<!--quoteo(post=2005822:date=Nov 2 2012, 12:15 AM:name=Talesin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Talesin @ Nov 2 2012, 12:15 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005822"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->On spawn (eg: base under attack defense), the Marine spawns with six bites of damage they can soak, and doing VERY appreciable amounts of damage against any lifeform present, with very little aim required.
Skulk spawns at endgame still needing six bites to kill an upgraded Marine, and dying in about half a second of rifle fire. To upgrade to Carapace requires evolution time, and to a lifeform that can take more than being sneezed at by an upgraded rifle, even longer. Meaning that the spawn is very easily camped, with ZERO recourse on the Kharaa side. Likewise, Kharaa MUST control multiple points to have access to their abilities. It is exceedingly simple for Marines to snowball. Kharaa endgame is a fight through ALL the sustained and immediately available abilities.
Likewise, balance has been determined to be equitable for the FULLY UPGRADED version of a given lifeform. Meaning that until they are unlocked, the given lifeform is significantly underpowered (very visible in the Fade with the lack of Blink).
It'll be fixed, but as-is the side balance is oriented toward short games, and slanted in the Marines' favor for the late-game. Which is a problem, as they turtle FAR too well and reach their late game quite easily, with very little impetus to actually explore the map or hold more than 3 resource points.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=2005828:date=Nov 2 2012, 02:19 PM:name=GORGEous)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GORGEous @ Nov 2 2012, 02:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005828"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Armor 3 marines take 4 bites to kill.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> What? Sorry I dont have the numbers but I know its 3 bites with a0, its definitely more than 4 bites of a skulk with a3.
<!--quoteo(post=2005877:date=Nov 2 2012, 12:08 AM:name=hakenspit)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (hakenspit @ Nov 2 2012, 12:08 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005877"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What? Sorry I dont have the numbers but I know its 3 bites with a0, its definitely more than 4 bites of a skulk with a3.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> For Armor 3?
4 Skulk Bites 5 Lerk Bites 4 Fade Swipes 3 Onos Gores<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Those counts are only for full damage attacks, as glancing hits deal less damage.
- I completely agree with slowing down the marines when they spawn. Rather than having them instantly have armor 3 and weapon 3, I vote that they should have to buy an upgraded weapon and armor from the armory. This will make it completely analogous to aliens having to egg to get their upgrades.
- Exos are way too EZ MODE. W+M1. You have no ammo to worry about. Your miniguns overheating penalty is so short it might as well not even be there. There's literally nothing else for you to even do besides W+M1 your way to the enemy hive. It's incredibly over-simplified, dull, and imbalanced in just how easy and noob-friendly it is. Compare it to the Fade and how hard that is to play, and either exos need to have more counters (WHERE IS WEB?), be harder to play (longer minigun overheat penalty, limited ammo and reloads, maybe slower and more limited speed while firing)
- Grenade launchers are just lame. In NS1 they were pretty much just for anti-structural work. Now the defacto tactic of choice seems to be to simply fire at your feet and nuke all the skulks around. I would propose a 5-meter firing safe distance to lend a serious counter to the GL.
<!--quoteo(post=2005889:date=Nov 2 2012, 12:28 AM:name=twiliteblue)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (twiliteblue @ Nov 2 2012, 12:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005889"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Those counts are only for full damage attacks, as glancing hits deal less damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Why bother counting anything else.
Consider these two common scenarios where the respective bases (human/alien) are being attacked.
Marines: <ol type='1'><li>newly spawned marine having w3/a3 upgrades can immediately contribute to the battle while doing any of the below.</li><li>newly spawned marine can easily pickup a weapon/suite/jetpack.</li><li>newly spawned marine can easily buy a new weapon/suite/jetpack.</li></ol>
Aliens: <ol type='1'><li>newly spawned alien doesn't have any of the chamber upgrades.</li><li>newly spawned alien retains upgraded abilities (leap/xenoside).</li><li>newly spawned alien is the weakest alien life form.</li></ol>
Now when i say "easily pickup/buy" i mean it doesn't take the player out of combat for a significant amount of time, for example you spawn, you're immediately in combat, as you're attacking and moving you see a weapon nearby, you move towards it as you're attacking and you pick it up. Downtime? the only downtime is the time it took to drop your weapon and pickup the new one, so about 2 seconds. Same thing with buying a new weapon. For aliens it's much different, there's a lot of downtime if you want to evolve, or even get your chamber upgrades.
