When playing on alien team I know that there's nothing I fear more then 5 heavy+HMGers marching to my hive..... its something that can spell doom for many Alien teams but here are a few good ways that with a little team work and some lifeforms you can fight em off.

If you have 3 hives

- Webs can keep em busy and slow them down even if they don't trap them it takes time to spam nades and welders

- a couple of Xeno skulks along with Acid rockets can really soften up Heavys for Oni and fade to rush in and clean up the rest of them

If you have 2 hives

- the onos shouldn't rush in and try to take them all. the onos should use primarly stomp to freeze the heavies, then a bunch of skulks should rush in and try to kill one. of course the skulks will get owned but hopefully you can kill at least 1. keep doing this and avoid having your onos take too much HMG fire and getting killed. hit and runs are harder with the fade, so I'd recomend that fade's blink around the map and use this time when most the marines are together to kill of as many RTs as possible (the rines deffinitly have too much res if they have a heavy train)

If you have 1 hive

- stick your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye, its not impossible but extremly hard to counter hev trains with only one hive.

theese are just a few ways I like to counter hev trains that sometimes work for me. any other good ones you guys would like to add.

Pinning them down while base is destroyed, or splitting them up and getting them piecemeal.

Sometimes marines go welder happy once they think the aliens have left.. this is an excellent time to attack them.

Skulks can do surprising damage to HA trains, because they can weave around the players and thus gain some degree of shielding. This is also good on FF servers as marines will end up firing HMGs at each other, which means any alien followup is going to be very successful.

Umbra+Skulks weaving is an excellent variation on the above.

The other beautiful thing about HA is their sheer lack of speed. Since catpacks are rarely seen, a surgical strike on the marine base can cripple the HA advance. Some will return to base, some will push on, and once they split up they can be picked off. A really successful base attack will mean relocation for the rines, which ties up HA as they'll be trying to build a new CC, etc.

Once you take out the upgrade buildings, or marine rts, you can just sit and "bleed out" the marine HA. Remember, once the res is gone, so are the HA.

A good skulk with celerity, maybe regen too if they don't have shotguns, can whoop a small heavy train's ****. I've taken out two out of three ha's solo as a skulk with just celerity. If I had regen, bet I could have taken the other too

Try to make the heavies beacon, but watch out for multiple obs. Try to take down their adv. armory, arms lab and proto lab. Try to distract the heavies as much as possible.

Skulks are great against heavy trains, because if you play right, the other heavies will be shooting the one you're concentrating on, in the back. Then, your buddies can attack them from behind.

Heavy trains have no hard counter, besides teamwork. With teamwork, however, you can win easy. Stomp + Umbra + Skulks = GG.

Hive 3 vs. Heavies is really easy. I don't need to tell you how to do it.
Hive 2 is Stomp + Umbra + Skulks or Umbra + Fades + Skulks.
Hive 1. Well, if they've got heavies, and you've got 1 hive, then you've already lost.

Like other people have said, hit their base. Heavies have to spend time welding, they are slow, they may have to build (PG or TF), and they have to hold you off. You can take out their base while they are doing these things.

Onos, enough said.

Stomp stomp stomp a lot,
Stomp until they die!
Bite Bite Bite,
Munch Munch Munch,
Swipe Swipe Swipe,
Gore Gore Gore,
Heavies are no more!

(sing to the tune to Row, Row, Row your boat)

I'd say the biggest disadvantage at one hive, besides all the obvious things already mentioned, is spawn rate. Any skulks that attack will die, and all of them have to spawn again before another coordinated attack can be made.

how about you skulkies all hang in ambush, ONE is the paraskulk. he paras a target and you all gang up on that HA.
die/run away.
retry on next HA

A marching HA train is a joke, it has been since early 3.0.

A: marchers are extreamly easy to slow down and stall with harrassment from small but nasty creatures such as skulks gorges and lerks, exspecially when they stop to set up sieges, you can't build while your gun is going off nonstop. Stalled heavies = dead hevies because for every second the hevies take to acctually kill a hive is a second that an onos has to potentially digest them and a second that a fade has to take down the armory/protolab at MS.

B: stomp + leapbiters = many many dead heavies in practically no time at all

C: even if the hevies get to the hive, they have to set up at very least a PG base or walking in the hive will be suicide once they all have unloaded thier clips into leapspawners and the hive in general, and without backup they will all be skulk food in notime. HMGs are not the best weapon for taking down hives. And if they DO try to set up a PG base you have tonnes of oppertunity to stall them in a combat induced stuper right outside of your hive. Gorges bile, fades harrass, skulks kamakazi, and pretty soon the reletively simply task of lowering your gun for 45 seconds to put up a TF becomes extreamly difficult to do, just because without all guns blazing and all welders welding, the heavies acctually start to take signifigant damage pretty fast.

An important thing to remember when fighting heavy weapons and jp/HA:

Take down those RTs. If they have enough res to redrop equipment everytime someone dies, you're screwed...

