Marine recall ability bad for marines?
Velfi
Join Date: 2013-01-22 Member: 181236Members
Join Date: 2013-01-22 Member: 181236Members
<div class="IPBDescription">(regarding its use in pub matches)</div>It seems that in many <b>pub matches</b> that I play, marines can easily lose the game due to an unwise recall by the commander. The easiest way (in my opinion) to end an exo push is to force a recall. The lone exos are then easily killed by skulks and gorges, and the marines lose a great deal of resources. It seems too easy sometimes to trick a marine commander into consolidating his forces, and a badly timed recall can ruin a good defense or end a good push. It's frustrating to be marching on a hive, only to be recalled to base to deal with three skulks.
Obviously, the issue is decided by the experience of your commander, but I wonder if recall could be changed in a way so that it wasn't such a double-edged sword. For example: what if the ability shortened spawn times at the cost of resources?
I don't have a good solution; How do you guys feel about it?
<b>TL;DR Do you like the recall ability? Y/N</b>
Obviously, the issue is decided by the experience of your commander, but I wonder if recall could be changed in a way so that it wasn't such a double-edged sword. For example: what if the ability shortened spawn times at the cost of resources?
I don't have a good solution; How do you guys feel about it?
<b>TL;DR Do you like the recall ability? Y/N</b>
Comments
Without it marines would lose pretty much every time. They cannot move as quickly as aliens.
Only problem is inexperienced commanders using it when they don't need to. However aliens will always try to deceive the commander, so if they want to get marines away from a hive, they can encourage a beacon by doing a fake rush.
Edit: On cancelling, its fine now without it. In NS1 you could cancel, problem was that it made alien rushes so tricky. If the beacon rang, then you can either stay (and likely die), or run (and the commander will always cancel, you achieve nothing).
Obviously, the issue is decided by the experience of your commander, but I wonder if recall could be changed in a way so that it wasn't such a double-edged sword. For example: what if the ability shortened spawn times at the cost of resources?
I don't have a good solution; How do you guys feel about it?
<b>TL;DR Do you like the recall ability? Y/N</b><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i'd rather lose an exo push than the main.
shortening spawn times, as if pushing in on marine bases weren't difficult enough as it is.
the mechanic is not at fault if the marine commander makes a bad beacon, that's simply called being outplayed.
It remains to be seen if it would be used intelligently..... Imagine a beacon where all your marines said no.
The whole <i>point</i> of the ability is that it is a double edged sword with benefits and drawbacks. If you changed that, it would be less interesting.
You're right that misusing the ability can hurt a pub marine team badly. But, so what? If you're bad at the game, you lose. That's how it should work.
for me this would be pointless. most of the time when i'm trying to draw a beacon, i'm a gorge and optimally i'm with an onos and a few other gorges, but most of the time it's either me or me and another gorge... and i don't expect to survive the process.
i can just see it, 2 gorges run into your base with an onos, you "fake" a beacon, and the onos runs for the exit while the gorges just continue to bile your damn power node... at which point the onos turns around because nobody mass teleported and you're forced to really beacon... except you've wasted too much time by now and you no longer have power... in your main. gg
One question: Would you change the rules of chess, because it is to easy to make mistakes?
The whole concept of a game is, that the better player is winning... That the player that does less mistakes is the winner in the end. Reducing the amount of possible errors you can make in a game, just makes it stale and boring. A game is even better, when you can mislead your enemy to make mistakes. This is the quintessence of outplaying / outsmarting your enemy.
This said, I'm absolutely fine with the beacon mechanic. Not so much with other mechanics that unintentionally lure you into errors. Like playing defensive as marines. Or starting with an early robo-factory for sentries.
There is no counter.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you're doing an Exo push your commander should have a B team of 2-3 marines camping warp gates, ready to be the front line against a counter attack. RTS is like Chess you play each move with every move after it in mind.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To the person who suggested you have 2-3 marines camping a base when EXOs are out on a push, just how they heck are you doing that? On an 8 player team you have 1 commander, your 3 marines sitting on their asses in base, leaving 4 marines for assault. Let's say 2 EXO and 2 welders. Against 7 or 8 aliens (since the comm can easily jump out and not diminish alien effectiveness in the short term) those four players are toast. Unless you are suggesting 4 marines should be able to take on 8 aliens.
