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« on: May 13, 2005, 09:30:37 PM »
WARNING: Long post ahead!
As Gold said it totally depends on the scenario. I find commanding to be very similar to Starcraft, where instead of me actually having to control the units and macro the base at the same time, the micro is controlled by the individual players. This is a good and bad thing, in Starcraft between two evenly skilled players; you can normally tell who has the advantage at the time in question. NS on the other hand has much more variance in terms of what is possible; for example 1 skulk owning 3 marines which in theory shouldn’t happen but actually does.
All else being equal, with an even # of players on the team all scenarios should in theory be fair. Smart comms will not treat it that way, but rather go with the flow of the game. If you know for a fact you team has nobody with decent aim, you’re not about to push into a hive against 1-2 good fades unless you can out gun them by a long shot. You have to know what your team is capable of before you can make any real decisions on strategy. This is one reason why pub games are much different than league matches, comms know what their team is capable of, but that’s rarely the case in pubs since it’s almost never the exact same team/comm. As with any situation, setup / timing / positioning are the most critical to attacking hives. I used to factor aim into that equation but even with the most advanced players on your team anything can happen. This is just my opinion, there’s a million other factors I could throw in here but don’t have time for.
Setup is having the all the tools capable of doing the job properly. You can’t piece things together at the last minute and hope to pull out a win. It may happen 1 out of 10 times if you get lucky, but you’ll fall on your face and demoralize your team (if disorganization hasn’t got to them already) when you fail. First you need a general plan of attack IN ADVANCE. It helps to know the maps, the hive in particular, and be aware of life-forms on the opposing teams. Marines can rarely risk any of that on-the-fly stuff unless it’s an emergency or miracles present themselves. Comms need to TOTALLY be in charge of these scenarios, you can’t let field leaders/comms control what’s happening since they aren’t seeing the over all picture. Equipment varies at different stages of the game, but if you’re keeping up with upgrades and tech any hive can go down to the right strategy. Early game pg/shotguns, mid game siege and heavy weapons, and even late game trains are all workable options. Getting people organized is the commanders main job, people may get into position to get a pg up, but the commander needs to notify everyone and make sure they are aware of the plan. Otherwise you’ll beacon randomly and say phase but no one will know what’s going on. It’s good to get marines mentally prepped for rushes; it’s a lot harder to take them down in groups when everyone has their game face on. Resources are like insurance, you need to have some spare at all times during a hive assault. You should have resources for meds/ammo primarily, weapons/heavies for those respawning, back up structures in case things go down… this will keep your team alive. When assaulting a hive no one knows how long it will take to get it down, so plan for the worst case scenario.
Timing may in fact be the most critical factor in NS. MT should be used primarily by the commander when timing an attack, or if you don’t have MT you need team recon. If you can ninja a PG outside a hive being covered by few units, prepare your team as I mentioned before, wait till fades/onos or their important life-forms are not in critical locations and then give the go ahead. For example, on ns_caged, you ninja a pg outside sewer and aliens don’t know. Wait until the time is right! Let’s say they’re trying to clear out dbl because you have rts there or are on the other side of the map at a hive they don’t own or have mc’s at. That’s a perfect time to beacon everyone and rush in with shotguns even. Sure it’s not that easy, but you get the point, take an advantage when you can. Just like after killing a teams one and only fade (hell I die all the time)! When better to push into position as a team and get a fortified outpost near their hive set up, why wait until that person re-fades or someone else does. Know when hives are dropped/go up, usually between 3-6 minutes; it’s much easier to siege a building hive against 1 chamber units with no 3rd ability than waiting. Fades / Onos become nearly invincible after the 2nd hive is up if they are smart.
Positioning relies heavily on map knowledge. Certain hives have extremely weak defense to siege at certain areas (cargo bay on tanith), while others are impossible to siege (archiving on hera). If you plan to siege, the resource commitment is huge, so know what you’re doing. Don’t just plop things down anywhere and hope to God you’re in range, I’ve learned this the hard way so take my word for it. I mentioned having lots of resources to spare because a siege outpost can cost roughly 70 dollars [adv. tf (25) / 3 siege cannons (45)] in change. That doesn’t even include pg/turrets/mines. That’s no small bit of cash, and you sure as hell don’t want to wait for it to trickle in while you’re under attack and your team is calling for med packs. If you aren’t attempting to siege, be sure keep track of enemy units/structures. That means units outside the hive, ones that are in the hive, and static defense/chambers. If you have no chance in hell of taking down the hive and are fighting a war of attrition, take out their structures (very weak) in the base while fending them off. It has roughly the same effect as marines losing their AL and can cripple fade / onos / lerk effectiveness. Comms should watch the Scoreboard, be aware of how many aliens are dead/respawning. Pushing into a hive when all aliens are alive is suicide (unless the majority is nowhere near the hive); try to pick them off while they attack your marines/pg. You should have 2 IPs if they have 2 hives, so spawning rate is equal. Aliens will come after you, they don’t allow you to setup, so play defensively until you have the headcount advantage, THEN make your move. Make use of beacon! Aliens have one key disadvantage in hive rushes, and that is when their whole team is dead they can’t just reappear all at once! This can be a very slow process for them and outnumbering respawning skulks while you take down a hive isn’t such a problem do deal with.
On a side note: One thing I have never been to sure about is the so called rule on spawn camping, it’s much too vague and I’d like to see proper clarification about it in a well thought out post made by the admins. If one exists already, please link me to it. In theory (matches) you’d have ½ of the team attacking the hive and the rest defending the attackers so no one dies. On LM that’s a bannable offense to my knowledge. Apparently you’d have to be shooting the hive or structures and hopefully when something respawns, you’ve got ammo in your gun (or someone else does) to then focus your aim on the unit to kill it before it gets to you. This puts marines at a further disadvantage since that basically means you’d never rush a hive without siege/heavy weapons/armor/jps; you just couldn’t do enough damage nor survive the spawning skulk attacks without insane aim or ammo conservation. All of that is only available in the late game with resource domination, and as we all know aliens tend to dominate the majority of mid/late games. I’m not complaining about the rule, just making an observation and requesting a more defined set of rules. I know why the rule is in place, so I don’t disagree with it, but it’s mainly for Rambo spawn campers and I think it needs to be discussed.
Anyways, sorry for the long post, I hope that helped. I’ve been trying to comm more often lately and help get marines players into a more organized fashion than they normally seem to be when I’m playing for aliens. I’ve noticed spear/newborn/rad and many of the other regular comms all have different styles, no matter what it is though you should listen to what they want to do because bottom line is they make the real decisions. Most of them have been doing it for long enough to know what works and what doesn’t, so don’t ignore them just because it isn’t something you would do (unless of course its completely retarded like relocate to pad on hera :p).
Questions? Comments? Medpacks?
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/gl(4)/hmg(125)) in the future. Just for sake of rushing once a pg is up so people don't get their guns and hump before phasing.
. The game had too many issues at the time and pub play was much too disorganized on either side to enjoy the game, at least on the servers I played on so I was never dedicated to the game. I’m a CS player by trade (played for about 2 years competitively in cal-main season 9 or 10) so NS always took a back seat to my CS team’s practice schedule, but it was occasionally fun nonetheless. What I’ve found is that this game HAS gotten significantly better with every new release; I could really care less about what anyone from the “glory days” believes.
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