I think it might just be that pub players have not gotten used to the new aliens. Also alien com is a lot more important now. I have not seen the new drifter abilities used in pub play at all.
I've used them a few times, didn't find them extremely useful, the armor healing one is pretty weak.
Though I have had a few moment when I said, dang I wish I had emp there
Man the new drifters are awesome, you just gotta use them moooore. I've saved countless lifeforms with their abilities. Onos too slow? use storm to get his fatass out of there. Want a cool way to distract a marine or two in a hive room? Make a hallucination hive wait for the marines to start shooting then have the aliens pounce. Tired of having your harvesters killed only seconds before you can recyst them? use mucous on the harvester to start rebuilding the armor, which starting dying again, while your cyst grows. The health of the harvester stays the same and it only cost you the 1 res not the 8 to buy a new one.
For the topic of marine turtle breaking, however, on most maps, they aren't of much use, as the grenade spam prevents them from getting close enough to the marine base to augment the aliens. (Same holds true of the Gorges and various structures that some have suggested.)
I suppose, if the Drifter's enhancement duration's were increased, say by 0.5-1.0 second per level of Biomass, then it might be a more viable in assisting base cracking, as you could apply your alien enhancements from further away. Granted, you would have to organize your increasingly frustrated team to hold further back and get boosted before going in as well.
Simpler, of course, to do something about the 1 comm chair full strength grenade launcher spam.
luckily i never saw such a long turtle, but i agree that high marine tech should be on 2 cc´s and the biomass healthbonus and the abilities on 3rd hive need a buff
What is really just needed is a grenade spam counter. There's currently no counter to it.
There was a counter that was inexplicably taken away...
It wasn't totally inexplicable. They changed the prediction code for grenades and couldn't get it to work with whips hitting them back so removed whip hitting. Not sure why they felt it better to have the new code and no whip back rather than just sticking to the old code, I assume they had their reasons.
Maybe if Umbra would take grenades out of the air? Granted, it'd only help a little, and could easily backfire (even if it would be nifty to suddenly see the grenade projectile slow to a stop in mid air when entering Umbra). It'd be nice if Whips were made useful for more than entertainment purposes. I mean, they do have a *little* defense use, if they are shaded and in sufficiently large clusters to bile the hell out of an Exo, but the structure limit kinda ruins that potential, and they don't have enough health individually to do anything to an Exo, once spotted. It would help, slightly, if their bile was fully acidic and melted flesh as well, but none of those advantages would go towards base cracking - just making them worth while for defense again. At the moment, a whip kill is so rare it just leads to laughter and ridicule.
Do need to at least remove the Whip help tip/description that says they deflect grenades - confuses both new and old commanders no end. (Also still need to fix that Fade help tip/hud lock error, coming across more and more folks with that issue.)
Just thought I'd mention that I played on a Beta server, and am thoroughly disturbed that nothing has been done regarding the complaints in this thread. (Though the new cyst chain system is nice.)
It was a 70 minute game on ns_summit, in which aliens had 80-90% resource control for 90% of the game with the marines pinned in Flight Control. They somehow managed to hole up well enough to get full upgrades and Exos on their one extractor.
Took over for previous alien commander, moved all the eggs from three hives to the front lines, organized Enzyme + Storm + Fade w/Vortex + 3 Gorge + 7 Onos rush. Made ten backup Onos eggs in the extra hive, just in case it failed... And it did. Took out maybe 2/4 exo's and barely dented the power, just removing the structures protecting it. Every higher life form died in the assault.
The backup Onos eggs woulda saved us, but a lone jetpack flame thrower flew to the furthest hive, and hard boiled them all before the aliens picked up more than one. The one that did hatch, thanks to horrendous amounts of panic mist, was fried alive, solo'd by the same jetpacker. One other was Echoed out in time (woulda been more, but said shift caught fire) yet the other marines reached that one before the aliens did, because...
