edit: hey, it isn't about shotguns!
running these thoughts by you guys, if it becomes anything of worth perhaps i'll report on ns forums:
atm everyone sees aliens as the team that pretty much wins unless the aliens screw around and do nothing. which sadly, is very, very accurate. "the games are won by 5 minutes played", is indeed the problem we face. hive two can be put up by 3 minutes if you get ~3-5 kills, depending on rfk and rts. i've gotten it up earlier in a full game, but due to luck of owning marines early into the first minute. but as you can plainly see, its possible to get 25 res in about two minutes, as the free(skulk), non upgraded lifeform. RFK may be to blame(in that case it is), but this isn't the only problem.
everyone knows marines can turtle, its not even funny how well they can do it. it'll eventually be broken, with the right combo of abils+lifeforms. however, add heavies to the mix, and its that much harder to break. especially with phasegates. they also have shotguns, which are ridiculously good, but i can't call them overpowered due to the netcode issues. so okay, netcode saves aliens often, but sometimes it also kills them("im down the hall yay" bob killed fade with shotgun "..")
so problems from two short paragraphs are: rfk and netcode. on top of those two issues, we also have the alien res system setup. the way it works, as far as i've noticed, is the following:
say you have 3 res towers, 6 people on a team. very easy to get on most maps, and just as easy to hold. every 4 seconds 3 res is distributed. it goes to every player in an order. so, players 1-3 will get one res a piece for that "tick" of the rt. the next one, the other 3 players get 1 res a piece. and repeats every 4 seconds. pretty nice wouldn't you say, 1 res every 8 seconds for holding a hive, something you need to win anyway? then you can throw in the hope that aliens will be holding hive2, or some other rt. just makes it go faster every time.
RFK gives the resources solely to the killer. so lets say jim kills a marine. he'll get 1-3 res at random, and the normal res from the res tower. throw that together how you want to, 1-3 res is an extra speed of 8-24 seconds. 24 seconds is a long time in this game to just obtain for killing a player, something you have to do. as well, every lifeform can obtain RFK. so that gorge laming up that one room gets all the res for his kills, never really getting back its worth(vs good players) for total cost, but defending a room and getting more res faster(8-24 second skips remember!) to defend yet another room.
overflow allows this to become even nicer! its like removing an entire player calculation wise, while retaining his form and usefulness. free upgrades allow aliens to retain their res better than before, as well. gorges can just build without care or worry if the entire team has overflow.
okay so we have the issue, alien res system is insanely good if they hold res towers at all in a 6 player game. obviously the math dies a little if you add 7/8 players, but ns is "balanced at 6", so thats out, but even at 8 players, 3 rts can win the game for aliens.
marines get all their res to one player, yes. but he has to spend it on high cost global upgrades, which can be argued is cost effective, and they are very nice, which they are. but the problem is he has to save up as much as a gorge does to get these things, and he can't ALSO be giving out weapons(like fades and whatnot), and meds/ammo, rts, phasegates. you can have ~4 upgrades going at once depending, armory/arms lab/obs/arms lab#2. most scenarios, comms will just be upgrading the arms lab for the most part. even then, 40 res early on for a1/w1. comes about the same time aliens start hive2. compareable? not really. add the fact that aliens can also have a fade and a lerk and chambers by now. really uncompareable.
the problem i'm having with all of this is that marines can be very, very strong after they get armor3 heavies with hmgs. they can't be touched. ever. siege anything, just owns. only thing that really hurts them is screamed acid rockets, but to do any real armor damage the fade has to be in los of the marines, and can die to a gl+hmgs(GL does hurt a fade, a lot, if it hits) but theres the giant tic tacs(tactics) arguement you can do, but realistically marines will end up siegeing whatever their target is to death.
so my conclusion on the problem is that the aliens early res flow compared to use is too little. its difficult for marines to start off atm. use a lot of res early, and its usually easily killed since your marines have to be elsewhere taking rts, can't guard everything. if you decide to try the elec strat and elec everything, you're stuck on no upgrades for a good amount of time, usually you're starting a1/mt by the time aliens have hive2 going with chambers up, and a fade or two. but the plus side to that strat is if you push hard enough early, you can take the aliens expansions and hold them for some time, buying you much needed time. but you need what kind of godly marines to do that? clanners probably could do it, but they won't since "gorge healing+skulk = dead elec rt". yea, since it doesn't take them 5 years to do that its a bad idea =]
honestly, only thing marines can do this patch is buy time by going directly for the expansions and holding them. holding them being the hard part, but turrets/elec can handle that at the beginning, which is where the problem is. but again, risk vs reward, you can end up getting owned and have nothing.
moral of my post? ns is unbalanced. the devs want comebacks, which is what the alien res system allows if the marines two hive lockdown but don't get their res, and aliens push back early enough so that marines don't jp or ha the hive to hell and back. so its basically a giant rt battle. for the first 3 minutes. then it really doesn't matter, just as long as you have a few good lifeforms and hive2 out.
i'm not sure how to fix this problem, though. perhaps its the marines fault, for not killing aliens expansions early enough. but in comparison, marines can have 3 rts for the first 3m, all they'll get is pushing to hive2, not what aliens can get(two fades, lerk, hive2, chambers). perhaps vary the tick speed based on the number of aliens on a team? then increase it as the game goes on, or perhaps when a hive goes up, making it so if aliens have 3 hives and 1-2 rts(for whatever random reason, but just an example) they can still come back. i suck at ideas for balancing, so don't take that from the post, just take what im trying to identify as the problem, alien res flow.
