Just Played Another Aliens Vs. Turrets Game...
JohnnySmash
Join Date: 2003-08-04 Member: 18870Members
Join Date: 2003-08-04 Member: 18870Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Oh god... the boringness</div> Okay, so I'm watching my friend play NS 2.0. He gets in one of those games where the aliens are dominating the map but can't seem to crack the Marine's base. In the 45 minutes I watched him play, the Aliens couldn't get into the base because of all the turrets.
So I told my friend this game sucks, and that I wanted to try to play on the Alien team. So he presses F4 or whatever, then I go ahead and play as aliens.
I tell the team to go for the buildings, not the turrets or players. They are lacking resources so if we take out their buildings they'll be hurting. I tell the Onos to use their main attack (gore?) on the buildings since it does double damage. Some people say "Yeah we've been trying" and others say "ok".
So I figure this should be easy- we wear down the buildings by throwing ourselves at them and eventually their money is so dry they have nowhere to turn.
Since I'm saving up for an Onos, my first encounter is with a Skulk. I get the faster movement upgrade. I plan to run into the base and Xenocide to do maximum damage. So I try it, run in, but literally half a second later I am dead to turrets.
Okay. Those turrets kill fast. I'll just run in and bite whatever the hell I can before I die. If we damage their buildings they need to invest in welders. If the welder player dies they are hurting for even more res. If they don't get welders eventually their buildings are gone.
Again I run in as fast as I can- with the movement upgrade. Despite me moving a zillion miles an hour, I die nearly instantly the second I'm in the room.
Okay. Maybe Skulk is a bad idea. The turrets kill them too fast. That's fine with me. Turrets cost res and Skulks are basic units anyways. So I skulk (pun intended) around the outskirts of their base attacking marines until I get the Onos upgrade.
W00T!! Time for some major ****-kicking, right? I'll just run in and will have some SERIOUS damage done with my double-damage-to-buildings gore before they can take me down. I've fought against Onos- I know they take a long time to kill.
So I evolve, upgrade my movement and redemption, and run on in. I gleefully run up to a building as fast as an Onos can go, and know that if I can pull this off I'll be setting an example for the entire team and be that much closer to stopping this turret cheese.
BOOM! After the first gore to the building I am redeemed with 130 health left. Maybe if I hadn't gotten redemption I could have gotten a second hit- but that's not the point. We'll never destroy it like that.
SO I realize the true solution is to band together and attack all at once. After my Onos heals we all collaberate to wait outside the Marine base. Before they know it the Marines have three Onos and a few other aliens running around thrashing their base.
Uhh... wow. What's this? How did we all die so fast? We barely killed anything. It was all of us at once. There goes all that res we spent. =(
I stick around for a while just to make sure what we did had no effect- it didn't. I aimlessy keep trying but nothing works.
SO, that was it. I left. I usually play Marines and had just assumed that the Aliens weren't coordinated or didn't know that Gore did double damage against buildings. Now I find that their complaints DO have a foundation.
The solution? I don't know. I'm just saying that from what I can tell it IS an issue.
And btw- people say to counter this with Lerks? Can you tell me how? I haven't personally tried, and I doubt it would work considering I haven't seen it done. I've seen plenty of Lerks messing around near the base in the same situation and all they ever really do to me as a Marine is annoy the hell out of me with that green gas stuff.
=/
-JohnnySmash
So I told my friend this game sucks, and that I wanted to try to play on the Alien team. So he presses F4 or whatever, then I go ahead and play as aliens.
I tell the team to go for the buildings, not the turrets or players. They are lacking resources so if we take out their buildings they'll be hurting. I tell the Onos to use their main attack (gore?) on the buildings since it does double damage. Some people say "Yeah we've been trying" and others say "ok".
So I figure this should be easy- we wear down the buildings by throwing ourselves at them and eventually their money is so dry they have nowhere to turn.
Since I'm saving up for an Onos, my first encounter is with a Skulk. I get the faster movement upgrade. I plan to run into the base and Xenocide to do maximum damage. So I try it, run in, but literally half a second later I am dead to turrets.
Okay. Those turrets kill fast. I'll just run in and bite whatever the hell I can before I die. If we damage their buildings they need to invest in welders. If the welder player dies they are hurting for even more res. If they don't get welders eventually their buildings are gone.
