of.
<!--quoteo(post=2031425:date=Nov 21 2012, 12:22 PM:name=Reeke)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Reeke @ Nov 21 2012, 12:22 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2031425"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->With shade first, fades/lerks are denied far, farrrr more useful upgrade combinations, were for example cara & celerity won't be a possible choice because one of them wont be available until the third hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When feign death returns, this won't be much of an issue anymore.
By the way, if you're going shade first you should pretty much always go crag second. Carapace is much more of a necessity than cele/adren are.
Usually, there won't be a midgame if you go camo in a pub though, because there's a high likelihood that either the marine team, commander, or both will fail due to the instant requirement of both commander competency and teamwork, thereby delivering total map control to aliens fairly easily.
Camo games in pubs are usually effectively over a few minutes after camo goes up.
Actually I found that cammo games tended to drag out far longer because unless you have those precious few aggressive players using it to rush command on veil, most players pocket the cammo upgrade and go into troll mode. The rushing skulks are hardly served by the cammo ugrade half the time anyway because they get a passive ping off the obs in the marine base and just end up going in at normal speed anyway, its just that you get 3 or more in at once without raising any alarm bells (assuming they can resist the urge to snack on stragglers along the way).
In my experience, shade first tends to push the mid-game out much further because shades eat up valuable Tres that could be spent on shifts/eggs.
As for going crag second, I'm not sure. If the marines went robo/macs, adren/bilebomb is very handy in getting up to some serious gorging... and shift+egg spawns are always good for keeping pressure on important areas because it helps players make the "right" decision about where to assault on spawn. But I do hear what you're saying... celerity doesn't combo well with cammo, but it does a great job paired with silence.
I guess it depends on the size of the map and what the marines seem to be up to.
Comments
I understand the OPs point, but just like a lot of other things in this game, there is a learning curve, and discouraging people from discovering different strategies is probably not a good idea. The comm was merely trying to get his guys to move around more, or camp more important areas. The key to camo is continuing to be mobile, while sneaking up when appropriate. Forcing people to sneak is a really important skill for skulks.
Celerity is easy, you go faster. Regen/Cara is easy as well, you can get hit more. Camo/Silence is devious but isn't as simple as the other two, but arguably do a lot more hurt to even players who are able to _really_ track skulks (ie: guys who can kill 2 skulks on 1 clip). They can't do that against skulks they can't see.
Well, let me clarify... cammo is indeed very good. In the right hands, its borderline OP because you can move while invisible and set up some excellent engagements. My point isn't that cammo is bad... my point is that cammo is a sub-par first tech option for the reasons outlined in my posts. Is shade first fun? That's a question for the individual player to decide... but the fact is that when you play a large number of matches you see lower success rates and lower aggression from average players when all you equip them with are stealth upgrades.
The arguement that low skill players would fail no matter what you give them doesn't hold water. Blind, club handed button mashers will fail no matter what you do for them, but everyone who isn't completely handicapped will perform better or worse according to their skill set and experience. Even first game rookies will have some positive effect on the game if you feed them the right tech at the right times to counter what the enemy is up to. In fact, as an alien commander, your job is primarily to read the situation and make strategic choices that have the greatest effect on your troops since you can't very well micro manage the war effort.
So, if you see the marines have no weapon upgrades, you can go shift hive to enable your units to close the distance faster. If you see the Marines have no Obs early on, you can safely go shade hive and capitalize on their mistake. If you see they are going fast weapon upgrades and shotguns, you're killing your team if you don't get crag hive first. There are many permutations of tech decisions that include crag or shift first tech decisions... but in my mind the only reasonable shade tech first strategies hinge on there being no early obs at the marine base.
Aggressive cammo play has been suggested more than once here as "strong". If there is an obs at the marine base within 3 minutes of the start, I assure you you're wrong unless your players are natural born ninjas.
Consider the walking speed of a skulk in cammo can't keep up with a sprinting marine... forcing you to break cammo to execute an ambush from ranges beyond "guaranteed first strike". Lone plodding marines won't be the norm after the first time this happens because the marine team will be alerted to the presence of shade tech, and the obs will be built in short order to ensure that the marines are able to move out aggressively.
