Rush Two Hives Early Game, Simultaneously.
Juji
Join Date: 2002-11-18 Member: 9153Members
Join Date: 2002-11-18 Member: 9153Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Why make life harder on yourself?</div> Fades are a pain in the **obscenity**. Umbra is a pain in the **obscenity**. Fades + Umbra + gorge heal + d towers = bad mother **obscenity** news.
Why make life harder on yourself? Take two hives and hold them and you win.
One thing that I see a lot of comms doing, is taking one hive and then sitting there, d-ing it up like crazy with 10 turrets while they wait for HA and HMGs before they move on.
Stop!
Those 10 turrets (or any number of turrets really) aren't going to do **obscenity** against 2 fades and a lerk umbraing, so don't bother.
"wh@T wiLl I dO wITh aLL mY r3sOurc3s tHOugH?", you say.
Never fear, juji's two pronged attack is here to save the day.
******
Early game, the main goal should be to take two hives, not one. If you can prevent aliens from ever even getting fades, then your life is instantly made 10000% easier. Thats right, 10000%!
With this goal in mind, screw all upgrades until you can secure two hives (you won't need them against skulks and lerks). Scout out where the aliens main base is and send 2 teams of marines out to the other 2 hives, grabbing 2-3 nodes along the way (leave them undefended for now).
Leave a couple of marines and a few turrets to defend your main base/build things.
Chances are the aliens are throwing themselves against your turrets and marines at main, and the other 2 hives are left completely undefended. Set up a tf at each hive, 3-5 turrets to defend it, an ammo station and get a phase gate at each as soon a you can.
All your marines should be either at base, or one of the two hives defending it until you can get enough resources to set up each hive with enough turrets/sieges to protect if from any lvl 1 alien attack.
After that, do whatever you like, as long as you defend those hives its game over and the marines live happily ever after.
The end.
******
Worst case scenario is that the aliens prevent you from taking one of the hives (right now on pubs, 9 times out of 10 they won't be organized enough to do this), and you are back at square one anyway. It's too easy a tactic to pass up early game, and the risk is minimal. Marines can afford to fight on two fronts, because when grouped up, they own skulks, and having too many marines at one location is a waste.
Try it, it works.
Why make life harder on yourself? Take two hives and hold them and you win.
One thing that I see a lot of comms doing, is taking one hive and then sitting there, d-ing it up like crazy with 10 turrets while they wait for HA and HMGs before they move on.
Stop!
Those 10 turrets (or any number of turrets really) aren't going to do **obscenity** against 2 fades and a lerk umbraing, so don't bother.
"wh@T wiLl I dO wITh aLL mY r3sOurc3s tHOugH?", you say.
Never fear, juji's two pronged attack is here to save the day.
******
Early game, the main goal should be to take two hives, not one. If you can prevent aliens from ever even getting fades, then your life is instantly made 10000% easier. Thats right, 10000%!
With this goal in mind, screw all upgrades until you can secure two hives (you won't need them against skulks and lerks). Scout out where the aliens main base is and send 2 teams of marines out to the other 2 hives, grabbing 2-3 nodes along the way (leave them undefended for now).
Leave a couple of marines and a few turrets to defend your main base/build things.
Chances are the aliens are throwing themselves against your turrets and marines at main, and the other 2 hives are left completely undefended. Set up a tf at each hive, 3-5 turrets to defend it, an ammo station and get a phase gate at each as soon a you can.
All your marines should be either at base, or one of the two hives defending it until you can get enough resources to set up each hive with enough turrets/sieges to protect if from any lvl 1 alien attack.
After that, do whatever you like, as long as you defend those hives its game over and the marines live happily ever after.
The end.
******
Worst case scenario is that the aliens prevent you from taking one of the hives (right now on pubs, 9 times out of 10 they won't be organized enough to do this), and you are back at square one anyway. It's too easy a tactic to pass up early game, and the risk is minimal. Marines can afford to fight on two fronts, because when grouped up, they own skulks, and having too many marines at one location is a waste.
Try it, it works.
Comments
as far as grenades and keeping you out of their hive goes, when they have 2 fades and a lerk umbraing at your main base and the one hive that you have secure, good luck holding on to it. It's just a matter of time before you lose one or the other, and it's game over.
The longer marines wait for bigger guns or grenades, the more likely they are going to lose. 2 hives should always be priorty. The more time you give aliens to get fades and lvl 3 caraprace the harder it's going to be.
Early game, you should try and spend all your free resources on securing 2 hives. You don't need big guns or armor against lvl 1 aliens.
I'm not saying that when they get fades its game over, but why make your life hard? Go for 2 hives, and if you get them, you win.
I honestly don't think you'll have the points to do it.
