Comeback ability
gnoarch
Join Date: 2012-08-29 Member: 156802Members, Reinforced - Gold
Join Date: 2012-08-29 Member: 156802Members, Reinforced - Gold
<div class="IPBDescription">Is it too easy for aliens?</div>Hey,
I just played a very good game on Mineshaft. I joined when Marines were down to Repair, Control and the pilot and Gap RT. But what seemed to be the standard 10 Minute last stand became an incredibly good match. We pushed deposit for like 30 Minutes with Exo JP and ARCs until we finally killed the Hive.
After that we also liberated DRES and finally killed Sorting hive almost 60 Minutes after I joined.
But then began the misery. From this point on forward it was impossible for marines to push Cave, because as soon as some marines moved out in one direction, aliens attacked power nodes in all other places. I don't know if it's because the map layout of mineshaft allows so many attack paths for aliens in this situation but we ended up doing nothing else as to rush from hive to hive, killing off infestation and rebuilding Pgs and power nodes.
As the aliens had the main routes to Cave fortified by ship/crag/shift stations we HAD to do a forceful push with at least 4 marines to break through. But at the same time we could not spare so many guys as there were 5 places to defend and we had only 7 marines on the field.
So of course we lost Sorting when we had to beacon to repair(seriously, who the ###### placed the power node in Sorting? Whats the logic behind putting the single most important structure in the worst defendable spot of the room).
From this Moment when Aliens had 2 hives again we had lost. They had 4 or 5 gorges at any time which is insanely good defence and at the same time continued their attacks on power nodes.
So in the End we lost a Game despite having the upper hand for good 60 minutes. Very frustrating. I know, a good marine team would split up, e.g. 2 ppl pure def, 3 ppl push hive and 1 guy as runner to help whatever squad is pressed to hard.
BUT this game still is played on pub severs and I think you all know it is near impossible to achieve this level of koordination within a pub marine team. It is just not going to happen. EVER.
For the Alien team on the other hand this kind of constant harassment almost comes natura as skulks dont want to die at „the front“ all the time and therefor instinctively go for targets like power nodes/pgs as soon as they realize the marine team can not defend all hives at the same time.
So the point of this story is that I really think it is too easy for aliens to come back from situations like this. The reason behin this I think is the Power Node mechanic. There are two ways to look at the problem: 1) is too easy for aliens to kill power nodes or 2) the impact of killing a power node is too grave.
I do get the idea behind the power node and I think generally it's a good one. But I really think as the game progresses the weak spot the node represents to the marine team grows bigger and bigger as there is no proper way of defending it despite having a JP marine constantly watching it. If a onos and 1 or 2 skulks decide to attack it there HAVE to be more marines ready to phase in or the node is lost in matter of seconds. And I'm speaking of a 1 Hive situation here. With bile bomb it only needs 2 skulks and 1 gorge to kill a node in no time.
Aside from these balance issues I just don't think that it makes much sense in a late game context, that the fate of the marine team depends on a crappy 2000HP structure so heavily...
So I think there should be a late game tech for marines to either be able to properly defend power node or to get more independend. Two examples are:
- Electrify. This could work quite well, as it makes it near impossible for 1 or 2 skulks to singlehandedly conquer a Hive while not affecting the effectifeness of gorges/Onos. To avoid it being too strong at the beginning, it could be an AA 2 Hive upgrade…
- Phase Gate emergency generator pack. A Tier 2 building which powers a PG. This way you’d have to kill power node and PG generator pack to disable the PG, while beacon already would be disabled by killing the node. Also there could be a time limit until the generator runs our of fuel and therefore the PG is disabled. This would still force the marines to defend nodes and repair them, but the loss oft he power node in a Hive wouldn’t be that drastic and you could put the PG+Emergency pack at a spot which is better defendable by marines/turrets than the Node (SORTING!!!)
I just played a very good game on Mineshaft. I joined when Marines were down to Repair, Control and the pilot and Gap RT. But what seemed to be the standard 10 Minute last stand became an incredibly good match. We pushed deposit for like 30 Minutes with Exo JP and ARCs until we finally killed the Hive.
