Alternative Perspective
eaglec
Join Date: 2002-11-25 Member: 9948Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-11-25 Member: 9948Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">a new strategy</div> Trying to figure out this 80% lose ration for marines I thought up a new strategy that might be completely useless but might not. I'd like to hear from anyone that successfully tries this strat, the problem is it requires the marines to know the plan so might not be very good on public servers.
The background on how I thought of this was thinking from the Khara point of view. On the few occasions I've lost while playing Khara there was a common theme. If there Khara dont get resource chambers up then the marines tech too fast for the khara to counter. So if the game starts 1v1 then the marines get a severe advantage 5 minutes later when another 8 players join each side.
Anyway onto the strat:
<b>Objective</b>
To cripple Khara resource income early.
<b>Method</b>
Marines sent to run to secure each res node, a marine at every node if possible within the first 90 seconds of game start.
As soon as the game starts every marine runs for a res node while the commander hops in the chair and drops an IP or two, then gets out again to build. The marines are very much at risk during this time but they have a couple of things going for them.
1. Skulks do not expect to see marines out of base this early in game.
2. Those that have already gorged when the marine(s) arrive will be building and again wont expect the marines. If the marine kills the gorge he can then inform the commander that the res tower is there.
3. I thnk many marines will stumble upon eggs gestating to gorge to build their res tower. Killing these eggs is very easy even for a newbie and costs the alien team a res tower for several minutes.
4. Aliens have real strength in numbers but for the first 2 minutes of the game they are scattered accross the map.
<b>Summary</b>
OK, so what are the odds? Well I think some marines will run past a skulk and get taken down in seconds. If the Khara try a skulk rush then the base will get destroyed and the marines might very well be wiped out in the first 2minutes. On the whiole though I think it would be realistic to expect at least a 50% return on this, so in an 8v8 return you can expect to deny the Khara of 3 or 4 res towers and gain 3 or 4 for the marines. In the first two minutes. You can then redeploy those that respawn to assist in the defense of base/key location and you might be of to a good start.
The biggest downside of this strat is it requires an understanding and co-operation of the whole team from the word go. So on a public server it is likely to be doomed to failure.
Look an entire post without resorting to smilies <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
The background on how I thought of this was thinking from the Khara point of view. On the few occasions I've lost while playing Khara there was a common theme. If there Khara dont get resource chambers up then the marines tech too fast for the khara to counter. So if the game starts 1v1 then the marines get a severe advantage 5 minutes later when another 8 players join each side.
Anyway onto the strat:
<b>Objective</b>
To cripple Khara resource income early.
<b>Method</b>
Marines sent to run to secure each res node, a marine at every node if possible within the first 90 seconds of game start.
As soon as the game starts every marine runs for a res node while the commander hops in the chair and drops an IP or two, then gets out again to build. The marines are very much at risk during this time but they have a couple of things going for them.
1. Skulks do not expect to see marines out of base this early in game.
2. Those that have already gorged when the marine(s) arrive will be building and again wont expect the marines. If the marine kills the gorge he can then inform the commander that the res tower is there.
3. I thnk many marines will stumble upon eggs gestating to gorge to build their res tower. Killing these eggs is very easy even for a newbie and costs the alien team a res tower for several minutes.
4. Aliens have real strength in numbers but for the first 2 minutes of the game they are scattered accross the map.
<b>Summary</b>
OK, so what are the odds? Well I think some marines will run past a skulk and get taken down in seconds. If the Khara try a skulk rush then the base will get destroyed and the marines might very well be wiped out in the first 2minutes. On the whiole though I think it would be realistic to expect at least a 50% return on this, so in an 8v8 return you can expect to deny the Khara of 3 or 4 res towers and gain 3 or 4 for the marines. In the first two minutes. You can then redeploy those that respawn to assist in the defense of base/key location and you might be of to a good start.
The biggest downside of this strat is it requires an understanding and co-operation of the whole team from the word go. So on a public server it is likely to be doomed to failure.
Look an entire post without resorting to smilies <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
Then its only the comm that is the defence..
I'm wary about setting up RTs far away from base so early. I'd think the objective would be to take out alien RTs. If the aliens are too busy away from marine start, a lone marine could work on RTs nearest to the marine spawn.
Unless your team of 10 has 10 -very good- players, a single marine building a node is skulk food.
1-killing the alien economy is extremely hard. Most res towers will be closer to the alien spawn point then they are to your spawn point. Thus, over the cource of killing the res tower, you marines are likly to be attacked at least twice. If your marines don't have bigger firepower then the aliens,they will have to relay on skill to win. And if the marines and skulks are equal then you can assume the marines will loss one of the two fights.
2-you don't find eggs. most gorges will build the res towers that are farthest away from your start. Also, marines are loud, and as soon as a gorge hears one, he will fall back, or build offence chambers. If he falls back, it means a skulk ambush is probably comming. If he buildings an offence chamber it means the commander is going to have to buy a lot of ammo and medkits (since the marines will have to flank the chamber to kill the gorge who is healing it)
3-In gerneral, aliens control the whole map (minus marine start) at the start of the game by defult. Aliens will have access to more (and better) ambush locations. Aliens will beable to get to just about any spot of the map faster then marines. And, since aliens have hive sight, they will beable to react to things faster then the marines. Thus, it will become harder and harder for your marines to take ground unless they have an early shotgun.
