Nano Shield change
doBronx
Join Date: 2012-12-29 Member: 176678Members
Join Date: 2012-12-29 Member: 176678Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Only a fairly minor change!</div>Gonna preface this by saying I only have around 80 hours put into ns2!
I play on w.e servers have the lowest ping (both rookie and regular), but i have been on a good amount of them so far and like a fair few others seem to agree, aliens have an advantage, especially during the early game where they can freely base rush whilst their C expands wherever he/she wants with little to no ramifications. Feel free to slate me and say that higher up games are completely different :p But the games where marines tend to get out of the early game and can expand/tech up ready for the initial fades are the ones where a group pushes out to the natural expansion with med pack/scan/ammo help from the C until Phase tech is up.
I do get that whilst a team of 4 crack shot marines looking out for each other can fend off alien attacks fairly well but for pub servers the amount of effort and team work required as marines outweighs that of aliens by a fair amount, ive played both sides fairly evenly.
anyway yada yada! minor change, <u><b>nano shields don't require a second command station to use</b></u>. with command stations being low cost its not a huge change anyway, but when expanding during the early game you tend to get armories and other structures to help you out directly. Also with this change in pub servers it should encourage commanders to help out during team fights more often and not feel stingy when dropping structures in fear of the group getting wiped out and the tech getting wasted.
So yeah, its a piece of mind thing. If it would severely impact higher level games then say so :) But from my experience so far aliens have some tough advantages that a lot of teams cant get past. Most marine losses occur when they cant push out and when they do they just get wiped, leading to a turtling marine team waiting for the fade to come in with the nail in the coffin :p
I play on w.e servers have the lowest ping (both rookie and regular), but i have been on a good amount of them so far and like a fair few others seem to agree, aliens have an advantage, especially during the early game where they can freely base rush whilst their C expands wherever he/she wants with little to no ramifications. Feel free to slate me and say that higher up games are completely different :p But the games where marines tend to get out of the early game and can expand/tech up ready for the initial fades are the ones where a group pushes out to the natural expansion with med pack/scan/ammo help from the C until Phase tech is up.
I do get that whilst a team of 4 crack shot marines looking out for each other can fend off alien attacks fairly well but for pub servers the amount of effort and team work required as marines outweighs that of aliens by a fair amount, ive played both sides fairly evenly.
anyway yada yada! minor change, <u><b>nano shields don't require a second command station to use</b></u>. with command stations being low cost its not a huge change anyway, but when expanding during the early game you tend to get armories and other structures to help you out directly. Also with this change in pub servers it should encourage commanders to help out during team fights more often and not feel stingy when dropping structures in fear of the group getting wiped out and the tech getting wasted.
So yeah, its a piece of mind thing. If it would severely impact higher level games then say so :) But from my experience so far aliens have some tough advantages that a lot of teams cant get past. Most marine losses occur when they cant push out and when they do they just get wiped, leading to a turtling marine team waiting for the fade to come in with the nail in the coffin :p
Comments
The armory is a nice idea though, i must admit when I command i try to get 1 guy to stay in the base to build whilst the rest push out, but for those initial seconds most of the team will stay and build the armory and lose time they could use to push out :(
Then you would have to associate a cost to marines to get up to their Arms Lab's research level as well. You see how pointless that is, though. 3 res are a damn lot for individual players so that someone who dies a lot would never get close to any higher level tech. And if he doesn't upgrade, he doesn't stand a chance against the enemies who do so.
Upgrades are an investment of the commander for the team. They are pretty expensive for him, so they should at least be free for the players. Upgrades are the way to scale the initial units properly to the lategame tech of the game, so the free units don't become utterly useless.
As for the Armory: that would be a somewhat bad change because it doesn't allow the commander to place the Armory in a spot that he considers best to hold the room. At best you could have something like making the first Armory a free one, so that marines have the equivalent to alien's heals at the Hive. But then again is it an asymmetric game anyway and the Armory is built nonetheless instantly by a marine team (and any decent marine team will instinctively coordinate in a way that it splits up in even teams to take the RTs on either side of the base and only leave 1-2 guys in the base for building), besides that the res cost and starting res are balanced accordingly. Marines can also expand faster to get more Extractors without additional costs, as opposed to the costs for cyst chains for aliens.
try to avoid derailing guys, talk about the nanoshield change because that's what the thread is about
we're not buffing nanoshield - we're buffing weak marines at start of the game in pubs
it might've been changed as you said, but mightn't other factors make it now possible to revert?
they were planning to nerf nano-shield. (longer cooldown from 10 to 12 seconds)
there you have your answer.
your suggestion will never happen.
Source 04.01.2013:
<a href="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108447514" target="_blank">http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/file...s/?id=108447514</a>
they were planning to nerf nano-shield. (longer cooldown from 10 to 12 seconds)
there you have your answer.
your suggestion will never happen.
Source 04.01.2013:
<a href="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108447514" target="_blank">http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/file...s/?id=108447514</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The nerf that never happened was due to factors in the later games surely? not the early game, I've not been in a single game where we've rushed the second CC down to get nano shields, so it mustn't be :p and its a CD based nerf, which can still be implemented with this change if it ever happened :o
Most ppl seem to be at an agreement that in pub servers, marines lose due to not being aggressive enough at the start, due to early game skulk barrage whilst marines have to build, and the skulk vs marine @ early game favoring the skulk (imo - 2 hit kill, p much guaranteed to get the kill if you get the jump). In coordinated teams ye marines can be sick, but the only coordination that aliens have to really use during the early game is just mindlessly rushing together.
