This is a strat ive thought through but have not been able to try, its reallly generic, but upon suggesting it, all i get is "omg it wont work cuz of this" or "this will beat it"

All the counters are all valid points, but i'm completely unphased because this isnt the first time ive suggested something and been met with criticism as intense, logical, and lots of against, and then turned it into something viable.....

Ive thought of this for a 10V10 game alien strategy, and while perfect, on paper, i have no doubt errors will be found in excecution, however thats how ive come to make my strats better, real time error and trouble shooting of the strat when excecuted.....

First off, the theory is that ALIENS have nearly three times as much starting res as marines in 10V10, but NEVER allocate it useful... My strat takes on a clan approach, but really wouldnt be this hard to pull off, as it only dictates strategy for the first 4 minutes or so....

The General gist of my strat is this:
Aliens use thier immense starting res to both LAME UP half of the map and also hold early nodes (minus two people, who get early fade and hive as needed) From there, they simply HOLD THIER GROUND early game, making marine RFK income next to nothing (a huge plus in large games) Until thier hive is up, at which point marines with 5 nodes, BUT next to no rfk will be hurting bad

Summary of why this works: Marines know how hard it can be to take a room with several skulks, gorges, and OC's... Healspray, bite, parasite... As long as the skulks dont rush the marines.. Time spent setting up a siege is actually beneficial to the aliens, as it buys them time to get more higher life forms from thier huge amount (4-5) resnodes and early hive...

Reasons for Developing this strategy
-OC's are weak, however a large alien team can afford to drop many more of these than a small team could for AREA DENIAL as long as they are kept up by gorges and skulks, ideally 3-4 in a chokepoint with a gorge and a few skulks can hold it(early-mid game) forcing a marine siege

-Aliens never cap enough nodes, TWO NODES IS NOT ENOUGH, RFK does NOT COMPENSATE enough to remove alien resource nodes from being highly beneficial

-ALiens never get the hive up in time, 5 minutes or less is ideal, anything after 6 and you seriously reduce your chances of winning

My strategy revolves around several goals to combat this:

-Cap the 4 res closest to the hive room (5 total) Cost: 4 skulks, 4 gorges, 4 nodes, 15*4 +10*4 equals 4 nodes, 100 of the starting res, and 6 skulks left

-Two Chokepoints Held... these vayr from map to map but include Cargo and chemical on tanith, south loop and outside CC on eclipse, and Below Generator and Ominous Kismet or Foreboding on nothing
---These have to be held IMMEDIATELY.. my suggestion is 4 skulks break off into two pairs and IMMEDIATELY proceed to these chokepoints, one egg while the other covers (if one is closer to MS, send 3/1 respectively rather than 2/2.. my idea is for each to eventually be gorge and have two OC's each up (4 total per chokepoint) within the first 1:30 of game Then have one stay gorge and healspray while the other goes skulk i will continue on this later....

-Third, the final two skulks are ideally your best skulk and best fade, saving for an early hive and early fade respectively.... Thier goal early game is to protect the res gorges and then get kills, while still emphasizing holding the chokepoints...

Unlike conventional alien tactics, i find aliens MUCH better at HOLDING a location (e.g. the chokepoints), and i believe that is wha they should do rather than run at camping rambo marines and die. This would both allow more people to be alive to respond to any problems (marines rushing a chokepoint, hive rushing, ect) but will also allow the chokepoints to have a chance (comm cant waste 50 res medspamming early game, and one gorge, 3 skulks and 4 oc can hold a room at least against all but a full team marine rush, but ur whole team is still alive to counter as you havent been dying to rambo's

Ideally by 1:30-2 minutes 2 of ur res gorges are now skulk, and two of your chokepoint gorges are now skulk, leaving you with 6 skulks and 4 gorges... 2 skulks per chokepoint, and the good ones getting kills for early fade/hive...

