Author Topic: For Plaguebearer  (Read 7606 times)

April 06, 2004, 08:44:07 AM
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SaltzBad

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On Alien teamplay

First of all, I can understand why you have a problem with me trying to get some coordination out of an Alien team regularly - trying to see that we don't over-gorge, get enough DCs and RTs and what not. Of course everyone has their own oppinion of what should be done and what not, and their being no CC for aliens makes this a bit messy. Quite honestly if people don't feel like playing along with me they don't have to - theres nothing I can do anyway.

They're just suggestions, and if people feel like playing as a bit of a more coherent team then thats cool, and most rounds become alot more fun. It doesn't mean we'll win every round - but even losing is more satisfying when its not an endless  'spawn, jump chomp jump jump chomp, die' cycle.

And if you have reasonable suggestions on what to do differently, theres no need to be dramatic about it. We can try it, theres plenty of rounds to do so.

On building more than ~4 RTs

Okay, lets say we have something like yesterday, 7 people on our team. We gathered a total of 4 ressourcenodes, meaning 3 people Gorged at the start of the round. Everyone Gorging is obviously putting themselves down to 0 res. That leaves 4 people, 2 of which will need to do Hives and chambers (and remember, cooperation isn't perfect - in public play, some people don't want to putup either). The remainder is two people, assuming both of them do their roles (where again, in public play odds are high he'll either never spend his res or putup OCs somewhere) to go for early Fades/Lerks, an essential to containing any good team like the ones yesterday.

This model should give you one ressource point every ~7 seconds, or Fadeing without any kills in ~175 seconds, aka 3 minutes. Obviously, against competent marine teams ressource towers will go down - but then, you should be getting some kills as well, getting you to 50 res in well under 4 minutes, for Hives and Fades. Chambers come 10 res earlier.

Lets assume for a change, 6 people put down RTs instead of 3 (that would be Server M2, Cold Turn, Hamasaki, AE35, Eastern and Gorges in our example). That leaves a maximum of 1 person for either early lifeform, chambers or hive (assuming again he did so, and remembering that things on publics don't go perfectly). So, if everything goes perfectly after 3 minutes your whole team should have 50 res, right? (Double the income, 50 instead of 25 res in 3 minutes)

And heres the problem. You yourself will probably admit that its simply not likely that every RT will hold - a few will go down simply because so many people Gorge at the start of the game, leaving the marines free to go wherever they like for a minute. Next comes the time required of your team to setup this many RTs - you can argue for re-skulking and not blindly/immediately dropping all those towers, but again that adds even more time until your ressources start poring in.

So in the end, you'll have one guy going Fade a bit faster than normal, and 6 guys probably being screwed out of res. You can hardly tell me this is better than the situation we had in that game, where 2 guys go fairly early fade (admittedly we sucked ass), and 2 more spend big on chambers and hive, with another 3 with around ~30ish res for rebuilding RTs or filling other roles the team needs at the time (Lerk, OCs, Chambers etc.).

Gorge simply does not = teamplay. A good mix of lifeforms and structures does though - and look at any alien win against competent marines to prove this. I think you were around on ns_tanith where aliens had only 3 RTs and 2 OCs up to 6 minutes into the game and dominated with them. Just the game before they did the polar opposite, with 6 Gorges and got raped in every possible way - my cute widdle marines got the drop on 2 Gorges in the act, and 3 more finished RTs before the 4 minute mark. The setback was so large that we saw no lifeform until 8 minutes, at which point we were overteched to the point of a Fade just being a laugh (Heavy Armor). The game ended with a simple walk-in on their only hive (they had one building too, but that never made it very far) at 11 minutes.

So Saltz, why do you want to win so badly?

Honestly, I don't care so much for winning, and as said above if anyone doesn't want to play a bit mock-competitively as a team, they don't have to. But, lets face it - losing as an Alien sucks. Its just plain not fun being an unupgraded Skulk vs supertechrines - nothing you can do, and almost no effect you can have alone. Spawn, be a walking target and die. I simply don't enjoy spending my time that way, end of story - and teamplay is what turns this all around. A rush of unupgraded Skulks is so much more fun than spawning one by one and dying to the campers outside the Hive, even when it fails horribly. Working with your team and complementing eachothers abilitys is much more satisfying than just trying to masturbate to your own skill.

