I was playing a game of bast last night with some friends. We had all gone marine, and for a while, things went pretty smoothly. We rushed atmospheric, and set up a phase gate there for easy siege ability. We were moving to take feedwater hive when things started getting mucky. We just took way too long to get set up and moving. In any case, the aliens took feedwater and engine, and things started getting really ugly. Onos were pouring into our base, and all looked futile. They were even using our own phase gates as quick escape routes. We looked pretty doomed.

Luckily, our commander, pieceofsoap, had a few tricks up his sleeve. He sent me through the docking hydraulics vent system until I neared engine room. There, he placed a TF, a few turrets, and a siege. As all the aliens were too busy mauling our base to bother protecting their own, they never heard the welding of uber-cannons in the darkness of the vent passageways.

The siege went up, and the hive went down. We hastily relocated to engine, setting up a cc, portals, turrets, the works. We even dared to place a phase gate there to evacuate the remaining troops (many had high-tech weapons and equipment) before we recycled the entire main base. It was starting to look up again.

The aliens continued to pound away at our now mostly non-existent base (not sure why they didn't notice...), and we set up in main aft junction, and sent a one-man commando mission to nuke refinery. Unfortunately, I didn't have a mic with me that day (very, very stupid of me) and soap hadn't been paying much attention to the text messages as he was paying so much more attention to killing another hive. The aliens came in and eventually took out main aft junction, but not until I had killed three fades and countless other aliens with only a shotgun and jetpack, entirely without commander support. By the time soap notices his (only) mistake, they had us in the palm of the hand.

The assault on refinery was pushed back, and we were fighting the most ridiculous siege I've ever played. Fades here, fades there, a few skulks there - it was crazy. We used our resources carefully, and had welders to repair everyone and a few grenade launchers to hold off the army of aliens. It felt as though we were fighting a losing battle. And for a while, we were.

Eventually, soap got bored and hoped out of the cc, and I took his place. After a few minutes of doing nothing but defending in vain, soap got a clever idea - he would use our entrance route to escape. I gave him a jetpack, and he picked up the GL of a fallen comrade and set off through docking hydraulics.

With the help of a medpack or two, he evaded the chambers in atmo and made it to steam generation - within siege distance of feedwater. The aliens hadn't bothered to rebuild their wall of lame after the first failed siege on that hive, so it was pretty simple to build a TF up in the piping system and start laying down cannons and turrets. We were in for a comeback, again.

Soap defended his outpost to the last, killing countless enemies with some very well-placed grenades; the sieges eventually cleared out feedwater and parts of atmo, and then finally killed their hive. However, as is hinted above, soap was eventually killed. I didn't place a phase gate for reinforcements until it was too late, and the siege outpost was destroyed. We were back to fighting the Alamo.

Back at base, things had been getting steadily worse. The aliens had taken out our TF, armory and almost killed our phase gate, when I realized that I was still fully equipped. I jumped out and started pounding grenades into fades like there was no tomorrow, and once they had been killed, I welded what was left and rebuilt what wasn't. Yet another comeback was looming.

While the alien team was left to spawn and re-evolve back into fades, we charged down the engine tunnel and to the brink of main aft junction. We almost had it too - a creatively placed siege and many determined marines holding it without advancing until the chambers were clear helped do that. Unfortunately, a single marine made a single mistake and a single fade got really lucky and killed almost all of us. We had too much on our mind to realize that no one was commanding - had someone been doing so, we might have lived.

This back and forth action, guerrilla vent warfare and a blind LMG rush (a very successful one, too) followed for another hour. In the middle of yet another marine comeback, the server crashed. This was very not cool, but I guess it was a way of the game saying "ENOUGH ALREADY!"

What can we learn from this? Well, here goes:
1)NEVER ignore text messages, especially if you are commanding. Voice communication is the best way to go, but it will not always be there. Also, don't ignore your defense no matter how successful your offense might be - it won't matter if you'd don't have anything to come home to.

2)Be a sneaky **obscenity**. HA is good for some things, but jetpacks are better for most. You can get to and from areas with ease, navigate vents like a man-skulk, and slaughter fades by the scores. Also, you can't sneak all the way across the map twice wearing HA; it could be possible, but it would be very difficult.

3)Know thy phase gate. When to use them, when not to use them, and how to use them. One of the least appreciated command tools there is.

4)Pick up fallen equipment! That GL may be heavy, but it's really expensive too, especially if you only have one resource site.

5)Lastly and perhaps most importantly - never give up, no matter how bad things get. If you keep on going, you can win (unless, of course, the server crashes - but everyone knew we were going to win eventually ).