Again I run in as fast as I can- with the movement upgrade. Despite me moving a zillion miles an hour, I die nearly instantly the second I'm in the room.
Okay. Maybe Skulk is a bad idea. The turrets kill them too fast. That's fine with me. Turrets cost res and Skulks are basic units anyways. So I skulk (pun intended) around the outskirts of their base attacking marines until I get the Onos upgrade.
W00T!! Time for some major ****-kicking, right? I'll just run in and will have some SERIOUS damage done with my double-damage-to-buildings gore before they can take me down. I've fought against Onos- I know they take a long time to kill.
So I evolve, upgrade my movement and redemption, and run on in. I gleefully run up to a building as fast as an Onos can go, and know that if I can pull this off I'll be setting an example for the entire team and be that much closer to stopping this turret cheese.
BOOM! After the first gore to the building I am redeemed with 130 health left. Maybe if I hadn't gotten redemption I could have gotten a second hit- but that's not the point. We'll never destroy it like that.
SO I realize the true solution is to band together and attack all at once. After my Onos heals we all collaberate to wait outside the Marine base. Before they know it the Marines have three Onos and a few other aliens running around thrashing their base.
Uhh... wow. What's this? How did we all die so fast? We barely killed anything. It was all of us at once. There goes all that res we spent. =(
I stick around for a while just to make sure what we did had no effect- it didn't. I aimlessy keep trying but nothing works.
SO, that was it. I left. I usually play Marines and had just assumed that the Aliens weren't coordinated or didn't know that Gore did double damage against buildings. Now I find that their complaints DO have a foundation.
The solution? I don't know. I'm just saying that from what I can tell it IS an issue.
And btw- people say to counter this with Lerks? Can you tell me how? I haven't personally tried, and I doubt it would work considering I haven't seen it done. I've seen plenty of Lerks messing around near the base in the same situation and all they ever really do to me as a Marine is annoy the hell out of me with that green gas stuff.
=/
-JohnnySmash
Comments
The only problem with this is that it STILL doesn't work against a HUGE mass of turrets, and grenade launchers screw it up pretty badly (since all of the aliens are bunched up in the umbra). A single marine with a GL can end an Onos pretty quickly using a GL, and those skulks who were running with it just get chopped.
Bilebombing gorges work pretty well too, if you can get them into cover to fire on the turrets.
However, i think that the real solution involves some sort of turret per area or turret per factory cap, in all honesty. The most turrets i've seen in a room to date (i was a marine, so counting wasn't hard) was 86, with 7 sieges. There comes a point where some sort of limit is necessary, people.
We were aliens. We had all res, all hives but one (marine reloc), on tanith, the rines had sewer hive -- very onos unfriendly territory.
The base was crawling with turrets, and they kept up a constant GL spam from inside the base up those ladders and pipes. We couldn't get near. The BIG problem was some random gorge built move for our 2nd chamber (sense was first), so our onoses didn't have regen/redeem.
After 2 hours, I left the game. we were no closer to getting in than we were at 30 minutes. We TRIED the lerk+gorg method, and the GLs stopped us cold.
Any other pat suggestions?
That's the trick everyone has to understand (and it can be hard to achieve on public servers)... you need a well rounded team in terms of classes and you need the full compliment of the aliens arsenal to finish the turreted up end game.
Unfortunatley, I cannot take credit for this glorious farm. To all those who say the aliens just needed coordination, 3 gls constantly spamming the doors kills everything.
Edit: Here's the pic, using school server
<img src='http://www.rpi.edu/~harrid6/superfarm.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
That's the trick everyone has to understand (and it can be hard to achieve on public servers)... you need a well rounded team in terms of classes and you need the full compliment of the aliens arsenal to finish the turreted up end game. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
On an 8 player server you need 2 of each class... 2 lerks, 2 onos, 2 gorge, 2 fade (perhaps even 3 gorge 1 fade)... coordinate an attack, everyone using all their abilities and it will fall in an INSTANT!
That's the trick everyone has to understand (and it can be hard to achieve on public servers)... you need a well rounded team in terms of classes and you need the full compliment of the aliens arsenal to finish the turreted up end game.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This sounds really off-the-top-of-your-head and untested. Might work in theory, but it was hard enough getting 3 Onos, a couple Skulks, and a Gorge to coordinate when I was playing the public server.
