I am fine with shift/celerity first. It is tried and tested and proven to be effective.
I also see a good amount of shade/camo first. This would be fine if the commander would research silence also. But that usually doesn't happen until much later. So you are stuck with just camo, which is a situational tool. In order to get any benefit from it at all, you must slow to a crawl. Whenever you are running or chomping on something, you still make tons of noise, alerting marines to your presence and making it harder to hear marines' footsteps. Really it is only good for situations where you can't reach your target without it.
Compare that to silence. You get the full benefit all the time, no matter what you are doing, and it doesn't affect your speed. NS2 maps are absolutely brimming with places for skulks to hide, such that complete invisibility would just be redundant in most ambush situations. And when you are trying to take out an extractor, you can get to it fast without being heard and while you are chomping, the sound is muffled so you can hear marines before they get too close. What isn't to like about silence?
Shift first is useful enough for the shift structure and fast building a second hive. At which point you would probably want to decide which of the four upgrades you really want. Armor is certainly a safe bet.
If you don't have any decent gorges, I'd say shift first is the least of your problems.
OH HERE WE GO AGAIN !!!!!! Please do us a favor, do a forum search and you will see that this subject has been addressed over and over and over
the problem isnt that most people dont know how to play shade, the problem is called EGG LOCK. People chose shift 1st not for celerity, but for the ability to drop eggs. Thats why dont even think about going shade 1st on a 24 player server.
And rather than worrying about if your alien players can utilize cloak (or silence) well enough to offset the negative effects of shade hive 1st, you should rather worry about whether or not the marine team knows what its doing.
noob Cloak/silence will defeat noob marines almost all the time
skilled Cloak/silence will defeat skilled marines almost none of the time
this is reality, there is no 'out of the box' unless you want to lose or you know that you can win. Sure it can be fun to be different, but more often than not your just wasting everyones time.
Who the hell plays on 24 player servers? Having fun being forced to go Shift every game because egg-system simply doesn't support that many players?
Yeah, if the entire marine team works in unison and is skilled, they own shade hive. It's also called competitive games. In pubs this is never the case, so you can go shade without a worry.
IF YOU DISLIKE CAMO AND WOULD PREFER SILENCE - do ask the comm nicely to research silence. It doesn't really cost much. That's the great thing about shade hive - stuff is cheap yo.
Not SureJoin Date: 2013-01-06Member: 177758Members
I'm trying to remember if there has ever been a strategy game where an available speed upgrade wasn't the first priority.
I don't think the way celerity affects combat is as important as how it affects map control, and I think the way it affects map control outweighs the combat benefits of going crag or shade first.
I tried a couple of very early cara games the other day for fun (obviously telling my team what the plan was first). The first game went horribly - I'm not sure why, I think we were simply outplayed by better marines. On the second attempt (different server), it went completely the other way. I had cara up in just over 60 seconds, and our skulks just minced the marines from then on in. The whole game was over in 3 minutes I think...
It's fun to try different strats. I will give fast silence a go sometime if I can build up the confidence to go shade first... Obviously not on veil because that's destined to fail with only 4 tech points!
I've done a lot of marine commanding of late, and I'm finding I really enjoy it. I'm not an RTS player historically, so I still have a LOT to learn about tactics and strategy, but I'm definitely winning more than I'm losing, which is nice. It can be SO frustrating to have players milling about doing nothing, though. We had an epic game on tram last night - marines lost, but we had a damned good go at the aliens! We had some good players, but also a fair few who weren't following orders and not particularly good shots, which did hold us back a lot. The aliens had the edge, a few more of the clan whose server it was (but we also had some on our team, they weren't stacking), and I found it very difficult to hold the team coherently together after about 30 minutes of the game: it's like everyone just got a bit tired! It was a very tense game, to-ing and fro-ing over shipping and warehouse a lot, but in the end we just couldn't get enough attack at the same time to put the aliens on the back foot.
