1.04 Beta Impressions
Bigrick
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3750Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3750Members
I've been playing the beta a bit and just wanted to say its all good except for one thing I noticed. It "feels" like they've made the Onos bigger, I have to duck to get past some roof bits. Also I got stuck alot more and had to kill myself after just trying to jump over a single OC.
Otherwise its all good.
Oh yeah one other thing I noticed is that since Phase Gates have less health they build faster, which is a big advantage for phase rushing.
Otherwise its all good.
Oh yeah one other thing I noticed is that since Phase Gates have less health they build faster, which is a big advantage for phase rushing.
Comments
What is your impression of the new siege turrect? And what about the fades?
I was playing aliens on Eclipse and i was scouting the map as a skulk when i spotted jetpacking marine in the vent in Computer Core hive with a turret factory and siege beside him and he was talking on all say like: What!? Why doesn´t this damn thing work?!?!? He was just sitting there with his fancy siege doing nothing. It was pretty funny.
Commander pings an area, aliens right now sort of ignore it. "Okay fine, you see me. Bring it on!".
Now commander pings an area with alien structures, aliens go, "Oh crud! They must have a siege up! RUN RUN RUN!"
It's more about the fact that if you happen to be standing next to a building that gets sieged, the splash damage hits you, sometimes killing you depending.
Shotgun cost reduction is also good. Now shotguns will be more viable for commanders to hand out to competent troops early on.
Still, I think that fade acid rocket damage should be reduced slightly, even though the reduction of the splash radius is a nice start. (The things are just way too powerful right now.)
Also, I really would like it if they made it so you can only place infantry portals within a certain radius near an active command center. That would put a slight damper on infantry portal rushes.
Problems in 1.04:
-Marines spawn too fast making rushing too easy. Must be changed.
-Phase gates available too soon. Should be researchable. In large games (16+ players) the increased cost didnt has much of an impact on the economy.
-gap between high and low tech to big. As it is now a skulk has no chance against a HA/HMG guy. The same for Fades against basic soldiers. Yes researching/2.hive should give the team an advantage but not that big. I know that you don´t want this game to be compared to CS but one of the cool things about it is that you can take out a guy in armor/helmet/ak47 with a pistol easily if you approach him from behind or are a skilled player. In NS a newbie HA/HMG guy will always win against even a Pro skulk since it takes too much bites to kill him.(And hmg is damn powerfull) This is the reason everyone presses f4 as soon as 1 team has secured 2 hives. The solution would be to decrease armor/health of fades/HA-HMG guys to give the basic units a chance to kill them (Basic dies with 3 bites so armored should die with max 5/ and fades shouldn´t be able to take more than 30 lmg bullets and maybe 20 hmg ones. Sure cost of units needs to be rebalanced too). Give the teams the chance to make a comeback to keep the game interresting and balanced. Teamplay and smart usage of the available weapons shoult win the game not brute force (ever seen a rambo ha/hmg guy taking out an entire skulk team and then the hive all alone? Its damn sad that such things are possible)
PS: To all of you that say its possible to kill a HA with a skulk or make a comback after aliens have 2 hives yes it is true but 99 times out of 100 the game is decided as soon as 1 team has 2 hives. There must be at least a 33% chance to come back to keep the players motivated enough to continue playing.
Looking down the All Seeing Eye list, the server I payed it on was, I think, the "NS v1.04 BETA - redphive.org -2- NS" at 208.181.81.13.
However, I don't think it was really a 1.04 server - probably 1.03 with some mods on it.
The guns had a laser sight, which really sucked because it just gave the marine away, didn't improve aim at all. Sometimes the laser sight would go through a wall, exposing the marine's position!
The siege guns didn't require somebody to have LOS with the target.
Phase gates still cost 20 cash.
Shotguns still cost 20 cash.
Frankly, if it was my intent to test 1.04, either 1.04 is not very far along at all or I I just wasted the evening 8-P.
I was trying to play the Marines to see if I could get them to win more. In the few dozen games I must have played, they only won maybe 3 or 4 times - and only once would I consider it a flat out honest victory, the other times the aliens quit or a marine rushed their base. My god, Marines suck on 16 player servers. Of course, in this case they also had that nasty laser sight thing screwing them up, so it probably isn't fair for me to judge.
Impressions on 1.04 - Played on Hastezone (Public - Nonscrim):
Everything seems to be fine, marines have to cap atleast 1 RT if they plan on the early tech upgrades. What they really messed up with, is the siege cannons. Siege cannons are SO expensive now its not even worth the hassle of using them to take down wall of lames. 1 Scan = 2 siege shots. A wall of lame/hive takes about/more then 20 siege shots, so its looking to be pretty expensive. They should make scans last about 2-3 seconds longer, just so sieges aren't a hassle. Mind you, if you get marines to go near a wall of lame/hive, they die pretty fast. Mmm.. thats about all I can think of at the top of my head.
Also, marine rushes are still very easy to do. The extra cost of the IPs doesnt stop a marine rush at all. In this has already been tested and has been easily done by a group of skilled marines.
The only way I think marine rushing can be stopped is by giving aliens more resources at beginning of the game. Allow them to pop 1/2 OTs.
Future: Lerk flying cost - way to much. Make it so flying doesnt waste all your damn adren...
Jetpacks: Dont allow jetpacks to be able to stay in the air forever.. hives are so easily taken down by unlimited jetpack power.
Scans: Longer, or reduced to 2.
And of course the usual stuff..
