Always Fast 2nd Hive?
MisterYoon
Join Date: 2012-08-18 Member: 155747Members
Join Date: 2012-08-18 Member: 155747Members
<div class="IPBDescription">that's not appropriate for competitive play.</div>
In recent few builds, i've almost only watch on competitive plays aliens dropping fast 2nd hive. I thought it's because of veil, but actually it was not only issue of veil.
I know how many risks aliens take by dropping fast 2nd hive. Losing Harvester will be crucial, and they will not able to spread cysts out and take no good map control therefore. However, i am sick to see always the same strategy. It must be handled. Either nerf or buff.
In recent few builds, i've almost only watch on competitive plays aliens dropping fast 2nd hive. I thought it's because of veil, but actually it was not only issue of veil.
I know how many risks aliens take by dropping fast 2nd hive. Losing Harvester will be crucial, and they will not able to spread cysts out and take no good map control therefore. However, i am sick to see always the same strategy. It must be handled. Either nerf or buff.
Comments
* Aliens require 2 hives to compete with marines early game
* no RFK (no early lerks, fades)
* Lerks not having projectile spore
* No skill based movement system for skulks (good marines smash good skulks)
Basically competitive games are alien teams turtling on 2/3 res trying to desperately hold their hive + base rushing. Very boring tbh..
If you don't like the strategy, come up with a better one or figure out why you can't.
Honestly, my gut reaction was to compare your argument to Zerg in Starcraft/SC2. Its pretty standard for Zerg to fast expand in every MU (except ZvZ XD). You don't see other players going "im tired of FEing as Zerg, nerf or buff plz blizz".
ect.
If Skulks were capable of matching marines with equal skill levels it would remove the need for aliens to get the second hive so early, which would give them more options and allow them to attempt to protect RTs. There would need to be many large changes to gameplay and the resource systen to accomodate this but it would be worth it in the long run.
With the skulk being the lifeform most players (unless very good) spend the majority of their time as, it is very strange to make it so weak. This causes large amounts of frustration and feels like a huge imbalance for new players, when they are dominated so completely.
Sure, rushes and "cheese" can still happen due to imprudent, committing marines that end up losing the base powernode but that seems to be the current meta.
And 2 hives being vital for aliens is exactly how NS1 had it as well, the difference being that in NS1, losing a hive was devastating, often game ending as players rarely saved for extra backup hives in favor of going Fade/Lerk, not to mention they cost 50 because you needed to gorge first.
Made the game much more predictable with the usual huge fight for building/locking down/protecting the 2nd hive.
As for skulks being weaker than marines, it was always like this in NS1, skulks needed to group up or as the name suggests ambush their targets.
Adding more "skill based movement" will not help much if you're running head on into marines.
The recent cone buff has helped a lot with this, skulks feel and play much better now, hopefully the new walljump will improve on this.
You pretty much have to go straight hive, into leap or shift + celerity. going early upgrade doesn't give you much benefit. I think leap and gas should be moved to hive1, that makes it viable to go leap, or gas + lurk (provided lurk gas gets a buff) before you drop hive 2. Also if upgrades where a bit better for skulks, it might be feasible to run upgrades before hive 2.
to be honest this isn't that much better than ns1 comp play for aliens which generally just came down to 2 or 2 straight fades, and wither or not to run an rt/lurk or a straight lurk.
So yes, competitive ns2 alien strategies are very stale at the moment, and I don't see that changing until drastic changes are made to the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1985925:date=Oct 2 2012, 01:40 AM:name=Katana-)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Katana- @ Oct 2 2012, 01:40 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1985925"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->to be honest this isn't that much better than ns1 comp play for aliens which generally just came down to 2 or 2 straight fades, and wither or not to run an rt/lurk or a straight lurk.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Depends on what version you're talking about. Some versions (3.0b5 for example) had very limited alien strategies, but there were a lot of viable build orders in other versions, especially in the the final version, 3.2.
I don't think that is the "main" culprit although I agree that there are many different reasons that fast 2nd hive is clearly dominant.
If this was the main reason, it would also be problematic for marines, since they also have slow pres.
But it isn't, because the "cheap" midtier marine pres equipment (mines, shotguns, welders) is very effective at bridging the gap. The alien "cheap" equipment (gorges, hydras, lerks) can't match them. In fact as you state it's only leap skulks that can hope to deal with shotguns.
In other words the weakness of the alien early game until fades is the reason why fast 2nd hive is so dominant.
- rt count is low due to smaller maps and marine pressure dominance vs vanilla skulks.
