Jetpack+hmg Rush
V_MAN
V-MAN Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6217Members, Constellation
V-MAN Join Date: 2002-11-03 Member: 6217Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">What's your method for countering this?</div> I see this strategy time and time again in clan wars that it has become almost expected, hell I use it in a clan match because it is so simple, effective and it makes use of the marines early advantage in fire power blah blah etc etc you've heard it all before.
What I was wondering was how do most people counter this? I normaly try and slow the marines down by constantly rushing and taking down their res nodes as well as going for a key structure in their base long enough for that second hive to go up. If they should get jetpacks and HMGs what then? I find it is dependant on the hive room, refinery can be awful to defend against jetpackers as can all the hives on ns_eclipse in this situation I find that only lerks, some well placed OCs and lots of skulks can help but against a really good jetpacker or as many as four there isn't much you can do <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> .
What I was wondering was how do most people counter this? I normaly try and slow the marines down by constantly rushing and taking down their res nodes as well as going for a key structure in their base long enough for that second hive to go up. If they should get jetpacks and HMGs what then? I find it is dependant on the hive room, refinery can be awful to defend against jetpackers as can all the hives on ns_eclipse in this situation I find that only lerks, some well placed OCs and lots of skulks can help but against a really good jetpacker or as many as four there isn't much you can do <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> .
Comments
Of course, destroying RTs left right and centre is a good idea. It's always important to stop your enemy from gaining access to more advanced ways of killing you.
As for combatting JPs themselves... it aint easy, even with leap and lerks. Acid rocket is your best bet, spikes are quite viable (generally more effective than trying to bite the JPer, anyway) and if you are good enough to bring them down with leap and bite then by all means do so.
By the way, I discovered that you can severely hamper JP\HMG hive assaults on ns_nancy simply by patrolling the vents as a skulk. You don't have to survive the HMGs, you just have to parasite them and warn your team. This lets your buddies mobilise and get to the hive (or into the vents) before trouble arrives.
Jetpack is to cheap IMO. Once on Nacy the marines could only hold one or max two of the RT:s for any longer time and they still managed to swarm us with jet/hmg. We couldn't hold any hives except engine for any longer time and we couldn't be on the offensive since they where allways using the vents to kill our hives.
Failing that, 2 or 3 Lerks with a handful of DCs can spike a marine to death in moments. Just remember that spikes are hitscan, not projectile as they appear. They instantly hit wherever your crosshairs are pointing, unlike the LMG, which has a spread.
I think we were lucky in that game though IMO had the jetpackers gone on to our first hive in engine room they would have killed it but instead they came back to feedwater to defend the base where the low ceiling kept them in bite range of the skulks.
If my skulks can't hold the marines long enough for me to get 2 rts (IE I have to build DCs early), I'll try a base rush. Unfortunately, if the comm uses mines properly base rushes can be depressingly inneffective.
1-hive aliens should have 2-3 lerks and at least three DCs under the hive. With something like refinery, your best bet is actually to wol up the entrances to the hives, 'cuz once a not-**** jetpacker is in there, he has free reign to do as he likes, pretty much. With something like, say, cargo hive or feedwater, tossing OCs in the hive and running around on the cieling as skulk works.
Basically: be a badass. With some creative recycling, you can get a pair of JP/HMG before the aliens have a hive, no problem, one RT - so it's going to come down to the skill of the lerks vs. the skill of the jetpackers.
-K
ive said this time and time again. MOST PEOPLE DONT KNOW HOW TO JP. they get stuck, run of out juice, whatever. i get so many skull kills on JPers cause they get stuck in the ceiling, fall, hurt themselves to like 20 health, then i bite them in the head. sometimes i get cocky and just parasite kill them.
