Marines have plenty of time to kill the 3rd hive once it is dropped, it isn't built instantly, it takes a gorge and a drifter at the very least, if just a drifter is building you have a ton of time! And usually that is the most vulnerable time, it doesn't have max hp while building.
Another point to bring up, is how useless skulks can be towards the end. Marines with upgrades can easily make a skulks life a nightmare even without gear. Armor and Weapons ups, and the ability of marines not needing as many RTs.
@freebirdpat Yes but you are also not identifying the situation at which Xeno is most powerful. As we all know, Xeno becomes more powerful when there are more players. Another aspect of aliens that gets more powerful when there are more players, gorges. It's not really feasible in 6v6 to have a dedicated gorge player since that is 1 less skulk, fade, lerk, onos on the field. With 12v12, you can always afford to have 2-3 gorges on your team which also means that that hive goes up extremely quickly. There's not just 1 gorge and a drifter, usually there's 2-3 gorges + the drifter power building that ASAP with a heavy defense from the aliens.
In most cases in pubs, this means that you have an extremely narrow window of opportunity where you can take back that base and deny the 3rd TP before it's completed, 2-3 gorges finish a hive insanely fast especially if they use enzyme.
Skulks are still very important late game. They might not be strong in a straight up fight but they are still the most effective at RT harass and swarming.
Cannon_FodderAUSBrisbane, AUJoin Date: 2013-06-23Member: 185664Members, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
@Chizzler I haven't played a game where 3 hive aliens with no higher life forms are a problem for marines. It can still be back and forth between the 2 sides as 3 hives opens up alot of abilities for aliens, but if the marines are equally skilled as you described, then one would assume marines are pretty much on full tech (jp and a3/w3). I see that as a contest and team work issue if marines are being pushed back over and over with skulks. Xeno can be annoying, but that is why there is contest for the 3rd hive for the 2 sides.
If by your logic, the 2 sides are equal, then it would be rare for the marine side to trap and kill all higher life forms (because 2 equal sides means there is about equal map control, so the early lerks / fades would probably have enough pRes to re-lerk (is that even a word?) or re-fade after dying.
So at the end, I think its a team work and pushing your advantage when you can issue rather than a balance for xeno. I have played plenty of games where marines can't finish off aliens like you describe (we held most of map, lots of res, full tech earlier than aliens) and still lost due to the lack of coordination to push a hive. Then aliens manage to 3 hive on 2-3 res nodes because we are just not pushing, and beat us with xeno and superior team work. I take those on the chin, and say we screwed up, not xeno is OP because we had the map control, we could have won, but didn't.
How does late game..not mean end game? A minute? If aliens have xeno, marines should have the upgrades to push forward or at least defend... otherwise, they screwed up earlier with res management to get the marines proper upgrades.
2 things. Xeno costs you as a skulk absolutely nothing. There is no waste of res at all. So, you've got it quite backwards between combat and vanilla. Skulk upgrades dont cost anything. So you get your celerity, your aura, and your cara all for free, then blow yourself up in a group of rines. This costs them money for whatever weapon/accessory they had.
Yeah, because marines getting up to 30% more damage and 60 more armor, for free, isn't relevant. SO unfair.
I don't get the point you're making @ruprecht. Can you clarify?
2 things. Xeno costs you as a skulk absolutely nothing. There is no waste of res at all. So, you've got it quite backwards between combat and vanilla. Skulk upgrades dont cost anything. So you get your celerity, your aura, and your cara all for free, then blow yourself up in a group of rines. This costs them money for whatever weapon/accessory they had.
Yeah, because marines getting up to 30% more damage and 60 more armor, for free, isn't relevant. SO unfair.
I don't get the point you're making @ruprect. Can you clarify?
I think he's talking about how every spawn the marines still have buffed upgrades, unlike aliens who need the res to get upgrades each spawn.
2 things. Xeno costs you as a skulk absolutely nothing. There is no waste of res at all. So, you've got it quite backwards between combat and vanilla. Skulk upgrades dont cost anything. So you get your celerity, your aura, and your cara all for free, then blow yourself up in a group of rines. This costs them money for whatever weapon/accessory they had.
Yeah, because marines getting up to 30% more damage and 60 more armor, for free, isn't relevant. SO unfair.
