One silver lining in the early HA heavy weaps strategy if it fails, as long as your marines constantly pick up the dropped welder and heavy weapon, you only need to give a respawning marine a heavy armor suit and send him on his way back to pick his stuff up. If you can do this, it makes losing individual HAs a little cheaper by 20 or 25 res a shot, since their weapon and welder will still be where they dropped it, or being hot-potato'ed by the other heavys to make sure they don't disappear into thin air.
If you lose more than half the heavys in 30 seconds or less at any point, the game is almost guaranteed to be over. This is an all-or-nothing strategy if there ever was one. If you get a thrill deep down inside from betting it all on one shot, no matter what the actual outcome turns out to be, you should try this.
The important point remains, this strategy CAN work, mathematically. I generally feel safer holding an HMG with 200 armor than I do looking at the lower right hand corner and seeing the armor vest and pistol icons get more dangerous looking. The way I see it, upgrades help light armor marines marginally, but not so much that they can't still easily die, and they are overkill for higher echelon equipment. HMGs and HAs don't NEED upgrades, TBH, they have more than enough potential capability for destruction and survival even with base-line stats. Equipment is a much more direct way to counter better alien lifeforms. 2 HMGs VS Fade is a lot easier than organizing 2 LMGs VS Fade, and HMG/shotgun combos are the best counter to Onos there is.
Kent raises the point about 2 hive skulks. This is worth examining. However, provided that you as the commander make sure the aliens can't get a second hive, low-upgrade HAs and HMGs are usually more than enough against 1 hive aliens. As long as you kill them the moment you see them, everything works out and nobody takes more than a few quickly welded bites.
You can upgrade the armory the moment it's built, can't you? Why not do it the second it gets built at like 0:15 seconds game time? Is that a commander mistake or something? Kent said something about the aliens being able to put up a hive before you finish the armory and it being completed before the proto finishes. I don't dispute the numbers, the armory takes for EVER. Is this for small games like you see in clan matches, or would rushing HA work better in 8V8 and above, where alien res is slower? I know that the larger the game, the stupider strategies you can play with as marines, generally.
The thing upgrades have in their favor is that when you buy them, you buy them for the whole team, and everyone gets them when they spawn, free. If you're on huge servers with more than 8 marines running around, upgrades and making sure your marines work in squads can be just as effective as better equipment. Yes, even at maximum, Weapon Level 3 only does 30% extra damage, but if you get three marines shooting a target, that's 90% extra damage, and it's almost like four vanilla marines were shooting the target.
Better equipment VS higher upgrades each have their own place. Armor 1 makes sense, it's a good upgrade to buy. Spend a mere 20 res once to add a 20 point boost to every respawning marine for the rest of the game, and with excellent medpacking on your part, your marines can survive FOUR BITES from very early in the game, if you always medpack them on the second bite. However, instead of slapping down 30 res for Weapons 2, think about whether it would pay off quicker if you spent that 30 res on say, two heavy machineguns for defense until you have time to get heavy armor suits or jetpacks or whatever. Nothing does better for marine defense of an area than having an HMG stand at the back of the room and open fire the moment something is too close to run away before dying. And the more aliens that your team kills, the more resource points you get for killing the aliens. HMGs will net you loads of money if you put them somewhere that they can shoot skulks all day. And HMGs are instantly deployed. You drop them to your best shooters, send them out, and they do way more damage way sooner than if you had purchased Weapons 2. But at the same time, if those HMG guys do something dumb, or just meet up against a better alien player and lose the HMGs somewhere that they can't go and get picked up again, you lose the money you spent on them, and unless the guys with the guns made enough money killing aliens to cover the cost of buying them the guns in the first place, you have less money than when you started, and nothing to show for it. If you had picked up Weapons 2 however, your whole team would have 20% more damage, and they would have it even if they died, unlike only two guys having all the firepower, and not being able to keep it if the guns get lost.