Spend 80 on your base, and then another 60 at each hive? While dropping 22 at each point you cross?
Not enough, man. Sounds like you are spreading yourself thin...
12 players, 6 per team
1 Commander
1 guardian
2 per group
would leave each group with only 2 marines, easly killable by a small group of skulks. Even a group of three is too small to be really effective.
16 players, 8 per team
1 commander
1 guardian
3 per group
better, but still easly dealt with by a few allright skulks or one highly skilled one.
20 players, 10 per team
1 commander
1 guardian
4 per team
Ideal. four people can cover each other more effectivly then three or two, especally when faced with multiple targets.
You'd need a full server with at least 20 people to have enough marines to make the strat really effective, and even then, your small groups of 4 marines will have to ward of the attacks of 6-8 aliens.
Too complex, and numbers are too much of an issue... could it really work?
If there is a secure room next to the hive, you can set up in there and build sieges as well, works the same.
The main thing is that aliens aren't as organized as marines (at least they shouldn't be, since the marines have a comm that can set waypoints and see the entire map). Take advantage of that by moving groups of marines towards the two undefended hives.
Yes it requires decent marines and yes you might not be able to secure 2 hives, but unless the alien team is well organized, most of the time they don't have enough defense at either of the other 2 hives to ward off even 2 marines. If you can hold those hives for 1 minute, and set up turrets (properly of course, protect the tf), you own them. lvl 1 aliens are owned by properly placed turrets and marines guarding them.
The other alternative is to turtle at main or the other hive that you secure, but like I said, once they get 2 hives, your life just got a whole hell of a lot more complicated. You will have lvl 3 caraparaced fades to deal with along with umbra using lerks, + faster respawning aliens and more defenses to break through. To fight these, you are gonna need hmgs, shotguns, GL, JP, HA. This will cost a LOT more res-wise in the long run than securing 2 hives with a few turrets.
This won't work all the time. But look at it this way.
If you have 2 teams full of newbs (which is totally understandable since this mod is so new), the aliens will most likely be wandering about try to find lone marines to gank. If you send them in groups to the 2 hives, chances are the aliens won't know what hit them by the time you get those turrets up.
If both teams have decent players, marines should be able to kill skulks and lerks without much trouble and they should be able to secure those two hives before the aliens can get up and running. Aliens have **obscenity** for resources until they grab those res nodes and that usually takes quite a bit of time. Then they need to d up the hive and build it which = even more time. All the while you have marines moving in on them, hopefully killing them once in a while. All you need is one decisive victory against the aliens and by the time they repsawn and regroup you own their hive with turrets.
Of course, if your marines can't kill skulks and lerks with lmgs, then you are SOL.
Sadly, most commanders are still newbie and will instead do the "base at spawn, get 1 hive, stop there until you have weapons" strategy. Yet in all the games I played this far, that tactic never succeeded : what happens is that with fades on their side, aliens WILL take the hive back sooner or later, as well as stealing all the resources nodes on the map while the marines hopelessly try to protect both the hive and base against fades.
Right - if you grab one Hive right away, it's a good idea to just keep pushing on to a second Hive while teching up at the same time. Waiting in your Hive until researching is done isn't nearly as effective. I have seen it win plenty of times, but I prefer to keep on the constant offensive.
Without a more flexible command system, any "multiple-pronged" attack is destined to fail on the average public server. I know that when I'm commanding and a fight breaks out, I'm dropping health and marking retreat way points as needed. It would be impossible to manage two fights at once without a clear way of seeing who needs health (i.e., not having to be looking at the player to drop a health kit, only having to drop the health kit on their 'player bar' which is always present on your screen).
I definitely hope the dev team has plans to add more functionality to the command system, because there is so much potential for true strategy wasted by the clunky interface.
Anyways, it might be a little tough, but far from impossible. Unless your team is absolutely full of new players that don't know the map at all, it's not as bad as you make it sound.
If securing two hives quickly were by all means an EASY tactic to victory, then it would clearly point to an imbalance in the game. That's not to say however that it's not possible. Admittedly, I've been able to pull the double hive secure maneuver myself a few times with great success on pubs where people lack a great deal of organization. However, on clan servers (esp with a lot of clannies in the game), the situation changes entirely: capturing even the first hive can be an uphill battle, depending on the organization of the alien opposition. Once the second hive is secure, however, the game does become admittedly easier, as the aliens primarily suffer two problems that they don't face early game: an inability to secure resource nodes without defense, and marines armed to the teeth.
