schkorpioI can mspaintJoin Date: 2003-05-23Member: 16635Members
bilebomb > macs, exos, buildings
but this still proves that when marines are boxed in, their res flow should shutdown (limit the amount of resources in the starting extractor if its the only one you have). And possible a 3-5 minute countdown before power runs out if the powernode is the only one you have.
UWE fully support armour/robo blocking, they think it's somehow related to building bunkers on like 2 maps in SC2 that have in built bunkers on maps.
Balanced alien teams break turtles, as well as chipping away slowly if they any good, nothing scarier than a good onos with good umbra support, might as well put the SG up your own arse and hold the trigger until it goes click. I like using armouries in pubs because it keeps marines on entrances/choke points and breaks any sprint attempt in or out.
Funny that CC blocking in NS1 in Aus was a bannable offence on nearly every server, scrim or war.
I'm confused as to why your gorges couldn't do anything, they should have been able to bile bomb the MACs as well as the factories, bile bombs are quite deadly to MACs and while I'm sure the marines would have built more (they had the factories after all), they should have run out of funds faster than they could be replaced (in sufficient numbers to repair the barricades anyway).
I really can't see this actually being an issue if you use all the tools available to your side, and use them properly. Bile bombing the factories won't work if they have a million macs repairing them, sure. But why can't you aim slightly higher and hit the MACs? Or bumrush some skulks through the vents to hit them or something, I don't know. It seems like rather bad play from the alien side and some very weird play from the marine side.
How come you had 3 hives but seemed to have a lack of res?
###### the 3 gorges and 150 whips, 7 onos and one gorge etc, did you try one gorge healing a slowly advancing/echoed bombard whip and crag Wall Of Lame? If they got 240 res of Factories you get 240 res of whips, bombard, crags and shifts ... in fact you had 3 hives so an ink shade too ...
Also, we haven't been able to test what would have happened if those factories hadn't been there, with the marine commander having more res to drop on exos, we don't know if your team *would have been able to capture the rooms even without the factories being there* ... it seems to me, that the actual HitPoint damage done to your forces was from JP the marines ... ?
-WildCat-Cape Town, South AfricaJoin Date: 2008-07-19Member: 64664Members, Reinforced - Shadow
I was actually playing in this game on the Alien side.
The Marine team's shenanigans with the Robotics Factory blockades were interesting but not the most interesting thing to me. What I found more interesting was the effectiveness of Exosuits as a defensive unit. With their positional advantage, our Onoses could barely dent the blockades before they were mowed down. Gorges attempting to bile bomb were perforated in a matter of milliseconds.
In this particular case, the Marine team was forced to defend due to our superior play in the first 15 minutes. However, under more favourable conditions, I think a Marine team could still utilise a defensive Exosuit to great effect.
So when the rest of the team begins the main assault on the Alien base, you could just have one guy stay in base with a dual Exo. Some players might reject being given such a task because they'd regard it as a boring job, but I'd be happy to do it. I think it would be an excellent insurance policy against ninja counter-rushes on the power node or the Observatory in Marine's main base.
Provided that the guy in the Exosuit positions himself in such a way that he can fire at incoming Aliens for a while before they reach him, he should be able to defeat a counter-rush, even against higher lifeforms. And if you want added security, a Robotics Factory or two at the entrance(s) clearly works a treat when combined with an Exosuit behind it (as evidenced by this particular match).
Having said that, I think that I'd probably prefer a more "official" / "intuitive" way for Marines to block choke points. If doors that could be welded shut were introduced, their health values could be balanced separately from structures, which would allow them to be weaker. Also, Exosuits wouldn't be able to fire over them and perforate anything that approaches.
Then, once weldable doors are in the game, they could reduce the extents of each of the power zones and effectively create gaps between the zones inside choke points (especially around doors). These "no build" zones would discourage Marines from continuing to use structures as blockades. Perhaps structures made in areas that are outside of any power node's effective area could be considerably weaker. Alternately, they could make it so that you can't place structures outside power zones.
How come you had 3 hives but seemed to have a lack of res?
###### the 3 gorges and 150 whips, 7 onos and one gorge etc, did you try one gorge healing a slowly advancing/echoed bombard whip and crag Wall Of Lame? If they got 240 res of Factories you get 240 res of whips, bombard, crags and shifts ... in fact you had 3 hives so an ink shade too ...
