Four Node Wall Off
|strofix|
Join Date: 2012-11-01 Member: 165453Members
Join Date: 2012-11-01 Member: 165453Members
Lately I've been experimenting with a marine strategy that attempts to compensate for teams with skewed skill levels. One of the biggest difficulties I encounter as a marine commander in public games is what to do when my marines simply can't win engagements. One of the key problem areas I identified is trying to expand in the mid game, around 5 minutes and onwards. This typically involves sending your team out to take a forward position, and having them die horrible deaths with no way of quickly reinforcing at that location again. One of the most effective strategies I've found is to do a four node wall off, which essentially involves doing all the expanding in the first 2-3 minutes of the game, and then to never expand again until the end of the game.
At its core, this strategy starts as almost all marine games do. Dropping an armoury and an observatory, then moving out in two directions. In the one direction you cap a resource node, and in the other you take control of a tech room. However, where most teams would then continue to push for more resource nodes, in this strategy you stop expanding, and start "defending offensively" which I will go into later.
Unfortunately, due to the 4 node and wall off requirement, this strategy is only applicable in two locations. The first is mineshaft, where a spawn in either operations or repair will do. Operations is the preferable location, but it isn't a necessity. The other possibility is either server or warehouse on tram, preferably warehouse. The reason these are the only two options is illustrated below.
Three factors are required for the location of this strategy.
1. Two tech points.
The taking of the second tech room should be done immediately, and should be the highest priority at game start. This allows the much needed node to be capped early, as well as getting the marine team a strong foothold in the room.
2. A resource node between the two tech rooms.
Although it shouldn't be taken for granted, this resource node essentially "defends itself" due to being surrounded on both sides by marine bases. It will rarely need defence, but this shouldn't be an issue.
3. A fourth outlying resource node that is within at most 10 seconds walking distance of one base.
Three resource nodes simply is not sufficient for this strategy to progress satisfactorily. As a second reason, defending from within two bases simply causes too much collateral damage, and a buffer is required to minimise this. For this reason, all defence that side of the wall is done from this forward resource point, frequently being reinforced from the closest base.
Once the locations are taken and locked down to an acceptable degree, which is actually incredibly easy even with inferior players, the turtle begins. The best way to maintain this defensive line is to have two defenders permanently defending from the closed base, and have the rest of your team defend from the forward resource node position. When I say defend, it is important that they defend offensively by permanently assaulting the closest untaken tech room(forward resource node marines only, not closed base defenders).
At this point, one of two things happen. Either the alien team takes note of the marines defensie play style, and choose as forward a base as possible. With the marine setup, this is inevitably the tech room closest to the forward resource node. The aliens will put almost all their defence into keeping this room, while the marines defending that side continue to hit it. The other option is that the aliens do not choose to be overly offensive, and instead take the closest tech room to their first hive, furthest from the marines. If this happens, the "defending" marines should be able to take the resource node in the closest tech room quite easily, if you choose to do so. In my experience with this strategy, holding a 5th resource node for any more than a minute results in quite an unbelievable speed up. While an attractive possibility, its important not to overextend, as you risk a base rush at that point. It isn't a big issue, but distress beacons can become costly.
You may be thinking that the inferior players will simply be getting overrun at this point and will be losing everything. This is where the nice part about this setup comes in. Firstly, because every main defence line is very close to a spawning location, they are permanently reinforced. Secondly, after dropping two phase gates, one armoury, and an observatory, your "overhead" costs go straight to zero. That is to say, you no longer spend resources on turrets, no additional armouries, no additional observatories, no med packs, no ammo packs, no more phase gates, nothing. At this point, around the 4 minute mark, every resource you extract goes straight into upgrades. I usually drop 2 arms labs immediately and proceed to research every upgrade the second the previous one is done. This usually results in full level 3 marines by around the 7-8th minute. Once again, this is purely for defence. Any marines becoming overly offensive and moving too far from the wall should be called back immediately.
