I've been comming more lately and I've been rushing Advanced Armory every time. By 3, 3 1/2 minutes I can hand out HMGs (and a few shotguns to round things out), and the aliens just kind of die. I see Fades getting owned completely by just 2 HMGers, and this is with w0. I've won almost every round I commed when I rush AA.

I used to think the shotgun is the best, given its economical cost and structure ownage, but now I just think HMGs can solve almost all of my problems. Maybe it's just because pub aliens don't know how to deal with early HMGs, but HMGs seems damned strong.

I want to know what aliens can do to counter HMGs. Once I get my team of HMGers out on the field, assuming I'm fast enough with my meds (I give most of them welders as well) nothing stops them. They just take down one node after another, and then cap them. I end up having more res than I can spend. It's ridiculous.

Ambushing works super.

Lerk spores are great also to weaken the marines.

Lerk + skulk pack with a nice ambush can waste the whole lot of em.

If its 2 hives then umbra+spore+fade and skulks = dead HMGers.

Also I've seen a good team rush the base while the rest of marine team is out to lunch at res nodes and eat the advanced armory. Then they gradually mop up HMGers.

Also depends on what chamber aliens went with. If its DCs its gonna be HARD. Movements they got a better chance because they are harder to target with cele and MUCH better at ambush with silence (i don't care what people say MT does NOT negate silence as much as you'd think. Hide someplace sneaky and run up behind the marine..he'll never know what hitem) Sensory can be DEVASTATING to the HMG rush with focus and well placed cloaking sensory spots. A focus fade with some lerk support to spore marines as they move will destroy the HMG rushing marines..or even a gaggle of focus skulks camping cloaked waiting for the marines to run through.

Here are some solutions

- Harass the marine base constantly (ie have a skulk go chew on their armory/arms lab/ip). Try to get rid of structures.
- Kill res nodes to limit the number of heavy guns that rines can hand out.
- Send fades/lerks/skulks to deal with hmgers.
- Rush the second hive fast. Leaping skulks are harder to deal with and umbra is a nice shield for aliens
- Save nodes
- Don't suck
- Teamwork

rofl @ don't suck advice.

Well, hive2 isn't exactly the environment I'm looking advice for right now cuz I can hand out HMGers before the second hive starts going up. During the first 3-4 minutes, my marines can usually expand and cap at least 5 nodes without too much trouble due to skulks being weak.

Sending Fades to deal with HMGers is really hard because HMGs really tear thru fades quickly.

ambushing sounds like a really good idea, and using silence is good too, but pubbers typically never want anything but DCs

Harassing base sounds good, unless the comm leaves one man to base (with a HMG of course)

good fades use a hit and run strategy, when you are a fade you should never EVER run towards your opponents, blink in, swipe, blink out and repeat, this works very effectively with focus against HMGers

If you havent managed to restrict marine income by the time they get HMGs, you're in for a very tough time.

What you need to do is to be constantly on their RTs, so that every HMG killed hurts. Fades and a lerk to keep the marines at bay near hive while skulks take out RTs. If you play the res war well enough, and manage to break the HMGers once, you're often in a good position to win.


Res is the key though, stop them from being able to drop new HMGs as soon as their old go down. Delay that protolab by killing their RTs. Harass base to force them to keep a marine near their base/PG.

If you dont have a decent lerk, it will be very difficult though.

[Edit]A key point is have your skulks work *around* their HMGs. After fades are up, use your skulks to go after lone lmgs and RTs only.

Empty the bullets (fade, lerk, leaping skulk), then chew (the others waiting). Duh.

I'm having trouble as aliens on a 12v12 server. On smaller servers I do noticably better.

I think the problem is getting the alien team organized enought o work together to take down the hmgers and also to take out their nodes.

However, what usually happens is that marines just build more IPs, and most of the aliens stay in the spawn queue, taking like a whole minute to spawn in. They just try to rush base at the beginning and get owned. I dunno what I can do to organize the alien oub team enough to win in a 12v12.

Stop playing on 12v12 servers. It's silly.

You know, it's kinda funny I think that the aliens would be LESS screwed in large games than they are now if the res system is the 1.04 res system.

>

Don't listen to Church. He's a nub.

The reason the 1.04 system worked is that aliens were capped at 33 res at 1 hive, funneling all the res to the single gorge after a few minutes into the game. There was also the fact that you needed two hives for fades, and three hives for onos, meaning that the res cap worked out fine. 1.04 res system + unchained lifeforms = aliens lose.

fades blink in and out alot focus on marines wasting ammo and get them when they are reloading.

it's good to pick off hmgers when they are away from ms so mostly the hmg gets lost instead of getting picked up again.

keep killing the marine rts.

ambushes works fine, remember to have some skulks walk on walls/ceilings so the skulks at ground level can chew marines up or skulks can drop from ceilings to chew them up. if all of u are at ground level the hmg spray just tears through the skulks _very_ easily even if u have a lot of skulks at the ambush.

when two hives come, UMBRA.

When pub marines encounter a spore lerk, they get the fear.

