I have only played on public servers, so it's been my experience that the game is dominated by which team gets the most players who ruin things for their team the fastest. I think whoever made a help bubble imploring noob players to go gorge as soon as they join a server should be drawn and quartered. I have won in 2 minutes with a skulk rush before, and I have felt a small pang of guilt... but that disappears next round, or the round after, when we rush and the marines don't miss. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Then they build 200 turrets they don't really need in their base.
And they leave a sweet spot for us to eat the tfactory.
That's when I realize, I needn't feel guilty. These clowns deserve what they get.
Erm, anyway, back to the question, I have never played in one of these nigh-mythical "league games" or "clan matches" so I have no real basis for judging how balanced the two races are. All NS is for me is server-hopping until I find a place where people are somewhat competent. Half the time I get fed up and drop out of 3 games in a row, loose all my faith in humanity (the other players, that is,) and call it a day.
I have been reamed a couple times as kharra, though, when the other team is really on the ball. Sometimes even when there are no idiot gorges sucking up resources on our team. So I guess it must be at least theoretically possible to win as marines. The two races are really so different that it's almost impossible to truly balance something like this.
Maybe if you added code to report everybody's win/loss record, pwnage, ammounts of times structures die before being completed, which weapons are used most, popular build orders, etc. bact to a central server for statistical recordkeeping, you'd be able to take a look at it all and see some kind of trend that implies whether a weapon or ability is "too powerful."
Don't forget that part of being a good commander is picking your moments.
Often I see our better commanders (in NZ) jump on a server and play a round or two as grunt before they decide if they want to command.
It's seems they often try to wait for the right combination of players and map before they decide to step up to the plate. This ofcourse will tilt their win - loss record in their favour...
There's very little aliens can do except fight back. When half the marines are good at aiming and shooting, the marine rush is pretty much unstoppable.
One way I can think of is to get the skulks to hide in vents and whatnot, so when marines run by all skulks just drop down and kill them. This kind of defending doesn't happen much because aliens usually don't expect a marine rush.
Marines have the upper hand in the opening game? Marine rushes are easier? Wow, I'd love to know what game <i>you're</i> playing.
From the time the game starts until the marines get heavy armour, the Kharaa have hte upper hand. Period. Sure it takes a lot of skill to use a skulk properly, but until the marines get something better than that tinfoil light armour, they are LUNCH. The only times they aren't lunch are when the Kharaa aren't good enough; not because they're unbeatable.
If it's possible to take out a squad of four light armour and two heavy armour marines using one skulk (and I should know. I've done it) then it's <b>certainly</b> possible to halt a marine rush.
imo it depends VERY MUCH on how many ppl there r on the server... i.e. if it's a 5 vs 5 it's quite common that aliens would win unless they r bad organized and marines r well organized... in a game with so few players it's also kind of a deathstrike when the aliens get a second hive... as long as it's 7 vs 7 or even further up marines r getting slight advantages... i also think that fade's slightly overpowered because most of the time 1 marine with HA and HMG does not killa fade unless the fade behaves stupid... so normally u need about 3 marines to kill 2 fades.... HA & HMG = 50 res.... btw: i hate beeing commander as he has terrible controls... i'm really missing shortcuts such as select all units u see on screen all units outside main base or just all units... furthermore it also depends on the maps... some maps 5 vs 5 is fair some r impossible... <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> Greetz Badmaster <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--SoulSkorpion+Dec 16 2002, 12:11 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SoulSkorpion @ Dec 16 2002, 12:11 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Marines have the upper hand in the opening game? Marine rushes are easier? Wow, I'd love to know what game <i>you're</i> playing.
From the time the game starts until the marines get heavy armour, the Kharaa have hte upper hand. Period. Sure it takes a lot of skill to use a skulk properly, but until the marines get something better than that tinfoil light armour, they are LUNCH. The only times they aren't lunch are when the Kharaa aren't good enough; not because they're unbeatable.
If it's possible to take out a squad of four light armour and two heavy armour marines using one skulk (and I should know. I've done it) then it's <b>certainly</b> possible to halt a marine rush.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> When we were playing Marines on the weekend with Tournament Mode (10vs10) we just kept on rushing their hive in waves of 4-6 until it went down. 3 Marines is <b>more</b> then enough to guard the Marine Base.
From my experience the more aliens go down in the initial contact the better the chance the Hive will go down (Due to long alien respawn times).