This ungodly surge into upgrades can even the odds even against more skilled players, provided the marines never leave defensive positions. At this point, if the aliens so choose, fades can begin to ravage the defending marines you have, but since the marines are so quickly reinforced, the fades rarely make a dent. At this point it is very important to keep the pressure up at the forward resource node, because the aliens will have had n choice but to expand to this location, and it will keep attention off the rest of your bases.
Its worth mentioning that 2 of the 4 resource nodes will typically be attacked quite often, and at this point may have gone down 2-3 times. Its important to replace them immediately and keep the resources flowing.
Around the 10-12 minute mark is where the end game starts to come out. Due to their map dominance, you can expect the first Onos to emerge around 11 minutes in, if they had someone who didn't die much at all. It is imperative that you have dual exos researched no later than 11:30-12 minutes. It is also imperative that you control your marines and have at most 2 dual exos bought at this point. The first must be one of the two defenders in the closed base, the second needs to defend the forward resource node. This exo should defend extremely conservatively though. Absolutely no pushing past the resource node, and retreating whenever things get too hot.
At the same time, you need to be constantly building ARCs. A minimum of 5 is required, but more is good. You should also have at least 5 MACs, as no player should be concerning themselves with welding the exos.
At around the 15 minute mark, the aliens should have had their third hive long enough to begin upgrades like Umbra and stomp, but not long enough to already have 5 Onos eggs dropped. If they do have 5 Onos eggs dropped, insufficient pressure was applied at the third tech room, and the aliens just went crazy with their resources. At this point, the ARCs should move out to the forward resource node, accompanied by one exo and every light marine you have. Additionally, the two defenders at the closed base should bth have dual exos, and should be utterly anhialating everything that even thinks about attacking that base.
It is important not to be overzealous with the ARCs. It is also important not to stop building ARCs during this time. Your costs should now be shifted towards spamming medpacks for the lights, but this wont be near enough to equal your income, and ARCs should continue to be produced. When beginning the siege, if in ore processing (tram position), only hit forward structures around the entrance into repair. This corridor is very dangerous, and you do not want your ARCs to take any more damage than they need to. If in the gap (mineshaft position), this is a pretty funny part of the game, because you just siege deposit right out from the gap in like 10 seconds flat. This isn't completely necessary (as I found out last night in a game where, for some reason, I could not siege that hive out), but it makes it pretty easy mode. Its important to note that the purpose of this ARC push is not to down the hive.
The moment the ARCs deploy in the gap/ore processing, the two Exos defending repair should begin to move out with no fewer than 5 MACs with them. They move straight to the closest hive, destroying everything in their path. If the path is particularly blocked up, you can have a third exo move out with them. This leaves 3 exos on the closed base side of the map, and 1 exo and 3 lights (potentially 3 jetpack lights if you wanted to go that route) at your forward resource node in your typical 8v8. At this point, its important that your ARCs move forward to a hive sieging location around 10 seconds after either the opposite hive begins taking damage, or after the aliens start to worry enough about the 2-3 exos incoming on their hive. At this point you should have enough sustained damage on both hives to take at least one, though with the amount of tech and upgrades the marines have, you really should take both hives.
Assuming you only take one hive, you are now fully teched marines fighting against 2 hive aliens, which is a very easy win with the correct commanding. To be more descriptive though, at this point what you want to focus on is completely overpowering the aliens with ARCs. Worst case scenario you should at this point have 3 marines capable of going dual exo and defending arcs/ sieging out hives. Its important at this point not to focus on locking down hive rooms, but instead to focus on alternating between destroying hives on either side of the map. Considering the build time of a hive, if you aren't travelling at a snails pace you should be able to kill their second hive while the third is still building. And as we all know, one hive aliens are a complete walkover at that point of the game.
The obvious disclaimer is that this is a public game marine strategy. It is conceivable that highly organised and skilled alien players will have pulled off some sort of amazing attack that circumvents the entire marine defence.
However, this strategy is based around one central premise, and that is that highly teched marines who are doing dedicated defending, and not attacking randomly, will almost never lose a location if it can be reinforced rapidly. Exos take this to a whole new level, where you can really stop an entire team attacking with very high lifeforms with only two players, if they position themselves correctly.
