Build Orders
Calego
Join Date: 2013-01-24 Member: 181848Members, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2013-01-24 Member: 181848Members, NS2 Map Tester
Alright Comms, Khamms, and everyone else. Let's compile a list of Build-orders.
I'll start things off with my Exo Rush:
- Needs 4 RTs
- Drop armory immediately, research AA as soon as it's done.
Get RTs, tell team not to push too far away.
Find starting hive, control tech point reasonably close to it.
- Drop Obs at resource node closer to secondary tech point than starting one
- Drop CC at secondary Tech Point
The goal here is to have Exos up, get your entire team to buy them, then beacon them to the tech point closer to Alien Hive.
- Drop ProtoLab, Research Exos
- Drop Arms Lab, Start A1, then A2
Drop ghost chairs on all remaining tech points as a bonus insurance policy.
Assuming you hold the 4 RTs necessary, Your team should have 40 pres by the time Exos role out at around 7-8 minutes. And you should be able to have at least A1 by the time they hit the hive. Extra CC and beacon means a counter rush will be ineffective (except to disable the A1/2 arms lab). Ghost chairs will also help ensure the aliens don't drop panic hive.
Thus far this has only worked on Tram (namely because I've only done it on Tram), and only in the little derpy games that are common when seeding servers. I've tried to pull this on a populated server and it didn't go over well (the team demanded jets instead, and wouldn't bother obeying me to hold RTs...).
I'll start things off with my Exo Rush:
- Needs 4 RTs
- Drop armory immediately, research AA as soon as it's done.
Get RTs, tell team not to push too far away.
Find starting hive, control tech point reasonably close to it.
- Drop Obs at resource node closer to secondary tech point than starting one
- Drop CC at secondary Tech Point
The goal here is to have Exos up, get your entire team to buy them, then beacon them to the tech point closer to Alien Hive.
- Drop ProtoLab, Research Exos
- Drop Arms Lab, Start A1, then A2
Drop ghost chairs on all remaining tech points as a bonus insurance policy.
Assuming you hold the 4 RTs necessary, Your team should have 40 pres by the time Exos role out at around 7-8 minutes. And you should be able to have at least A1 by the time they hit the hive. Extra CC and beacon means a counter rush will be ineffective (except to disable the A1/2 arms lab). Ghost chairs will also help ensure the aliens don't drop panic hive.
Thus far this has only worked on Tram (namely because I've only done it on Tram), and only in the little derpy games that are common when seeding servers. I've tried to pull this on a populated server and it didn't go over well (the team demanded jets instead, and wouldn't bother obeying me to hold RTs...).
Comments
Drop naturals
Armslab - hop out and build
Armor1
Weapons1 as soon as possible while prioritizing building available res nodes first
2nd IP
Armory
Shotguns
Phase Gates
Armor2/Weapons2 (I like armor2 for survivability)
Weapons2/Armor2
Catpacks
Weapons3/AA
AA/Weapons3
Protolab
JPs
Endgame
EDIT: in addition to the fact that no one in their right mind expects marines to have Exos ever, much less at 8 minutes...
If you have a single not-so-bright marine who buys a GL or flame thrower when AA finishes ( ~3mn), aliens WILL know what's coming.
A clever skulk will wonder why marines don't have A1 at 4-5min in the game and will generally check marine start to see where the comm has spent its resources.
Anyhow.
Here's a semi-standard Gates First:
- Drop Armory (2nd IP if pubs)
- Drop Naturals
- Drop Obs > Research Phase
- Drop second set of RTs
- Research Mines (while waiting for marines to get to gates locations)
- Get 2-3 Gates
- Arms Lab
- A1, W1
- Shotguns
- W2/A2 (W2 messes fades up with shottys in big groups)
> Somewhere around here good idea to have a second CC up and maybe an Obs (depends on res income)
- A2/AA
- Proto
- Jets
- ??? > Profit
Also, here's good small game (6v6) start:
Drop robo, whole team builds.