-JohnnySmash
That's the trick everyone has to understand (and it can be hard to achieve on public servers)... you need a well rounded team in terms of classes and you need the full compliment of the aliens arsenal to finish the turreted up end game. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This sounds really off-the-top-of-your-head and untested. Might work in theory, but it was hard enough getting 3 Onos, a couple Skulks, and a Gorge to coordinate when I was playing the public server.
-JohnnySmash <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well I can assure you it's NOT off the top of my head and it has been tried and tested.
As I pointed out though it requires an ENTIRE team that can work together, something that is certainly very hard to coordinate on a public server. Don't forget however this game has been tested and developed using skilled players who DO listen to each other so that it can eventually find it's way into competitive play.
I'm not saying your point is unfounded... I've found the same thing in the games I've been playing. But people are so use to the "tipping point" in 1.04 whereby one time instantly had so much more going for them (JP + HMGs or a 2nd Hive) that the game was decided on 95% of the time.
I do think some tweaking may need to be done to the turrets... make them aim and track a little less spot on perhaps, and maybe also do something to the GL so you can't spam the endgame infinately, but NS' primary focus is on <i>forcing</i> people to work as a team... no longer can 1 or 2 rambo's finish the game off on their own... you need the full compliment of all the classes and weapons abilities spread across the team to break the end game.
One other point I'll make is I think you'll find turrets used more sparingly as commanders work out ways to achieve a marine victory more decisevely, instead of the "steady as she goes" mentality most seem to have now.
one word: umbra
one word: umbra <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
lerk died from GL, sorry.
*edit*
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I had a 3 hour game on tanith, where we were marines, and holed up in our base. Three grenade launchers, Two TFs with turrets, 2 Armories, the resnode, and a crazy load of turrets. We got so much res we finished ALL the upgrades, and then outfitted everyone with heavies. It was hard to drop anything (apparently there is a structure limit, and droppables count as structures?) We didn't get very far though, untill we were overpowered outside the base. Eventually the aliens F4ed. I have a picture, but I can't post it unless there is a way to upload to the forum, because my server is too whimpy.
Unfortunatley, I cannot take credit for this glorious farm. To all those who say the aliens just needed coordination, 3 gls constantly spamming the doors kills everything.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
you rock!
Best solution is to make a turret build limit. Having 50-80 turrets along with GLer spam at the enterances just shows nothing will be getting into marine base no matter how cordinated it is or how much umbra or bilebombing is used.
I think 6 turrets per factory is MORE than enough to a) allow a smaller group of aliens to have a fighting chance against a turret farm if it is left undefended by at least one live marine but b) make turret farms pretty much unstoppable without a full-on coordinated aliens if they are defended by at least one or two marines.
That is, turrets should NOT be the means by which marines can competely abandon any given area for the rest of the game as long as they are keeping half the aliens busy somewhere else.
And please: no more having several turret factories in the same area. That's even more ridiculous: you take down one, and there are still one or two more that keep the turrets going.
Turrets need to be fixed, because fighting them is extremely boring. It's you vs. a bunch of inanimate autoaim object for 30minutes! What a blast! At least if you make marines more powerful or nerf aliens, you'll be facing off against human intelligence.
Turret farms are the only big problem I see with 2.0. Every alien win I've seen (That wasn't a 5 minute game) has had to fight with massive turret farms near the end of the game. The marines eventually got dragged down and the aliens won, but endgame should not take an hour and a half to complete.