With next to no higher life forms, the fully upgraded marines rolled over the aliens in short order, taking out every hive in turn, not even stopping long enough to secure them, beyond preventative CC placement, ending the game via blitzkrieg less than 5 minutes later. A single Exo and a turret system proved more than sufficient to defend the marine base against the few remaining disorganized aliens with the presence of mind to attempt to move in behind them.
That, on a beta server. Mostly experienced players, no greens.
This has gotta stop.
Anyone know where we might go to make our voices better heard on this? As this kinda indicates nothing is happening on this front.
Just thought I'd mention that I played on a Beta server, and am thoroughly disturbed that nothing has been done regarding the complaints in this thread. (Though the new cyst chain system is nice.)
It was a 70 minute game on ns_summit, in which aliens had 80-90% resource control for 90% of the game with the marines pinned in Flight Control. They somehow managed to hole up well enough to get full upgrades and Exos on their one extractor.
Took over for previous alien commander, moved all the eggs from three hives to the front lines, organized Enzyme + Storm + Fade w/Vortex + 3 Gorge + 7 Onos rush. Made ten backup Onos eggs in the extra hive, just in case it failed... And it did. Took out maybe 2/4 exo's and barely dented the power, just removing the structures protecting it. Every higher life form died in the assault.
The backup Onos eggs woulda saved us, but a lone jetpack flame thrower flew to the furthest hive, and hard boiled them all before the aliens picked up more than one. The one that did hatch, thanks to horrendous amounts of panic mist, was fried alive, solo'd by the same jetpacker. One other was Echoed out in time (woulda been more, but sadly, none were close enough to the shift) yet the other marines reached that one before the aliens did, because...
With next to no higher life forms, the fully upgraded marines rolled over the aliens in short order, taking out every hive in turn, not even stopping long enough to secure them, beyond preventative CC placement, ending the game via blitzkrieg less than 5 minutes later. A single Exo and a turret system proved more than sufficient to defend the marine base against the few remaining disorganized aliens with the presence of mind to attempt to move in behind them.
That, on a beta server. Mostly experienced players, no greens.
This has gotta stop.
Anyone know where we might go to make our voices better heard on this? As this kinda indicates nothing is happening on this front.
Game is not balanced for 12v12(maps arent balanced for 12v12 either). Marines have a huge advantage. It will be hard to kill turtling marines on servers like that.
Game is not balanced for 12v12(maps arent balanced for 12v12 either). Marines have a huge advantage. It will be hard to kill turtling marines on servers like that.
Well, if that's the case, they need to disable making servers this size as most all the servers are around that size... It's even harder to crack maps in smaller games, so I can only suppose you mean it's designed for larger games (despite the fact I recall it being said the balance is specifically designed for 12 man teams.)
Agreed on:
Railgun exos only on 1 CC.
W2/A2 only on 1 CC.
I've thought about the upgrade part so many times, and I always come to the conclusion that getting full upgrades with just your starting base is way too OP
Agreed on:
Railgun exos only on 1 CC.
W2/A2 only on 1 CC.
I've thought about the upgrade part so many times, and I always come to the conclusion that getting full upgrades with just your starting base is way too OP
The marien turtle is hard to crack but this is mostly due to ineptitude of the aliens...
@thoth if your subsiding on power and exo's your suiciding on replaceable units... The only structure worth a team wide suicide on is the CC! Alternatively if the rine team makes a large push this leaves the egg soft, instead of trying to push them back into their base allow them some room, and when they start to attack a hive rush their CC...
Here's a weird idea.
If aliens have a 100% maturity hive at every tech point except 1 (which the marines have), they can research "super-cysts".
Super-cysts are invulnerable, its infestation deal both hp and armor damage to marine buildings AND prevent repairing of buildings.
The aliens can then super-cyst into the marine base, and marines can have a last desperate attempt to take down a hive before the super-cysts destroy all their buildings.
