Commanding Strategy:
ElvenThief
aka Elven Thief (ex. NS Programmer) Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8754Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
aka Elven Thief (ex. NS Programmer) Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8754Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">The impracticality of 2 hive lockdowns</div> 2 hive lockdown: most often executed early game by either relocating to an unoccupied hive, and setting up a phase system and turrets or mines in the 2nd unoccupied hive. Marines cap res nodes, hold positions until they get upgrades, and do their best not to lose their positions in either hive to the aliens. Tech up, equip up, battle the aliens for the last hive, game over.
Many commanders will tell you, this is almost a guarenteed win. The aliens, unless organized better than the mafia, will very likely demoralize and teamwork crumbles, making it even easier for your marines to hold the 2 hive positions.
I am here to tell you today that the 2 hive lockdown is impractical. It's just not ineffective... yet. I'll explain why it will be though. Nothing bothers me more than when I hear a commander say "Guarenteed win: we'll do a 2 hive lockdown".
Natural Selection, at its heart is an RTS. Anyone who has skill at warcraft3 or starcraft online knows the importance of speed and how proper spending of resources makes the difference between winning and losing. Your objectives in an RTS are to 1) Best manage and allocate your resources to your upgrades and armies. 2) Cripple the opponents economy. 3) Cripple upgrades and structures and ultimately achieve 4) Destroying your opponent and winning the game.
A 2 hive lockdown only achieves 3 and 4. Most commanders do not handle upgrades and improving their marines until after enough resources have been allocated to building defenses at the hives so that aliens cannot overrun them. They also, unless very skilled, do not persue crippling the alien's resources in any shape or method.
The perplexing reason of why 2 hive lockdowns succeed are because they do cripple the only way aliens have of reaching the next tier or upgrade level. Take the possibility of more hives out of the picture, and really, your marines get a long game of fighting tier 1 aliens all game.
I call these games no skill games because after the first 10 minutes of possible intense fighting, the longer the marines hold the hives, the less of a chance that the aliens have to win.
Going into a single hive with level 3 weapons and armor and HA and HMGs and GLs and motion tracking against (at most) level 3 carapaced skulks, lerks and gorges. Not only is it absurd, but it's often insulting to still see marines get dropped.
All in all, aliens cannot prevent marines from achieving higher upgrade levels because all marine structures can be rebuild anywhere on the level provided there are resources. Hives can only be in 3 positions, and when held, the marines only have to play a passive role in blocking alien upgrades.
This is why 1.1 will totally pwn 2 hive lockdowns. Because the game rules force commanders to focus on securing resource nodes outside hives, and take focus away from solely securing hives because aliens will be able to achive all races at hive 1. They will gain the power to overcome higher level marines later in the game despite the fact they only have 1 hive. Commanders will essentially be forced to make better decisions as RTS players because of this.
Summation of everything I said: 1.1 will pwn. 2 hive lockdowns will be seen as an obsolete strat. Commanders will either evolve or remain completely ignorant of what's going on. Evolution will abound.
Many commanders will tell you, this is almost a guarenteed win. The aliens, unless organized better than the mafia, will very likely demoralize and teamwork crumbles, making it even easier for your marines to hold the 2 hive positions.
I am here to tell you today that the 2 hive lockdown is impractical. It's just not ineffective... yet. I'll explain why it will be though. Nothing bothers me more than when I hear a commander say "Guarenteed win: we'll do a 2 hive lockdown".
Natural Selection, at its heart is an RTS. Anyone who has skill at warcraft3 or starcraft online knows the importance of speed and how proper spending of resources makes the difference between winning and losing. Your objectives in an RTS are to 1) Best manage and allocate your resources to your upgrades and armies. 2) Cripple the opponents economy. 3) Cripple upgrades and structures and ultimately achieve 4) Destroying your opponent and winning the game.
A 2 hive lockdown only achieves 3 and 4. Most commanders do not handle upgrades and improving their marines until after enough resources have been allocated to building defenses at the hives so that aliens cannot overrun them. They also, unless very skilled, do not persue crippling the alien's resources in any shape or method.
The perplexing reason of why 2 hive lockdowns succeed are because they do cripple the only way aliens have of reaching the next tier or upgrade level. Take the possibility of more hives out of the picture, and really, your marines get a long game of fighting tier 1 aliens all game.
I call these games no skill games because after the first 10 minutes of possible intense fighting, the longer the marines hold the hives, the less of a chance that the aliens have to win.
