Aliens Control The Map Within 2 Mins
Garet_Jax
Join Date: 2003-02-23 Member: 13870Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-02-23 Member: 13870Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">(Not a flame)</div> In most pub servers, at the start of a new round, an experienced skulk team will disperse across the map, go gorge, build an RT, drop an OC next to it, then skulk again.
With this method they control, on average, 6 res towers within 2 minutes.
Its very hard to counter, as gren guns aren't available for the marines yet, and knifing an RT takes so long that the aliens will be warned by the hive sight well in advance of the RTs destruction.
This is all because the aliens start with a whopping 25 res, so on a relatively smal 8x8 game, the alien team starts with 200 res points - twice as much as the marines.
Also, why is an alien RT cheaper than a marine RT? Im sure that a skulk can kill a marine RT much quicker than a marine can knife an alien RT (assumin its not an elec RT)
IMHO, aliens should start with 15 res, both teams RTs should cost 15 res, and instead of the super-effective Scent OF Fear, we should have a Hive Sight upgrade (where lv0 shows para'd enemies and alerts u to a damaged hive, lv1 shows location of allies, lv2 show enemies in allies FOV and lv3 tells u when structures r under attack)
Whats your thoughts on this?
-Seraph
With this method they control, on average, 6 res towers within 2 minutes.
Its very hard to counter, as gren guns aren't available for the marines yet, and knifing an RT takes so long that the aliens will be warned by the hive sight well in advance of the RTs destruction.
This is all because the aliens start with a whopping 25 res, so on a relatively smal 8x8 game, the alien team starts with 200 res points - twice as much as the marines.
Also, why is an alien RT cheaper than a marine RT? Im sure that a skulk can kill a marine RT much quicker than a marine can knife an alien RT (assumin its not an elec RT)
IMHO, aliens should start with 15 res, both teams RTs should cost 15 res, and instead of the super-effective Scent OF Fear, we should have a Hive Sight upgrade (where lv0 shows para'd enemies and alerts u to a damaged hive, lv1 shows location of allies, lv2 show enemies in allies FOV and lv3 tells u when structures r under attack)
Whats your thoughts on this?
-Seraph
Comments
1. alien res towers are cheaper and harder to destroy coz marines are not able to scout the map early
2. aliens start with more resources and have there base from the beginning. marines have to build stuff early on leaving them behind with 50 res for resource towers. 200 vs 50... kind of hard for marines.
3. decrease marine res tower and electrify costs... ( the beta server releases are great so far <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->) or increase alien rt cost to 20
just think about it... aliens can spam 5 rts at the start. marines cant do this. if they spam 5 rts they have to leave one marines at every tower and he is toast when a skulk approaches ( sry... but most pub marines dont hit a ****! most of them lose against 1 skulk). further the rt is gone coz skulks are evil against rts.... maybe 1/2 dam vs structures for skulks. dunno
just my 0.02$
an experienced commander <u>can</u> counter it - when the team does what he says!
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remember:
the hive can only be build at 3 certrain positions.
most commanders lock down at least one hive.
there can only be build one upgrade per hive = lockdown is effective at 2 hives
only reason this works is because of a comm that drops a tf in marine spawn without beeing attacked, instead of attacking with the marines.
THAT is so completely wrong. You're effectively crippling the marine team, giving them no chance at all to win anymore. The marines will have lost all their structures and all their res. They normally have a hard time trying to win anyway, but having them start off with absolutely no res at all makes it practically impossible to pull off a win. You'll effectively prolong a game that you already have won for at least twenty minutes or so. I thought we were saying that turret farming was bad because it leads to a long drawn-out game that the marines can't win anyway and the aliens have trouble bringing to an end.
The real-world equivalent to this would be to exchange the death penalty for the torture-to-death penalty.
By all means, if there is a chance to end the game, END IT instead of turning it into a drawn-out bore.
Otherwise I agree with Ollj. Skulks haven't become that much stronger since 1.x, so going with a turret farm in base should be entirely possible, and save you a ton of res that you can use for expansion and upgrades.
The idea of nerfing alien hive sight is horrible. You lock in SCs as the number one upgrade as it's necessary to know when your RCs are under attack. On marine teams, the commander knows which RTs are under attack, and can send marines over there to help out. How often do you see that help arrive in time? Rarely. Now imagine an alien team that has no clue that their RCs are under attack unless they are within hearing range. The aliens wouldn't stand a chance. And what use would it be putting an OC or two in a popular siege location if your team has no clue at all when they go down?
