Can You Beat This Strat?
Act_Chill
Join Date: 2003-04-24 Member: 15816Members
Join Date: 2003-04-24 Member: 15816Members
A great strat that I have found really hard to win against as aliens is making 3 ips(max respawn) and building an observatory no armory no tf. Then getting pg and placing one close to the hive(doesnt have to be right next to it which makes it hard to defend against). Then you just out spawn the aliens. If some nub doesnt listen and just wonders around the map thats great b/c you can get rts. Ammo who needs that b/c you will die too fast until all aliens are in respawn cue and then its game over and ammo spam is ok.
Comments
IP rushes were deadly in 1.04 , but much less now. Using a PG to reach the hive basically makes it a delayed IP rush , so the aliens are likely to have better tech (full upgrades while your marines have none !) and hive assaults are too messy to use shotguns effectively (marine dies with shotgun , his pal takes the now emptied weapon and dies stupidly)
The 3rd IP is worth 2 shotguns , so if you have the ressources for such a strat it's better to just give a pack of them when the PG goes up so the hive dies in seconds without much trouble.
not really, I've been on teams that shut down phase rushes, teams usually only do it out of desperation.
Also as soon as two hives come up and fades and lerks you are all screwed and it will just be a mass slaughter of marines
Anyway, this is just one of many rush tactics, may or may not work. If the other team is prepared, you're screwed, but otherwise you got a quick win. Short game, less fun for everyone, but if winning is more important than the fun, sure, go ahead.
NOTE: this might be fun if you totally own the other team(for opening a window). But chances are that winning is less fun than any other kind of win.
I'm willing to bet that when the aliens lost, half the team had 70 res or more. This strat is very analogous to my usual pub strat, but I spend the money on motion tracking instead of phase gates, since that much pressure is overkill.
Contrary to what someone else said earlier, you won't see many phase rushes in clan games, unless the aliens are completely outmatched. Phases need to be held by at least one marine; it's far too disorienting to have to rush through and then immediately engage in battle. This ends up meaning phases are used to hold an area, maybe to delay alien expansion, until the marines are ready to advance whenever.
I see it ending up more as a "turtle and wait for the aliens to get bored" strat. Once the aliens nail the third hive, you'll have to contend with Xeno, which will kill marines in big amounts very quickly, you lose your spawn advantage, and your base gets totalled.
Rushes are great but need a lot of coordination and most of all the element of surprise. Anyone seeing this coming will be able to shut it down quite quickly.
I know no one uses mines on pub, but they really help you
defend the pg, + pu them around the hive and skulks will be easier to hit
when they are watching out for mines.
Any thoughts?
The problem with the strat you described, is most of the aliens are to be dead. This is bad, because in order for it to be effective, you need to be killing aliens. With what I described, most of the aliens will be playing as usual, running around the map, and it will minimize your chances of failure. This is why normal phase rushes are so effective, there is little to no resistance when you start attacking the hive.
as far as i know...
This statement is really accurate but sometimes if you are playing against an elite, just one person can take down a marine team if they aren't careful, but for the most part the public community cannot handle that kind of pressure and will wind up panicing and making mistakes (there are exceptions of course, but those are few and far between).
The other problem is of course the aliens don't need to kill your PG to win out of that situation - as long as they can handle your assault up to about the 5-6 minute mark, they're fine and will have expanded more than your lone res runner can :/
Personally, I build 2 ip's, armoury, tf, and 2 Sentry turrets...get some res, get an Arms Lab + Observatory, set down some defense in one of the empty hives, then PG rush the other hive(s) with shotties.
Early-game rushing can be very effective. I found this out by accident when I unknowingly sent my 'Rines into the Alien's starting hive.
P.S. Make sure, if you can afford it, to have a "Rambo-team"; 2-3 'Rines (preferably above-average/Vet) that essentially function as your Scouting-unit: dropping RT's, building defence at choke points, while the rest of the 'Rines use good-old brute force on a Hive. This strategy makes it very hard for the Aliens, because IF your main Rine force is utterly destroyed (as it often is), they can phase in to one of the various "scouting-posts" and quickly regain the area they lost (better yet, attacking the OTHER hive, which most likely the Aliens will be unprepared for).
I comm the game as, imo, it was meant to be commed...no blind rushes, no uncalculated risks; that is what the majority of NS players already do. Your job is to stem this rambo-ness, redirecting their fury into a efficient and effective team. Although early-game PG-rushing does that (in a minimal way), it doesn't adress the fact it's NOT FUN: If you (Rines) lose the rush, then the Aliens will likely return to your base in full-force with some bad hangovers. If the Rines win the rush, the game is over...sounds a little like Combat?
Second, while PGing that first hive, they can still afford to send one guy out to lame up the second hive - fully prepared for your PG assault. You won't be able to spare a team to send out, and leaving that hive alone will only give them the time they need to get it built. And when they spawn back in, your game is up.
Nice strat but at the end of the day its a rush and rushes fail miserably if not achieved within the first minute.
PLEASE think before responding to this post. Even when the aliens new the comm was going do this 3 times in a row they won everytime. One time we were able to put up the 2nd hive, but I yelled at that person. Why??? Lets see are first hive dead 2nd is not up yet and he could have gone fade. NOOB
"It is immpossible to get a hive up in 2min"
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Rubbish. Try harder. If you hoard the starting res and act as a SCOUT, ideally nailing a few rines, then you'll easily be in a position to set up a hive. This is all the easier if the marines are mostly in spawn with only a few free roaming lunches outside.