Going into a single hive with level 3 weapons and armor and HA and HMGs and GLs and motion tracking against (at most) level 3 carapaced skulks, lerks and gorges. Not only is it absurd, but it's often insulting to still see marines get dropped.
All in all, aliens cannot prevent marines from achieving higher upgrade levels because all marine structures can be rebuild anywhere on the level provided there are resources. Hives can only be in 3 positions, and when held, the marines only have to play a passive role in blocking alien upgrades.
This is why 1.1 will totally pwn 2 hive lockdowns. Because the game rules force commanders to focus on securing resource nodes outside hives, and take focus away from solely securing hives because aliens will be able to achive all races at hive 1. They will gain the power to overcome higher level marines later in the game despite the fact they only have 1 hive. Commanders will essentially be forced to make better decisions as RTS players because of this.
Summation of everything I said: 1.1 will pwn. 2 hive lockdowns will be seen as an obsolete strat. Commanders will either evolve or remain completely ignorant of what's going on. Evolution will abound.
Comments
As any RTS player knows, if you try to grab too much, your defences get spread thin and sparse. This is exactly what happened. There were maximum 2-3 marines per hive, and very few actually in the base. The aliens grouped together 3 skulks and rushed in, killing everyone and everything, and chomped the PG away before even the first marine had respawned.
The same happened on the second hive location. Then, because we had tried to set up 3 bases, our main base only had a third as much defence and equipment. 3 times easier to go down, and down we went...
I'd be suprised the aliens couldn't/didn't organise a group attack centered on one place with a 2-hive lockdown by marines.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pretty good post but I think I have a differing oppinion.
While 2 hive lockdowns wont be as devestating, it will STILL be a viable idea.
While it does seem pretty apparent that all evolutions will be available at hive 1, it is best to remember they will only have hive 1 abilities. Onos with just Bite and something else? Fade with claws and something else?(I'm saying something else because most of us have a good idea that abilities will be switched around) No Umbra or Gas cloud for Lerk.
Onotp of that only 1 upgrade chamber? A lockdown will still be effective, but for different reasons, as has been said several times before. Now your preventing aliens from posessing their better abilities and additional upgrades, which is almost as debilitating.
A lockdown will still be good, it just wont be AS good as it is now.
A good post overall, but I'm just speaking my different oppinion.
Onos can definately take out an outpost, unless there is a huge mass of turrets, so ignore that part.
does an onos NEED anything else? only reason an onos needs paralysis is to taunt it's victims (unless ur totaly "elite" and get the JPers), charge is just for fun when running into a base or just to speed you up, and primal scream is used mainly to scare the **** out of the marines. Unless the whole team is attacking, then Primal Scream is useful, but Paralysis and Charge are useless at the moment in my opinion.
(2) I am here to tell you today that the 2 hive lockdown is impractical. It's just not ineffective... yet. I'll explain why it will be though. Nothing bothers me more than when I hear a commander say "Guarenteed win: we'll do a 2 hive lockdown".
(3) 2) Cripple the opponents economy. 3) Cripple upgrades and structures and ultimately achieve 4) Destroying your opponent and winning the game. A 2 hive lockdown only achieves 3 and 4.
(4) The perplexing reason of why 2 hive lockdowns succeed are because they do cripple the only way aliens have of reaching the next tier or upgrade level. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
In general: I don't care what you say, a 2 hive lockdown or not allowing aliens to get Fades is the key way to win. I'm not going to argue any. If your comm, just get 2 hives fully secure, then you can wait and camp and let the aliens keep trying to take one back.
Now.
1. Because it IS almost a guarantee win. You have two hives, you prevent fades. True, if you have a really fk'in intelligent gorge and the marines only have a phase + turrets + NO MINES, then you CAN def rush and win it. Did it once as a gorge in Port Engine. YOu can't just half-arse build outside. As a gorge, you have to build AND healspray in and out.
2. If a comm says "lets get two hives and win" ....well, I wouldn't say that - even though that IS my objective =)
3. Of course a 2 hive lockdown only achieves 3 and 4, securing objectives/hives isn't about cripple the opponents economy. They can have all the nozzles they want, as long as two hives are secured.
4. As I mentioned in general, fades are the key for aliens to win. In capping two hives, you prevent this. If aliens can obtain two hives, they deserve to win. Marines stuggle to get 2 hives secured, mined, and turreted. If aliens allow it, then Marines deserve to get the win.