A story well told, Narfwak.
This game proved that even when all is lost, if you have creativity, you may yet be victorious. On another note, "We had all gone marine," isnt quite accurate, TidbiT was an alien, and if he starts posting in these forums he may extoll the virtues of the marines that refused to die. If I could have gone back and played again, I would have capped more resources, but hey, the game went on 5 hours or so, even if I could, Im not sure I would want to.
I must point out the strategy we were pursuing at the end of the match. Our main enterance in engine hive was totally blocked off by fades, so our only exit were the vents, which when you have a jetpack, and the enemy team consists almost entirely of fades, are quite homely. The plan was to sneak a marine out, through atmospheric processing, then get to a hive, I would prefer refinery, but any would do, and instead of building a turret factory, build a phase gate. We still had a phase gate in our engine hive base, so the plan was to teleport all marines to the hive, and just shoot it. This would take the pressure off engine hive, and while the aliens are struggling to retake refinery, take out feedwater, effectively ending the game.
But hey, servers crash. Probably an adminmod issue.

Sounds like a great game, but I can't take a 5-hour game. I have to get outside every once in a while.

If you werent there, I think you would stay... And then you would set a time limit for games in the future.

similar thing happened to me when i was commanding ns_nothing.

we pretty much kept taking each other's hives, its like a merry go round. we took cargo hive, they took silo hive. we took vent hive, they took cargo hive, and so on.

this happened for a while when aliens are building the 2nd hive and we attack their 1st hive. finally they got that 2nd hive up and started fading before we can get rid of their 1st hive,and they faded us to death. but this whole process took 3-4 hours lol.

A suggestion for your next game:
Siege feedwater through the vents.
You can get in the vents by main aft junction, which take you all the way down to the tram tunnel. You can create sieges in that vent, and the aliens will have no clue where they are a lot of the time, and phase gates can be set up in there, so that marines can overwhelm fades who try to come into the vents. It works like a charm.

I'd been thinking about that recently, while I was taking finals. I was going over the entire blueprint of the map in my head when I realized that we had forgotten all about the other end of the vent system. I feel kinda dumb about that now. And yes, both Winstoner and TidbiT were on alien, so I guess I am a bit off about that. I also should have given you a phase gate to build sooner when you where in steam gen (I did build one, but only when you started getting owned by fades).

Oh, and about the crash - I was stupid enough to not have the server running in debug mode, so now we'll never know. D'oh.

I think Tunnel seiging would be a good idea, but only when it complements a standard seige or soldier assault, if they don't know about it then its a good idea. But small tunnels that can only fit a row of cannons through it has the chance you won't be able to put any turrets in it, then someone would have to hang around it so they don't get destroyed. In the end i say its a good idea if your using it in cooperation with a commando type of thing, or if you're sure that they won't find them anytime soon. otherwise it's a waste of RUs.

Kaos, you were there when the tactic worked beautifully against engine room. Granted, it is harder to find places near feedwater that have as much room as the vents by engine, but soap and I found a nice little cubby-hole last night. I know of an even better one, too.

Additionally, the entire concept revolves around keeping a jetpack marine in the vent the entire time. That way, the only way they can take out the sieges is with a group of skulks (which can be easily dealt with via shotgun) or using the Lerk Rider technique to send a fade into the vent (which most pub players don't know how to do).

Lastly, you really don't need any more people in the area to do the siege. Unless you are playing on an unpatched server, there is no way that you will even have enough money to support such double-pronged sieges if you are in the position we were in for the majority of the game.

one of the worst thing with many is that when it starts to get bad they leave the game.
let's say you are 8-8 and suddenly thing's are getting bad you are 8-5 and after that 8-3...

how fun is that??? for booth teams...

like it have been said here, the game can change... not very often maybe, but it can.

one game i was in the marines was better then the aliens... they got the reception and holoroom etc...
we where trying to take out holoroom... and after i had been taking out the reception by my self.. there wasn't any marines garding it offcourse since they had holoroom and it didn't make such big differense, but anyway...
one's i had taken it out i headed for holoroom where the rest had just started an attack and we managed to take it out..
almost everything, like tf, the resources a comm chair that wasn't used and some turrets, when there is some ha hmg marines coming and killing us, and offcourse we had such bad luck that they managed to rebuild pretty much of it and they kept building so we couldn't take it out.. well... not easily anyway.... i thought that i could try to take out the main base since everyone else was going for holoroom so i went there and took out the comm chair and a bit more then half the tf, but in a second attack of me i took it out... but offcourse the marines had holoroom as mainbase after that and since they had started to attack our hives with sieges some started to leave wich leed to anotherone leaving and then we where only 3 single aliens - 8 marines.... maybe we wouldn't have won the game, but the marines wouldn't have had such a easy victory if not everyone would have left... god i hated it....