Most games that I have played basically end up in some kind of middle game where the aliens have fades en-masse, and the marines (hopefully) have some kind of heavy weapon and/or researched technology. What basically plays out for victory of the second hive is how well each team can secure their own resources and, at the same time, rape the enemy's own resources. Aliens possess a slight advantage in this field, as a skulk can go out on his own and rape a marine resource nozzle; marines are usually encouraged to avoid "rambo" style playing, as it usually gets them killed on the field. How much resources either side has available during this "middle period" basically determines who keeps control of the second hive, and ultimately, who wins the game. If the marines are able to pull out enough resources to get enough HA and machine guns and grenades to hold the aliens back and manage to rebound from lost resources due to an entire squad being killed and the base you were about to setup being raped, then you can hopefully setup some seige turrents and push forward on the enemy base. If defense is insane, then it is highly recommended to "switch up" and target alien resources instead in a blitz using comm sweep and ordering marines to take out resources, or, more likely, target another hive with a different squad of marines to really put the aliens on the fritz.
Again, none of these tactics are surefire means of victory--good alien players can almost always destroy the best tactics that the commander throws at them--its the ability of the good commander to be able to adjust accordingly to every situation.
If that didn't make sense, it's because I was on the phone for the last .5 hours changing some flight plans. But I'm sure some of it is good <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Hell, I think I've actually seen Juji in a few games recently, the name looks familiar.
But I have seen this strategy employed on pub servers, albeit rarely.
IT WORKS, especially on ns_eclipse, where there is a resource node at each hive. If you're going to turret up a resource node, why not make it a resource node at a hive?
The game tends to go on for a while, with the marines scraping for resources, but as Juji said, LMG marines can take out skulks just fine, and once you get motion tracking and a couple upgrades, it's a cakewalk.
And yes, you CAN pop down resource nodes as you see them. The problem with capturing nodes usually involves commanders who want to throw up 5-7 turrets at each resource node, which slows them down and uses a great deal of resources. If you have to rebuild an undefended resource site twice, it's STILL cheaper than placing even one turret, and a lot less risker than losing a turret factory, several turrets, and the node, resource-wise.
If you have 2 resources, you can actually get up quite a few turrets quickly - if that's ALL your building. If you do this at a hive early, you are in business. Phase gates are key, get them up asap to each hive, and you are set. Go out and secure reousrces when possible, or simply rebuild the ones they destroy.
Just watch out for gorges who do offensive turreting on your location, that's about the only real threat, but it won't come to pass anytime soon.
Juji isn't pulling your leg here, it works. I've seen it done as aliens and as marines, and I've seen it done on public servers. It's just a matter of marines understanding how it works and cooperating.
Which is why he's posting it here, to EDUCATE marines, so it is done more often.
Listen to the teacher.
Also what a lot of people who post on the forum fail to realise is that most of the people who play marines on pub servers now are quite new to NS and as a result cannot aim for **obscenity**. Time and time again I see a group of 3 marines get chewed to bits by one skul because they panic and try to bunny hop out of the way (stupid CS players) rather than standing their ground and aiming for the face. If you see this happening at the start of the game to much then chances are you have already lost <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
I cannot stress these enough.
Just one marine getting through to an unoccupied hive, THROW DOWN A PHASE GATE!
Take the first hive, lay down a Tfac, and two turrets far enough that they can fully cover the fact, leave 2 marines to defend, and have everyone else rush the next hive. Once you have phase gates, you can get there with marines faster than the skulks can rush, and once you get a decent turret farm online, a win is assured.
Base, 2 spawns, tfac, and 2 turrets...
First hive you get to:
-Helps to have a friend run to one right away instead of building the initial structures, so you can get a resource tower up there ASAP (Will not be found by roving aliens, they are in the initial "RUSH/SIEGE!!!!11" stage, where they all go in a bee-line to your base)...
-Then get Tfac, and the two turrets.
Move on to next hive, but leave a couple of defenders...
Get those gates up ASAP!
Second hive, throw up a gate FIRST, then get tfac and turrets.
The phase gates negate "spreading yourself thin"
20 RUs for a phase gate or another turret?
PHASE GATE!
Marine > one turret in defense, and when you have 4-5 marines porting in from places to defend, adds the power of about 5 turrets to each spot you have a phase gate, for ONE RU more than a turret. Deal? HELL YEAH!
But yea, you hit the nail on the head with your post, I couldn't have said it better myself.
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=20&t=11843' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...ST&f=20&t=11843</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I have to strongly disagree. On the contrary, I believe it's important to take both empty hives right away. The trick is to build phasegates at each location the moment the marines arrive. Think of it this way- once you have phasegates at a hive, you can simply pour marines into the area until you have turrets set up, and the marines arrive nearly instantly after they respawn.
As the first marines arrive at the hive, they usually find lone skulks busy rushing to the main base, and perhaps a lone gorge (if anything) at the actual hive room waiting for them.
