You're a great comm. You've got a two hive lockdown: Phase gates, lots of turrets and even electrification. These nublets on the alien team have no chance to survive, and must make thier time.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRING

I'm not going to even get into why locking down hives are a stupid idea in the first place. The main point of this thread is to tell you that two hive lockdown games arn't fun for either side. Sure you're going to win the game, but its a heartless and unfun win. These games ride on the notion that "Its just a matter of time" before the marines get all the res nodes, electrify them all and then move on the hive with heavy hmgs and full upgrades

STOP IT!

These games arn't fun for BOTH teams, win or lose. I'd rather have an epic game where I lose than play out a two-hive turretfarm, nodeelec game. Not only are they not fun, it shows inexperience, incompetence and ingorance of a commander. You fully well know that the game is over. Don't drag it out. Move in for the kill. You don't need every non-occupied node on the map before you kill that hive. You don't need to turretfarm every location of strategic importance.

Know your marines. Know their abilities and play within them. If you can clearly see that your marines are handling the alien team with one hand tied behind their backs, then exploit it! If they can handle skulks with lmgs anywhere on the map, chances are they can handle them even better with shotguns while rushing that hive.

MOVE IN!

Get the game over with, so the skill stack can even them out with a new game.

Say it with me now boys and girls

2 HIVE TURRETFARM LOCKDOWN GAMES ARE BORING!

Why do we play games? We play games because we want to have fun. How do we have fun? Do we have to win to have fun? Usually this is the case, but it doesn't have to be! These types of games are NOT fun and completely contradict the reason why we play games!

Go for the nonstandard win. Try a new strategy. Get motion tracking first for once in your life. Try catpacks. Try grenade launcher rush. TRY SOMETHING NEW.

well then i guess..dont play pubs.

if you're admin to a server just ban the damn commander. but if you're not, there's not much you can do.

pubs are open to the public so just let people do what they want.

If the aliens go sensory first, I'm going to lockdown two hives ASAP. That's auto GG unless the pubs can actually come together and form some sort of gorge / skulk heal system.

I don't lock down hives normally. What I normally go is make my rines mine the area they're going to siege. No turrets, no electrification. Just mines and siege cannons. Sometimes an Armory if they need it.

Best strat ever:

Jet pack / shotgun rush.

It takes four clips of a shotgun to down a hive. With JP's as early as fades and they have shotguns, it's very easy to just have your marines fly around or on the hive and focus fire it to death.

locking down 1 hive is understandable, but there is absolutely no need to lock down 2 hives. Not only do they make the game boring, but its not needed.

If you've got a 2 hive lockdown it means that the skill of your marines are obviously higher than that of your opposition. An experienced alien team will NEVER let marines get a 2 hive lockdown if they can help it. They understand that while they can lock down 1 hive, they can break it if they have 2, this is why aliens will fight the HARDEST to save a second hive if it happens to go under attack. 2 hives gives them a fighting chance. When they lose that chance, they lose the will to fight. Thats boring.

At worst a two hive lockdown should be a pg next to an electrified res node. Build both, elec, move on to finish the game.

a 2 hive lockdown is almost always a definite win. Its like when you play an RPG and use a memory reader to change some values to give you 999999999 money or 9999 stats. Whatever the game throws at you you know you're going to get past it, so why bother playing?

I'll say it with you Lito!

2 HIVE TURRETFARM LOCKDOWN GAMES ARE BORING!

2hive lockdowns are madeup for SC I always say.

2hive lockdown is usually suicide. takes res, time, effort and is boring. However if you fight vs SC its another story.

The res is worth it simply cause kharaa WON'T get kills and RFK. Time is also ok. Kharaa won't pose a big thread sp you can techup faster. Boring, maybe for the kharaa but rines can have loads of fun.

If kharaa find a 2 hive lock boring let them adapt and try to break it. thats not boring, thats hard work.

If the marines flow from locking hive locations to killing rts to removing the last hive, then it's not bad.

However, that generally requires somebody strongly reminding the marines to hurry their yay-we've-won-this-I-can-rambo-now butts up.

If they don't Sensory first the most I'll ever lock down a hive is a phase gate with mines on it. Maybe an electrification if they like to persist on killing the phase.

