Early Fade Counter?
evilops
Join Date: 2003-02-13 Member: 13494Members
<div class="IPBDescription">in clan games (6v6)</div> Okay... you may or may not have encountered this. But imagine that the alien team has a highly skilled fade that evolves at the 4-5min mark, upgrades carapace, and has gorge healing and lerk umbra support within the next couple of minutes.
Electrified nodes begin to fall very fast.
Squads of marines are intercepted quickly and fall fast also.
Lack of res means a big slowdown in tech, while the aliens cap more res and Oni start appearing...
Sooo, how do marines counter this?
Ideas ppl! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Electrified nodes begin to fall very fast.
Squads of marines are intercepted quickly and fall fast also.
Lack of res means a big slowdown in tech, while the aliens cap more res and Oni start appearing...
Sooo, how do marines counter this?
Ideas ppl! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
If nothing else, it may get the gorge or lerk thats supporting the fade. This is just what I believe, I may be wrong.
Even if it don't kill it it'll give it something to think about
<!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
That early in the game, unless you can put up a massive volume of fire, the marines are gonna get destroyed.
A commander should always get the armory upgraded asap. If the aliens are fast teching to fade, the marine has to respond. Mines are fine but you can't count on them (unless its near vents or narrow doorways). They dont always kill. They can go through a whole game without hitting anything. Hmg has larger clip. the clip is large enought so that a decent shooter can make a fade retreat before the fade does much damage. The problem with lmg is that the fade will draw fire from a lmger by blinking around and then go after him while he is reloading. Shotguns are fine but hard to manage a clean hit if the fade is merely a distraction while his teammate skulks (or another fade) is doing most of the damage.
oh yea, best way to kill a fade is to ambush him. If you ambush him while they're retreating then you should able to kill them. Hide behind doorways somewhere off from your base when you think the fade is coming. Let him go by and then blast him when he goes back to heal.
Potentially you COULD rush a hive and give them something to worry about, or at least distract (in a 6 v 6 game with an early lerk and fade, chances are their chambers aren't widespread), otherwise go with the Ham advice.
Plus point of mining is that if the fade+lerk+gorge unit is clustered, you can potentially catch all three. Though once they get second hive and bilebomb, your mines are less than useless against a competent alien team.
If you see that 4 aliens have gorged and building res, and 2 saving for fade...your ok for a rush. For experienced marines it can be really easy to keep the aliens pinned down in thier base and spawn kill them endlessly. You don't want to let them get res and get away with it.
As for 2 gorge and the rest fighters...steamedham's advice is the best your gonna get.
Marines have to play aggresive, with early upgrades and capping. When you need your 'rines to be somewhere, put a shotgun in that group. Fades are less inclined to dance with a group of 3 marines when one of them has a shotgun. Medpack support does wonders when he actually decides to go in for a kill.
Plus, always try to block in the fade, either by standing in a doorway or just boxing him in.
Deffinately need to do some mad offense at the start to stop their expansion, and whatever the marines do needs to be done fast. 4-5mins into the game isn't very long indeed. Shotguns have proven to be pretty unreliable in killing skilled fades... partly because the rines might need more shotty practice, but mostly because blink is crazy. Haven't tried HMGs on early fades though...
Must try some mine luvin'. Could maybe put a stack or 2 of mines at the nodes the fade is likely to kill first, and if they pay off... it'll be more than worth it. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Sucks a bit eh
And the fade took regen instead of carapace then he needs to support to rip up the entire marine team in a matter of minutes. As a decently-deadly fade trying to model himself in the image of HAM's absolutely BEAUTIFUL fading, I can say from experience that few things scare a fade, one of them being upgrades and the others being either shotties or hmgs.
HMGs are a little easier to cope with because you can just blink around like a mad mofo till the clip empties out, but shotguns don't have that same vulnerability... Also trying to take down HA on your own is freaking HARD...~
When Syn went marines and HAM took aliens, we saw syn pumping out JP/HMGS at around the time the HAM fades started rampaging. This was in an earlier version of NS. 2.00 JP/HMGS cost more than 2.01 HA/HMGS, so perhaps the early fade issue wont be such a big problem if the marine team tech rushes to HA...
Upgrading the armory really isn't all that expensive now, so long as you can keep it alive. 2-3 hmgs can come out pretty early if you want them to, but I wouldn't recommend it without armor level 1 (gives some reaction time), and preferably some weapons ups too.
It would bring tears of joy to our eyes.
After playing a few more clan games, and playing as an early fade... it deffinately comes across as a form of the 1.04 marine jp rush <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
For example, in nothing, holding generator allows seige of 2 rts, plus giving you the gen rt. Holding Room with things gives you 2 rts, plus cargo hive. Miasma also should be easy to take down from gen.
Basically, defense > offense. The whole thing about rushing HMGs or JP/HA is that the early marine offensive isn't as good as the alien early offensive, so the marines always get owned. This was part of the reason HMGS were lowered to 15 res, but that's not enough to counter fades.
1. Armor upgrades: These make a HUGE difference, even level 1. It means an extra swipe to kill and usually in the time it takes for that extra swipe they can get me in the crosshairs and put enough extra bullets on me.
2. Blocking the exits. If fly in fast, take some damage and fly out to heal. If there is a small exit use 2 marines to bock it and then when i get stuck on them it gives you 1 or 2 extra seconds to shoot at me. This is very effective with shotguns. Lines of turrets work well for this too. Also rooms with low or uneven ceilings make it much harder to move. Stay out of wide open spaces and fades are much easier to deal with.
3. Mines. Don't just place 1, I can blink over it and take very little damage. Put 5 in one spot that I have to go, like a door. Try to hide them, be sneaky.
4. Getting ambushed while taking out electric RTs. If you hear a fade taking out an electric RT don't shoot right away, sneak up to point blank, wait as long as you can, and open fire just when he pulls back from the RT to heal because thats when his health will be the lowest.
Those are my weaknesses.
Carefully placed too so one mine sets most the others off.
Played a clan match where we tried to fade rush vs BM only to have about 10 mines go off at once (which were placed in the most inobvious of positions), even tho we sent in a skulk to kill the mines, and boom, 3 dead fades and a lost alien round.
Shotguns help too.