And yes the greater the player limit, which means bigger marines team, the more potent the Marine Openning Rush.
Marine rush 101. 1. Have the comm lay a couple of spawners. 2. Collect a couple of team mates. 3. Move to the hive, and have the comm lay an armory, and if there is time, CC and ports. 4. Only one person is needed to kill respawning skulks, and there is no threat if the rest of the skulks outside the hive are dead. 5. Have good people shoot spawning skulks, while crappy people shoot hive. 6. Win.
If siege cannons could actually track units, it would be overpowered. But it can't, so it's really not all that bad. It's the phase gates that go with them that you have to be careful of. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
I play on both sides, and I honestly don't mind siege cannons that much if there's not a phase gate to go with them.
Marines can siege. Aliens can bilebomb, xenocide, acid rocket spam, and charge.
i think there are kinda overpowered (aliens). they get cool abilites (or weapons) and once they get 3 hives, game over for marines... with 3 hives, practically all aliens are unstoppable: skulks with xenocides, gorges with thoses babblers, lerks with tohses FRIGGING ANOYING danm spores, fades with thoses strong bile bombs, and friggng onos with primal scream and palarlis and claws and charge.....but on my other hand..... i think it is fair though for the effort of maknig hives, thoses aliens deserve new aliens and abilities.
1. Good or bad commander?. is the good commander "awake & active" , sometimes it also depends hows the marine team working together..
2. Aliens need to work together (make attacks, inform each other when marines are coming, what they're doing). Gorge must be someone who knows to be a gorge.
3. Its all about teamplay.
Even when light marines take a hive, build turret factory & phase gates, turrets surrounding it and constantly using the gate to defend it, some successfull skulk attacks can take them all down. (just happened when i played as skulk)
But still, i agree well almost its all about who gets 2 hives but i've seen the other team to just give it up when enemies have 2 hives..I mean marines now, they're hardly even trying to do anything expect spawning at base. The commander could still probably turn the game around!.
If marines have 2 hives, there is still a change for aliens to get back one of them and for the gorge to build the hive but it's not likely because at this time marines have HA & HMG but i've seen it happen though <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->. Expirienced it myself..and aliens rocked, finally won the match.
So...to really answer the question, both teams are equal when it comes to firepower (& equipments) but good players have huge influence on the game.
I used to think marines were under powered, but now the curve has caught back up on my server...
Since it is a pub, it isn't always true, but now that people use the IPx2>>armory>>observatory path (or some similar build order) in base, and phase gates to take hives, the game has see-sawed back to the marines.
Now I am curious to see how the game evolves to counter this...
The Kharaa are not overpowered. The more i play with the kharaa the more i see easy it is to kill fades. It all depends on how the marines play it. If the marines have harmor with welders, fades dont do much against em. if marines are stupid and dont go for a hive, fades end the marine infestation fast.
I think Klimster is right. you dont even need your whole team to pull off a marine rush at start. 2-4 good marines could do it easily. I think the entire game is pretty balanced, its just in certain situation it seems one team is just completely screwed or theres nothing they can do. this is why i think alot of people say things like siege or fades are unbalanced, etc. but meh, just keep copying starcraft/aliens and you guys will be sweet <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
I think the greatest power of the aliens are the gorges and self-building structures an the healing-power of dc Think about it.
If marines want to defend a location, the commander has to place a tf, then 2 marines (1 cover, 1 build) need to finish it. Then turrets need to be placed, and again, 2 marines need to build it.
The aliens on the other hand, only need 1 gorg, he spams some oc and they all auto-build.
Then when aliens want to take a fortiefied marine-base-in-hive they only need to take the tf down. And all the turrets stop functioning,
The marines on the other hand, 'll have to start shooting/sieging their way through a WALL of oc, backed-up by a wall of dc.
I've stopped ha/hmg rushes as a gorg in caged. There is a door with 2 parts, sometimes it just opens and closes, but sometimes 1 part goes up, while the other goes down.
when u place a couple of oc in front of the door, build twice as much dc, and the marines will have a **obscenity** *HARD* time coming through.
It's lame, I know, but it works like hell, combined with the healing-spray, carapace and webs, a gorg can defend and keep almost ANY location. (as long as marines don't come spamming grenades with 3 ppl or putting multiple sieges up).