Some people say that winning isn't fun. Well it may be a boring, overpowered, unbalanced strat, but it gets you the win.

Now on NS if I wanted to have fun, it'd be some retarded strat that my marines would get **** at me for doing that would only work with skilled marines (Clanners.)

Sort of like going solo hero with mass moon wells on Warcraft III. It's fun, it's not overpowered, but on NS doing somthing like "The One Man Shotgunner w/ Alamo base" won't be fun at all in their eyes.

One game I practically mined the aliens to death. LMG and mines was all I used to win with offensive push. The marines were complaining for me to get them other stuff. They called me a bad comm, even though we won.

Then on a different server I did a two hive lockdown cause they went sensory first and everyone was telling me I was a pro comm, a good comm and I should play on their server more.

I predict someone will complain how the alien team isn't having any fun. My response: They're the enemy team, it's their fault they aren't having fun. It's like a newbie on an RTS game with a couple teir one units VS a good player with a full army of the highest teir units.

If I wanted the Alien team to have fun I'd play an Alamo game (One res node. Mass turret farm/mines, comm chairs blocking door ways. Marines with hvy armor/welders/lvl 3 HMG's. It's no fun for the marines. (Except a few, like me. I find alamo games fun.) Longest Alamo I've ever had was two hours. The aliens were like "Good game! n_n" while the marines were like "omg u sux!!11!one!1!"

It's all in the eyes of the beholder. More marines want to win than to have fun.

Its the new pub crime.

It used to be spawncamping, but now its teams dragging their feet.

IE:



3 fades dance around your base, hit the IP every now and again to kill a spawning rine, swipe your upgrade buildings, then blink back out. Yes, they're attacking the base, and they're not really spawncamping per se... but they drag the game out by 20 mins because they want to do everything except take out the IP and CC. This can cause a lot of frustration, especially since many servers don't have any way to check if its being abused.


OR

You're in the hive, you try to rush out but get squished by HA HMG with catpacks. Its all over. BUT NO! The marines build a tfac, pg, pile of sieges, and proceed to SIEGE your hive. Or it gets better, then put up a tfac and NORMAL TURRETS and proceed to kill your hive that way. This is not spawncamping either, but its horribly horribly lame.


In both cases the players cant complain. If you're on the losing side you're just a whiner, and if you're on the winning side then you're not complaining because you're winning. Your only hope of justice is an Admin on your team who's been playing for the entire round and KNOWS whats been happening... because anyone who joins will just say "nah, they're just whining cos they lost".


It takes the shine off a lot of games, and generally leads to people quitting the server. Nefarious game slacking and skill stacking is cheap and hard to really "prove" because it involves constant monitoring of games, and people don't want to have to do that. And rightly so.

So instead we appeal to the players..... but really, how many of them are going to listen?

IF you can lambfarm both

Then there wouldn`t be any glorious fight without...

jsut hand shotties and bg...

Oh yeah, you're an amazing comm. I'd love to be able to put down turrets as well as you. Why would I need to learn how to give medpacks really fast or get the right upgrades, or even whip off a single waypoint when I can just comm a team that is blatantly better than the other, and just drag out the game for a slow and painful win. I deserve it. I commed this game. They couldn't of won it without me. What? You think you can farm eclipse better than me? You can damn well try.

I miss the games where the comm was the actual decisive factor in a game. 'Cause frankly, you can be a crap comm, and still win with a leet team. So you're just a medpack dispencing, upgrade getting comm who drops the occational shotgun when they need it. Feel pretty leet, don't you?

Instead, think back to that really great game. The aliens gave you hell as you desperately tried to seige down that second hive. If it weren't for those shotguns and properly placed meds, you probably would've lost it ages ago. Your team must of taken down 3 fades atleast! They finally got the turret factory down, but not before you got that quick scan in for another volley of seiges to get that hive down! You send in your marines to clean up the mess and then move on to the last hive. Congradulations are thrown around, compliments on marksmentship here and there, and the label of "Decent commander" is thrown around with your name.

Those games don't happen with 2 hive super turret lockdowns, my friend.

well if you can pull off a 2 hive lockdown and stall the game for very long, doesn't that imply that the marine team is stacked?
so instead of having the lockdown, you might as well have all or at least some of your marines rush to teh first hive and spawn camp while you just chill in your comm chair. Isn't that just as boring for the commander as it is for the aliens?