Comments
Man the new drifters are awesome, you just gotta use them moooore. I've saved countless lifeforms with their abilities. Onos too slow? use storm to get his fatass out of there. Want a cool way to distract a marine or two in a hive room? Make a hallucination hive wait for the marines to start shooting then have the aliens pounce. Tired of having your harvesters killed only seconds before you can recyst them? use mucous on the harvester to start rebuilding the armor, which starting dying again, while your cyst grows. The health of the harvester stays the same and it only cost you the 1 res not the 8 to buy a new one.
This guy started playing last week and he already knows more than you all
I suppose, if the Drifter's enhancement duration's were increased, say by 0.5-1.0 second per level of Biomass, then it might be a more viable in assisting base cracking, as you could apply your alien enhancements from further away. Granted, you would have to organize your increasingly frustrated team to hold further back and get boosted before going in as well.
Simpler, of course, to do something about the 1 comm chair full strength grenade launcher spam.
It wasn't totally inexplicable. They changed the prediction code for grenades and couldn't get it to work with whips hitting them back so removed whip hitting. Not sure why they felt it better to have the new code and no whip back rather than just sticking to the old code, I assume they had their reasons.
Do need to at least remove the Whip help tip/description that says they deflect grenades - confuses both new and old commanders no end. (Also still need to fix that Fade help tip/hud lock error, coming across more and more folks with that issue.)
It was a 70 minute game on ns_summit, in which aliens had 80-90% resource control for 90% of the game with the marines pinned in Flight Control. They somehow managed to hole up well enough to get full upgrades and Exos on their one extractor.
Took over for previous alien commander, moved all the eggs from three hives to the front lines, organized Enzyme + Storm + Fade w/Vortex + 3 Gorge + 7 Onos rush. Made ten backup Onos eggs in the extra hive, just in case it failed... And it did. Took out maybe 2/4 exo's and barely dented the power, just removing the structures protecting it. Every higher life form died in the assault.
The backup Onos eggs woulda saved us, but a lone jetpack flame thrower flew to the furthest hive, and hard boiled them all before the aliens picked up more than one. The one that did hatch, thanks to horrendous amounts of panic mist, was fried alive, solo'd by the same jetpacker. One other was Echoed out in time (woulda been more, but said shift caught fire) yet the other marines reached that one before the aliens did, because...
With next to no higher life forms, the fully upgraded marines rolled over the aliens in short order, taking out every hive in turn, not even stopping long enough to secure them, beyond preventative CC placement, ending the game via blitzkrieg less than 5 minutes later. A single Exo and a turret system proved more than sufficient to defend the marine base against the few remaining disorganized aliens with the presence of mind to attempt to move in behind them.
That, on a beta server. Mostly experienced players, no greens.
This has gotta stop.
Anyone know where we might go to make our voices better heard on this? As this kinda indicates nothing is happening on this front.
Game is not balanced for 12v12(maps arent balanced for 12v12 either). Marines have a huge advantage. It will be hard to kill turtling marines on servers like that.
Well, if that's the case, they need to disable making servers this size as most all the servers are around that size... It's even harder to crack maps in smaller games, so I can only suppose you mean it's designed for larger games (despite the fact I recall it being said the balance is specifically designed for 12 man teams.)
Railgun exos only on 1 CC.
W2/A2 only on 1 CC.
I've thought about the upgrade part so many times, and I always come to the conclusion that getting full upgrades with just your starting base is way too OP
Agreed
@thoth if your subsiding on power and exo's your suiciding on replaceable units... The only structure worth a team wide suicide on is the CC! Alternatively if the rine team makes a large push this leaves the egg soft, instead of trying to push them back into their base allow them some room, and when they start to attack a hive rush their CC...
If aliens have a 100% maturity hive at every tech point except 1 (which the marines have), they can research "super-cysts".
Super-cysts are invulnerable, its infestation deal both hp and armor damage to marine buildings AND prevent repairing of buildings.
The aliens can then super-cyst into the marine base, and marines can have a last desperate attempt to take down a hive before the super-cysts destroy all their buildings.
I'd prefer Gorgezilla