Also, we haven't been able to test what would have happened if those factories hadn't been there, with the marine commander having more res to drop on exos, we don't know if your team *would have been able to capture the rooms even without the factories being there* ... it seems to me, that the actual HitPoint damage done to your forces was from JP the marines ... ?
We had absolutely no lack of res, I simply had a lack of things to spend it on. Onos were a double edged sword at that stage of the game. They were almost entirely required to prevent a counter attack from the marines (with almost everything else being far too weak to actually stop the marines), however all they could do was sit outside of the marine bases and do nothing.
As I said, they had observatories covering every angle on their bases, with ARCs deployed everywhere. This meant the commander didn't even need to ping to siege approaching structures, it was all done automatically, nothing could come within an ARCs range of their bases.
In my opinion, due to the power node mechanic, blockades are a much greater force multiplier than Exos are. They also carry essentially no risk, or disadvantage for a team full of jetpackers.
It still doesn't make sense that your gorges had to get within LOS of marines. the splash area of bilebomb should mean they don't have too. just sit around a corner or obstacle and keep attacking...1 suicidal gorge now and then if you needed the MAC's taking out. Marines would have to come out to deal with them and you'd have a Lerk with spores preventing that, and an onos or 2 to bulletsponge the more aggressive marines. I can't see any place on that map (or any map for that matter) where gorges have to have direct line of sight to break through barriers into a tech point.
I have to agree though, Dual Exosuits make some killer defenses. I've yet to come across a match where they've been put to good use defensively, and the one occasion I tried too, my team were outraged and insisted I went on the offensive. I expect, in time, we'll see more exo defenses and less ninja gorges succeding as a result.
The Marine team's shenanigans with the Robotics Factory blockades were interesting but not the most interesting thing to me. What I found more interesting was the effectiveness of Exosuits as a defensive unit. With their positional advantage, our Onoses could barely dent the blockades before they were mowed down. Gorges attempting to bile bomb were perforated in a matter of milliseconds.
Where were your lerks with umbra for the Onos and spores inside to blind them? Where were a couple skulks to provide diversion by leaping around and drawing fire? Were gorges not healing the Onos if bile wasn't possible? If they were blocked in, then did you have a nest of crags outside the door? Why not? Heck, you could send skulks at it since they could be at ground level and not in the line of fire. If there are marines on the other side welding, a quick xenocide will clear that right up.
However, most importantly, what was the alien team doing for 10 minutes while the marines built this all up?
I keep seeing it time and time again that aliens are too timid when it comes to finishing the game. They drag their feet and then wonder when they run into a turtle. They are so used to not needing much teamwork that when the time comes to use teamwork they seem to have problems figuring it out.
The Marine team's shenanigans with the Robotics Factory blockades were interesting but not the most interesting thing to me. What I found more interesting was the effectiveness of Exosuits as a defensive unit. With their positional advantage, our Onoses could barely dent the blockades before they were mowed down. Gorges attempting to bile bomb were perforated in a matter of milliseconds.
Where were your lerks with umbra for the Onos and spores inside to blind them? Where were a couple skulks to provide diversion by leaping around and drawing fire? Were gorges not healing the Onos if bile wasn't possible? If they were blocked in, then did you have a nest of crags outside the door? Why not? Heck, you could send skulks at it since they could be at ground level and not in the line of fire. If there are marines on the other side welding, a quick xenocide will clear that right up.
However, most importantly, what was the alien team doing for 10 minutes while the marines built this all up?
I keep seeing it time and time again that aliens are too timid when it comes to finishing the game. They drag their feet and then wonder when they run into a turtle. They are so used to not needing much teamwork that when the time comes to use teamwork they seem to have problems figuring it out.
Even if it took us 2 hours before we even thought to look at marine base, should it really be possible to get your bases into such a position that they simply cannot be taken? UWE have accomplished this perfectly with the alien team. It doesn't matter how much resources you have, or how many structures you've built, the marine team will destroy it and make it inside if your players themselves do not have the ability to repel the enemies. Why is it not this way for marines?
As for the composition of the attacks, like I said, it was a 2 hour game. We tried everything. We didn't go AFK for 2 hours, we tried everything. It simply wasn't possible to get through the layers upon layers of blockades.
Turtles are an issue, w3 on 1 tech point I think has a lot to do with it.
Link the weapons and armour upgrades to tech points held and a lot of these issues go away.
