How do you win marines on NS2?
chibimike
Join Date: 2007-09-09 Member: 62232Members
Join Date: 2007-09-09 Member: 62232Members
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Serious post, haven't seen more then 2 marine wins in about a week and I have yet to lose a game on aliens...
How do marines work? What strategy should we be using on here Arcs the key? I never see Arcs really? Would love to see some more wins or some info on marines because right now it just feels like work to play marines and aliens is all nice and laid back and easy.
Serious post, haven't seen more then 2 marine wins in about a week and I have yet to lose a game on aliens...
How do marines work? What strategy should we be using on here Arcs the key? I never see Arcs really? Would love to see some more wins or some info on marines because right now it just feels like work to play marines and aliens is all nice and laid back and easy.
Comments
Unlike aliens where a single player can carry the whole team (maybe not in 12v12, but definitely in 8v8) marines need the whole team (in 8v8, maybe not for 12v12) to be somewhat competent, and not to stand around in base doing nothing expecting to defend.
EDIT: ARCS are map specific, Tram, arcs, Docking, arcs. Summit, probably not arcs unless you're filthy rich.
Always get JP's first NOT exos, if you're rich enough you can get exos later (though you shouldn't need them).
Aliens on the other hand don't need to hardly know all of this at all. If you have a marine team that knows all this, your chances of winning as a marine skyrocket. However, a lot of pub players are oblivious to all this, but if you find the right server that has lots of regular players this won't be the case and you'll see a lot more marine wins on those servers.
This should be the first commandment of marine play(Maybe I'll start a thread on this). Keep mental notes of how many harvesters are up. Normally aliens will sit on 4 and win. Determining which to attack is like chess(not really lol) but if you read the game right you know when to step into their base or when to pick off non-base nodes. Do it right and the pressure shifts and the income as well. Also, use guns. 6 clips w0, 5 clips w1. Then ask for ammo.
Solo is situational but high risk. Depending on how concentrated the alien focus is on the alpha team, may afford you a solo marine to take out upgrades or base harvesters.
Now for my own addition.
Offensive mines
Early mines brought to forward positions. For instance, placing them as cover so you can pick off nodes from a distance. Even the best skulks can't avoid mines all the time.
Commander support
Drop meds and ammo. Even if you're low on res its worth it because letting your marines die is more detrimental to your economy than if you did drop meds.
This is only true if the marines you are trying to support are trying to defend, take over a location or trying to hurt the alien economy.
Supporting Marines that are fighting in an arbitrary area or not far from an armory or have no chance at all to begin with (ie: 2 onos fighting 3 marines) is a waste of resources.
You need to know only one
You put Phase Gates in every room you reach. And then you travel with that cool weeeejj sound around the world. Eventually there will be so many phase gates it will be faster to reach your destination by feet.
And then you'll get a ride on Onos Choo-Choo Train. Have a good day!
Well 2 onos against what 3 marines? w1 a1? well yeah sure. sounds like the game is lost anyways. I hope you'll agree that you forgot to mention that what i said is true for killing lifeforms as well.
i.e. despite being in an arbitrary area clutching a fade/onos kill is worth it. I'm not encouraging any arbitrary front line tactics, just saying, that if it happens a marine runs into a high lifeform, that nano-medpack is still worth it.
-What is your skill level?
-What generally happens on your Marine teams? At what point do they start losing?
-Do you plan to command or do you stick to being a foot soldier?
-Do you have and use a mic?
I've been playing on 24p servers a lot this week and a few 16p servers. It's been pretty even between races. I haven't had a marine losing streak since last year. I don't always win on Marines, but working with the Commander and the team helps get some memorable wins. I think communication is the biggest factor, going by the past week of games. A silent team is a disorganized team.
The most important thing imo is that you have to move fast and be agressive. Expand to tech point, secure it, move out again. Don't linger around unecessarily. Take the fight to the aliens. Put the pressure on them instead of the other way around. If you hit a stronghold, don't waste too much time trying to break through. Adapt, move around, hit other targets. One of the biggest mistakes I see marines make quite often is getting sucked into a trench war on one side of the map while losing control of the other side. And hunt down those harvesters.
Off course, you'll still have to win engagements to make it happen, so you'll need some good shots and a medpackspamming commander on your side.
Let me explain the second point (the quote):
Marines have a lot of advantages. They have ranged attacks and so they are more effective in groups. They can quickly lock down important locations with Armories, Mines, and later Phase Gates. Right from the start of the game, too, not just later.
In short: Marines can quite easily and quickly take control of a part/room of the map if they go there in a bigger group. This is what NS2 is all about: you control the map, you win. You don't, you lose.
Here's when attacking Harvesters comes into play. When Marines are attacking a Harvester, it means they are taking control of the map. They are doing the right thing to win the game. More importantly, they are NOT doing something useless. They are NOT wasting their time with something that effectively does NO damage to Aliens. They keep the pressure on Aliens.
