Alien Commander vs Marine Commander
JediPhreaK
Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167028Members
Join Date: 2012-11-05 Member: 167028Members
From what I have seen and played so far 30+ Hours of Gaming I feel that the Alien Commander is vastly easier to play than Marine Commander. I feel that there needs to be some sort of balancing in this aspect of the game. Either work in less effort on the shoulders of Marine Commanders or more on the shoulders of the Alien Commanders.
An Alien commander can pretty much constantly build with virtually no help from his team and leave them to just rampage the Marines. Initially at the very least Marine Commanders have to rely heavily on their own forces to build for them. Later you can have swarms of Robots, but that is still a costly endeavor and they are easily dispatched.
The rest of the Alien team can pretty much leave the Commander to do his thing with the occasional request for Evolution upgrades, whereas the Marine Commander is required to provide constant support with new armories phase gates etc. I just feel that Alien Commanders have it too good at the moment, as far as possible solutions to this, perhaps double or even tipple the cost of placing cysts might slow them enough to balance the equation.
I would like to hear others ideas on evening the playing field for Marines vs. Aliens commanders from others as well as any thoughts etc any of you might have as well.
An Alien commander can pretty much constantly build with virtually no help from his team and leave them to just rampage the Marines. Initially at the very least Marine Commanders have to rely heavily on their own forces to build for them. Later you can have swarms of Robots, but that is still a costly endeavor and they are easily dispatched.
The rest of the Alien team can pretty much leave the Commander to do his thing with the occasional request for Evolution upgrades, whereas the Marine Commander is required to provide constant support with new armories phase gates etc. I just feel that Alien Commanders have it too good at the moment, as far as possible solutions to this, perhaps double or even tipple the cost of placing cysts might slow them enough to balance the equation.
I would like to hear others ideas on evening the playing field for Marines vs. Aliens commanders from others as well as any thoughts etc any of you might have as well.
Comments
Err no. Alien expansion is already much slower then marine expansion and if the alien commander is doing his job properly there is a good amount of things to do.
Seems about right.
I don't think you quite understand the dynamic between Marines and Aliens.
When I originally started commanding as Aliens I believed that because all my structures built autonomously Aliens where supposed to be the more aggressive...
I believed that my team should be out destroying all marines structures and I should be expanding out at ridiculous rates and capping as many RTs as I could.
However as aliens this is simply not the case:
The aliens have a MUCH harder time controlling the map than the marines do, they are forced to take 2-3 res towers and hold onto them for the majority of the game whilst the marines are able to spread out getting between 4-7 for the majority of the game.
This is because a res tower is a risky thing to have as aliens, firstly you have to cyst to them which costs res and then also pay the 10 res for the tower... this means that alien res towers cost MORE than marine ones. Secondly alien res towers have LESS health and if the cyst chain is broken they will die and thirdly even if the res tower earns its own cost + cyst cost back it has still been a res investment with no profit returns and thus it has been res NOT spent on upgrades for your team and thus has put your FURTHER behind techwise than the marine team.
Not really. Numerically they have less health, but Aliens do considerably more damage than the Marines, so...
Bottomline, imho the things that needs to be done is :
- A revision of prices of certain abilities
- Give a khammander more to do before hive 2 goes up. Aliens have to rely too much on their second hive for abilities and tech choice options. This is aside from the balance itself, its purely a matter of lack of things to do that might dull out khammanding early game.
A Marine Commander also requires a team that will listen more than an Alien commander does.
By that logic, skulk is easier to play than marine, since marine requires aim and the vast majority of new alien players just hold down attack and fling their mouse around.
Nice summary. I really liked the "anarchist" alien team play in NS1, it was a nice asymmetry in the team organization that added a lot of flavor to the game. It was a strength that should have been capitalized on instead of removed.
The trade-off between the gorge and the alien comm was also present during the whole beta, it was a competition between the "gorge is boring!" and the "alien comm has nothing to do!".
nuff said
beein a good alien comander > beein a good marine commander
and that's where and why the marine commander can be superior to his counterpart. Marine comm has more and effective tools to decisively alter a battle. Whereas an alien commander can only watch and hope his team can get the job done on their own. Alien comm is generally more relaxing to play but it doesn't always mean it's easier or better, rather it means that they're much more at the mercy of the team's (in)competence.