Upgrades and Equipment are two routes which a commander needs to keep in mind. You need to know your game, and know your team to know what to buy and how much to spend. Being a commander is like running a business. Spend your money to gain the most advantage over the enemy team. It's up to you to decide whether you want your team to have permanent upgrades, or temporary equipment.
Generally, the better the aim of the players, the more that buying guns for your best shooters and best team-players pays off. Upgrades are strategic, equipment is tactical. Every marine should know the difference between these two, especially the commander.
This is a cool topic about an interesting alternative strat, so it gets my vote of approval.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Kent raises the point about 2 hive skulks. This is worth examining. However, provided that you as the commander make sure the aliens can't get a second hive, low-upgrade HAs and HMGs are usually more than enough against 1 hive aliens.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Since the aliens can at least put up the second hive by the time you can place the proto lab, you will have to take down the second hive without HA. If you can take down the second hive as it is going up without HA, then you don't really need to get it in the first place. Just clear out the hive, use distress beacon to get them back to base (since you have an obs), give them meds + welding, and send them at the starting hive.
I like upgrades they can save you when all you got is an lmg. Besides I always die easyer with a hmg it seems. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif' /><!--endemo-->
On timing : Swift correctly realised that standard tech (HA or JP) rushes will mean you build your Armory first thing into the game. An advanced armory takes <b>3 minutes</b> to research, so roughly at 3:15 you've got th at AA. It will take you maybe half a minute with good coordination to build a protolab, and another 100 seconds (1:40) for HA, or 50 seconds for JPs.
Unless you're able to deny nodes, the Hive can start going up at about 3:30, approximately the same time you've finished your AA. A Hive takes 3 minutes to go active - so realisticly speaking, once you're done and have outfitted your HAs at a frantic pace, you've got 60 seconds to walk to the Hive and kill it, or face dealing with Umbra. In other words, unless the Aliens are gloriously stupid and/or bad, they'll be able to delay and dilute your plan enough to synch it up or put it behind the 2nd Hive going active. At that point, walking in on the Hive while its gaurded <i>almost never</i> works.
You still do have the ability to Siege though, and HAs while expensive, are a great counter to pretty much every conventional way to bust a siege, short of an Onos.
The short of it is, prototech is even more delayed than any upgrade, and that can hamper your earlygame - which is over all the most important. A strong earlygame on the otherhand can get you those HAs a mere minute or two later, with mapcontrol and a heavily delayed 2nd Hive alongside.
<!--QuoteBegin-|ds|meatshield+May 16 2004, 05:19 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (|ds|meatshield @ May 16 2004, 05:19 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Did your HAs have heavy weapons? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> 3 HMG, 2 SG.. the problem was that only 4 of them went to hive in group
To comment SaltzBad - there is no problem with holding ground before we got HA.. just about time fades appear and marines are starting loosing nodes HA come online.. Marines with a1 upgrade are comfortably able to deny access to second hive for many minutes and keep res nedos up.. skulks are extremely weak and even basic marines can handle them. At time you have majority of team in HA aliens have either 1 hive or 2nd growing hive..
If you're owning the other team anyway, sure Licho. Then its mostly just a matter of style how you finish though.
You can just sit back and smoke crack if the alien team takes 6:30 or more to get a Fade, is unable to attack your nodes or even hold their secondary Hive and the accompanying nodes.
I think this is where MT comes into play. It boosts the early game so much that you can deny aliens a lot of the map. However if your going to have to upgrade the armoury straight off, MT is going to be delayed to the point where it will probably only be active at best 5 minutes, kind of damaging its effectiveness. So i'm wondering is it better to get MT on the go first and then upgrade the armoury.
One advantage of having that AA up is that instead of handing out say 4 SG's to deal with that fade, you can happily hand out 2 HMG's and a SG or just 1 of each and be considerably more deadly. Theres no point having the tech unless you use it.
