Does Anyone Find...
ZiGGY
Join Date: 2003-01-19 Member: 12479Members
Join Date: 2003-01-19 Member: 12479Members
<div class="IPBDescription">An attempt at necromancy</div> ...the slow death at 0 hive very annoying? Most servers are well moderated and with the team-imbalance instaend it seems harsh to still have it implemented. I say this because rushes with all out risk which would fail in non public situations can succeed, but only because the aliens are unable to take advantage. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
Edit: Yes you can get lvl3 cara but by this time the hive may almost be dead and so you lose even if you can kill most of them.
Let the server admins decide how to admin the servers. Clearly if a skulk is sat in a vent with no intention of moving until the marines get jetpacks, you might as well slay him and start again, however if there's a chance and the lone player is willing to take it, vive la comeback!
Doesnt HAVE to be a slow death, depends how much you want (or need) to win...
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Correct me if I'm wrong, Ziggy, but you're talking about a situation where the marines sacrifice everything, even up to letting their base get eaten, but the marines are still hemmed in with mines and have shotguns, and so aren't easily taken down. Two situations here:
A. On tournament servers, there is no 0 hive death for the aliens, and so assuming that a couple of skulks weren't at the hive when it was attacked, or managed to escape, they can destroy the marine base, including IPs. This means that they head to another hive, and start building/saving up for building. The marines have no way to spawn, and neither do the aliens, but the marines are largely protected by the mines. If they leave that spot, they become much more vulnerable. They may be able to leave and kill the skulks off, they may not. Either way it'll be risky for them since they won't be respawning, but that's part of the risk of an all or nothing strategy like this.
B. On public servers, when the hive goes down, the aliens bleed to death, so to speak. This means that unlike the above situation, if a couple of aliens have escaped, or weren't there when the marines arrived, and they took down the marine spawn, they are still largely screwed. The marines can't spawn either, but they don't need to. They have no reason to leave the safety of their minefield. They can simply wait there until the aliens die. Unlike A, there is much less risk involved because they don't have to worry about losing their base, as long as the hive dies.
In A, they may kill the hive, but if the aliens have been clever or the marines incompetant enough to let a few get away, they have to leave their safe minefield hunt the aliens down, or risk the aliens putting up another hive, and facing a torrent of skulks with no IPs to back them up.
Do you see how the 0 Hive Blight takes away that risk for the marines? Once the hive is dead, they can turtle, even if the entire alien team got away. I think if the entire team got away, they should have a chance at relocating. If the marines get their base trashed, they certainly have a decent chance at relocating, even if they are without a commander for awhile, as long as he dropped a CC somewhere.
Some of my best and most exciting games have been ones where the as the marines we have fought a holding action hoping that a small squad of marines could make it to the relocation spot, or games where I have been part of that squad, knowing that if we die, we're *not* coming back, risking everything to make it to the new CC. Sometimes we won. Many times we did not, but it was very fun either way.
The aliens used to have this excitement when they had lost their hive, but they no longer have a chance to do so.
I'm not sure what to replace it with, but I would very much like to see the 0 Hive Blight removed or changed in someway, simply for the reasons above. It could even be set up so that it still occurs, but takes 3 minutes to kick in after the hive dies. This way you give someone who was going to have a reasonable chance the chance to make it work. I think this is the same reason why starting a hive stops Hive Blight.
Something to consider...
Twilight
However, for most of the post I was talking about Ziggy's situation where the marines all set up camp in the hive in the first few minutes, armed with shotguns, and have mined themselves in.
In this case, if the marines take out the hive, there is a pretty big chance that the aliens have hit the marine base and wiped it out, since you need most if not all of the team at the hive to pull this off.
With the marine base wiped out, and the hive wiped out, the marines should be in a dangerous situation, since they have no base. However with Hive Blight, they simply have to turtle up in their minefield with their shotguns, and hope they can not all die before the remaining aliens get beeped to death.
With tournament mode, and no Hive Blight, however, the marines are in a much trickier situation. They can turtle up like before, but in so doing risk the aliens building a hive and eating them alive. The alternative is to leave the safety of the minefield and try to eliminate the aliens, but since neither team is respawning, this could easily go either way. This is *not* a 5% chance of winning, and the game is *not* going to drag on needlessly.
In this situation, victory for the marines is dependant on wiping out the aliens before they can build a hive and working together to avoid dying, since they cannot respawn. No respawning is a grave drawback, but then again they knew the risk when they threw everyone at the hive in the beginning.
For the aliens victory is dependant on being either being sneaky and eliminating the marines one by one, knowing the marines cannot respawn but realizing they cannot either, or carefully defending a hive until it can be built, thus almost definitely ensuring victory because then the battle is a respawning team against a non-respawning one.
Either way, the battle will be tense and difficult for both teams. It simply means the marines must either leave more people to defend their base, or if they choose not to, accept the consequences of losing their base.
In the current public server version, marines suffer a minor drawback from losing their base in the form of not respawning, but since they have shotguns and are dug in with mines, this becomes mostly inconsequential, since skulks will have difficulty in taking out several shotgun wielding marines behind layers of mines.
Take away the Hive Blight Death from the above scenario, and there is a very real chance of the aliens coming back.
Twilight