Shift or Fast 2 Hive mandatory?
TheRedRager
Join Date: 2012-11-02 Member: 166227Members
Join Date: 2012-11-02 Member: 166227Members
For every single alien game that I have played, if the comm did not go either a shift hive first, or did not go a very quick second hive, the marines would basically slam the alien team because of the HUGE lack of eggs.
This leads to like a 40 second respawn timer for a dead alien and thats extremely annoying and un-fun.
Thoughts?
This leads to like a 40 second respawn timer for a dead alien and thats extremely annoying and un-fun.
Thoughts?
Comments
the problem is if your team blows you get raped.
When I comm aliens i switch it up all the time.
For instance, in a competitive clan match you see Marines getting mines IMMEDIATELY and then mining up base before moving out. If you did that in a pub game, lol you just wasted a ton of res because aliens aren't organizing a push very well. As for my pub experience, I'm more worried about getting a ton of resources first. The skulks are keeping the Marines busy (and pub marines move much slower out of base), and then if eggs are actually a problem, I'll evolve shift hive and drop a shift in a safe location.
Even with experienced players, the experienced marines will sometimes rush the hive and kill eggs - so shift or second hive are important again.
Definitely not. . .
Ideally you'll want to take 5 resource towers and this means you don't get an early upgrade or an early hive
If you're team is dieing like crazy though it's time to drop a shift
If the map is large or you have people that want to go early lerk then celerity is key
If things work out though you should be able to drop in a 2nd hive around the 5 min mark and be spamming upgrades from that point on till the game ends
If you're doing a skulk rush dropping carapace is great or adrenaline for a gorge rush
Docking is the best map for early camouflage and silence gets a lot of use in Tram due to it's heavy corner concealment for skulks
hope this helped. . .
I hope that we'll see more varied builds once people stop sucking at the game.
As unforgiving as you are in these forums, I tend to agree with you a lot. Once the playerbase and metagame stabilizes, we need to start brainstorming ideas to create new tech paths and make the unused ones more viable starts.
I agree... I agree with you in a number of ways Temphage but butting into every single thread on the entire forums and spamming rage isn't a mature way to voice your opinion. Sure you probably have the right to do it, you paid after all... as we all did.
Do you really however think that this will get you listened to?
Do you really however think that this will get you listened to?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
For sure. It's 3 days after release. These things always take time. UWE even got a post-release patch out quite fast.
This game is a result of player feedback. Given, it's clearly not Temphage's feedback.
They won't, because they can't.
Look at everything the aliens have at their disposal... it's not much. The reason they're so strategically limited is because they follow such a painfully linear tech path, because they're so heavily dependent on structures and researches, and because they don't have upgrades to properly counter much of anything that marines throw at them.
The closest the aliens ever get to a hard counter is the bilebomb.
Marines get weapon upgrades which hard-counters carapace. They get armor upgrades which hard-counters every class (since aliens get no damage-boosting abilities). They get flamethrowers which hard-counter lerks. They get ARCs which hard-counter structures. They get shotguns which hard-counter almost everything, but especially skulks and lerks. They get Observatories which hard-counters both Silence *and* Camouflage at the same time.
Marines have options. You can go for the early A1 upgrade, or drop shotguns. You can chose to expand to a second tech point, or pool your resources because the tech points don't matter at all for most of their progress. You can easily send out all your guys and quickly grab RTs with little limitation. You can fortify positions with turrets and place them offensively thanks to the battery power.
Aliens have effectively no use for a single hive, and they only get to pick a single upgrade out of a total of two, and only ever two for that single hive. Without a second hive, they have no other options. With a second hive, their options expand somewhat, but not much. Second hives offer combat improvements - leap and blink, for example - but those are not game changers. A skulk without leap is dead, a fade without blink is dead. A marine without a shotgun can still be highly effective.
Marines have upgrades, aliens just have chores to accomplish before they can actually start playing the game.
but i would like some softening up of these seperate trees, like crag, shift and shade being allways buildable, but without the corresponding hive only having a basic funktionality. or something like that. because as alien commander you cant help but feel veryvery limited.
Look at everything the aliens have at their disposal... it's not much. The reason they're so strategically limited is because they follow such a painfully linear tech path, because they're so heavily dependent on structures and researches, and because they don't have upgrades to properly counter much of anything that marines throw at them.
The closest the aliens ever get to a hard counter is the bilebomb.
Marines get weapon upgrades which hard-counters carapace. They get armor upgrades which hard-counters every class (since aliens get no damage-boosting abilities). They get flamethrowers which hard-counter lerks. They get ARCs which hard-counter structures. They get shotguns which hard-counter almost everything, but especially skulks and lerks. They get Observatories which hard-counters both Silence *and* Camouflage at the same time.
Marines have options. You can go for the early A1 upgrade, or drop shotguns. You can chose to expand to a second tech point, or pool your resources because the tech points don't matter at all for most of their progress. You can easily send out all your guys and quickly grab RTs with little limitation. You can fortify positions with turrets and place them offensively thanks to the battery power.