So from this very realistic and plausible point of view, the marine team will always end up with the upper hand.
<!--quoteo(post=2005895:date=Nov 1 2012, 09:34 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 1 2012, 09:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005895"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->- I completely agree with slowing down the marines when they spawn. Rather than having them instantly have armor 3 and weapon 3, I vote that they should have to buy an upgraded weapon and armor from the armory. This will make it completely analogous to aliens having to egg to get their upgrades.
- Exos are way too EZ MODE. W+M1. You have no ammo to worry about. Your miniguns overheating penalty is so short it might as well not even be there. There's literally nothing else for you to even do besides W+M1 your way to the enemy hive. It's incredibly over-simplified, dull, and imbalanced in just how easy and noob-friendly it is. Compare it to the Fade and how hard that is to play, and either exos need to have more counters (WHERE IS WEB?), be harder to play (longer minigun overheat penalty, limited ammo and reloads, maybe slower and more limited speed while firing)
- Grenade launchers are just lame. In NS1 they were pretty much just for anti-structural work. Now the defacto tactic of choice seems to be to simply fire at your feet and nuke all the skulks around. I would propose a 5-meter firing safe distance to lend a serious counter to the GL.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think "make them just as bad as this" as a balancing act, is not the way to get anywhere.
<!--quoteo(post=2005889:date=Nov 2 2012, 04:28 PM:name=twiliteblue)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (twiliteblue @ Nov 2 2012, 04:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005889"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Those counts are only for full damage attacks, as glancing hits deal less damage.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> as far as i am concerned, glancing bites are additional bonus damage that you shouldn't really be doing in the first place. 4 bites is correct imo. If anything, armour bonuses should have been <b>increased</b> to compensate for the inclusion of glancing bite (not that i would argue for this).
Would like to see alien upgrades 'sticky selectable' with more interchangable flexibility if only to reduce tediousness though. Other than that, i do think alien upgrades do a good enough job scaling to armour/weapons upgrades. Skulks have so little health w1/w2/w3 really don't make <b>that</b> big of a difference and carapace pretty much totally nullifies the additional benefit of w3. Aimed shotguns are still generally going to one shot you no matter the weapon level.
*Do think armoury healing armour is a bigger issue here (too fast).
Honestly, I don't understand the complaints about the exo-suits at all. Supported exo-suits are powerful, to be sure, but the fact that you have to dedicate so many resources to keeping them alive ends up balancing them out in my opinion. I can't count the number of times when I've seen exos overextend and get swarmed or nailed by surprise Oni or when the alien team forces a beacon, leaving the exos as effectively sitting ducks to be picked off by skulks. By themselves, exos are nigh-useless.
<!--quoteo(post=2005934:date=Nov 2 2012, 02:12 AM:name=Crysack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crysack @ Nov 2 2012, 02:12 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005934"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Honestly, I don't understand the complaints about the exo-suits at all. Supported exo-suits are powerful, to be sure, but the fact that you have to dedicate so many resources to keeping them alive ends up balancing them out in my opinion. I can't count the number of times when I've seen exos overextend and get swarmed or nailed by surprise Oni or when the alien team forces a beacon, leaving the exos as effectively sitting ducks to be picked off by skulks. By themselves, exos are nigh-useless.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
a single exo by itself is useless yes, but if they're 2+, they can kill all the skulks to throw at them easy.
<!--quoteo(post=2005934:date=Nov 2 2012, 06:12 AM:name=Crysack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crysack @ Nov 2 2012, 06:12 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005934"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Honestly, I don't understand the complaints about the exo-suits at all. Supported exo-suits are powerful, to be sure, but the fact that you have to dedicate so many resources to keeping them alive ends up balancing them out in my opinion. I can't count the number of times when I've seen exos overextend and get swarmed or nailed by surprise Oni or when the alien team forces a beacon, leaving the exos as effectively sitting ducks to be picked off by skulks. By themselves, exos are nigh-useless.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I just think they're too powerful for how stupid they are. The minigun overheat isn't even a penalty, it takes about two seconds, and it only takes about as long as it would take you to cool down without overheating anyway, effectively meaning your DPS doesn't change at all. You have infinite ammo and don't even need to reload, which was something important about HMGs, the super-long reload.