Just leave the damn game and join a different server if you run into these situations.

The mark of a competent commander (aka good comm) is one of understanding. A good comm can understand the flow of the game, know which direction the team should push, and how to go about it. S/He does so at an acceptable pace. Meds come within 5 seconds of a request via the interface, 10-15 with a verbal or typed call. A good comm can usually predict to some degree what the alien movements and plans will be, and react somewhat swiftly to a sudden movement that was unexpected.

Notice all the "moderates", "somewhats", etc in the paragraph above. This is because a good comm should in fact be an average commander. The problem in NS is most people suck at RTS, and are terrible commanders. The only reason people stand out is because they understand the game, not because they excel at it. A seasoned starcraft player that's played for many a year would annihilate most commanders in terms of skill after some practice, including most clan commanders.

A kickass commander would totally know what is going on in a game. That comm would know what the aliens are doing, predict their movements, be ready for surprises, and be all over the map, all the time. That comm would rarely miss meds, and would be anywhere that they were needed BEFORE they were needed. When a marine says "are you watching me all game or something, you always med me right as I need it", you are doing your job as commander. A great commander would never be behind the game, they would be in front of it, ALWAYS being where they were needed, BEFORE they were needed.

The mark of an excellent commander is being dynamic, fluid, mobile, and very sharp. Be where you need to be when you need to be, do what you need to do when you need to do it, and be highly motivated. Wimpy comms don't inspire ANYONE to do anything, and that's a No-Go. If you don't fit these criterion, do your team and don't get in the chair. No one wants to go lock down 2 hives, turret farm everything, and sit back while the res flows in. That's boring, time-consuming, and wasting everyone's time. No one learns from that except how NOT TO PLAY. Try that strategy in WC3 or any other RTS and see how quickly you're annihilated. The only reason it works in NS is because of a moderate team inbalance and the disorganization of most alien teams in pubs. Play the game like it was intended and see how much complex and diverse NS can actually be.

You can't win with towers alone unless your opponent is totally incompetent and you know exactly what you're doing. NS is similar, except that you don't have to know exactly what you're doing in order to went with static d alone. Also, if you're a way above average player, why does it matter that you can beat a far less experienced player with a fairly lame tactic. I could counter most posts here by saying "I could beat that because I'm an experienced player", but I don't because it's a waste of a post. Get my logic?

locking down 2 hives is annoying, but is that the MARINES fault?
we do our best in the games and we wanted fun, but with those who lame around in NS, dropping mc/sc without asking, what can we do? they dun listen they dun learn. its ok for marines having 3~4 noobs* since we could just ignore them (never med them), but with freedoms to build with gorge, that problems.

or should we just ask all the marines to have one hand tied up so that aliens stand a chance

Generally 2 Hive lockdown games ARE boring, but if the Aliens win in this situation, than its a great game ^^

Just played a game now come to think of it, had a great marine team, 10v9 i think it was, 10 rines 9 aliens.
We must've capped all the top half of the nodes (cafeteria and above on ns_mineshaft) and i just starting to elec them, alien were in the bottom half but just couldn't expand becaues of my elec'd nodes, so they simply blocked themselves into there hive with millions of oc's.
Needless to say this game went on for about 40 minutes when it was won in te first 5.
Insted of trying to win, i simply capped every node possible, leaving aliens with a whole two nodes, and farmed that big middle room that slopes upwards (sorry don't know mineshaft well at all, but it's ok because no one ever seems to play it anymore) and sat there, waited for 300 res, and kitted my whole team out with the whole lot, mines welders, ha/hmgs sgs whatever they wanted, and simply walked into the hive set up a tf and elec'd it to death

GG. lameness for aliens


<edits> i don't know what point this post was supposed to make, but i suppose it shows it's not always rines fualt.</edits>

For me its simple.
farming is usefull when you have so much res it makes hardly a difference anywayz.

2 hive lockdowns ALWAYS pay of if you can keep them. Id o nt think there lame. Most teams are around 9 players each. If 6 to 9 players can't atleast defend another hive area then the one they started in, they deserve to lose painfully.