Aliens have effectively no use for a single hive, and they only get to pick a single upgrade out of a total of two, and only ever two for that single hive. Without a second hive, they have no other options. With a second hive, their options expand somewhat, but not much. Second hives offer combat improvements - leap and blink, for example - but those are not game changers. A skulk without leap is dead, a fade without blink is dead. A marine without a shotgun can still be highly effective.
Marines have upgrades, aliens just have chores to accomplish before they can actually start playing the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They will, because they can.
They can now. Crag hive and fast cara will make an early game skulk realy hard to kill with no/low marine tech upgrades and force them to upgrade SG or weopns level 1
Or use shade hive 1st, make a shade, early. This will cloak eggs and other structures from marines. An early game comm isn't likley to waste scans on an aliens base early on.
They could also not place a second have but go for agressive havesters.
There is 3 out of many, many diffrent stratagies. The can change every game so to say they cant is very pessimistic.
This is not true, If the alien comm did this, they would lose 100%. What does cloaking the structures do for the aliens? Nothing, if marines are attacking the base, they can just ask for a scan and then hey guess what, the 25 res you spent on shadehive + shade is completely moot because your skulks will be useless and they will egglock you so hard.
Shade hive is quite possibly the most useless because the marines can counter it completely with one scan.
You list many POSSIBLE strategies, however they are not VIABLE. Which is what the point I am making in this thread is. that currently, only fast 2 hive or quick shift is VIABLE.
Once you realise this, you will understand that, instead of looking to what tech is chosen, you should look to what territory is taken. Expanding directly towards the nearest hiveroom, or expanding in both directions to the two nearest resource nodes to your hive, are two completely different approaches at the start of a game. I remember watching one competitive game in which a team (I forget which one) expanded from sub sector on veil directly into double res (nanogrid). This, on a map in which the previous umpteen rounds had involved the aliens instantly dropping the second hive within 10 seconds of the round start. From the perspective of the alien players, this would seem like a trivial difference, but in terms of the timings involved (which are vital when commanding the alien team) it is a completely different strategy.
Many people don't like or respect this "simpler" (I prefer the world different) approach to commanding. It is very different to the marine commanding experience which is more micro management oriented, and therefore the influence of which is far more profound and obvious to the players. However, as an NS1 player who never once touched marine commanding, and who still doesn't, I can honestly say that I can't get enough of alien commanding and its new and different approach to strategy.
One thing I will admit, however, is that the hive types are not equal. Many people see either crag or shift as superior to one another, which I do not subscribe to, however I am quite disappointed by how unviable shade hives are at the moment. In my opinion this what not always the case, and in the past, during the beta, I would frequently go shade hive first if the marines were being overly aggressive at the start from an adjacent spawn point. I hope that improving the viaiblity of the shade and its upgrades is a high priority of the UWE team.
Even if we completely ignore alleged balance issues, aliens are linear, HIGHLY repetitive, and completely lacking in variety. In every game that's ever been made that has crazy alien lifeforms able to quickly evolve, you have all sorts of exciting 'biological based' effects. It then becomes the struggle for technology to dominate cruel mother nature.
Aliens don't have that. You get only 3 upgrades which come in pairs that are exclusive to each other. Due to the design of the classes, it's more obvious which upgrades are better than others. Gorges and Fades are huge energy hogs, so they have to have adrenalin. All the offensive classes have to face bigger and better guns, so they have to have carapace. Many alien abilities have just completely disappeared (Gorge web being the one I'm missing the most).
I'm fine with the concept of the commander being a different sort of commanding, but the entire page of posts can be summed up with 'No, Shade is not viable and probably never will be because of how easy it is to counter'. Whether you go Crag or Shift first is a matter of debate, but a moot one because it's all agreed that you need to drop Hive 2 as the first thing you do after which you'll just get whatever upgrade you didn't get on Hive 1 (but not Shade).
Aliens should be dynamic, fun, and full of interesting things to play with. Marines should be regimented, industrious, and full of interesting things to play with.
It's hard to say that aliens are interesting at all. Skulks ambush and that's about all they can do. Fades hit-and-run and that's about all they can do (I did once Vortex a guy, but it consumed half my energy and he was back in about five seconds, so I'm not sure it was worth it).
Gorges and Lerks are the only ones that really break out of their one-trick-pony mold, and in the case of the Gorge it's because the non-Bile Bombing aspect of the gorge is really just holding M2 at things. And the Lerk is hardly different from NS1 so I don't consider it new enough to be interesting.
The only alien I enjoy playing, despite its faults, is the Fade, because shifting into and around the battle and confusing people is a lot of fun and is the only alien that really feels ALIEN and unique. I get to pretend I'm Nightcrawler, horray!
For a species that is supposed to be about evolving, they sure do a lot of stagnating when it comes to tech upgrades.
Crag hive offers regen and carapace which are very useful but really only necessary once marines start getting weapon upgrades. The crag building is nice obviously since it heals but it's not as fast as just healing at the hive. Also it's expensive to drop enough of them to be effective, so they're only viable once you have enough res later on.
Shade hives offer silence and camouflage, both are countered by observatories and camouflage easily by an experienced marine. Silence will give you probably at least 1 bite but still won't help much once they get armor 1. And as far as the building goes you can cloak an area, but the shades die quickly and are again hard countered by a scan.
So that's my reasoning