okay i have been waiting awhile for this thing to launch
and i am very pleased with the gameplay.

it is very fun crawling walls and morphing to different species.  excellent models userinterface and maps.  very proffesional looking, huge potential.

but it seemed imbalanced in favor of the marines
(maybe because i played as an alien, i always picked random and us aliens were always short)

it seemed that the marines could group all their stuff in one spot and shove alot of turrets in that spot and simply build up upgrades.

meanwhile as an alien we had to build in three different SPECIFIC spots to get our upgrades.  These specific spots were extremely hard to find amid all the other things on my radar (color coding might help...i dunno).  I understand the resource points being difficult to find that is part of the gameplay.

i found unless the marines were totally lost they would build all their stuff in one spot then patrol to the other two hive spots and waste whatever started there.  they would upgrade to the point of missiles then all show up in 1st hive spot.
and no one could spawn in without being blown to bits....this  seemed to happen repeatedly.

i will try again cause most of all
this mod is fun very fun.

maybe i missed something
maybe i am just stupid...
maybe my team just sucked...heheheh
maybe i just need a strat guide?

Hehe.  Hey, this is getting easy!  I just have to keep copying and pasting.  Anyway, this applies here.

Supposing we did make the aliens much stronger right now.  What happens a few weeks down the line when people start learning how to play the alien effectively, as they were intended to be played?  I'll tell you.  We get dozens of posts from players complaining that the marines are too weak and the aliens are unstoppable.  What have we solved?

Practice, practice, practice.  When everyone gets more experienced, and the resource model hasn't been monkeyed with by the server admins, the balance will fix itself.  Just keep plugging away!  The reward will be well worth your time!

Also, it'll take time, but just learn the maps a bit, and learn the locations of the hives. That'll help a lot. The patch should help some too.

I too, am new to this, but when I played, it was the opposite... we had upgraded equipment and all, but when we entered the enemy hive room we were gretted by offensive chamber fire, bilebombs, and flying(leaping actually )skulks....i dont think it is all in favor of the marines....and as for making a lot of turrets it made no difference when we had 2 fades blasting us with bilebombs and an onos crusing our turrets...nay i think the balance is all up to who and how many on a team.

you can't have a bilebomb unless they have all 3 hives

http://www.natural-selection.org/manual/alien_fade.html

if you had taken down one of the other two hives
(they will be less defended)
then no bile bomb

this is the problem i was posing
the aliens are forced to spread
while the marines are not
i was surprised at this especially since marines
have the benefit of commander class
nobody is planning for the aliens we all run around and bite things

the solution i was asking for was not
make aliens more powerful by any means
i think weapon/attack balance is good
i like the fact that aliens are singular and melee for most part
and humans are ranged and grouped

in fact i was not asking for specific solution
i was just posting what i observed
i will leave that up to you guys if a solution is needed

i will also practice more

I played for about five hours last night (this morning?)  and found the balance to be basically all right/ slightly in favor of the marines.

It's more that you -cannot turtle- for any period of time.  If either team lets the enemy get to their max upgrades without also being there and having a steady stream of resources, then they are screwed and will be begin to slowly lose.  And as they lose, slowly, they'll start to lose faster too.  Though this applies to marines, more so.  It seems -really- hard for them to turn back a rout.

The lethality of a skulk waiting in ambush seems to be able to prevent marine charges from bowling over resource nozzle after resource nozzle.

The marines don't really have anything to compare to an Onos for sheer "Clear that the heck out" power.

I know this thread is dead but i thought i would follow up

I have found by playing more i have gotten better at being an alien
(this helped)
i have also found others are getting better at playing an alien
(this helped more)

i think alot of the problems i was seeing were due to bad resource management
everyone wanted to be a fade or an onos
and no commander class just said NO....wait! :-)

but people are learning and i have seen much more balanced
tug of war type gameplay in games

in reply to snipedoom omega, if marines let the game get to that stage you should expect to have that problem.
in my opinion the key is to expand as far as u can asap, whilst preventing them from doing so. its like any strategy game. there is always a team which if let to grow will come out the winner

QUOTE (kingmob @ Nov 13 2002, 03:50 AM)

I know this thread is dead but i thought i would follow up I have found by playing more i have gotten better at being an alien (this helped) i have also found others are getting better at playing an alien (this helped more) i think alot of the problems i was seeing were due to bad resource management everyone wanted to be a fade or an onos and no commander class just said NO....wait! :-) but people are learning and i have seen much more balanced tug of war type gameplay in games

in addition the marines were slightly nerfed

Odd that you say the marines are slightly stronger, 80% of games i've played (after patch), aliens have won.