I've tried early expansions and found them good for the first 2 mins when you see 5 v 3. But then aliens realise you have some RT's undefended and take them down.
One improvement I would suggest is send marines out in pairs. They have a much better chance than 1 on their own. (IE it's more likely 2 marines will last to cap two nodes, than one lasting to cap 1).
And finally, unfortunately, the average Pub Marine is simply not good enough for this to work. I've had shotty rushes fail to one skulk! So my whole team <b>with</b> shotguns gets killed by one skulk. And this sort of thing happens alot. If your lucky and get some good marines then try it, I've seen it done - GG in 15 mins.
Send marines in pairs. Let them patrol 2 nodes. That should increase the survival rate of the marines and make it easier for the marines to ambush skulks eating RTs.
I actually managed to do something similar on a pub as a comm. One of my few comm wins: Eclipse, 2 teams of 3 marines patroling 3 nodes each (station access alpha & triad & the one in the alcove close to cc, maintance & horse & south loop). I didn't bother with electrify, but I believe we would have been even more successfull if I had.
The vast majority of the games I see in pubs 2/3 of the team goes gorge to drop a res node. The gorges are usually fairly solitary, at that. They can't do squat to stop you from killing the hive, them, or the RTs they've built. It's a gamble that pub marines seldom capitalize on.
The marines dont need all the res but it is essential to make sure the khara dont have more than you.
Imagine this on 10v10 (ideal play - yes I know things wont be this perfect)
8 khara run to a res point and gestate to gorge
2 skulks go to stalk base or check hives, saving their res to get hive 2 or even 3 underways asap.
You go comm and 9 marines spread out over the map. There are 8 nodes to cap (10 per map, start with 1 each)
5 of your marines encounter eggs - instant kills nodes not built
2 of your marines enounter gorges and one dies, the other takes his gorge out.
Of the other two marines one wanders around and is killed by the skulks the other meets a gorge building a res tower and kills him, just.
You have finished building 2 ips and set the spawned marines building the rest of base. The rest of the marines you give a waypoint to converge on the gorge that killed the marines and then the one where the marines killed the gorge by the part built res tower.
Aleins now have 8 skulks with 15 res each and 2 with 25 and only one res tower. They have no upgrades and can only get 2 res towers up in the next 5 minutes at best. In the mean time you have 4 res towers and a hive (double res maybe) secured with 6 marines moving on the other hive. You hand out a few shotties and start the upgrades. 3 marines with shotguns continue on gorge/res hunting missions. you link the hives and bases by phase gates and have the rest of the marines patrol. 6 minutes later the aliens cave enough res for a lerk or two or some res towers. You have enough res to research for a HA train.
In reality you may have to drug the aliens to have it this easy but the idea isn't to cap all the res its to stop the aliens doing that by mimicking their strat.
If you can make the aliens waste their first few minutes and starting res then you have them crippled for a longer term victory.
1 IP, Armory, TF. I will wait until I'm sure the initial skulk rush is over, and then send most of my men out to the nearest RT. Meanwhile, 1 or two people will stay at base and build 3 turrets. I will usually assign my most experienced men at base. While the rest of the team is out capping res, (moving from RT to RT, electrifying as they go along), I will supply the two remaining people at base to secure a hive (generally one which I already have an electrified RT in). From there, they'll be supplied with shotguns and sent to hunt resources. Their job is to destroy any enemy resource towers they come across and replace them with their own. On most pubs, the RT score at this point will be around 4v2 or 5v2, leaving them only the hive RTs.
Occassionally, when you're faced with a good team of players, they will be able to knock out your electrified RTs one by one, slowly, but surely. You should attempt to stop their efforts, but for the most part, the damage has been done:
Through your early 5 or so RTs, you've managed to tech quite quickly, and have probably upgraded your armory already.
The aliens, having lost a good majority of their resource towers, have been severely crippled. You most likely won't be seeing onos for some time (unless one or two players have decided to save up for it), and from there it should be cake.
I do understand that your strategy is more for the beginning of the game, but I'd like to see marine players being more flexible and aggressive in general. This is definitely a big step in the right direction. Marines have to worry about one skulk getting into their base and eating it from inside out. Aliens won't have this problem because marines in general aren't that fast. Conventional wisdom states that if marines aren't all moving together they'll all die. This is true, but even aliens can only be so flexible. It's much more difficult to pull off distractive assaults (big attack at one hive with a sneak tfac outside another hive). This sort of attack would be excellent against early on aliens, but exploits the lack of concrete alien organization later on as well.
I'd love to try this strat. out and see how it plays.
KILL RES NODES DONT LET EM STAY CAUSE U SEE 1 OT or ITS ELECTRIFIED...U COME BACK TO LIFE YOU KNOW!, just keep pounding it until it falls...and it it dont and it ends up being over run with turrets or ot's or people, u, 1 little person, just distracted either a good portion of the alien team, or the comm and a few marines
'nuff said
After that, they either keep rushing or cap RT. Marines need to defend base long enough to resist the rush and at the very least build IPs, and in such a manner that skulks are discouraged from rushing again.
Many times as skulk have a waited for all rines to leave base, then ran in to feast on their IPs. Easy pickings, and sometimes even two rines can't stop it.
Mind you, all of this strategy will likely change with the next release.