Now, when we talk about individual "but you can always..." sorts of argument and counter argument there is always in someones mind a specific example or experience that seems to contradict what other people are saying. If you are reading this post and thinking to yourself about that one time you went 1 v 6 as a sneaky skulk or lurk and won... I'm never going to convince you that this was a fairly uncommon event. "It was so easy, anyone could do it if they just practiced it..." isn't valid unless it repeatable across many games with a variety of skill levels on display.
I've played a lot of games since launch... 109 hours so far. Most of my time has been spent in the alien command chair. In my experience, not only do I get lots of groans from my team when I drop shade first, I also get far worse returns on that investment than going anything else. This includes 229 and 230. I can't claim to have tried all the gimmicks in the book yet, but I'm far less experimental in this game than I would be in something like Dawn of War because 6+ real people depend on me making good decisions and not being excessively experimental with my strategy. So, going hallucinated units under 4 minutes just feels excessively foolish with other peoples time.
However, in the interest of being fair about this I'm going to do nothing but shade first tonight (assuming I don't get ejected for my troubles) to see if there's something I've missed. I'll report back if it seems I've been overly harsh...
As a skulk its incredibly useful for hit and run attacks on 2v1, kill one run and recloak, then hit the marine thats looking at the hallway you escaped to from behind.
At this point in time I consider all three alien upgrade paths to be viable at the first hive, each encouraging a different style of play and I don't mind if my commander drops any of them.
Shade first is viable, fun, but more easily countered. Seems ok.
With shade first, fades/lerks are denied far, farrrr more useful upgrade combinations, were for example cara & celerity won't be a possible choice because one of them wont be available until the third hive.
I think in time new players will realise it's better to have upgrades that are constantly useful rather than situational like camo. Sure it will allow you to mop up other new players in the early game, but as players get better and against experienced marines with good reaction times the boost you get from getting the first bite in quickly deteriorates, and thats before the like of a2 come out.
I'm not at all surprised by this.
However, when watching less skilled players use it, they stall out. They get a few more kills than you'd expect otherwise, but overall they don't move around much. Worse, if the commander that goes shade first isn't on top of their game, the 2nd hive decision making process can cripple you. The reason being that if they misread the flow of the game an pick incorrectly on the second hive, it tends to swiftly go against the aliens because shade has more or less run its course by mid game. The Marines adjusted and secured 50% of the map while pressuring our hives with scans a plenty.
Now, to be fair... most of these shade-first games were victories. My personal opinion was that it felt like an uphill struggle to close the deal going shade because I was inclined to drop shades at various points on the map to secure our holdings. This delayed the second hive and tech considerably while doing very little for our forward progress unlike putting down a shift to help gorges build and spawn eggs at critical locations. Map control relied on slowing down the marines and creating some confusion, but if they were competent, this wasn't happening at near the pace we needed it to.
FWIW, while playing marine vs. shade first aliens (all too many IMO) I was winning most of my matches. In fact, I think I only lost to aliens when they were swarming Onos due to their economy being too strong (and having our commander brain freeze in one match) and never due to any shade presence that I was aware of.
When feign death returns, this won't be much of an issue anymore.
By the way, if you're going shade first you should pretty much always go crag second. Carapace is much more of a necessity than cele/adren are.
Usually, there won't be a midgame if you go camo in a pub though, because there's a high likelihood that either the marine team, commander, or both will fail due to the instant requirement of both commander competency and teamwork, thereby delivering total map control to aliens fairly easily.
Camo games in pubs are usually effectively over a few minutes after camo goes up.
In my experience, shade first tends to push the mid-game out much further because shades eat up valuable Tres that could be spent on shifts/eggs.
As for going crag second, I'm not sure. If the marines went robo/macs, adren/bilebomb is very handy in getting up to some serious gorging... and shift+egg spawns are always good for keeping pressure on important areas because it helps players make the "right" decision about where to assault on spawn. But I do hear what you're saying... celerity doesn't combo well with cammo, but it does a great job paired with silence.
I guess it depends on the size of the map and what the marines seem to be up to.