<!--quoteo(post=2005937:date=Nov 2 2012, 05:14 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 2 2012, 05:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005937"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I just think they're too powerful for how stupid they are. The minigun overheat isn't even a penalty, it takes about two seconds, and it only takes about as long as it would take you to cool down without overheating anyway, effectively meaning your DPS doesn't change at all. You have infinite ammo and don't even need to reload, which was something important about HMGs, the super-long reload.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, but if they didn't have the damage output they currently have, then what would be the point of building them? Maintaining one or two exos already requires co-ordination and a ton of resources and the exos themselves aren't actually all that durable. A single Onos can comfortably take down two of them by himself if they aren't supported properly.
<!--quoteo(post=2005937:date=Nov 1 2012, 10:14 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 1 2012, 10:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005937"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I just think they're too powerful for how stupid they are. The minigun overheat isn't even a penalty, it takes about two seconds, and it only takes about as long as it would take you to cool down without overheating anyway, effectively meaning your DPS doesn't change at all. You have infinite ammo and don't even need to reload, which was something important about HMGs, the super-long reload.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> They're weak against the gorge's bile bomb/ 2 skulks/ fades/ and even lerks who have a greater accuracy. Essentially every alien race in the hands of a competent player can kill their toughest units unless the team on the ground defend them.
He's right, the exo as a lone unit will not get things done.
<!--quoteo(post=2005941:date=Nov 2 2012, 06:17 AM:name=Crysack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crysack @ Nov 2 2012, 06:17 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005941"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Yes, but if they didn't have the damage output they currently have, then what would be the point of building them? Maintaining one or two exos already requires co-ordination and a ton of resources and the exos themselves aren't actually all that durable. A single Onos can comfortably take down two of them by himself if they aren't supported properly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Every single game I've seen, Exos come <i>long</i> before the Onos. If the aliens don't play EXTREMELY well and counter the first wave of exos, then it's pretty much GG.
Giving Gorge back their webs would be a nice way to help counter Exos, since they can't weld. Not sure why they removed it.
God help you if you don't kill the exos fast enough, usually the marines will just jump right back inside one when they spawn after they slaughtered enough skulks. Which is another matter to bring up - look at how long... and how much notice... the marines get when an alien wants to go Onos. Whereas jumping in an exosuit takes what, one or two seconds of animation?
<!--quoteo(post=2005944:date=Nov 2 2012, 05:19 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 2 2012, 05:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005944"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Every single game I've seen, Exos come <i>long</i> before the Onos. If the aliens don't play EXTREMELY well and counter the first wave of exos, then it's pretty much GG.
Giving Gorge back their webs would be a nice way to help counter Exos, since they can't weld. Not sure why they removed it.
God help you if you don't kill the exos fast enough, usually the marines will just jump right back inside one when they spawn after they slaughtered enough skulks.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Again, making the exos unweldable in certain scenarios would make them virtually useless. A 50-75 res unit that is that slow and easily destroyed would be merely a liability.
As it stands, there are two main ways of dealing with supported exos (if they're unsupported, just swarm them with skulks and they won't be able to do anything to stop you). One is to get a couple of Oni supported by gorges on your side and do hit and runs to kill off the MACs and marines. The more effective way is to force a beacon with skulk attacks into one of the marine bases so you can then pick off the unsupported exos.
I never said make them unweldable. I said introduce things that can counter them that exos are not equipped to handle. IE: webs, which you have to weld to destroy. Exos can't use welders. Ipso facto, exos get bogged down by webs.
<!--quoteo(post=2005944:date=Nov 2 2012, 08:19 AM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Nov 2 2012, 08:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005944"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Every single game I've seen, Exos come <i>long</i> before the Onos. If the aliens don't play EXTREMELY well and counter the first wave of exos, then it's pretty much GG.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is quite a glaring problem then. Due to the number of upgrades required to keep marines competent on the way to higher tech, and the armor upgrades needed just to make exos viable, Onos should almost always appear <b>long</b> before exo suits do. There are some other factors which affect this as well: Due to the relatively few tech upgrades for the alien commander to research, it is far more common to drop lifeforms for players, than it would be for the marine commander to drop tech/weapons. Also, aliens very rarely spend resources on the way to Onos. For example, your first Onos player is unlikely to have gone lerk or something prior to that. Marines on the other hand will almost invariably have bought <b>at least</b> a welder by the time exo suits are available.