There is no impossible, anything can be done. So instead of nagging about 2 hive locks, ppl should improvise and try to get them DOWN.

its not that hard. Depends on a few things but still, it can be done. I solo'd to much hive locks alone, getting killed on the last block of a tf or something. imagine if there were 2 simple skulks.

You couldn't beat OCs?

GLs, catpacks, sieges.

I fail to see why you had to counter their OCs with an elec tfac in hive. The difference between rines and aliens is that rines have many ways of wiping out static defense at range... aliens lack this ability, instead having to get up close and personal.

Why does everyone think that its okay to farm up hives when you have the res?
Use the res on equipment, not turrets. Every turret you put down was a potential shotgun for your marines, which would've been geared towards your hive.

That turret you place in that hive, its going to stay there until its dead. Its never going to walk up and move to a new location. But shotguns can move around and inflict damage across the whole map.

Yes, its true that its the aliens fault that they let you get a 2 hive lockdown, but nothing they do can entice the marines to finish the game off any faster. Whose fault is that? The lame commander who feels that he should milk the win for all its worth.

I don't see how turret farm lockdowns pay off either. Do those turrets PREVENT a hive from going up? By all means, no. A gorge could sneak in and put it up. Do the turrets take down the hive? Yes, but it'd take a hell of a long time. Does it tell you that a hive is there? By all means yes, but the same thing can be done for free if you scanned it using an obs, or just sent a marine over to take a look. So what do the farms do? The only USEFUL purpose is to kill the occational skulk that is foolish enough to attack it. 1-3 res. Congradulations, you spent 60+ res to get 1 - 3 res in return.

If thats all it needed to do, then why not just stick a res node and phase gate an electrify it? Serves the same purpose at less than half the cost. And, gee, that res could be used to suit up your marines for that last run on the hive you've been meaning to get down for the last 30 minutes.

In most of the pub servers that I've been to, some of the worst comms will do two hive lockdowns on almost every ns_ map, with 50 turrets each, to ensure that the hives stay secure.

What's the implication here?: the marine team obviously has really good players if they can do this or the alien team lacks teamwork///has nub players. Comms that bad should be beaten easily since they waste so much res on everything else but upgrades...

I see how doing hive lockdowns and taking forever to finish the game can be quite annoying. But if you run into these kinds of situations just leave because whining about it isn't really going to do much. Pubs are open to players of all sorts and many, who are just learning to command, will eventually learn to finish the games efficiently. (I know i learned my lesson -_-. I used to do mass turret farms but realized it was just a waste of time and res after losing to good players.)

I'm not whining. In fact, on my regular server it rarely happens because we have commanders that know that it doesn't work. Its when I go to the pubs and see two hive lock down strategies, and people STILL doing the mass electrification strategy. I had a game where one of my marines kept nagging me to electrify my nodes or else i'll lose them. I told him that if I electrified them, they'd never pay themselves off; and the fact that they've already payed themselves off, but he wouldn't hear of it.

The fourms is where we contribute and learn, and i thought that it would benefit whoever cared to read from a bit of insight from commanders that dared to try something new.

They have to realize that not everything needs to be defended. The old japanese board game 'Go' is described as a sharing game. You can't have the whole board, so don't try to take it. Some places are going to have to give if you're assaulting other places, and that is completely alright as long as you keep the big picture in perspective.

I agree with Lito, you can't have it all.

Lack of player skill across the board makes this sort of thing viable.

I looked at this topic this morning, and said to myself I was going to do somthing much more retarded and lame.

This is my story:

At the start I rushed my marines down to the hive exits and turret farmed them up. Every exit to the hive was covered with turrets, mines, and electrification. Even vent exits were covered. My marines killed stragglers. The aliens were trapped inside their hive. I then captured the entire map.

After that I ordered my marines to wait and not kill the hive. I then expanded on EVERY res node on the map. Every res node had:

-Electirifcation
-3 IP's
-Armory
-Turret factory electrified and upgraded
-Mixed turrets
-Phase Gate
-Observatory
-Comm chair
-Mines

I then made mass electrified turret factories in the alien spawn. Luckily on this server F4 doesn't work so they were stuck spawning in only to die.

