Honestly as it was probably said before, if the marines cant kill the aliens when they are attacking/defending an extractor point. They will lose the game. Teamwork is important but if you cant aim worth a lick as marines enough to kill a skulk, you WILL lose. If you can reach the stage where you have 2-3 tech points with a CC, there are 3 viable options to win as marines. 1 Arc Push. 2. Exo Push or 3 Jetpack/shotgun rush. Those are the 3 main ways to win a game (or combination of all 3). Arc push if your team are having trouble killing the alien team. 2. Exo push if you have people who can aim decently as the exos with welder/mac support or 3. If you have really good/decent players direct them to rush a hive and jetpack/shotgun it down while spamming med packs and ammo for them.
The only other option which may sometime work is if you egg lock the aliens early game and shoot their hive down, but that would usually only work if the aliens were gonna lose to a better team anyway if they found themselves in that position.
Arc rushes should be the go to strategy for commander as it is faster and more reliable as it is not too dependant on the skills of your marines to aim, as long as they are protected from gorge bilebombs/other aliens long enough, they can take down a hive very fast and deny the aliens upgrades/higher life earlier. The Jetpack/shotgun rush is better if you have decent marines and the enemy team is not as good. The exo push should only be used if in a stalemate and evenly matched with the enemy team with arc support if possible, exo pushes are inherently risky as they are a big investment and if they die its a big loss for your team while also leaving your base vulnerable to counter attack as exos are slow as hell and cant use phase gate. Many games are lost because marines all immediately pick exos leaving only almost nobody to defend their base fast enough while the whole team pushes to support the exos.
I would say tl;dr player skill (which leads to map control) as you obviously wont have much map control if you are constantly dieing to the enemy team at strategic locations.
AurOn2COOKIES! FREEDOM, AND BISCUITS!AustraliaJoin Date: 2012-01-13Member: 140224Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Forum staff
edited February 2013
have less kdr shitheads, i want my team to have a lot of deaths trying to achieve objectives, not a lot of kills doing nothing useful whatsoever. it means they try for the team, not for themselves.
kdr is nice, but aiming for kdr? ... really?
have less kdr shitheads, i want my team to have a lot of deaths trying to achieve objectives, not a lot of kills doing nothing useful whatsoever. it means they try for the team, not for themselves.
kdr is nice, but aiming for kdr? ... really?
Being an asset for the team and having a high KDR are not mutually exclusive.
Having a High KDR means that they are slowing down the enemy resource gain and slowing their higher life form number on the enemy team. Honestly if your whole team has a terrible KDR rate, it is unlikely to be able to hold onto objectives even if they tried.
As a frequent Commander, I like to get players to think about things as if they were the Alien Commander.
When Aliens, in public play, I will usually have 3-5 Harvesters up when I drop a 2nd Hive. That is then 3-5 res. ticks every few seconds, for the whole time it takes to build the Hive. By the time that 2nd Hive is up, I've accrued ~80 resources, with nothing I've needed to spend them on. And they just keep on ticking...
All in next to no time... Whereas if you were taking out my Harvesters, I'd be spending all of those resources rebuilding Harvesters constantly, slowing our Upgrades/Evolutions and the players' PRes ticks to Onos. The resource explosion around the 7-8 minute mark for Aliens happens because you've let it. Before you know it, Fades are out before you have Shotguns, and Onos are out before you have Upgrades.
There is nothing more frustrating as an Alien Commander than having to spend your TRes on re-dropping Harvesters. You then need to make significant decisions on what Upgrades to bring to the table for your team as opposed to just bringing EVERYTHING. "Do I skip getting Leap and get Blink first instead, putting all my hope on one person who has enough PRes to go Fade to make a difference to the game - knowing that the Marines probably have W2/A1 and Shotguns by now?" The more risks the Aliens have to take, the better the Marines are doing.
Marines should get stronger as the game goes on - significantly stronger. And the only way to ensure this happens is to keep the resources flowing for you, and not for the Aliens.
I'm pretty convinced it's not even possible to win as marines vs aliens unless you stack marine team, there's simply nothing a marine team can do that comes close to doing as much dmg as gorge bile bomb and can be spammed/abused so easily.
You can play perfectly for 20+ mins and it's all for moot if you let 1-2 gorges near your power node for 10 seconds, they will wipe the power and wipe out every important structure even if you start moving across the map as soon as you see it, you will lose an obs/pg minimum. It's getting to the point I don't see why every alien player doesn't gorge at least once, 2 people gorge a res node and drop hydras, change back, 2 people gorge the expansion, change back, 2 people gorge another choke point somewhere, change back.
I really hope that spawn queue for aliens is in the official patch tomorrow otherwise I see no point in playing the game, numbers across numerous things like bile range, bile dmg, re spawn timers, re spawn waves are just hopeless to play against.