and i can tell you that i kinda much suck at being alien and still i managed to take out several marines including some with ha hmg + reception and the first base and some other tf that was outside our hive while we where 3 - 8..

so stop leaving you idiots even thou the game isn't going any good for you... grrr

yeah once i was playing ns_nothing i think it is, the one with powersilo, and as marines we rushed and took powersilo, the onto viaduct, and got there as the aliens were building the hive, and thanks to some good commanding we had knocked them back and looked set to win, bases everywhere.

then disaster - 5 skulk rush took out the only CC we had, the comm had been a bit sloppy and forgot to ask for a weld, and so from then on it was 8-8, with no comm. we used VC to muster the last of our strength, and to attack the hive in one group. so off we went, brave marines into the unknown. we ploughed thru any alien resistance and when we got to the hive we were going well until they started to nit-pick marines off one by one, and soon most of us were waiting to spawn.

then unbeknown to us they attacked the weakly defended powersilo and killed it, and soon we had fades rushing us. then onos . looks like the game that was almost won by us (the hive had about 1/4 health left i reckon) could be turned around, easy as that.

another game on tanith i was a fade, but we were only just holding 2 hives, and i killed the marine spawn by myself but they had moved into cargo and set up major base their, so we lost anyway

I like that!
NEVER GIVE UP!!!
It's a simple rule, it's easy to follow, you just dont give up!
-And if were really loosing???
Give those alien a last fight they wont forget soldier!
Commanders, Dont go recycling everything that pisses me off!!!!
Let them win straight, if marines are loosin, Aliens deserves to win!
Just DONT GIVE UP!!!
Win everything back if u can!
And die like a man if you have too!

Yip, if ppl are pounding bases or wat have u they get lazy and ignore base under attack warnings. Sounded like a fun game to play, good job on taking advantage on ave alien team.

Heh, I love games like that. Long games, with lots of stuff happening and bases changing hands.. makes for a white knuckle ride

Your post was very well written and an entertaining read.

great war story. wish i had the battle scars from that one...

I bet that was a great game. Wish I'd been there.

Like pretty much everyone near the end of this thread has said: don't give up until the Onos is humping the comm chair!

And even then, screaming into voice as your damn teammates take what feels like years to setup a second CC... it's not over until you get a team-win message Although games where the winning side refuses to destroy the last hive/pathetic outpost get annoying.
Loved reading that... had similar experiences myself both as comm and marine- in fact, near identical I always seem to enjoy myself most in those games, even if they end in a loss (or a sever crash, heheh... MiF and even Hullu's has done that to me a few times.)

Something like this once happened to me.

We were playing a good game on bast but our comm wasn't the greatest in the world, so we eventually got swamped by fades (who controlled engine and refinery). The main marine base was being attacked pretty hard from all sides. Suddenly in one fell swoop the fades took out our outpost at feedwater, effectively cutting us off entirely from the rest of the map. We could only sit and spam grenades to keep the fades at bay, knowing that at any second they would use their big guns and wipe us out completely. We turtled up.
Our worst thoughts were confirmed as we heard a primal scream coming from the airlock. I decided that, instead of just hanging around and fighting a losing battle, to actually do something. I quickly gathered all who would listen to join me on the elevator, but only one HA marine with a LMG and another vanilla marine joined me (the rest wouldn't listen). We bravely descended, entering the vents on the way down. We made our perilous journey through the vents, and fortunately nothing attacked us as we came to the opening at the engine room.
I saw a gorge just standing on the generator, probably talking or something, thankfully looking at the room entrance and not at us. My companions lined up on either side of me while I carefully took aim with my grenade launcher. I launched two rounds directly at the gorge, killing it and surprisingly some other alien hiding on the other side of the generator. My teamates commenced giving the hive everything they had, while I unloaded clip after clip of grenades. The hive went down quickly, and by then the commander took notice and ordered us to re-build our base there. We made our comeback, and had a fully functional base. We did eventually lose, but not after another hour went by in which we took the refinery and secured many other key points.
Never underestimate the vent systems, especially on Bast.