The sooner this becomes the standard, the better. I am continually surprised the more I see clan matches where aliens have a stay-at-home comm. I'd say if you shared the duties of a comm, you could probably go without having one for 80% of the game, at least the mid-early game when you don't need drifters as much for sure.
Commanders get no res, and have theirs spread to other players. Rather gimp one player and buff the others than gimp everyone equally.
Yes, alien commander is less APM intensive, but you should be getting out of the hive sometimes anyway. Khamm can also be listening all over the map for footsteps, arguably boring but you can always be doing it.
This has to go by the way. Built-in map hack is not exactly good design in a RTS game.
You are NOT only depending on the skill of your aliens. You can actually help them very effective, if you would start talking to them. Being in the top view and being able to see enemy movement gives you the power to coordinate and time the attacks of a group, like no alien on the ground. Tel them where to gather. Look when everyone is in position. Tell when exactly all should attack and the power of your aliens get multiplied.
Or just keep silently clicking those upgrade buttons and whine how boring alien com is.
€dit: To get this straight. I believe myself, that the alien com needs more options and interaction possibility to his troops. But "boring" is a big exaggeration.
You are NOT only depending on the skill of your aliens. You can actually help them very effective, if you would start talking to them. Being in the top view and being able to see enemy movement gives you the power to coordinate and time the attacks of a group, like no alien on the ground. Tel them where to gather. Look when everyone is in position. Tell when exactly all should attack and the power of your aliens get multiplied.
Or just keep silently clicking those upgrade buttons and whine how boring alien com is.
€dit: To get this straight. I believe myself, that the alien com needs more options and interaction possibility to his troops. But "boring" is a big exaggeration.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed, I do a fair bit of Khamming myself and I like playing as a gorge in games as well as lerk or skulk, yet I hear all the complains about how "boring" Khamming and being a gorge is. It could use some love, but like I said before, its not that bad as some people are making it to be. NS2 is not NS1. Combat healing as a gorge for one is very underrated and yet so helpful to keep skulks and other lifeforms alive (its like medpack spam). Yes you'll get shot at while healing but thats just less bullets that will go into skulks and it gives skulks free shots at the marines. With some experience you'll survive most battles.
The gorge went to a more combat orientated role and some people can't seem to get over that since they keep comparing NS2 with NS1. Also remember that carapace gives a gorge 75 more armor, thats huge. Most of the construction stuff went to the alien commander and gorge has become a support/artillery/off tank for aliens. Try to bait marines in running after you while skulks eat them from behind. :)
I think both the Khammander and the gorge are distinct enough in their roles in the team.
Alien commanding requires 100% attention throughout the game. You need to keep expanding constantly, and keep your team informed on where you're expanding, what the next plan is and decide where the next structure will go.
Alien commanders can't drop medpacks, but they can use the heal wave feature in the crag, they can use the Shade's ink (super effective) or hallucinations. If one of the upgrades gets destroyed you must to redrop it as soon as possible, and much much more. If you're not in the hive to do all those things, your team will most likely lose, that's why I wouldn't want to end up on your team while you're commanding!
You are also responsible to keep your team motivated, to inform them of all the activities and strategy on how to win the round. There's many more neat things commander can do, unfortunately I am not aware of all the tricks and features yet. For example as a commander you can basically create new eggs anywhere on infestation which will result aliens to spawn in a certain area. You can create bunch of eggs outside of one of marine's bases in order to increase pressure.
Once our commander somehow teleported a whip into marines' base. I yet have to find out how he did that. But I am learning about new tricks everyday. Alien commanding is very exciting and different from Marine commanding. It's fun in its own way and I am glad that it's not identical to marine commanding. I am glad they put it in NS2. It's a big improvement over NS1.
