You could go and play it... It's a free hl mod. And if you don't own hl... Well there's a game every single gamer should have played...
I own HL and I played NS a little back then, and I have NS installed right now, but there is a problem: 1) Nobody plays NS now. 2) Popup menu is glitched for me and so is Comm interface so I can't do anything as a comm and as an alien, and I've heard I'm not the only one having that problem (I once found a game with 20+ players).
Have you really tried to play? Because I play NS nearly every day, and I can assure it is still played... freaking every day. For your technical problem, try to simply reinstall NS3.2 (perhaps from somewhere else), sometimes it did that and a reinstall fixed it.
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Only thing I miss from NS1 sieges is the enormous big BOOOOOOM.
The boom these days is a lot less hard. Id prefer a bigger boom and lesser fire rate tbh. Just for feels.
(I also liked the huge splash damage although I agree its to OP to implement)
Im with the scout & drifter group. No way a competent kham & team can not spot arcs incoming.
i think the issue here though is after they arc drop a hive, the marine commander can then move them in for the next hive, if for example he wants to siege sub but system is full of crags whips he can then arc system before moving his arcs system to arc sub. if at any point the siege gets abit to much he can quickly backup his arcs until its clear and move them in again, if this was ns1 the marine players would have to construct siege turrets ito hit system, then construct them in system to hit sub and if at any point the laiens get the upper hand the siege turrets cant eaily be moved to safety. also the stacking of arcs is difficult to counter even if you have drifters, 10 arcs will drop a hive fast.
I see the OP's point that through the conversion of static to mobile siege weapons the key points of contention become less prominent. In reality, they haven't been completely eliminated, but the total time that a location is contested has been reduced.
This results in a decline of "epic" battles for territory, whilst increasing the pace of the game. Pace is something I believe the Developers opted for over "epic".
Seeing as this topic is based off of preference toward one style over another, let me contribute these thoughts. Consider each of these as a risk investment with a potential reward.
- NS1 Commanders could sell the equipment when they were done or losing a siege position to reclaim resources. The investment in NS2 is non-redeemable.
- Aliens can blame themselves for ARCs rolling out on the floor. Beside scout/drifter positioning, a team that has kept the Marine Resource pool to a minimum will be less likely to see ARCs (15 tres ea). The exception would be under a risky scenario where early-mid game a commander may opt for ARCs over upgrades... in this case, high risk should be given a high reward if successful.
- NS1 Siege Turrets' Achilles heel is taking down the governing Turret Factory (you can still always sell the siege turrets). ARCs can continue to fire regardless of your losses.
- NS1 early warning was typically a Phase Gate and/or Turret Factory. Ns2 as mobile drifters and static cysts. Now it would be more difficult to get a forward position... note how infrequent "ninja" phase gates occur in NS2 (understandably, ARCs do not require power).
The only time I ever find we're getting owned by arcs unexpectedly is when we're getting owned by marines because they're flat out better. The arcs in this case aren't required for the win anyway.
Drifters, communication, and not letting marines run away with early res towers. What more is there to say?
The mobile siegecannons(arcs) are pretty stupid imo, since commander can actually solo a hive. He doesn't even neccessarily need his teams cooperation, just click the arc army into hive and deploy and kill hive in few seconds. In NS1 u needed ur team to build turret factory first at the sieging location, then upgrade it to advanced turret factory which took 30-60secs maybe and then team needs to finally build the siegecannons.
This process gave aliens time to prepare. And after all this was done aliens only had to kill the turret factory to make all siegecannons stop working. Imagine if alien commander could move 5-10 whips to marine mainbase and destroy the whole base with them in few seconds? At least marines could beacon which aliens cant do.
Also in NS1 it wasn't uncommon to see gorges outheal siegecannons. Marine commander also ran out of energy from obs/obses pretty often(observatories used energy for scan which regenerated slowly instead of res) so comm couldn't keep scanning forever continuosly.
So in NS1 aliens had way more time to prepare, marine commander needed his team to obey his orders to kill the hive, all the siegecannons could be made unoperational by killing 1 building at the siegesite, gorges could outheal sieges, Marine comm could ran out of scans while sieging and aliens could teleport from one hive to another quickly to prepare for siege.