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Wrote that last night, played 11 games tonight, 11 more alien wins, 3-4 of the games feature the usual "LOL I dont noe how we won that u guyz were winning most of the round" and all games ended in gorges biling down various things. If nano shield nerfs go live than marines might as well concede every game unless they shotgun rush or win the first 5 engagements straight and take at least 2 res nodes, aliens are balanced around holding 3 RTs in a game where 10 RTs are on a map, 4 RTs aliens have a license to spam as much shit as they possibly can, people can infinitely go gorge and bile bomb things and if in the extremely rare chance they can't afford pres gorge 10 tres is what, 18 seconds, absolutely nothing, 3/4 of marine buildings take longer to repair after 5-6 biles land then what aliens can get gorge tres.
Every single game I played on aliens I gorged and dropped hydras, some games it completely stopped a push in its tracks, other games it was a speed bump of 20-30 seconds, which could be a very effective speed bump if it stops 3-4 marines from building a quick pg/arm/obs. I faded every single game I gorged and some games I was the first 3 fades out anyway, so there's fuck all trade off to gorging except a potential 3-4 min wait for your own pres fade or 1-2 mins if your rolling the game. Some of these games I went assault gorge and absolutely tipped engages into the aliens favour, simply running out and drawing fire, hitting 2-3 spits and following skulks with heal makes a ton of difference, a lot of engages early game are lost or won by 1-2 pistol rounds or an extra second of LMG fire, each healspray undoes that moment.
I don't even see the point of railgun exos, this reminds me of blizzard releasing naxx40, maybe 10-15% of the Ns2 player base will see railgun exos on the field, what % of that will see them used effectively since they require aim and rego to be effective, something severely lacking in a lot of games of NS 2. How many games are we going to see gorge tunnels, given the new meta of shade/crag or crag/shade with a perm gorge and comm gorge minimum each game for a few teams, exos receive no play at all in 9/10 comp matches, how is anything in gorgeous effecting this except potential nerfs to nano shield which at this point are ridiculous, god forbid aliens learn to disengage in some fights.
tl;dr: In marines vs marines, marines always win, how do you explain that?
Never go in groups smaller than 3. Go where commander says. Get 2nd base. Get phase gates. Get resources (always in groups of 3 or more). Build protolab. Start making pushes set up phase gates and armory as close to where you will push as safely possible. Attack in groups of 3 or more. You will almost always succeed if this is done. It's when marines start wondering off on their own, and being bad thinking it's call of duty and you point and click at pretty colors, that's how you lose games. It's not call of duty, and the people that make this mistake are always the ones complaining about aliens being over powered. The reality, if you play the game the way it's made to be played, is that if anyone is over powered, it's the marines.
i kinda disagree with the 'never go alone' idea.
assuming you can beat enemy skulks 1v1, it can be advantageous to go alone. obviously this depends on the map. on a smaller map where the action is condensed, then you will be overwhelmed quickly, but on a larger map if you can draw 2-3 skulks out of position on your own - you're helping your team greatly (2-3 less skulks elsewhere).
imo you should never be afraid to go alone.
remember that if you're in a group, it's often much easier for the aliens to respond to the threat. the aliens could either delay your success or successfully defend. where if you were to attack three seperate areas at the same time, you're almost guaranteed to succeed in 1-2 of those areas.
if you attack with 5 into a room, then the aliens can reply with 4-5 and keep you occupied indefinitely. if the aliens have more RT's in this situation, the marines are purely wasting time. resource lead becomes insurmountable - fade/onos comes out - gg.
Comments
The only other option which may sometime work is if you egg lock the aliens early game and shoot their hive down, but that would usually only work if the aliens were gonna lose to a better team anyway if they found themselves in that position.
Arc rushes should be the go to strategy for commander as it is faster and more reliable as it is not too dependant on the skills of your marines to aim, as long as they are protected from gorge bilebombs/other aliens long enough, they can take down a hive very fast and deny the aliens upgrades/higher life earlier. The Jetpack/shotgun rush is better if you have decent marines and the enemy team is not as good. The exo push should only be used if in a stalemate and evenly matched with the enemy team with arc support if possible, exo pushes are inherently risky as they are a big investment and if they die its a big loss for your team while also leaving your base vulnerable to counter attack as exos are slow as hell and cant use phase gate. Many games are lost because marines all immediately pick exos leaving only almost nobody to defend their base fast enough while the whole team pushes to support the exos.
I would say tl;dr player skill (which leads to map control) as you obviously wont have much map control if you are constantly dieing to the enemy team at strategic locations.
That's a given for any game requiring skill.
This looks good I'll have to start finding my games here... Thanks!
kdr is nice, but aiming for kdr? ... really?
Being an asset for the team and having a high KDR are not mutually exclusive.
When Aliens, in public play, I will usually have 3-5 Harvesters up when I drop a 2nd Hive. That is then 3-5 res. ticks every few seconds, for the whole time it takes to build the Hive. By the time that 2nd Hive is up, I've accrued ~80 resources, with nothing I've needed to spend them on. And they just keep on ticking...