4 marines split in two groups and go build extractors fast.
One marine builds sentries around IP, MAC is produced in the meantime.
Robo is sold, as otherwise you will have no res for fourth extractor.
Now, what are the benefits?
1) Early game base security. If sentries won't kill all those skulks, commander will have a huge help fighting them, and MAC will even be able to restore some armor so parabitebite won't work.
2) Enhanced base security means marines can be more aggressive and not rush back every time someone reports skulks approaching main base. Secured base generally means that marines can stray further without worrying about IP eaten of forced return by beacon.
3) Marines don't waste time to build mandatory stuff at base, MAC builds. Armory, arms lab, observatory, second IP, phase gate - it's roughly 1.5 minute build time saved for one marine. 1.5 minutes of being useful outside marine start. Which means more extractors saved, more harvesters destroyed, more lifeforms killed.
4) Free MAC welding at base.
Now, isn't it overly expensive?
Costs might seem to be high: 10 res robo, 25 res sentries, 5 res MAC.
Well, firstly, MAC is not mandatory, but is totally worth 5 res investment (read above), since you are getting robotics factory, why not produce a robot...
Then, robo gets instantly sold, so it's 8 res back. So it's 32 initial res investment.
But 32 is too much? Well, if things won't go according to plan, or if want to get some upgrade sooner once early game has passed, you can sell sentries and get 20 res back. So in the end, it's 10 + 10 + 5 + 5x3 - 8 - 20 = 12 res. Twelve res for MAC building, welding, and most importantly, base security. Even if it only the sense of security, it really encourages team to be more aggressive.
A good situational trick is to sell those sentries after first wave of skulks is defeated. They will be like 'man they've got sentries in their base, we'd better not rush it until we get lifeforms / upgrades' and won't step into your base for some time, thinking you still have sentries. And you will get your money back real quick.
Total cost is twelve res, including MAC as a bonus / 7 res go nowhere eventually. Compare it to mines - which require 20 res initial investment (though both armory and mines are needed, there is no waste of res here) and 15 pres to lay down one-time defense, which might be completely ignored by careful skulks. Compare it to obs - 10 res for obs itself and 10 res for beacon. Again it's 20 res to defend against early game rush, and what's worse - it bring everyone to base, leaving all the tasks marines were performing unaccomplished. This might mean harvester or gorge or his tunnel surviving, extractor built only to 95%, or your working extractor going down.
In conclusion. It is kinda situational strategy, works best if you know enemy team likes rushes. It will delay first tech (upgrades or phase gates) for a while, BUT at the same time, it allows marines to be more aggressive and build more, which in turn means that you will break even and get your stuff rapidly (in fact, sometimes income gets higher than MAC can build).
what you mostly see in pubs is shift-hive-first or armslab a1 w1 w2, possibly some pg rushes. and that's about it, most other beginnings are easily critizised by certain players unless the commander already has a reputation.
advice from personal experience: before trying out something unconventional on a populated server, command a "standard" scenario first to grow trust in your knowledge/abilities and then the unconventional one the round after. as mentioned in several posts here, strategies can fail if other players don't listen.
as for unconventional openings, something i recently saw was a catalyst-axe rush directly on the enemy hive. i only saw this once so i have no specific advice on how to pull it off effectively (i guess you need quite some luck in any case). point of the strategy is that the hive is very weak at the beginning of the game (since it's not matured yet) and the axe deals double damage against structures so it goes down really fast.
when resources and the situation/timing allows it (which is really rare), i sometimes drop 2 hives at the same time. chances are actually good to keep both alive (if your team has decent coordination and scouting), otherwise the marines usually only have time to bring one of them down (never seen both die yet).
best case: you have 3 hives and you have them earlier than dropping them one after another. means more map control and no weakest link regarding newborn/mature hives later on.
worst case: you have 2 hives and lost 40 res. that's a lot, but would probably have happened the same way (or losing even 80 res) when dropping them one after another.