Sure this all doesn't happen naturally on a pub, and feels a bit out of place even. But hey, isn't teamwork what NS was all about? :)
« Last Edit: April 06, 2004, 08:45:20 AM by SaltzBad »

April 06, 2004, 02:54:26 PM
Reply #1

Magmatron

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To me, winning is okay, having fun is better. My most memorable games have been losing ones, and as long as I have fun I don't give a damn how many kills x person has, or which team won. On aliens, if I'm being told what to do enough, I'm going to get angry. I have no real interest in alien teamwork beyond attacking groups of marines in a pack. If someone is looking for competitive play or alot of teamwork, I advise scoping out a clan server.

On Lunixmonster, a person just can't have aliens who came to play in their own way follow a plan they devised, since that's not what those people came for. People are going to get irritated. The best shot at getting people to follow strategies  on LM is to be the marine commander. If I find anyone attempting to boss around the alien team and ruin their fun, I will deal with them personally. If the alien team as a whole decides to listen to one or two people, then that's their choice and I'm fine with it.

I'm sorry if this is only for Plague, but in that case you might want to try a PM. Just seemed to be a good thread to make a point on a subject I think important.

TyrNem...blah blah blah

April 06, 2004, 03:21:28 PM
Reply #2

BobTheJanitor

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I don't really see anything wrong with alien teamplay. If one person wants to try and organize things, more power to them. It happens anyway. What do you think you're doing when you yell 'MARINES IN POWERSILO GET HERE NOW!' ? That's an attempt to organize the alien team.

Alien organization is the main reason aliens win so often on LM anyway. Mostly it's just that we have so many good regs that they already know what to do. Most will gorge for RTs right off, but not all. Someone almost always says 'I've got the hive.' Someone drops chambers as soon as they get the res. It just works out. I don't find anything problematic about Saltz's efforts to add more organization to the alien team. I don't guarantee it'll work all the time, but there's nothing wrong with trying. I was really happy once to see him organize a pack of skulks into attacking an elec'ed RT. (and taking it down with ease)

Lunixmonster: Banning the NS community one smacktard at a time. -lolfighter
there are a lot of aaaa...mmmmm.... "HAPPY" pirates on this ship. -GrayDuck

April 06, 2004, 03:51:00 PM
Reply #3

Magmatron

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Sure, that's always fine, it's an understood part of what aliens do. Someone tells the team where the enemy is, and members of that team decide whether or not to go there and do something. That's different from directly ordering around people to do what you want, or force people to adhere to a structure you designed. That's what I have a problem with, because if you do not do what that person "suggests", generally you are insulted for it, or that person starts blaming you for his problems, etc. For me, it ruins the fun I would rather be having thinking for myself. If I want to be a pawn, I'll go marines.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2004, 03:52:28 PM by Ness-Earthbound »

TyrNem...blah blah blah

April 06, 2004, 04:21:52 PM
Reply #4

Plaguebearer

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Saltz, in that game, you were saying we could get by off three nodes.  We only had four because I cashed in my rfk for building another node.

I never insinuated that gorge=teamplay.  But I do insist that without res, aliens lose.  It's simple enough to go gorge, drop a res, go back skulk, and go about your business.  That res then parlays into more available defenses, upgrades, lifeforms...
God, I'm old.

April 06, 2004, 04:43:21 PM
Reply #5

SaltzBad

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I thought we had Gorges/Hama/Cold Turn + Pressure as our starting res, and hence 4 RTs Plague. My point isn't that aliens don't need res, but they're likely to get it faster for the game-deciding point by not all going out and putting up RTs. When playing against a team thats not all that good, having too many RTs doesn't hurt - infact, it accelerates the win. But against teams like yesterday, too many gorges leave us even weaker and longer in the dubiously 'fun' realm of good aims vs basic Skulks.

But instead of arguing, next chance we get lets just try it bot ways and see how it plays out. Maybe I'm totally wrong and marines take too much time to take down RTs with Skulk defence, and we'll really live to cash in against competent marines. I'm willing to try and maybe learn something :)

April 06, 2004, 10:27:16 PM
Reply #6

Grillkohle

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But I do insist that without res, aliens lose.  It's simple enough to go gorge, drop a res, go back skulk, and go about your business.  That res then parlays into more available defenses, upgrades, lifeforms...
Amen.