On the Lerk/Umbra issue, yes, it's quite effective when used right. Tonight on Origin, the endgame was near. Aliens had just taken hive 3, but the marines had built up a huge turret farm outside Cargo and pushed the aliens out with 6+ HAs. The game was going back and forth between the two teams. The Marines began building a outpost outside the lava bridge. They got down a tfact, some turrets, an armory, and some other goodies. They then rushed at the (flowing lava falls) hive with 4-5 marines. This small group of aliens were pushed back to the hive. We ducked behind our defense wall for a few seconds, then our Onos rushed out at the Marines. Being a Lerk, I kept umbraing him. (With addren, you can almost keep it going forever.) Another Lerk joined in and kept up Primal Screams and Umbras. A Fade also joined in on the fray. The Umbra'd, Screaming Onos plowed through the 5 marines like they were nothing. We rushed into the outpost outside the lava bridge and wiped it clean without contest. Still on a rush, we attacked the Laser Drilling room and cleaned it up. It consisted of ~5 turrets, a phase, and an electrified res tower. We cleaned it up quickly. I believe the Fade was redeemed by the electrified turret. Either way, it fell very quickly. After that, we began doing to same thing to the marine spawn area. We took out the Marines res node, Skulks took care of the nodes in Cargo, the commander sold the outpost outside cargo for the res, and later sold the rest of the base out of frustration.
Anyway, you didn't ask for my war stories.
The Onos/Lerk/Umbra/Lerk/Primal Scream combo is extremely effective, but it depends on the area. Smaller areas are easily taken down if the Marines don't have a GL. Larger areas are tougher and require more precision, but still work.
Bye bye umbra!
as an alien its pretty damn hard to crack turret farms unless you get into a good position, gorg and bile bomb (but to get to that position you have to survive the farm) or have an onos smash them before they get fully up and running .. by turret farm, i mean at least 8 turrets (at least).. and by the time you crack one farm.. another springs up that throws the aliens into another spin..
as a marine you spend the game building.. turrets, obs, sieges and TFs .. or welding them
within all this im noticing about 50% of the games are ending with the demoralized team F4 or just leaving the server..
i think another factor in this .. is redemption .. nearly every person playing onos gets redemption and when they go in for the kill .. they may as well not bother.. cripple/destroy a structure - get redemed - marine welds/builds structure and so on..
also the more i play im finding the aliens need to secure all the hives from the start.. if they lose one hive to the marines .. and they farm it .. its all over.. its a trait the aliens don't get
as far as the marines having nothing but their spawn left and their main objective is to stay alive and keep that piece of the map.. i don't understand where that fits into the game.. especially games like that where the game last for more than 1 hour..
being a good commander now seems to be; have a competent team of marines that can build a TF and a whole lot of turrets..
however .. i have had some pretty good games too both quick and long ones..
If marines are not guarding, just fade or onos ur way in with 1 guy.
With men behind the lines, you need a team behind you - but virtually any combo gorge, lerk, onos or fade w/AR and xeno skulk will mince them.
I am sorry but if Map Controlling aliens can't break into a lone marine base, they are either toying with the marines or are idiots.
1)The only way to get by a farm is combined arms. But these combined arms are hard to get on a pub server.
2)Some turret farms are so harsh that proper combined arms fails.
Counter-points:
1)Teamwork is far more common in NS pubs than in other mods, and there is no reason why it won't slowly improve overtime.
2)This could result from a lack of skills(teamwork and player skills), skills will rise overtime.
Although some things should be addressed regardless. Like turrets per map, and turrets per area. Aside from balance, framerates are a good reason to limit turrets. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Several factors, really. The 1.04 onos was also a better match for turret farms, it took a bit more effort to down them. Umbra was better too.
Bilebomb, from the fade, also flew longer distances. Some claim the trajectory is the same as in 1.04, but even if that's true being launched from a smaller alien still reduces the range. In 1.04, launching the bile while running and jumping could throw it pretty far. The damage also was nice, I used it against marine groups instead of acid rocket. Acid did more damage to players, but the bilebomb splash meant you'd hit many people at once.
ONOS under UMBRA/PRIMAL support from lerks can CHARGE the arms lab, that takes care of the upgrades and the game.
option2:
gorges under umbra support and primal scream bile the crap out of the base
also the devs can considder making the team that controlls the most RTs auto win after 2 hours
That argument about AI vs players is a good one too. Especially since it's a simple turret, not just an AI controlled marine. Why not put turrets halfway between 1.04 effectiveness and 2.0 effectiveness?(accuracy and tracking ability)
For attacking fades are better.
In the last stand you need onos and fades NOT to attack structures but to distract the players and block the bullets off the gorges and fades while they umbra, primal scream and bilebomb.
a whole team of oni equals a whole team of newbies.
I guess there is two types of turret farms. One is difficult but defeatable, the other is a bog of death.