On the topic of balance as a whole, its also worth noting that, in the majority of cases, res for res, aliens are more powerful than marines. That is to say that, aliens have the distinct advantage of being undefeatable 1v1. The highest tech unit the marines have cannot beat an Onos even with only a single hive upgrade (ok it CAN, but it shouldn't, the Onos IS more powerful). The difference is that, as the alien's attacks operate in an area, they don't scale as well in numbers. 1 exo versus 1 onos is hands down an onos win. 2 v 2 becomes a little blurred, but its probably still going to be the onos. 3v3 and it starts to completely turn around. 4 exos begins to get to the point where they will decimate anything because they can put so much focus whereever they need to.
This is where the concept of alien's "increased mobility" comes from. Granted, they don't seem very much faster than marines, and they definitely can't get around the map as quickly when you take phase gates into account, but because aliens are relatively stronger by themselves than marines are, lone players, who are far more agile in strategic movements than a group of 4 or 5 players, can still do a large amount of damage. The prime example of this is a gorge with bile bomb and adrenaline.
Not to say that things are perfect the way they are now. There is always room for change. One thing I would very much like to see is weapon and armor levels tied directly to the number of comm stations held. This would give marines some incentive (and some need) to get a third tech point, and it would give aliens some incentive to attack the marines third tech point.
<!--quoteo(post=2005959:date=Nov 2 2012, 06:35 AM:name=|strofix|)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (|strofix| @ Nov 2 2012, 06:35 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005959"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->One thing I would very much like to see is weapon and armor levels tied directly to the number of comm stations held. This would give marines some incentive (and some need) to get a third tech point, and it would give aliens some incentive to attack the marines third tech point.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I haven't played comm yet but I actually assumed that was already the case.
Aliens are not weaker than marines in the late game, nor any other period during the game. The phenomena you are identifying is that aliens are weaker than marines in direct confrontation. This DOES NOT mean aliens are generically "weaker" than marines, it simply means that Aliens strength is NOT direct conflict.
The mechanic in NS currently is similar to zerg vs terran in starcraft. Aliens have faster movement speeds, they have access to movement paths that Marines can't easily use, and they have one hit wonder units that can put effective damage into marine strongholds unless there is significant concerted defense against them.
Functionally, this gives aliens the advantage of very strong map control to counteract the marines advantage of a more powerful positional army. In NS marines basically control the flow of the game, and the aliens respond in turn by finding back doors to constantly do damage. Marines cannot generally be prevented from a 100% effort push into an area nearby to where they are. Aliens are able to whittle down marines as they travel across the map using their map control advantage, and they are able to exploit any location that marines currently are not FAR more easily than marines can exploit alien absence from a location.
It all comes down to cost efficiency. Once marines are established in a location they are able to be very cost efficient. But moving across the map, and establishing a new position, is much more expensive for marines than it is for aliens generally speaking. If you can cause marines to lose value in their army while they are moving, if you can attack marines where their army is not, and if you can use those attacks to force the marine force to move when it doesn't want to move, then your alien team will win. Marines cannot be cost efficient when they have to be in places where they do not have a strong defense set up. Marines can only be cost efficient when they are forcing aliens to respond to something they are doing, and because aliens have map control by default, it's usually the case that the aliens get to control where the front is unless they do something wrong.
<!--quoteo(post=2005983:date=Nov 1 2012, 11:59 PM:name=Swiftspear)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Swiftspear @ Nov 1 2012, 11:59 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005983"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The mechanic in NS currently is similar to zerg vs terran in starcraft. Aliens have faster movement speeds, they have access to movement paths that Marines can't easily use, and they have one hit wonder units that can put effective damage into marine strongholds unless there is significant concerted defense against them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But Aliens are not faster than Marines. That is just straight not true. Phase gates, beacons, uncontrollable spawn locations for Aliens, marine sprint, AND Marines spawn times are much better and they don't have to evolve when they spawn. Trust me when I say Marines are faster, they can react better and can get around the map much faster. They can siege harder with instant reinforcements and they can hold sieges better because obviously turtling with range advantage is easier.
