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Dear god, has it been 10 years? I sat and watched the last few minutes of the livestream they put up with the launch trailer and as soon as I heard the old "OUR HIVE IS UNDER ATTACK!" sound, so many memories came flooding back. I remember the giant shift to steam, way back in the day. Seems fitting that it releases on steam now. 
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Oct 31, 2012 01:12
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So, a few thoughts after a 4 hour run last night... Early game sulking to find the marine hivebase can pay off really well, less so for Marines doing the same thing, since it is difficult to take down a hive with the axes. I like the move to a khammander model for aliens. Paired with an early gorge, they can take over a large portion of the map fast. Especially if the celerity /adrenaline upgrade is researched first. The marine commander is basically relegated to having Marines do his work for him until he gets MACS. And on that note, early welders really speed up the expansion, though builders get boned for later exos on personal points. I think there are definitely some balance changes to be made (skulks ripping apart a lonely travelling exo?), but for now the game feels amazing, and brings back oodles of memories from those years of ns1.04.  And if you are installing today, hit training mode and load the trainer map in explore mode. This not only precaches everything so you load future maps faster, but it will get you familiar with both commander interfaces in a nice safe environment. I plan to spend a while going about as a marine commander tonight since it seems a fair number of people do not have a mic. Makes commanding easier, I think. Edit: umbra blocks half of all bullets, is negated by flame as mentioned earlier. Onos + lerk umbra + gorge healing = rape train. Side note: gorge running? Sticks his tongue out like a dog. Amazing. DelphiAegis fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Oct 31, 2012 |
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Oct 31, 2012 18:05
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Just came out of my first run as a marine commander. My marines were mostly rookies, so they did basically nothing without a waypoint or me saying in voice what to do. Edit: But hey, we ended in a win! Still, the tech tree looks awesome and I can see a lot of late-game stalemates that happen now being broken by those arc tanks. Remember the siege turrets from NS1? Yeah. These are those, on wheels that deploy and do a non line-of-sight shot on hives in the time it takes for one ping to reveal/complete. The more I think about it, the more I like the skulk/bilebomb counter to Exos. I mean, You REALLY want to punch that f'n skulk, but you can't, since he's short.  And I was wrong about the gorge running. He's actually skiing. Just hurls himself forwards and goes dead. Moves you fast down infected hallways for a bit of energy. Also it's kind of cute seeing the tongue stick out. 
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Nov 1, 2012 00:47
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7c Nickel posted:The gorge belly slide is fun. If you turn smoothly enough you can actually get around corners without slowing down. Mod inspiration: Gorge racing! If you get far enough ahead, you can throw globs in your opponents way!
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Nov 1, 2012 00:59
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BlueDestiny posted:I do love how gorges get to clog hallways with giant boogers. At one point our team had 4 of them so the hive entrance looked like an alien WW1 trench. Those stay up even if you get killed or evolve into something else, too. For a quick 10 resource if you aren't doing much else with it, it can be hilarious to clog up so much. Or just leave random hydras on ceilings and places. If you can spit it, you can do it!
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Nov 1, 2012 01:23
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Guesticles posted:If you're feeling bad about your commander experience, let me tell you about my first time in the Marine chair during the beta. After giving a warning about being new com, I got in and did IP/Armory/Obs... but my buildings kept disappearing. I couldn't figure it out, and thought it was glitch, or aliens, or something. Don't feel bad, had a comm earlier who also had his voicechat bound to V and kept cancelling upgrades. "What? No, I swore I got welders. What the fu.. oh. Oops." Though too much time in skyrim has made me think that rightclicking is bad and that I can move around the map with WASD for some reason. Few more games and hopefully I'll iron that out.