So, given that I am only one person, and my claims of success can be anecdotal at best, I would really like it if other players started trying this strat out, with the solid intention of winning the round. I would love to know of ways you think it can be improved, specific weaknesses it has, and how it fails, if you do fail.
Taking the previous paragraph into account, I would also reeaally like it if a competitive team could at least attempt this strategy in any scrims they have, if they can spare the time. I don't at all expect it to fully translate, but I would like to know if the central premise has at least some merit.
Any questions and/or ridicule is welcome.
At its core, this strategy starts as almost all marine games do. Dropping an armoury and an observatory, then moving out in two directions. In the one direction you cap a resource node, and in the other you take control of a tech room. However, where most teams would then continue to push for more resource nodes, in this strategy you stop expanding, and start "defending offensively" which I will go into later.
Unfortunately, due to the 4 node and wall off requirement, this strategy is only applicable in two locations. The first is mineshaft, where a spawn in either operations or repair will do. Operations is the preferable location, but it isn't a necessity. The other possibility is either server or warehouse on tram, preferably warehouse. The reason these are the only two options is illustrated below.
Three factors are required for the location of this strategy.
1. Two tech points.
The taking of the second tech room should be done immediately, and should be the highest priority at game start. This allows the much needed node to be capped early, as well as getting the marine team a strong foothold in the room.
2. A resource node between the two tech rooms.
Although it shouldn't be taken for granted, this resource node essentially "defends itself" due to being surrounded on both sides by marine bases. It will rarely need defence, but this shouldn't be an issue.
3. A fourth outlying resource node that is within at most 10 seconds walking distance of one base.
Three resource nodes simply is not sufficient for this strategy to progress satisfactorily. As a second reason, defending from within two bases simply causes too much collateral damage, and a buffer is required to minimise this. For this reason, all defence that side of the wall is done from this forward resource point, frequently being reinforced from the closest base.
Once the locations are taken and locked down to an acceptable degree, which is actually incredibly easy even with inferior players, the turtle begins. The best way to maintain this defensive line is to have two defenders permanently defending from the closed base, and have the rest of your team defend from the forward resource node position. When I say defend, it is important that they defend offensively by permanently assaulting the closest untaken tech room(forward resource node marines only, not closed base defenders).
At this point, one of two things happen. Either the alien team takes note of the marines defensie play style, and choose as forward a base as possible. With the marine setup, this is inevitably the tech room closest to the forward resource node. The aliens will put almost all their defence into keeping this room, while the marines defending that side continue to hit it. The other option is that the aliens do not choose to be overly offensive, and instead take the closest tech room to their first hive, furthest from the marines. If this happens, the "defending" marines should be able to take the resource node in the closest tech room quite easily, if you choose to do so. In my experience with this strategy, holding a 5th resource node for any more than a minute results in quite an unbelievable speed up. While an attractive possibility, its important not to overextend, as you risk a base rush at that point. It isn't a big issue, but distress beacons can become costly.
You may be thinking that the inferior players will simply be getting overrun at this point and will be losing everything. This is where the nice part about this setup comes in. Firstly, because every main defence line is very close to a spawning location, they are permanently reinforced. Secondly, after dropping two phase gates, one armoury, and an observatory, your "overhead" costs go straight to zero. That is to say, you no longer spend resources on turrets, no additional armouries, no additional observatories, no med packs, no ammo packs, no more phase gates, nothing. At this point, around the 4 minute mark, every resource you extract goes straight into upgrades. I usually drop 2 arms labs immediately and proceed to research every upgrade the second the previous one is done. This usually results in full level 3 marines by around the 7-8th minute. Once again, this is purely for defence. Any marines becoming overly offensive and moving too far from the wall should be called back immediately.
This ungodly surge into upgrades can even the odds even against more skilled players, provided the marines never leave defensive positions. At this point, if the aliens so choose, fades can begin to ravage the defending marines you have, but since the marines are so quickly reinforced, the fades rarely make a dent. At this point it is very important to keep the pressure up at the forward resource node, because the aliens will have had n choice but to expand to this location, and it will keep attention off the rest of your bases.