After that we also liberated DRES and finally killed Sorting hive almost 60 Minutes after I joined.
But then began the misery. From this point on forward it was impossible for marines to push Cave, because as soon as some marines moved out in one direction, aliens attacked power nodes in all other places. I don't know if it's because the map layout of mineshaft allows so many attack paths for aliens in this situation but we ended up doing nothing else as to rush from hive to hive, killing off infestation and rebuilding Pgs and power nodes.
As the aliens had the main routes to Cave fortified by ship/crag/shift stations we HAD to do a forceful push with at least 4 marines to break through. But at the same time we could not spare so many guys as there were 5 places to defend and we had only 7 marines on the field.
So of course we lost Sorting when we had to beacon to repair(seriously, who the ###### placed the power node in Sorting? Whats the logic behind putting the single most important structure in the worst defendable spot of the room).
From this Moment when Aliens had 2 hives again we had lost. They had 4 or 5 gorges at any time which is insanely good defence and at the same time continued their attacks on power nodes.
So in the End we lost a Game despite having the upper hand for good 60 minutes. Very frustrating. I know, a good marine team would split up, e.g. 2 ppl pure def, 3 ppl push hive and 1 guy as runner to help whatever squad is pressed to hard.
BUT this game still is played on pub severs and I think you all know it is near impossible to achieve this level of koordination within a pub marine team. It is just not going to happen. EVER.
For the Alien team on the other hand this kind of constant harassment almost comes natura as skulks dont want to die at „the front“ all the time and therefor instinctively go for targets like power nodes/pgs as soon as they realize the marine team can not defend all hives at the same time.
So the point of this story is that I really think it is too easy for aliens to come back from situations like this. The reason behin this I think is the Power Node mechanic. There are two ways to look at the problem: 1) is too easy for aliens to kill power nodes or 2) the impact of killing a power node is too grave.
I do get the idea behind the power node and I think generally it's a good one. But I really think as the game progresses the weak spot the node represents to the marine team grows bigger and bigger as there is no proper way of defending it despite having a JP marine constantly watching it. If a onos and 1 or 2 skulks decide to attack it there HAVE to be more marines ready to phase in or the node is lost in matter of seconds. And I'm speaking of a 1 Hive situation here. With bile bomb it only needs 2 skulks and 1 gorge to kill a node in no time.
Aside from these balance issues I just don't think that it makes much sense in a late game context, that the fate of the marine team depends on a crappy 2000HP structure so heavily...
So I think there should be a late game tech for marines to either be able to properly defend power node or to get more independend. Two examples are:
- Electrify. This could work quite well, as it makes it near impossible for 1 or 2 skulks to singlehandedly conquer a Hive while not affecting the effectifeness of gorges/Onos. To avoid it being too strong at the beginning, it could be an AA 2 Hive upgrade…
- Phase Gate emergency generator pack. A Tier 2 building which powers a PG. This way you’d have to kill power node and PG generator pack to disable the PG, while beacon already would be disabled by killing the node. Also there could be a time limit until the generator runs our of fuel and therefore the PG is disabled. This would still force the marines to defend nodes and repair them, but the loss oft he power node in a Hive wouldn’t be that drastic and you could put the PG+Emergency pack at a spot which is better defendable by marines/turrets than the Node (SORTING!!!)
Comments
As for power nodes themselves, they do take a bit of effort to destroy (2000 hp and 1000 armor), a lot less then a room full of cysts in most situations (mature cysts have 550 hp and 0 armor). And cysts cost resources, where power nodes do not (I think. I could be wrong, but it's what I hear people say a lot. xD ). If you were pushing them that hard for that long, your team should have had phase gates, obs, and turrets up in every important room, and turrets/obs around key resource towers and power nodes. As soon as they start pulling those backdoor attacks you have a few options. Either send people back, or push harder (or combine the two. Generally one or two marines can clear out skulks and such from the power nodes in a properly fortified room).