Why are shotguns only reduced to 17? Should be 15. They are still pointless now at 17... still too much.
Fades splash is slightly less... what did that change? Should be a lot less.
To me it seems like marines get nerfed over and over... and in smaller games like 5on5 or less it is already very easy to win as an alien. I win as aliens everytime. Now either I am really good or it isn't too balanced. But then you play on a big server, 10on10 and then the marines have a huge advantage. So I guess somewhere in between it all works out... I guess.
That makes it like before. just take basic soldier jump into the hive area and watch some 100´s of rp go up in smoke. No no sieges are fine now. The problem is that the game becomes unbalanced as soon as 2. hive is up. (And early on due to fast marine spawn)
Ever played on a 16+ player server with decent players? On that servers half of the aliens are constantly dead because marines spawn twice as fast (2 IP is a standard these days) making the early marine rush tactic nearly unstoppable. (Phase gates make things even worse). On big games that few resources more dont make that big of a difference.
PS: The only time i saw the marines win in the 1.04 beta was when their comm build phase outside our hive and constantly rushed it till all our players were waiting to respawn. They killed us in under 10 min.
Ever played on a 16+ player server with decent players? On that servers half of the aliens are constantly dead because marines spawn twice as fast (2 IP is a standard these days) making the early marine rush tactic nearly unstoppable. (Phase gates make things even worse). On big games that few resources more dont make that big of a difference.
PS: The only time i saw the marines win in the 1.04 beta was when their comm build phase outside our hive and constantly rushed it till all our players were waiting to respawn. They killed us in under 10 min.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
... and the marines can just up the spawn rate if they feel like it - just build another IP.
Also, using cost of items to try and balance things will not work as long as the resource model looks the way it does.
Here, take a look at income per minute for towers and team sizes:
1 2 3 4 5 6 #of resource towers.
4 19,2 28,4 37,6 46,8 56 65,2
5 21,5 33 44,5 56 67,5 79
6 23,8 37,6 51,4 65,2 79 92,8
7 26,1 42,2 58,3 74,4 90,5 106,6
8 28,4 46,8 65,2 83,6 102 120,4
9 30,7 51,4 72,1 92,8 113,5 134,2
10 33 56 79 102 125 148
11 35,3 60,6 85,9 111,2 136,5 161,8
12 37,6 65,2 92,8 120,4 148 175,6
13 39,9 69,8 99,7 129,6 159,5 189,4
14 42,2 74,4 106,6 138,8 171 203,2
15 44,5 79 113,5 148 182,5 217
16 46,8 83,6 120,4 157,2 194 230,8
A marine team of four, which arguable in itself will have a much harder time to win, needs to cap three resource towers before they earn as many resources as a marine team of 16 does from the START.
Until the marines tech out and start giving everyone JP/HMG/HA/GL, there is no cost that a 16v16 marine team has that a 4v4 marine team hasn't. So why should the team with the tougher task get just a quarter of the resources to do all of the task? Or vice-versa - why should the team with the easier task get four times as many resources?
Is anyone else having problems with the 1.04 beta or the beta servers with the skulks?
It seems to me and several others that are playing that the skulk bite is not quite as powerful as it used to be or should be. On a 1.03 server 2 marines don’t scare me as a skulk 4 marines make me worried but I will still go in.
In all the 1.04 servers 1 marine scares me because 50% of the time I die before I hit him once. I'm not sure if the bite has been slown down or if it’s just not hitting when it should.
I have talked to several people in game and several players have agreed with me. What’s everyone else think?
I wish the test servers had it setup so you can see the numbers of dmg taken so we could tell for sure what the numbers are.
Also it seems that the marines are winning in less than 10 min all the time or they loose, but that may be because Rushes are suddenly so popular all of a sudden... <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo--> <4> <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> <4> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='asrifle.gif'><!--endemo-->
marines winning?? my that IS strange...
i hope 1.04 evens the stakes out slighty...you know who's side im on...well if you dont, its on the the "good" side of the gun....
The problem is that they nerfed the siege what is good but they forgot to nerf acid rocket(splash damage must go) and so the marines loose as soon as 2. hive is up. They need to make the fades close combat units like skulks to give the marines a chance to get some shoots at them. As it is now its acid rocket/retreat/heal/repeat. And with 3 fades outside the marine spawn you cannot rush the one you have damaged because the other 2 splash damage you to death. Fades are an endgame unit and here lies the problem with NS as it is now. 1.04 is a step in the right direction but its still a long road till balance. 1.02-aliens ruled because of carpace bug, 1.03 marines ruled because of phase gate rush, 1.04 marines rule if they prevent 2. hive, aliens cannot loose if they get second hive. (I dont know how dumb they must be if the aliens loose with fades without having to fear siege cannons destroying their hives) Maybe 1.05/1.1 does it right
So they'll lose even more in the mid-game; where they already are vastly underpowered.
Sorry...by the time Aliens get two Hives it's not fully-upgraded HA/HMG versus Fades. No matter how much anyone wants to pretend it is.
I'm wondering if the rush problem could be fixed instead by altering the way aliens spawn, not only increasing or modifying the rate somehow, but also changing where they spawn. Make a good few spots that spawn in vents nearby or places not easily seen. I really don't think the rush problem will go away just with some res cost changes. It's going to need some small well planned changes across the board that add up to stop the marine rush. I have a feeling once a bigger update is made, perhaps 1.1 there'll be a few changes that change the 1.04 changes back.