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Nov 2, 2012 21:20
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After a few rounds, I have to say that I absolutely love the lerk. The flight mechanic is easy enough to pick up by anyone, yet deep enough to have some real fun as you get more comfortable with it. On those big open maps (Docking, Refinery) you can really harass an entire marine team and not get caught. Those ceilings and nooks are amazing to hide in. Had a match where the marines were holed up in one tech point. So no exos. Though, they somehow kept enough rez to keep GL spamming anything near the entrances, so we couldn't get in. Lerk spore to the rescue. Fly up high and fast and just fart all over the base and let it settle, giggle as you get a few kills from it.
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Nov 3, 2012 01:07
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So, I'll have to test this on a proper server as an alien commander, but it's kind of neat. The shift structures when fully matured can be upgraded (for another 15 res) to move themselves to anywhere else in the map, as well as one nearby structure (crag, shade, the whip, the shade itself, and the 3 upgrade towers) anywhere else on the map for a bit of res and the caveat that it has to be infested first. Obviously the idea is to get your precious upgrade towers out of the way of an attacking force, or set up a forward base with relative ease instead of growing it in situ. However... If you make a few of these shift towers, and upgrade them all (An unlikely situation except in a weirdly deadlocked lategame), and doubleclick to select them all, you can move these structures to a single point. So if you have three shift structures, all of them next to three crags, you can move all three of those crags to a single stacked point anywhere on the map that is infested. And honestly? The whip upgrade is an amazing exo-counter if used right. It's like bile bomb, but larger splash and tons more damage. It only damages armor of regular marines, but obliterates structures and exos with prejudice. Six shifts, six upgraded whips, infest into their base and teleport them in and watch mayhem happen. Though it is odd that whips prefer to melee rather than bomb if they are in range of a target.
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Nov 3, 2012 05:16
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octoroon posted:Haven't read that whole thing yet but it seems pretty misinformed in a number of ways. Most glaringly, Aliens do have a siege weapon -- it's called bilebomb and it can completely end a game in a matter of seconds if properly coordinated. The upgraded whip acts like a line of sight siege engine as well (And does a lot more damage than the gorge bilebomb due to the immobility). It's a good start on the guide, though. I would try to tailor the descriptions more towards what you need to know as a commander, rather than a grunt though.
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Nov 3, 2012 17:06
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Wildtortilla posted:This game looks like it has smooth gameplay, but so did Planetside 2's videos. Is it pretty smooth or is it a jankfest like PS2? PS2 is utterly unlike NS2. For the combat, it's far more twitch oriented, with close calls and lots of wild shooting in dark hallways. And with the comm/khammander, there is a whole other dimension to the strategy part of the game that you won't see in PS2. The battles still feel epic, but without the "there is a lot of crap happening around me" feeling that PS2 gives, more a "There are a lot of bad guys on the other side of this wall and I have to bite/shoot them a lot and I don't know if I can" vibe. About the only thing they have in common is area control mechanics. If you mean smooth as in decent FPS, YMMV as evidenced by some posters here, though it's a zillion times better than beta was. And they are still actively working on things and have fixed some major issues most people were having already.
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Nov 3, 2012 17:16
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Brother Scrotum posted:Yes, it totally sucks trying to find that shell you just put down in a sea of invisible structures. And then when you do find it, you click on it and accidentally evolve Regen because sometimes clicking on a thing will make it evolve something against your will. If you turn off "Commander Help" in options, the floaty upgrade items over your structures will go away, and good loving riddance. I couldn't upgrade my armory because there was a loving armslab next to it and I kept trying to research armor 2 (5 minutes into the game) when I just wanted an advanced f'n armory. Once you get it out of your head that wasd moves the map view around, and that clicking the minimap is the best way to get around, commanding gets a lot easier. I support the idea of "hivesight" for the khammander, though. And the change for hivesight to highlight cloaked structures.
