Introduction To Basic Comming
Starlude
Join Date: 2003-09-05 Member: 20576Members
Join Date: 2003-09-05 Member: 20576Members
<div class="IPBDescription">For new comms who want common strats</div> Here I assume you've already had some experience with NS and with comming, meaning you to go to the arms lab for upgrades. I start with general strats, and then finish with some fine argument points from different commanders.
These are the general marine strats that are used by most commanders.
Rush Class strats:
The strats that are the least flexable are always rushes, so I'll go over them first. Rushes are huge gambles, they either win or lose a game, and afterwards, comms usually have no res for anything else.
1) Shotgun rush: usually not effective, but can be done. Drop the armory, drop the shotguns, get your medspam finger ready. Figure out the hive, and send your rines to their victory (or death).
2) IP rush: somewhat effective, but hard to survive reaching the desired position: drop a Comm chair and 4-6 ips. if > 3 Ips are built, marines will usually simply outspawn the aliens. possibly drop an armory + sgs, but usually not necessary.
Control Class strats:
Now there are various different types of control strats
1) Marine res rush: Find and plop, as many res towers as possible, without electrifying initially, Comms then disagree about the branches this strat should take. Some believe in electrifying all the nodes, while others will simply hold them.
The marine res rush now has a few branches, which I will now attempt to go into more detail
1a) Marine Defensive Position: Build Turrets, phase gates, the works at critical positions (hives, double res, chokepoints, siegerooms). They well poor a lot of res into defensive structures, and a bit into technology. Nodes will be electrfied, and the ultimate goal here is to hold res towers for the dreaded heavy train, usually necessary to defeat multiple WoLs, and large aliens.
1b) Electrify and upgrade: Simply electrifies res towers, possibly with phasegates at critical positions, and then runs up the upgrade tree. The factor here is you are depending on marines to stop larger aliens (by killing them), and hoping fades + onos won't go for your weakly protected positions. Large, coordinated alien rushes can take positions from you. Sieges come into play a lot with this type of strat, as opposed to Heavy armor (due to a lack of res for HA).
1c) All-out upgrades: No electrification at all, marinse attemp to engage aliens either on their territory, or on a "hotspot" where, aliens can congregate, and will not attack unelected res towers. The ultimate goal is an early (8 min or less) heavy train with level 3 weapons and level 3 armor. The problem here is you counting on aliens to go for your marines, and not your res towers, and you are counting on your marinse to be flexable and mobile enough (and good enough shots) to maintain their positions.
2) Slash and burn
As the name implies, the idea here is for marines to launch directed assaults into alien terrority to destroy res towers. The idea is to keep aliens down to only their hive res tower (and it is even possible to take that out somtimes). This basically starves the alien teams, and you won't seen onos even 20 minutes ingame. Usually marines are limited to one or two res towers, as most of their commander's time and resources are poured into destorying enemy resources. this can be combined to some degree with marine res rushes, although attacking enemy res towers and defending a large number of marine res towers strains the tteam, and tends to spread them otu a little too much
3) Two hive lockdown
This is another popular strat with many commanders. The idea is to hold, and control two hives, thereby preventing many alien evils, including bile bomb, stomp, leap, and umbra. Sentry farms, electrification, and relocation to an empty hive are popular ways to lock down two hives. generally though, comms controlling two hives don't have resources for other things, and generally only have 2 (maybe 3) resources towers, and no upgrades very late into the game.
Well as to my own personal preference, I prefer slash and burn, or a combination of electrfication + upgrades simultaniously. The idea though is always to stay flexable in your strategy, and be prepared to make changes. WoL's can block passages, but remeber there is usually a back way. Sieges or HA? what do you do with that 100 res?
Even in the beginning of a game, you need to assess the ability of your team to push foward, their intellgience (do they look around corners, and cover behind them, or just charge recklessly). Will they phase when you tell them to? Everything needs to be taken into consideration when commanding a marine team. Do you let your team rambo, or give them very specific instructions? Do you want to have a mostly directed team with a few rambos? Go for a big distration while that pg is going up on the other side of the hive? Remeber though, always stay flexable and think fast on your feet. where are your marines, how can they help you in your current situation? Adjust and adapt.
The Upgrade Argument: W1 or A1? An age old argument, seen many many times
A1 argues: 1 extra bite, teams survive longer, can get off many extra shots on a skulk because of knockback, ambushing skulks have less of a chance of killing.