It's not so hard with 2 hives... just wear them down with Fades and FLOOD them with Skulks, as fast as you can. Just keep up constant pressure and eventually you'll start taking them down. MCs help a TON here.

The other thing to mention is take them one at a time. Find the one thats behind a little bit and have the fade and three skulks all hit him. Fade stay for 2 swipes if you can. Skulks bite and move like crazy and then when they are all dead have the fade go back in for more swipes. Repeat. Takes a lot of communication.

Terror rocked our H-train with a one hive fade by getting them one at a time with precise strikes. It was amazing.

I have a good story concerning this actually.
Our alien team had 2 hives up and we were on the verge of being anihalated(sp) by a heavy train. Me and this guy called kebab were the only 2 fades and we made the direct decision to forget about the hive and take down all the marines res. He took one half of the map and i took the other. We got the marines down to one RT. After this our team managed to still hold the hive and we got an onos. We slowly picked off the HA one by one and eventually won the game

Very memorable game that one.....

wow must have been intense. but the job of getting rts down should surely be for skulks. fades should do the harrassing of HA trains, delaying them building sieges, and harrassing the marine base to make sure at least one heavy is there at all times to guard the base.

if aliens would place mcs in more strategic areas, heavy trains would die in no time. when it comes to mcs, aliens seem to only drop 3 and then those 3 are only in the hives. if some mcs were to be placed near corners, onos could stomp spam a whole group of heavies while skulks munch happily away. also with mcs nearby an onos can stomp spam, devour, and stomp spam some more or use the mc to safely digest a marine.

If you use an MC to get back to the hive, does a digesting marine stay inside you? I've never tried that.

You cant use an MC while digisting.

I like to drop an MC near any action. The boost to energy alone can turn a gorge into a spit machine gun, or allow it to single handedly bile down most rine bases. Its very useful when you consider that primal scream takes three hives and even then few lerks actually use it.

If you redeem while digesting, the marine won't stay with you.

If a heavy train is heading towards the hive, send someone to go harass the marine base and force them to beacon. At that point, you can destroy any setups (tfs, pgs) around the hive and set them back a bit. There should also be a skulk destroying rts to slow down their economy and prevent them from dropping more heavies later on.

To counter heavies, you need to pray if you have one hive. With two hives, its not too bad as you have your third abilities (stomp, leap, umbra, metabolize, and bile bomb) which can become extremely difficult to deal with as a marine. With one hive, well, you're just going to have to think of a way to work around it because at that point in the game, the marines will have plenty of ups and res. Try using the strats mentioned in the above paragraph =)

u can use a mc and still digest a marine, u only lose the rine if u redeem.

its sooo cool when your an onos, and they get a PG up..

Okay im an onos and i hear a a building sound outside my hive.. so i go and investigate i see the marine and let him finish building

Then the marine beacons "

"PG PG PG IN FISION!!!!"

then they all come out

meanwile i stomp them and then skulks come!!!

the skulks tear em to shreds while i stomp them

or even better when the onos gets telefragged.

Didn't both to read the rest, but my counter is short and effective:

Attack somewhere else.

In this case, the best defense is definately a good offense.

The weakness of heavy armor is LIMITED MOBILITY. Take advantage of this. They can't respond very quickly to a rampaging fade.

Take down res nodes, run in their base and attack stuff (adv armory is good, pg if you plan on staying a while). Make them beacon or phase back. Then get your butt out of there just as they arrive. Hang around the corner healing, and as soon as they leave go back in and attack. They might hang around a while and weld/rebuild the base. GREAT! They're not attacking the hive any more! Take down another outpost (i.e. double res) or go rt hunting!

Every time you make heavies phase back to base or run back to base, you create confusion. Confusion is the doom of a heavy train. They can't go through the phase in a group so they get split up - 2 heavies are much easier to take on than 5. If they walk, there will be marines leading the pack too much, and there will be stragglers. It's much harder to weld each other when your buddies are spread out everywhere.

The best alien to counter a heavy train is not an onos but a fade Fades are the ultimate guerilla fighters - they can be wherever a heavy train ISN'T just about 100% of the time.

Of course, there might be turret farms EVERYWHERE and you just can't penetrate any of them. Usually a team can't do that AND have a heavy train. If the marine team can, then it's your fault for letting them accumulate this much res - you've probably already lost the game.

Summary: The best counter to heavy train is a very annoying, impossible-to-kill, marauding fade.

You still have to stop the marines eventually. It doesn't help to kill their base if they can march into a hive, kill it, march to the next one, kill it, march to the third one, kill it. It is important to attack other areas when they get a heavy train. You also need to be able to kill the marines.

if you have a 2nd hive, you should win with this current build.

One word: Teamwork. One Compoundword...What ever...

Basically everyone has to work together, in friendly fire games (my favourite) the skulks will either cause lots of damage.

Case 1: Gun happy marines.
They shoot the skulk, and hit their friends, alot, unless the skulk sucks.

