Contrarian Commander Strategy
M1ke
Join Date: 2002-11-17 Member: 9067Members
Join Date: 2002-11-17 Member: 9067Members
<div class="IPBDescription">argument against "grab the hive quick"</div> Yes, I know the objective of the game as marines is to kill the alien hives. However from my experience, going straight for a hive at the beginning of the game is not always a sound strategy.
I play marine a lot and see time after time: "OK guys, let's secure a hive ASAP," and 30 minutes later we're re-enacting "The Alamo" at home base followed shortly by a trip back to the Ready Room. I've seen it work on occasion and I'll bet it could work consistently with a good commander and a group of decent marines. In fact, it may be the ideal strategy, but in the world of inexperienced commanders, NSPlayers, Rambos, and "if I only had a jetpack" guys, I believe a more flexible strategy is needed.
My objection to the "grab the hive quick" strategy is that it can easily become too defensive. Instead of one well defended base, you now have two moderate to poorly defended bases. Spending resources to turret spam (*sigh*) delays tech and weapons which gives the aliens an open invitation to take resource nozzles and their second hive. Once they get fades, all the turrets in the world won’t stop them from retaking that third hive if you can’t counterattack with HMGs, and the game is effectively lost. From my own experience, this is the most common reason why marines lose.
The most consistently successful strategy I have seen is to capture 3-4 resource nozzles first and save the hives for later. You defend these nozzles with just a few turrets and marines. A smaller investment means a smaller loss if the aliens kill off an expansion. Meanwhile, research at base what you need to attack. In my opinion, the game is won by marines with motion tracking, HMGs, siege turrets, and enough income to keep your troops constantly supplied. The rest is chess: contain their attacks, stay on the offensive, probe for a weakness, and exploit it to victory. The key is never to turtle.
I play marine a lot and see time after time: "OK guys, let's secure a hive ASAP," and 30 minutes later we're re-enacting "The Alamo" at home base followed shortly by a trip back to the Ready Room. I've seen it work on occasion and I'll bet it could work consistently with a good commander and a group of decent marines. In fact, it may be the ideal strategy, but in the world of inexperienced commanders, NSPlayers, Rambos, and "if I only had a jetpack" guys, I believe a more flexible strategy is needed.
My objection to the "grab the hive quick" strategy is that it can easily become too defensive. Instead of one well defended base, you now have two moderate to poorly defended bases. Spending resources to turret spam (*sigh*) delays tech and weapons which gives the aliens an open invitation to take resource nozzles and their second hive. Once they get fades, all the turrets in the world won’t stop them from retaking that third hive if you can’t counterattack with HMGs, and the game is effectively lost. From my own experience, this is the most common reason why marines lose.
The most consistently successful strategy I have seen is to capture 3-4 resource nozzles first and save the hives for later. You defend these nozzles with just a few turrets and marines. A smaller investment means a smaller loss if the aliens kill off an expansion. Meanwhile, research at base what you need to attack. In my opinion, the game is won by marines with motion tracking, HMGs, siege turrets, and enough income to keep your troops constantly supplied. The rest is chess: contain their attacks, stay on the offensive, probe for a weakness, and exploit it to victory. The key is never to turtle.
Comments
with blink and acid rocket they are increadible deadly, the only thing the 3rd hive usually does is make it more easy to crack the marine base.
Intead of just grabbing 1 hive, grab 2, now they are stuck as lurks and skulks. Ive played with a commander that did this, we won everytime we played as marine (around 3 times), we were switching sides each round but we also won as alien as well because we understood the implortance of getting our hives up asap.
First thing we would do after the first rush is have one guys go gorg, and start saving up for the hive at the very begining, then we would have 1-2 gorgs just purly getting resorces, during this our skulks would haras the marines at horse shoe, since the commander usuauly gets a hard on about that place, we just wouldnt let them build, and usually never put up enough guards to guard the builders to stop us from killing them. However once they got the turrets up would could hardly do jack to take that place down since turrets v skulk = dead skulk
Fades can be a **obscenity** to kill, and they can take out bases fairly well in groups.
Not necessarily - 3 sentry turrets in your main base + a phase gate will hold off any skulk/lerk attacks. I've found that phase gates seem to lull aliens into a false sense of security: they see a relatively "undefended base" with 3 turrets, decide to rush in, and then have 2 or 3 marines teleport in within a few seconds.
The phase gates are the key to having 2 "poorly" defended bases.
Hmmm... interesting point. I never really thought of it like that, but it makes sense.
I guess that's true, except for the fact that it's a resource point with a CC and infantry portals. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I never really defend my resource nozzles unless they're in a key location like Holoroom on Hera (near a Hive, 2 nozzles), or Mess Hall on Nancy (routes to 2 Hives through there). So I guess if I treated *my* start as a resource nozzle, I'd be dead in the first rush, with no armory or turrets. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Yes fades are strong, they are supposed to be. Fades will be what the aliens need to have a chance at taking over the third hive. All you have to do is hold out untill you have HA/HMG, and then you should have the advantage over the fades. I dont think it's possible to secure 2 hives fast like mancora said. Sure if you grab 2 they are stuck with skulks, but you are stuck with few resources and little or no upgrades. And those skulks and lerks will take out one hive and take it over, it's very hard to prevent that. Just consider everybody attacking one hive while 1 or 2 lerks go to the other hive and take out the tfac, you are forced to either split your marines up over 2 places, or let one hive go. And they can set up D chambers outside to fall back to. Sure you can build siege to counter that, but there goes another 50 resources for 1 siege (100 if you want siege in both hives you secured). I dont think it's possible to hold down and secure 2 hives for long enough to win against aliens, if you can you should win the game however.
