Early Thoughts
KRagg
Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8832Members
Join Date: 2002-11-15 Member: 8832Members
<div class="IPBDescription">end game and origin among other things</div> I'll start with ns_origin.
It's terribly hard for onoses to move around in this map, especially if you loose Vent hive. In that case, it's a veritable nightmare to try to support your team since you have to take long detours to get there. Now, I do realise that the map adheres to the two exits rules, but it doesn't do an onos much good when you have to walk around half the map because you're too big to go through one of them.
Another thing which really bugs me is the end game. When marines are winning, aliens have only hive one abilities and are significantly weaker than when they're winning. On the other hand, when aliens are winning, marines are still as strong as ever and can turret farm and spam indefintely to keep aliens out. I'm not really sure how this can be solved, but I do have a suggestion. A passive effect called "Terror of Inevitability" or something like that which weakens the marines if the marines have had only one resource node (2 for double nodes) for a significant amount of time, for example five minutes. Or perhaps when aliens have had three hives for an extended amount of time.
And while this is more of a feature request, since you do have visual confirmation of when you are in cloak range, it would be nice to be able to see when you are in move and def range (possibly just an icon for all three). On top of letting aliens know when they're within range, this would also help gorges to plan an efficient defense.
ns_bast. There is no easy route in for the end-game, making it an excercise in patience to finish this. The vent can be closed, the elevator shaft is problematic, especially now that the onoses can't climb the ladders to the top, and the turnstyle hinders the momentum needed when you are charging the base.
Devour and stun are a lot of fun as onos and played right an onos can live for a long time.
It is truly hard to choose between which tower to start with, even though only one of the sensory abilities are really worthwhile.
Playing gorge is a lot less stressfull and lots of fun, since the fulcrum of the alien hivemind no longer revolves around the performance of a single gorge.
The new fade is hard to get used to and he does feel a bit lacking in terms of damage output, since he only has two attacks, and the secondary one is a hive three abilities. I like the new blink, especially the fact that you can blink through the air ducts with it, however, I am not too happy about metabolize. When I'm fighting, it doesn't heal me fast enough to warrant changing to it, and when you're not fighting, with the insane speeds of blink, you're really better off just blinking to the nearest DC farm/hive and healing up there.
I'm sure I don't have to say anything about pheromones, but I do want to urge you to make cloaking a chamber only effect and change out the upgrade version for something else, or allow aliens to move around cloaked, for example lowering the cloaking slightly so that it is easier to see the alien. As it is now, there's little use for this ability compared to putting up an SC nearby and getting SoF.
It's terribly hard for onoses to move around in this map, especially if you loose Vent hive. In that case, it's a veritable nightmare to try to support your team since you have to take long detours to get there. Now, I do realise that the map adheres to the two exits rules, but it doesn't do an onos much good when you have to walk around half the map because you're too big to go through one of them.
Another thing which really bugs me is the end game. When marines are winning, aliens have only hive one abilities and are significantly weaker than when they're winning. On the other hand, when aliens are winning, marines are still as strong as ever and can turret farm and spam indefintely to keep aliens out. I'm not really sure how this can be solved, but I do have a suggestion. A passive effect called "Terror of Inevitability" or something like that which weakens the marines if the marines have had only one resource node (2 for double nodes) for a significant amount of time, for example five minutes. Or perhaps when aliens have had three hives for an extended amount of time.
And while this is more of a feature request, since you do have visual confirmation of when you are in cloak range, it would be nice to be able to see when you are in move and def range (possibly just an icon for all three). On top of letting aliens know when they're within range, this would also help gorges to plan an efficient defense.
ns_bast. There is no easy route in for the end-game, making it an excercise in patience to finish this. The vent can be closed, the elevator shaft is problematic, especially now that the onoses can't climb the ladders to the top, and the turnstyle hinders the momentum needed when you are charging the base.
Devour and stun are a lot of fun as onos and played right an onos can live for a long time.
It is truly hard to choose between which tower to start with, even though only one of the sensory abilities are really worthwhile.
Playing gorge is a lot less stressfull and lots of fun, since the fulcrum of the alien hivemind no longer revolves around the performance of a single gorge.
The new fade is hard to get used to and he does feel a bit lacking in terms of damage output, since he only has two attacks, and the secondary one is a hive three abilities. I like the new blink, especially the fact that you can blink through the air ducts with it, however, I am not too happy about metabolize. When I'm fighting, it doesn't heal me fast enough to warrant changing to it, and when you're not fighting, with the insane speeds of blink, you're really better off just blinking to the nearest DC farm/hive and healing up there.
I'm sure I don't have to say anything about pheromones, but I do want to urge you to make cloaking a chamber only effect and change out the upgrade version for something else, or allow aliens to move around cloaked, for example lowering the cloaking slightly so that it is easier to see the alien. As it is now, there's little use for this ability compared to putting up an SC nearby and getting SoF.
Comments
I've harld seen any Gorges in any 2.0 games. I've joined a game about mid game and had not seen a gorge the remainder of the game.