I am a high diamond zerg if that means anything and while I'd like to say playing Alien com and on their team feels like zerg, it doesn't. Exos and 3 3 Marine upgrades come far before Onos because Aliens are busy spending a ton of rez to expand earlier, they can't recycle, and marines generally have more map control due to PGs. Just my two cents. :/
So far I don't think either side is much more powerful than the other, even in the late game. Although I do think marines are perhaps a bit more mobile than they should be. Not talking about phase gates and beacons, because those are essential gameplay elements, but simply the marine movement speed feels a bit too much.
To be fair, onos can come way before exos, and exos without A3 and dual miniguns are pretty ######. If the alien commander hasn't researched bilebomb by the time exos hit the field, you deserve to lose. Alien p.res gain is usually slower of course, since they're dead for longer (no p.res during death) and aliens generally have less RTs. Good alien comms will also see the need to save for an onos egg, well before players can get onos with p.res. (Unless the team is holding a lot of extractors)\
But let's not kid ourselves, aliens are not only weaker lategame, they are also incredibly frustrating to play at that stage. There's no way to boost your dmg (PLEASE BRING BACK FOCUS) to stay competitive and most of the third hive benefits are outright crap. (Not to mention upgrades like carapace, silence, etc don't help much any more at this stage) Every alien victory at that stage of the game is an incredibly dragged out one, versus A3/W3 marines who even without a second CC turtlethe game out for much much longer than they should.
Fortunately it's not too hard to come up with fixes to this problem, I only hope UWE doesn't stay blind on the issue.
<!--quoteo(post=2005356:date=Nov 1 2012, 06:28 PM:name=Al_Ka_Pwn)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Al_Ka_Pwn @ Nov 1 2012, 06:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2005356"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Late game marines are far more powerful than aliens.
Aliens do locational damage and marines can shoot any part of the alien to do the same damage.
Phase gates give marines more mobility than Aliens. In NS1 aliens could teleport between hives. This is absent.
Marines have universal upgrades that they can get on one base. Meaning late game marines require 6 hits from skulks and 4 from fades.
Late game marines are more powerful than the late game aliens. Aliens require 3 bases to be subpar to marine's 2 bases.
Marines have the best static defense and the least amount of area they have to defend allowing them to hold out far longer than should be allowed.
Aliens lack a siege weapon to capitalize on any sort of momentum.
In order to rectify this require marines to get 2 bases in order to get level 2 weapons and armor, and 3 bases to get level 3 weapons, and armor and exos. Give aliens better static defense and some sort of seige weapon. Perhaps based on the spores of the lurk, like the ability to pump nerve gas into a base constantly in order to siege it, or to fill an entire alien room with gas to defend it. Also allow aliens to teleport between hives after at least the second hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
aliens dont do locational damage. they do damage based on how poorly you aim. there are no "headshots" in ns2
I think the biggest issue with balance topics on this forum lately largely comes down to new people still learning the game. I went 25-2 or something in a game last night, playing lone-wolf, using only the LMG... I didn't spend any Res the whole match, does that mean it's OP? No, and I did similar things as an alien. My point is people need to wait a while before coming to conclusions about balance.
<i>Disclaimer: I'm not trying to be boastful with my k:d or anything, just stating it to make a point about there being a lot of new players who are still learning. I consider myself to be a pretty average gamer.</i>
These exact issues have been brought up several times in the beta, by players who have 300+ hours of NS2 played. So discrediting this thread because 'the game has just released' doesn't exactly make much sense.
The onos can come out in 5-7 minutes if the alien teams are using a dropped onos eggs. Exosuits require dual miniguns and armor 3 to do anything and even then are so much slower than onos. The aliens can rotate and force exos (or their support) out of position. In a split map situation, aliens can sac a few onos to kill the exos and then rebuy their onos with tres long before marines can rebuy their dual minigun exos with pres.
In nearly every situation, a healthy alien team with onos are far advantaged over marines with exosuits. The real marine strength lies in jetpacks, shotguns, and forced innate teamwork. The new marine player is probably going to stick with his herd where as I've seen many new onos run into the marine base and die alone.
Comments
Skulk spawns at endgame still needing six bites to kill an upgraded Marine, and dying in about half a second of rifle fire. To upgrade to Carapace requires evolution time, and to a lifeform that can take more than being sneezed at by an upgraded rifle, even longer. Meaning that the spawn is very easily camped, with ZERO recourse on the Kharaa side. Likewise, Kharaa MUST control multiple points to have access to their abilities. It is exceedingly simple for Marines to snowball. Kharaa endgame is a fight through ALL the sustained and immediately available abilities.