Build 5-7 off towers around your hive although keep in mind if FF is on via tournament mode you'll need to put thought in were u place them because they WILL hurt your hive. If theirs more then one way into your hive *ushally the case* try and cut one of the pass's off via off towers by stacking. Leaving 1 way open giving the other team incentive to come in on that way. Off's have the proabability of killing 1-2 hmg/jpers while they spam your hive but u cannot always count on this.. Its more for the fact they cant land and get health if you hurt them. Have 3-4 lerks assuming this is a 6v6 match, 2 just spiking and the other 2 mid-flight biting... *YOU MUST practice this skill as its very important*.
the jp/hmg rush is VERY hard to counter.. but keep in mind that even though you have all these off defense towers etc.. in place... it wont stop them from just camping near your hive and siegeing with hmgs/jp's still geared up!
I don't know what map it was on, but that'll give you an idea of what it takes to stop it successfully. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
What I was wondering was how do most people counter this? I normaly try and slow the marines down by constantly rushing and taking down their res nodes as well as going for a key structure in their base long enough for that second hive to go up. If they should get jetpacks and HMGs what then? I find it is dependant on the hive room, refinery can be awful to defend against jetpackers as can all the hives on ns_eclipse in this situation I find that only lerks, some well placed OCs and lots of skulks can help but against a really good jetpacker or as many as four there isn't much you can do <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> . <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
this is what sYn does:
our gorge caps a node right away, and while he is saving, all the skulks suicide para rush in their base while they are still trying to build structures.
the reason we do this is because dead skulks dont suck up resources, and hey sometimes you just get lucky and can end the game, but thats not important now.
now after the first RT is up, we have another player go gorge. One caps RTs, the other builds hive defenses. We put 6 D chambers (yes 6 i know d chambers can only heal a structure 3 at a time) and scatter O chambers around the hive. While the hive is getting attacked the gorge tries to heal it, because most people just focus on the hive, and not the gorge or d chambers. The extra D chambers are incase a crafty JP/HMGer decides to go after the d chambers.
Then 2 of our guys go Lerk so its 2 lerks, 2 skulks, and 2 gorges. Lerks attempt to spike down and force them to land for health, and skulks attempt to bite him while he lands. Lerks can rarely do it themselves, they need to pressure the JPer so that he needs to land, and skulks usually get the kill.
Every time you successfully defend a JP/HMG rush, you have to counter attack. Run it back to them, whether you attack their main base, OR attack their RTs.
Now the super hard part of defending JP/HMG, expanding to the second hive. When you expand you typically have 2 gorges at the expansion, a lerk and a skulk, which leaves a lerk and a skulk at the main hive. One gorge saves for the hive obviously, and the other builds hive defenses.
It is SOOO difficult to 2 hive locations with 6 total players, your guys have to stay sharp and have Excellent alien killing ability, otherwise any decent marine team can squash you.
This strat will not always work, and it has failed us before, BUT this is the way that we successfully countered many jp/hmg rushes.
Hopefully this helps.
Namely, any height will be used by me to stop these attackers.
Now, in clan games you run one game as aliens, one games as marines, and ties are (?) decided by who wins fastest. So turtling up and delaying the marine JP rush win as much as possible may still be enough to win the match, if not the game.
I would also call this the alien version of turtling; unfortunately I think it's the best defense the aliens have against a jetpack rush. The strat I have been messing around with calls for the same proportion of skulks, lerks, and gorges, but one of the gorges (the first one, I guess) has to keep capping res around the map. I think it's vital because it allows the aliens to be on a good footing once the jetpack rush is finished. Time works for the marines only if they're able to hold the aliens in one spot. Level 3 equipment still won't be able to clear out a map full of walls of lame. And of course avoiding the second hive until at least the first rush has been completed.
One thing I think that you can count on is that in a true jetpack rush, the marines would be totally concentrated on getting that first hive down. It's essential to them since they have been focusing on rushing tech in stead of capping res and controlling the map. I think it's wise to avoid thinking about the second hive until the first rush has been killed so that you know where they will be going. The aliens are much more effective when they're all in a little horde.
Additionally the counter attack (assuming you survive the initial rush) is vital. The aliens have to put the hurt on the marines enough when they are weak so that they won't be able to mount another rush immediately.