<!--QuoteBegin-SaltzBad+May 16 2004, 12:59 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (SaltzBad @ May 16 2004, 12:59 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> If you're owning the other team anyway, sure Licho. Then its mostly just a matter of style how you finish though.
You can just sit back and smoke crack if the alien team takes 6:30 or more to get a Fade, is unable to attack your nodes or even hold their secondary Hive and the accompanying nodes. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Where are you playing? Before fades come, marines ALWAYS OWN! Simple medspam and rines have 2-4x more kills than skulks and can kill all RT .. No need for MT.. Maps like veil = total early marine ownage..
HA re online at 5:30 just about time fades are there.. If you kill most their res and deny them kills, there will be no fades before 5 minute.. (even if 1 player has res for fade, he needs usual DC too..)
And no, if you own early, that doesnt mean you are gonna win, great fades can kill even the best upgraded marines and can break any lockdown..
Comments
If you lose more than half the heavys in 30 seconds or less at any point, the game is almost guaranteed to be over. This is an all-or-nothing strategy if there ever was one. If you get a thrill deep down inside from betting it all on one shot, no matter what the actual outcome turns out to be, you should try this.
The important point remains, this strategy CAN work, mathematically. I generally feel safer holding an HMG with 200 armor than I do looking at the lower right hand corner and seeing the armor vest and pistol icons get more dangerous looking. The way I see it, upgrades help light armor marines marginally, but not so much that they can't still easily die, and they are overkill for higher echelon equipment. HMGs and HAs don't NEED upgrades, TBH, they have more than enough potential capability for destruction and survival even with base-line stats. Equipment is a much more direct way to counter better alien lifeforms. 2 HMGs VS Fade is a lot easier than organizing 2 LMGs VS Fade, and HMG/shotgun combos are the best counter to Onos there is.
Kent raises the point about 2 hive skulks. This is worth examining. However, provided that you as the commander make sure the aliens can't get a second hive, low-upgrade HAs and HMGs are usually more than enough against 1 hive aliens. As long as you kill them the moment you see them, everything works out and nobody takes more than a few quickly welded bites.
You can upgrade the armory the moment it's built, can't you? Why not do it the second it gets built at like 0:15 seconds game time? Is that a commander mistake or something? Kent said something about the aliens being able to put up a hive before you finish the armory and it being completed before the proto finishes. I don't dispute the numbers, the armory takes for EVER. Is this for small games like you see in clan matches, or would rushing HA work better in 8V8 and above, where alien res is slower? I know that the larger the game, the stupider strategies you can play with as marines, generally.
The thing upgrades have in their favor is that when you buy them, you buy them for the whole team, and everyone gets them when they spawn, free. If you're on huge servers with more than 8 marines running around, upgrades and making sure your marines work in squads can be just as effective as better equipment. Yes, even at maximum, Weapon Level 3 only does 30% extra damage, but if you get three marines shooting a target, that's 90% extra damage, and it's almost like four vanilla marines were shooting the target.
Better equipment VS higher upgrades each have their own place. Armor 1 makes sense, it's a good upgrade to buy. Spend a mere 20 res once to add a 20 point boost to every respawning marine for the rest of the game, and with excellent medpacking on your part, your marines can survive FOUR BITES from very early in the game, if you always medpack them on the second bite. However, instead of slapping down 30 res for Weapons 2, think about whether it would pay off quicker if you spent that 30 res on say, two heavy machineguns for defense until you have time to get heavy armor suits or jetpacks or whatever. Nothing does better for marine defense of an area than having an HMG stand at the back of the room and open fire the moment something is too close to run away before dying. And the more aliens that your team kills, the more resource points you get for killing the aliens. HMGs will net you loads of money if you put them somewhere that they can shoot skulks all day. And HMGs are instantly deployed. You drop them to your best shooters, send them out, and they do way more damage way sooner than if you had purchased Weapons 2. But at the same time, if those HMG guys do something dumb, or just meet up against a better alien player and lose the HMGs somewhere that they can't go and get picked up again, you lose the money you spent on them, and unless the guys with the guns made enough money killing aliens to cover the cost of buying them the guns in the first place, you have less money than when you started, and nothing to show for it. If you had picked up Weapons 2 however, your whole team would have 20% more damage, and they would have it even if they died, unlike only two guys having all the firepower, and not being able to keep it if the guns get lost.