Finally my marines called mutiny on me, kicked me out of the comm chair, and sieged the hive (Why'd they siege it? I don't get it -_-;;)

This was the most vile thing I've ever done on NS. A nearly two hour game of torturing the aliens.

I am actually laughing as I type this........

This is the sort of rubbish thats getting more popular.

One game I played I was single handedly wiping out MS, with the alien team yelling at me to leave the IPs up.

I didn't, I took everything down and ended the game quickly. The next match was a lot more fun.


And in case anyone suspects, I DID ask the comm if he was new, but there was no response. If you don't say you're new, you get no mercy.

It's sort of a double edged sword. Some marines like winning, some like fun strats.

But usually if a fun strat fails due to marine/alien skill differences, then your marines hate you for not doing a cookie cutter build.

Like at the very start, just drop an armory, drop shotties, drop them ammo (So they don't hump it for the next 30 seconds.), and go straight to the hive.

One of two things will happen:

1) The marines get in the hive, kill whoever was on the way. Blast the hive, and good game. Marines and aliens both say things similar to "lol" and "WTH?" with positive results. Sometimes you'll hear a "gg" in there.

2) The marines get in the hive, some die along the way. They blast at the hive but fail to kill defending skulks. The skulks then go to your base, eat you and your comm chair. Marines are like "OMG NOOB COMM" and scream at you in the mic with "Never comm again!".

The marines will always blame you, like a child blames the parent. When in truth it's really up to them how much fun they have.

I was playing Aliens, and they double hive locked down. We just used gorge healing and skulks to free the hives. The marines didn't have much resources and we were able to take over the map rather fast before they got lvl 3 weapons.

This sort of laming is what makes people dislike NS...

To be honest lamers don't like to be lamed, especially when they can't entertain themselves. If the comm is trying to get every node on the map in a jack assish fashion, vote eject him, or dont follow orders and dont build a node in the alien hive, instead shoot it.

I've tried really hard not to turret farm...4 turrets max per location.

It's hard to defend anything without a TF or an electification on a large pub. I've tried and tried...95% of the time it doesn't work because most of the marines are incompetent and don't listen.

I'd love to win games on pubs without having to lock things down, but it often doesn't work...

In a small match (<10v10), it's no problem...

Hows this...

Too bad. Im locking down both hives and getting my forces rallied. I'll be packing HMG/HA with two hives locked down and every res node electrified if I want to damnit. Its called winning. Im not going to purpously let them walk over my defense just in the name of "being a good sport". Thats the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Im going to outfit every marine with the latest tech, storm into their base and blow it to shizzle with HMG or Shotgun bullets. You dont like it? Tough.

Thats completely alright. Although experienced marines would eject you sometime in the middle, that is completely your choice. I realise this thread isn't going to change the whole NS world; Not every comm is going to read this thread and say "You know what, he's right, I've been doing that all along and its getting boring, lets try something new". And you know what? Thats just fine. The fourms are a place to read, learn, and improve. If you want to be stubborn and lock down those hives and just sit there teching up, you'll realize sooner or later that it gets boring, then blame it on no new updates to NS, b5 taking too long, what not, leave the game for a month until the new patch comes out, then do it all again. Chances are, Recoup, we won't be seeing you for too long.

For those who are more open minded about improvement, they get a new kick out of the game. Its about "Hey, you don't always need Heavies to win...I can be more efficient like this" or "I never knew catpacks were this useful...". Its about having more fun in the server you play on. And thats what we play games for, right? To have fun.

Lock those hives down. Get a minibase going at every res node. Electrify everything that you can. Spam medpacks in the hive for absolutely no reason because you have so much res, you don't even know what to do with it. Then, the next game, try a relocation, a shotgun rush, or even just take the hive res node and just LEAVE it undefended; spend that res on weapons 3, and you'll see how change can bring fun not only for you, but for the whole server.

When I have just locked down two hives, I dont sit around base for 30 minutes getting everything upped. I give my marines all the res I have worth of equipment, and we march to the hive. This is mere seconds after getting hive number 2 locked down. We get a phase gate up outside their hive, and we just die and come back in. If they dont have heavies, then fine. If we dont have HMG's, I give them shotguns and say "Well go anyway". I dont bide my time like some morons. I go for the hive when I take down number two, or at least start thinking of HOW im going to take out that last hive.