A word of warning to fades, It is possible to go down, due to a lmg/la marine.
When u spam your rockets, a marine just rushes out and empties his clip at point-blank. I've done this, left 16 bullets or so in a 50 clip, we had a frustrated fade then.
<!--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-->If siege cannons could actually track units, it would be overpowered. But it can't, so it's really not all that bad. It's the phase gates that go with them that you have to be careful of.
I play on both sides, and I honestly don't mind siege cannons that much if there's not a phase gate to go with them.
Marines can siege. Aliens can bilebomb, xenocide, acid rocket spam, and charge. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i would agree with you 100% except for one thing: none of those alien weapons can shoot through walls. you can't place a fade in the engine room hive in ns_bast and launch bilebombs at the marine base. try the opposite with a siege cannon. however, the siege cannon debate is covered way more effectively in other threads and by folks way smarter than me. i've just had bad times with them making the marines seem more powerful.
I used to think fades were slightly overpowered because of their acid rockets, now I think if the humans want to moan about it being too powerful they can and I'll just moan about phase gates being too good due to the early tactical use of them. The sides aren't meant to be equal they are supposed to have different advantages and disadvantages and this is one of them.
Comments
Then they build 200 turrets they don't really need in their base.
And they leave a sweet spot for us to eat the tfactory.
That's when I realize, I needn't feel guilty. These clowns deserve what they get.
Erm, anyway, back to the question, I have never played in one of these nigh-mythical "league games" or "clan matches" so I have no real basis for judging how balanced the two races are. All NS is for me is server-hopping until I find a place where people are somewhat competent. Half the time I get fed up and drop out of 3 games in a row, loose all my faith in humanity (the other players, that is,) and call it a day.
I have been reamed a couple times as kharra, though, when the other team is really on the ball. Sometimes even when there are no idiot gorges sucking up resources on our team. So I guess it must be at least theoretically possible to win as marines. The two races are really so different that it's almost impossible to truly balance something like this.
Maybe if you added code to report everybody's win/loss record, pwnage, ammounts of times structures die before being completed, which weapons are used most, popular build orders, etc. bact to a central server for statistical recordkeeping, you'd be able to take a look at it all and see some kind of trend that implies whether a weapon or ability is "too powerful."
Often I see our better commanders (in NZ) jump on a server and play a round or two as grunt before they decide if they want to command.
It's seems they often try to wait for the right combination of players and map before they decide to step up to the plate. This ofcourse will tilt their win - loss record in their favour...
There's very little aliens can do except fight back. When half the marines are good at aiming and shooting, the marine rush is pretty much unstoppable.
One way I can think of is to get the skulks to hide in vents and whatnot, so when marines run by all skulks just drop down and kill them. This kind of defending doesn't happen much because aliens usually don't expect a marine rush.
From the time the game starts until the marines get heavy armour, the Kharaa have hte upper hand. Period. Sure it takes a lot of skill to use a skulk properly, but until the marines get something better than that tinfoil light armour, they are LUNCH. The only times they aren't lunch are when the Kharaa aren't good enough; not because they're unbeatable.
If it's possible to take out a squad of four light armour and two heavy armour marines using one skulk (and I should know. I've done it) then it's <b>certainly</b> possible to halt a marine rush.
i.e. if it's a 5 vs 5 it's quite common that aliens would win unless they r bad organized and marines r well organized...
in a game with so few players it's also kind of a deathstrike when the aliens get a second hive...
as long as it's 7 vs 7 or even further up marines r getting slight advantages...
i also think that fade's slightly overpowered because most of the time 1 marine with HA and HMG does not killa fade unless the fade behaves stupid... so normally u need about 3 marines to kill 2 fades.... HA & HMG = 50 res....
btw: i hate beeing commander as he has terrible controls... i'm really missing shortcuts such as select all units u see on screen all units outside main base or just all units...
furthermore it also depends on the maps... some maps 5 vs 5 is fair some r impossible...
<!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
Greetz Badmaster <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
From the time the game starts until the marines get heavy armour, the Kharaa have hte upper hand. Period. Sure it takes a lot of skill to use a skulk properly, but until the marines get something better than that tinfoil light armour, they are LUNCH. The only times they aren't lunch are when the Kharaa aren't good enough; not because they're unbeatable.