Upgrades and Equipment are two routes which a commander needs to keep in mind. You need to know your game, and know your team to know what to buy and how much to spend. Being a commander is like running a business. Spend your money to gain the most advantage over the enemy team. It's up to you to decide whether you want your team to have permanent upgrades, or temporary equipment.
Generally, the better the aim of the players, the more that buying guns for your best shooters and best team-players pays off. Upgrades are strategic, equipment is tactical. Every marine should know the difference between these two, especially the commander.
This is a cool topic about an interesting alternative strat, so it gets my vote of approval.
Since the aliens can at least put up the second hive by the time you can place the proto lab, you will have to take down the second hive without HA. If you can take down the second hive as it is going up without HA, then you don't really need to get it in the first place. Just clear out the hive, use distress beacon to get them back to base (since you have an obs), give them meds + welding, and send them at the starting hive.
Swift correctly realised that standard tech (HA or JP) rushes will mean you build your Armory first thing into the game. An advanced armory takes <b>3 minutes</b> to research, so roughly at 3:15 you've got th at AA. It will take you maybe half a minute with good coordination to build a protolab, and another 100 seconds (1:40) for HA, or 50 seconds for JPs.
Unless you're able to deny nodes, the Hive can start going up at about 3:30, approximately the same time you've finished your AA. A Hive takes 3 minutes to go active - so realisticly speaking, once you're done and have outfitted your HAs at a frantic pace, you've got 60 seconds to walk to the Hive and kill it, or face dealing with Umbra. In other words, unless the Aliens are gloriously stupid and/or bad, they'll be able to delay and dilute your plan enough to synch it up or put it behind the 2nd Hive going active. At that point, walking in on the Hive while its gaurded <i>almost never</i> works.
You still do have the ability to Siege though, and HAs while expensive, are a great counter to pretty much every conventional way to bust a siege, short of an Onos.
The short of it is, prototech is even more delayed than any upgrade, and that can hamper your earlygame - which is over all the most important. A strong earlygame on the otherhand can get you those HAs a mere minute or two later, with mapcontrol and a heavily delayed 2nd Hive alongside.
3 HMG, 2 SG.. the problem was that only 4 of them went to hive in group
To comment SaltzBad - there is no problem with holding ground before we got HA.. just about time fades appear and marines are starting loosing nodes HA come online.. Marines with a1 upgrade are comfortably able to deny access to second hive for many minutes and keep res nedos up.. skulks are extremely weak and even basic marines can handle them.
At time you have majority of team in HA aliens have either 1 hive or 2nd growing hive..
You can just sit back and smoke crack if the alien team takes 6:30 or more to get a Fade, is unable to attack your nodes or even hold their secondary Hive and the accompanying nodes.
One advantage of having that AA up is that instead of handing out say 4 SG's to deal with that fade, you can happily hand out 2 HMG's and a SG or just 1 of each and be considerably more deadly. Theres no point having the tech unless you use it.
You can just sit back and smoke crack if the alien team takes 6:30 or more to get a Fade, is unable to attack your nodes or even hold their secondary Hive and the accompanying nodes. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where are you playing? Before fades come, marines ALWAYS OWN! Simple medspam and rines have 2-4x more kills than skulks and can kill all RT ..
No need for MT..
Maps like veil = total early marine ownage..
HA re online at 5:30 just about time fades are there..
If you kill most their res and deny them kills, there will be no fades before 5 minute.. (even if 1 player has res for fade, he needs usual DC too..)
And no, if you own early, that doesnt mean you are gonna win, great fades can kill even the best upgraded marines and can break any lockdown..