Don't build stuff unless you plan to use them... Dropping an arms lab and waiting 2 minutes to upgrade is a waste of 20 res for 2 minutes. So don't just build stuff thinking "oh I will want one of these later".
Similarly with aliens think about timing, gorge/skulk/... upgrades take much longer then bio-mass to upgrade, start them before biomass so they finish at the same time...
When I doubt get JP before Exo... This will thin out exos later since some people won't have the res...
There's a problem when i get Exo before Jetpack, lot of people rush in and buy it then leave Exo with no Marine to repair them, and lot of guy who got Exo, venture out alone, think they're invincible.
on some map, i really like to get Jetpack more than Exo if the roof is high enough.
My usual build is to try get A1 first, make them survive 1 more bite really game changing.
You can't win the game as a commander, you can only lose it - especially on marine side.
In most games, I would say more than 9/10 the team balance is so far off that strategic decisions don't really matter. Whether you went phase gates or upgrades or dropped over 9000 medpacks doesn't really matter. Similarly hive choice doesn't really matter. The better team wins no matter what.
Then again, in that less-than-1/10 game, your choices and speed as a commander can actually make the difference.
Of course, I'm assuming both coms are pretty competent. Again, you can't win as a com, but you can surely lose by slow response, especially on marine side - rushes against rooms with PGs or IPs in them.
By the way, I actually think dropping medpacks and ammo is a poor decision, as well as building an armory in your starting room. I think it wastes a LOT of res which can be used to speed up upgrades which are crucial in mid-game between lerks and early fades.
I prefer to support groups of marines by making an armory in the room that they're in, and moving the armory with them as the front moves (recycle / rebuild). That shouldn't happen too often either because building time is wasted time - and like any RTS this game is an exponential race against time.
I haven't seen a single commander win a game. I've seen a lot of them fail though.
This game doesn't require much micro or macro compared to a conventional RTS, so there is negligible to I would say no differentiation of "commander skill" between someone RTS-savvy with 50 hours and someone with 4500 hours. The most "advanced" thing you can do as far as micro is make arcs, macs or drifters (oh yeah, and waste 1 res each on every medpack and ammo drop). With one resource and generally very slow RTS gameplay, the macro is also laughable. You don't even have direct control of fighting units, so the bulk of where you would spend your time and the conventional RTS "micro" doesn't even exist. The speed compared to a conventional RTS is also like 10 times more forgiving (unless it's an alien rush ;-) ) . So it's extremely easy to reach "top level" in the commander view, which then makes it capped as far as what you can do as commander. So, assuming both players have reached that (extremely easy to reach) "cap," you can't really "excel" by doing something amazing which any other com wouldn't do.
Basically, if I had to quantify how much commanding in this game challenges me mentally and physically compared to RTS games I've played, I would say this is about 3/10 .
You can only fail to do the basics, i.e. hand the game over.
On the FPS part of the game though, it's an entirely different story. The cap of reaching "top" level is far far higher, there's a stark difference between someone with 50 hours and someone with 4500 - even if the 4500 hour guy can't necessarily aim well ;-) , and someone who is actually really good can easily make a HUGE difference and even single-handedly dominate an entire team of average players.
TL;DR. I would say the commander causes about 3% of the "win/loss" on average, whereas the FPS players cause the other 97%.
Commanders (at least for marines anyhow) good or bad make a big difference in either winning or losing,
Bad commanders can all most always cause a lose for there team (no mic, no teamchat, not know what to do, not telling his marines or aliens what do to where to attack etc)
Good commanders can do all of the above, but then it would be on the team, if they listen, then it comes down to the skill of the players, IF you can get a good mix between a good commander and players, you can have some awesome games.
But to my point, commanders DO win games, i think @HeatSurge may have not played with a commander that knows what there doing? and its not all about macro when you command. Its a team game TEAMWORK wins games - Commanders wins games - Players wins games.
Disagree, commanders can totally win games. Not every time of course, but decisions you make can easily cause a win.
Yeah, had a pretty hilarious game where both teams were nearly 100% green on a server running NS2Stats, finished the game with top score/kills/damage as alien comm due to whips. Destroyed all the marine positions with whip rushes :P That's obviously an exception however.
Really good players can carry a bad comm at the games beginning, but the longer the game goes on the larger no knowing how to properly upgrade/support your team will hamstring those good players.
aeroripperJoin Date: 2005-02-25Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
edited December 2013
1) Learn how to the play the game first on the ground, and observe what more seasoned commanders do.
2) Start a local server (or training mode) and learn all the grid hotkeys so you don't have to click on any buttons while comming. Get fast at learning the keys for dropping meds and ammo. Get used to using the space key to go to alerts. Use hotgroups for your armory, arms lab, observatories, arc factories, and proto labs for quick upgrading and use. Learn what everything in the game does in a stress-free environment. Learn good structure placement for base buildings (esp observatories), and phase gates. This is probably the single biggest area to improve your comming dramatically. You need to feel comfortable with the comm GUI.