again, this is highly situational, usually if you have 80+ res in your bank and no relevant upgrades/support structures are needed.
much more viable (and quite popular by now), with shift-hive-first: have a single drifter at base and echo out harvesters at risky front-line positions, avoiding risks of getting gorges, drifters and still-weak harvesters shot (for every drifter, harvester or gorge dying, you lose res equal to 4x harvester-echo and losing those is also bad for morale). you also have your drifter at base to build spurs and support structures that you'll eventually echo to the front lines. a gorge waiting for a hive drop can also take the tunnel back to base and help to build the new harvesters in a safe area, without any dangerous traveling.
echoing out fully built harvesters also allows you to take nodes you would otherwise not risk to occupy: even if the harvester goes down more sooner than later, you gathered precious pres for higher lifeforms and kept marines busy for a while.
but even when doing this, it can sometimes be better to drop the harvesters normallyand let a gorge build it up (to save echo costs).
a downside is: the drifter in base cannot easily support frontline aliens with enzyme cloud. so consider getting a second one to rush phasegates etc., since building a 2nd hive takes a lot of drifter-time anyway.
actual build:
for this build i usually research shift hive instantly, also placing a shift and the base-drifter right away and echo out the harvester whenever it seems to make sense, usually more often than not.
initially, i tell the gorge(s) not to worry about harvesters yet and ask them to claim at least 1 techpoint with a tunnel. ideally, the tunnels cover a resource node, those harvester locations are usually fine without echo since the gorge is guarding there anyway (i often drop a crag to support the tunnel, situationally also a shade and/or a whip).
after getting some spurs (optional, but i often do it first) a second drifter is built and you are ready for a hive drop. the gorge benefits from a shift to complete it faster: the shift from base can echo itself in, also saving the gorge time to build up a new one. if the tunnel died for some reason, either wait for a new one or at least echo in a crag (and maybe more) before dropping the hive. use the drifter's enzyme cloud to help clear out the techpoint if it is occupied by a phasegate. enzyme cloud also seems to speed up the hive building when used on the gorge, but it seems to me that the effect is highly diminished (probably due to healspray not stacking too well to prevent 2 gorges from building it up insanely fast).
having 2 hives is when things get a bit more dynamic build-wise, so i'm not continuing with that.
ARC rushes seem surprisingly effective e.g. on eclipse. anyone got a build order for that?
i've also seen early sentries at choke points sometimes, e.g. on veil, but gorge spit seems like a good counter against that.
Build order is kind of self-explanatory - I'll just say, don't be an idiot and research phase tech.. (duh).
Here's a video of catalyst rush for you:
It was totally improvised right before the match, didn't even gave it a lot of thought, and later it turned out one dude was afk during explanation of this... tactic. If you watch at minimap closely, that is the dude who goes crevice alone while rest of the team goes reactor. If it wasn't for him, it'd be huge success. This was organized play, but not real comp, teams were kinda random.
Anyway, it was proven to be viable, I've analyzed what we did wrong, one marine not knowing what the plan is aside, I should have just dropped a few meds around the hive, we didn't need that many catalysts.
I tried it a few times later in pubs, it was really fun and effective. Yes, it is possible to win using this strat.
CC drop is mandatory. Not only it gives you more time to finish the hive, it makes aliens think that you are relocating, hence most of the skulk are going to be busy biting original CC.
As far as ARC rushes go, I've not done one in a while. The nerf to ARC travel speed made it more difficult as you have to decide whether to roll them a long distance with support (pulling marines back from the front to gaurd, telling aliens what you're up to) or risk building the robo up front (where you might lose it, and immediately telling aliens what you're up to.
A variation that I prefer is specific to Veil and involves the Pipeline, East Junction, Homebase triangle. Though a System/Sub gate will work well too.
- RTs, Armory (2nd IP on large servers)
- Obs, Phase Tech, Mines
Assuming aliens start Sub, don't bother pushing Sub Side, have one-two marines sit in sky and block.