BAM. Leap.
BAM. Hive upgrades.
BAM. Blink.
BAM. Bile Bomb.
BAM. Spores.
BAM. Fade Egg.
BAM. 3rd Hive.
BAM. Good Game.
All in next to no time... Whereas if you were taking out my Harvesters, I'd be spending all of those resources rebuilding Harvesters constantly, slowing our Upgrades/Evolutions and the players' PRes ticks to Onos. The resource explosion around the 7-8 minute mark for Aliens happens because you've let it. Before you know it, Fades are out before you have Shotguns, and Onos are out before you have Upgrades.
There is nothing more frustrating as an Alien Commander than having to spend your TRes on re-dropping Harvesters. You then need to make significant decisions on what Upgrades to bring to the table for your team as opposed to just bringing EVERYTHING. "Do I skip getting Leap and get Blink first instead, putting all my hope on one person who has enough PRes to go Fade to make a difference to the game - knowing that the Marines probably have W2/A1 and Shotguns by now?" The more risks the Aliens have to take, the better the Marines are doing.
Marines should get stronger as the game goes on - significantly stronger. And the only way to ensure this happens is to keep the resources flowing for you, and not for the Aliens.
Not really... lol.
You can play perfectly for 20+ mins and it's all for moot if you let 1-2 gorges near your power node for 10 seconds, they will wipe the power and wipe out every important structure even if you start moving across the map as soon as you see it, you will lose an obs/pg minimum. It's getting to the point I don't see why every alien player doesn't gorge at least once, 2 people gorge a res node and drop hydras, change back, 2 people gorge the expansion, change back, 2 people gorge another choke point somewhere, change back.
I really hope that spawn queue for aliens is in the official patch tomorrow otherwise I see no point in playing the game, numbers across numerous things like bile range, bile dmg, re spawn timers, re spawn waves are just hopeless to play against.
-
Wrote that last night, played 11 games tonight, 11 more alien wins, 3-4 of the games feature the usual "LOL I dont noe how we won that u guyz were winning most of the round" and all games ended in gorges biling down various things. If nano shield nerfs go live than marines might as well concede every game unless they shotgun rush or win the first 5 engagements straight and take at least 2 res nodes, aliens are balanced around holding 3 RTs in a game where 10 RTs are on a map, 4 RTs aliens have a license to spam as much shit as they possibly can, people can infinitely go gorge and bile bomb things and if in the extremely rare chance they can't afford pres gorge 10 tres is what, 18 seconds, absolutely nothing, 3/4 of marine buildings take longer to repair after 5-6 biles land then what aliens can get gorge tres.
Every single game I played on aliens I gorged and dropped hydras, some games it completely stopped a push in its tracks, other games it was a speed bump of 20-30 seconds, which could be a very effective speed bump if it stops 3-4 marines from building a quick pg/arm/obs. I faded every single game I gorged and some games I was the first 3 fades out anyway, so there's fuck all trade off to gorging except a potential 3-4 min wait for your own pres fade or 1-2 mins if your rolling the game. Some of these games I went assault gorge and absolutely tipped engages into the aliens favour, simply running out and drawing fire, hitting 2-3 spits and following skulks with heal makes a ton of difference, a lot of engages early game are lost or won by 1-2 pistol rounds or an extra second of LMG fire, each healspray undoes that moment.
I don't even see the point of railgun exos, this reminds me of blizzard releasing naxx40, maybe 10-15% of the Ns2 player base will see railgun exos on the field, what % of that will see them used effectively since they require aim and rego to be effective, something severely lacking in a lot of games of NS 2. How many games are we going to see gorge tunnels, given the new meta of shade/crag or crag/shade with a perm gorge and comm gorge minimum each game for a few teams, exos receive no play at all in 9/10 comp matches, how is anything in gorgeous effecting this except potential nerfs to nano shield which at this point are ridiculous, god forbid aliens learn to disengage in some fights.
tl;dr: In marines vs marines, marines always win, how do you explain that?
i kinda disagree with the 'never go alone' idea.
assuming you can beat enemy skulks 1v1, it can be advantageous to go alone. obviously this depends on the map. on a smaller map where the action is condensed, then you will be overwhelmed quickly, but on a larger map if you can draw 2-3 skulks out of position on your own - you're helping your team greatly (2-3 less skulks elsewhere).
imo you should never be afraid to go alone.
remember that if you're in a group, it's often much easier for the aliens to respond to the threat. the aliens could either delay your success or successfully defend. where if you were to attack three seperate areas at the same time, you're almost guaranteed to succeed in 1-2 of those areas.
if you attack with 5 into a room, then the aliens can reply with 4-5 and keep you occupied indefinitely. if the aliens have more RT's in this situation, the marines are purely wasting time. resource lead becomes insurmountable - fade/onos comes out - gg.