I don't get the point you're making @ruprect. Can you clarify?
I think he's talking about how every spawn the marines still have buffed upgrades, unlike aliens who need the res to get upgrades each spawn.
@Cannon_FodderAUS
I agree that marines should be able to stop the hive going up and it's down to a lack of teamwork to do so before the hive is up,in most of my experiences it's how i see it... However the advantage given by that third hive is too much, It decides the outcome of the match in almost every case i've seen.
How does late game..not mean end game? A minute? If aliens have xeno, marines should have the upgrades to push forward or at least defend... otherwise, they screwed up earlier with res management to get the marines proper upgrades.
End-game is traditionally used to describe the final moments of a game. More recently it's been used by MMORPG players to describe reaching max progression/completing all content because those games unlike more traditional ones don't have an end, NS2 does.
Any tech the marines have (except Armour and weapons upgrades) were bought with p.res. Xenocide is free... the longer that hive is up the more pres will be lost through attrition and the harder it becomes to take it down, defending now is useless, it's most likely why they've secured the third hive in the first place. You've got to bring it down as quickly as possible, before you've burned through your marines p.res.
Like most things on aliens, Xeno should scale with biomass, should do ok damage at bio 7 but at bio 9 it should be able to do quite a bit of damage, there for it makes it not so end game when 3-4 skulks all use it at the same time just 1 sec after re-spawning and wiping out any marine pressure that builds up.
Balance doesn't mean that two teams are equal throughout a match. Just that matches have an equal chance of going to either team.
Even in StarCraft 2. The different races have different strengths depending on the stage of the game.
Before it was weps 2 and shotties before fadeball or you lose. Now its marines need to finish it or prevent 3rd hive or aliens gain a big advantage. I don't see the problem.
Sc2 meta changes a bunch. But I remember when they used to say that terrain dominates early and peters out late.
Comments
Another point to bring up, is how useless skulks can be towards the end. Marines with upgrades can easily make a skulks life a nightmare even without gear. Armor and Weapons ups, and the ability of marines not needing as many RTs.
In most cases in pubs, this means that you have an extremely narrow window of opportunity where you can take back that base and deny the 3rd TP before it's completed, 2-3 gorges finish a hive insanely fast especially if they use enzyme.
Skulks are still very important late game. They might not be strong in a straight up fight but they are still the most effective at RT harass and swarming.
If by your logic, the 2 sides are equal, then it would be rare for the marine side to trap and kill all higher life forms (because 2 equal sides means there is about equal map control, so the early lerks / fades would probably have enough pRes to re-lerk (is that even a word?) or re-fade after dying.
So at the end, I think its a team work and pushing your advantage when you can issue rather than a balance for xeno. I have played plenty of games where marines can't finish off aliens like you describe (we held most of map, lots of res, full tech earlier than aliens) and still lost due to the lack of coordination to push a hive. Then aliens manage to 3 hive on 2-3 res nodes because we are just not pushing, and beat us with xeno and superior team work. I take those on the chin, and say we screwed up, not xeno is OP because we had the map control, we could have won, but didn't.
I don't get the point you're making @ruprecht. Can you clarify?
I think he's talking about how every spawn the marines still have buffed upgrades, unlike aliens who need the res to get upgrades each spawn.
I agree that marines should be able to stop the hive going up and it's down to a lack of teamwork to do so before the hive is up,in most of my experiences it's how i see it... However the advantage given by that third hive is too much, It decides the outcome of the match in almost every case i've seen.
End-game is traditionally used to describe the final moments of a game. More recently it's been used by MMORPG players to describe reaching max progression/completing all content because those games unlike more traditional ones don't have an end, NS2 does.
Any tech the marines have (except Armour and weapons upgrades) were bought with p.res. Xenocide is free... the longer that hive is up the more pres will be lost through attrition and the harder it becomes to take it down, defending now is useless, it's most likely why they've secured the third hive in the first place. You've got to bring it down as quickly as possible, before you've burned through your marines p.res.
Even in StarCraft 2. The different races have different strengths depending on the stage of the game.
Before it was weps 2 and shotties before fadeball or you lose. Now its marines need to finish it or prevent 3rd hive or aliens gain a big advantage. I don't see the problem.
Sc2 meta changes a bunch. But I remember when they used to say that terrain dominates early and peters out late.