Nerfing hive sight would ENFORCE SDM or SMD building orders (and lead to screams of "OMG NUB GORGE MC/DC FIRST F4 F4!!").
A better idea would be to have skulk bite do only 20 damage. That way aliens would have more of a chance.
They send a squad of marines over to knife it,but because the RT auto-heals and the knife only does 30 damage,the entire skulk team rushes in and owns the squad of marines.
Repeat till onos comes in at the 8-9 minute mark due to RFK.
<!--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-->A better idea would be to have skulk bite do only 20 damage. That way aliens would have more of a chance. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
.......The aliens would have more of a chance if their Skulks primary weapon did a fraction of its normal damage? O_o
My problem as comm is always that marines sit around in base instead of scouting at the start of the map. Killing a gorge at the begining of a game and wasting his res tower in progress is 25 res down on the aliens part - you don't get that waiting for someone to build up an infantry portal.
I know its in the nature of the game (being an RTs/FPS and all); but to cancel out some mediocre gorging, u need a quality commander and some lethal marines.
If every gorge was as resourceful/tactically competant as the marine commander, the aliens would win every game.
-Seraph
Once again, it is easily countered by the marines. At the start of the game, there should be only one marine in base building. The rest of the team should immediately be out (without getting ammo) hunting down these gorges before they put up their res nodes. The marines need to punish the aliens for their overagressive expansion.
When the marines start learning to do this, you will see less of this activity by the aliens on the pubs.
MARINES HAVE GUNS. 'Nuff said.
Anyway to get on the track of this mess....just give your team some shotguns,they work wonder even against hives (esimated time of hive going down to 5 shotguns = 15 secs)
Shotguns are overpowered,and are not in anyway 'lame' so why not drop some??
Plus not every server has everyone going Gorge and drop an RT.
The invisible OC's entirely block marines from going that way. If you have 2 smart gorgs, they can completely box the marines in for a good 5 minutes.
but noone can hold 5 marines rushing a res ...
play with better marines ....
They were crippled since 2.0 was released - aliens just expand too fast, live too long, and evolve too quickly as opposed to the marines, who can barely get out of their base before aliens control the map and are using the higher alien classes to kill everyone.
Heres an example of something that's happened a few times in 2.0 already.
Aliens only need 5 res from the start to evolve to lerk - and then they have such an annoying and hard to deal with alien class - especially if they spore from vents - making it hard for the marines to keep a hive, protect resource towers, etc. The marines can't really get in the vent to kill the lerk, they can't shoot grenades to kill the lerk, and the lerk often has regeneration and therefore this early-game evolution/upgrade combination can effectively and easily keep the marines at bay. I believe that the aliens should start with less res and require a little rfk to speed up their early-game gorging. That way they still have an opportunity to toss up res early but they can't sit back and wait for the stronger alien classes to come in so early.
<!--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-->Ive seen experienced comm counter it.....<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's so extremely hard vs even relatively experienced aliens - I don't believe the skill requirement should be unbalanced like this. I kind of miss 1.04 where dumb gorges could ruin the aliens, instead of 2.0 where instead half the alien team could be fresh vanilla newbies doing just about nothing to help and the marines would still lose even if quite well skilled.
<!--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-->A good 'rine comm can almost compete with how fast aliens put up towers<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree - i'd say the best game possible would be about 3/4 of the effectiveness he'd need. I've played games where we get up a couple of rt's and then down alien rt's but then they end up with lerk and fade quite quick especially if they're managing to kill off my marines. The only time rt hunting has ever really worked for me was when the aliens were newbies and didn't really do much setup for any of their rt's - they eventually left when they had no rt's left and we just tossed up an armory and mined/shotgunned (the mines for defense, just in case) the hive with an armory i tossed down under it.
<!--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-->Simple answer, kill as many of the gorges as you can at the start.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The problem with this is that once the aliens get the rt's up, most will evolve back to skulk - you'd be lucky if you could get 2 let alone 3.
I love you.
Yeah... an excellent comm is equivalent to a god, in my book, I applaud the guys who do it well. But that is one HELL of a steep learning curve, you have to admit, name one game with something worse than that job. The next n00b who reads this who has no idea how the commander's job works and would like to learn; next game, get in that chair, I DARE you.
I like the res argument though... now one could say that all aliens need res to support them, while marines need none, that is a valid opinion. But still, they do start of with more res, this goes toward both buildings and stronger units. I suppose the marines could start off with proportional res to the aliens (not exactly EQUAL, but proportional) or maybe some aliens can start with 0, while the rest start with the regular 25.