Likewise, balance has been determined to be equitable for the FULLY UPGRADED version of a given lifeform. Meaning that until they are unlocked, the given lifeform is significantly underpowered (very visible in the Fade with the lack of Blink).
It'll be fixed, but as-is the side balance is oriented toward short games, and slanted in the Marines' favor for the late-game. Which is a problem, as they turtle FAR too well and reach their late game quite easily, with very little impetus to actually explore the map or hold more than 3 resource points.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Armor 3 marines take 4 bites to kill.
What? Sorry I dont have the numbers but I know its 3 bites with a0, its definitely more than 4 bites of a skulk with a3.
For Armor 3?
4 Skulk Bites
5 Lerk Bites
4 Fade Swipes
3 Onos Gores
4 Skulk Bites
5 Lerk Bites
4 Fade Swipes
3 Onos Gores<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Those counts are only for full damage attacks, as glancing hits deal less damage.
- Exos are way too EZ MODE. W+M1. You have no ammo to worry about. Your miniguns overheating penalty is so short it might as well not even be there. There's literally nothing else for you to even do besides W+M1 your way to the enemy hive. It's incredibly over-simplified, dull, and imbalanced in just how easy and noob-friendly it is. Compare it to the Fade and how hard that is to play, and either exos need to have more counters (WHERE IS WEB?), be harder to play (longer minigun overheat penalty, limited ammo and reloads, maybe slower and more limited speed while firing)
- Grenade launchers are just lame. In NS1 they were pretty much just for anti-structural work. Now the defacto tactic of choice seems to be to simply fire at your feet and nuke all the skulks around. I would propose a 5-meter firing safe distance to lend a serious counter to the GL.
Why bother counting anything else.
Marines:
<ol type='1'><li>newly spawned marine having w3/a3 upgrades can immediately contribute to the battle while doing any of the below.</li><li>newly spawned marine can easily pickup a weapon/suite/jetpack.</li><li>newly spawned marine can easily buy a new weapon/suite/jetpack.</li></ol>
Aliens:
<ol type='1'><li>newly spawned alien doesn't have any of the chamber upgrades.</li><li>newly spawned alien retains upgraded abilities (leap/xenoside).</li><li>newly spawned alien is the weakest alien life form.</li></ol>
Now when i say "easily pickup/buy" i mean it doesn't take the player out of combat for a significant amount of time, for example you spawn, you're immediately in combat, as you're attacking and moving you see a weapon nearby, you move towards it as you're attacking and you pick it up. Downtime? the only downtime is the time it took to drop your weapon and pickup the new one, so about 2 seconds. Same thing with buying a new weapon. For aliens it's much different, there's a lot of downtime if you want to evolve, or even get your chamber upgrades.
So from this very realistic and plausible point of view, the marine team will always end up with the upper hand.
- Exos are way too EZ MODE. W+M1. You have no ammo to worry about. Your miniguns overheating penalty is so short it might as well not even be there. There's literally nothing else for you to even do besides W+M1 your way to the enemy hive. It's incredibly over-simplified, dull, and imbalanced in just how easy and noob-friendly it is. Compare it to the Fade and how hard that is to play, and either exos need to have more counters (WHERE IS WEB?), be harder to play (longer minigun overheat penalty, limited ammo and reloads, maybe slower and more limited speed while firing)
- Grenade launchers are just lame. In NS1 they were pretty much just for anti-structural work. Now the defacto tactic of choice seems to be to simply fire at your feet and nuke all the skulks around. I would propose a 5-meter firing safe distance to lend a serious counter to the GL.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think "make them just as bad as this" as a balancing act, is not the way to get anywhere.
as far as i am concerned, glancing bites are additional bonus damage that you shouldn't really be doing in the first place. 4 bites is correct imo. If anything, armour bonuses should have been <b>increased</b> to compensate for the inclusion of glancing bite (not that i would argue for this).
Would like to see alien upgrades 'sticky selectable' with more interchangable flexibility if only to reduce tediousness though. Other than that, i do think alien upgrades do a good enough job scaling to armour/weapons upgrades. Skulks have so little health w1/w2/w3 really don't make <b>that</b> big of a difference and carapace pretty much totally nullifies the additional benefit of w3. Aimed shotguns are still generally going to one shot you no matter the weapon level.