EXOs should beacon with the team. If aliens can force a beacon then the removal of the EXO from the front line should be the marine's punishment, since it means a LONG walk back with the slowest units in the game. Instead, if marines beacon it's game over. People have actually started to say "gg" now when marines beacon on an EXO push. It's become that predictable.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The whole point of the ability is that it is a double edged sword with benefits and drawbacks. If you changed that, it would be less interesting.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Losing the game is a double-edged sword? No, sorry, that's a forfeit button.
Having the EXOs beacon with the team would be an acceptable "double-edged sword" since not only would the aliens prevent an attack on their hive, they would force the marines to move their EXOs back to base. They would essentially 'reset' the marine attack. Instead, beacon becomes a 'GG' button. How could anyone see that as a 'good' ability?
EXOs need to beacon with the team. Let marines loose their map position and be forced to walk the long way back. That would be fair. Giving the aliens a free "I win" button when they force a beacon when EXOs are out totally breaks the game mechanics.
Despite your GG-stories, I have won games with Exos. But that is the same anecdotal evidence you claim to prove your point.
It's been quite some time since I have been a Commander, so please forgive my ignorance.
How exactly does the beacon function work; what are the requirements to beacon marines to an obs? Could it be functionally used to move marines from one place to another for means of an attack, such as drop an OBS somewhere close to an occupied hive and beacon to it to save travel time? Or does the Obs that you beacon from have to be on a tech point with a CC?
How exactly does the beacon function work; what are the requirements to beacon marines to an obs? Could it be functionally used to move marines from one place to another for means of an attack, such as drop an OBS somewhere close to an occupied hive and beacon to it to save travel time? Or does the Obs that you beacon from have to be on a tech point with a CC?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Obs needs to be at a tech point with CC, yes. The beacon costs 10 res and takes about 2-3 seconds to teleport the team in after pressing the button. The Obs is also pretty vulnerable with only 770 HP (10-11 Skulk bites, or 4 Onos hits), so if the aliens decide to go for it, they can tear it down before it goes off if the Commander notices the attack only after it started.
As for beaconing Exos: it would add too much forgiveness to marines. They could just throw all their stuff at the enemy base and if all welders got killed, they could get their 75 res investments easily back to base to repair them and start again. Aliens don't have such a thing, an Onos can die pretty easily after a failed rush since jetpacking marines can chase it down easily.
It would also make a base attack much harder for aliens if marines could suddenly have a bunch of killing machines for defense out of nowhere.
Marines have usually a Phase Gate at their sieging front anyway, so most of the team can get back to support the Exos pretty quickly after a beacon, unless the aliens took out the base power after the beacon or killed the base Phase Gate.
As for beaconing Exos: it would add too much forgiveness to marines. They could just throw all their stuff at the enemy base and if all welders got killed, they could get their 75 res investments easily back to base to repair them and start again. Aliens don't have such a thing, an Onos can die pretty easily after a failed rush since jetpacking marines can chase it down easily.
It would also make a base attack much harder for aliens if marines could suddenly have a bunch of killing machines for defense out of nowhere.
Marines have usually a Phase Gate at their sieging front anyway, so most of the team can get back to support the Exos pretty quickly after a beacon, unless the aliens took out the base power after the beacon or killed the base Phase Gate.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ok, so it functions just like I assumed it did.
I don't think it would be game breaking to allow it to beacon EXOs. Sure, it can pull the marine teams BEACON out of the fire, but won't that forced retreat also give respite to the alien location the marines were targeting? Also, the "force a beacon" ploy the aliens use would still be in play. Additionally, It would make the Obs a primary target like it was in NS1.
While it would also add more attention to the "I Win" power node button in the targeted tech point, I don't think it would really damage the game as a whole to allow EXOs to beacon. It would be far worse if they could beacon anywhere rather than just a tech point. And as stated, those EXOs have to remake their pilgrimage to whatever hive they were attacking too.
