For the love of god SAVE FOR ONOS
Stardog
Join Date: 2004-10-25 Member: 32448Members
Just do it.
If you go Fade and die, don't go Fade again.
If you go Lerk and die, don't go Lerk/Fade.
If you go Gorge and die, only go Gorge again if you have to.
I can't count how many times in a 16-24 player server when only 1 person saves for Onos. This alone loses you the game.
If you go Fade and die, don't go Fade again.
If you go Lerk and die, don't go Lerk/Fade.
If you go Gorge and die, only go Gorge again if you have to.
I can't count how many times in a 16-24 player server when only 1 person saves for Onos. This alone loses you the game.
Comments
In the long term this will be more beneficial than saving for an onos just to win that single game. Everything is not centered around the win or loss of a round.
Wrong.
PS: Opinions based on 18 person or higher servers are instantly null and void.
Lerk harassment is essential for MOST of the game, and entirely useful during the second phase of the game. I get that you are most comfortable with the onos due to it's laughable skill requirements and it's the go-to sledgehammer for breaking the marine team, but any respectable marine team with jetpacks will annihilate the onos your team saved for, and then because everyone is broke, clean up and win.
This exact thing happened to me last night in a game. The aliens had like, zero higher lifeforms for 99% of the game, then oh look 6 onos and 2 gorges are hitting main. We jetpacked over to cargo, killed it, over to pipe, killed it. Game over.
The game doesn't actually start to get balanced until 18-20. 8 player pub teams are laughable at best and the number one reason the game seems balanced pro-alien. Marines scale better with more players.
Regardless, 3-4 onos at the same time WILL win the game, jetpacks don't even matter when you have that much going. The only way to stop them is to stick a dual gun exo in a base, but even then if the onos can actually coordinate it won't.
I don't agree. the onos may be more versatile mainly due to its movement speed but it's definitively no massacre machine - 1 marine may be no match, even two, but it gets really dangerous when it's faced with (properly upgraded) marines in groups of 3 or more (who don't stand tight together to be stomped down, who strafe while shooting and who pursue it, when it retreats). and playing onos is not a no brainer: many players believe them to be massacre machines (that's what they seem to think, and that's what they seem to think of exos too) so they run in packed bases against 8 marines and die after the first marine is fallen.
OP: 10 onos may end a game, but so could 10 exos. for any amount of onos, it gets easier when you are paired with support lifeforms (bile/medic gorge, spore/umbra lerk, marine killer/harass fade, cannon fodder skulk). so all players saving up to go onos is not the key to winning games. in midgame, you can't be aggressive enough with only gorges and skulks, so some players must go lerk or fade. when they die quickly, it's bad, I agree.
but most of the times, lerks and fades (and even gorges) tend to live much longer (best way: retreat from time to time to get your health back up, don't face marines with only some hp left) than the average skulk which gives them a crapload of pres to go onos - sometimes even around the same time as the skulks who saved from the beginning and died over and over again until they can.
especially because its so expensive
and depended on the rest of the team.
Unsure what the troll above me is getting at.
You should see how a GOOD Onos does it, what you mention are baddies who suicide. Good Onos harass marines, killing a few, running out to harass res nodes, run back, kill more marines and constantly jump around the map. It is UNKILLABLE. I've gotten over 50 kills without dying as an Onos and singlehandedly turned the game for my team. Trying doing that as a single Exo with no support. A pack of Onos is even worse, three rush a base and whack the power node in seconds basically ending that base for Marines. Exos can certainly kill a hive but have no form of retreat in case things turn for the worse and are easily cut off with forced beacons and harassed with bile bombs. It IS the no brainer pick for Aliens.
And when 1 onos can change the output of the round marines are usually not that good upgraded/organized/in onos killing.
Actually, this is by far the most basic thing about NS. Failure to grasp this ends in nothing but consistent failure in-game. This is how it was in NS1, and how it is in NS2. I say this because of the statement above that both team's 75Res should be more equal. It's not consistent with either team to have a "Alien DE Sword" or a "Marine Murder Machine."
Furthermore, this is the new-player forum, which tells me the OP was likely playing random servers. Dictating a single strategy is asinine for this, as the random, non-comp player is completely unpredictable. Your wave of 6+ Onos with hallucinations may work one game, but it will likely never work again. As others have stated, don't forget about early and mid-game.