Case 2: DONT SHOOT BOB!
They hesitate to open up because they do not want to kill their friend, Bob. Use this time to move around and munch them. If you die, even the most disciplined marines will continue firing for a little bit longer, hopfully hitting their friend. Nothing like 'nade spam to brighten a skulks day.

well the best way to counter heavies at 1 hive is to have all of your team, probably 6 or 10 people all go gorge on top of a hive that has an mc or two on it, all get adren. they all heal the hive for as long as possible.

No matter how many gorges you get, 22 sieges will take a hive from 100% to 0% instantly, assuming they don't simply wipe it out with shotguns.

*gets out excel sheet*

I made a sheet once calculating turret + siege dmg versus one hive. (no chambers or gorges in yet, gorge values are hard to calculate damnit)

22 sieges is the only number downing hives in less then a second and has 258 dmg to spare.

and if anyone wonders, without shooting the hive, or healing of any sort, 4 normal sieges tacke 20 seconds to down it, continues fire.

I will upload the sheet once, since its 3.F calculated. Now I only hope I figure gorge healspray values out before I do.

I still can't do the gorge thing..

Ok.. if anyone can help, be great.
I need:

the number of energy
adrenaline increase
healspray energy use
healspray ROF
energy restore rate

Some I have, but still. I have the next, if I know what it all means, no.

#define kHealingSprayBuildableScalar 5
unknown
#define kHealingSprayDamage 13
dmg spray does
#define kHealingSprayPlayerPercent 4
I think this states it heals 4
#define kHealingSprayEnergyCost 0.15
ah, a 0.15 cost of energy
#define kHealingSprayROF 1.60
ROF

#define kAdrenalineEnergyPercentPerLevel 0.33
adren increase per lvl
#define kAlienEnergyRate 0.08
energy restore rate

Main point I do not know is the number needed for full energy. I think 1, but then it simple does not add up. unless it means that with adren, energyrate is canceled. All kinda hard to calculate in.

If you're next to a movement chamber you don't need adrenaline to healspray forever as Gorge.

I could give you a detailed 5 page paper on methods and strategies to counter HA trains but since I don't have that much time and no one here will care to read all of that, here is my 2 cents:

First, I'm going to assume they have gotten to an HA train situation because you (as a team) have failed to grab enough resources for your team and failed to deny the enemy access to resources.
Emphasis:
The best way to counter a Heavy Armor train is to not allow it to happen in the first place.

So with that in mind let's say you have failed and now they have HA, let's also say the marines haven't locked down two of your hives and brought the server to its knees with extreme turret framing. One of your first priorities for aliens when you begin the game should be to get that second hive up ASAP. Obviously this means you'll have to get resources, but I see all too often people who want to spend their res on going fade instead of getting up a hive. If you are the first with enough res, go drop the hive quickly and then go back to killing. Remember the well know quote that necessity is the mother of invention and remember that Natural-Selection is a highly team oriented game. At this point you will have to used superb communication and teamwork to set up ambushes and use what you have available. The lack of teamwork is usually why HA trains seem unstoppable on pubs. One good method is to attack with everyone on the aliens team, aliens fully untied will outnumber the marines. And usually the time to counter the HA train is before the train is large and everyone in it has HA. A good strategy is to set up an ambush. Have the fades harass the marines to slow them down while you get all of the skulks, gorges, and an onos preferably in one area the skulks go on the ceiling and the onos is waiting around the corner with the gorges behind them. When the skulks lead the attack being the pawns that weaken, confuse, and use up the enemies clips a second or two after the skulks begin their assault then the onos and fades move in the gorges fire bile bombs into the fray. This actually usually works well even with lvl 3 weapons and lvl 3 armor. Bile bombs are crucial as the united full team ambush. (I'm assuming the gorges have adrenaline if you have MCs, as it is the most prudent movement upgrade for gorges) With nay luck your defeating victory will have the marines reeling for resources giving you time to press the offensive. Most public commanders are not experienced enough to know to have more than one IP in which case you will also be buying time. Notice I didn't talk about lerks. Spore is useless against HA, try to bite and you get shot out of the air before you can say hello. Lerks would need primal scream. Umbra wouldn't hurt, but lerks just die so easily against lvl 3 or lvl 2 HMGs.

How is bile bomb crucial? Last time I checked, it doesn't affect marines, period. If you are attacking them before they are setting up a siege base, there won't be any structures to damage.

Maybe the bile splatter obscures the marines' visors, reducing their visibility and thus aim.

Or perhaps it makes them go OMG LOL THEY ARE BILING US and take out their knives to knife the stupid gorges...And get raped by the fades and onos.

you can also parasite them to death like they do in the pro randoms. that **** be leet.

does anyone still have the link to that movie?

with 3 hives, you don't need to worry about HA train.

if its not to big, why not.
clandarkmul@home.nl (can take alot cause its hardly mailed to)