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jerkstoresup posted:It's odd being the only black-armored marine in some servers. As a comm it'll be insta-win city for me most days now. The difference between having an experienced comm vs not is massive.
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# ¿ Oct 31, 2012 10:04 |
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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 00:36 |
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Xaris posted:- Marine (and Alien) Movement: I really miss glide-jumping I've been so ingrained in strafe+turn+jump+crouch that it just feels weird when it doesn't work. It's something I'll get used to. I understand they were trying to lower the skill ceilings, it physically never made sense and was a "bug" so I'm not berating them about it, I just miss really miss it and was a huge unique part of NS1 for me. Regarding glide-jumping, it's been replaced by a new system that not many new players know about. If you jump onto a wall and then immediately jump off of it you'll increase your speed. As for lerk, if you're using spikes to kill structures that's probably not the best use of time. They're much more effective at strafing targets or softening them up as you divebomb for a bite. They also parasite targets, making them visible to your allies through walls. Guesticles posted:Clots are obstructions. They can be used as cover, to block doors/halls, or both. One of the best uses for clots is to completely surround your upgrade nodes (Shells, Spurs, etc.) so that it's harder for marines to come in and snipe them.
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# ¿ Oct 31, 2012 19:23 |
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quaunaut posted:Are people just not aware of the Skulk wallhopping? Sure, you won't get as fast as a good bhop spree back in the day, but honestly I'm okay with that. Getting a good run down with wallhopping is hard anyway. Probably not. It's not explained in any tips (I believe) or exposed in recent videos, and with the removal of the sound effect it makes it tougher to organically discover it as well.
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# ¿ Nov 1, 2012 20:25 |
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TheMostFrench posted:This is so important for people to realise, I always get people in pub games shooting eggs/cysts and the hive and calling for ammo constantly. Honestly this is still the best move. Shooting the hive still produces higher DPS than the knife with a weapon upgrade, and is safer to boot. I'd need to run the numbers to see exactly the cost/benefit - I'm only speaking from experience.
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 03:36 |
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quaunaut posted:This isn't a flat rule. Generally it depends on the skill of the Comm- a good Comm will just recycle the node, and then all you did was waste time. Killing the power guarantees they waste the res. In the current patch can't you recycle when the power is out? I thought that was added back in.
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 11:54 |
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quaunaut posted:The three best strategies an alien comm can have(that I've found yet): This is generally accurate for pub games. Note though that #2 will get you killed if you're playing against a competant organized marine team, and #1 can be replaced with a Shade if you're playing with a competent Alien team.
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# ¿ Nov 5, 2012 02:50 |
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RadicalWall posted:I still vote for early carapace since it's the only one that gives a real numbers benefit, but then I'm never in the commander's seat. Carapace is the safest choice if you're new to commanding and there's a mixed bag of players on both teams. It also might be viable if the other team is outclassing you, but if that's the case you'll have a hell of a time securing your second hive and getting blink out before they get JPs anyway.
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# ¿ Nov 5, 2012 07:21 |
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Gormless Gormster posted:Commanding is pretty much the best thing about this game by far, and I'm happy that most people would rather shoot aliens and let me jump in the chair. Also, my accent allows me to play the callous, hunting obsessed Victorian gentleman soldier, so I can't be blamed for hamming it up a bit. drat it, I wish I had a good accent so I can pull this off. All I can do is chatterbox endlessly. Splicer posted:Second hive + res towers -> crag and shift -> shield + spur -> Leap + Carapace + Celerity all complete research simultaneously. True, much of my comments about shift/shade/crag first go out the window if you do Hive first instead. My comments were based more on the idea you'd upgrade once before getting hive 2.
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# ¿ Nov 6, 2012 09:20 |
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I still feel that alien comm is missing that special spice that the marine comm has. The lack of interaction with alien comrades in the field makes me sad. It's not a bad experience, but it definitely is not as engaging/rewarding.
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# ¿ Nov 8, 2012 22:34 |
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What are people's current opinions on lerks? I love playing with them and, now that the hit reg has been fixed, feel they're a pretty good balance between harass ability and toughness. I will say though that I think for the current balance level they're probably 5 res more expensive than they should be. I'd love to see their cost cut to 25 for both evolving and egging and see how that goes, 'cause right now it's very very risky to go lerk before you get your second hive up with carapace. Since they're intended to be an evolution available strategically at one hive a res cut would be useful imo.
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# ¿ Nov 12, 2012 12:18 |
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voltron lion force posted:You build faster using the wielder. You do not build faster with the welder except for destroyed power nodes, in which case it is vastly superior. What it does do when building a structure is it will increase the health of the structure at the same time that you're building it. This will cause some of the visual feedback to look like you're building the structure faster, but in aggregate it still takes the same amount of time to finish the structure with a welder than without. It's generally preferable to build with a welder since it makes the structure stronger should it get attacked half-way through construction, but it's more of a perk than a distinct gameplay advantage.
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# ¿ Nov 14, 2012 00:23 |
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octoroon posted:Kind of a heavy resource investment for what you get, great for pubs though. Yeah. I'm not too keen on turrets in general, but there are times where the 20 res for that investment is better than the 15 res for a pack of mines.