There are maps like mineshaft where marine spawn has only 2 entrances (both door ways that allow marines to be positioned a long way out of range), this map makes it stupidly easy to turtle...add exo's and the whole thing gets boring very quick.
I have been in similar situations with experienced players and this has been an issue.
And before you ask, yes there where gorges bile bombing, lerks throwing up umbra and spores, onii, fades and skulks.
Problem is the bottle neck means that even if you take out the robo or armoury, the concentrated fire makes even onos wince.
This can happen even without exo's (just regular marines, GL's, FT, SG's and LMG) as the amount of damage that a single marine can do is amazing considering the 0 res investment.
Linking tech points to upgrade levels on marine side would address this...even if its just that for anything other than w1 you need 2 tech points.
That way marines are only expected to in the game and not dominating by holding 3 tech points to hit w3.
You should be careful with that attitude. "I lost a game because the game is broken." is:
- in most cases wrong
- in most cases the fault of the players lack of skill / knowledge about the game
As others have already stated:
- a gorge does not need line of sight to kill buildings
- gorges shred MACs
- buildings are blocking Exos too
- a whole team of onos is not the solution to any situation
- many alien teams lack teamplay a lot
So instead of coming to the forums and claiming, that it is the games fault that you lost a match. Start searching for the errors at yourself. Try to adapt to the enemy tactic and find out what you did wrong. If you can't find anything you did wrong, than you might want to ASK in the forums for a solution. But coming here and passing your own errors to the game won't get you much consolation.
So instead of coming to the forums and claiming, that it is the games fault that you lost a match. Start searching for the errors at yourself. Try to adapt to the enemy tactic and find out what you did wrong. If you can't find anything you did wrong, than you might want to ASK in the forums for a solution. But coming here and passing your own errors to the game won't get you much consolation.
Fair enough, but does that approach not then assume that the game has no errors?
No. Just because most claims of "OP!", "Broken!" are simply ways of people to avoid the admitting of own mistakes, does not implicate that there are no legitimate cases. But you can easily identify such legitimate claims by the amount of threads and the amount of people that not disagree with this claims.
No. Just because most claims of "OP!", "Broken!" are simply ways of people to avoid the admitting of own mistakes, does not implicate that there are no legitimate cases. But you can easily identify such legitimate claims by the amount of threads and the amount of people that not disagree with this claims.
So then your stance on marine turtling capability must then be that it is not an issue, judging from your response.
Correct?
So then your stance on marine turtling capability must then be that it is not an issue, judging from your response.
Correct?
The problem lies in the players, both sides. If the marines have clearly lost, voting concede is the best option, since a vast majority of the players don't want to drag the game on. If the aliens have clearly won, it only takes a little teamwork to overcome the turtle. However, it proves to be a problem when the alien team is incapable of teamwork, and the marine team is incapable of admitting defeat. Though I can believe the game in question was a pretty epic one for the marines after they won.
About structure blocking: there's not much I can add, it's all been said. I'm pretty sure that I could destroy one side of the blockage with a gorge on my own. The repair exit to logistics comes to mind: you can spam bile bomb from half-way to logistics on the elevated part of the room, with a few crags and a shift behind you well out of ARCs reach and 1-2 fades/oni to protect you. There's nothing the marines can do to repair the structures if even one gorge can spam as much bile as he can from a safe location. The DPS is amazingly high and constant. The only way would be for them to rush over their barricade to kill the gorge, and that's when you've already broken the turtle: forcing marines to lose equipment which they can't replace, whereas you can always replace your gorges even though it would get killed.
I'm not going to say that I particularly LIKE the ease with which marines can turtle, but I cannot agree that just because you got outplayed in this game, the game is broken.
It sounds very frustrating indeed, but honestly, from where most of us are sitting (it seems by the responses so far in this thread), you just got outplayed this time. And maybe a little bit trolled.
I'm not going to presume to suggest ways you should have tried to win but didn't, because I wasn't there. I will say that this is 1 game out of how many millions played (and surely we'd have heard about such games here from the losing team getting so annoyed!), and isn't - on its own - indicative of a systematic problem with the game.
I will say that this is 1 game out of how many millions played (and surely we'd have heard about such games here from the losing team getting so annoyed!), and isn't - on its own - indicative of a systematic problem with the game.
