We've all been there. A bunch of gung-ho marines ready and able to go from the very start. The alien go Sensory first and we all grin thinking we've got this one wrapped up already. Then your Comm, who seemed reasonable enough before, starts doing odd or useless things. A recent game of mine had a Comm who would communicate quite a bit at first then just stopped talking after a while. He dropped 2 proto labs and never got us Sensory until ... well... they had hive three before he even considered it despite the aliens going sensory first. So this situation is something we've all seen or been subject to. A Comm jumps in the chair and proceeds to be completely ineffective or just screwy then leaves. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief except, of course, you who has gotten into the chair and who has to know salvage the situation.
Obviously not every game is the same and not all previous Comms will screw up in the same way. However what I am interested in hearing is how you deal with these dire situations. What did you try? What worked? What didn't? What did you start with? Did you gamble it all on a desperate shotty rush? Try and turtle up and then move out? Or did you try to be that annoying sod that recycled all the IPs?

If a comm screws the first 5 minutes and the other team are anywhere near competant you've lost.

You cannot salvage a game after a crap comm has had his way with it.

Agreed. By the time that insane Comm leaves the chair and the new comm has put things back into order, Aliens will have reached 2 hive and downed all your outside RT's. Fades and Lerks vs. barely upgraded marines, and hive 3 coming up if marines somehow survive. GAME OVER.

The lack of good comms is what makes pub-marines so bad. I hate having to scream for ammo for 1 minute and half and then get killed by skulks cause Im all outta ammo.

its a loss.

I recycle all exept RTs, armslab, armory and IPs.
pump it all in upgrades and guns, then recycle the IP and we all go out in blazing glory of last man standing

Eh, if I know the commander sucks, or I don't know and see him drop 6 turrets at base with starting res, then I hump the armory up to 250/30 and go try to spawncamp the aliens. Pretty much the only thing that will help that poor **** to put a win under his belt. Other than that, I've never seen a commander pull a win out of his **** after some fool, either leaves, gets out of the chair and says " I suck at comming somebody else do it" after 10 minutes of ruining the game, or gets voted out. He's pretty much screwed the game completely, and continually tries to blame his poor comming skills on his marines.

Do a dire jp rush with gls, seperate into two groups and attack the two least defended/closest hives. If you have to, sacrifice base. Then rush the last one where you have put down a CC hopefully, and recycled base and hope the aliens will die before they find out where you are. That's about ALL you CAN do. That, or have all your marines hide around the map armed with whatever they can get and be sure to have an obs handy.

But yeah, after the five minute mark, just consider the game lost. If you don't have w2/a1 with w3 or a2 going and have the armory upgraded, at least 5 rts and a secure hive, then it's lost. It'll be around that time you'll see fades and onos and it'll be the end of the game.

I hate comms who drop a TF, 2 ip's, and 6 turrets on a 7 man pub team...
I usually try to eject them and salvage right from the start, but one of the comms I've seen alot of recently is one that drops the usual IP Armory right off, then 10 minutes into the game they have 2 hives and we have no arms lab and 200 res with the armory still not humping back.

The best way to salvage both of these is eject immediately and recycle/salvage and yell at your team alot. I've had the marines favor the insane comm over me several times, even though I know what im doing is right and will only help us, they think the earlier comm was better than me. I dont know what to do when your team favors someone other than you

As long as you have res for about 5 or 6 shotguns and they don't have 3 hives then it's still possible to put up a good fight and potentially even win. Form up everyone in base and send them all off together to the nearest and least defended hive. Now this tactic is really an all or nothing, they either all die or the hive dies but if you've got a team of half decent marines who stick together then you've got a good chance of getting the hive.

I pick up a lot of games and have seen others pick up games and using this tactic have really put up a good fight and it's also incredibly fun to be a marine when this tactic is used. I've seen multiple matches were this tactic was used and 3+ hives have died. Note: aliens are normally swimming in res so hives just keep going up, to win you have to clear out all their res as well as their hives if the opportunity appears.

/me remembers the game on Mineshaft where marines died getting out of base, but managed to take out 5 hives with shotty rushes....

That sir was a great game.

On pubs you could try a JP shotty rush with your best team players, who you'll know by name since they'll have been trying to organise things in the face of the worlds worst comm. Most winning alien teams will be soft and complacent, so chances are your rush will meet little to no resistance, and hardly any hive defence. At most it can buy time.