*Do think armoury healing armour is a bigger issue here (too fast).
a single exo by itself is useless yes, but if they're 2+, they can kill all the skulks to throw at them easy.
I just think they're too powerful for how stupid they are. The minigun overheat isn't even a penalty, it takes about two seconds, and it only takes about as long as it would take you to cool down without overheating anyway, effectively meaning your DPS doesn't change at all. You have infinite ammo and don't even need to reload, which was something important about HMGs, the super-long reload.
Yes, but if they didn't have the damage output they currently have, then what would be the point of building them? Maintaining one or two exos already requires co-ordination and a ton of resources and the exos themselves aren't actually all that durable. A single Onos can comfortably take down two of them by himself if they aren't supported properly.
They're weak against the gorge's bile bomb/ 2 skulks/ fades/ and even lerks who have a greater accuracy. Essentially every alien race in the hands of a competent player can kill their toughest units unless the team on the ground defend them.
He's right, the exo as a lone unit will not get things done.
Every single game I've seen, Exos come <i>long</i> before the Onos. If the aliens don't play EXTREMELY well and counter the first wave of exos, then it's pretty much GG.
Giving Gorge back their webs would be a nice way to help counter Exos, since they can't weld. Not sure why they removed it.
God help you if you don't kill the exos fast enough, usually the marines will just jump right back inside one when they spawn after they slaughtered enough skulks. Which is another matter to bring up - look at how long... and how much notice... the marines get when an alien wants to go Onos. Whereas jumping in an exosuit takes what, one or two seconds of animation?
Giving Gorge back their webs would be a nice way to help counter Exos, since they can't weld. Not sure why they removed it.
God help you if you don't kill the exos fast enough, usually the marines will just jump right back inside one when they spawn after they slaughtered enough skulks.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Again, making the exos unweldable in certain scenarios would make them virtually useless. A 50-75 res unit that is that slow and easily destroyed would be merely a liability.
As it stands, there are two main ways of dealing with supported exos (if they're unsupported, just swarm them with skulks and they won't be able to do anything to stop you). One is to get a couple of Oni supported by gorges on your side and do hit and runs to kill off the MACs and marines. The more effective way is to force a beacon with skulk attacks into one of the marine bases so you can then pick off the unsupported exos.
This is quite a glaring problem then. Due to the number of upgrades required to keep marines competent on the way to higher tech, and the armor upgrades needed just to make exos viable, Onos should almost always appear <b>long</b> before exo suits do.
There are some other factors which affect this as well:
Due to the relatively few tech upgrades for the alien commander to research, it is far more common to drop lifeforms for players, than it would be for the marine commander to drop tech/weapons.
Also, aliens very rarely spend resources on the way to Onos. For example, your first Onos player is unlikely to have gone lerk or something prior to that. Marines on the other hand will almost invariably have bought <b>at least</b> a welder by the time exo suits are available.
On the topic of balance as a whole, its also worth noting that, in the majority of cases, res for res, aliens are more powerful than marines. That is to say that, aliens have the distinct advantage of being undefeatable 1v1. The highest tech unit the marines have cannot beat an Onos even with only a single hive upgrade (ok it CAN, but it shouldn't, the Onos IS more powerful). The difference is that, as the alien's attacks operate in an area, they don't scale as well in numbers. 1 exo versus 1 onos is hands down an onos win. 2 v 2 becomes a little blurred, but its probably still going to be the onos. 3v3 and it starts to completely turn around. 4 exos begins to get to the point where they will decimate anything because they can put so much focus whereever they need to.
This is where the concept of alien's "increased mobility" comes from. Granted, they don't seem very much faster than marines, and they definitely can't get around the map as quickly when you take phase gates into account, but because aliens are relatively stronger by themselves than marines are, lone players, who are far more agile in strategic movements than a group of 4 or 5 players, can still do a large amount of damage. The prime example of this is a gorge with bile bomb and adrenaline.
Not to say that things are perfect the way they are now. There is always room for change.
One thing I would very much like to see is weapon and armor levels tied directly to the number of comm stations held. This would give marines some incentive (and some need) to get a third tech point, and it would give aliens some incentive to attack the marines third tech point.