Get power to 99 in East first time they go through it, keep a marine or two here to block Topo and C12
- C12/Overlook RT
Kill the Gorge in Pipe/Sub
- Pipe/Sub RT
- Gates in Base, Pipe/System, East
- Drop Robo in East, Upgrade ARCS
Possible to drop Sentries in East to help defend, depends on how fast aliens are going for Bile.
- Get two arcs, Obs in East
Set em up, Knock em down. Aliens will rush either East or Pipe right now. Assuming they don't go for base. So yell at your marines to stay on gates.
- Get Nano, keep the East Gate or get one in System/Y-Junction (You could relocate it to Nano, but IMO it's not necessary and it feels more defensive. Marines get a clear shot at skulks biting Nano as they enter from East. Plus if aliens retake Nano, you can still ARC it out so they won't drop it.)
From there, pressure Hives. Arcs are reasonably effective from System. Cargo's more Jetpack than ARC friendly.
Alternately, if they start Pipe, don't push past East Junction. Get a gate at System, East and Control. ARCS might be better deployed from System to West Junction.
I'm not really sure how to integrate upgrades into this. Assuming good resflow, You could theoretically have A1 by the time you have ARCs? I don't do numbers. Just yell at your marines to not push too hard and mine the crap out of the gates.
My favorite line is "I don't want to see a square meter of XPLACE without a mine on it."
It's also really beneficial if you can get the team to run back to base without the beacon since every single alien can now hear it and they will suspect a rush of some kind.
@Laosh'Ra, your shift strat. is what I am doing alot atm on pubs. It works reasonably well (though I don't do the hive drop so fast, unless the team is doing well). I tend not to drifter support til about 5 min (when A1 is out or pg is out). Also, I get biomass 1 started when I want to drop hive, then after hive drop, I save for gorge ups (bile is just so powerful). So when 2nd hive is done, I have bile. I sometimes don't drop 3rd spur til I have the next 2 upgrade structures. Depending on the flow of the game. I try to have a shade and crag build in base near the shift in case we hit an area successfully, then I can echo the pre-build crag (or if I can cyst to the other side of the wall of the room we want to hit, I echo the crag there and tell the team to hit that room.
very solid
It really doesn't matter if they expect it at that point, unless they're a pack of insane skulks/lifeforms and bile bomb gorges, there's very little they can do against a pack of Marine exos.
It isn't always viable, but if you have spare, cysted node you can use echo to save a harvester that's under attack.
Echo the shift in;
Echo the harvester out;
Echo the shift out.
It can really frustrate the marines
"Build orders" seem to be much simpler for Marines than Aliens, maybe I'm just a better Marine comm. @Laosh'Ra keep em coming!
Shotgun Rush
- Drop Armory > Research Shotguns
Get the whole team to move towards enemy base, secure room close to it.
- Drop secondary Armory, power-build.
Whole team buy shotties, charge the hive -> profit!
Alternatively drop a chair on the way to the hive as insurance, and to fool aliens into thinking it's a relocate.
Semi-standard "Upgrades first":
- Drop Arms Lab, Naturals
- Research A1
- Second set of RTs
- W1
- Armory, Obs, Phase Tech, Mines
Second IP somewhere in here if needed
- Gates, A2/W2, Shotguns
I usually prefer W2 first as it'll mess up the lifeforms when they come out combined with shotties. Good shots can survive longer by killing/scaring things faster, rather than by living a little longer with some extra armor. Aliens fear weapons, are annoyed by armor.
Here's where you decide to go for ARCs or Tech - I tend to choose wrong
- Lv2 upgrade
- Robo Factory, ARC upgrade
Somewhere around here it's a good idea to get a second CC/base.
- AA
- ARCs (three is a good number)
- Proto (W3 somewhere)
- Jetpacks
- Support and profit!