Too scared to lose their precious HMG, they'll avoid all confrontation that ensures they'll take damage. Even if there's a potent comm medspamming like crazy.


That would probably be the key. Stay ahead of the HMG train and spore their path. It'll take them ages to reach their goal, during which your skulkbuddies have hopefully got a second hive up, and taken down some of their RT's.

Simple really.

if they have 2 HMGs it means hardly anyone has one.
If they stick together it means the other team is weak.
If they split up it means you only have one target to hit.
If they camp base you can own the team.
if they are not inbase you own base.

Ambush, gas, blink. No ups will easily face them soon enought. Sure, if he dies another rine can pick up the gun. But he needs to either reload, or aim and fire the remainder of the clip. in both causes that won't cut it. If only 3 aliens gang a HMGer he is a goner. You are ganging him in a corner now aint ya?

I kinda wish that all of my marines would be smart enough to have a -healthy- amount of fear. Instead sometimes on pubs they just run off on their own and die, although when they do stick together, they can get places. How many res nodes typically can you keep the marines down to? I seem to have no trouble holding about 4 nodes. 5 if my marines can comfortably patrol double.

Flank em and spore em. When they're shooting at shadows, send in a fade to **** a marine. Gorges on standby with the healspam.

If they've got a bit of wit tho then you're probably screwed. Best case scenario is to pillage their res nodes so that the res spent on HMGs will be bled out, leaving them open for a counter. If you can break them up with hit'n'run attacks and spore spam, all the better.

Upgrade wise you want to be pushing second hive and going for silence or celerity. Adren spore spam lerk, silence/celer skulks/fades, then flank ambush them. You might get lucky. To split their team up, consider a quick blitz on MS - sometimes this sends 1-2 rines running back to defend, which puts the odds in your favour.

I didn't see anybody note this. RUSH THEIR BASE and get rid of the Advanced Armory. mopping up the left over HMGs are easy after that.

One good lerk can ruin HMGers. A good lerk can take them out if they're bunched up, and if they're isolated, then a fade can do the same thing.

Remember, every time you kill a marine, and someone doesn't pick up his gun, that's a 16-18 res point swing.

Rushing HMGs means that the marines have to cut back on other things, like RTs, upgrades, phase gates, and/or motion tracking.

On 12vs12 server marines just simply outspawn and outres aliens. Res flow to aliens is so slow that their lerks, fades, chambers and 2nd hive are delayed (if server does not use giveres). Marines just move in groups and cap all nodes, destroy alien nodes they see. Aliens have very hard time to build destroyed nodes bacause extremely slow res flow and half alien team will be anyways in spawn queue because one hive.

If marines can't win on 12 vs 12 someone is screwing up game. If teams are equal, aliens just don't have a chance.

The best counter naturally is: take down that hump-dewm (advanced armory) You can quite easily take it down due pub bases dont have that kind of defence. It is allso huge loss if you lose the adv at around 4mins, no fades yet BUt also max of one upgrades. Whats more fun than killing vanilla rines with fades? If they have hmg fast i would also say go for the sc in 2. hive.

Main thing to stop HMGs is to drop the armory and eventually all of the HMGs will dissapear. Once the armory has been destroyed it's another 3 minutes at the earliest before more can be constructed. Once the armory is down focus on killing HMGers as far away from marine start as possible. I normally let marines actually get into the hive room with HMGs, they feel invincible until they suddenly realize they're facing spores, spawning skulks, and a lerk who happens to chew on them at just the right time to not get shredded. Lerks and skulks are the best for LA marines, fades are a really large target and until they get hive2 die very fast to HMGs in all but the most advantageous spots.

The main thing though is to do what should have been done since the beginning: everyone has a job to do. If everyone does their job, a fade will be on base constantly and skulks will be hitting RTs. People will ****, moan, complain, grumble, and say lots of petty retarded things, but the fade on base will win you the game, even if it looks like he's not doing much at any given time. The constant harassment slows marines down from leaving/phasing, and he can take out structures slowly over time. Harassment is the aliens best attribute, it should be used constantly to annoy marines. Once they get frustrated enough they'll do something rash, and that's when you can act.

Harassment is essential in NS. Moreso I believe for cracking Marines, as at least on the alien side ANY player can gorge up and drop a chamber near him, or some OC.. or he can lerk if he needs sporespam, etc.

But marines rely on the comm, and if you mess up the comm then he can't be medding his marines, and VV. I don't think I've seen any proper game won without a split attack designed to bleed the enemy of their res.

Well, you could go for psychological harassment (not by insulting)

Try harassing an HMG marine constantly with parasite as a skulk. It should work because that HMG marine will now become a liability to his own team, not to mention it should tick him off quite a bit because an HMG can be less effective on a lone marine. If you have a lerk to help you, all the more better.

Also don't forget that RTs are higher priority. If you're chewing on an almost destroyed RT and an HMGer comes around the corner, you're better off continuing to destroy the RT. With no res, the marine team cannot crank out as many HMGs as they could.

It's all about harassment and attrition.

And don't forget to take random chances at taking out their armory. Those things take forever to upgrade and once they lose it, they're in a lot of trouble. Especially if nobody chooses to weld it.