W1 argues: 1 less bullet to kill a skulk, people with good aim won't get bitten, and therefore won't need armor.
Is motion tracking worth it?
I've seen some comms motion track rush, and it is not that bad. while 45 res is a steep investment, in 3.0, you can see their blue circular location, in addition to their exact position on your minimap. It makes marine movement easier, and slahs and burn tactics are considerably easier. As a comm, your life becomes a lot easier, as you can tell marines where enemies are.
Just about all comms will agree though, the first two upgrades you should get are weapons 1 and armor 1.
Hand grenades: seem to sometimes have uses and sometimes not, this issue is still being debated heavily.
Cataylst packs: appear to not be worth their cost for the time being, even though marines no longer get hurt by them.
Upgrading the armory: Takes a long time is usually a high priority for most comms
Jetpacks vs. Heavy Armor: Heavy armor wins the day on pubs, being very hard to kill if equiped with heavy weapons (shotgun, HMG, GL) and welders.
If I missed anything feel free to add ^_^
These are the general marine strats that are used by most commanders.
Rush Class strats:
The strats that are the least flexable are always rushes, so I'll go over them first. Rushes are huge gambles, they either win or lose a game, and afterwards, comms usually have no res for anything else.
1) Shotgun rush: usually not effective, but can be done. Drop the armory, drop the shotguns, get your medspam finger ready. Figure out the hive, and send your rines to their victory (or death).
2) IP rush: somewhat effective, but hard to survive reaching the desired position: drop a Comm chair and 4-6 ips. if > 3 Ips are built, marines will usually simply outspawn the aliens. possibly drop an armory + sgs, but usually not necessary.
Control Class strats:
Now there are various different types of control strats
1) Marine res rush: Find and plop, as many res towers as possible, without electrifying initially, Comms then disagree about the branches this strat should take. Some believe in electrifying all the nodes, while others will simply hold them.
The marine res rush now has a few branches, which I will now attempt to go into more detail
1a) Marine Defensive Position: Build Turrets, phase gates, the works at critical positions (hives, double res, chokepoints, siegerooms). They well poor a lot of res into defensive structures, and a bit into technology. Nodes will be electrfied, and the ultimate goal here is to hold res towers for the dreaded heavy train, usually necessary to defeat multiple WoLs, and large aliens.
1b) Electrify and upgrade: Simply electrifies res towers, possibly with phasegates at critical positions, and then runs up the upgrade tree. The factor here is you are depending on marines to stop larger aliens (by killing them), and hoping fades + onos won't go for your weakly protected positions. Large, coordinated alien rushes can take positions from you. Sieges come into play a lot with this type of strat, as opposed to Heavy armor (due to a lack of res for HA).
1c) All-out upgrades: No electrification at all, marinse attemp to engage aliens either on their territory, or on a "hotspot" where, aliens can congregate, and will not attack unelected res towers. The ultimate goal is an early (8 min or less) heavy train with level 3 weapons and level 3 armor. The problem here is you counting on aliens to go for your marines, and not your res towers, and you are counting on your marinse to be flexable and mobile enough (and good enough shots) to maintain their positions.
2) Slash and burn
As the name implies, the idea here is for marines to launch directed assaults into alien terrority to destroy res towers. The idea is to keep aliens down to only their hive res tower (and it is even possible to take that out somtimes). This basically starves the alien teams, and you won't seen onos even 20 minutes ingame. Usually marines are limited to one or two res towers, as most of their commander's time and resources are poured into destorying enemy resources. this can be combined to some degree with marine res rushes, although attacking enemy res towers and defending a large number of marine res towers strains the tteam, and tends to spread them otu a little too much
3) Two hive lockdown
This is another popular strat with many commanders. The idea is to hold, and control two hives, thereby preventing many alien evils, including bile bomb, stomp, leap, and umbra. Sentry farms, electrification, and relocation to an empty hive are popular ways to lock down two hives. generally though, comms controlling two hives don't have resources for other things, and generally only have 2 (maybe 3) resources towers, and no upgrades very late into the game.
Well as to my own personal preference, I prefer slash and burn, or a combination of electrfication + upgrades simultaniously. The idea though is always to stay flexable in your strategy, and be prepared to make changes. WoL's can block passages, but remeber there is usually a back way. Sieges or HA? what do you do with that 100 res?