I kind of like the generator idea, although I see open to a bit of abuse, even if it's only a temporary solution. They could possibly build them, and then just block them off from attacks. Suppose it would mostly depend on how long it lasts. Although in reality, most aliens hit phase gates first so marines can't keep flooding in. Then resource towers, then power nodes or whatever else is juicy in the area. (excluding sentry batteries, those are usually hit first so it's safer to push the other targets)
This sounds more like your team just couldn't get it together enough to finish the job.
This
Failure of command you only need a few marines to guard an arc train. Nuke the alien structures and attack from multiple fronts.
If they have whips use flame throwers
I think the real problem is that pub play could be better organized in some sort of match making way. I have begun to do gathers myself but the majority of players dont. A few think we need to work on creating organize play as a community. Here are some thoughts.
experimental: For newbs commanders and people wanting to learn the basic. Veterans out of the goodness of there hearts can teach.
pub play: current situation
gather pub play: where u choose teams for two rounds or so you can get to know players and such. kinda like a recreation soccer league.
gather competitive play: For people who want to take it a step higher. ENSL is a good place to go.
Finally clan matches, show matches, tournament, and etc
i guess experimental is kinda a special gather pub play.
TLDR; i think ill make a post about this lol.
funny, I find that to be the mark of a good map. ;)
@OP: Cave is easily the worst hive location on any map anywhere. Its impossible to defend against a marine assault due to the long sight lines to the hive itself and the large overhead area that JP's can exploit for their purposes.
Without having been there, my guess is that with 60 minutes of lead time, the aliens had amassed a huge bank of T/P-Res that they couldn't burn through in the final siege... and once they got a ninja hive, they crapped out onos and ran amok. Also, the cave hive was surrounded by crags and whips with the marines using GL's?
Without those in play, I don't see the aliens holding cave... at all. If the Marines went AR/Flamer + JP and the odd exo for firesupport, and focused on killing the hive, there really isn't much for a gorge/skulk army to do. Exo's can be a bad investment if there's bombard whips and gorges with easy LOS, but otherwise they are amazing for holding the forward PG and associated infrastructure.
If my marines are having a particularly hard time of it in the final push, I build a forward Advanced armory and Proto near the siege (north point or cavern in this case) so they can quickly restock... and if you're sitting on 6 RT's, you can drop JP's and exos for them to grab too.
The harassing skulks can not actually kill command chairs faster than you can back-build them with Macs. If your commander was beaconing infantry away from the siege at cave, he was over reacting. SG formations near power nodes and a dedicated defender to pick off/slow down the ninjas should have been enough.
I know it was the marine's fault, it was our game to loose.
But plz also think about this:
The marine team wasn't a bad one. Actually I think it was at least 80% of how good pub teams ever get on a public server. The team almost always followed orders, we had several guys with really high points and decent K/D ratio(which means ppl harassed alien buildings and could aim alright). Every time we did a push with exos everyone had a welder as well as there being macs. I think we used at least 30 ARCs in the course of the game and so on...
My problem is that this was one of the 10% of games where both teams actually knew what they were doing without one team being stacked. I just doesn't get that much better.
So I'm asking if it would hurt the game to implement a feature that helps marine teams to not loose their hive power so easily. I don't think this feature would have to collide with "pro" play at all. E.g. if this tech costs 50 res and is only really helping against skulks then for a good marine team it would be stupid to get because a JP SG marine who watches all nodes is waaaay cheaper. But on a "normal" team this option could be worrth far more than 2 more gls or something. I mean just electrifying this goddamn sorting node would have been worth 100 res. (why is it placed down there anyway?!?)
So what I'm trying to say is: if a team with 100% skill is as good as any team gets, the game might be balanced for teams above 60% skill. But most games on public servers are played at around 30% to 40%. And in this skill range I feel killing off a single power node is too easy for aliens taking into account the amount of coordination the attacking/defending needs from both teams.
Aliens also have a similar problem, with a jp/gl taking out all of the alien upgrades. Except they have far less ability to protect themselves. The answer is when you have an advantage, exploit it.