Current Alien/Marine victory ratio over ~1 week

[Toroic]

I'd like to offer a different perspective:

I always play alien, and my last 3-4 plays have been alien major victories, sometimes because marines breached the ship and linda killed a lot of them.

A ton of aliens die each round by being stupid and rushing. The main reasons xenos lose is

1) incompetence in the first wave (admins/mods had to save a round recently where a queen was eating live hosts at the start) or a bunch of runners die and marines rush

2) No one spawns as xeno, xeno attack ship with 8 against 30, and die.

3) fantastic plays by marines.


Does the average runner/crusher/hivelord suck? Yes, horribly. They tend to get picked off, especially if idiot drones are stacking doors.

Winning as alien is a lot about macro-strategy. Alien lives are expensive, because wins often happen due to having 8+ tier 3 xenos. There is generally better team cohesion with aliens, probably partly due to being faceless. You can't even track alien buddies within the round by their number due to them changing each evolution...

except for the queen, who is the #1 difference on the alien team between a win and a loss.


I think marines should have more things they need to do on the planet. Assaulting the alien hive tends to lead to a loss unless the aliens are just that incompetent (which they often are)


I really enjoy the asymmetrical warfare, and there's definitely a skill issue on both sides causing imbalance. However, there's no easy way to solve that, and generally marine infighting is an easy alien win.


The best solution is probably marines having more valuable things on the map to go after, things that leave them vulnerable. Maybe ore they can mine that lets them make some mechs close to the alien hive?

I also think aliens who lose their queen should have a living drone or auto-lose. Having one random host that can pop, evolve to drone, and then evolve to queen delays games excessively. I'm not saying that the surviving drone should automatically be queen, but that there should need to be one alive.

[Jack McIntyre]

I think more as well with the marine victories, recently most rounds i have saw there was usually a mutiny, I would say around 50%, not sure why we had such a rise in marine deciding to turn against marine, but that basically kills off your guys and stop people from fighting on the planet thus killing your chances of victory. Furthermore I also found that a lot of marines will turtle the FOB if a hive attack fails, while this can be understood, from what I learned as playing as a marine is that you need to put some pressure on the xenos until you can get more supplies or manpower onto the surface. Because if you quit after one assault and decide to wait for the xenos to come to you, you are giving them more time to evolve as well as letting more hosts pop to add more to their number. You have to kinda of just force little skirmishes to make them not put any pressure on the FOB while you try to get your shit together. If you don't have pressure on the xenos, they will get to build up without any constraint which kinda of shocks me because if you play any strategy game, no matter if you are full on attack or like to play defense, you at least have to harass your enemy just a little bit to shake them up a bit and make them start to question their own strategies or at least threaten their supplies and logistic support, granted with xenos it may not be as clear, but if you can stop xenos from grabbing monkeys and other wildlife when they can't grab a random marine, then you are cutting off how many larva that they can get.

[Toroic]

I think more as well with the marine victories, recently most rounds i have saw there was usually a mutiny, I would say around 50%, not sure why we had such a rise in marine deciding to turn against marine, but that basically kills off your guys and stop people from fighting on the planet thus killing your chances of victory. Furthermore I also found that a lot of marines will turtle the FOB if a hive attack fails, while this can be understood, from what I learned as playing as a marine is that you need to put some pressure on the xenos until you can get more supplies or manpower onto the surface. Because if you quit after one assault and decide to wait for the xenos to come to you, you are giving them more time to evolve as well as letting more hosts pop to add more to their number. You have to kinda of just force little skirmishes to make them not put any pressure on the FOB while you try to get your shit together. If you don't have pressure on the xenos, they will get to build up without any constraint which kinda of shocks me because if you play any strategy game, no matter if you are full on attack or like to play defense, you at least have to harass your enemy just a little bit to shake them up a bit and make them start to question their own strategies or at least threaten their supplies and logistic support, granted with xenos it may not be as clear, but if you can stop xenos from grabbing monkeys and other wildlife when they can't grab a random marine, then you are cutting off how many larva that they can get.