I suppose in the future they really take good care to insure that all fancy extraterrestrial outposts and spaceships have all of their rooms carefully linked by vents, all big enough for an armored marine to crawl through, and some big enough to build structures in, and all without any grates or fans of any kind, or any function other than allowing skulks and JP marines easy transportation between rooms. Is it just me, or do some NS maps feel too... venty? Nancy I think is the only one that has realistic vents, and even those don't actually provide any ventilation. Something the mappers overlooked I think: real vents have a purpose - to provide air circulation. Air circulation doesn't occur without fans and an access to some outside source of air (the outdoors, an air tank of some kind on a ship, whatever).

Eater.

If you take the same vent system you used to get to engine room to the back of feedwater (comes out near tram tunnle).

You can set a siege up in the vent, in the late game very few aliens will run through tram tunnle because its easier to use movment chambers.

I take it you didn't siege engine from the base because you consider it lame/cheap.


btw, bast is really sickly un-balanced to the marines atm if you're prepaird to be cheap.

Siege engine room from your base the second they build a hive there (but not befor).
Take feedwater via atmopheric to start with (because of the masses of res it gains you)

When you lose atmopheric take the vent in main aft junction down to the tram tunnel, set up phase and siege, congratulations you just cleaned out a hive and all the defences for refinary hive in one upgraded TF.

If you've been doing recyling and teching well not placing too many turrets ect you've probably got enough res to dish out any toys people want, dish out said toys and give a wp to refinary hive.

Always be aware that: You can siege feedwater from the vents, you can walk directly to refinary from your base via water-treatment OR em-drillshaft (making it unlikley that both are defended.)

Any commander who's prepaird to press the attack repeatedly has so many fronts to attack on its wrong

BlueGhost

The vents used to be corridors but the marines went crazy with a shrinking ray?
I can't think of any other reasons as my theory is the nano-grid would do all that.

What I want to know is how come the marines always let the aliens build 1 hive. Why not stop them before?

Also the maps don't have toilets. I wouldn't like to be on that ship.

Anyway this is a silly topic.

Personally the vents don't bother me, but I do hate doors that won't open. Where does it go?lemme thru!!!! :'( I'd prefer a wall to a non opening door anyday.

Presumably the marines don't get called in till they realise they have a problem, and they don't spot that till there's 1 hive up.

What I'd like to see are ex-crew members who've been diced up by the aliens befor you arrive

As for never giving up I always just throw everying into a last assult. I cycle the turrets, I hand out GL/HMG/HA/Welds and set them off, sometimes the marines are good or the aliens aren't and my HA squad creams through everything in its path reaches 1 hive, blows it away and then continues on to the next.

The best wins are where your HA squad has just creamed its way into one of their two hives, the 3rd hive you still own cos the aliens threw everything at your base. BUT! you just have time to stick a com chair down next to your HA/HMG squad befor leaping from the old one into the arms of 3 fades.
*hello mr Fade, I Can see your house from in here! Splat*
'Hive under attack'
*respawn and hop in the new com chair*

The HA/HMG squad then progress off to the next hive blowing it away to let the timer do its work.

Only had one of them tho, favourite game ever hehe.

BlueGhost

Great story. I wish I got five hour games more often

I once played a match (as alien) and i took like 75 mins before we had detroyed most of their base, unfortunatly the commander had placed infantry portals everywhere, and i then i talkin EVERYWHERE!!!

Must have spent 150-200 RP and the marines just came rushing, til we had no fades left, but after waves of skulks we finaly took down their infantry portal only to find them ALL camping at their original base (base resource point at ns_caged).

It took a while but then we got fades = area of effect rockets = GG!
In the end the held us of for half an hour, annoying us like hell, but from their point of view i gues it was worth it.

w00t, I dont have to make a thread for these stories

ok, first one (saddest display of rines in combat EVER) Aliens totaly desimated, 0 hives, the dammage was being delt out... this was on caged (I believe, it was the one with sewers... and vent hive) anyway, all we had were 2 DC in the vents in there base and 1 skulk left, that 1 skulk mannaged to kill everyone on the rine team and there IP while running back to be healed by the DC... 1 lone skulk against about 6 rines...