I know its in the nature of the game (being an RTs/FPS and all); but to cancel out some mediocre gorging, u need a quality commander and some lethal marines.
If every gorge was as resourceful/tactically competant as the marine commander, the aliens would win every game.
-Seraph <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I win about 75% of the time when I comm with at least one guy who listens and informs me.
I have been comming for about two weeks now.
You don't need to have years of experience to command, just basic know-how of how the game is played.
The key to being a good commander is to be flexible. While a basic strategy of how to win on the map is useful, you need to be able to adjust if aliens do something to spearhead a part of your tactic. Example: If aliens take double nodes, most commanders just fail as they keep sending their guys to take it instead of taking the scenic route and capping other nodes and killing alien RTs. It only takes a decent comm and a good fieldman with communication for marines to win. That's pretty low for requirements in a team of eight or nine.
aliens are easy to compleatly CRUSH. Barring having a bad team or playing agisnt a stacked team of Pros there is no reason that a comptient commander should lose more games then he wins. A good commander shouldent find it to hard to have a 3/1 win ratio.
Ok so the aliens want to rush entire map and go gorge. hmmm, you have a fricken map that show ALL THE RESNODES maby you should send kill teams out there to weope em out while there building?<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->?? your looking at a easy 10 res gorge kill and then an easy unbuild resnode kill for a 26-28 res gain for your team.
Or here is a crazy idea. Maby send your team as a group out to capture the double res node or send smaller teams out to the one close to base that you can hold. Once you take something like a double res build a GOOD defense up at it.
Aleins have basicly 2 choices in the beging of the match. All go gorge and drop res to earn res steadly but, take chance of being cuaght be mariens and massicured. Or mostly stay skulk and try to earn res by killing hoping that there playing aginst a poor quilaity team.
The first tactic is contered by simply hunting gorges and LMGing nodes. The second is countered by making sure you kill them more then they kill you dening them res to do anything.
Look at the alien team, skulks go out knowing they will die or at least I know I'm going to die. They run into 3 humans just for the hell of it, just to **** them off. Humans on the other hand always run away from a fight - always. Whenever I'm part of a heavy group going to attack a hive, at LEAST half the crew leaves. If we are rushing cargo (in the map with viaduct), as soon as 1 fade comes at us and starts attacking, most guys turn around like wimps and run away. If you CHASE the fade, he will die! It happens to me all the time when I'm a fade.
Most of the game is psychology. I'm not a pro at psych but I know that if you run away, the enemy WILL chase you. If a fade runs away from an smg guy, it means he either sucks or he's low on life - that's a signal to attack him. If he's advancing on you swinging his claws, you'll think he's quite able to kill you even though he may be almost dead. If you turn away and run from the fade instead of shooting at him, you are guaraunteed to die but if you face him and shoot him, you have a chance of living.
It's screwy but for some reason the aliens understand that but the humans never do. If you take a guy on the alien team then put him on the human team, he'll react completely differently to enemies.
A lot of people just turn into instant n00bs when they go marine. Getting 1 person to listen to you is a lot harder than it sounds.
I've never seen that happen... If I see a skulk or even a fade, I shoot the damn thing until it dies and don't even think to run, that is just completely stupid. Come to think of it, I never look to see what my teammates are doing, either, if they are running, that definitely explains why I've had big teams die to teams of aliens consisting of 1 fade and 1 skulk. I'm gonna pay more attention next time.
The only thing I DO run from is an Onus, and that's only if I have a chance of making it back to a turret farm to back me up, if I'm the closest marine, I know I'm screwed and shoot the thing as much as I can before it stuns or kills me.
I'm really hoping you're wrong on this, but it would definitely explain a few things.
But yeah, the not listening to orders part is always a problem, it would be nice if the structure of the game was changed so that n00bs learn to follow orders before they even <b>know</b> about the shotgun. I can't say I'm not guilty of going AWOL, but you gotta love it when the commander groups you with two guys who don't listen and sends you all across the map for a res node. At least with the mini-map now, you know when your teammates have wandered off to kill themselves. I'm post-2.0, but I can imagine quite the little jolt a guy would get when facing two skulks without knowing he has no back-up. That's a scene straight out of the movies.
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Your whining about a whiner <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Keeps your marines on his toes, and out of your base.
Hows that for expansion?
Only reason why Marines lose alot, cause they're just afraid to move out. You stick in base, and you'll give the aliens no resistance over rts, and the whole map. Or they just love filling up their ammo reserves only to get slaughtered by skulks before they get to even finish their first clip.