Atm some random turd in marinecomm chair can solo a hive with few clicks unless alien comm reacts fast and gets his teams full cooperation :P
I think the biggest annoyance is that ARC rushes are stopped entirely by gorges. Gorges don't make it easier, they make it possible. I can't really remember back to NS1, but I'm pretty sure that bile bomb wasn't the cure all to anything with armour. Preventing a siege was equal parts biting and clawing, just as much as it was bile bombing.
Now, the only thing that can stop ARCs is a gorge spamming bile bomb into them. Quite often I will have my marines immediately build an armoury and a robotics factory, and then have them spread out and get at least 3 resource towers and hold them while I do nothing but build ARCs. That way, you will have at least 6 by the 4th minute, probably more, at which point you simply roll them into the nearest alien hive because they have absolutely nothing that will stop it in time.
I like how ARC gameplay changed in the Balance mod:
-Reliably countered by Shade Ink, forcing marines on foot to move into the Hive room first to take it out instead of just waiting outside. (Makes Shade a viable tech path for defense scenarios instead of just hoping to outheal the damage long enough with Crags or requiring Adrenaline for that Bile Bomb barrage)
-50% slower movement on the ARC but increased construction speed and upgrade speed for the ARC Factory. So it essentially discourages the construction of massive ARCs in the save base and puts emphasis on a Factory at the front line that needs to be held. Due to the movement restrictions does it also take longer to move the existing ARCs on to the next Hive after a successful siege, giving aliens more time to prepare for a counter attack. And it also makes it harder to get them into safety after the marines got cleared away.
-Population limit of 200 points that is shared between ARCs (20), MACs (10), Sentries (25), Armories (15) and Robotics Factories (10). Values are probably still open for adjustment, but it's pretty much impossible to get more than 8 ARCs on the field.
-Bile Bomb is a 1-Hive ability that requires only Biomass level 2, essentially giving aliens the chance to defend against ARC pushes even on 1 Hive.
I think it's a wash between ARCs and Siege Cannons as far as game play mechanics.
I think Siege Cannons were far more fun than ARCs. Setting up a siege base in NS1 was a tense, white-knuckled, practically Ninja-like event. ARCs are like a 30 minute pizza delivery. Expeditious, while generally unsatisfying.
You could go and play it... It's a free hl mod. And if you don't own hl... Well there's a game every single gamer should have played...
I own HL and I played NS a little back then, and I have NS installed right now, but there is a problem: 1) Nobody plays NS now. 2) Popup menu is glitched for me and so is Comm interface so I can't do anything as a comm and as an alien, and I've heard I'm not the only one having that problem (I once found a game with 20+ players).
Have you really tried to play? Because I play NS nearly every day, and I can assure it is still played... freaking every day. For your technical problem, try to simply reinstall NS3.2 (perhaps from somewhere else), sometimes it did that and a reinstall fixed it.
I managed to find one server filled with people and they explained me how to fix my problem. I had 3 actually: had to downgrade HL for popup fix, disable gammaramp for intreface fix and modify videodrivers to use nvidia instead of integrated graphics, because it wouldn't change noramlly via nvidia panel.
After seeing sieage cannons in action I must say that arcs are much better.
The only major problem I have with ARCs in their current state is their movement.
They can move through clogs and through infestation spikes and its unclear which obstables an ARC is able to drive through/over. And its unclear at which incline an ARC is unable to climb.
Otherwise, I think ARCs are fine.
They could use a cap though, dependent on how much ARC Robotics Factories you have.
Like maybe 5 ARCs per ARC Robotics Factory.
I'm sure though that putting a limit on ARCs was mentioned before.
Comments
Anyway: Have you really tried to play? Because I play NS nearly every day, and I can assure it is still played... freaking every day. For your technical problem, try to simply reinstall NS3.2 (perhaps from somewhere else), sometimes it did that and a reinstall fixed it.
The boom these days is a lot less hard. Id prefer a bigger boom and lesser fire rate tbh. Just for feels.
(I also liked the huge splash damage although I agree its to OP to implement)
Im with the scout & drifter group. No way a competent kham & team can not spot arcs incoming.
This results in a decline of "epic" battles for territory, whilst increasing the pace of the game. Pace is something I believe the Developers opted for over "epic".
Seeing as this topic is based off of preference toward one style over another, let me contribute these thoughts. Consider each of these as a risk investment with a potential reward.