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one gorg might have 3 chambers built by then.
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Again, with three chambers being pretty cheap to manufacture, most gorge players will rush out as skulk, scout a bit, make a kill or two, then respawn at the hive to drop chambers. Assuming the team can properly use the chamber he chose then your rush is going to die to a mob of carapaced skulks, etc.
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Also, when you build the pg(semi close to hive) there are going be some gorgs a good distance from the hive and some skulls messing around. No one goes lerk anymore at the begining and even if they did they suck in ns thsi is not combat where they get 6 upgrades.
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Gorges will not necessarily be a "good distance from the hive". At least one will be hanging around the hive and will scream like a piggy when he hears you putting up a phase. Second, at least 2 skulks will go to your spawn to see what your plan is. If they spot an Obs then your game is up.
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One time we were able to put up the 2nd hive, but I yelled at that person. Why??? Lets see are first hive dead 2nd is not up yet and he could have gone fade. NOOB
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Maybe you lost because you were trying to comm the alien team and calling them all noobs. You know, idiotic stuff like that. If you like the sound of your own voice, I suggest you use the special "listen to me, I R0><0R j00 b0><0rz" button. Its the one labelled "F4".
Second, what good is a person going fade if they're the worlds worst fade player? I'd say most beginners with a bit of wit would rather spend their res on something which has SOME chance of contributing to the team..... as opposed to going Fade and dying within 3 seconds because they'd not got the knack of how to use one. The guy putting up second hive was gambling that the rest of the team could hold out long enough for the hive to go up - instead he has some mic-monkey screaming noob at him in a high pitched 13 yr old's voice. GG.
If you can't understand your team's strengths and you think they only exist to service you, then its time to find a new hobby.
1) build 3 sensory chambers in a network covering the path marines want to rush through
2) get focus
3) kill marines in 1 bite
4) laugh
5) laugh
6) laugh
7) win
This only applies if marines are going WITHOUT armor 1, if marines go for armor 1 asap or you just dont like sensory do this:
1) set up lots of ambushes in active areas, if 6 marines leave base and you kill 1 at each intersection, by the time they reach the hive they will all be dead, or there won't be enough to secure a pg.
2) get several nodes. if marines are focusing hard on the main hive it should be easy to have a quick res flow without defending nodes.
3) get 3 defense chambers. If possible hide them in such a way that they will be relatively safe yet heal areas where marines want to hold. If that is not possible get them by the hive so it is harder for them to rush in and win.
4) get fades, a single good fade has a good chance of slowing down the marine team because they can't afford alot of arms lab upgrades or shotties when they spent extra on fast phase and extra ips instead of nodes. The key thing to remember is that the fade's job is to DELAY, and STAY ALIVE, don't try to be a hero and kill all the marines at once. Try using blink to cause trouble in marine start, anything you can think of to make them react to you instead of following their original plan.
5) get more hives
6) win
Also, you would have to not only go sensory, but you would have to place them at the hive and toward the marines start, which is something you might not do if you dont know the marines are going use this strat and they may kill you if you try to go too close to their base.
If this tactic fails that forced the aliens to use sensory as their first upgrade so elec all your rts will insure that they will not be taken down and you wont have to worry about fades. I would immediatly recycle the base pg and 1 or 2 of the 3 ips and start getting rts and elec them.
I dropped mines around the phase gate to defend it while the marines went and killed.
The marines were slaughtering the aliens at first. When they died and respawned, they (Unfortunately) would hump the armory till they had 250 ammo. This allowed the Aliens to respawn.
Then the marines got together and decided to attack only the hive, and not the aliens.
The game lasted 13 minutes with just them having one hive. At the 14 minute mark they had a second hive and a fade. All the while the marines were complaining. I had researched grenades for them to use.
Point: Due to armory humpage, we lost since they spent so much damn time in base just humping away. Next time I try this I'm gonna recycle the armory so they will hopefully directly phase through. I'll post my results later today.
Even if you did have an armory, the RFK gained by the aliens will put you in a bad position assuming you have not capped any nodes yet and they slaughter all your marines. But that would be suicide anyway.
Besides, anything that appears as a moving yellow circle on hivesight = food, so make the best out of your parasites!
Just an analogy from an alien player's point of view. And yes it's possible to slaughter 10 marines in the first 1.5 mins of the game, but it's close to impossible anyway, they would call you a h4xx0r.
BTW, SCs won't work too well, because you can still hear the sloshing sound of RTs even when it is cloaked (and average alien players know that) so they could presume that countering phases with SCs is not the brightest idea. Better alternative against it is MCs first (extra speed = harder to hit skulk)
Furthermore, to those who suggest that sensory would beat this strat is utterly correct, sensory tends to own pgs. I know that as comm, the most effective counter to sensory involves neither an early arms lab or early obs (although a cloak walk rush is a risk), but involves early HA / electricity.
I see alot of the people here are assuming that this game would go on. If the rush fails the game is lost. simple as that, and if you can't kill that hive within the first couple of minutes then you didn't *rush* and have failed. If your sly enoughy you could have a marine slinking around the map getting RT's and start to tech, but the whole point is to rush. This would be an effective pub strategy, and in the hands of an actually organized / trained team it would be interesting to see the effects.