Gorge is the building killer. The Bile Bomb makes short work out of any marine out post and two Gorges that back each other up are increadibly effective. Shoot, if you got a Lerk and a Fade or Oni backing them up, they're pretty much unstopable. And thats only 3-4 players on a team taking out a single outpost.
You guys need to get out of the 1.04 mind set. Lots of things have changed and ther's a lot of new stratigies .. dont write off something because it doesn't work the first time you tried it.
You guys honestly think we all sat on our **** testing 2.0 ..? <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::marine::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/marine.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='marine.gif'><!--endemo-->
turrret farming is really successful right now.. where are all the <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo--> 's?
Come out of the closet, you wanna be gorges!!!! Plz for the sake of the Kharaa's survival. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
You just can't compare an outpost which has 3-4 turrets and a PG if the comm bothered to a marine team turret farming their base after loosing the last hive with multiple IP's.
And it has nothing to do with 1.04 mindset as you put it. Most of the games I played (mostly 18-20 people on the servers) had 4+ gorges most of the time, including attempts at breaking through the marines last stand.
I just don't see what kind of strategies would work when you turn the corner and face 10-20+ turrets. well, other than rush, rush, rush, rush, rush for 10-15+ minutes, meanwhile the comm gains res off of every kill and the last one-two RT's he has so he can churn out new turrets.
but...
about gorges gettin nailed from marines easily - a good tactic that worked in 1.0x was to use redemption, and always stay by an OC/DC when a marine is near. skirt around the chamber while the marine tries to shoot u (u will take little damage as the chamber will absorb it); because u r takin damage slowly, redemption will always work, so u will be whisked back to ure hive.
-Seraph
But a good alternative to DC are SC now. Several games I played we started with them. They're great cause...
A. They cloak ANYTHING alien! (Hive, resnodes, team, etc.)
B. Well, you're cloaked how to know what's going on when they cant see
So if you place SC everywhere you are constantly cloaked and free to run around with little worries and makes Cloaking upgrade pretty useless.
A good gorge setup is:
Redemption (almost never die)
Scent of Fear (see marines before they get to you, maxed out you can see them a mile away)
Silence (Personal choice, but all 3 MC are effective in the way you like)
Just tested and it took me two minutes or so to destroy 20 L3/L3 turrets spread out over holo in ns_hera. had adrenaline and caraphase and some def towers nearby. (didn't use move because of the distance, you won't always be guaranteed to have towers within distance either).
That's of course, not considering marines, comm scanning for towers nearby, onoses running in your way, etc.
Actually, no, we said quite the exact opposite: The Gorge is less of an exclusive builder, and more of a support unit.
Anyway, from the games I have played in, mostly all the time I've plaed, we picked sensory over the other upgrade chambers as the first upgrade, cloak and alien motion-tracking =teh win
"OMG, hive-lockdown still works!"
Then:
"Aliens are grossly overpowered!"
Now:
"Shotgun and HA reign surpreme."
Next will quite possibly be:
"Damn, Lerks are just too good!" Because people realized about the merit of Spores.
Each and every time, I'm told that people tried "everything" (which is what my last post was aimed at). Honestly, I'm starting to get a little grumpy.
[I hope you take no offense to the tone you percieve from this text message and hold a grudge for all eternity]
I know. That's why they promoted me to admin status <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--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 hope you take no offense to the tone you percieve from this text message and hold a grudge for all eternity]<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nah, you criticised my mental and not NSes gameplay balance. I can live with that <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
I'm starting to get very bitter indeed about the problems most players have with going gorge. It's hard enough getting them to go gorge early game to drop a res and maybe a chamber or two, and harder still to get a skulk who never went gorge in the beginning to use his res to get an early hive. But it seems hardest of all to get 2-3 players to give up their combat classes to go gorge and bile a big turret farm(yes, it works as well against 20 turrets as it does against 5, as long as you have some intelligent alien support) or a base. And even if you can pull that off, the rest of the aliens won't properly support the gorges(LERKS DO NOT USE UMBRA NEARLY ENOUGH!) and the gorges won't heal eachother so they die and everybody says bile bomb rushes don't work.
In fact, it's pretty hard to get anyone to do anything you ask them to. I don't know if it's just because I still don't have a mic and people don't read text(you'd be surprised how often people say they never pay attention to text chat) or if most pub players are still extremely selfish or what but it's really getting on my nerves.
Gorge vs turret =the turrets will win, Bilebomb cant take them down fast enough before you're killed, by the turrets.
Okay, skulks are quite good at taking down turrets, especially if they have xenocide and it's not overcrowded by marines.
Fades is NOT good against turrets, but groups of them can still take them down, if there is no marines
Onos against turrets, yes, they can take down outpost but as soon as the matter is a marine base, the onos WILL get killed, the turrets will block it's way, because of their huge size the marines will most likely hit with all their bullets, and 10 bullets a second *10 marines =Onos pwned
Overall, turret farms prolong the game, something I thought the Development team was fighting. Turret farms can be taken down, but it's hard, especially if the marines have relocated to some nasty places <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo--> the more marines there is in the game, the more harder it will be, and you have to really organize a mass alien rush in order to take them down :/
So, I do think they should be toned down, just alittle
Bzzzt. Wrong.