In the beginning, while you have little resources and need to save for hive bases rather than build turret farms, give your marines some tripmines to set up near bottlenecks (i.e. doors). They'll both limit alien movement (I know that when I play as an alien, a tripmine subconsciously makes me avoid using that entrance).
You can then leave the base alone for a while, because the aliens will either avoid touching the tripmines or kamikaze and kill themselves if they REALLY want to get in - the tripmines will still slow down their attack though (they have to respawn, after all). During this time, you can work your **obscenity** off securing the two empty hives, then win the game.
Oh, so so true. For example, atmospheric proccessing in bast can be defended very easily with turrets alone (provided you know proper placement). However, remeber that distress beacon only works with your main base.
Also, try to rush areas near hives, but not neccesarily the hives themselves. Another example from bast - if you take main aft junction before they get a hive up in there, you can keep aliens out of it pretty well.
And never go defensive from the start - this is how aliens win the most easily. By contsantly harrasing with free skulks, an alien team can psychologically devestate a team, making them go completly defensive, and only building turrets. In the mean time, the 1-2 gorges are infesting the entire map, making it impossible to get out easily.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I just got out of a game in which the commander (-=Lazarus=-, who actually did a really good job) set up a forward base in the room next to the sewer Hive on ns_caged, as well as the other Hive.
Needless to say, 30 minutes and 15 Onos later, we realized it didn't work. We managed to push them back to 1 Hive, but the damage had been too great to be undone.
I agree that you shouldn't put turret after turret down. You can set up a minimal defensive position like you would quick expanding nodes but you have to keep a few marines guards in the spawn on top of what defense is set up. Wherever your Inf. Portals are located it is important that point is adequately defended so it doesn't become overrun. On most maps the initial Inf. Portals are built at spawn, making it tactically the most important point on the map for the Marines until you relocate them.
As long as you can spawn in, you have a chance.
Moving into an eney hive right away lets you have your marine spawns there right away, (Nearly invulnerable to attack) and it makes the time when you would have the resouces to secure the second hive come just 30 or 35 RUs after when you would normally be securing the first hive.
Even if you only have 2 nozzles, but hold the hives, only a completely inept commander could lose.
One of the biggest problems with this however, is that many marines are set in how they want their original start location set up like most commanders do, as a main base.
Needless to say, 30 minutes and 15 Onos later, we realized it didn't work. We managed to push them back to 1 Hive, but the damage had been too great to be undone.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, if they had Onos, I'm assuming this didn't happen very early in the game. It does if you want it to work, or else it is pretty much pointless (I have completly ignored some captured areas as alien before - turrets can't touch me). Also, this strategy is mostly just for setting up a siege - get the cannons up as soon as the area is captured. Many gorges like to use a similar strategy (build near the choke point, then make the marines choke in it), so this will cut right through that. Also note that with v1.02, aliens cannot build invincible walls of lame anymore, so this will be even more effective.
Also, this works better on small maps, like bast or tanith, as you can get to the areas you want to build in more easily. Maps with not as many vents and secret passageways, such as bast, are also good choices (in short, just try it on bast <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> ).
I actually really beg to differ if there ever was a wall of lame to begin with, and not just a siege cannon bug, that made them do no actualy damage!!
Heres a thread somewhat dedicated to the topic of walls of lame actually existing that siege cannons couldnt take out (my replie is on the forth page) .
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=11648&st=0' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...=5&t=11648&st=0</a>
Actually, setting up the siege base was one of the first things we did. Since we were all focused there, however, the aliens took their second Hive and took out our siege base with Fades.
Looking back (with 20/20 hindsight, of course) I told the commander we needed to get a phase gate up there in order to protect it. Which, we never did.
It was still the most fun I've had losing - right as our main base was overrun, Lazarus set up a CC in some tiny little nook behind a box so that Onosesesessses couldn't get to it. I hopped in there and threw up a quick portal and factory, so he could respawn and jump back in.
I have to strongly disagree. On the contrary, I believe it's important to take both empty hives right away. The trick is to build phasegates at each location the moment the marines arrive. Think of it this way- once you have phasegates at a hive, you can simply pour marines into the area until you have turrets set up, and the marines arrive nearly instantly after they respawn.
As the first marines arrive at the hive, they usually find lone skulks busy rushing to the main base, and perhaps a lone gorge (if anything) at the actual hive room waiting for them.
When a skulk dies, they have to wait in line for the 1 hive to respawn them, then run all the way back to the battle scene. When a marine dies, there are 2-3 marine portals waiting to bring them back to life, and they only have to jump on the phasegate to get back to the action. Lerks and skulks are going to have a very difficult time taking hives defended by both turrets and a seemingly endless supply of marines.
On another plus side, holding the main base + the 2 hives = 3 resource nozzles.
In the event that a hive if fortified against attack, I agree with the tactic of setting up siege cannons and turrets just outside its room.