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# ¿ Nov 14, 2012 03:02 |
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Downward Spiral posted:Was going to post on movement and snippets from the relevant .luas to answer some guys question, but got busy instead. Just dropping in to say: Please don't buy turrets, goons. Mine rushes are infinitely more fun, after all. Though building turrets in the enemy hive is a special kind of trolling that still appeals to me.
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# ¿ Nov 14, 2012 04:41 |
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Black_Plague22 posted:Speaking of sentries: Huh, didn't know they could be built on infestation. That's non-intuitive. Smythe posted:You just need to put a big rock on the mic transmit button and chant "phase to neck phase phase phase keep phasing DON'T STOP IN DOUBLE GO BACK THROUGH KEEP PHASING gogogogogogo SHOOT THE HIVE SHOOT THE HIVE NOT THE RT JUST SHOOT IT" This is me all day every day.
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# ¿ Nov 14, 2012 22:59 |
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RabidWeasel posted:229 just went live, no patchnotes yet, afaik the only balance changes were to regen and crag/hive healing. Alien passive healing is double what is used to be, regen is 50% more, regen works in combat at 20% strength. Crags and hives heal more than they used to though I think the max heal from hives (i.e. healing onos) might be a bit lower. That seems pretty good to me. I wonder how regen working in combat works though, that sounds like a potentially risky change.
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# ¿ Nov 15, 2012 01:35 |
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Yeah, that regen change definitely seems to have been a huge buff for aliens, particularly Onos. I love how it feels generally, but man fighting Onos is a lot rougher now.
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# ¿ Nov 16, 2012 00:12 |
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RadicalWall posted:This presupposes that you can survive and take two bases without upgrades, which means the aliens are bad and you're probably going to win regardless. Yeah. Armor 1 goes a looooong way, I'd really never skip it to rush exos.
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# ¿ Nov 16, 2012 00:58 |
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Man, I really really hate NS2_Veil. The double res node placements just don't work at all as well here as they did in NS1, and the game really just devolves into who can successfully control double res. It's horrible, which is made doubly worse by it being one of my favorite NS1 maps.
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 02:56 |
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Splicer posted:I've been forced to do this in so many games I've khammandered (well, not the desolate map part). Five or six Exos tearing up one of our hives, I'm screaming at the Onos to go for their base already instead of charge of the light brigading it, then saying "gently caress it", dropping an Onos egg at another hive, then performing a brief command-chair tour and ending the game in three/four minutes. Yeah, I'm starting to think that the most effective commanders are the ones who hop out more often and do stuff like this. I don't know if it's necessary to stay in the chair for most of the game.
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 12:37 |
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Guesticles posted:Short answer: MACs If you can successfully defend a MAC in the alien's main hive... I dunno dude. I'd probably call that alien team pretty uncoordinated OR your marines are good enough that they could win the game without the turrets.
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 20:48 |
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Ciaphas posted:Has anyone (tried to) use ARCs at all? I swear I've never seen them ever. Arcs are good, but due to relative cost and the fact that robotics factories are not yet standard build items you won't see them rolled out much. It's typically a safer investment now to put money into upgrades and exos.
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# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 21:15 |
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Pollyzoid posted:Build 230 changelog: http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2012/11/build_230_is_now_live_on_steam Wow, that's quite the list of changes for the aliens. Nothing terribly disagreeable there though. The shift change of eggs makes me sad as a comm however, instantly spawning hordes of eggs was my favorite silly strat.
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# ¿ Nov 20, 2012 06:50 |
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AgentF posted:This NS2HD video shows the aliens being res-locked by having their only extractor killed early and not having the res to drop a new one. Hugh argues that, in this case, the Marines have a responsibility to not drag out the game. It sounds like the courteous thing to do, but I wonder if there should be an in-game mechanism to handle this scenario? An argument could be made a lot of ways, but I'd probably just argue for a surrender vote system. Yeah, F4-ing accomplishes the same, but it's more obtuse to new players.
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# ¿ Nov 23, 2012 02:33 |
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Morek posted:There's a big difference between voting to surrender and throwing the game to make your team fail. A failed surrender vote, you keep playing and trying to win. Three guys throw in the towel and they force you to lose. There's a big difference in terms of community interaction. True, but at least with a surrender system there's some onscreen reinforcement as to what's going on. Newbies may not even realize that their team is F4ing or that they should as well; a surrender vote at least provokes a point of conversation.
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# ¿ Nov 23, 2012 08:48 |
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Liku posted:It's really not that hard to click an open are where there isn't a player or structure and if you do hit E, Z and click a few spaces over. Yeah, I don't like 12v12. 8v8 seems the best compromise for pub games, though you can sometimes push that up to 10v10 depending on the skill of the players (it's actually better the worse they are).
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# ¿ Nov 25, 2012 12:04 |
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Captain Beans posted:Yea, there are some really good marines out there. Some might be using that pink texture poo poo that can't be disabled yet but some are legit that good. Yeah. A good headset and a forward armory can allow a skilled marine to do amazing things. I went 32-1 just three nights ago. It's an interesting balance in that Shade hives are typically the most effective against skilled marines since it completely fucks up their situational awareness, but they're also arguable one of the riskiest first hives to go for.