3) Keep commanding and getting experience. Use voicecomm, order individual players whenever possible instead of 'we need to go here'. Personalizing orders means its much more likely to get done. With experience you will start to learn when its critical to med marines in certain engagements, and when you need to let them die in others.
4) Have your marines focus on harassing enemy res throughout the game, assigning specific players if needed. Never let them sit on half of the maps nodes without challenge.
TEAMWORK wins games - Commanders wins games - Players wins games.
Disagree. As I mentioned, a commander has extremely little to do with winning games, because it's simply not possible to have a "good" commander. It's only possible to have a "not bad" commander. Once you grasp the fundamentals, you hit a cap that isn't passable, and there's almost nothing you can do to directly influence the game since you have nothing to do with combat which is usually how the bulk of an RTS game is won (the other little piece being response time to deal with attempts at "surprises" and macro). Any near-par RTS player with fairly mediocre micro skills and notification-to-response time is 95% as good as someone who has played this game for 5000 hours exclusively in the commander seat imo.
The same can't be said for the field players who control most of the outcome of the game (I would say upwards of 95%).
Yeah, had a pretty hilarious game where both teams were nearly 100% green on a server running NS2Stats, finished the game with top score/kills/damage as alien comm due to whips. Destroyed all the marine positions with whip rushes :P That's obviously an exception however.
I wouldn't call that "a game." This is why the amount of fucks I give when I enter 90% of rounds these days approach zero approximating 1024/2^seconds, because it's not really "a game" - it's some sort of dice-roll-deathmatch-noob-fest of random acts of 2 people working together and 5 having no idea what's going on in the room or phase next to them. And that was before Wednesday happened.
Really good players can carry a bad comm at the games beginning, but the longer the game goes on the larger no knowing how to properly upgrade/support your team will hamstring those good players.
That goes perfectly with what I said above - you can't win a game, you can only lose it. It's really really really easy in this game to "not suck." Basically, you have to:
- Build RTs promptly
- Keep team res down by investing in player upgrades promptly
- Bècon on marines when needed
As easy as those 3 things are, I've seen so many people entering the chair being really slow at dropping RTs and spending team res on meaningful upgrades that it's made me pretty numb towards the outcome in most rounds. I really think it's hopeless, because the sad part is that commanding in this game doesn't and won't attract the population that it should - since the most fun of RTS games is unit micro (for me anyway, and I think for most others) - because that's mostly how you show "skill" and that's how you defeat your opponent - and that doesn't exist in this game, I should say fighting unit micro anyway. You can arrange macs and drifters into formations all day long, but the sad part is - it probably has less than 1% impact on the outcome of the round overall. You get to watch people succeed or fail, and you don't control any of it. In essence, commanding is much like watching TV. You can change the channel when you get bored, but you can't alter the plot. That's why hardly anybody that's actually had some taste of what this game has to offer wants to command.
P.S. The simple "acid test" that I just thought of is when a round ends, consider - why did one of the specstackular arrangement of people prevail? Was it because of the amazing comnêss or because of the combination of X players on top of the scorëboard? Now consider really hîgh-lêvêl experiences.
Comments
There's a problem when i get Exo before Jetpack, lot of people rush in and buy it then leave Exo with no Marine to repair them, and lot of guy who got Exo, venture out alone, think they're invincible.
on some map, i really like to get Jetpack more than Exo if the roof is high enough.
My usual build is to try get A1 first, make them survive 1 more bite really game changing.
In most games, I would say more than 9/10 the team balance is so far off that strategic decisions don't really matter. Whether you went phase gates or upgrades or dropped over 9000 medpacks doesn't really matter. Similarly hive choice doesn't really matter. The better team wins no matter what.
Then again, in that less-than-1/10 game, your choices and speed as a commander can actually make the difference.
Of course, I'm assuming both coms are pretty competent. Again, you can't win as a com, but you can surely lose by slow response, especially on marine side - rushes against rooms with PGs or IPs in them.
By the way, I actually think dropping medpacks and ammo is a poor decision, as well as building an armory in your starting room. I think it wastes a LOT of res which can be used to speed up upgrades which are crucial in mid-game between lerks and early fades.
I prefer to support groups of marines by making an armory in the room that they're in, and moving the armory with them as the front moves (recycle / rebuild). That shouldn't happen too often either because building time is wasted time - and like any RTS this game is an exponential race against time.
This game doesn't require much micro or macro compared to a conventional RTS, so there is negligible to I would say no differentiation of "commander skill" between someone RTS-savvy with 50 hours and someone with 4500 hours. The most "advanced" thing you can do as far as micro is make arcs, macs or drifters (oh yeah, and waste 1 res each on every medpack and ammo drop). With one resource and generally very slow RTS gameplay, the macro is also laughable. You don't even have direct control of fighting units, so the bulk of where you would spend your time and the conventional RTS "micro" doesn't even exist. The speed compared to a conventional RTS is also like 10 times more forgiving (unless it's an alien rush ;-) ) . So it's extremely easy to reach "top level" in the commander view, which then makes it capped as far as what you can do as commander. So, assuming both players have reached that (extremely easy to reach) "cap," you can't really "excel" by doing something amazing which any other com wouldn't do.