Truthfully, in most RTS games turtling is generally a slow way to lose, especially when aliens get stronger as a function of time, and marines generally don't in my experience.

[Neray]

Truthfully, in most RTS games turtling is generally a slow way to lose, especially when aliens get stronger as a function of time, and marines generally don't in my experience.

Actually, it totally depends on engineering/robust skills of marines as well as on RO's activity.
P.S. A common misconception is that "robust" means "fighting skills". It is, but in addition to them, it also means "tactical skills and common sense". In general - "everything, that help you survive and win".

[Jack McIntyre]

Yea, but Toros also has a point, the mentality of most marines is once they secure the FOB you may be lucky to get them to go for one assault and if it fails then they just want to hide and they think their sentries and their defenses will hold the enemy. I know I'm not the only regular marine player that usually tries to get at least a fighting patrol together to go do just hit and run raids on the xenos at least so that we can put some pressure on them. It is just the mindset of the marine players that needs some work. They think that with their sentries, mines, fake walls, girders, tables, and every other fucking thing that they put up will make them safe, but really it doesn't. Yea it will slow down the xenos, but if they have experienced people as well, they have learned to siege a FOB, they basically have learned how to hit that thing without losing to many people and to slowly take it over. Yea you may do some damage to them, but the marines can't hold the line forever. I think Apop himself even has said that turtling is just another way for the marines to lose as well. It is something that you just need to learn from experience, we all start on the marine side new and not sure what the hell we are doing and slowly we learn to get better and work on becoming "robust". I would say as well from my own experience of helping a few new players who had no idea where they were going on the ship or how to get their gear even, we have newer marine players on the server who are not sure what works, and what doesn't work. They will learn with time, I think it is just up to the marine regulars to help out the newer players as well as trying to learn some new tactics to fight against the xenos.

From what I have noticed the xenos, you guys are using tunnels more and actually using more strategy then I had seen in the past, played xeno as well as marine in the past, now not so much, but that isn't the topic. However I remember one round I was a hivelord and made tunnels that could easily attack the FOB with, no matter how many times I brought it up, no one used the tunnels, furthermore they had more runners and hunters who tried to just rush the marines and were gunned down almost immediately, because marines learned how to beat them, concentrated fire.

None of the players are stupid on either side, we play round after round, see what our enemy is doing, try to plan a way to beat it, we do, and thus the enemy now has to plan a new way to counter your way to stop his attack. We're humans, we learn from our mistakes and we build off of it, why do you think we don't fight wars anymore where both sides are standing line by line and just shooting muskets at each other, because with the technology we have now, it would be a massacre. Humans learn to adapt, so I would say xenos have adapted to marine strategy and now it is the marine's turn to learn.

[Sadokist]

I'm just gonna say I don't give a flying FUCK! .....I just want the new map and mode already.

[Neray]

Adam, remember that Hesus's FOB in engineering few days ago? I sent him about 4 turrets, tons of everything else and that FOB holded up alone, without any marines in it, for ~20 minutes of hard attacks. After that we resecured it, repelled 9 or 10 charges and won due to heavy casualties at aliens side.
Sometimes clever defenses are enough to win. Sometimes not.

[Jack McIntyre]

Again though you can't relay on that alone though. I once lead a assault against the hive, one of our engineers brought a sentry, we were holding them just fine when suddenly more xenos came from the hive, the queen led a charge out so we called for back up and two squads came to reinforce us, so i tried to lead a counter charge and we started to push back and almost won the battle until someone took out the sentry gun, as soon as it went down, almost all the marines started to fall back thus leaving the stragglers with me leading them into once again a losing battle as we were outnumbered and slowly tried to fall back while covering each other which worked slightly. I got captured myself, but I know a few made it back. The other squads had put so much faith in that one sentry gun that held the line for us to drag our wounded back to, that suddenly when it got taken out by a hunter, they lost all hope and ran. Had they stayed we could have held and probably won the battle, xenos ended up winning the round.