Now id say the two remaining gorges who dropped resnodes need to save for chamber of choice (assume DC as strat would be different for SC or MC) which they will have 4 up by the time the hive goes up

The two remaining chokepoint gorges are gonna keep the OC's alive, while the rest of the aliens camp the chokepoints and/or DESTROY MARINE RESNODES!!!

Lets say you lose one resnode, and at 4 minutes the marines are sucessfully sieging chokepoint number 1....

Even with 4 resnodes, you still have a 4:30-5 minute hive...

5 minutes, you have ur uber fade, plenty of d's, and a few lerks (2-3) from the guys who dropped **** and went back skulk, you still have 4 DC, a chokepoint, and the hive chugging along....

From there, whatever.....

What this strat prevents...

ALIENS SPREAD THEMSELVES TOO THIN, by holding these chokepoints, you force your team into half the map or so, effectively doubling your numbers (per area) this is a great benefit for aliens....

REALLY GOOD MARINES ARE NOT EFFECTIVE: even turin cannot rush a room with 4 oc's and 2 skulks and hope to killl anything... let him lmg the node from the corner, rush him as he reloads.... simple as that, HOLD THE CHOKEPOINT AFTERWARDS, dont GO RUSHING DOWN the hallway going whoopidee doo daa and get killed by the next wave....

Marine expansion is slowed GREATLY early game, keeping them AWAY FRMO UR HIVE, and allowing you to KEEP AND HOLD your resnodes, this is important, as early game is the most crippling time for aliens.......

O chambers are NOT good alone, but by backing them up with a gorge and a few skulks, you almost always will force a marine siege, which is great, it buys you time to get taht hive up AND wastes marine res/time.... Another benefit is while they are occupied with this they wont notice a few skulks sneaking in and biting all thier nodes down until it is too late.....


Is this TOTALLY against conventional alien strategy?
-Yes

Does it haev merit?
-Yes

Dont get me wrong, NONE of my ideas ever work the first time, in fact it usually takes me a long time to even get my team to pull one off effectively (harder so with alien strats, cuz im not comm) and the first versions fail miserably... however i learn from them, and make them effective...

Im not arrogant, but i know that i could make this work similar to how ive made my other strats work....trial and error.....

Rather than have people go OMG OMG THIS WONT WORK CUZ OF Y or X, which is what i always get, and i agree it may not, i just prefer to argue my point until people get fed up, go with me, let me try it for some realtime feedback, then i can adjust it.....one of these days ill get a team to do a rough model of this... and itll be FUNNN!!!!





Here is an example of it in action, i think this was excecuted fairly well, however more demo's and tests will have to be done to see if it is a sound strat (if there are hole's, viable counter's, ect)

Just played tanith, actually got ppl to listen to me....

We had 9 gorges the first 3 minutes, and this was excecuted almost perfectly....
Note: Tanith is a good map for this strat, however things id like to point out...

ALien deaths, we just held the chokepoints, and 5 minutes into the game we had ~7 deaths, thats a measly 14rfk for marines.... seeing as they had 5 nodes tops, and we had 2 hives secured, its no wonder we won...

They even welded satcomm and rushed it before it was up, however we were able to fend them off with a lot of oc's due to how many nodes we had (and gorges)...(like 4 gorges rushed over there and spammed 6 oc's healspray spammed and got them up, which held it until they gl rushed 2/3 of the team, but then we still had a bunch more OC's in the hive and were able to push them back..... just watch the demo)

Overall this is a very strong display of my strat in action, even though it wasnt flawless and the demo starts 4 minutes in because it was only then i realized OMG WTH BBQ haxx this might WORK


Be sure to read my teamchat as i make an effort to tell wahts going on and "narrate" the early game which we missed in the demo....

Note: we had 6-9 gorges the whole time until the marines rushed with GL.....

http://www.users.muohio.edu/LangJV/gooddemo.dem

~Jason

whoa nice job! gotta convince people...,

That sounds like it could actually work, though I would never play on a server with that many people.

