Boredom
Inexorable
Join Date: 2002-09-28 Member: 1360Members
Join Date: 2002-09-28 Member: 1360Members
<div class="IPBDescription">ZzZzZzZzZzZz........</div> Is anybody else finding playing the Kharaa kind of boring lately? Maybe it's just the servers I play on, but for the most part it's Random Team onto Kharaa (not helped by the fact if teams are even you get put on the alien side) -> Keep marines contained in base, or at worst one hive -> Get Fades -> Kill marines just as Onos come online.
Every once in a while you find a server where the marines outclass the aliens so much it's simply not funny. Either the marines will move out of their base almost as a single body and you get to spend most of the game looking at chasecam, or your teammates are almost competent enough to qualify as mold spores. But when the two are evenly matched it doesn't seem even.
Is it just me? <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Every once in a while you find a server where the marines outclass the aliens so much it's simply not funny. Either the marines will move out of their base almost as a single body and you get to spend most of the game looking at chasecam, or your teammates are almost competent enough to qualify as mold spores. But when the two are evenly matched it doesn't seem even.
Is it just me? <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
Those games RULE.
I hope further changes to the game will cater more for this type of strategy. Maby it already does but people choose not to?
- marines take 2 hives, aliens 'somehow' manage to get 1 back
- marines take 2 hives, aliens raid main base, gain enough time to take a hive back, or do enough damage to permanently screw the marines
- aliens take 2 hives, marines push for the 2nd as it is being built... aliens manage to get a few fades just as the second hive falls, hard battle follows
Other game paths:
- marines take 1 hive, aliens get fades, wipe out resource nodes, wipe out hive, wipe out base [often 3rd hive is not needed]
- marine team has no leadership, take no hives - game over.
- aliens rush base and win [very rare]
- marines rush hive and win [more common than an alien rush victory - but not many teams skulk rush any more, got to get those ninjas]
- marines take 2 hives, turret/siege them, then tech up for 10-30 minutes before attacking the 3rd hive [very common]
Anyway, the 'best' games I have played, revolve around the second hive:
- IF the kharaa hold that hive, the kharaa will win. [90+%]
- IF the marines take the hive, and the kharaa cannot get fades, the marines will win. [90+%]
IMHO, for balance, 1.04 would need to make the fades slightly less dominant, and make the marines far less capable of taking that second hive.
Especially when the marines get so occupied by keeping there 2nd hive because that's under constant attack, that u can just go lerk, got to marines 1st hive, get at a nice, covered distance (far enough away for the turrets not to fire), and just spike the tf to death, then call in skulk-support, and get the hive, beore they now what hit them.
I definetly like the 'hive-switchin' games best (go from 1 hive to the other, marines take yours, while you take marines)
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Marines can be such poor loosers, I had a game like this once, they owned us, marines had 2 hives, and started teching. Wrong. We captured a hive, marines counter-acted and the battle begun. It was a battle raging on for about an hour, then we managed to drive them out completley, Then all of the sudden marine-spam came on the screen, yelling that we where incompetent, we should've gotten them way earlier and so on....
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no, it's not very rare... we've won with this tactic several times...
It's worth playing alien just for these games, where you play a decent marine team but kill them through sheer natural teamplay.
Oh, and I find playing marines fairly boring these days, much prefer alien =).
Indeed, it might be nice if instead of a fight over the second hive, it was a fight to keep the Kharaa out of the third.
I don't know if there's really much that can be done about it though, simply because of my play environment. I don't have the time to commit myself to clan play, and any server with a decent set of players (ie. Nano-Gridlock) is passworded 24x7.
On pubs you're lucky to get 1 or 2 per team people who have the skill and knowledge to get things done. If you ever realize "Hey, we've actually got 3 decent players on our team!", the game is all but won. Add to that it is much easier for the Kharaa to be supported by these few good players (if one of those good marines doesn't take the comm chair, they're toast.), and you get alien win after alien win not because of any imbalance, but because of basic play mechanics. The only real way I can see to fix it would be making the marines stronger than the aliens, but that would mess over clan play.
To be fair though, it's not the actual alien gameplay I find boring. I had a match last night (3vs3) against D&S Smithboy which almost had me pulling my hair out because he's a good marine. No more simply wandering lazily up to a blinded grandma with an automatic weapon and casually ripping her face off. He used motion tracking to make sure he was never suprised, if I snuck around him and started hitting his base he'ld run back and kill me. Even when I eventually got to Fade I was still forced into a fighting retreat. All in all he was a real pain in the ****, and one of the most fun opponents I've had in a while.
Unfortunately, even his impressive display of skill couldn't counteract the fact his team wasn't gaining any ground. I'm not sure exactly what his comm was doing (he didn't <i>seem</i> to be that bad), but we got to Fades and there weren't any HMGs to meet us. Another game that ended just as the third hive came online.
- marines take 2 hives, aliens 'somehow' manage to get 1 back
- marines take 2 hives, aliens raid main base, gain enough time to take a hive back, or do enough damage to permanently screw the marines
- aliens take 2 hives, marines push for the 2nd as it is being built... aliens manage to get a few fades just as the second hive falls, hard battle follows
Other game paths:
- marines take 1 hive, aliens get fades, wipe out resource nodes, wipe out hive, wipe out base [often 3rd hive is not needed]
- marine team has no leadership, take no hives - game over.