Even in the beginning of a game, you need to assess the ability of your team to push foward, their intellgience (do they look around corners, and cover behind them, or just charge recklessly). Will they phase when you tell them to? Everything needs to be taken into consideration when commanding a marine team. Do you let your team rambo, or give them very specific instructions? Do you want to have a mostly directed team with a few rambos? Go for a big distration while that pg is going up on the other side of the hive? Remeber though, always stay flexable and think fast on your feet. where are your marines, how can they help you in your current situation? Adjust and adapt.
The Upgrade Argument: W1 or A1? An age old argument, seen many many times
A1 argues: 1 extra bite, teams survive longer, can get off many extra shots on a skulk because of knockback, ambushing skulks have less of a chance of killing.
W1 argues: 1 less bullet to kill a skulk, people with good aim won't get bitten, and therefore won't need armor.
Is motion tracking worth it?
I've seen some comms motion track rush, and it is not that bad. while 45 res is a steep investment, in 3.0, you can see their blue circular location, in addition to their exact position on your minimap. It makes marine movement easier, and slahs and burn tactics are considerably easier. As a comm, your life becomes a lot easier, as you can tell marines where enemies are.
Just about all comms will agree though, the first two upgrades you should get are weapons 1 and armor 1.
Hand grenades: seem to sometimes have uses and sometimes not, this issue is still being debated heavily.
Cataylst packs: appear to not be worth their cost for the time being, even though marines no longer get hurt by them.
Upgrading the armory: Takes a long time is usually a high priority for most comms
Jetpacks vs. Heavy Armor: Heavy armor wins the day on pubs, being very hard to kill if equiped with heavy weapons (shotgun, HMG, GL) and welders.
If I missed anything feel free to add ^_^
Comments
A1 argues: 1 extra bite, teams survive longer, can get off many extra shots on a skulk because of knockback, ambushing skulks have less of a chance of killing.
W1 argues: 1 less bullet to kill a skulk, people with good aim won't get bitten, and therefore won't need armor. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've never seen "people with good aim" ask for weapons 1 first. If there's a debate, it's with people who know what they're talking about on one side, and people who obviously have little experience with the game on the other. Always get armor 1 first, it's the best upgrade the marines have period.
A1 argues: 1 extra bite, teams survive longer, can get off many extra shots on a skulk because of knockback, ambushing skulks have less of a chance of killing.
W1 argues: 1 less bullet to kill a skulk, people with good aim won't get bitten, and therefore won't need armor. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've never seen "people with good aim" ask for weapons 1 first. If there's a debate, it's with people who know what they're talking about on one side, and people who obviously have little experience with the game on the other. Always get armor 1 first, it's the best upgrade the marines have period. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, with the new armor system, medpacking is a lot less effective, which used to be one of the main points of getting armor 1. Right now, if you have armor 1, and you get bitten once, then get a medpack, you'll be at 100h/18a, which means you'll die in 2 bites anyway.
If you get a medpack after 2 bites, the medpack will do something useful: You'll be at 90h/0a, making you die in 2 more bites. Another medpack won't help though, obviously.
Basically, you run out of armor very quickly.
This makes the a1 vs w1 debate a lot closer imo. I still think a1 is slightly better though.
This also means that armor 2 is now a meaningful upgrade, I believe it's about equal to the old armor 1 in medpackability. I think I'll be upgrading it before weapons 3 in the future.
The new armor system also makes welding the armor of LA marines significant. In fact, if an armor 1 marine takes just a single bite, welding his armor will put him back up to his full 3 bites to die, which a medpack won't do! <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html//emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif' /><!--endemo-->
At 5 res a pop and now that they don't take away the pistol anymore, giving out a lone welder to a large squad of light marines might not be a bad investment at all. Welding a light marine's armor takes only a fraction of a second, after all.
Later on in the game, welding jetpackers is also very important.
Correction:
Armor 2 means you take 4 bites to kill now!
You'll only have 5 hp left over so a single parasite/healspray/spore cloud etc will kill you instantly, but it's still something. I'm definitely going to try getting armor 1 and then armor 2 right from the start, combined with a few welders and medpacks, the very next game I comm.
I believe the best way to learn how to comm, and to know what you want to though is to get out into the field and do it. I encourage everyone to develop their own style of comming. While some basic strats are generally followed, there are many nuances, and variations that you will develop on your own, although perhaps not brand new, it's a joy of being a comm.
This is just a guide to help give new comms a heads-up and heads-start on comming. (I remeber I was scared to death the first time I got in that comm chair =p).