If the comm is smart enough to drop shotguns and the marines are smart enough to take down the OCs, then the aliens waste tons of res. Even if the marines lose a shotgun for every OC they kill, they still come out ahead. Handgrenades will hurt you too, because the marines will be able to take down OCs easily with only a 20 res initial investment. If the marines play aggressively, then lots of aliens will die. Lots of marines will die, too, but they can drop another IP to compensate, while the aliens have to drop a hive. You'll be undermanned until your second hive goes up. You better hope your fade is good and lucky, because if he dies, you won't be able to get another one for quite a while, because everyone spent res on OCs.

In 10v10, this is what I'd do:
Best Fade/Skulk to go Fade
Second Best Skulk to drop the Hive
3 Skulks to Gorge, drop RTs, and go Skulk until they have enough to go Fade
One decent Skulk to drop chambers
4 Skulks to go Lerk

4 Lerks can keep every major chokepoint gassed for the whole game. If your skulks are smart about scouting, then you will be able to spot every attack on your hives. Then your lerks go there and gas the marines to death. The aliens should play defensively. Keep the marines contained, let the skulks kill the RTs, but don't make any major pushes or risky moves.

Let the marines take one hive, as long as it's not the middle one. If they turret it up, then they wasted a lot of res, and once umbra comes along, you can take it out easily. If they don't turret it up, then you'll be able to take it down with an organized attack.

Once your second hive is up, you can have one lerk permanently follow the fade around, using gas and spores to help him out. SCs are a good idea, because Focus works very well with spores.

If your one of lerks dies, then he can recap some RTs with the RFK he got and one of the skulks that intitially dropped RTs can go fade or lerk to fill their spot.

You either get tons of RFK and marine deaths, or the comm has to waste tons of res on medpacks and welders, assuming your lerks are decent.

In large games, the aliens start out OK, but they tend to slow down, and by the time you need the second hive and a fade, it's quite late, and you've likely already lost. Early lerks will compensate for that, by giving you a strong early game, keeping your team alive until fades and a second hive come out.

theclam,

tbh i realy like the doctrine of Chokepoints.
early aliens often lack the attacking power to recapture postions (like the 2nd hive)


btw i think lerks added with gorges are the perfect defenders of the oc walls.

Exactly my thoughts from my experience playing on the 24-man Classic NSArmslab server. This strategy is logical, sound, and virtually unfallible if executed correctly, and provided the alien team has 2 good fades and decent skulks who take down marine res.

From my experience, The commander can usually afford to use the shotgun res and just seige out one of the chokepoints after capping nodes. And seiges don't require teamwork. Just a pack of mines or 2, sometimes not even. The com can just delay dropping those shotguns while he seiges, then recycle them and get most of the res back.

EDIT:: if you have enough chambers to make the room hard to take, then it's worth seiging. If it's not worth seiging, then the chambers aren't going to help defend the chokepoint much.

It depends on the map really. Some maps are easier to lame up than others, so it's probably worth taking the risk.

Tanith is a good example of chokepoints. If you are alien and have either Sat or Fusion hive, your #1 priority should be to lame up chemical transport (first room out of satcom). This will guarantee you 2 hives and 5 res nodes (starting node included). Once this is accomplished, the aliens just need to focus on protecting cargo as 5 res nodes is enough for fades, onoses, etc.

So based on what I have experienced, it comes down to map designs. Some maps won't have good choke points like agora or are easily sieged like hera. The smaller the map, the easier it will be to produce a WoL strategy like this.

The only problem with this strategy is that you probably will not have enough time to properly set up more than one chokepoint before the marines get there. Marines typically move out immediately, and can, for example, get to Comp Core from MS in Eclipse in about 35 seconds, which isn't much longer than a gorge gestation time.

If the mariens are very aggressive way early on, which good marine teams would be, there's going to be trouble setting up the OCs.

I know where he got this idea from.

I've had a few pub games on Tanith where we started from either cargo (what is that, fusion?) or satcom. About half the team (4 or 5...can't remember) dropped nodes, one for hive one for fade. One guy dropped a couple oc's on the upper ledge in chemtran, and someone else dropped a couple on the boxes in cargo.