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Nov 4, 2012 20:20
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AgentF posted:So a Shift can teleport other structures to itself or away from itself? What are the tactical uses of this? Building up a reserve of Shades in your base then plopping them quickly on the map? How fast does this teleport process happen? Only away from itself. Once the shift building has fully matured (An enzyme dropped on it (Third tab, third row, first button, or hit 'e' then 'z') will accelerate the maturation) you can evolve the shifting ability. I think it's 10 for the tower and 15 to evolve the ability. From then on, you can select the shift tower (Or multiple shift towers) and use the button to select a type of tower near the shift tower you want to move. This includes all the upgrade towers, all the special towers and the whip, and you can place it *anywhere* on the map on infestation for 5res. Takes about 6-10 seconds or so. You can also move the shift tower itself in the same way. It's ludicrously expensive res wise, unless you're hitting a turtle and don't really have anything else to spend it on. But it allows you to get healing bases back in order really fast, or coordinate whip-bomb attacks. DelphiAegis fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Nov 6, 2012 |
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Nov 6, 2012 01:29
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RadicalWall posted:Side question: Do you have to evolve Bombard on every whip separately or is it hive-wide? Separately. Think of them like ARCs.
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Nov 6, 2012 01:37
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RadicalWall posted:I cant see how it would possibly be faster considering you still have to grow them and then wait for them to transfer over. It seems like its purely for reusing your old structures to push the front lines. Pretty much this. If you're patient enough, you can move a shift around to move a healing station closer/away from/to the other side of a base that you want to attack. The khammander has a lot of depth to his gameplay, but it's basically the reverse from the marine commander. The marine comm is relying on his vision to instruct his marines and do what needs to be done, whereas the Khamm is reacting more to the players as they move/chomp things around the map. The crags are great for not only the passive healing, but the res-costing massive heal on a cooldown they have. Can be ridiculous on structures if the Khamm is paying attention. And shades can throw out Khamm-controllable hallucinations that can wreak havoc to morale sometimes. I love playing, and I can't wait until the depth of the game is really plumbed even in pub games.
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Nov 6, 2012 02:22
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Fallom posted:I wouldn't mind them implementing this in the game. Some matches just drag on for-loving-ever and it's brutal on the other team. Most matches drag on forever due to the newness (in part) of the teams playing. Both sides have ridiculous end-game closers that can very honestly break anything the opposing team can throw at it. Before you say "BUT THERE WAS THIS TIME WHEN...", I'll preface that by saying 1 hive/chair for the turtling team, essentially limitless res for the attacking team, etc. There are ridiculous come-backs (as posted in this very thread!) which make this game great. But the RFK system was really, really awful as it rewarded more player skill than strategy at the game. And while skill should be a factor, it should not be the only one. Combat? Sure, go for it. But not in my ns_ 
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Nov 7, 2012 01:57
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Chomposaur posted:Is res really what's stopping people from winning with complete map control anyway? I felt like RFK was a much bigger factor in early-mid game when the one dude who was insane at killing people was able to get an early hive or fade. Well, I should be clearer, I apologize. The endgame abilities are fine (exo/welderJP/mac/ARC train vs oni/gorge support with fade/lerk and whipbomb trains), but sometimes the knowledge of such escape those playing the game, since it's still (relatively) new. A lot of matches end with just exos, or just an onos. I actually had a comm research vortex today and the fade used it to ridiculous effect in the main base. Things like that. A fair percentage of the pubbing server doesn't know these things (yet!).
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Nov 7, 2012 03:49
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Magres posted:Wait whips can chuck grenades back? That's amazing They smack them while in the air. Sometimes this makes them blow up on the whip, sometimes it's off into the distance, sometimes it's back at the marine. Aiming at the ground basically negates this, though.
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Nov 8, 2012 03:48
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Gosh, this game. This game! I seem to be on some aging gamer sine curve. Some days I will be amazing, bullets will seemingly bounce off my carapace, I'll comm perfectly and every bullet/chomp hits flawlessly. Other days marines even glimpse one of my talons and I am waiting for an egg, can't hit for the life of me and everything goes wrong. Though for some reason, the high of said sine curve keeps me comping back in hopes to repeat it, the bottom of it makes me go back because seriously, nothing can be worse than THAT. I love NS.