Is marine turtling not a widespread and well known and documented issue in the late game?
I was under the impression that it was.
So then your stance on marine turtling capability must then be that it is not an issue, judging from your response.
Correct?
Yes. Compared to the turtling in the beta or shortly after release, it is a non-issue right now. Shortly after release it happened very often. Because:
- aliens had even worse teamplay,
- they didn't know how to overcome a marine turtle
- and marines enjoyed the experience to defend their base until the last man falls
Right now:
- either marines know when they have lost and than they recycle / concede
- or aliens know how to create a good mix of life forms and make a final push together.
The very very very few cases in which one of the above is not happening doesn't justify a big game mechanic change that would probably introduce much worse problems.
Maybe my view is lopsided, but thats because I talk to my alien team members to organize the final push, when nobody is doing it. So I haven't seen a successful turtle in ages.
-WildCat-Cape Town, South AfricaJoin Date: 2008-07-19Member: 64664Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Strofix is probably going to be sadfaced at me for saying this but, in all honesty, I do think we were outplayed. We launched some massive assaults on their bases, which would have worked perfectly against any other pub team. However, I have to give credit to this particular bunch of guys for being very well organised. Most teams of pub Marines would not have been able to pull of such weird tactics for that long.
After a few of those assaults failed, we stopped taking things entirely seriously and I even egged on Strofix's server crashing attempt. Instead of spamming hundreds of random whips, we could have created nests of Crags and Shifts just out of reach of their ARCs and made a more concerted effort at bile-bombing their blockades with more than one Gorge at a time. We also could have used Umbra, which I don't remember being utilised at any point during the game.
That said, I think some of you naysayers would have been surprised at how effective an Exosuit behind a Robotics Factory with several MACs can be. I certainly was surprised. I've never seen a turtle on that scale before.
Marines always tend to turtle in the last few minutes of a lost game. From my experience, it only needs a tiny bit of alien teamwork to end turtles, thanks to the powernode win button.
Warehouse is nice to turtle because Exos can fly up to the beams on the ceiling. However the powernode is so exposed, a gorge can bile it from the corner to ore. Had a game where 4 marines were welding that thing, 2 gorges biled it down. After lights go out, the power cant be resored for some time and your team has a great opportunity to end the game (bilebomb the armory, proto, ip - they go down so fast).
But yeah, another problem may have been the map itself, because certain bases are simply retarded when it comes to assaulting them when marines are turtling. For example, imagine, if you will, trying to attack datacore from glass hallway, when the marines have at least 3 robo factories blocking it and a single exo on the overhang.
I'll say it now, you will never push it. Never. Won't happen. You simply will not make it.
Sure, you could try the ramp side, or go to another base, but in this case, on tram, it is my opinion that they really did just have 3 of those unassailable entrances, which we simply couldn't get past.
Also, when I say "it could never be done" I suppose I don't reeaally mean that. Anything is possible, anything can be done. Its just a case of whether or not its feasible to expect a random team, an average team, to be able to do so.
Marines always tend to turtle in the last few minutes of a lost game. From my experience, it only needs a tiny bit of alien teamwork to end turtles, thanks to the powernode win button.
Warehouse is nice to turtle because Exos can fly up to the beams on the ceiling. However the powernode is so exposed, a gorge can bile it from the corner to ore. Had a game where 4 marines were welding that thing, 2 gorges biled it down. After lights go out, the power cant be resored for some time and your team has a great opportunity to end the game (bilebomb the armory, proto, ip - they go down so fast).
That's if you can get into ore. This is another issue, primarily with tram. I don't think its fair, or good design, to have tech rooms separated by a single room. I mean, these marines had essentially no presence on the map at all, outside of their bases. However, their tiny, limited reach just managed to overlap the whole of ore processing, which means we couldn't sequeeze in-between there. No doubt, it would have been an invaluable staging area.
The repair exit to logistics comes to mind: you can spam bile bomb from half-way to logistics on the elevated part of the room
Actually, I found that approach to be extremely lacking in cover. I would have to double-check this... but I think your bile bombs would hit the ceiling or one of the support beams if you tried to do it from the elevated area. I tried bile-bombing from that side two or three times during that game and, in most cases, I was killed by the Exosuit quicker than the data packets could travel from the server to my client to tell me that I was being shot at.