Nano shield being available with 1 CC gives marines a piece of mind, but doesn't completely get rid of the teamwork/skill as its quite expensive for the early game, and the commander needs to use it correctly whilst dropping health/ammo to insure his investment.
Oh yeah and also due to it being early game the aliens can easily switch to a diff target mid fight if a nano shield was used, marines aren't packing anything but rifles at this point so its hardly like you're protecting your stone cold killa flamethrower :p
I agree with this. It's strong. It's really easy to get two comm chairs down.
I don't think buffing nano shield is the correct way to buff the early game for marines.
Getting another command station down is indeed not very hard, but in 90% of games I've been in, the marines don't have that much building time due to skulks endlessly rushing to them, if they arent aiming at doors and vents and a skulk gets into into melee range unharmed then most of the time marines will start dying. you tend to drop an armory for the health/regen into mine disposer, or an extractor and then fend off the skulks until phase tech is ready. And even if a phase gate is dropped I've still seen teams wiped out and the gate destroyed, which is another problem, getting hit the second you walk through a phase gate, same with IP's, dunno what UW were thinking there :o
Dont take my word for it, go check out the playstyles in these servers, maybe nano shield isn't used early game 'cause its fairly expensive and feels like too much of an investment when giving to strangers who might just waste it by being a bad shot, but it seems like a step in the right direction as far as helping out Marines during the early game, which looks to be the root of the problem with regards to them getting beat more often than not :p
As comm I have spammed med packs/ammo/nono shield on a JP marine and had them take out entire bases. In fact, if the alien team is busy making a big push into a marine controlled tech point it is a pet strategy of mine to send a single marine with a jet pack to hit alien upgrades. A marine with a JP can easily get over/around whips and even through vents. With nano shield/med pack support there is little chance that even a marine with poor aim will die. It is always fun seeing the khamm pop out of the hive to try and fend off the marine only to fail because of nano shield. An annoying strategy it may be, but I don't think it is by any means overpowered.
And yeah during the mid/late game i can and have seen how effective nano shields can be, especially in the hands of a skilled marine, i understand UW's contemplation in nerfing the cooldown of it, but again my change doesn't affect anything but the early game as to even get a jetpack you need 2 command stations xD
If u think there are better ways of helping marines out early game, or even think that they dont need help then pls say :)
As stated in an earlier post, it was already tried in beta, and found to be quite overpowered in the early game for the exact reasons I stated. If you find in pub play that you can't get by without it, consider rushing a second techpoint and establishing an early base there before trying to cap resource towers. While it is a large resource investment, you will be holding at minimum two nodes, and it is usually fairly easy to defend the node in between tech points on most maps.
As stated in an earlier post, it was already tried in beta, and found to be quite overpowered in the early game for the exact reasons I stated. If you find in pub play that you can't get by without it, consider rushing a second techpoint and establishing an early base there before trying to cap resource towers. While it is a large resource investment, you will be holding at minimum two nodes, and it is usually fairly easy to defend the node in between tech points on most maps.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i dunno what servers youve been in, but rarely any early game engagements are ever close :p And whilst Med packs are good, it doesnt help for much when early game marines get 1 shot when their armor has depleted. I understand that good marines could be deadly with a nano shield, but at the start of the game I see a lone skulk going 2 or 3v1 and taking on all 3 far often more than i see a marine taking on 2 or 3 skulks whilst being helped by his commander who spams med packs and ammo and scans. This might start to level out as ppl become more accustomed to shooting tiny aliens as opposed to other humans, but it hasnt happen for most yet :p
if the nano shield was free during the beta then no doubt it wouldve been very strong :p it aint free anymore. And now that a lot more players are playing the game things will pan out differently than what happens in the beta with the select few who play it. You say rushing an early expansion, I try to do this (as do 95% of the teams im in) all the time, its pretty much the only stable way to win, if you dont push out like crazy at the start with phase gates youre p much screwed as a marine team.
I'm nearly 100 hours now and nothing has changed, rookie friendly servers are now no longer filled with green named guys, ppl are communicating like crazy and still marines are losing far more often than not, even the pure amount of effort you put in as a marine outweighs that of aliens by a mile lol, i play aliens at night cause i can chill out and have fun and dont have to be the verbal warrior that marines require you to be xD. There is no way that i'm just going vs sick alien teams all the time, it seems to be anything but fact that the aliens are slightly stronger than the marines, especially during the early game.
Maybe nano shields arent the way to help marines out during the early phases, I only like this change as it is fairly minor and only affects the start of a match.
I don't often play public games <i>seriously</i>, so I can't comment on how that would work out. I'm merely talking about competitive play. Whilst it's difficult to say how it would affect pub play (I have a feeling it wouldn't actually matter. If a skulk can solo 3 marines, then he can do so to a nano'd marine as well), comp play would be very affected because most if not all of the marines there can aim. It's already difficult enough to fight 2 techpoint marines, if one techpoint was all that was needed for nanoshield, then it would be a huge buff. As it is some commanders go second techpoint early for the massive buff that nanoshield provides.
Their loss. Nano shield is great and if anything needs a nerf. Making nano shield a 1 chair ordeal is not a good way to buff terrible players in the early game.