Recoup, I hate it when commanders do that.

Albeit my relocate to the third hive strategy is pretty lame as well, but at least it's about necessity (assuming you want to win at all costs), but your strategy is incredibly stupid.

Your 6:1 marines probably could have LMGed that hive down from the start, but you had to drag it out and face hive 1 skulks with your HA+HMG and then blow the hive down effortlessly in the course of 20 minutes.

What did I just finish saying Rapier?

How to take the last hive?

Look, dude.

If you were able to lock down two hives, that is the sign of poorly skilled aliens and supreme incompetence in the team as a whole. Either that, or your marines were over 3:1.

So give credit for your marines for winning the game, not yourself.

Ill take that as a no, you DIDNT read what I said.

I told you specifically that I take my team the SECOND the enemy's second hive goes down (give or take 1 or two marines to stay behind and build, just in case we dont make it on our first run) I take my marines and I send them for the enemy hive. In most cases, they will move together and build a Phase Gate, then I proceed to drop equipment at base. If they want to come and phase through to get it, fine. If they dont, that's fine too. In only 5 minutes I've probably gotten the phase gate up, my marines have killed the hive, and we are searching for DC gorges and/or skulks. I dont **** around for 20 to 30 minutes after locking down hive number 2. I head for their base.

Let me say this so all of you can see it:

I go for hive number 3 after killing hive number 2 almost imediately

This way all you blind folks can spot it.

What this thread is about is a early-mid game 2-hive lockdown where the other team doesn't even get a second hive up. They lock it down with everything you can lock down with: 10 turrets, back-up turret factories, and electrification all around. This is only viable when the teams are obviously stacked in terms of skill on the marine team. Comms know they've won, sit back and enjoy it when they can do something about it.

This isn't about when you've seiged down the second hive. If you've seiged the second hive down, they've already had their chance, and they lost it.

So Recoup, any implications on my previous post I take back, but guys, don't derail the thread, please.

Instead of locking down two hives, let me see if you approve of this strategy. I call it "Locking down the hive." I decided to try this on a random server to see what gratitiude I'd get.

At the start I built an armory, passed out mines to my marines and ordered them to stick together and get to the hive.

Two out of six marines died along the way, losing eight mines.

When they got to the hive (I had to keep them healthy, as there was skulks/gorges along the way.), I dropped a turret factory in their spawn, ordered my marines to place mines all around the turret factory, I electrified it. Made a triangle of turrets. I dropped two IP's and an armory near the electrified turret factory. Mines and electrification stopped the skulks while the IP's went up. One of my marines were parasited to death. By this time my comm chair was almost dead (Rushing skulks.) so I dropped a comm chair in their base alongside the IP's, armory, and turret factory.

After some intense fighting and using the remaining resources on mines/med spam, we won.

After the game, marines comments were somthing like "i cant believe we won gj"
The alien comments were like "that is so cheap" and "WTH was that".

The skulks were too afraid of the electricity, but when I made some turrets, they suddenly became frenzied and charged it. It was kind of funny. I can imagine an alien on the enemy team telling his allies to "stay back & parasite them to death".

Funny stuff indeed.

Why did I post this in this thread? To show that comms have ways of winning other than Cookie Cutter build orders.

It is indeed fun to try many ways of playing the game eh, just not everyone likes those many ways...

The other great woe of modern NS.. alien teams who never attack.

If you're paraing people to death when they're rushing your hive then quite frankly you need to quit NS and go to a different mod where both sides have guns.

If its different, more likely than not its going to make for a fun game; unless your comm is intentially smurfing it.

I had one game where the comm relocated three times...in the same room. Ominous Kismet in ns_nothing. One base under the quadlift, and mine ladders to the sides for another 2 minibases (cc,armory,ip). Needless to say that we lost, but hell it was a LOT of fun. The whole server got a good laugh out of it. We call it a 'moral victory'; loosely regarded as playing a 30 minute game that we lost (while not turtling), or doing something fun and different like a 3-part-same-room-relocate.

what we need is more "moral victories".

In that game, jammano, I don't think I would've been disappointed to lose as marine. Thus its a "moral" victory; a loss, but in the end the team still had fun. You don't get 'moral' victories with cookiecutter two-hive-lockdown games. You get empty wins, and even worse losses. The kind of wins and losses that make you think "ugh...do I really have to play this out?"