- heavy aggression is penalized due to no res while dead
- upgrades are too expensive vs their benefit to survivability
- no rfk means that you are penalized for going non-fade lifeforms except emergency gorge
- no ranged spores = no early game area denial from the lerk
That was tried, and it was terrible.
Personally, I'd love to see tier2 tech researchable on the first hive and tier3 tech researchable on the second hive, but at double the cost.
It seems simple but here in lies the problem.
Marines need 2nd cc for bells and whistles (ie Jet packs and Exo's), they dont need 2 CC's to get weapons upgrades.
Aliens do, as without second hive...no leap..no leap = dead aliens and game over 99% of the time.
Remove leap from 2nd hive constraint and watch the 2nd hive become less urgent.
That aliens have to get 3 hives to get full tech but marines 1 (2 if you include exo's and jp's) seems to be going asymmetry for the sake of it and not looking at game play.
Marines can happily tech up with 1 CC and res points....once they are fully tech'd a push into another tech points not that hard.
They can get all 3 weapons and armour upgrades, SG's, GL's, arcs etc.
Aliens, to even compete, need a 2nd hive (leap, bile bomb, spores, blink) all require a 2nd hive.
So for any real upgrades aliens need a 2nd hive, this is why we see fast 2nd hive being the only real option.
Until marines decide not to upgrade weapons, advance around the map we wont see any change to this.
Really UWE need to consider how the game scales and how this flows down to game play.
I am sure they did not intend for there to be really only 1 choice (fast hive (and shift)) but due to marines being able to very quickly tech up (by 8 min in they can have w3)aliens have little choice but to get 2nd hive (as it offer crucial weapons/upgrade for everylifeform).
Oh and a hive is a boat load harder to kill than a shell...or spur...so the upgrades more likely to be permanent (harder to take down...certainly not without warning).
I think either you have to force marines to get 2 tech to get beyond W1 A1 and shotguns or shift abilities from 3rd hive to 2nd hive...and 2nd hive just available via a res expendature (ie how it used to be..ie leap without 2nd hive)
I think the problem is due to how irrelevant the mere presence of the second hive is at the moment. In times gone by, aliens were competent with vanilla skulks and one hive. The second hive meant a sudden and massive increase in power. This meant two things, firstly, the second hive was harder to get, because it gave more power. You needed infestation, it built slower, it was generally more vulnerable, which encouraged locking down the area before dropping. Secondly, as a spin off of the first reason, other, less demanding structures would often be dropped instead, in order to delay the commitment of a second hive.
Now, aliens are incredibly feeble at one hive, and equally feeble at two. The hive itself gives nothing, and is relatively very expensive. In turn, it must be incredibly easy to drop and get up, but it is also incredibly necessary as the potential to upgrade lifeforms is paramount to making aliens less feeble. This means that there is almost no choice involved. A necessary structure with almost no risk involved in dropping it.
The game forces aliens to drop the hive the second the commander takes control.
This is a straight copy paste from an email but i hope it makes sense anyways:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>RT Balance</b>
One thing that affects the game balance quite a lot currently is the fact that resource tower mechanics are very imbalanced between the teams. Marine RTs build faster, take longer to destroy and don't require cysts which essentially makes them cheaper than alien RTs. On average it takes 5 cysts to get infestation to spread to an resource node. Then it takes about 40-45 seconds for an RT to grow up without help of a gorge. After that it takes 1 minutes for the RT to pay back the resources spent on the RT and 30 seconds to pay back the resources spent on the Cysts. All of this causes an alien RT to take 2 minutes and 15 seconds for it to pay itself off.
Marine RT takes only about 10 seconds to build, but of course requires atleast one marine to build it. The builder requirement is not a big issue because the builder is also protecting the RT which aliens have to do too if they want to get even a single RT to pay back the res invested in it. Thus marine RT pays itself back in about 1 minute and 10 seconds.
It's great that the RT mechanics are asymmetric but they should definitely be more balanced than this. Currently marines always want to build as many RTs as possible and they can't overextend themselves economically while aliens should never build an RT to a room where they don't have a hive before fades are out because it's 90% sure that they will never get back the resources invested. This makes the economy parts of the game very predictable. Marines always get about 70% of the RTs in couple of minutes and aliens never build a single RT before the second hive is up. Public players have taken a long time to realize this causing aliens to lose a ton of games only because the alien commander built an RT or two but now we're starting to see public players getting grasp of the economy balance in NS2 which makes the public games very predictable and boring too.
