Cmd Patterns I Am Seeing Often

sillYsillY Join Date: 2002-11-20 Member: 9462Members
<div class="IPBDescription">don't comm yourself into the corner</div> one would think that, as time passes, commanders would start to adopt more effective strategies. instead, i keep seeing commanders getting locked in a defeatist strategies and new commanders, after witnessing those as marines, adopting the same strategies. this applies, for the most part, to the marine games.



i will list those "bad" strategies in the chronological(wrt to progression of your average round) order, which is also happens to be the order of importance.

1. turreting up the base until the initial res. run out.

- if you did that, you just blew the early game and set your team back. if, and only if, you soldiers just cannot hit rushing skulks, put two turrets down that protect spawns. the sound of those turrets alone will help you to keep skulks away from attacking spawning/building marines. since you only have one res tower in the beginning, once the initial 100 rps are gone, you will be slowed down significantly, thats the thing that aliens need the most at this point.

leave 1-2 guards at the base, if you can spare them. this is much better then 5 or 6 turrets. marines respawn, turrets don't

2. fortifying the res nozzle closest to marine base/fighting for it.

-ahh the horseshoe, the greatest enemy of commanders on eclipse.
the same argument as above applies. your marines will be passing this spot repeatedly, at least until you get the gates.
why waste res on TF + 3 turrets, when you can put the same setup up at hive and get the nozzle there?

-so aliens overwhelmed horseshoe or such? forget it and go the other way. it is not worth it when you can be securing your secong hive in the same time it takes you to fortify location such as mess hall to the point you cannot walk by without running into a turret. aliens LOVE fighing drawn out battles for chokepoints/res points, even if they die a lot. this means that their gorge is secure and fades are on the way.

3. fortifying your first hive without building the phase gate there (unless you moved comm chair and portals there right away, see below on that)

-this just means losing this hive as soon as competent aliens get carapace and rush TF. since it takes a skulk much less time to run from one hive to another then it takes a marine to run from main to a hive, without a gate, you WILL be outnumbered and overwhelmed, short of using aimbots and other such silliness (yeah, you see all kinds of things on pubs)

4. going after res locations after taking the first hive, turreting up every tower.

-see #2. now you have even less time since the gorge probably has enough res for 2nd hive at this point and this becomes a real race.

ask yourself - would you rather have res for "shotties" and HA or 2 hives?

-the only exception is double-nozzled room such as atm. processing or holoroom. they provide such a good return that you will be building sieges and phase gates as fast as you want, so the first wave of fades (who WILL be coming unless you go for 2nd hive IMMEDIATLY after securing 1st) may be the last one.

-look, if you really need those res, build 2 res towers close together on the routes that are not frequented by skulks and post 2 competent guards with a welder to patrol both. maybe give them a phase gate after those towers start pumping.
once you start taking hives, there aren't going to be any coordinated attacks on those towers, trust me.

5. you take 1st hive, start taking another and hear "commander's chair is under attack", scroll the map and see 3 skulks attacking your base with TF dead and no marines around.

-do you scream "OH NO EVERYBODY BACK TO MAIN!"?
no! you say to yourself "wow, aliens are giving me their second hive ".
if you make your marines run to main now, you won't get 2nd hive anytime soon and your marines are gonna taste some serious acid.

-build another command chair and inf spawn (or 2) at your hive (it takes 1 marine to build it as opposed to a team of ~3 to uncamp main). as soon as you get portals at hive, recycle ones in main if they are not dead already so marines don't spawn into skulk's jaws.
now get out of the chair and take your chances. you will probably die. respawn at hive and FORGET ABOUT MAIN FOR THE REST OF THE GAME. this is one of the reasons you should not invest too much into it, btw.

-it takes skulks a LONG time to kill comm chair and these are the skulks that are not defending 2nd hive.

all these "strategies", especially turreting res nozzles only worked because 2 or 3 aliens went gorges, another 2 or so went lerks, and gorges would build chambers instead of res towers, all that before 2nd hive, giving marines A LOT of time. the aliens are learning to get 2nd hive up ASAP, will the commanders learn? this remains to be seen.

Comments

  • DrSuredeathDrSuredeath Join Date: 2002-11-11 Member: 8217Members
    I was booted out of the commander chair last game because I refused to set up RP and secure Horseshoe and wanted to secure Southloop. Man, was I **obscenity**. They should know by now that Horseshoe isn't worth defending.
  • ImaNewbieImaNewbie Join Date: 2002-11-29 Member: 10207Members
    Yeah, I've had that happen to me all the time.

    What I do(usually works), is tell them nicely that horseshoe is not worth the time because it gets attacked alot. I usually just plop a res tower there and leave it at that. The aliens like to destroy it but I just rebuild it again for the heck of it(the few seconds the aliens take to get rid of it means that few seconds I'm gonna set up sieges at their hive, and of course I rebuild res tower if resources are ok).

    What I hate the most is the beginning of the game when right after you start half the marines start rushing for a hive. I still think that is not a wise strategy as there's not enough resources to give those marines who rushed to hive any backup since the first thing I need to do before securing a hive is get 2-3 extra res towers so I have enough resources to build phase gate and TF at the hive.
  • ShuflYShuflY Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8760Members
    If more commanders thought like silly, there would be alot less alien victorys.
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