Its worth mentioning that 2 of the 4 resource nodes will typically be attacked quite often, and at this point may have gone down 2-3 times. Its important to replace them immediately and keep the resources flowing.
Around the 10-12 minute mark is where the end game starts to come out. Due to their map dominance, you can expect the first Onos to emerge around 11 minutes in, if they had someone who didn't die much at all. It is imperative that you have dual exos researched no later than 11:30-12 minutes. It is also imperative that you control your marines and have at most 2 dual exos bought at this point. The first must be one of the two defenders in the closed base, the second needs to defend the forward resource node. This exo should defend extremely conservatively though. Absolutely no pushing past the resource node, and retreating whenever things get too hot.
At the same time, you need to be constantly building ARCs. A minimum of 5 is required, but more is good. You should also have at least 5 MACs, as no player should be concerning themselves with welding the exos.
At around the 15 minute mark, the aliens should have had their third hive long enough to begin upgrades like Umbra and stomp, but not long enough to already have 5 Onos eggs dropped. If they do have 5 Onos eggs dropped, insufficient pressure was applied at the third tech room, and the aliens just went crazy with their resources. At this point, the ARCs should move out to the forward resource node, accompanied by one exo and every light marine you have. Additionally, the two defenders at the closed base should bth have dual exos, and should be utterly anhialating everything that even thinks about attacking that base.
It is important not to be overzealous with the ARCs. It is also important not to stop building ARCs during this time. Your costs should now be shifted towards spamming medpacks for the lights, but this wont be near enough to equal your income, and ARCs should continue to be produced. When beginning the siege, if in ore processing (tram position), only hit forward structures around the entrance into repair. This corridor is very dangerous, and you do not want your ARCs to take any more damage than they need to. If in the gap (mineshaft position), this is a pretty funny part of the game, because you just siege deposit right out from the gap in like 10 seconds flat. This isn't completely necessary (as I found out last night in a game where, for some reason, I could not siege that hive out), but it makes it pretty easy mode. Its important to note that the purpose of this ARC push is not to down the hive.
The moment the ARCs deploy in the gap/ore processing, the two Exos defending repair should begin to move out with no fewer than 5 MACs with them. They move straight to the closest hive, destroying everything in their path. If the path is particularly blocked up, you can have a third exo move out with them. This leaves 3 exos on the closed base side of the map, and 1 exo and 3 lights (potentially 3 jetpack lights if you wanted to go that route) at your forward resource node in your typical 8v8. At this point, its important that your ARCs move forward to a hive sieging location around 10 seconds after either the opposite hive begins taking damage, or after the aliens start to worry enough about the 2-3 exos incoming on their hive. At this point you should have enough sustained damage on both hives to take at least one, though with the amount of tech and upgrades the marines have, you really should take both hives.
Assuming you only take one hive, you are now fully teched marines fighting against 2 hive aliens, which is a very easy win with the correct commanding. To be more descriptive though, at this point what you want to focus on is completely overpowering the aliens with ARCs. Worst case scenario you should at this point have 3 marines capable of going dual exo and defending arcs/ sieging out hives. Its important at this point not to focus on locking down hive rooms, but instead to focus on alternating between destroying hives on either side of the map. Considering the build time of a hive, if you aren't travelling at a snails pace you should be able to kill their second hive while the third is still building. And as we all know, one hive aliens are a complete walkover at that point of the game.
The obvious disclaimer is that this is a public game marine strategy. It is conceivable that highly organised and skilled alien players will have pulled off some sort of amazing attack that circumvents the entire marine defence.
However, this strategy is based around one central premise, and that is that highly teched marines who are doing dedicated defending, and not attacking randomly, will almost never lose a location if it can be reinforced rapidly. Exos take this to a whole new level, where you can really stop an entire team attacking with very high lifeforms with only two players, if they position themselves correctly.