The RTs could be balanced by adjusting the health and build times but I don't think that's a good way to do it because increasing these values makes FPS play more boring as you spend more time building and destroying buildings. Decreasing these values lead into whack-a-mole gameplay that we had couple of patches ago and realized that it was not fun. I think the best fix would be increase the cost of the marine RTs or make power nodes to cost small amount of resources. This would cause marines to commit little bit more on the RTs and think twice before capping 70% of the RTs in the map. This would also make marines to be able to overextend econimically (spending too much res on RTs so that aliens can get ugrades before marines can).
<b>Hive vs Phase Gate</b>
Even if RTs were balanced it could still be the best option for aliens to always go for instant hive because in many maps the marines have no chance on taking down hives before phase gates are up (veil and docking for example). If aliens drop instant hive the hive is ready before phase gates are researched and built. Aliens can also get leap instantly after the hive is up given that they have not lost their only RT. This makes aliens very powerful just after two minutes of game and giving marines literally no way to prevent this from happening. With the current skulk marine balance this is not too big of a problem because shotgun marine can easily 2-4 skulks rushing on him.
If phase gates were available faster or hive was available slower i'm sure we would see more varied alien strategies as well as more contest of the second hive. Maybe making hive to cost 50 and/or lowering the research time of phase gate tech and maybe lowering the cost of each phase gate by 5 could bring more options to both teams in the early game?
<b>Upgrade chambers</b>
Not many competitive teams use upgrades at all anymore in early and mid game. It is partly because the alien RTs are so weak and early hive is so easy to get up and gives you leap and blink. But it's also because the upgrade chambers are so weak and easy to kill. Earlier you could drown the upgrade chambers in clogs to hide them and give a little more survivability. Now that upgrade chamber were made bigger it's quite impossible to clog them up. Why were they even made bigger? They are harder to hide, easier to aim at, harder to clog up. Thus diminishing the need for tricky and skilled play. Is it possible to make them smaller again or buff their HP / Armor just a little bit?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
THIS
Maybe combine this with having only limited upgrade on 1 hive (i.e only abilities for 1 - 2 lifeforms)
This would add so much more depth to the alien strategy and actually give the khammander some real choices, do you focus extractors or hives? What lifeform upgrade do you priortise on a single hive if you end up focussing on 1 hive and resource towers, etc.
Right now it feels like both aliens and marines go down the same strategy every single game, totally different from how it was in NS 1. Needless to say, it makes even the commanding experience a pretty dull one. (No choices, no depth) As an alien commander it's almost always second hive drop, as a marine commander it's almost always rush obs and phase tech. (Only way to properly maintain map control) You might as well get rid of commanders and automate the build orders if this remains unchanged. There's very little real time strategy actually taking place in NS 2 today.
This is a straight copy paste from an email but i hope it makes sense anyways:
RT Balance
One thing that affects the game balance quite a lot currently is the fact that resource tower mechanics are very imbalanced between the teams. Marine RTs build faster, take longer to destroy and don't require cysts which essentially makes them cheaper than alien RTs. On average it takes 5 cysts to get infestation to spread to an resource node. Then it takes about 40-45 seconds for an RT to grow up without help of a gorge. After that it takes 1 minutes for the RT to pay back the resources spent on the RT and 30 seconds to pay back the resources spent on the Cysts. All of this causes an alien RT to take 2 minutes and 15 seconds for it to pay itself off.
Marine RT takes only about 10 seconds to build, but of course requires atleast one marine to build it. The builder requirement is not a big issue because the builder is also protecting the RT which aliens have to do too if they want to get even a single RT to pay back the res invested in it. Thus marine RT pays itself back in about 1 minute and 10 seconds.
It's great that the RT mechanics are asymmetric but they should definitely be more balanced than this. Currently marines always want to build as many RTs as possible and they can't overextend themselves economically while aliens should never build an RT to a room where they don't have a hive before fades are out because it's 90% sure that they will never get back the resources invested. This makes the economy parts of the game very predictable. Marines always get about 70% of the RTs in couple of minutes and aliens never build a single RT before the second hive is up. Public players have taken a long time to realize this causing aliens to lose a ton of games only because the alien commander built an RT or two but now we're starting to see public players getting grasp of the economy balance in NS2 which makes the public games very predictable and boring too.
The RTs could be balanced by adjusting the health and build times but I don't think that's a good way to do it because increasing these values makes FPS play more boring as you spend more time building and destroying buildings. Decreasing these values lead into whack-a-mole gameplay that we had couple of patches ago and realized that it was not fun. I think the best fix would be increase the cost of the marine RTs or make power nodes to cost small amount of resources. This would cause marines to commit little bit more on the RTs and think twice before capping 70% of the RTs in the map. This would also make marines to be able to overextend econimically (spending too much res on RTs so that aliens can get ugrades before marines can).