However I can see why they put in this restriction. In principle having EXOs beacon *could* (in theory) make marines unbeatable since any time you rush marine base they can phase in their entire team - including some bullet spewing EXOs. In theory, it seems like preventing EXOs from beaconing is reasonable. The problem is that is doesn't look at the impact that prohibition has, nor does it consider the impact repeated beacons would have.
First off, the main flaw with the contention that allowing EXOs to beacon would prevent aliens from attacking a marine base is that each beacon comes with a cost. While one might suggest that 10 res isn't expensive, you can't beacon repeatedly since you are going to run out of res very fast. (Unless you have the entire map under your control, in which case you've won the game already)
So if aliens attack marine start, the team beacons, EXOs with their guns blazing. Now aliens head to tech point number two and do the same, so marines beacon again. Sooner or later one of two things will happen.
-marines will run out of resources
-aliens will beat the beacon and destroy the obs or power
Meanwhile, every single time the marines beacon, the aliens are guaranteed that their hives will be safe. <b>A marine team that beacons becomes completely defensive.</b> While marines are strong defensively, <b>they can't win on defence</b>. If aliens can keep the marines beaconing they can be destroying marine extractors and auxiliary bases not at tech points. Pretty soon the marines have no res to beacon, and so they'll start losing assets. All the while their slow EXOs are unable to make it to a hive since they keep getting recalled.
Frankly I think having the EXOs beacon would make it harder for the marines to win, but it would also make it harder for the marines to <i>lose</i>. That's the issue right now is that a beacon can decide the game, and it shouldn't. Not IMHO anyway. There is no forgiveness with a beacon causing marines to lose their entire assault squad. It's a game ender. At least a beacon with the EXOs gives them a chance to recover, even if they have been set back being forced to return to spawn with the slowest unit in the game.
2 rts take 30 seconds, 3rts ~20, and 4 ~15seconds... so yeah.
funding beacons isn't a problem unless the game was over 30 minutes ago anyway.
Shortening respawns wouldn't work unless we're talking about there being an IP limit per Tech Point (otherwise you get the same 3+ IP stalemates we have now.) But fast respawns would completely change beacon's role, removing its ability to work as a reaction, so even with all those significant changes I don't know that it'd work out well. (That said, an IP Limit Per Tech Point should probably happen anyway.)
Canceling beacons would require that the full resource cost of the beacon is still expended (as the other guy rightly mentions), and maybe that's an improvement but it honestly doesn't feel like a massive change to the original stated problem.
At the end of the day, as yet another poster mentioned, you have to understand that massively over-committing is a Very Bad Ideaâ„¢. I regularly point out to teams that some defense needs to stay at home to ensure our push can continue to have welder support (either that or you need plenty of MACs)
Make "emergency beacon" a researched option from the observatory, and then an upgrade for the command chairs. Then you would click on the command chair and issue the beacon from there.
This would mean you don't need an Obs for every CC, but you'd also have to upgrade the CC to perform the recall if you wanted that ability. The price for the research and upgrade could be balanced around this to a certain degree so as not to make it too expensive or too cheap to have CC's with the upgrade but no nearby obs.
Given the fragility of power nodes and the complete lack of counter to Onos (except having 4 marines for each Onos in a fight) beacon is essential. If theres no beacon you lose there and then. Beacon at least delays your loss untill the aliens hit the other base/s.
If it is accidental recalls that bother you then yes the beacon mechanic could be better/ more straightforward. Alowing it to be activated on the easy to find/click command station rather than having to set up hotkeys for hard to find obs would be helpful for more casual comms.
I like this guy.
And if you're selecting your observatories to scan, you're doing something wrong. Scan is available in the support menu. E>F>Click (assuming default bindings [for when you can change them]).
Knowing when to beacon and when not to is an important commander skill.
And to sum it all up, the best use of an Exo is on defense. Ain't nobody messes with Big Exo's base. Ain't nobody.
... just no.
you clearly have no understanding of balance.
10 extra res to activate 5-6 nanoshields... an ability that cost 5 res per cast...
you clearly have no understanding of balance.
