On Alien teamplayFirst 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 RTsOkay, 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?
Topic: For Plaguebearer (Read 4769 times)