1. Armory and Obs to start
2. Mines. You now have two cheap and necessary layers of protection against base rushers.
3. Get dat arms lab up. Armor 1 first, always, so your marines dont die from para2bites.
4. SECOND IP. Even if you dont have a spawn queue going. This is a 10 man team, a failed push can easily mean loss of all your map control without enough IPs. Would you rather invest 20 res now, while you can, or suddenly realise you need a 2nd IP when your whole team is in a spawn queue and all your RTs are going down?
4.5. If the aliens set up a troublesome gorge fort, research hand grenades
5. Weapons 1. Duh. Could also do this before 2nd IP if you can see your team is well-positioned.
6a. If the oppositions lerks are good, get shotties
6b. Else research PGs
7. Get W2/A2
8. Place PGs as neccesary.
8.5 Definitely time to think about getting a second tech point with Obs and an IP. Also robo factory if you have res.
9. AA
9.5 A3/W3
10. Proto.
10.5 Cat packs (and maybe Nanoshields!)
11. Jets
12. Dont research exos. Ever. Leave them alone.
Once you've got AA/W2A2 the order kinda matters less than your ability to remove hives from the map, so that's kinda open to interpretation.
This build is intended to address the main reason I see decent pub teams fail, and that's unexpected rushes on the main base due to a couple of competant aliens.
Traditionally it went something like this:
- Drop Robo, powerbuild
No one leaves base.
- Upgrade ARCs
- Pump out 2-3 ARCs (recycle IP, RT as necessary to do so)
- Locate Hive, Roll em out, with everyone on the team in protection mode.
Set up ARCs in range, Marines must provide line of sight, cover the ARCs.
Problem is that ARCs move even slower than they used to, and slower still on infestation (which can be cleared at the risk of attracting a swarm, not that an ARC train would ever do that on its own).
There's not really a counter except the obvious kill the marines and the ARCs with skulks.
I suppose Shade's ink would be a counter, Also a base rush would be bad depending on how much res there is to drop a ghost chair.
You'd need to eliminate the arcs-travelling-across-the-map for this strat to have any hope of working. An alien team *should* call base rush (once the marines have left base) on this, there is no chance you won't be spotted as no marines leave base at the start, which is... odd
A better variation would be to have a start with 2-3 marines capping as usual, but send a larger than normal pressure team up to one of the alien naturals, and build the arc factory there if you can. It's not terribly likely to work, but has a better chance of not getting you counter-rushed than your version! Those cappers would be on base defense duty while the rest of the team holds the forward position (rotate players who die with cappers to push up faster than respawners).
Armoury
Obs/PG tech
Second IP if required
PG as far forwards as possible, but you really take what you can get.
Mines/arms lab
OR
Arms lab
+1/+1
Armoury/obs/pg
In both builds I go for +2/+2 then AA + proto. JPs are so annoying for aliens, it's well worth getting them before W3 if you have half a chance of winning. If you're basically losing then you have to go for w3 instead.
You can skip the early obs with fast arms lab, if you need to beacon that early on then you're gonna lose anyway.
It is very similar to @Laosh'Ra 's build.
Cyst out to naturals,
research shift hive and drop a shift near the harvestor
get a drifter to get shift built
by the time the shift is done, your closest natural (should be infested). Check your map presence.
If you are pushing well, then move the drifter to build your first harvester (save the res of echo)
If you are holding very well (ie. pushed marines back, and gorge made a tunnel to a tech point (hopefully near a res node).
Drop res and crag at the tunnel near tech point. shade if you are feeling scared. tbh, shade doesn't matter as they will know tunnel is there and probably shoot to reveal. If possible I put the shade at base to echo out
Drop 2nd harvester at next closest natural (get the drifter to build that)
you now have 4 nodes hopefully, and I will cyst out further if it is looking good. (I don't cyst out far at a time, as it is wasting res to have your long chain cut. Tell your skulks to keep their res down.
If possible, I get a skulk to scout a res node before committing to drop cyst (though if you are pushing very well, I don't do that).
From here, I will echo harvester unless there is a gorge there to build it.
by 5 minutes if all goes well, I will drop the first spur.
It is very standard, even if it does win games, it can get your team last longer unless the marines are just very superior in skill.