I disagree. Aliens have far more mobility, and longer distances between tech points is just going to make it more difficult for marines to secure a 2nd base without much impact on the aliens. Veil is an example of this, with Marines always starting at the top of the map, taking roughly 2 mins (guesstimate) to get to a location for a 2nd base, easily long enough to intercept them, or push on their base whilst they're all out in the field.
Ore processing is going to be tough to break with marine bases on either side, especially with Onos' & Gorges as they'd have to come through from the Hallway (forget the name, north tunnel?) and up the stairs. I'd probably have focused on Repair from Logistics & Hub, as the ramp up to warehouse provides little cover for aliens. There's a crate in the corridor between Logistics and Repair that a gorge can shoot over, I've used it to hold back exo's coming from logistics towards repair, and i imagine it works the other way too.
You know what, OP? Take a picture of the map which you played and draw some squares where they had placed these factories which you could not destroy in any way. It is IMPOSSIBLE that you couldn't destroy factories and then take out marines one by one.
I bet you just fail to play as aliens.
edit: you know what, take ANY map and make ANY situation where marines are turtling/baricading themselves in and I'll give you some "tips" how easily those "baricades" can be broken.
Sure, Marine turtling can be combatted. It's possible. It still doesn't change the fact that it's annoying and poor gameplay.
Aliens needs anti-turtling that is both more devastating and situational than the Bile Bomb. I've suggested similar stuff before, and here's a new idea along those lines... What about an expensive unit that moves like the Drifter and functions as a Bile Bomb collector? The Khamm primes/deploys the unit, making it slowly open up like a flower and sit idle and vulnerable on the ground. Gorges then spam it with Bile Bombs until it's filled up, something which should take a very long time (several Gorges working together quickens the process). The filled Bile Bomb collector is weighed down and moves slowly towards a Marine base were it emits a massive AoE blast, perhaps resembling the Marines scan effect only gooier.
What would this achieve? A counter to Marine turtling without giving the Aliens a nobrainer über weapon that works in every situation. It also requires teamplay and doesn't exclude the Gorges. No more turtling Marines as they'll have to either try to win, or lose. Prolonging is simply no longer an option.
this only seems to happen when the marine team has too many noobs.
noobs have a tendancy to play passively and are oblivious to a 'soft-loss scenario' (the scenario where you have no chance to make a come back). this results in the marine team gradually receding further and further back until you're unable to leave your spawn room.
unique to NS2, this unrecoverable soft-loss position results in a pathetic building blockade spam to drag out the inevitable loss. any reasonable marine team would never be pushed back that far, and decent marine players usually press F4 before it gets to that point because they know it's GG.
the red lines highlight killboxes. anything in this area other than an onos is dead within 3-5 seconds. Anything in this area that is an Onos has at maximum 10 seconds.
I still stand by my words about the exit from repair to logistics. Should be easy to throw a bile bomb, go behind cover, throw another, go behind cover, rinse and repeat with 3-4 gorges until it breaks, even the exo cant stand there for too long if the biles hit him too.
It's certainly not easy, but the aliens have a far better shot at breaking that turtle than marines have at breaking out of it. The biggest fault here is letting the marines entrench themselves that well in the first place.
I see only one robotics factory between Hub and Ore processing, and no EXOs in Ore processing. Gorges and Onos would be able to kill that before anything could get there. Send your whole team there. That factory is gone in under 5 seconds. Have lerks ready with spores for any incoming jetpackers. That gets you into Ore processing. From there you can hit either tech point. (Although hitting warehouse is the better option)
Once you take Ore Processing, using the vents in Ore processing, send in skulks and/or lerks to harass, while gorge and Onos peck away at the blockades. I say warehouse is the better option since you can get gorges into the vent to Warehouse, which makes spamming easy. (since the EXO up top won't have proper LOS) The vents that exit under the platform are hard to defend without actually getting down there, and the EXO won't go down there since they lose LOS from the top.
So what was stopping an attack on the one robotics factory in Ore Processing on the exit to hub?
Comments
but this still proves that when marines are boxed in, their res flow should shutdown (limit the amount of resources in the starting extractor if its the only one you have). And possible a 3-5 minute countdown before power runs out if the powernode is the only one you have.
Balanced alien teams break turtles, as well as chipping away slowly if they any good, nothing scarier than a good onos with good umbra support, might as well put the SG up your own arse and hold the trigger until it goes click. I like using armouries in pubs because it keeps marines on entrances/choke points and breaks any sprint attempt in or out.