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Nov 10, 2012 22:05
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You can make quick turns while gliding, just hold W and spacebar. Winning a game ending as a lerk is the best readyroom ability. I'm sad that JPs don't keep their ability to fly in the readyroom. Spores are AMAZING, and an excellent way to soften up a marine turtle (Or just to be a dick in general) though at first it is kind of counter-intuitive how it works. Especially if you have silence. It's hard to see with hivesight on, but you can see some of it without hivesight on. It's like green swirls in the air. Marines see a giant stinkcloud. If you hear coughing, you're doing it right. Also, the cloud will settle on the ground, so stay up high and fart away! Umbra has a different and similarly odd mechanic: You shoot it at a location. Any alien near you when you shoot it, or in the line of fire will "glow" yellow for a while. While they do, every OTHER bullet hits. I believe the flamethrower negates this entirely (as in, removes the effect) and grenade explosions are obviously not affected. The cloud is about as big as an onos, but it's either spore or umbra (even with Adrenaline up). Which is as it should be.
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Nov 11, 2012 18:37
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Batham posted:I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but what's the difference between black and deluxe armor? Deluxe is if you preordered the game when it was on steam. Black armor is when you preordered the game before it was available on steam. I think. Mostly sure, anyway.
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Nov 11, 2012 21:30
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Brother Scrotum posted:So, what is the tech progression like for a good marine commander? I've got great Alien comm skills, but I've never really tried Marine comm. Should I get shotguns first? Should I get armor 1 first? Phase tech immediately? What color is the sky? I usually force someone to be a base bitch. Armory, then grab at least one node while moving to a secondary location, obs + phasetech and an armslab, armor 1, then weapons 1/2/3 as fast as I can. Welders first, then shotguns, then the loooong advanced armory upgrade. Weapon upgrades and map control are your best tools to keep the aliens in check. It really sucks to go against a crag/shift alien skulk with celerity/carapace with weapons 0. If the main base is left alone (Like we are keeping pressure elsewhere) I usually throw up a robotics factory and pop out a few macs for keeping things in random places topped up or built/rebuilt if needbe. I almost always am forced to do this on docking, repairing the powernode in base from the lerk on the landing pad shooting it like he's all cool or something.
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Nov 12, 2012 03:53
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I love heading to the Thirsty Thirsty Baggage Claim on Summit's ready room. Though I often end up delaying the game by shouting to the pubs about it and making them follow me. The entrance is to the right of the spectators doorway 
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Nov 12, 2012 19:05
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LibbyM posted:This is very much incorrect. If you are alien, and join a match in progress, you will have no clue what "main base" is, but if the com would just say Locker Room, you'd know, or could at least find out with one press of c. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3515254 Edit for content: NS2Goons is a drat nice server to play on. I believe the admins are working on a pub kicking system (for goons connecting) as well as a forced-random command so games don't start with 3:2 or something. DelphiAegis fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Nov 15, 2012 |
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Nov 15, 2012 21:12
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Drevoak posted:Does celerity work on lerk flying? Yes, it does. Futz around in explore mode, you can definitely feel the difference. Most of the time it ups your top airspeed, which for a lerk is really amazing. I only go adren lerk if I am sporing/umbra'ing a marine turtle. And yes.
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Nov 16, 2012 04:23
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Tornado Lazers posted:Yeah the server list is still pretty weird. Sometimes I sort by favorite and nothing will come up, sometimes the goon server will come up. When it doesn't, sometimes it will show up if I sort it alphabetically. The list populates slowly. So if you hit a sorting when the list starts to populate, it won't sort new servers by that. So I spamclick the favorites button until I see the stars. Then spamclick the server itself. I wonder when we'll take the (Rookie Friendly) tag off? :/
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Nov 16, 2012 07:11
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whiskas posted:There's no such thing as a sentry that's a pain in the rear end to kill. It takes 10 seconds for a gorge to kill the sentry battery from far away with his spit. 5 seconds if he uses bile bomb. Lerks can down a sentry battery in less than 10 seconds with spikes. You are a god damned bullet MAGNET as a gorge, though. I often end up getting celerity as a gorge just to run away. Even then, the number of times when the marine just has to kill that fatty while my skulk buddies chomp him up is growing. Now if they could only kill him before the marine kills me.