I however will...if the hive has to much D there...Immediatly attack the aliens original hive which almost never has any D. normally all the aliens will all try and rush to the second and defend there knowing most marines rush that hive since...aliens don't spawn there. However building a quick base and immediatly sieging thier first hive in the span of 2 minutes right after thier second hive goes up. Very effective. I simply can't wait for 1.1 because all the rules will change and everyone will need to adapt. marines will need upgrades more then ever and securing main areas of the map will become even more critical. I imagine securing hives to keep aliens low on the tech scale will be important but...not as much as now. Going to be intersting....
However I imagine my standard of...attack...attack...keep attacking all the time. Should still work well...as long as it keeps the aliens off balance...and as long as they are looking where i want them to. I can have free rein to do Evil on the rest of the map.
I'm just saying, I hate seeing commanders assume it's the only way they can win.
I've commanded games where we LET the aliens take a second hive, but the marines under my command didn't focus on securing hives. They focused on destroying alien resources and keeping our own, which is the entire point of my post above.
After 5 minutes of having that 2nd hive, we downed the primary one, but the aliens had a total of 2 res nodes and NEVER pulled a fade on us because we set them back so far in resources.
My post above was just my thoughts after a very intelligent conversation I had with a random guy on a server at 6 am. He was the kind of guy who said he'd rather play a long epic style game rather than do a 5 minute win. His reasoning was marines didn't get as much fun and experience with all the equipment.
I agree that it's a good game for the marines, but on alien side, it's utter arse.
It is my opinion that with 1.1, strategies will be refined around securing resources, not hives (at least for the purpose of stopping fades and onos, because that's all we're really doing with current lockdowns).
I also believe that the epic battle games will be the ones that don't last forever with little action, but have intense battles between all upgrades of creatures and marines. No matter if the game is 10 minutes or 10 hours, those will be good games and I'm looking forward to them.
As for my commanding strategy, I'll be a complete n00b for the first few days that 1.1 comes out and try many heinous things. Thanks for all your input, my post was merely to open the minds of both commanders and marines.
- A public server alien team will not naturally group or organise an attack, and usually will not make a serious, organised effort to regain a hive untill it is too late to do so.
- Public server games are still more often than not played with an abnormal number of players, giving an economic advantage to marines that they shouldn't have.
- The act of travelling to a hive and giving people turrets to build naturally brings a marine team together in one location. It's a retard-proof method of getting pub players to act together as a team. Something that wouldn't otherwise occur, and has no equivalent on the alien team.
Turreting 2 hives is not an especially strong strategy, it just happens to work (Sometimes) because of the less-than-optimal environment. It is far, far from being a 'power strat' and nowhere close to being a guaranteed win.
The point? Even against newbies, the two-hive lockdown/seige is chancy at best unless you totally outclass the aliens. Against any decent team it will fail.
If you let Marines take two hives and lock them down so securely that you can't even break them with a full on skulk rush and Offense Chamber placing, then you really deserve to lose that game. Really.
does an onos NEED anything else? only reason an onos needs paralysis is to taunt it's victims (unless ur totaly "elite" and get the JPers), charge is just for fun when running into a base or just to speed you up, and primal scream is used mainly to scare the **** out of the marines. Unless the whole team is attacking, then Primal Scream is useful, but Paralysis and Charge are useless at the moment in my opinion. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not going to laugh at you openly becuase that would be rude. I will just assume you've never charged a building, go try it and edit your post.
I will also go out on a limb and assume you don't know how to use it, charge ONCE hold forward the whole time and run into things.
Yeah - I tend to play onos if we get to an all-out insane war stage in our games. Whereas you might have to hit an upgraded marine a couple of times with bite/claws (your horn, basically) to kill him, charge just runs anyone in your path down. Like getting hit by a steamroller. Hilarious stuff.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i disagree to a great extent. I can take fades, and with teamwork, the second hive can be alien held, and teh marines can still wage a viable war. the key to this kind of war, though, would be to cripple the economy, and begin the use of tactics, holding several key areas of the map, and limiting enemy movement (welding vents helps LOTS). Get good men down there, and you can work it so that you can face each fade with 2-3 marines, merely because of the phase gates and the fact that YOU pick the ground to fight on. in this way, you can grind them down, and eliminate the ability to get fades through an ECONOMIC chokehold. these make for fun, but VERY long games. It is also hard to get marines that won't just lie down and die when the second hive falls. You gotta have men who will fight to the end.