Hive vs Phase Gate
Even if RTs were balanced it could still be the best option for aliens to always go for instant hive because in many maps the marines have no chance on taking down hives before phase gates are up (veil and docking for example). If aliens drop instant hive the hive is ready before phase gates are researched and built. Aliens can also get leap instantly after the hive is up given that they have not lost their only RT. This makes aliens very powerful just after two minutes of game and giving marines literally no way to prevent this from happening. With the current skulk marine balance this is not too big of a problem because shotgun marine can easily 2-4 skulks rushing on him.
If phase gates were available faster or hive was available slower i'm sure we would see more varied alien strategies as well as more contest of the second hive. Maybe making hive to cost 50 and/or lowering the research time of phase gate tech and maybe lowering the cost of each phase gate by 5 could bring more options to both teams in the early game?
Upgrade chambers
Not many competitive teams use upgrades at all anymore in early and mid game. It is partly because the alien RTs are so weak and early hive is so easy to get up and gives you leap and blink. But it's also because the upgrade chambers are so weak and easy to kill. Earlier you could drown the upgrade chambers in clogs to hide them and give a little more survivability. Now that upgrade chamber were made bigger it's quite impossible to clog them up. Why were they even made bigger? They are harder to hide, easier to aim at, harder to clog up. Thus diminishing the need for tricky and skilled play. Is it possible to make them smaller again or buff their HP / Armor just a little bit?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
RT's I agree but missed the fact that a marine comm can recylcle extractors that are being attacked and recover some of the Res invested...alien khamm cant.
Not sure I agree with the Phase v Hive comparison...I have sen phase tech not much short of 2 min in..definately by 3 min. The benefit of phase tech (instant travel across massive distance (or escape hatch)) outstrips a hive as you still need to then research the upgrades.
Phase tech is available on 1 tech point so marines dont need to push a 2n tech point just harass res.
ScardyBob rather than double the cost...how about double or triple the research time (I still dont understand why they keep shortening these for either side)?
This way aliens can make a choice early and still expand but have to wait 4-5 minutes for leap to actually research.
Seems a simple way to slow down the tech hitting the field whilst still letting aliens expand.
Otherwise its a choice between leap, a hive or a couple of extractors...when really we could leave cost as is and just increase the time to research.
REsearch times rather than economy seem a better way to control the rate at which tech hits the floor (ie play around with research times and not just down..but upwards).
Phase and beacon are two ways for marines to instantly travel the map its bull######.
You attack their base they beacon defend it off, killing all the aliens, they rebuild a phase gate (IF it was destroyed) in like 2 secs and then phase, they're back at alien front door again before aliens can even regroup.
Phase and beacon are two ways for marines to instantly travel the map its bull######.
You attack their base they beacon defend it off, killing all the aliens, they rebuild a phase gate (IF it was destroyed) in like 2 secs and then phase, they're back at alien front door again before aliens can even regroup.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And lost 25 tres in the process while aliens lost none.
Zeikko has a point. Its strange to see matches with 12 destroyed RTs on marine side and no noticable downside from it. Aliens on the other hand, who have to be careful about their RTs ( unlike marines obviously ), suffer a lot from 2 or 3 killed harvester.
Additionally, since having two hives significantly reduces the number of "lynchpin" cysts it becomes considerably more difficult to orphan RTs, reducing the amount of Kham attention and resources required to prevent this. A one hive network is rife with SPOFs, a two hive network is much more robust. Increasing the ability to maintain the network and increasing Alien RT location defensibility would decrease this particular gap between fasthive and non-fasthive play dramatically.
I think you can see where I'm going with this.
<!--sizeo:1--><span style="font-size:8pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Cystgorge forever hydras ascendant<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
The only solution in my eyes is, to move Leap to Hive1 and massively increase the research time and the res costs. So you can decide of getting "early" Leap but not being able of researching upgrades for a while, getting upgrades first or a second hive for spore, bile, blink and more eggs.
Leap doesn't belong to Hive2 it is to effective simply because it gets an advantage for the default life form.
The only solution in my eyes is, to move Leap to Hive1 and massively increase the research time and the res costs. So you can decide of getting "early" Leap but not being able of researching upgrades for a while, getting upgrades first or a second hive for spore, bile, blink and more eggs.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Or you fix the skill based movement and allow skulks to scale well with the marines in skill early game. Leap can be kept powerful enough to combat jetpacks and to allow skulk to scale to late game.
As in general, balancing the skulk around walking/leap is going to cause skill scaling issues that show up already and are most likely going to get bigger as the skill differences grow.
This is the way that has been explored before, it's probably the easiest way to pull it off at this point.