So Was It Supposed To Be Two Hives, Or Three?
JackBoCracken
Join Date: 2002-11-09 Member: 7928Members
Join Date: 2002-11-09 Member: 7928Members
I remember long ago posting in some balance thread post-1.01 and complaining that marines didn't have a counter for level 3 hive abilities.
I was quickly chided and told that the game was supposed to revolve around a game of contention for the third hive.
Okay, that makes sense.
However, right now, it seems like it's not that, it's whoever gains two hives first. Since I play with the same pool of 50 people or so, this is what usually happens:
If the marines successfully pull off a phase gate rush and takeover two hives, then it becomes 10 minutes of excitement followed by 30 minutes of waiting for the marines to kill us. We'd F4 but it breaks admin mod for some reason.
If the aliens successfully get a second hive, it's 10 minutes of violent struggle over that second hive and then 30 minutes of slow, painful death by acid rocket/umbra.
At this point, the game isn't very fun. It boils down to the same strategies, over and over. It would be a lot more fun if the midgame was longer, took place when the aliens had two hives, and didn't require only one strategy.
The only two variations to marine strategy I've seen besides a race to portals is:
-Jetpack rush (works best on Refinery hive)
-Marine rush (stick down 5 portals near a hive and just kamikaze constantly)
Aliens have successfully gorge rushed before, and that was certainly interesting, but it doesn't happen all that often.
I was quickly chided and told that the game was supposed to revolve around a game of contention for the third hive.
Okay, that makes sense.
However, right now, it seems like it's not that, it's whoever gains two hives first. Since I play with the same pool of 50 people or so, this is what usually happens:
If the marines successfully pull off a phase gate rush and takeover two hives, then it becomes 10 minutes of excitement followed by 30 minutes of waiting for the marines to kill us. We'd F4 but it breaks admin mod for some reason.
If the aliens successfully get a second hive, it's 10 minutes of violent struggle over that second hive and then 30 minutes of slow, painful death by acid rocket/umbra.
At this point, the game isn't very fun. It boils down to the same strategies, over and over. It would be a lot more fun if the midgame was longer, took place when the aliens had two hives, and didn't require only one strategy.
The only two variations to marine strategy I've seen besides a race to portals is:
-Jetpack rush (works best on Refinery hive)
-Marine rush (stick down 5 portals near a hive and just kamikaze constantly)
Aliens have successfully gorge rushed before, and that was certainly interesting, but it doesn't happen all that often.
Comments
/NB
if the marines pick up that second hive its over.. unless you get real lucky, sorry bout that, but you cant jack up hive 1 powers without ruining the early game.
Ideally, HMGs would be fighting fades, but right now, it boils down to what I originally posted.
I like how people still don't manage to RCP.
Or each map having different numbers of hives.
I dont see any problem here, though.
you need a decent comm however it'll usually end up a battle to hold 3rd hive/take over 2nd WHILE managing all your res towers.... hehe
Variations of tactics could be attempting to take all alien res nodes BEFORE taking 2nd hive if it's too heavily fortified, and using the advantage of the aliens lack of resources and your gain, to reinforce your 3rd hive.
might win, but it is sooo uncool and not fun at all,
the mid game is the best part of this mod, fades vs HA, trying to take control of a 2nd hive (for both teams), the problem is...... we dont play the mid game. (i actually played 1 mid-game today, it was my first time)
i have thought about this long and hard, have played many games with many people, have pondered this for days, i just cant find a way that would make it so that most games played, you whould be fighting a tense mid-game for a second hive.
i can not figure out what to do <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Aliens securing 2 hives just means hurry up and fade before siege is laid, inbetween. Of course, I'm just speaking in general.
-Early game marines need to be slowed down (seems to be happening in 1.04)
-2nd hive aliens need to be slightly powered down. Slightly as in ONE change, either fade armor, health, damage, energy, or change the way the grenade launcher works (explode on contact with anything) or increase acid resistance of HA. Only one change though, not multiple ones.
Eater.
Never mind all the time it actually TAKES you to die as a Fade you spend gaining res.
Played a set of games last night that perfectly enforces the point- due to a slightly inexperienced (*ahem*) commander who eventually left we'd lost our hive outpost- the turning point- and were under siege by Fade's and gorges. A Fade got a nasty example of teamwork when I frantically typed "Rush the Fade!" to my newly spawned teammate as our turrets were bombarded with acid- we each leapt up and emptied our LMG's into it, adding a nice touch of yellow about the place. We may have lost, due to the failure to defend the hive, but it shows that either side can make a comeback if they get lucky (and have a decent team).
Oh, it's not entirely relevant but I played a tournament game the other night- as a HA/HMG I walked down the corridor to see a standard comrade empty his clip optimistically into an umbraed lerk. He drew his knife, regardless of the spiky death rapidly killing him, rushed in... then the HA behind me flattened the lerk with a grenade and sent the standard's corpse flying. Everyone muted me on voicecomm as I wouldn't stop laughing... <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Well, here's a problem I see that you have to deal with when trying to force three hives to be built to be a victory: It's easy for the marines to take and fortify one hive at the beginning of the game. Thus, if you make three hives absolutely required to win the game, then you've pretty much just permascrewed the aliens.
I think what basically needs to happen is this:
* Fades (the main reason why the entire game hinges around two hives) need to be nerfed. Especially their acid rockets, which they generally lob at an angle into any room which dares have any marine fortifications in it. A range reduction isn't going to do it.
(Come to think of it, I think Fade's extreme potency might have taken Fleyra and co by surprise. In 1.01 they were not all that great, so they were jacked up a bit in 1.02. Then 1.03 fixxed some serious bugs with AOE damage that alien weapons were running into. Two out of three of the fade's weapons are AOE based. Voila, acid rocket and bile bomb balance needs a total reconsideration.)
* Economy needs to be tweaked to give marines bonus resources for smaller servers 16 players or less, and less resources for larger servers (24 players or more). You'll notice a drastic change in win/loss ratio for the two sides on these two kinds of servers due to the way the economy works.
Despite this irony I am in the "fades are too strong" camp. I would like to have a viable mid-game. This is probably hard as all hell to do, though, without screwing up the rest of the balance. So if you dev's are reading this, know that I still think this mod is AMAZING and I think the balance is near perfect. All this bitching may just be bad commanding on our parts. Personally I think the midgame balance can be tweaked very slightly, but thats just a personal opinion I still think you guys have done a bang up job.
Despite this irony I am in the "fades are too strong" camp. I would like to have a viable mid-game. This is probably hard as all hell to do, though, without screwing up the rest of the balance. So if you dev's are reading this, know that I still think this mod is AMAZING and I think the balance is near perfect. All this bitching may just be bad commanding on our parts. Personally I think the midgame balance can be tweaked very slightly, but thats just a personal opinion I still think you guys have done a bang up job.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They don't need to be nerfed. They need one very very slight adjustment (perhaps .15 second slower attack rate, 15 less armor, 20 less HP...). They were boosted too much in 1.02 or whatever. That's just my opinion though.
This is what I see time and time again in HL mods:
- X feature is too powerful
- X feature is then nerfed, and everything else is boosted as well
- X feature becomes useless