So perhaps, alien commanding isn't boring and you are just a boring commander. ;)
(This message is directed to anyone who thinks alien commanding is boring and decide to spend 50% of their time on the ground instead of commanding)
I'm pretty sure it's only near cysts, but I could be wrong. If it is just near cysts, I think it's fine as drifters are a bit expensive and not always viable.
Alien commanding requires 100% attention throughout the game. You need to keep expanding constantly, and keep your team informed on where you're expanding, what the next plan is and decide where the next structure will go.
Alien commanders can't drop medpacks, but they can use the heal wave feature in the crag, they can use the Shade's ink (super effective) or hallucinations. If one of the upgrades gets destroyed you must to redrop it as soon as possible, and much much more. If you're not in the hive to do all those things, your team will most likely lose, that's why I wouldn't want to end up on your team while you're commanding!
You are also responsible to keep your team motivated, to inform them of all the activities and strategy on how to win the round. There's many more neat things commander can do, unfortunately I am not aware of all the tricks and features yet. For example as a commander you can basically create new eggs anywhere on infestation which will result aliens to spawn in a certain area. You can create bunch of eggs outside of one of marine's bases in order to increase pressure.
Once our commander somehow teleported a whip into marines' base. I yet have to find out how he did that. But I am learning about new tricks everyday. Alien commanding is very exciting and different from Marine commanding. It's fun in its own way and I am glad that it's not identical to marine commanding. I am glad they put it in NS2. It's a big improvement over NS1.
So perhaps, alien commanding isn't boring and you are just a boring commander. ;)
(This message is directed to anyone who thinks alien commanding is boring and decide to spend 50% of their time on the ground instead of commanding)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As a relatively new guy to Natural Selection 2 (haven't played Natural Selection 1) I completely agree with you.
Having played both Commanders and Khammanders I feel like the Khamamnder requires a lot of pro-active gameplay than the Commander (and most certainly a functioning mike). Even after 3 hives, all biomorphs and upgrades have been given to my team I find myself still "flying" around the map, strategically placing drifters as sentries, putting shifts and crags down in the right spot as the team advances, constantly alerting and updating the team of events/upgrades/ninja 'rines etc.
Sometimes I feel like the responsibilities of the Khammander outweighs that of Commander. Feels like if you're a mediocre Commander (without a mic) your team can still pull through. If anything I feel like it seems to tend towards a more passive gameplay with Commander, building and upgrading what my team requests but otherwise just doing my business (that's not to say I don't take an active approach as Commander, but there's distinct feeling of less pressure than Khammander). But a mediocre Khammander will damn his team to oblivion and failure and be on the receiving end of his comrade's "blam" sticks.
Just because most people don't know what is inside the alien tech tree's doesn't mean the alien's command job is necessarily easier. It's actually a much more active roll than the Marines commander in some ways. For instance, you can cyst spam an area where the marines are pushing just before an alien attack. Skulks rush in, and you can place a healing mist (Nutrient Mist) once you have two hives to heal that group of aliens (Place the mist almost directly on top of a newly minted cyst, it will still work after a second or two). If you're smart, you should have a drifter at least somewhere close by that can then use another ability (3 T.Res, can't recall the name. Primal Rage?) that supercharges alien attack damage and attack speed. It turns a skulk from a biting machine into a buzz saw. All the while the marines can't build in that area until they clear the infestation, which limits the marine commander in his options to build in that area. You construct forward bases with shifts+egg drops+crags, maybe even if a whip if you're rich and the location can make use of one (Melee turret, works well in close quarters without a good LOS).
Now imagine doing all of that in three different locations at the same time, and you might get an idea of what being a good alien commander means. On top of all that, he's going to be constantly upgrading and expanding towards res nodes to keep you guys fed. The alien commander is the sole authority for the Aliens entire map except for clogs and hydra's from gorge's. The Marines commander will need to rely on his team to not only kill skulks but to build his structures. (At least until he has MAC units, these tend to distinguish a good Marine Commander from the best Marine Commanders. If I see these being used well, I get worried.)