You can play NS2 by a simple rule: if you do NOT
- a) kill Harvesters or prevent them from being built
- b) secure and build Extractors
- c) secure key locations to gain map control, in order to to do a) and b)
you are NOT doing any meaningful damage to Aliens. You are NOT damaging the Aliens economy. You can kill one million skulks with your 1337 aiming skills, it does nearly NOTHING in terms of helping your team to win.So, in order for Marines to win, they need to do the above things. This means they must NOT do other things which do not do damage to Aliens, but waste the time of Marines. If you do anything for more than 2 minutes, and have not yet done a), b) or c), then you might as well be AFK in terms of how your team benefits from you. You are NOT making use of the Marines' advantages.
Here are some random examples of what I often see making Marines lose:
This does NO damage to the Alien economy. Meanwhile, because these Marines are missing, the rest can't hold the Repair Tech Point, can't hold Central Drilling, can't attack Aliens Harvesters in Crusher and Cavern, can't attack Cave... and because of this advantage, Aliens win. Marines could not use their advantages: going in big, powerful groups, securing locations, taking map control.
These Marines attacking Deposit should have helped taking control of the rest of the map.
A more successful alternative that I've seen is this: one half of Marines goes to Pipeworks, the other half gets Lava Falls (getting Phase Gates in both locations). From then on you can put pressure on Containment (top base), especially if Aliens didn't start there. You can attack Chasm and Conduit Harvesters. Aliens can't get Lava Falls for themselves. The only safe Harvesters Aliens will have are in their bases. Marines can better defend, because anybody attacking Pipeworks must go through Lava Falls (where you are) or Containment (which you are attacking), so the front line for Marines is much smaller (allowing them to use their advantages) and the front line for Aliens is much bigger (you can get between Alien Hive locations).
In that case, a good Commander must make sure that Marines don't hold too many locations (so they have to defend all the time), that Marines stay together in bigger, more effective groups, and give a clear plan of what to attack next so you don't give aliens time to recover from the advantage that Marines have.
TLDR: Marines lose when too many of them are doing useless things. Time is on the Aliens' side. Don't be useless. Attacking Harvesters and securing key locations in time (e.g. Locker Room on the Docking map) is a great way to NOT be useless.
This sums it up very well, too:
I think you just need to understand what does damage and what not. If marines are fighting skulks in an area it does no damage to aliens. Even if they kill the skulks, the aliens have won something. And this something is time. And time is resources. The aliens need no manpower to get extractors running. So if a few skulks can occupy a few marines for a minute, they won time. Marines that are shooting at skulks do no damage to buildings. You can damage the aliens only by 2 ways: Killing buildings (especially harvesters) to decrease the t-res pool or killing higher life forms to decrease the p-res pool.
Ok, there is one thing more: Occupying tech points so aliens can't get all upgrades is also important. But the overall point is that you understand what you can do to damage the enemy team. Killing a skulk feels like damaging the enemy. But in reality it is not. Killing skulks is only necessary to take or defend map control. But the killing is only secondary to reach the goal.
If your entire team is hanging around a solid 1 kd ratio, it's usually a pretty even game.
But since Skulks are easier to get kills with by mashing your head into keyboard, aliens tend to win.
They instinctively spread out in the begging, take one res node after another and set up in choke points so Skulks can't easily get behind our lines and contest them. With a constant res flow, it was easy to provide the team with forward armories and mines to hold those locations before I was even close to getting Phase Technology.
If the game is going well, my build order is basically Armory -> Second IP -> 2x Extractor -> Observatory -> 2x Extractor -> Forward Armories -> Welder -> Mines -> Arms Lab -> Phase Technology -> Weapons 1 -> Armor 1 -> Shotguns -> Phase Gates -> Forward Observatory ->Command Station for Nanoshield and more IPs.
The most important thing is that your marines can coordinate themselves well and have a good aim. If I can trust my team to hold a tech point against an equal number of Skulks without dying, then I can focus on more important things first than an instant Phase Gate. As the guys holding that location get reinforced from the main base, they set out to the next RT locations and contest them, so ideally we have 5-6 RTs and keep the aliens down at 3. Ideally we get one more Phase Gate close to the alien base so that they don't dare to go anywhere else and attack our RTs.
If you have guys who are clever enough to instinctively group up in small groups and spread over the map, then it's really a dream as commander. They secured enemy RT locations before you even considered to take them. If a Gorge is blocking an entrance to a room, there is already coming a marine team on it's own from another side into that room and pick the Gorge off so that they can regroup with the guys coming from the other side.
Download and play the Marine v Marine mod from the Steam Workshop. Seems to be the only legitimate way these days. Sad but true fact.
Sal
Plenty of marine wins on there :-)