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Nov 18, 2012 22:09
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Brackhar posted: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. One game the exos were stomping through our hive and NOT killing it (Last hive, they were being dicks), but there was a shift still up. We still had tons of tres, so the comm just spammed eggs, and the entire right side of the screen was filled with soandso kills egg messages, since exos stomp them to bits. I say it should be 2 for 2, with a cooldown, not 5 for 2.
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Nov 20, 2012 06:56
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Bhodi posted:The stupid game freezes sometimes when I'm commander. Then, I can't get back in because someone immediately takes my slot! Sorry marines Don't worry Bhodi, someone else hopped in the chair and we went on to win. :3
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Nov 26, 2012 05:33
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In some of the old discussions on NS1 in terms of map design, I know they had a few general guidelines to go by. Any two adjacent tech points should take roughly the same amount of time to walk to as a marine. Doesn't have to be exact, but it will space out your map. RTs should be included with your Tech point, and nearby. Double res nodes should have some large disadvantage to holding them: See Veil's nanogrid has vents and large access, Refinery's high ceilings and many many access points. There should be a lot of obvious ambush points for both sides. Biasing a room to skulks or fades is OK, but not every room should be such. Player clipping needs to feel right. There should be interesting stuff to jump on, but also from. One way bits for one side (see: the emergency access ladder in veil) Vents should make some sense; usually between hives or as one-way skulk shortcuts. Marines should generally not be able to access vents, but know where they are clearly for watching for fire. Some of the best mapmakers went through oodles of iterations with their maps, altering little things or sometimes really big things to get them to "feel" right. It takes a lot of playing yourself (even at a casual level) and observation of how maps direct their flow to start to get a feel for making a good one yourself. NS1 had a lot of good maps, though heaven help you if you decide to remake them, since I have no clue what the tools are like for NS2. I do remember one map that came out that was awesome, but had a bit of controversy around it, since it had the CC spawn in the "center" of the map, with the three hive locations on the periphery. Most NS1 maps adopted a parallelogram-style of hive/CC placement, though this has changed with tech points and 5 locations rather than 4. Apparently the tools aren't too complex since I saw CO_ maps out in the first week, but who knows.
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Nov 29, 2012 04:39
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octoroon posted:If you don't have vote surrender mod and can't convince your team to readyroom then just join a new server. There's no point in wasting your time like this. Hell if you're playing with enough newbies to be stalemating like this you should probably server switch anyhow because the next game won't be much better. I really, really hate the team balancing auto-ending games. Sadly, without a surrender system (Similar to holding X and selecting to eject the comm), I can't justify taking it out for just this reason. Super frustrating when it's 3 minutes in and you obliterate an outpost or something and the other team F4's for another game. half the fun is seeing long, back and forth games to completion, damnit.
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Dec 3, 2012 01:11
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Guesticles posted:Pretty much this. There was a time when redeeming caused you to do so. Other times eating a marine completely disabled redemption. I think the former option was settled upon quickly, though it has been a while. I'm not sure anything needs drastic changing right now (Save for the cloaking jump exploit). I'd have to think on it a good while. Balance is hard in a very much skill-oriented game (Which NS still is.)
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Dec 5, 2012 01:05
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Garfu posted:Alright, NS2Goons is back up. You can direct connect at chi2.ns2servers.com The alien Christmas was hilarious. Bright white infestation, hives that look like christmas trees and funny colored aliens. Never did get to see what the onos looked like though.