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Once our commander somehow teleported a whip into marines' base. I yet have to find out how he did that. But I am learning about new tricks everyday. Alien commanding is very exciting and different from Marine commanding. It's fun in its own way and I am glad that it's not identical to marine commanding. I am glad they put it in NS2. It's a big improvement over NS1.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are two ways to do that as far as I know. Each whip has an 'uproot' command that lets you move it while it's your selected target. Alternatively, you can upgrade a shift structure to teleport your whip to another location. It has an area of effect around the shift for the teleport, so it only works if the whip is near the shift you upgraded. He probably put down a ton of cysts in their base as well, since I believe they can only be teleported onto infestation. Perhaps you can root them somewhere there isn't any, since whips don 't seem to die when off infestation. To be honest, this is often not terribly useful. It can help if you screw up and put a whip at the wrong spot, but otherwise it's just to screw with the marines heads.
The people that want gorges to be builders need to understand that the gorges roll is different now. It is it's own forward healing base/siege turret/area denial monster. You provide forward assistance and a fallback zone for aliens to regroup at. Later game you provide the bulk of the aliens pushing power that negates the strong marine turtle. New gorges will need to learn what area's are the most beneficial to clog up, and I always try to get some folks to go gorge at the get-go and clog important junctions. The OP part? All those abilities cost you 10 res. Seems steep when all you have is heal, spit, clog, and hydra, but when you unlock bile bomb suddenly it's amazing. One of many reasons the second hive is 100% necessary.
Kharaa commander can hear where marines are no matter if they are on cyst or not, this alone gives you always something to be doing as you should be informing people about marine locations before they actually get to a res node or hive.
There are afew things i dislike from both sides of commanders, some have already been mentioned and it is a big deal.
1/ Marines are slow expanding, relying on marines too heavily. As Kharaa com i could expand to a double res so quickly off the bat that by the times marines even get there i would have both res nodes already up and going.
2/ Kharaa commander isnt as interactive with fellow team players as the marine commander is with dropping meds and all. There is only so much the drifters myst is going to do and i see it more as something to use when they are taking out power nodes or something, the other stuff isnt as usefull. I havnt been able to use bone wall as much mainly because you have to use it on infestation and it really doesnt last that long at all.
Gameplay for both commanders are extremely different. On the marine side you do alot more babysitting of players and giving individual orders. Kharaa commander is pretty much expand then look into the abyss trying to figure out where marines are going.
This is actually what I enjoy about the marines. As a grunt on the ground you really feel like you are building toward a victory. You get the feeling that you are apart of something larger, with a larger goal than just go kill some stuff. Marines may have a slower style, because of how the commander and troops must be in perfect harmony as they move towards victory. But this is why I love playing the marines.
Drifter mist is for damage, but you also have nutrient mist which is a med pack over time. Bone wall is situational, but very useful in it's situation. I've killed a ton of marines with bone wall. Once you learn the reload/fire timing on a grenade launcher, you can pop up a bone wall right in a GL's face. Watch him blow himself into oblivion. Or, more commonly, block off a marines escape route when he has two skulks chasing him. Follow up with drifter+nutrient mist.
Hmmm i dont know if thats correct, Nutrient mist only speeds up gestation, i dont believe it heals at all. Also the drifter mist only speeds up attack speed, not their actual dmg. Using bone wall to fling back afew nades doesnt seem worth it. I doubt it would kill the marine as it doesnt do that much dmg and im sure once he sees the wall he wont keep shooting.
I think you are making these abilities sound more useful than what a straight up medkit, ammo and scan is for marines.
Im commanding alot, mainly marines (though it keeps annoying me... Its so nice to watch a group of marines getting insta killed by a skulk horde from above in HD on widescreen)
Anyways, the Marine commander really has a huge impact on the game, its easy to learn but soooo hard to master, theres always room for improvement.
But Alien commander? i dunno really, you can always decide how you go through the tech tree, but compared to the marine commanders challenge (where do i place sentries, when do i get what, place a new armory at every corner and all the while keep dropping medpacks and ammo on your slaves)
Its extremely stressing in my opinion.
I enjoy it but it gets on my nerves after 2-3 rounds and i need a break >.<
Aliens on the other hand are rather relaxing (if your team is half-decent)