Funny that CC blocking in NS1 in Aus was a bannable offence on nearly every server, scrim or war.
I really can't see this actually being an issue if you use all the tools available to your side, and use them properly. Bile bombing the factories won't work if they have a million macs repairing them, sure. But why can't you aim slightly higher and hit the MACs? Or bumrush some skulks through the vents to hit them or something, I don't know. It seems like rather bad play from the alien side and some very weird play from the marine side.
###### the 3 gorges and 150 whips, 7 onos and one gorge etc, did you try one gorge healing a slowly advancing/echoed bombard whip and crag Wall Of Lame? If they got 240 res of Factories you get 240 res of whips, bombard, crags and shifts ... in fact you had 3 hives so an ink shade too ...
Also, we haven't been able to test what would have happened if those factories hadn't been there, with the marine commander having more res to drop on exos, we don't know if your team *would have been able to capture the rooms even without the factories being there* ... it seems to me, that the actual HitPoint damage done to your forces was from JP the marines ... ?
The Marine team's shenanigans with the Robotics Factory blockades were interesting but not the most interesting thing to me. What I found more interesting was the effectiveness of Exosuits as a defensive unit. With their positional advantage, our Onoses could barely dent the blockades before they were mowed down. Gorges attempting to bile bomb were perforated in a matter of milliseconds.
In this particular case, the Marine team was forced to defend due to our superior play in the first 15 minutes. However, under more favourable conditions, I think a Marine team could still utilise a defensive Exosuit to great effect.
So when the rest of the team begins the main assault on the Alien base, you could just have one guy stay in base with a dual Exo. Some players might reject being given such a task because they'd regard it as a boring job, but I'd be happy to do it. I think it would be an excellent insurance policy against ninja counter-rushes on the power node or the Observatory in Marine's main base.
Provided that the guy in the Exosuit positions himself in such a way that he can fire at incoming Aliens for a while before they reach him, he should be able to defeat a counter-rush, even against higher lifeforms. And if you want added security, a Robotics Factory or two at the entrance(s) clearly works a treat when combined with an Exosuit behind it (as evidenced by this particular match).
Having said that, I think that I'd probably prefer a more "official" / "intuitive" way for Marines to block choke points. If doors that could be welded shut were introduced, their health values could be balanced separately from structures, which would allow them to be weaker. Also, Exosuits wouldn't be able to fire over them and perforate anything that approaches.
Then, once weldable doors are in the game, they could reduce the extents of each of the power zones and effectively create gaps between the zones inside choke points (especially around doors). These "no build" zones would discourage Marines from continuing to use structures as blockades. Perhaps structures made in areas that are outside of any power node's effective area could be considerably weaker. Alternately, they could make it so that you can't place structures outside power zones.
We had absolutely no lack of res, I simply had a lack of things to spend it on. Onos were a double edged sword at that stage of the game. They were almost entirely required to prevent a counter attack from the marines (with almost everything else being far too weak to actually stop the marines), however all they could do was sit outside of the marine bases and do nothing.
As I said, they had observatories covering every angle on their bases, with ARCs deployed everywhere. This meant the commander didn't even need to ping to siege approaching structures, it was all done automatically, nothing could come within an ARCs range of their bases.
In my opinion, due to the power node mechanic, blockades are a much greater force multiplier than Exos are. They also carry essentially no risk, or disadvantage for a team full of jetpackers.
I have to agree though, Dual Exosuits make some killer defenses. I've yet to come across a match where they've been put to good use defensively, and the one occasion I tried too, my team were outraged and insisted I went on the offensive. I expect, in time, we'll see more exo defenses and less ninja gorges succeding as a result.
However, most importantly, what was the alien team doing for 10 minutes while the marines built this all up?
I keep seeing it time and time again that aliens are too timid when it comes to finishing the game. They drag their feet and then wonder when they run into a turtle. They are so used to not needing much teamwork that when the time comes to use teamwork they seem to have problems figuring it out.
Even if it took us 2 hours before we even thought to look at marine base, should it really be possible to get your bases into such a position that they simply cannot be taken? UWE have accomplished this perfectly with the alien team. It doesn't matter how much resources you have, or how many structures you've built, the marine team will destroy it and make it inside if your players themselves do not have the ability to repel the enemies. Why is it not this way for marines?