Unfortunately, if a marine team loses a 2 hive lockdown, it's most often either because the aliens were ubar-organized or because the marines were n00bs who couldn't hold a position or follow orders. A competant marine team doesn't need that much teamwork to hold those 2 hives forever. That's where the issue lies.
Asal: You said it best. The key is to cripple the economy, which it always should have been. Just hives are a little easier than economy.
I dont know if you are aware of this, but primal scream makes you and people in its range attack MUCH faster. using adrenaline + primal scream first, then teh bite/primary attack, will flatten any building in short of 10 seconds, with teh exception of cc.
Since there are going to be exactly 0 fades I can drop mines until pings hit 300, then tech up and drop 25 siege cannons next to there hive for fireworks.
If I fail to take one of the hives then I forget the lockdown stuff and go for guns and JP's to take one back. Since early on I only use phase gates and a mine pack or two I will have at least partial upgrades at this point.
BTW: Primal Scream = good and Charge = Supar Building Smasher and occasional Marine steamroller <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
On one hand, if you're playing a relatively unorganized Alien team, you've got a pretty easy win on your hands. Not that it's the fun thing to do, but if you <i>absolutely</i> have to win, you can go that route.
On the other hand, it's frigging expensive, and if you don't have comptetent Marines on your team that can defend your nodes as well as patrol your hives while you tech up, you'll find yourself left with 3 nodes total, minus the res for tech, minus the res to keep mines up, and minus the res to build fortifications at your hives. By this time, one of your positions can be taken out by a decent group of aliens with backup from a gorge.
It's why I tend to stay away from 'em unless I know who my teammates are.
you're right, one of you.
As any RTS player knows, if you try to grab too much, your defences get spread thin and sparse. This is exactly what happened. There were maximum 2-3 marines per hive, and very few actually in the base. The aliens grouped together 3 skulks and rushed in, killing everyone and everything, and chomped the PG away before even the first marine had respawned.
The same happened on the second hive location. Then, because we had tried to set up 3 bases, our main base only had a third as much defence and equipment. 3 times easier to go down, and down we went...
I'd be suprised the aliens couldn't/didn't organise a group attack centered on one place with a 2-hive lockdown by marines. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well usually the Marines will relocate to one of the hives.
2. If you have the aliens owned, you can win the game faster if you don't lock down two hives first.
3. If you don't have the aliens owned, you can't lock down two hives.
Conclusion: Stop locking down two hives. Live and die in the proper fast manner. Stalling does not get you a win. Do you notice how competent aliens result in you relocating to one hive and slowly realizing you can't afford to keep fighting off the aliens? Yes, two hive aliens own. Web owns. Umbra/fade owns. So you better get some nice choke points so you can afford to give them hell before, during, and after they get their second hive. Imagine you kill their gorge. Imagine you kill an rt. Imagine you kill a couple dc's. Imagine you spawn camp their only hive. Now tell me why you give all that up just to play turtle with two hives, at least one of which you _will_ lose unless the aliens SUCK anyways, in which case, you could have went and killed them right from the start.
REDUNDANT ME.
I disagree with your theory, two-hive lockdowns are quite effective even if the relative skill of both teams is equivilant. Marine commanders have been refinining the 2-hive lockdown since... the begining of NS really. The only reason that aliens win in clan games is because they are trained to know ALL rine movement ALL the time. Even very skillful alien players cannot achieve this in a pub, therefore a competent commander will capitalize on this and employ this strategy.
In recap, 2hive lockdowns are extremely effective even against "any decent team."
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->In recap, 2hive lockdowns are extremely effective even against "any decent team."<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This arguement is a sound arguement for 1.04. (although against "any decent team", a 2 hive lockdown won't even get past marine spawn. You sure as hell won't be able to pull it off on a clan match, and some of the pubbers I know have enough experience not to let you close.)
The original point of my first post over a month ago was that it isn't going to be a sound arguement in 1.1 unless you also play for resources, not for stopping alien upgrades.
What bothered me the most is I recently went to a pub game, played marine, and the commander tried an instant two hive lockdown, despite the fact all us marines were ramboing and actually finished the original hive by ourselves.
My greatest arguement against the 2 hive lockdown is the fact that it requires little to no skill when compared to some of the skilled commanding I've seen. A 2 hive lockdown ultimately ends up being uberteched marines versus vanilla aliens. It bothered me that commanders could not come up with a strategy that focused on 1) resources 2) actually attacking the enemy before you go to waste the single hive 3) involved more teamwork than 'sit on your arse in the hive until you have HA'.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are lots of commanders and few strategies right now. Most people will complain about seeing jetpacks before a 2nd hive or being spawncamped in the first 3 minutes. While I too am not fond of it, I'd rather see 3 minutes of constant action as opposed to 20 minutes of dying to turrets in each hive and 10 seconds of seeing the marines actually attack.