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# ¿ Nov 28, 2012 21:51 |
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AgentF posted:Didn't think marines could start at Deposit on Mineshaft. I don't believe they can.
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# ¿ Dec 11, 2012 08:53 |
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Garfu posted:There's is no difference with killing skulks between w1 and w0. You have a chance of surviving longer with a1, especially against lerks since spikes do less damage to armor. This is why a1 is the preferred first upgrade. Is that accurate? I thought it dropped the number of LMG bullets needed to kill a non-carapace skulk by one per level. 13-12-11-10-9 Orange Crush Rush posted:I'm starting to hate Commanders that build both Exos before Jetpacks. I sometimes refuse to even research EXOs when I command, and I always will refuse if there's only one other person with a mic. EXOs require a ton of coordination and can be a huge liability if used incorrectly. They definitely make me pine for NS1 dropping heavy armor instead of letting marines purchase it.
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# ¿ Dec 31, 2012 00:45 |
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Sire Oblivion posted:I think they want to keep it like that so it remains true to the original map. I dunno, I think it's just more that double res points don't work in NS2 given the power node/cyst dynamic. If lava falls only had one RT I think the map would be mostly fine.
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# ¿ Jan 4, 2013 21:39 |
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Splicer posted:Haven't played it in a while, have you? No, oddly it's never in the server rotation. Did they take out the double res?
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2013 05:59 |
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Orange Crush Rush posted:This is a big thing for Pubs yes, but at the same time new players in Pubs doesn't explain why Aliens still maintain a much higher win rate at top levels of play. According to the Devs on the NS2 forums it's getting close to a 65% winrate for Aliens at all levels of play. I dunno. In both the last two nights I had 90+ minute games that effectively ended in a draw due to people quitting due to time. One was on Refinery and one was on Departures. Things are feeling pretty good balance wise to me right now, I just think that the general populace is highly undervaluing jet-pack flamethrowers on the marine side.
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# ¿ Jan 9, 2013 05:53 |
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StoicRomance posted:Alien? Always be jumping. (Jumpers are stupid hard to hit.) Good advice on the whole. As a note, jumping as a skulk when fighting shotguns is actually normally not the best bet.
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# ¿ Jan 29, 2013 22:06 |
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AgentF posted:Comm sounded fine except for that final sentence. A (singular) jetpack can kill a hive fine if he's got a flamethrower. Or a shotgun and the other team is rubbish. I miss the old jetpack/welder rushes of days long ago.
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# ¿ Feb 11, 2013 11:25 |
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Charlie wrote up a post-mortem for NS2 on GamaSutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/187299/Postmortem_Unknown_Worlds_Entertainments_Natural_Selection_2.php It's an interesting read, as it definitely explains the root cause of a lot of the issues that the product has gone through. It's also interesting that the first two points of things he said went right with development I'd actually count as reasonably large negatives.
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 01:23 |
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Zigmidge posted:Those are followed up by #2 in 'what went wrong' where he explains how that was a detriment in the beginning. Like he says, a simple shift in hiring practices can fix that. If you have a team of members that work well in that kind of environment, why not? The simple answer is that it very much risks scope creep, missing milestones, and bad prioritization. Which NS2 suffered from consistently and still does.
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# ¿ Feb 28, 2013 10:53 |
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Stele007 posted:The game needs to bring more attention to the fact that an important power node is under attack instead of some room with just a res node. I really hope they fix the bug that causes it to occasionally not give an alert at all too. It's incredibly frustrating. Killing the power at a control point is low risk high reward too. If you fail, all you lose is 10 pres, and if you forced a beacon they lost 10 tres and stopped any offensive they were making. Yeah, losing the game because you didn't get a notification that your power node was under attack is one of the worst feelings as commander.
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# ¿ Mar 1, 2013 00:31 |
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AxeManiac posted:Bile bomb can now destroy dropped weapons Wow. Umm. That sounds brutal. I wonder if it destroys equipment as well like jetpacks and exo suits?
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# ¿ Mar 1, 2013 01:50 |
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golden oldies pete posted:I thought gorge tunnels were supposed to be infestation only this poo poo is ridiculous. Yesssssss
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# ¿ Mar 2, 2013 01:04 |
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:I don't get the change either. Shade was barely a second hive upgrade as it was, now it's permanently relegated to 3rd. I still get pretty solid mileage out of silence, in all honesty.
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# ¿ Mar 12, 2013 09:50 |
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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 00:36 |
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Splicer posted:Silence is awesome in the late game, the problem is that in a large-scale game shades + silence just can't compete with shifts + celerity early game, and in any size game a midgame shade/shift can't compete with crag/(anything). Sneaky attacks are great throughout the game, but it's not worth what you have to give up for it when you take the whole of each evolution package into account. Well, large scale games (20+) have their own wacky (read: bad) balance anyway, so I tend to dismiss a lot of that. I'm also not advocating ever going shade/silence, but I do think shade/crag is a viable flavor.
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# ¿ Mar 13, 2013 22:07 |