Commanding 101

[BobTheJanitor]

If I'm reading this right, a2 is more powerful than it was in 2.0 yes? So wouldn't that at least give us reason to reconsider the standard of a1w123a23 ? I always thought a2 was still 3 skulk bites, but I guess I haven't been paying attention. I think an a1w1a2w23a3* may be in order.

*BINGO!!!

[Keyser59]

I know its a clan match, but I think this is a decent demo to teach the basics.

http://www.ampednews.com/?page=demos&id=307

Many comms make the fatal mistake of not pressuring. This is a side effect of building turrets everywhere, turtling, etc.

[SaltzBad]

Oh yeah, all new comms should do a 2 Hive lockdown with leet marines...

On that note, 5 bucks says eR won the marine round on eclipse as well.

Edit : And although it doesn't involve turrets, technically that was a very low-pressure strat that just locked down very easy areas with good players until you were overteched out the wazoo.

Kudos though, that made me never want to play alien on eclipse again - and I thought just maintenance hive was bad. Seems pretty much every hive in EC is utter ^^ - CC with the golden siegespot (2 RTs, most teams DCs), maintenance without any exits you'll survive taking and the Eclipse hive, victim of the 2 other hives easy deniability (although, CC hive can go up reasonably - just if its your starting hive, you're down an RT already).

And why does a leet team like eR do vent DCs? Do they never learn?

Edit 2 (For Bob):
If the opposing team really doesn't field fades yet, A1-A2 works excellently. If you're LMGing and/or encountering largely Skulks, W1 is totally ineffective - it doesn't change anything about Skulk vs LMG encounters.

But I've found usually you're at the 2-ish minute mark with a1 and want w1/2 for when Fades come around (4:30 - they're gestating around 3:30-4:00), just for the extra hand - and thats whay A1 and then weapons ups is still attractive.

[Dark]

dang well with all these tips from you guys if and when i get a mic that works i may try to com again o_O

[Keyser59]

On that note, 5 bucks says eR won the marine round on eclipse as well.

You owe me five bucks.

And although it doesn't involve turrets, technically that was a very low-pressure strat that just locked down very easy areas with good players until you were overteched out the wazoo.

But when you watch this demo, keep in mind of the 80 ping difference. This made it extremely hard to attack, and even harder to try to pressure their hive with no higher tech.

Oh yeah, all new comms should do a 2 Hive lockdown with leet marines...

How exactly is that a two hive lockdown? We only had a PG up to maintenance once, and they destroyed that pretty quickly. No kind of static defense whatsoever.

And why does a leet team like eR do vent DCs? Do they never learn?

Those DCs almost broke us twice.... What exactly are the disadvantages of putting your DCs there? Seeing as only in the end we came near their hive, it would have been pretty useless if they just stuck them up under the hive.

[SaltzBad]

The disadvantages is that annoying siege spot that reaches through all the DC locations in the vent and depending on how you build SAA together with the PS3 and CC node - the siege spot doesn't reach the hive, but thats secondary. Either way, seeing as how retaining that 40res is often more interesting than getting the rather mild advantage of a heal-zone and that the DCs went down early in the match, it must have set them back a good bit - the same Gorge that putup the new DCs could have been another Fade or a 2nd Hive.

The next disadvantage is that getting one shotgunner into the vents can be done fairly fast (afaik it takes one guy to boost someone into there from the PS3/SAA area). Nice if you don't want to siege from behind CC because you already cleared everything out.

As for the 2 Hive lockdown, the role your marines filled during almost the entire match was to use the countless gorgeously good defensive positions Eclipse offers to lock essentially lock down CC via phase (the phase was up most of the match if I remember right, although not without rebuilding) and in turn have a pretty strong grip on maintenance hive - via southloop mostly. The match consisted entirely of holding that, and the nice 6 RTs the position came with until you were teched.

[Satiagraha]

Hmm, well, I tried comming for the 3rd time in my life (first was a long time ago and I only did it once because I sucked, second was a few days ago and that led to a 5 minute game <_< )

I guess a 45 minute game with 3 hive deaths isn't bad... Although I hadn't originally intended to comm the game.  There were 4 people in LM and ElectricSheep and I were rines.  He refused to comm because he hates comming small games, so I hoped in.  It was a few minutes in when Crack joined, so I figured "hey, another rine, that's good".  Before I knew it, we had a full server, and I was in comm.  I was just trying to keep up with everything happening :blink:
I'd spam HAs and Shotties, and then led them to kill a hive, either SG or siege. Worked 3 times, but the aliens kept building it back :angry: . sooo... yeah, basically they eventually took out all my RTs and slayed my base... *sigh*


But at least 45 minutes of holding off the aliens is better than 5 minutes, right?

[Niteowl]

I guess a 45 minute game with 3 hive deaths isn't bad... Although I hadn't originally intended to comm the game.  There were 4 people in LM and ElectricSheep and I were rines.  He refused to comm because he hates comming small games, so I hoped in.  It was a few minutes in when Crack joined, so I figured "hey, another rine, that's good".  Before I knew it, we had a full server, and I was in comm.  I was just trying to keep up with everything happening :blink:
I'd spam HAs and Shotties, and then led them to kill a hive, either SG or siege. Worked 3 times, but the aliens kept building it back :angry: . sooo... yeah, basically they eventually took out all my RTs and slayed my base... *sigh*


But at least 45 minutes of holding off the aliens is better than 5 minutes, right?

good on ya sati! small games that go big are the nastiest, imho. they have very weird dynamics.

good work stayin in the chair for 45 minutes, maybe you see where commrage comes from eh?

oh, and congrats on comming the rines,and not just staring at your reflection in the command console :p

[Satiagraha]

oh, and congrats on comming the rines,and not just staring at your reflection in the command console :p

I must admit, that panel on the side had a mightily handsome reflection in it, I was tempted to forget about comming and just gaze into the control panel <3

[rad4Christ]

Well, I was playing late Friday night (or was it saturday morning), and I decided to get catpacks instead fo W3. And you know, I think I like it better. It has a higher long term cost, but it's extremely effective with hives and higher lifeforms.. Any opinions?

[SaltzBad]

It doesn't help all that much with hives unless you're LMG rushing them, but yeah Cats help with Lifeforms especially. Depending on how much res I can expect to have I'll research them before W2 - with a reasonable income, catpack rushes go alot further than a 10% damage upgrade (plus, Cats are researched fast - you can get back to W2 in no time).