10 extra res to activate 5-6 nanoshields... an ability that cost 5 res per cast...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd beacon the to the base NOT being eaten, and herd everyone through the phase gate.
Maybe that's just me.
However I can see why they put in this restriction. In principle having EXOs beacon *could* (in theory) make marines unbeatable since any time you rush marine base they can phase in their entire team - including some bullet spewing EXOs. In theory, it seems like preventing EXOs from beaconing is reasonable. The problem is that is doesn't look at the impact that prohibition has, nor does it consider the impact repeated beacons would have.
First off, the main flaw with the contention that allowing EXOs to beacon would prevent aliens from attacking a marine base is that each beacon comes with a cost. While one might suggest that 10 res isn't expensive, you can't beacon repeatedly since you are going to run out of res very fast. (Unless you have the entire map under your control, in which case you've won the game already)
So if aliens attack marine start, the team beacons, EXOs with their guns blazing. Now aliens head to tech point number two and do the same, so marines beacon again. Sooner or later one of two things will happen.
-marines will run out of resources
-aliens will beat the beacon and destroy the obs or power
Meanwhile, every single time the marines beacon, the aliens are guaranteed that their hives will be safe. <b>A marine team that beacons becomes completely defensive.</b> While marines are strong defensively, <b>they can't win on defence</b>. If aliens can keep the marines beaconing they can be destroying marine extractors and auxiliary bases not at tech points. Pretty soon the marines have no res to beacon, and so they'll start losing assets. All the while their slow EXOs are unable to make it to a hive since they keep getting recalled.
Frankly I think having the EXOs beacon would make it harder for the marines to win, but it would also make it harder for the marines to <i>lose</i>. That's the issue right now is that a beacon can decide the game, and it shouldn't. Not IMHO anyway. There is no forgiveness with a beacon causing marines to lose their entire assault squad. It's a game ender. At least a beacon with the EXOs gives them a chance to recover, even if they have been set back being forced to return to spawn with the slowest unit in the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Simple reason to not allow exo's to beacon is that you would almost never see an exo die unless a comm was lax and didn't beacon them back to safety.
Just think about how much people moaned about feign death and fades....can you imagine if feign death had ever been as useful for the fat slow Onos (who generally just died twice as he was too fat and slow).
Sorry exo's not beaconing is for balance in a major way, you can send 2 marines with FT's and some macs to guard those exo's and render any alien attacking other than onos nothing more than a nuisance.
I think some people have some serious "I WANT TO WIN" issues in this thread. Marine builds are continuing to evolve as players learn how the side works and what steps are required to make it work. If you don't like beacons then don't beacon.
I have won many games due to a few well placed beacons. I have rallied whole teams for massive game-ending pushes through a well-timed beacon. I have trolled the hell out of my team during the end game with about fifty chained beacons and begun a twenty minute troll fest by about six different commanders from my team (and the alien team haha) armoury spamming and recycling randomly all over the place. Beacon isn't the problem.
If you want those exos reinforced then keep building phase gates near them. All you need is one guy who does it for you while the push is on. If you want your exos to live then they will fall back when the team beacons until marines reinforce them. If you want to keep them alive during a beacon then have 1-2 extra MACs saved nearby (out of any bilebombing zones) so then they have some welding meanwhile. In short, analyse the situation, prepare a solution, give it about 10-20 games before people start to get used to what you're doing.
Ahahahah seriously you dont see a difference between beaconing a marine with a GL and being able ot beacon exo's?
As I said...do you remember the complaints about feign death and how fades where impossible to kill? Well that same issue would be present for exo's....except they are a lot stronger in both delivering and taking damage than a fade was.
Reason Feign death was not seen as OP'd for Onos was it rarely helped you (as you where too slow to move out of firing line).
Reason why beacon and PG's are not seen as OP'd is because they dont help the strongest unit in the game.
You do though bring up a point that I and others have raised about economy drains (and the inbalance that recylcing weapons (and structures) has).
Marines lose the arms lab...just drop another...all the tech will be there for you both free of charge and research free.
But that just creates more of a reason why marines should NOT be able to save the 75 RES exo...not provide an argument for why they should be able to.