So, given that I am only one person, and my claims of success can be anecdotal at best, I would really like it if other players started trying this strat out, with the solid intention of winning the round. I would love to know of ways you think it can be improved, specific weaknesses it has, and how it fails, if you do fail.
Taking the previous paragraph into account, I would also reeaally like it if a competitive team could at least attempt this strategy in any scrims they have, if they can spare the time. I don't at all expect it to fully translate, but I would like to know if the central premise has at least some merit.
Any questions and/or ridicule is welcome.
Comments
Also, I’m not good enough of a com to micro manage my men like that
Translation: you don't shout and swear enough.
Strofix, I've got a very similar commanding style to yours when I'm dealing with an unknown player skill level and I've used almost this exact tactic lots of times very effectively. The only additional point I'd include is if you do have 1/2 good players, use them as surgical strike units - scan the alien bases, find carapace or go and kill it over and over again. It's a huge cost for the alien comm and you can get in and out if you're careful; you can also pull 3/4 skulks off the front line which generally will cost the aliens some territory at the same time
Couldn't it almost work on Veil? Assuming the aliens don't start in Sub, capping the left side of the map and sitting on it could almost yield the same results.
Veil is a little one sided, so lesser skilled marines should already win in theory. Also the two tech point requirement already limits the aliens to only two tech points which should be an easy victory.
As 2 other people are suggesting already: Are you trolling?
No offense, if it really is your opinion I'm sorry that I thought that. But what you wrote can't be true on the first glance.
Actually you say in short: A marine team that is on a skill-disadvantage, can win the game if it plays defensive and holds less RTs than its enemy. They magically survive until they got all upgrades and are than suddenly competent enough to make a hive-push without losing a tech-point in the process.
Both advises (playing defensive AND letting the enemy more map control) are known as the worst you could do. Why? You will simply be overrun. If your team couldn't compete with skulks, they will be demolished by Fades or Onos. No matter how fast they spawn. Sooner or later that gorge will have killed the power at one tech point. I have seen exactly this setup you describe failing multiple times. It isn't some original idea. It is the default you see when losing with the marine team.
It is simply not possible for a marine team with a skill disadvantage to win by turtling. Not to mention all the details you oversight. On mineshaft you have a RT-disadvantage of 7-4. You have so many ways for aliens to harass pilot drill or gap RTs. And now to the math:
With constantly 4 RTs (I'm not sure if the res-tick is once every 6 or 7 seconds. I will use 6 for easier calculation and to be optimistic to your plan.) you would have 480 T-Res after 12 Minutes. (If non of the 4 RTs goes down at any time.) You will need in this 12 Minutes:
3 RTs = 30
2 IPs = 30
2 Armories = 20
2 Obs = 30
Phase Tech = 15
2 PGs = 30
1 CC = 15
2 Arms Labs = 40
W3 / A3 = 150
Welders = 10
Mines = 15
Advanced Armory = 20
Prototype Lab = 40
JetPacks = 25
Exo = 30
Dual Exo = 20
= 520 T-Res
Not included things that happen in real games where you not just theory craft. Like RTs going down, decreasing your income AND cost additional T-Res to rebuild. Like you want shot guns against lerks sporing your base or to defend against those fades. Or you need to replace a building that got down by a lucky bile bomb gorge. Not even talking about sentries. Or that you only have 1 IP at one tech point. ARCs and the Robotics you mentioned will appear even later.
It's very simple: You can't out-tech your enemy when you at such a great RT-disadvantage AND are at a skill-disadvantage. It simply won't happen. This tells me my logical reason and the many occasions I have seen those setups fail.
This said, it's no surprise that people think you are trolling. You either troll or you do not play much NS2. Or you are just incredibly bored and wanted to spark some discussion about an idea you had. If you had used your time to record a match where you use this tactic successful even once, it would be more valuable as such a wall of text.