I personally find it's rare to find a team that can continue the high pace required as marines (in particular the constant attacking that's needed), for more than about 30 minutes. That is, unless things start to really take a positive turn and it becomes obvious that victory is attainable. One problem with the marines' mid-game is that even if you're doing quite well and on track to win, it's not always that clear to everyone, commander included! In close games, it usually feels like you're losing (at least to me, and for both teams, I might add).
Comments
I also see a good amount of shade/camo first. This would be fine if the commander would research silence also. But that usually doesn't happen until much later. So you are stuck with just camo, which is a situational tool. In order to get any benefit from it at all, you must slow to a crawl. Whenever you are running or chomping on something, you still make tons of noise, alerting marines to your presence and making it harder to hear marines' footsteps. Really it is only good for situations where you can't reach your target without it.
Compare that to silence. You get the full benefit all the time, no matter what you are doing, and it doesn't affect your speed. NS2 maps are absolutely brimming with places for skulks to hide, such that complete invisibility would just be redundant in most ambush situations. And when you are trying to take out an extractor, you can get to it fast without being heard and while you are chomping, the sound is muffled so you can hear marines before they get too close. What isn't to like about silence?
If you don't have any decent gorges, I'd say shift first is the least of your problems.
ofc, you already ruined the round in their opinion,
so there is nothing you can do anymore.
the problem isnt that most people dont know how to play shade, the problem is called EGG LOCK. People chose shift 1st not for celerity, but for the ability to drop eggs. Thats why dont even think about going shade 1st on a 24 player server.
And rather than worrying about if your alien players can utilize cloak (or silence) well enough to offset the negative effects of shade hive 1st, you should rather worry about whether or not the marine team knows what its doing.
noob Cloak/silence will defeat noob marines almost all the time
skilled Cloak/silence will defeat skilled marines almost none of the time
this is reality, there is no 'out of the box' unless you want to lose or you know that you can win. Sure it can be fun to be different, but more often than not your just wasting everyones time.
Yeah, if the entire marine team works in unison and is skilled, they own shade hive. It's also called competitive games. In pubs this is never the case, so you can go shade without a worry.
IF YOU DISLIKE CAMO AND WOULD PREFER SILENCE - do ask the comm nicely to research silence. It doesn't really cost much. That's the great thing about shade hive - stuff is cheap yo.
I don't think the way celerity affects combat is as important as how it affects map control, and I think the way it affects map control outweighs the combat benefits of going crag or shade first.
Once the marines have Armour 1, Carapace or Silence are better.
Edit:
And honestly, with how small the maps are in NS2, mobility isn't really an issue when skulks are already faster than marines by default.
It's fun to try different strats. I will give fast silence a go sometime if I can build up the confidence to go shade first... Obviously not on veil because that's destined to fail with only 4 tech points!
I've done a lot of marine commanding of late, and I'm finding I really enjoy it. I'm not an RTS player historically, so I still have a LOT to learn about tactics and strategy, but I'm definitely winning more than I'm losing, which is nice. It can be SO frustrating to have players milling about doing nothing, though. We had an epic game on tram last night - marines lost, but we had a damned good go at the aliens! We had some good players, but also a fair few who weren't following orders and not particularly good shots, which did hold us back a lot. The aliens had the edge, a few more of the clan whose server it was (but we also had some on our team, they weren't stacking), and I found it very difficult to hold the team coherently together after about 30 minutes of the game: it's like everyone just got a bit tired! It was a very tense game, to-ing and fro-ing over shipping and warehouse a lot, but in the end we just couldn't get enough attack at the same time to put the aliens on the back foot.
I personally find it's rare to find a team that can continue the high pace required as marines (in particular the constant attacking that's needed), for more than about 30 minutes. That is, unless things start to really take a positive turn and it becomes obvious that victory is attainable. One problem with the marines' mid-game is that even if you're doing quite well and on track to win, it's not always that clear to everyone, commander included! In close games, it usually feels like you're losing (at least to me, and for both teams, I might add).