As for the composition of the attacks, like I said, it was a 2 hour game. We tried everything. We didn't go AFK for 2 hours, we tried everything. It simply wasn't possible to get through the layers upon layers of blockades.
Link the weapons and armour upgrades to tech points held and a lot of these issues go away.
There are maps like mineshaft where marine spawn has only 2 entrances (both door ways that allow marines to be positioned a long way out of range), this map makes it stupidly easy to turtle...add exo's and the whole thing gets boring very quick.
I have been in similar situations with experienced players and this has been an issue.
And before you ask, yes there where gorges bile bombing, lerks throwing up umbra and spores, onii, fades and skulks.
Problem is the bottle neck means that even if you take out the robo or armoury, the concentrated fire makes even onos wince.
This can happen even without exo's (just regular marines, GL's, FT, SG's and LMG) as the amount of damage that a single marine can do is amazing considering the 0 res investment.
Linking tech points to upgrade levels on marine side would address this...even if its just that for anything other than w1 you need 2 tech points.
That way marines are only expected to in the game and not dominating by holding 3 tech points to hit w3.
- in most cases wrong
- in most cases the fault of the players lack of skill / knowledge about the game
As others have already stated:
- a gorge does not need line of sight to kill buildings
- gorges shred MACs
- buildings are blocking Exos too
- a whole team of onos is not the solution to any situation
- many alien teams lack teamplay a lot
So instead of coming to the forums and claiming, that it is the games fault that you lost a match. Start searching for the errors at yourself. Try to adapt to the enemy tactic and find out what you did wrong. If you can't find anything you did wrong, than you might want to ASK in the forums for a solution. But coming here and passing your own errors to the game won't get you much consolation.
Fair enough, but does that approach not then assume that the game has no errors?
So then your stance on marine turtling capability must then be that it is not an issue, judging from your response.
Correct?
The problem lies in the players, both sides. If the marines have clearly lost, voting concede is the best option, since a vast majority of the players don't want to drag the game on. If the aliens have clearly won, it only takes a little teamwork to overcome the turtle. However, it proves to be a problem when the alien team is incapable of teamwork, and the marine team is incapable of admitting defeat. Though I can believe the game in question was a pretty epic one for the marines after they won.
About structure blocking: there's not much I can add, it's all been said. I'm pretty sure that I could destroy one side of the blockage with a gorge on my own. The repair exit to logistics comes to mind: you can spam bile bomb from half-way to logistics on the elevated part of the room, with a few crags and a shift behind you well out of ARCs reach and 1-2 fades/oni to protect you. There's nothing the marines can do to repair the structures if even one gorge can spam as much bile as he can from a safe location. The DPS is amazingly high and constant. The only way would be for them to rush over their barricade to kill the gorge, and that's when you've already broken the turtle: forcing marines to lose equipment which they can't replace, whereas you can always replace your gorges even though it would get killed.
It sounds very frustrating indeed, but honestly, from where most of us are sitting (it seems by the responses so far in this thread), you just got outplayed this time. And maybe a little bit trolled.
I'm not going to presume to suggest ways you should have tried to win but didn't, because I wasn't there. I will say that this is 1 game out of how many millions played (and surely we'd have heard about such games here from the losing team getting so annoyed!), and isn't - on its own - indicative of a systematic problem with the game.
Roo
Is marine turtling not a widespread and well known and documented issue in the late game?
I was under the impression that it was.
Yes. Compared to the turtling in the beta or shortly after release, it is a non-issue right now. Shortly after release it happened very often. Because:
- aliens had even worse teamplay,
- they didn't know how to overcome a marine turtle
- and marines enjoyed the experience to defend their base until the last man falls
Right now:
- either marines know when they have lost and than they recycle / concede
- or aliens know how to create a good mix of life forms and make a final push together.
The very very very few cases in which one of the above is not happening doesn't justify a big game mechanic change that would probably introduce much worse problems.
Maybe my view is lopsided, but thats because I talk to my alien team members to organize the final push, when nobody is doing it. So I haven't seen a successful turtle in ages.
After a few of those assaults failed, we stopped taking things entirely seriously and I even egged on Strofix's server crashing attempt. Instead of spamming hundreds of random whips, we could have created nests of Crags and Shifts just out of reach of their ARCs and made a more concerted effort at bile-bombing their blockades with more than one Gorge at a time. We also could have used Umbra, which I don't remember being utilised at any point during the game.