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Dec 11, 2012 04:29
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TheSpiritFox posted:As a marine though, I tend to find the people who are good shots and follow them around. Help build stuff, shoot at poo poo attacking them or take the lead into new rooms so that I'm the first one to die while they accurately pick poo poo off and accomplish things. Sometimes this is one of the best things you can do. It is easier to shoot a skulk at someone else's feet than around your own. Case in point: We had just secured Repair on Mineshaft and were moving to cavern. I was leading (As in, ahead of) a group of 4 marines total. Suddenly the walls explode with skulks everywhere. I empty both my LMG and pistol to some damage, but no kills, and end up hopping around in front of the other three marines, swinging my knife wildly, while apparently all the skulks were trying to bite me and failing. I left with 10 health, all the skulks dead and feeling like a piece of meat out on a stick. We later lost that game, but hey, good moments.
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Dec 13, 2012 19:47
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Cyks posted:admittedly I got my rear end torn up as an exo earlier due to silence. With the combination of me firing into a hive area and being hit from the front I didn't even realize an onos was behind me wrecking my poo poo and by time somebody pointed it out it was too late. Yeah, I dislike that now your marine "class" is what weapon you're using, rather than if you are with/without JP or heavy (exo) armor. I was so disappointed my first game win as a marine that I popped to the ready room and couldn't fly around. And honestly, I was just hopping to be a dick, since I didn't expect to survive and I always hop anyway. It had to have been 3+ skulks.
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Dec 14, 2012 00:33
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totalnewbie posted:People are down on camo because they are talking about a nonbroken camo. Yeah, was playing last night (Sadly not on NSgoons or Knife the hippo.. where are you folks?) very drunk. Alien comm kept going shade first or some silliness. It was only when I drunkenly explained (Via a terrible austrian accent) how to use the broken camo that we started winning games. And honestly? That's no way to win a game.
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Dec 14, 2012 20:20
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totalnewbie posted:I was in that server. I wasn't going for Governator, though. Just some evil austrian scientist. .. Or something. It's tough to remember. Some great games though.
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Dec 14, 2012 20:56
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chocolateTHUNDER posted:You guys should really be easier on new players. Do you remember how daunting NS was when you first tried playing it? More players means a bigger, more vibrant community which is always a good thing. I'm always nice to newbie comms, giving them pointers, and encouraging them if they want to continue comming, that's fine, but being asked to give up the chair to someone who feels more comfortable isn't a dig on them, just a request. Even if they don't have a mic. I'm really familiar with the comm interfaces (though piss poor at comming myself) so that I can say "Drop me a mist. Press space to go to the alert, hit E, then Z, then click near the egg with my name over it. Excellent work! That sped up my evolution to onos so I can rip the marine base apart. Thank you commander!" Then I bitch at them that they didn't drop me a dual exo.
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Dec 22, 2012 05:25
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As a side note for all the new players in this thread: If you messed around with the console in any of the half-life franchise, a lot of the commands are the same. I haven't seen a help option yet, but some of the more useful commands are pretty straightforward. Most notable: bind <key> "command" e.g.: bind F10 "j1" It's case sensitive, but this binds the F10 key to join marines. j2 joins aliens. Hope this helps.
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Dec 28, 2012 21:20
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Brackhar posted: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 Spitballing on the math here: LMG bullet: 10 damage LMG w1 bullet: 11 damage LMG w2 bullet: 12 damage LMG w3 bullet: 13 damage Effective non-cara skulk health: 90 So 9, 9, 8, 7. This is why I loathe the newbie commanders who get w1, then never have enough res for anything else. Yeah, it's super that we have a marginally slight weapon upgrade, but it doesn't help when we die in 3 bites. I wonder how long it'll take the current set of rookies to stop researching exos, push bases with bile and generally not be sucktacular again. :/
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Dec 31, 2012 00:52
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Drakes posted:Does the weapon upgrades just improve the assault rifle? It doesn't say so specifically but the wiki doesn't really imply that it increases the damage of other marine weapons. I was just using it as the base example for that discussion, it does improve all marine weapons by 10/20/30%.
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Dec 31, 2012 05:12
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