When a skulk dies, they have to wait in line for the 1 hive to respawn them, then run all the way back to the battle scene. When a marine dies, there are 2-3 marine portals waiting to bring them back to life, and they only have to jump on the phasegate to get back to the action. Lerks and skulks are going to have a very difficult time taking hives defended by both turrets and a seemingly endless supply of marines.
On another plus side, holding the main base + the 2 hives = 3 resource nozzles.
In the event that a hive if fortified against attack, I agree with the tactic of setting up siege cannons and turrets just outside its room. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
One of the marines' greatest advantages at the beginning is they respawn much faster than aliens whom have only one hive. As long as you have a phasegate at the hive location, you have intelligent moving turrets (marines) swarming in at 1 rp a pop. You don't even need to go into the actual hive room if they are defending. Just set up outside it within range of a siege cannon. This because the marines don't need the hive for anything, they just need to stop the aliens from having it.
*another nice thing about that is you only need the marines to kill 1 alien per 2 marines killed to keep someone there at all times. So as long as each skulk isn't killing 3 marines each you can hold them off for a good bit*
-Leu
We were on the c|E server, good palce. Good times.
But eh its kinda hard telling a team full of newbies to go where and do what when 90% of them keep asking how to build stuff or to get ammo and the remaining 10% keep running off to play rambo and refuse to listen or say anything.
I've got so much **obscenity** to do though (finals, exams, projects......<!--emo&:angry:--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/mad.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='mad.gif'><!--endemo-->), that I probably won't be on that much for a while. Hopefully, there will be more pub games like those ones by the time I can really start playing again.
Anyway, if you have one or two marines not listening to anything, there's nothing you can really do about it.
If they keep asking for guns and armor or whatever, tell them "STFU you **obscenity** NEWBIE!"
.....ok, maybe not that. But tell them that it's too early to buy bigger guns, and then tell them what you need them to do. works most of the time.
Square = Factory
Circle = Turret
Red Circle = Enemy Hive
Plan A:
<img src='http://www.vadakill.com/webconf/images/NS_PlanA.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
Plan B:
<img src='http://www.vadakill.com/webconf/images/NS_PlanB.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
Plan C:
<img src='http://www.vadakill.com/webconf/images/NS_PlanC.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image'>
The plan assumes you have some minimal defenses set up at base already. I suppose if you are on a smaller server game with only 6 marines, where each team could die in a single gulp, you would need to assault one hive at a time. Just make sure you get to the second soon after the first is secure.
As far as the defenses at the new hive go, I build in this order- Phasegate, followed by TF, 1-2 turrets, res tower, and then 1-2 more turrets.
Make sure the moment the marines respawn they are running to the phasegate to return to the hive. If they ignore this order, this strat won't work.
A solution? Once minimal defenses are up, move your main base into a hive chamber as quickly as possible. If you abandon Marine Start, that's one less area you need to hold, which means fewer resources and less time spent on defending it.
I saw somebody pull this off on a public server last night. Our commander got killed at one point, but the secondary base had already been positioned; he respawned at the hive chamber and jumped right back into command.
The coolest thing about this strategy was, since our spawn (and a horde of turrets) were inside one hive chamber, we knew there wasn't any chance of seeing an Onos unless we'd already lost. :D
Also, marines (even one marine) + properly placed turrets OWN, yes OWN lvl 1 aliens. They chew lvl 1 aliens up, and spit them out, then they lick them up, chew, and spit them out again.
Once you get enough turrets up, and the phase gate, lvl 1 aliens will not be able to break your hold on their hive unless you totally neglect it while it's under attack by the entire alien team (never weld anything, don't replace lost turrets, don't send marines to defend; but really, hardly any alien teams will be coordinated/good enough to do any real damage in the first place).
And if the entire alien team is attacking one of the other hives, who is defending their main hive? Not to mention the fact that once they die, they are going to be waiting a long time to respawn at their one hive.
Just to reiterate, marines (even one marine) + properly placed turrets OWN, yes OWN lvl 1 aliens. They chew lvl 1 aliens up, and spit them out, then they lick them up, chew, and spit them out again.
Exactly. Thanks to the miracle of instant teleportation, 100% of the active marines can respond to any threats nearly instantaneously.
Auraseer- <!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You'll be trying to defend 3 areas, while also trying to keep hold of resources.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not exactly, because the main base and each hive location always contain resource nozzles. Thus, you only need to defend the 3 spots linked by phasegate, and nothing else. If the enemy is limited to level 1 aliens, I propose that 3 nozzles are sufficient. Even if the aliens were to take every other nozzle on the map, they would have nothing substantial to spend all those resources on anyways.