That said, I think some of you naysayers would have been surprised at how effective an Exosuit behind a Robotics Factory with several MACs can be. I certainly was surprised. I've never seen a turtle on that scale before.
Warehouse is nice to turtle because Exos can fly up to the beams on the ceiling. However the powernode is so exposed, a gorge can bile it from the corner to ore. Had a game where 4 marines were welding that thing, 2 gorges biled it down. After lights go out, the power cant be resored for some time and your team has a great opportunity to end the game (bilebomb the armory, proto, ip - they go down so fast).
But yeah, another problem may have been the map itself, because certain bases are simply retarded when it comes to assaulting them when marines are turtling. For example, imagine, if you will, trying to attack datacore from glass hallway, when the marines have at least 3 robo factories blocking it and a single exo on the overhang.
I'll say it now, you will never push it. Never. Won't happen. You simply will not make it.
Sure, you could try the ramp side, or go to another base, but in this case, on tram, it is my opinion that they really did just have 3 of those unassailable entrances, which we simply couldn't get past.
Also, when I say "it could never be done" I suppose I don't reeaally mean that. Anything is possible, anything can be done. Its just a case of whether or not its feasible to expect a random team, an average team, to be able to do so.
That's if you can get into ore. This is another issue, primarily with tram. I don't think its fair, or good design, to have tech rooms separated by a single room. I mean, these marines had essentially no presence on the map at all, outside of their bases. However, their tiny, limited reach just managed to overlap the whole of ore processing, which means we couldn't sequeeze in-between there. No doubt, it would have been an invaluable staging area.
Ore processing is going to be tough to break with marine bases on either side, especially with Onos' & Gorges as they'd have to come through from the Hallway (forget the name, north tunnel?) and up the stairs. I'd probably have focused on Repair from Logistics & Hub, as the ramp up to warehouse provides little cover for aliens. There's a crate in the corridor between Logistics and Repair that a gorge can shoot over, I've used it to hold back exo's coming from logistics towards repair, and i imagine it works the other way too.
I bet you just fail to play as aliens.
edit: you know what, take ANY map and make ANY situation where marines are turtling/baricading themselves in and I'll give you some "tips" how easily those "baricades" can be broken.
Aliens needs anti-turtling that is both more devastating and situational than the Bile Bomb. I've suggested similar stuff before, and here's a new idea along those lines... What about an expensive unit that moves like the Drifter and functions as a Bile Bomb collector? The Khamm primes/deploys the unit, making it slowly open up like a flower and sit idle and vulnerable on the ground. Gorges then spam it with Bile Bombs until it's filled up, something which should take a very long time (several Gorges working together quickens the process). The filled Bile Bomb collector is weighed down and moves slowly towards a Marine base were it emits a massive AoE blast, perhaps resembling the Marines scan effect only gooier.
What would this achieve? A counter to Marine turtling without giving the Aliens a nobrainer über weapon that works in every situation. It also requires teamplay and doesn't exclude the Gorges. No more turtling Marines as they'll have to either try to win, or lose. Prolonging is simply no longer an option.
noobs have a tendancy to play passively and are oblivious to a 'soft-loss scenario' (the scenario where you have no chance to make a come back). this results in the marine team gradually receding further and further back until you're unable to leave your spawn room.
unique to NS2, this unrecoverable soft-loss position results in a pathetic building blockade spam to drag out the inevitable loss. any reasonable marine team would never be pushed back that far, and decent marine players usually press F4 before it gets to that point because they know it's GG.
the red lines highlight killboxes. anything in this area other than an onos is dead within 3-5 seconds. Anything in this area that is an Onos has at maximum 10 seconds.
It's certainly not easy, but the aliens have a far better shot at breaking that turtle than marines have at breaking out of it. The biggest fault here is letting the marines entrench themselves that well in the first place.
Once you take Ore Processing, using the vents in Ore processing, send in skulks and/or lerks to harass, while gorge and Onos peck away at the blockades. I say warehouse is the better option since you can get gorges into the vent to Warehouse, which makes spamming easy. (since the EXO up top won't have proper LOS) The vents that exit under the platform are hard to defend without actually getting down there, and the EXO won't go down there since they lose LOS from the top.
So what was stopping an attack on the one robotics factory in Ore Processing on the exit to hub?