Marine Skill.
Scythe
Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 46NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation, Reinforced - Silver
Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 46NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation, Reinforced - Silver
<div class="IPBDescription">Pretty useful.</div> I was commanding a game after assuming command from a commander that had to quit after about 10 mins into the game.
I jumped into the CC to hear a cacophony of "Your base is under attack" and "Marine lost".
Most of my marines were scattered around the map, engaged in many separate, short battles. I found that the previous commander had taken to rushing out and dropping collectors on nodes without bothering to fortify them. I wrote most of them off as a loss and told my newly respawned marines to move out to the nearest node, dropping them a few shotguns as I did so. There were two skulks attacking the node I sent them to and there were 6 marines in total, three with shotguns. By the time that the node was secured with a few turrets, there were 2 marines left. The rest were slaughtered. WE got a few more nodes secure and I decided that we would need to go for an all or nothing assault on a hive room. I ordered my marines BTB to meet up with the rest of our forces. I dropped a grenade launcher, a shotgun and a couple HMGs and we set out for a hive, me dropping health and ammo whenever needed. By the time they had got to the room adjoining the hive, all bar one of them had been killed. By this time the midden had hit the windmill and our base was under siege by several fades.
We lost that game.
I couldn’t really place the reason for our demise. It was partially the previous commander’s fault for engaging in the folly of rampant resource collector placement and partially my fault for failing to properly aim my medpack drops to keep my marines alive. But that couldn’t have been the sole reason. The only explanation I could think of was that my marines were simply bad at shooting. We were outnumbered seven to nine but I doubt that would have had much of an impact.
--Scythe--
I jumped into the CC to hear a cacophony of "Your base is under attack" and "Marine lost".
Most of my marines were scattered around the map, engaged in many separate, short battles. I found that the previous commander had taken to rushing out and dropping collectors on nodes without bothering to fortify them. I wrote most of them off as a loss and told my newly respawned marines to move out to the nearest node, dropping them a few shotguns as I did so. There were two skulks attacking the node I sent them to and there were 6 marines in total, three with shotguns. By the time that the node was secured with a few turrets, there were 2 marines left. The rest were slaughtered. WE got a few more nodes secure and I decided that we would need to go for an all or nothing assault on a hive room. I ordered my marines BTB to meet up with the rest of our forces. I dropped a grenade launcher, a shotgun and a couple HMGs and we set out for a hive, me dropping health and ammo whenever needed. By the time they had got to the room adjoining the hive, all bar one of them had been killed. By this time the midden had hit the windmill and our base was under siege by several fades.
We lost that game.
I couldn’t really place the reason for our demise. It was partially the previous commander’s fault for engaging in the folly of rampant resource collector placement and partially my fault for failing to properly aim my medpack drops to keep my marines alive. But that couldn’t have been the sole reason. The only explanation I could think of was that my marines were simply bad at shooting. We were outnumbered seven to nine but I doubt that would have had much of an impact.
--Scythe--
Comments
However, despite my lack of experience as commander, marine player's lack of skill as players really can change a game. It seems that only a few people know the concept of one man builds, one man covers. I keep having to explain to them that it would take MUCH longer to build if an alien killed the entire marine squad while they were building, along with the buildings, making me rearm and move them back into position. Another big thing is that many marines think they can take on the entire alien hive by themselves.
I get some marines who wander off without a budy into an empty hive and expect me to build there right away. Sure, taking a hive early is a good idea, but so is keeping valuable resources, especially when there's only one person to build and said person is an easy lunch for skulks.
The worst time is when my entire team save for two really good players wandered off before I even entered the console. They were great players and understood how to play marines, but the entire alien team rushed the base (taking out all the wanderers along the way). Lucky for me, I got an observatory up early and distress beaconed everyone back in. We still lost, though.
From these experiences, I'm starting to think that I shouldn't blame myself for every loss, really only two losses were direct attributed to my negligence (my main fault is completely forgetting to build some upgrades early, or arm marines at base when they don't ask for them) the rest were early losses due to bad shooting and bad small squad tactics.