- aliens rush base and win [very rare]
- marines rush hive and win [more common than an alien rush victory - but not many teams skulk rush any more, got to get those ninjas]
- marines take 2 hives, turret/siege them, then tech up for 10-30 minutes before attacking the 3rd hive [very common]
Anyway, the 'best' games I have played, revolve around the second hive:
- IF the kharaa hold that hive, the kharaa will win. [90+%]
- IF the marines take the hive, and the kharaa cannot get fades, the marines will win. [90+%]
IMHO, for balance, 1.04 would need to make the fades slightly less dominant, and make the marines far less capable of taking that second hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
dumbo, alien rushes wining is much more common them marine rushing winning.
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Ok, in retrospect we should have immediately realised that he'd gone to secure our hives, but it didn't occur to us until too late.
It was eclipse, we had eclipse command. The commander secured computer core first, built up a whole new base there. Being so small, it's really not hard to lock down compcore with a handful of turrets. That and he put all the buildings in corners.
Maintenence was a nightmare. He'd secured it before we could get enough fighters there (we had two or three excellent lerks in addition to the skulks). The phase gate was in the dead centre on that flat bit of ground near the resource nozzle. In each corner was a turret factory, guarded by a triangle of turrets. We had at least two people attacking this base at all times, and it was IMPOSSIBLE to remove. Under a covering hail of spikes, we skulks would suicide rush one of the TFs and the turrets guarding it, and we took out the TF on the left side two or three times. The problem was the phasegate - being in the dead centre it was covered by turrets from BOTH turret factories. We couldn't stop them from reinforcing maintenence and replacing the turret factories as soon as we took them down.
I kind of realised that we'd lost when I realised just how well defended maint was, but I and everyone else kept going. For some reason, the commander didn't go for upgrades but instead carefully reinforced the two hives and then went out for resources. We destroyed an installation at South Loop TWICE. The **** just kept rebuilding. The strangest thing was we were fighting against LA\LMGs practically the whole game long. We also had some of the best skulks and lerks I've ever had the honours of fighting alongside. The marines themselves were quite average, one or two very good shots, but mostly skulk food. Anyway, the battle raged on for a long, long time before the commander finally found that HA\HMG button. The game was over right from the start, but we weren't "losing" for most of it. At this point, we started losing. Carapaced skulks and lerks, although very skilled, were no match HA\HMGs ("canned turds," I took to calling them).
Anyways, although the game was certainly a loss from the early stage, it was a very, very good match. The moral of the story is, of course, don't get complacent and underestimate your enemy.
But that doesn't mean playing as the Kharaa isn't still boring. Most of the time it's like playing with God mode on. You still have to go out and kill the other team, but there is never any doubt that you'll win in the end.
Like I said, maybe I just need to find better servers. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Ok, so I'm on kharaa and we're starting in maint hive. Pretty standard start, our skulk rush doesn't make a big impact, they take eclipse command no problem and fortify it up, we have big problems expanding thanks to having about 4 newbie gorges running around like ninnies. We finally get our act together enough to start up building the CC hive(by this point if we'd been on the ball we could have been fade-stomping the base at Eclipse Command, but marines kinda had a case of the slows too, only they were spending their time turning both EC and their start base into small fortresses). Just as we start getting close to finishing the CC hive, marines attack it in strength and proceed to demolish the hive and everything in the area.
Now at this point I figure we're screwed, since they're setting up shop in CC, eclipse command is a no-go, and we just barely have 3 defensive chambers and NO oc's anywhere. Instead our entire team goes into an all-out assault on CC, using basically everything available to a single-hive kharaa team: suicide skulk rushes, lerks running interference from above, sniping from the CC vents, walls of lame covering both routes to and from the hive, everything short of gorge rushing. And it worked, we killed their outpost and repelled at least 3 tries to set up sieges inside AND outside the hive. So, we get our CC hive up, and LO AND BEHOLD our last newbie gorge goes off and sets up sensory upgrades. Great. We have fades and umbra-ing lerks, but they cann't do much owing to no adrenaline. Meanwhile the marines have turned eclipse into a genuine fortress, and are finally starting to get HAs and HMGs, and welders...lots of welders. Enough welders they they can have guys welding the guys that are welding the HA/HMGs, which creates these kinda mobile walls of marine lame.
For the next 3 hours or so we fought all-out war over eclipse hive, both sides using about every trick we could think of -walls of lame met by sieges, HA/HMGs met by umbra'd fades met by welders and an occassional GL, GLs drawn out from the defenses and swarmed, mass-suicide attacks to destroy TFs and Phase Gates met by multiples of each and lots of turrets and guys with welders to fix it all once we were repelled...etc etc. Lots of good micromanagment by the marine commander, constantly dropping health and ammo and armor and weapons for his troops, keeping us from driving a crippling attack home on their base. We probably would have won owing to resource strangulation, but we'll never know for sure since the server died while the battle for eclipse was still raging(about 4 hours after the round started). <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> Still though, that one will go down as one of the most amazing turnarounds I've ever seen, and one of the most vicious stalemates. 4 hours of fighting, from slow start and near-defeat at CC to the Verdun-style bloodbath at Eclipse Command...Ahhh, but it was epic!
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I've played over about 50 scrim as marines, and we won all of them by rushing. We never alien rush, just parasite.
But in maps like nancy or bast...
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I've played over about 50 scrim as marines, and we won all of them by rushing. We never alien rush, just parasite.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Difference is, marine rushes are the best by far at the start of the game, provided you have clan-level players, and a decent->good commander.
On pubs though... A single un-carapaced skulk can take out a large number of marines a lot of the time, as most pub marines cannot aim.