A couple guys re-skulked and hung out in that area. (well, everyone else re-skulked, except the two who dropped oc's) As more res came to the gorges, they added more lame, more oc's, some dc's, etc. Marines would filter in one or two a time into chemtran from the outside, and they'd get owned by the oc's and waiting skulk or two, or spat to death, or w/e. Same for cargo. The rest of the skulks played as normal...this includes enough traffic through the middle to double to keep marines out of that area in general.

Up until the 7th or 8th minute, when we had both hives and were fighting for the 3rd, marines were still trickling in one or two through that hallway. They finally took that lame down with 3 guys with hmg's and another with a gl.


Anyway, I think the gorge in chemtran got enough RFK to send his babblers to college.

lame them with the new WoL. Olol...just had to post this in here because Church also did a post in this topic

I think this strategy is very, VERY map dependant. On Tanith is can work wonders. On Veil...good luck. Of course, if even ONE of your OC team fails and gets killed in the beginning becuase of aggressive marines, then the otehr OCs are much les effective becuase marines can now just go around. Flawless execution, and a marine team that doesn't move out quickly seem to be requirements for this strat.

Oh yeah, and you said move out and cap the 4 nodes closest to your hive...let's say you have Eclipse hive. How...pray tell, will you be able to hold the 4 closest nodes against marines? Triad, Station Acces Alpha, Power Sub Junction, and Computer Core are the 4 closest. Power Sub and CC you can hold reasonably easily, but I bet marines will cap Station before you can, and they can shoot down Triad.

Dependant on the map, with this strategy you will NOT be covering enough ground. If the map isn't like Tanith, where you have a lot of RTs behind a few chokepoints that you can usually lame up, then your Res nodes WILL go down due to your WOLs needing to be maintained and guarded, and you don't have the manpower to stop the 9 marines (who are teching nicely because you aren't devoting skulks to chomping their nodes).

#1 Strategy for marines on Tanith: Rush Cargo either thru the central corridor or through Chem transport. If your hive is Waste, for example, there's no way you can stop marines who get out of base from the beginning, go thru Chem, and head to Cargo. They cna be in Cargo within 30-40 seconds.

I still stand by what I said before: Aggressive marines have a good chance of shutting your game down before you have a chance to execute it, but if the marines are just hanging around base, humping the armory, by all means use this strategy. Of course, on Tanith, a few SCs can stop marines just as easily, imho.

ive seen this work alot. But you have to stop the itial push.

It would work in some instances but it will fail in others ... pretty much like EVERY strategy in NS. If there was a rock-solid strategy in NS it wouldn't be too much fun.

If the commander drops shotties and the skulks aren't advancing (scouting) you are going to have two areas you are holding go down before a viable force can be assembled to take them down. If they have phase gates and superior positioning (next to a res node for instance) then you lost that res, and that part of the map until several people can fade/onos.

I still like it though.

this isnt really a unique idea, since this is in a sense, clan play...

only problem is, ur making it sound as if the pubs DONT have n00bs from Russia or somewhere running round going "hehehehe ^_____^ res **** ftw!!!"

making u loose a skulk guard, or a gorgey buddy, which sucks...

overall gud strat, basic in its principles, effective because.... erm... it just it OK!?

excuse the dbl post, but the quote points out something...

The whole point is if marines sit around and LET the gorges lame up everything, then yes, the lame will help a lot? However, once marines break through at any one point (via an aggressive rush at the beginning), they can jyst go AROUND all the other points, and you've wasted a lot of res on OCs that a marine won't touch until much later.

It requires teamworks and skillz jezzzz

i have a question

once a choke point is down, the entire area will be "Clear" by marines. ( Cuz no denfence except the chokepoints.
Aliens need a few min to recover but marines can simply "distress" and phase in and start procee to next position.

Is that mean " 1 chokepoint down = lose? "

One chokepoint down = your defenses are severely compromised. If you investe heavily in those chokepoints, and even one goes down, the marines will have free access to almost anywhere because they can ignore your other chokepoints.