If it's possible to take out a squad of four light armour and two heavy armour marines using one skulk (and I should know. I've done it) then it's <b>certainly</b> possible to halt a marine rush.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When we were playing Marines on the weekend with Tournament Mode (10vs10) we just kept on rushing their hive in waves of 4-6 until it went down. 3 Marines is <b>more</b> then enough to guard the Marine Base.
From my experience the more aliens go down in the initial contact the better the chance the Hive will go down (Due to long alien respawn times).
And yes the greater the player limit, which means bigger marines team, the more potent the Marine Openning Rush.
My experiences anyways.
1. Have the comm lay a couple of spawners.
2. Collect a couple of team mates.
3. Move to the hive, and have the comm lay an armory, and if there is time, CC and ports.
4. Only one person is needed to kill respawning skulks, and there is no threat if the rest of the skulks outside the hive are dead.
5. Have good people shoot spawning skulks, while crappy people shoot hive.
6. Win.
seige cannon.
I play on both sides, and I honestly don't mind siege cannons that much if there's not a phase gate to go with them.
Marines can siege. Aliens can bilebomb, xenocide, acid rocket spam, and charge.
1. Good or bad commander?. is the good commander "awake & active" ,
sometimes it also depends hows the marine team working together..
2. Aliens need to work together (make attacks, inform each other when marines are coming, what they're doing). Gorge must be someone who knows to be a gorge.
3. Its all about teamplay.
Even when light marines take a hive, build turret factory & phase gates, turrets surrounding it and constantly using the gate to defend it, some successfull skulk attacks can take them all down. (just happened when i played as skulk)
But still, i agree well almost its all about who gets 2 hives but i've seen the other team to just give it up when enemies have 2 hives..I mean marines now, they're hardly even trying to do anything expect spawning at base.
The commander could still probably turn the game around!.
If marines have 2 hives, there is still a change for aliens to get back one of them and for the gorge to build the hive but it's not likely because at this time marines have HA & HMG but i've seen it happen though <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->. Expirienced it myself..and aliens rocked, finally won the match.
So...to really answer the question, both teams are equal when it comes to firepower (& equipments) but good players have huge influence on the game.
Since it is a pub, it isn't always true, but now that people use the IPx2>>armory>>observatory path (or some similar build order) in base, and phase gates to take hives, the game has see-sawed back to the marines.
Now I am curious to see how the game evolves to counter this...
in 1.02 i thought marines were overpowered.
I think the entire game is pretty balanced, its just in certain situation it seems one team is just completely screwed or theres nothing they can do. this is why i think alot of people say things like siege or fades are unbalanced, etc.
but meh, just keep copying starcraft/aliens and you guys will be sweet <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Think about it.
If marines want to defend a location, the commander has to place a tf, then 2 marines (1 cover, 1 build) need to finish it.
Then turrets need to be placed, and again, 2 marines need to build it.
The aliens on the other hand, only need 1 gorg, he spams some oc and they all auto-build.
Then when aliens want to take a fortiefied marine-base-in-hive they only need to take the tf down. And all the turrets stop functioning,
The marines on the other hand, 'll have to start shooting/sieging their way through a WALL of oc, backed-up by a wall of dc.
I've stopped ha/hmg rushes as a gorg in caged. There is a door with 2 parts, sometimes it just opens and closes, but sometimes 1 part goes up, while the other goes down.
when u place a couple of oc in front of the door, build twice as much dc, and the marines will have a **obscenity** *HARD* time coming through.
It's lame, I know, but it works like hell, combined with the healing-spray, carapace and webs, a gorg can defend and keep almost ANY location. (as long as marines don't come spamming grenades with 3 ppl or putting multiple sieges up).
A word of warning to fades, It is possible to go down, due to a lmg/la marine.
When u spam your rockets, a marine just rushes out and empties his clip at point-blank.
I've done this, left 16 bullets or so in a 50 clip, we had a frustrated fade then.
I play on both sides, and I honestly don't mind siege cannons that much if there's not a phase gate to go with them.
Marines can siege. Aliens can bilebomb, xenocide, acid rocket spam, and charge. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i would agree with you 100% except for one thing: none of those alien weapons can shoot through walls. you can't place a fade in the engine room hive in ns_bast and launch bilebombs at the marine base. try the opposite with a siege cannon. however, the siege cannon debate is covered way more effectively in other threads and by folks way smarter than me. i've just had bad times with them making the marines seem more powerful.