Tram is too open for any kind defensive strategy once you own more than 3 nodes
Cave quickly becomes untenable if you don't push for at least one strong room like Deposit, Double, or Crusher
If you see your team getting outplayed then splitting them up for two even front lines won't work
You'll likely need to drop an additional IP and rally them over the mic for what objectives you want next
A nice setup I've been seeing more commonly on larger servers is where you have your main force, 1 marine floating offensive, and 1 floating defense
Main Force: Constantly attacks the nearest objective to a base; keeping pressure high, but without risking a backdoor attempt
Offensive Float: Constantly attacks the weakest enemy position, tries to setup ninja phase gates, or kill upgrades
Defensive Float: Mines up vents, welds lonely nodes, or scouts 1 room up from the 2nd undefended base
What breaks this strategy is if the aliens get early camo or if they get more than 1 quality fade online mid game as having loners will no longer work
If this isn't the case those two floats can usually peal off enough pressure from your front line that your main will force will start to take back ground
Ok. That was a bit aggressive for a response to a post that did nothing but recount a strategy I've been trying lately, but I will try and answer your questions(?) as best I can.
No, I'm not trolling.
Yes, I realise that what this strategy suggests is currently viewed as a very bad marine approach. However, the game is still young, and in my opinion still revolves entirely around individual player skill rather than considering strategy somewhat. The meta game in SC was still evolving and changing rapidly years after the game's release. So maybe, 4 months in, we are overdue for a tactics change up.
I have no doubt that you have seen this same setup fail in, as you put it, "losing marine teams". The difference is that this team has never been losing. They haven't lost big outposts, they haven't been forced into an upgrade path they don't want, but need. They haven't expended resources that eventually count for nothing.
Yes, resource towers are open to harassment. The aliens aren't immune to harassment either. The central premise is that marines are stronger in defence than aliens are in attack. That's the theory this entire strategy revolves around. If for every one defending marine, they need 1.4 attacking aliens, well then they aren't going to get through. In fact, I'm going to have marines left over at some point.
If you question the feasibility when it comes to resources, then start up an explore mode and try it. I assure you, it can be done with the exact timings I described in the original post. Yes, things don't always go to plan and action may be required that puts the marine timing off. But equally things can happen that put the alien's timing off.
After all that's said and done, your last 3 paragraphs truly surprised me. You accuse me of relying overly on theorycrafting, in a post where I expressly asked for people to try the strategy and give me practical feed back. What's more, your rebuttal is entirely theoretical. No practical evidence to speak of. Mere assertions based on nothing but personal opinion.
I never said this was the next leading marine strategy. I never said it was impervious to tampering, or that it could not be stopped. I merely asked whether others could determine how feasible it was.
To the theory crafting: If the math already says that this tactic can't work, because you don't have any resource buffer left for occasions like destroyed RTs, than it is valid to question it with theory crafting. Theory crafting can be a start for a discussion. But at least it should be built on a valid base.
I will have a go at something along these lines some time to see how it goes, but I must take issue with one thing you said:
One bile bomb near that exo and your macs are useless - I would really really strongly advise making all your marines carry welders and get them into the HABIT of welding exos. Far too much of the time, I see exos going down because a) no-one asks for welding b) no-one thinks to check exos c) people save up res rather than buying a welder and d) the comm doesn't tell people to weld exos either.
This is primarily a communication issue, but macs are not the solution unless aliens don't have bile bomb (in which case you've almost certainly won already anyway!). The bile stunning of macs and the massive damage they take in the process leaves the exos vulnerable to one or two skulks rushing while the gorge, lerk/fade distract/harass them. This is of course in the base where most of the light marines aren't. I'd guess more often than not, you'll be okay because pub aliens are stupid (even experienced pub players make trivial mistakes sometimes, like forgetting umbra to break a turtle... doh!), but it's a bad habit for people to get into not to weld their teammates, exo or not.
Usually I see this if there is at least one or two good marines, and every other player sucks. I mean, aliens "walking in straight lines" bad. Or gorges "learning how to place flowers" bad. Sure, they'll still get Onos, and that's when the one decent marine manages to kill them off, mostly because the aliens decide to send their Onos in one at a time.
It's better to just try and get a central location or a major room now and then instead of being too defensive. Even if you don't get the room, you can still deny it from the enemy, and that is better than nothing.