General pub players are actually getting better than using newbie strategies like this and should be opened to more than just lockdowns. Commanders only do 2 hive lockdowns because 9 times out of 10, against newbie aliens, you've got it won, no matter what the skill of your team is. Against experienced players, it's rare as hell to actually get the lockdown done unless you're extremely crafty at it.
To sum up everything, I feel the 2 hive lockdown is a dead strat. 1.04 raised the cost of phases and lowered their HP simply to counter the strat. And while commanders are getting better and more strategic, it's bothersome to see commanders who can't evolve past camping 2 hives every game and who can't evolve their strategy around the skill of their players. Sure, it might be the only strat that works on your favorite server, but is that because the players have never been exposed to a different strat, or because the players can't evolve themselves?
There's a serious flaw with this statement...
You see, 1, 2, and 3 are all different means to an end. That end is 4. Ultimately your objective (as you said) in an RTS is victory. How you choose to do that is that "S" part <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
performing a 2 hive lockdown does not mean you are not accomplishing #1. If you win the game without losing lots of buildings/troops because you messed up, then you managed your resources well. Good resource/upgrade management does not mean "get it as fast as possible", it means that you either A. already have it when you need it, or B. used your resources on something else that serves as a replacement (for example motion tracking would generally be a better investment than level 3 armor, or controlling 2 hives preventing fade/onos/umbra/web will keep LMG/LA effective much later in the game. I applaud any commander that can win without abusing JP/HMG rushing <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> )
#2 is accomplished if your opponent has nothing good to spend their resources on. Simply put, a bunch of 1 hive lerks and skulks with carapace and a bunch of defense chambers and offense chambers backing them up are not going to stop your HMG's and GL's effectively.
That being said...you could fail miserably at any of these listed means to victory, but that doesn't mean you're going to lose. You could give the aliens all 3 hives and still win if you manage resources properly and deny them resources.
From my original post, I did list those 4 items as objectives only. While you don't have to follow them, they are a good guideline for winning the game from a strategic point of view.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->That being said...you could fail miserably at any of these listed means to victory, but that doesn't mean you're going to lose. You could give the aliens all 3 hives and still win if you manage resources properly and deny them resources.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is quite true. Many pub games I see lack any coherent strategy and are just fights between random upgrades of marines against random upgrades of aliens losing and gaining hives. But it's mostly newbie play that exhibits this. It's also easy to let your opponents have 3 hives and deny res, except odds are they'll take all the nodes with the hives (except for maybe on caged). And those 3 nodes are quite enough to put enough pain on the marines via fades/onos, not to mention all 3rd hive abilities are pretty fierce for each level alien
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
#2 is accomplished if your opponent has nothing good to spend their resources on. Simply put, a bunch of 1 hive lerks and skulks with carapace and a bunch of defense chambers and offense chambers backing them up are not going to stop your HMG's and GL's effectively.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
#2 is accomplished if you don't give your opponent the opportunity to get more resource towers to allow these upgrades. In addition, I've seen a lot of strong fight put out by aliens that are walled up in their last hive. The only thing that gets them is eventually the marines will outspawn them or get a lucky break and kill numerous aliens at once.
While I agree that good resource management doesn't mean getting all upgrades as fast as possible, there are (at least in 1.04) some staple upgrades that both marines and aliens take. It's rare to see marines without armor level 1 or aliens without carapace level 3, and usually both teams immediatly get to work on that.
And finally <!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> I applaud any commander that can win without abusing JP/HMG rushing <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Likewise I applaud commanders who don't do 2 hive lockdown. Ultimately, my favorite commanders are the ones who can rally the team to win using uncommon and obscure methods. Unfortunately, any alien team will deem an hmg rush (no jps), a jp rush with no hmgs, an immediate siege on the first hive, a spawn camp with lmg rush, a mine rush, a grenade launcher, a base relocate to a hive, a base relocation to the aliens first hive, a shotgun rush, a tech rush, a HA rush, or any other kind of marine attack as cheap win due to the fact that the marine's strongest chance to win lies within killing the aliens first hive before a second is accomplished and the aliens don't have fast access to counters.