I haven't played comm yet but I actually assumed that was already the case.
If not, wow.
The mechanic in NS currently is similar to zerg vs terran in starcraft. Aliens have faster movement speeds, they have access to movement paths that Marines can't easily use, and they have one hit wonder units that can put effective damage into marine strongholds unless there is significant concerted defense against them.
Functionally, this gives aliens the advantage of very strong map control to counteract the marines advantage of a more powerful positional army. In NS marines basically control the flow of the game, and the aliens respond in turn by finding back doors to constantly do damage. Marines cannot generally be prevented from a 100% effort push into an area nearby to where they are. Aliens are able to whittle down marines as they travel across the map using their map control advantage, and they are able to exploit any location that marines currently are not FAR more easily than marines can exploit alien absence from a location.
It all comes down to cost efficiency. Once marines are established in a location they are able to be very cost efficient. But moving across the map, and establishing a new position, is much more expensive for marines than it is for aliens generally speaking. If you can cause marines to lose value in their army while they are moving, if you can attack marines where their army is not, and if you can use those attacks to force the marine force to move when it doesn't want to move, then your alien team will win. Marines cannot be cost efficient when they have to be in places where they do not have a strong defense set up. Marines can only be cost efficient when they are forcing aliens to respond to something they are doing, and because aliens have map control by default, it's usually the case that the aliens get to control where the front is unless they do something wrong.
But Aliens are not faster than Marines. That is just straight not true. Phase gates, beacons, uncontrollable spawn locations for Aliens, marine sprint, AND Marines spawn times are much better and they don't have to evolve when they spawn. Trust me when I say Marines are faster, they can react better and can get around the map much faster. They can siege harder with instant reinforcements and they can hold sieges better because obviously turtling with range advantage is easier.
I am a high diamond zerg if that means anything and while I'd like to say playing Alien com and on their team feels like zerg, it doesn't. Exos and 3 3 Marine upgrades come far before Onos because Aliens are busy spending a ton of rez to expand earlier, they can't recycle, and marines generally have more map control due to PGs. Just my two cents. :/
But let's not kid ourselves, aliens are not only weaker lategame, they are also incredibly frustrating to play at that stage. There's no way to boost your dmg (PLEASE BRING BACK FOCUS) to stay competitive and most of the third hive benefits are outright crap. (Not to mention upgrades like carapace, silence, etc don't help much any more at this stage) Every alien victory at that stage of the game is an incredibly dragged out one, versus A3/W3 marines who even without a second CC turtlethe game out for much much longer than they should.
Fortunately it's not too hard to come up with fixes to this problem, I only hope UWE doesn't stay blind on the issue.
Aliens do locational damage and marines can shoot any part of the alien to do the same damage.
Phase gates give marines more mobility than Aliens. In NS1 aliens could teleport between hives. This is absent.
Marines have universal upgrades that they can get on one base. Meaning late game marines require 6 hits from skulks and 4 from fades.
Late game marines are more powerful than the late game aliens. Aliens require 3 bases to be subpar to marine's 2 bases.
Marines have the best static defense and the least amount of area they have to defend allowing them to hold out far longer than should be allowed.
Aliens lack a siege weapon to capitalize on any sort of momentum.
In order to rectify this require marines to get 2 bases in order to get level 2 weapons and armor, and 3 bases to get level 3 weapons, and armor and exos. Give aliens better static defense and some sort of seige weapon. Perhaps based on the spores of the lurk, like the ability to pump nerve gas into a base constantly in order to siege it, or to fill an entire alien room with gas to defend it. Also allow aliens to teleport between hives after at least the second hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
aliens dont do locational damage. they do damage based on how poorly you aim. there are no "headshots" in ns2
<i>Disclaimer: I'm not trying to be boastful with my k:d or anything, just stating it to make a point about there being a lot of new players who are still learning. I consider myself to be a pretty average gamer.</i>
In nearly every situation, a healthy alien team with onos are far advantaged over marines with exosuits. The real marine strength lies in jetpacks, shotguns, and forced innate teamwork. The new marine player is probably going to stick with his herd where as I've seen many new onos run into the marine base and die alone.
They just cant keep up with the armor upgrades.
So with your primary soldier doing little to no damage, it makes the rest of the team with specialized units suffer.