This may also work for a crag hive (minus the echo).
If you shade hive start (its hard to pull off) - even with a superior team, because its hard to hold a tech point when they scan all the time. For this to work, you need to push out very aggressively and make marines either waste res on scans or slow them down because they are checking every corner. Its best if you para them and run off (they think you are in the room).
So you need to put down 2 veils early (within 2 minutes to be aggressive).
But as someone said (possibly me) veil is for vets because they know how to play aggressive with shade. Noobs just sit around waiting for marines to come to a ambush (totally useless). You only hold as much of the map as you are willing to push.
Compared to Marine strategies where you're basically locked in from the start on what tech tree you're building first, aliens have a lot of time to decide what to do depending on how the game is progressing.
If there's lots of res, drop upgrades fast. If there's a location that a whip would be useful at, go ahead and grab one. Drop hive when you can. Etc.
Of course there's basic guidelines for when certain things should be up, but it's all very relative.
Spurs before lerks (if going shift)
Second hive and Bile generally coincide.
Third Hive and Xeno (to drive despair into the marine spirits)
Shift, Crag, Shade is the current pub favorite. While crag, shift (shade) is the comp standard, if they ever get to three hives (which I don't think I've ever seen).
Beyond what you spend your initial res on (upgrades or harvesters or PvE), the build orders are very wishy washy on aliens. I think it's also highly map-specific.
I think part of the reason is because aliens depend on individuals to perform (you must be effective at your life form). So when you see lerks pop up, and your team have good lerks that don't die, marines are struggling (where as aliens are more reactive til lerks come). And the whole game turns when good Fades are out (have seen aliens on 2-3 res all game), but out comes 1-2 good fades, and suddenly they are on top. So alien's power go up in big steps.
On marines, they gain power as upgrades are done, so the team's effectiveness go up in small increments. The timing of these are dependent on meds (res sink) and territory control (how many res you have up). In this intricate balance of things is where the beauty of NS lays.
@Calego I think arc rush can only be described as all-or-nothing.
- Robo First
- Naturals
- Sentry Battery, turrets (in a key location)
This is the trickey part, you have to determine where the key points you want to hold are.
Usually, middle of the map, Then on the flanks route-blocking. 2 to 3 "farms" and then work on normal tech.
- More RTs
And that's as far as I got before a base rush happened. So be careful and watch for those. Don't push too hard beyond the sentry range.
So basically it seems like Push aggressively to get the turrets up. Then harass and out tech like mad. Eventually you can sell turrets if you need to. I expect you could sell the robo after the turrets are up.
If you can put the turrets in moderately aggressive route-blocking positions, you should be able to free up enough marines to put good positive pressure on harvesters, forcing aliens to defend more than they attack: that's the key to this strat.
(theoretically)
Sentry->ARC rush
- Robo First
- 2nd IP (important to get marines back out if/when they die)
- Naturals
- Sentries in mid, forward location on the flank (2 farms down)
- RTs
Push to an arcable spot near alien hive (not all of them are easy, but most are possible).
- Set up sentries. (3rd farm)
- Get armory at forward location
- RTs
- Obs (at base or at forward? base is safer, forward will save money when arcs roll out... I'd go with base myself)
- Phase tech and Gates to forward base fast.
Here's where things get sketchy (as if they weren't already), Either upgrade the robo in base and hike the arcs all the way to the forward location, or build a new Robo and upgrade at forward. Aliens will be doing 1 of 2 things here, they'll be rushing base a lot or they'll be rushing the crap out of the forward base. Defense is the name of the game.
- Build Robo at forward. Upgrade ARCs
Churn out some ARCs, 3 is the magic number, and roll em up.
- Profit!
Depending on resflow, which should be pretty good (assuming cross spawns, you should be sitting on 5-6 RTs), it's a good idea to have a backup phase at middle and perhaps another sentry farm in the room behind the forward location. Goal being to not lose everything if aliens rush the forward and seize it.