- NS1 Commanders could sell the equipment when they were done or losing a siege position to reclaim resources. The investment in NS2 is non-redeemable.
- Aliens can blame themselves for ARCs rolling out on the floor. Beside scout/drifter positioning, a team that has kept the Marine Resource pool to a minimum will be less likely to see ARCs (15 tres ea). The exception would be under a risky scenario where early-mid game a commander may opt for ARCs over upgrades... in this case, high risk should be given a high reward if successful.
- NS1 Siege Turrets' Achilles heel is taking down the governing Turret Factory (you can still always sell the siege turrets). ARCs can continue to fire regardless of your losses.
- NS1 early warning was typically a Phase Gate and/or Turret Factory. Ns2 as mobile drifters and static cysts. Now it would be more difficult to get a forward position... note how infrequent "ninja" phase gates occur in NS2 (understandably, ARCs do not require power).
Some additional food for thought.
Drifters, communication, and not letting marines run away with early res towers. What more is there to say?
This process gave aliens time to prepare. And after all this was done aliens only had to kill the turret factory to make all siegecannons stop working. Imagine if alien commander could move 5-10 whips to marine mainbase and destroy the whole base with them in few seconds? At least marines could beacon which aliens cant do.
Also in NS1 it wasn't uncommon to see gorges outheal siegecannons. Marine commander also ran out of energy from obs/obses pretty often(observatories used energy for scan which regenerated slowly instead of res) so comm couldn't keep scanning forever continuosly.
So in NS1 aliens had way more time to prepare, marine commander needed his team to obey his orders to kill the hive, all the siegecannons could be made unoperational by killing 1 building at the siegesite, gorges could outheal sieges, Marine comm could ran out of scans while sieging and aliens could teleport from one hive to another quickly to prepare for siege.
Atm some random turd in marinecomm chair can solo a hive with few clicks unless alien comm reacts fast and gets his teams full cooperation :P
Now, the only thing that can stop ARCs is a gorge spamming bile bomb into them. Quite often I will have my marines immediately build an armoury and a robotics factory, and then have them spread out and get at least 3 resource towers and hold them while I do nothing but build ARCs. That way, you will have at least 6 by the 4th minute, probably more, at which point you simply roll them into the nearest alien hive because they have absolutely nothing that will stop it in time.
-Reliably countered by Shade Ink, forcing marines on foot to move into the Hive room first to take it out instead of just waiting outside. (Makes Shade a viable tech path for defense scenarios instead of just hoping to outheal the damage long enough with Crags or requiring Adrenaline for that Bile Bomb barrage)
-50% slower movement on the ARC but increased construction speed and upgrade speed for the ARC Factory. So it essentially discourages the construction of massive ARCs in the save base and puts emphasis on a Factory at the front line that needs to be held. Due to the movement restrictions does it also take longer to move the existing ARCs on to the next Hive after a successful siege, giving aliens more time to prepare for a counter attack. And it also makes it harder to get them into safety after the marines got cleared away.
-Population limit of 200 points that is shared between ARCs (20), MACs (10), Sentries (25), Armories (15) and Robotics Factories (10). Values are probably still open for adjustment, but it's pretty much impossible to get more than 8 ARCs on the field.
-Bile Bomb is a 1-Hive ability that requires only Biomass level 2, essentially giving aliens the chance to defend against ARC pushes even on 1 Hive.
I think Siege Cannons were far more fun than ARCs. Setting up a siege base in NS1 was a tense, white-knuckled, practically Ninja-like event. ARCs are like a 30 minute pizza delivery. Expeditious, while generally unsatisfying.
I managed to find one server filled with people and they explained me how to fix my problem. I had 3 actually: had to downgrade HL for popup fix, disable gammaramp for intreface fix and modify videodrivers to use nvidia instead of integrated graphics, because it wouldn't change noramlly via nvidia panel.
After seeing sieage cannons in action I must say that arcs are much better.
They can move through clogs and through infestation spikes and its unclear which obstables an ARC is able to drive through/over. And its unclear at which incline an ARC is unable to climb.
Otherwise, I think ARCs are fine.
They could use a cap though, dependent on how much ARC Robotics Factories you have.
Like maybe 5 ARCs per ARC Robotics Factory.
I'm sure though that putting a limit on ARCs was mentioned before.