It's actually worth hitting the armoury just to weaken it slightly, before sending in a fade or skulk pack to finish the job. Not too much, or it will get welded. Just three bars. Then wait for marines to move out again and rush it. The additional second or two worth of munching time you save will often make the difference.

It's also worth thinking laterally and hitting cashflow, rather than production facilities. The observatory is extremely weak and will die to two skulks quicker than marines can actually beacon. If they do manage a beacon, then they'll still have a dead obs, but they'll have also spent an additional 15 res to watch it die.

If you can kill it whilst MT or PG tech is being researched, then you are looking at depriving the marines of 35-55 resources and a couple of minutes worth of tech.

In the same way, although a much tougher target, the arms lab provides a most succulent dish when upgrading. Again, you need to weaken it to begin with, then rush it.

In order to be able to do this, it helps if the marine spawn isn't crawling with mines. Here's where the Fade comes in. If there are mines down, the fade should be detonating them, especially since each mine is a potential 1-3 rp boost for the marines. Worst case, try using gorge spit to clear them. Or a healing gorge near base and a skulk with carapace. The latter is rarely going to pay off in terms of invested effort though.

Grendel I've found that if I fade does nothing but harass base, eventually he gets ignored by the commander and can do some serious damage on a structure, and if on the next attack a few skulks accompany him, it has the same effect as what you described. I did that all day yesterday as a fade and it just demolished marines unless I was sloppy and got nubbed.

Good strategy. So what do you do if there is a marine guarding base?

Just give me a call and I'll destroy all your precious marines with useless toys.

If there's marines patient enough to sit in base and guard it for most of the game without running off, and there are that many people on the server, then the game is pointless to begin with. Play on servers with less people. If a ns map ever gets above 18 players, I leave the server. I usually don't join servers where the max number of players is set that high, though.

yep...aliens just seem to have such a big disadvantage due to the res system...6v6 is ideal i think.

Problem is that you cant find really good servers under 16 players(mayb in america)

bleh i'm in asia and u can hardly find a server with decent latency, period.

Convince more people from Asia to play NS

Absolutely res domination. If they never get the nodes you just had a commadner waste that res on the AA when he could have gotten weapons upgrades for the fades that will be coming soon. If you dominate the res nodes you have at least one hive open and a few RTS so you'll be getting even more fades and a second hive.

The counter to everything is owning hte map. Own the map and win, don't own it and lose.

As far as combatting an already existing HMG force at the 4 minute mark ... good luck. Ummm, silence might work if the aliens ahve team work and pateience (usually lacking both) SCs seem abd because you will have armor1.

Personally, when I comm I never rush AA ... thinking about this for a second ... LMGs reload much faster, and a skulk takes nine shots to kill whereas a HMG is four (maybe five) assuming no upgrades (most went to RTS, AA, HMGs, armor1, phase tech I'm hoping). LMGs fire faster meaning that if you are on the skulk you really need hte equivalent of seven HMG shots in LMG terms. So we have seven versus four. THis is just me but I would rather have as many upgrades as possible and hit the AA button when I see my first fade ( waste rest of res on shotties, which deter most fades). Armor1, weapons2, phase tech marines are better in the early-mid game than are armor1 marines with HMGs. HMGs is just over kill until you've accessed the skill of the fade(s) and you might encounter that onos ****. If the alien team sucks you just wasted a ton of res on weak marine with 20 res in their hands instead of strong marines with very little res in their hands. Just my opinion ...

HMGs > everything the khaara can throw at them. Quick AA is definately nothing to laugh at... my the time AA is upgraded you'll be at 2 weapons and 1 armor upgrade. Just throw out some welders and have your HMGers rip the alien team apart...

[Edit] this has of course nothing to do with how to counter HMGs, but rather that the fact that HMGs >> LMGs with an extra upgrade level or two was disputed.

refresh my memory: level0 HMG = 18 damage a bullet or 20?

20, just like pistol.

yesyes.. pistol is our HMG in small size. \o/

it'll be funny if the hmg were as accurate as the pistol tho

J3st lol! I wanan see pistol-hmg mod

(poor skulks)

HMG on pistol acurace... Can you say gg.

Problem with early hmg is that you can have 5 of em covering a gl then just walk in the hive and sit in the corner while the gl takes it. The aliens can't do a dam thing.

get a lerk to spread them out a little bit, or if theyre very disciplined then youre basically screwed, try to scout a bit more next time :B

even though one could make up all kinds of counter-rush strategies involving sc's, mc's, lerks... etc.

Sometimes when I com I like to do a heavy weapons rush, most of the time the aliens are caught off guard and are destroyed.

Then there are the times when they have a few good fades and lerks working together with the skulks and 150 res goes down the drain, thank god aliens never work together ^_^b

Usually I don't have enough res to outfit my *entire* team with them...but if I give them to good shots, the Fades are usualll scared.

even if i do have the res to give every person an hmg and a few welders, i always give a few shotguns to go with it. i just hate it when my marines get in umbra and they all die so so fast.