Another option is the turtle, but turtling only drags out marine losses. If they're at 3 hives then they're going to xeno you to hell, so you may as well suck it up and go for the rush - you'll never get HA in the face of concerted xeno attacks.

turtling is completely useless. it just gives aliens time to set up more hives/resources/upgrades, before they come in and maul you anyway. I played one game where we had been pushed back all the way to base, with only the one rt in base left. What we SHOULD have done was move out quickly and either try to restore our rt's or rush hive, but when I suggested it our great commander told me to shut up and started spamming hmg's for turtling, further wasting our res. So we just sat there getting reamed by onos/fade/lerk/xenoskulks for about 15 minutes before inevitably succumbing to the alien rush. I dunno, maybe some commanders LIKE dying slowly, but as a marine it's a wasted of time and no fun at all.

If they have Hive 3, the game is completely unsalvageable. Any attempt at a shotty rush of some sort will get your marines xenocided into the next map.

Hive 2 is a little more leniant. As everyone had suggested, shotty rushes get you the most bang for your buck (and i'm guessing you don't have alot of 'buck' to work with). Don't ignore res nodes, though. Two clips of shotty will take it down, so why not have the whole team shoot twice and get it over with? Many think that its best to do a stealth rush, but whats the point if they have res coming out the wazoo? you need to keep the res nodes down or you'll lose, hive down or no hive down.

Hive 1 is compeltely salvageable. Recycle tf and turrets (if applicable) and move out, soldier!

the best way to salave it is to prevent it from happening

put this in console

bind key "say_team *** EJECT*** THE COMMANDER HAS DROPPED A TURRET FACTORY IN BASE *** EJECT ***

Played this game for years, and yes if a tf is in base sometimes I will worry a bit, but I don't automatically eject.

One server I played I had a great strat that I typically used (and won) with.

Just drop a tf, and ip and send everyone out of base except for my ace shooter. No Armoury, no Obv, just a tf and an IP.

Guys go out and cap, I electrify. Cap two, electrify, cap three electrify.

Before you know it, three minutes into the game and you have four nodes capped and electrified (and more if you have skilled shooters). Pushed my marines as far into the map capping nodes until they died and respawned. By the time they respawned the base had the armoury built, armour or weapon upgrades going (most of the time I would go dual upgrades) and the obv up with motion tracking or phase gates researching depending on the map. The strat was really hard to beat, especially if I got dual upgrades going. Also, with so much res going, I could freely drop shotguns early to counter fades and to continue taking down their res.
Granted, I haven't played the new patch yet, so balancing may have made this strat less feasible, but the thing is that on servers that didn't know me, I would seem like a noobish com, when I've been playing this game for years (scary thought).

Its a bit of a dangerous strat, and so I don't use it as much anymore, but the thing is you never know what strats may work, so being quick to eject (especially for tech builds you may not agree with) may not be a great idea.

Don't get me wrong, I've asked for ejections right off before, but I also have learned some really awesome tech builds, ideas and map strats by being patient with a commander I'm not familiar with.

The ones I usually eject are then ones I've played with, and lost the game, not because of bad strategy or such, but because they really had no idea of what they were doing during the duration of the game (as in waiting four minutes for a medpack when he has 100 res and constantly asking for one).

The thing is, unless you actually played with the com, and he just doesn't have the basics down (an idea of the map layout, a gameplan, and an understanding of how to guide the men and keep them alive) don't be too quick to judge.

I've learned a lot just by being patient and trusting the com, even though I don't agree with his style of play. Hard enough to find good coms, even harder to find people willing to try com because they're so afraid of being ejected (instead we have a bunch of marines wasting the first two minutes jumping around base waiting for someone to jump in the hotseat)

IF U EJECT THE COMM WHEN HE DROPS A TURRECT FACTORY IN BASE, mean minute 1 or less, U still can wi, but if not, gg u lost, so simple


in the case that the alien team knows how to do "their job" . probably u will see fades , and u wouldnt have any upgrades, so die and be happy, not ur fault, comms fault xD

It's funny... Eject gets sooo underused.

This post is not about recovery, but about coping. I've never commed a game, but I have hopped in. The fact is, I suck at micro-managment, so when no one commands, I'll hop in and warn people that they have me for 60 seconds. I'll drop the basic essentials and keep things flowing, but after that minute is up, I tell them I'm out. I don't take getting screamed at very well, but I find that the NS Community is mature enough not to yell at a loss when they know the commander didn't want to. I attempt to do the same thing when Commander Moron hops in, but I never leave any guarantees.

That said, I managed to hold off once for about 45 minutes on my first stint

Are there any servers for commander training?

I once posted a similair strategy as part of the FOOD principle.
Yet I did not even bother the TF, only the IP. Worked wonders if the team could aim, listened and especially if kharaa had the furtherst hive