I agree with you entirely. I don't play NS to not have to fire a gun. I play it so that I'm pushed by players who:

A. Are more skilled than me forcing me to out-think them (always fun)

B. Are good at out-thinking me so force me to improve my technical skill.

This is why siege cannons (while an integral part of the game) annoy me intensely, particularly when a com will put down 2 tfacts and 3 sieges for the easy win (note this has usually resulted by him being extremely {one might say Scottish, one might say Jewish - I however will say neither} tight with the resources and locking down every choke point). Wow gg and all that but NO, just NO. It's not a good game it's a boo00ooring game!

2 HIVE TURRETFARM LOCKDOWN GAMES ARE BORING!

This leads me onto a related topic. To temp com or not to?

Would you rather have a 3 minute round because everyone is bashful about comming due to the almost immediate backlash of comments you get for 'trying something new' or otherwise throwing the TSA handbook out of the window to promote some variety in the game?

OR

Would you rather have a 10-15 minute game where the aliens have pressurized you because of you making decisions that don't assure you a perfect win.

OR PERHAPS

Would you rather have what I had only 10 minutes ago on a so-called 'veterans only' server where I was flamed for temp-comming to get the game going and ABSOLUTELY ABUSED for getting out of the CC to kill off an alien that had got the RT nearest MS in ns_ayumi down to red. If they were all such vets they should have been able to deal with (and it's interesting that someone earlier suggested this) Motion Tracking straight off. I wish they had been able to but they immediately went into ::WhineMode:: as the base was assaulted by wave after wave of skulks and fades. But nevermind, it's only a game afterall. In total that's 10 minutes of their time I have 'wasted', which in the grand scheme of a let's say 80 year lifespan is not something to give someone that much abuse for.

In my honest opinion I believe that we lost the game because in my frenzy to get the game going I didn't bind my mic to my mouse (something I do for ease-of-use) and was unable to give marines health and such. But at the end of it all I'm thoroughly glad that I didn't as these were precisely the 'rines who sprouted *DON'T GET IN THE CC IF YOU'RE ONLY GONNA TEMP COM* constantly as I was trying to setabout constructing a base.

It's a pity that I'm so attentive to the text at the bottom of the screen when I'm comming - I like to know what the rines need/want in case I've overlooked something. It's also a pity that all I could see was CAPS flaming the whole round, which iwas not only distracting me from my job at hand, but also a complete misuse of the chat function (which in my mind would be best served to ask for structures, where the hive is etc...

To conclude it seems that NS has become an elitist game and is increasingly catering exclusively for those who are familiar with it (those so-called 'vets'). If you take a proper look at the game you may notice that its lack of gore, relatively easy menu system and absence of 'realistic' damage and accuracy modifiers aim it at a much wider audience. Why can't the 'vets' and the 'noobs' just get along?

I leave you with a suggestion: The next time a newish ns player wants to com, let him. You just might get something refreshing out of the experience, I'm sure he will.

P.S. As for that server (which I will not mention because that would just be 'childish' -something else I was accused of-) I will not be darkening its figurative doors again in the near future. I came for advanced gameplay, all I found was 'Lord of the Flies'. I may return there one day to see whether that ravenous mob of children had returned to the realms of civility upon whose values NS had once-upon-a-time hoped to build itself. And now for some mapping...

Oh and btw.

When I accused them of all being defeatist they all accused ME of whining and told me to leave. It made perfect sense to me and I was about to leave when one used the unoriginal and thoughtless stock-phrase 'noob com'. In the next map I thought I'd give them a taste of their own medecine and (perhaps fairly childishly) lamed in ms spamming: 'OMG we've lost!' and refusing to build anything. I think they got the message but I must have dont something wrong as I was kicked by the admin seconds later. Maybe he didn't like the point I was illustrating.

Oh one more thing, what are your opinions on making WoL's. These have been limited to 8 ocs in the immediate area. Should this also be true of farms?

A challenge for all coms out there remotely familiar with the game: for every "serious" (aka cookie-cutter) game you play, the next game you com try out something completely different, at least a relocation and at most a hive ip-rush or something.