that was the skill comeback of the century, here is the strategic one

on ns_nothing, we quickly moved to the power silo because of the insain rushes the 2 previous rounds. As we set up an iffish base, with enough turrents to make them atleast focus their fire on something besides the giant clump of buildings in the center. We tried furitivly to get the viaduct... but it was to no avail, we almost had it once but a lerk killed the 2 people building there and I didnt see the lerk untill it was to late and I couldnt do anything about it. So I just returned to base with a hung head... Then we had to deal with the fricken pesky lerks in the ledges above the hive location... about the time we cleared them out the fades came in, (at this point I have to take my hat off to the guy who got 64 kills that game. Our team consisted of alot of wusses that did not want to rush the fades, so I ended up dieing alot because I was the only person running into the corradors to try and stun them). We eventualy beat them back long enough for us to get 2 sieges up in the red room, got the viaduct hive, but they still had some fades and there gorgs had placed OC and DC all over the map... as I started to make my way from the red room to the cargo hive, I died about 6 times, but in the process cleared out all the webbing in that corrador. While me and 2 other people piled into the vent to cargo, our entire silo base got mauled over and it was looking very grim for us... So we got there and unloaded every bullet that we owned and then some into that giant piece of alien flesh. Well, we won this match in the biggest strategic upset I have EVER seen

Heh one of my short stories comes from a game of 1.02 without that auto die crap, I was the only skulk left (in Hera, Archiving) so I went gorge to get a crap load of res that was waiting in the pool for me Then I built the hive asap for my team after the rines were taking the pleasure to destroy our last bit of stuff that was left in our last hive they didnt bother to check the other hives suffice to say we came back and beat them much to there embarrasment It was a loonnng time ago but it was sooo sweet I just wish I could've remembered more of it, oh well im gettin old lol

Sounds awesome. The best games are those you think you lost. Granted, there will be a ton you DO lose, but a couple gems will come out of the rough. Great story- what server was this on?

Games where neither team gives up are the best.

A while ago on Hera I was on aliens at the time. Midway through the game we were both pretty even. We started in Vent and had Holo, they had taken Archiving and we were constantly fighting in Data. Seeing all the marines fighting I desided to sneak into their base. The base was undefended but they had a PG so I when up to chew on the CC I was luck enough to destroy it before anyone came after me. While respawning I proclaimed to my team how I had eaten the CC and how we would win shortly, though I was afraid they had built a backup in Archiving. The Marines, who did infact not have a CC, switched strategies to doing suidical LMG rushes. With surprising speed they drove us back out of Holo and were attacking Vent Hive. We were able to stop them but the just keep coming. The whole level was crawling with marines. At this point we were almost losing, but we worked together to push to Data Core and managed to get the second hive up, with the help of lots of OCs. Even after getting fades the game went on for some time before we eventually won.

A few days later I was on a different server but back on Hera, except this time after the CC went down half the Marines hit F4 almost immeadiatly. The entire game didn't last even 20 minutes. It's only a matter of not giving up.

Wow, sounds like you faced off against some pretty honorable people

people who f4 suck.

always fight till the bitter end!

remember: It's not over untill the onos smashes you against the wall till you're wallpaper.

That was easily the best game I have ever played... Answering your question, the server was Iowa City Spider Gaming. Unfortunately, the server is no longer operational. The server crash was actually a very fitting end, since the game could have easily gone on another 4 hours...

This thread reminds me of what happened in ns_hera couple of months ago.

It was a game of 8vs8 or so and as marines we relocated to Cargo hold just next to marine start. As you know very well, relocating to cargo doesn't require additional Command Console so I spared 30 resources and used the start CC's range to build ips and armory. Marines welded weldables and went on to some typical resource gathers.
After couple of minutes I got surprised when suddenly popping out from the only CC we had, and which was eaten by a lucky skulk who somehow didn't trigger the "Command Console is under attack message" (Grrr, I hate these bugs...). I explained the situation to other marines who didn't blame me (I got away thank God ). We were like "Ah, whatta [opposite_of_heaven], let's just fight till end". Their hive was at Archiving and we started to make multiple team assaults against the hive and managed to kill some of the DCs and finally the hive. We all were surprised to hear the countdown starting because it seemed almost too obvious that the aliens would have put a new hive up but they just hadn't.
Okay I'll have to admit that aliens were kinda noobish, since they didn't had any organized defense camping, they never even attacked our spawn and were just no match for vanilla marines. Still, I can use this game to prove myself every time in NS that a game can be won almost no matter the situation.

And sorry for my crappy English.

The only time I ever leave a game is if more than half the team already wants to or we're all dead exccept one person, the hives down and they know exactly where he is. I like to f4 when marines use cheap tactics though sometimes. OF course only after it's practically over anyways. I do get annoyed when one team takes a tactical advantage point and then someone says "holoroom gg" and then f4's or even processing, or cargo, or really any number of things. I've been a part of too many successful comebacks from solid 2 hive lockdowns and processing relocations that I hate it when people give up too soon.