April 07, 2004, 05:26:09 AM
Reply #7

Sydney Carton

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The question that Saltz is posing, though, is not whether it's better to have people go gorge to drop RTs or not, but what amount is the most beneficial.  

For example, on TLM if it's a full game, we have 8 aliens.  If each drops a node, assuming that no gorges get gunned down (a bad assumption), that's 8*25 = 200 res.  If I remember my lifeform costs correctly, that's 4 fades, 6 lerks, more chambers than you'll ever need, both other hives and 2 onos, or some combination of the above.

Another disadvantage of capping lots o' RTs at the beginning is that the "no gorges get gunned down" assumption is just plain wrong, and the more RTs you get, the more likely that you lose them before they break even in res production, meaning that you've gained negative res and wasted time.

Of course, it's not that simple.  You can't just trade res between players, so you can't say 2 RTs = 5 chambers like I was proposing above without some caveats.

The point is that there is some sort of ballpark optimal number of RTs to drop which will allow you to get the all-important fade and Hive 2 the quickest, and drop chambers along the way.  The question is what it is.
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April 07, 2004, 10:54:52 AM
Reply #8

Plaguebearer

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Of course, it's not that simple. You can't just trade res between players, so you can't say 2 RTs = 5 chambers like I was proposing above without some caveats.

2 RTs doesn't equal 5 chambers - an RT costs 15 res.
God, I'm old.

April 07, 2004, 11:20:15 AM
Reply #9

SaltzBad

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He's adding in the 10 for the starting Gorge. *shrug*

April 07, 2004, 02:48:58 PM
Reply #10

Plaguebearer

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I'm aware of that... so shouldn't we also add the cost of going gorge to the price for chambers?  Shouldn't do it on one side of the equation and not the other. ;)
God, I'm old.

April 07, 2004, 04:48:21 PM
Reply #11

SaltzBad

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Yeah, it doesn't make sense. But then, you'd never need 5 gorges to drop chambers at the start of the round. Anyway, it implys the right arguments - each guy going Gorge is wasting 10/25ths (aka 2/5ths) of his res on that alone, and considering we need people with 50 ressource at the 3/4 minute mark everyone going Gorge won't get you there faster - nor does putting up later RTs you cannot keep the marines away from easily.

April 08, 2004, 12:15:02 AM
Reply #12

Dark

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it all depends on what the team really wants to do.  i mean sometimes everyone drops a rt, but that is a few and far between amount of time.  yes salty has a good point about not having everyone do it but still his plan does have disadvantages and they are as he stated no one doing anything but res whoreing
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er.. which doohickey is the capacitor? and not a FLUX capacitor right?!? cuz then i'd have to put it in my Dolorian..
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April 08, 2004, 10:44:07 PM
Reply #13

zerwalter

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F*** I just realized that this game has been all about winning for me (period)

*cry* Maybe when I get back from my vacation I will play NS more for fun (which playing with Saltz has done anyways *hug*) I was just remembering the days when I first started playing NS. Twas my first FPS (besides the Descent series but it is quite different than a six-degrees-of-freedom-first-person-shooter) and I sucked so much that my only saving grace was commanding... I think I will go and reminisce more now *sniffs*

April 09, 2004, 02:31:21 AM
Reply #14

Magmatron

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Well, I think you guys can do me a favor and keep any further sniping at eachother in PMs.

TyrNem...blah blah blah

April 09, 2004, 01:55:59 PM
Reply #15

Fewlio

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Well, I remember back in the day when res = win. Everyone would just go fatty cap nodes then reskulk, of course it did depend on the map..... But this current version I don't quite know which is winning and which isn't. I do know that if the majority of people cap nodes then the one person saving can get a higher lifeform quicker and the rest can get hives and chambers... but then there's always good marine strats to counter this.... and good alien strats to counter those.... Hell I liked to command the alien team, but now I don't know enough from lack of play to successfully help my team win anymore. I just know I would rather play with someone who knows useful ways to win and I would like them to help me figure out how to use such strats.

If all the aliens just wanna go and do their own thing all the time then if the marines have any clue then the aliens are raped, but if the marines dont have a clue aliens can do anything they want and win easily.

Pub Strats = the winnar!

I reveal penis I know psychology.