Basically, if I had to quantify how much commanding in this game challenges me mentally and physically compared to RTS games I've played, I would say this is about 3/10 .
You can only fail to do the basics, i.e. hand the game over.
On the FPS part of the game though, it's an entirely different story. The cap of reaching "top" level is far far higher, there's a stark difference between someone with 50 hours and someone with 4500 - even if the 4500 hour guy can't necessarily aim well ;-) , and someone who is actually really good can easily make a HUGE difference and even single-handedly dominate an entire team of average players.
TL;DR. I would say the commander causes about 3% of the "win/loss" on average, whereas the FPS players cause the other 97%.
Bad commanders can all most always cause a lose for there team (no mic, no teamchat, not know what to do, not telling his marines or aliens what do to where to attack etc)
Good commanders can do all of the above, but then it would be on the team, if they listen, then it comes down to the skill of the players, IF you can get a good mix between a good commander and players, you can have some awesome games.
But to my point, commanders DO win games, i think @HeatSurge may have not played with a commander that knows what there doing? and its not all about macro when you command. Its a team game TEAMWORK wins games - Commanders wins games - Players wins games.
Yes, it seems to be #1 public rule:
Victory = awesome field players
Defeat = bad comm
No exceptions.
Yeah, had a pretty hilarious game where both teams were nearly 100% green on a server running NS2Stats, finished the game with top score/kills/damage as alien comm due to whips. Destroyed all the marine positions with whip rushes :P That's obviously an exception however.
Really good players can carry a bad comm at the games beginning, but the longer the game goes on the larger no knowing how to properly upgrade/support your team will hamstring those good players.
2) Start a local server (or training mode) and learn all the grid hotkeys so you don't have to click on any buttons while comming. Get fast at learning the keys for dropping meds and ammo. Get used to using the space key to go to alerts. Use hotgroups for your armory, arms lab, observatories, arc factories, and proto labs for quick upgrading and use. Learn what everything in the game does in a stress-free environment. Learn good structure placement for base buildings (esp observatories), and phase gates. This is probably the single biggest area to improve your comming dramatically. You need to feel comfortable with the comm GUI.
3) Keep commanding and getting experience. Use voicecomm, order individual players whenever possible instead of 'we need to go here'. Personalizing orders means its much more likely to get done. With experience you will start to learn when its critical to med marines in certain engagements, and when you need to let them die in others.
4) Have your marines focus on harassing enemy res throughout the game, assigning specific players if needed. Never let them sit on half of the maps nodes without challenge.
5) Win
Disagree. As I mentioned, a commander has extremely little to do with winning games, because it's simply not possible to have a "good" commander. It's only possible to have a "not bad" commander. Once you grasp the fundamentals, you hit a cap that isn't passable, and there's almost nothing you can do to directly influence the game since you have nothing to do with combat which is usually how the bulk of an RTS game is won (the other little piece being response time to deal with attempts at "surprises" and macro). Any near-par RTS player with fairly mediocre micro skills and notification-to-response time is 95% as good as someone who has played this game for 5000 hours exclusively in the commander seat imo.
The same can't be said for the field players who control most of the outcome of the game (I would say upwards of 95%).
I wouldn't call that "a game." This is why the amount of fucks I give when I enter 90% of rounds these days approach zero approximating 1024/2^seconds, because it's not really "a game" - it's some sort of dice-roll-deathmatch-noob-fest of random acts of 2 people working together and 5 having no idea what's going on in the room or phase next to them. And that was before Wednesday happened.
That goes perfectly with what I said above - you can't win a game, you can only lose it. It's really really really easy in this game to "not suck." Basically, you have to:
- Build RTs promptly
- Keep team res down by investing in player upgrades promptly
- Bècon on marines when needed
As easy as those 3 things are, I've seen so many people entering the chair being really slow at dropping RTs and spending team res on meaningful upgrades that it's made me pretty numb towards the outcome in most rounds. I really think it's hopeless, because the sad part is that commanding in this game doesn't and won't attract the population that it should - since the most fun of RTS games is unit micro (for me anyway, and I think for most others) - because that's mostly how you show "skill" and that's how you defeat your opponent - and that doesn't exist in this game, I should say fighting unit micro anyway. You can arrange macs and drifters into formations all day long, but the sad part is - it probably has less than 1% impact on the outcome of the round overall. You get to watch people succeed or fail, and you don't control any of it. In essence, commanding is much like watching TV. You can change the channel when you get bored, but you can't alter the plot. That's why hardly anybody that's actually had some taste of what this game has to offer wants to command.
P.S. The simple "acid test" that I just thought of is when a round ends, consider - why did one of the specstackular arrangement of people prevail? Was it because of the amazing comnêss or because of the combination of X players on top of the scorëboard? Now consider really hîgh-lêvêl experiences.