How weak is this ?
UncleCrunch
Mayonnaise land Join Date: 2005-02-16 Member: 41365Members, Reinforced - Onos
Mayonnaise land Join Date: 2005-02-16 Member: 41365Members, Reinforced - Onos
Games are truly going from bad to worse. Some ppl taking example on clans (maybe) are producing the same kind of tactics.
Marines have improved enough now to brag on any kill they do. I'm always surprised to see someone kill a distant target in total darkness. That particular target which looks grey on a grey wall. Marine are so confident sometimes they just upgrade armory and don't even take time to make jetpack and Exos. They just burn, or nade everything.
but...
Behold the 1st seconds skulk rush
It looks like NS 1.2. Rush marine base in order to end the game or at least slow marines. Pretty efficient if done properly. Game last 1 or 2 minutes if not seconds. Boring meter growing fast.
Behold the gorge rush
At start 3 gorges in a marine base; building hydra and protecting each other is kind of a deadly thing. NS2 is a joke meter going up up up.
Behold the Lerk spam
As a response to get something in early game; lerks come in. Lerks are doing ok. A trade. More lerk means late fade or no fade. So it becomes a lerk spam. It seems to work depending on the accuracy of marines (which truly amaze me sometimes). And/Or depending on support (gorge). The problem is : it's kind of repetitive and the unique thing to do.
At last the so called Marine running with constant erection on the map starts to stack alien side (public). I'm gonna ask it gently : pls back off, you don't deserve it. These aliens have tested and made it work; enduring hours of bashing and lost games (plus + shity keybindings).
Marine side is supposed to rely on teamwork. Work with your team.
PS: just hoping that NS2.251 will be better on many things.
Comments
Just for flavor sake I might have to add that those early game Alien strats are hella old and have nothing to do with the current patch
Also means that the closing line might need to be edited out or explained better since it's no longer can hold itself up
I digress though. . .
Skulk rush will only work on certain maps and if coordinated perfectly, otherwise its a log of eggs down the drain and just a bit of ammo for the marines. Guns hurt and half marine spawn can kill the skulks. You also fail to mention serversize as smaller servers have the marine advantage early game. 3 marines should demolish 6 skulks. Even on 32 player servers 6 marines can hold off 12 skulks initially.
Gorge rush. what people fail to do is attack BEHIND the gorges. Sure that wall of 9 hydras is formidable, but the back end of gorges are weak sauce. 3 gorges on a wall are 3 gorges not building things weakening the aliens in the place they need the most - res. Again serversize scales, sure on a 24 man server this might work (2/3 gorges) but less and the comm should be screaming at the gorges to get their fat backsides working.
Lerkspam is ok but early lerks are expensive in pres and weak. PLus if you are only holding ONE area against a few marines, that is how many advanced lifeforms vs cheap marines? Aliens need to stop the marine advance not merely hold a corridor or point. Plus this might work in big lofty maps but not twisty angular corridors such as tram.
I have noticed that 250 has blunted the rushes, it tends to be rush to a POINT and hold rather than baserush for quick win/strike.
But seriously that's what a rush is all about. It's hard to call it an all-in tactic for this game, but close enough considering a counterattack can have devastating consequences should the rush fail. This is why marine teams should spread out evenly so that they can scout a potential skulk train. There's always the chance to be rushed within the first minute or two and both teams need to be vigilant for such a possibility.
Getting caught with your pants down isn't a valid excuse to cry foul.
lerks are assuredly not weak. if i've got a lerk that's even halfway decent, and won't die in the first 5 minutes of the game, i'm much better off dropping an egg. and now with umbra? damn powerful.
I didnt say larger servers didnt. I merely said in smaller servers (in public servers) early on it favours marines in a skulk rush scenario. I was responding to the points made by the op not trying to counter every possible tactical decision.
Only if marines don't come back through PG or beacon or just walk back, but instead think "oh, we'll take them out when we respawn from those 2 IP".
In general, this is easily countered, *and* the aliens will loose quite a lot of PRES for the gorges and hydras lost.
Yea. But it is only *one* good marine plus a bunch of normal ones that is required for Lerks to die. One well-hitting marine is enough to kill the Lerk before it escapes, and the Lerks won't be able to easily snipe him specifically in the team of marines, so more likely, 2+ will go down ever time they clash with that group... which is largely unsustainable.
With improved frame rates, a lot of the old players are now much better shots, so Lerks mostly have gone from "can almost always get hits in for a while and then escape" to "die like flies" on servers I played on.
- slower marine spawning
- weaker marines in the base (either they have no armor or they're busy welding and have no weapon out)
- faster skulk movement
mines counter it fine, but that still requires some basic level of competence.
1) comm has to research it
2) players have to stop saving res and buy them
3) players have to put them in useful places
that's asking too much for this player base
and the people thinking that a marine can take out 2 skulks are vastly overestimating player ability
- marines cannot see the target (no brightskins)
- they cannot aim smoothly (bad engine / weak computers)
- they cannot aim well in general (pub players)
also comms don't drop meds that well
There's no stopping the opening skulk rush because there's literally nothing else for a skulk to do at that moment.
You can only diminish the impacts of it, by requiring more players gorge, or by making mines cheaper to research etc.
Another reason why I wish drifters didn't accelerate alien build rates instead of only gorges.
Personally, almost every comm I've seen that lacks a "basic level of competence" also puts turrets everywhere.. At the very least in base, making a skulk rush horribly crippled.
I'm saying that it's way easier to pull off with the new "balance". and it doesn't need any coordinated aggression
I don't think it's a minor problem... the success rate of this tactic has doubled or tripled because of the changes
Nope. It has doubled or tripled because of inexperienced Marine players. Keep in mind, that we have many new players because of the 66% sale.
skulk rushes require no coordination? it just happens by coincidence?
don't really see how b250 makes it easier for one side or another to do an opening base rush.
@OP, I highly disagree that games have gotten wors e. yes sometimes some games are decided within first few engagements still, but I've seen loads more comebacks on both sides when they're down and out. I played ( hesitant to admit) for like twelve hours yesterday and saw 2, maybe 3 base rushes from either side. the rest of the games were mostly pretty balanced. other than the early flamers and gls being frustrating, I noticed very little of the other things mentioned.
Gorge rushes almost never work at the very begining of a game and prove to be a pretty good waste of pres, especially if they're able to drop/ not finish building 3 hydras ( which is what I usually witness happening). if a flock of lerks is unstoppable, then q_q, they're better than you and deserve to win. after all, you can't win em all.
if you're really experiencing so much of this, maybe after a few rounds of base rushes you should find a new server populated by different people. I do find that sometimes a serv will get stale w/ the same players/strats, and a new serv freshens it up.
marines spawning 2 seconds slower and survivors not having armor makes skulks more deadly than before even if it's just old players in the game
I'm talking about 1-3 skulks. that scale of rush happens often without any coordination
if 2 skulks attack an IP, a marine won't even spawn in time in the new build
if 1 skulk attacks an IP, he will do way more damage as the "biting IP time" vs. "fighting the spawning marine time" has increased a lot
if the fight + travel time was 5 seconds, then it's now 4 seconds of biting an IP vs. 2 seconds. that's double
if it's some staggered rush (i.e. no coordination) and a marine survies he will die in 2 bites instead of 3 when the next skulk comes