<!--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-->Gorge vs turret =the turrets will win, Bilebomb cant take them down fast enough before you're killed, by the turrets.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Um, you don't just stand there in front of the turrets getting shot until you die. If possible you stand around the corner and hit the turrets with BB's radius. If not, you can get one of the other gorges to keep you healed.
<!--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-->Okay, skulks are quite good at taking down turrets, especially if they have xenocide and it's not overcrowded by marines.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Xeno no longer does double damage vs. buildings, and any decent number of turrets chew skulks up in seconds.
<!--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-->Fades is NOT good against turrets, but groups of them can still take them down, if there is no marines<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, with Meta and/or regen, they're better than skulks are. If there are no marines a Fade can take down a small/medium outpost on its own.
<!--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-->Onos against turrets, yes, they can take down outpost but as soon as the matter is a marine base, the onos WILL get killed, the turrets will block it's way, because of their huge size the marines will most likely hit with all their bullets, and 10 bullets a second *10 marines =Onos pwned<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, that's right.
So now we come back to Bile Bomb, the most effective way for aliens to eliminate large numbers of turrets. With the aliens you mentioned above and Lerks defending the gorges while they bile from as safe a location as possible, big turret farms are no issue.
its amazing how quickly you exhaust all strategies in a 2 hour turret farming exercise. with 3 hives ive seen a few games now where eventually fades sniping the important tf and open turrets bringsthem down, but when a carapaced onos is dead before he can reach the first turret how the hell can a gorge survive?
Well the gorge can survive by keeping healed, not staying in front of the turrets for an extended period of time and getting other aliens to protect him. Very simple really.
Well the gorge can survive by keeping healed, not staying in front of the turrets for an extended period of time and getting other aliens to protect him. Very simple really. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think if you were in the games I was playing you would find this is not the case, if a gorge must leave safety and go more than a few steps out of cover to bilebomb he is already dead. In the last game I played (ns_caged) the end game was extended for an extra hour, we tried a double onos+redemption rush, which almost wqorked except when the marines saved enough res for a couple of hmgs then, even that couldnt save us, next we tried onos + gorge, which was pitiful, onos dies in less then 5 seconds and the gorges dies instantly, having got off maybe 3 bilebombs, then a couple more players joined and I used a redemption fade to snipe their tf+turrets, took about half an hour of timed onos rushes and constant acid rockets, with the occasional marine getting out of base and causing me to warp back to base, hehe luckily with blink thats a 15 second round trip <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->.. but yeah.. took a long time, tried bilebombing from the vent behind their base a few times but after a couple of shots its all over for the gorgey.
edit:
every marine game I've seen won didnt involve turret farming, every alien game I've seen won <i>quickly</i> didn't involve turret farming, how about a hard limit to how many turrets you can have in an area? I don't mean to be bitchy or anything but atm this seems like a major issue >.>
Most likely they'll out of the BB's radius, since you'll have to be pretty close to the turret if you want to hit it.
Also, one gorge cant keep you healed, either it will run out of energy or it will die as well and if the turrets are decently placed meaning BB will only hit one turret, it's bye-bye gorgey
<span style='color:white'>[edit]</span><!--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-->Most alien teams seem to fall apart in the end game. You just have to have the Onos and the Gorge and the Lerk and the Fade there. This is a teamplay game. Don't expect that to change.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
are you saying a team HAVE to be consisted of every class in order to win? if so, I dont think it's balanced<span style='color:white'>[/edit]
Don't doublepost, please.</span>
what if you are playing a game with 2 or 3 aliens as they are the only ones patient enough to keep at the turret farm?
Even the much harder problem - 10 marines covering 20 turrets with an incessant GL spam - is actually possible to handle - at least at hive 3. Of course, it takes a COORDINATED alien team to actually break such a stalemate. I actually think it's good - it teaches the aliens teamwork. The proper mix of lerks to primal scream and umbra the Onoses that charges, while the gorges follows up with a bilebomb spam only AFTER the onoses are occupying the minds of the marines ... will crack most last last stands pretty fast.
Of course, getting the required alien teamwork to break a marine last stand can take an hour or even two, in case of the really hardheaded alien cases.
what if you are playing a game with 2 or 3 aliens as they are the only ones patient enough to keep at the turret farm? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, if only two or three aliens can co-operate while the whole of the marines acts as team (which is pretty much the only way to keep a turret farm under constant attack working), they seem to be doing better.
Sorry, but that's it. There is no Onos killing all turrets anymore; like with the marines, the aliens will have to join their forces in the endgame.
As I see it
RTS= Commander mode
FPS = rest of the game (of course it involves straetegy as well)
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I dont think it's a good idea to mix classic RTS with NS.. In RTS the AI is better than the NS average <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Also, every RTS does not require mixed troops, for an example, in Red alert I could with a large enough amount of Mammoth tanks complete annihilate the enemy base, in NS aliens should no matter what lifeform they take be able to deal with turrets, IMO <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->