Of course each clan or whatever has their own spin on how to do the tech/jetpack rush, so you have to be able to customize your defense accordingly. If the marines don't put as much pressure on your first hive, instead opping to cap res and control the map, you need to be able to spread out and hurt their res intake as much as possible.
Anyway, those are my unpolished thoughts on the issue.
My usual counter to this technique is the usual way i start 3/4 rts and hive...
usually about the time the first jp drops... i have webs... I web the entire hive room in random directions... concentrated webs are quite easy to get around. If you ever see one of my web jobs... it covers the ENTIRE room... and Ive only ever had 2 jpers in all my web jobs actually get the hive.. and it was late game, they had fallen to my webs before and brought welders.
Random web jobs have been the bane of more than a few marines in my experiance... every game ive webbed ive brought at least one jper down into my oc's without even being there.....
As far as I'm concerned you can assume two things: 1) webs will not be a factor in the jetpack rush, 2) once you get webs your jetpack worries are (or should be) over.
Refinery there is hardly any chance in hell you're gonna slap more then 1 jp boy down.
Eclipse on the other hand some OCs scattered around and skulks can do well.
Ah ... no. That's not quite true. In fact, because the marines don't have invested large amount of resources in any particular place, they have lots of free marines that can roam the map, hunt gorges and build res towers. Do note that in an 8v8 game, a restower only needs to stay alive for slightly more than a minute to pay for itself. As a single skulk takes 30 seconds to take it down, it means that build-it-and-leave-it is a very valid strategy.
The only place the marines need to defend is the base. Give the base defender a shotgun and a couple of minepacks, and the tech rush strategy will see the marines dominating the map MORE than in a hive lockdown situation. Especially as they will have early armor/weapon and possibly MT as well.
As an alien, I'm aware that the marines are going to be gorge hunting in via and capping res in cargo. Thus, we want to spread our forces appropriately. The major disadvantage for the aliens (in my eye) is respawn time, so we don't want to have a massive attack that dies, because during the time it takes for us to respawn, the marines can spread all over the map and entrench themselves at positions of strength -- such as the corner on the left side (comm view) of viaduct with two loooong hallways, or at the hallway between forboding antichamber and silo hive. So alien attacks are focused at probing the marine positions and not being afraid to run and heal up. Parasite is a lot of fun because it seriously ticks the marines off and makes them be really cautious and slow.
Ok, 5 minutes in, so the gorge has gotten two res towers up and the team so far is doing sub par but not horrible on the kill chart and presumably equivelently at keeping the marine expansion in check (I want to clarify this because we are hypothesizing teams which are fairly evenly matched). At this time most of the aliens should be maxed at 33 res; also the marines should be very much well on their way to the rush (ie either upgrading the armory or dropping a proto lab), no matter if they have been losing a few res towers. The first thing I would do is create another gorge to build ocs around silo and a lerk to hang around the hive. The first gorge caps a fourth tower, and places a little defense (maybe just one OC) to prevent rambo knifing.
Now, if the marines are still harassing viaduct hardcore, I'd boost the original gorge into red room to secure it before I capped the last res near viaduct. That's because you can assume that if they're not collapsing back to base then they're not ready to jetpack rush. If they're not around viaduct anymore, then cap the last res and put defenses around viaduct (with the help of a skulk to boost). Hopefully there's 4 or 5 ocs around silo by now. I'd have another skulk go lerk. If one of these lerks is really good it would be nice to have them patrol between viaduct and silo.
If marines haven't rushed by this point then the game is over. However, against a good team you should expect a rush before this -- soon after the second gorge started on the defenses. If the marines get jetpacks before this then the second lerk should go immediately and camp silo. With 2 lerks a gorge and some offense towers, you should be able to defeat any marines unless they have a comm with medpack aimbot or something. With 2 lerks a gorge and 2 skulks you should be able to hold off most jetpack rushes. Of course chance is a pretty big factor.
However, once and if the rush is defeated, the first gorge should get the second hive up asap. Additionally, the rest of the team should counter attack to delay any 2nd rush. Even a weak counter attack should buy you enough time to get webs.
I would still call this turtling, only strategically.