However that being said you have a point as well, but I think it is experience on both sides, as I mentioned, experience in besieging the FOB or how to counter the defenses will make it so that no matter how much you have, you can still get countered and defeated. I just simply meant that marine can't always count on their sentry guns or defenses all the time which I am starting to see more and more of. They expect it to save them every time and that is simply not the case, it is won by the soldiers who can think. Why I would also agree with your term of robust with people who actually use common sense and use tactics to try and counter and defeat the enemy.

[Voldirs]

Well, it's not classic RTS at all. Marine and Alien strategies are completely different.

First of all is ROBUST medical system. It exists only for marines, aliens just need to stay on weeds for a bit. If marine gets his hand slashed 2-3 times, his game is over, because, he will not be able to hold two-handed weapons before he gets surgery. Which takes quite long time: medevac, diagnosting, operation, redeploying.

Second, supplies. Marines rely really much on them, if there is no competent RO and SLs, game over man, game over. Aliens need only one supply, weeds, which can be planted by lots of aliens.

Third, numbers. Marines most time outnumber aliens, but it makes command and communicating system really complicated.

So, I would say that marine gameplay is MUCH harder and complicated, so it may be seen, that alien players have better teamplay. It's not, just it's easier to them to communicate and organise.

[Inaf]

Marines need officers who will provide things to do on the planet.
On the other hand, there should be me valuable things on planet, like, high-tech things needed for RnD to create better weapons.

[WyattH]

Marines need officers who will provide things to do on the planet.
On the other hand, there should be me valuable things on planet, like, high-tech things needed for RnD to create better weapons.

There's quite a bit of high-tech stuff on planet that the researchers will love to max out their research levels, sadly none of it is really for any weapons though.

[Neray]

There's quite a bit of high-tech stuff on planet that the researchers will love to max out their research levels, sadly none of it is really for any weapons though.

Not sure if Apop removed high-tech weapons from RnD craft system, but if he didn't - we have a mining shuttle at west caves, full of materials. Give em to decent RnD guy and he'll get you anything he possibly can make.

Marines need officers who will provide things to do on the planet.

They have NCOs - squad leaders. Marine's real enemy is usual SS13 random (nah, just "RANDOM" in general). Your fellow marines could be dumb, your commanding officers could be a group of noobs and your RO could be a nonexistent thing (or just as well an afk bastard). Due to complicated communication and supply systems, random and quality of players really affects gameplay.

[Dyne]

No one promised that it has to be 50:50 ratio.

In short- a whole number of issues changed, addition of the Crusher and Boiler as bunker busters, "twohanding" launchers, etc-etc.
Adding a marine minor and liberalizing escape/nuke attempt wont hurt, though.

[Ogard]

It all depends on how robust an individual is, I know two marines which always wear bandanas and kick ass all the time, usually taking down at least 10+ aliens or more, then they become an alien and wreck even more stuff, though this is just my thinking

[Toroic]

Well, it's not classic RTS at all. Marine and Alien strategies are completely different.

First of all is ROBUST medical system. It exists only for marines, aliens just need to stay on weeds for a bit. If marine gets his hand slashed 2-3 times, his game is over, because, he will not be able to hold two-handed weapons before he gets surgery. Which takes quite long time: medevac, diagnosting, operation, redeploying.

Second, supplies. Marines rely really much on them, if there is no competent RO and SLs, game over man, game over. Aliens need only one supply, weeds, which can be planted by lots of aliens.

Third, numbers. Marines most time outnumber aliens, but it makes command and communicating system really complicated.

So, I would say that marine gameplay is MUCH harder and complicated, so it may be seen, that alien players have better teamplay. It's not, just it's easier to them to communicate and organise.

You're vastly oversimplifying alien play.

Aliens would have to have a different medical system, because they do not have the ability to pick things up and get shot many times over the course of a match. Given that aliens start heavily outnumbered (sometimes by a factor of 10) injuries aren't appropiate.

Aliens do /not/ have only one supply. They have 4.

1) Hosts

2) Eggs/facehuggers

3) Jelly

4) Plasma

Weeds aren't a resource. They aren't consumed and produce plasma.

Aliens are extremely dependent on these resources, and 3 are dependent on a queen. When all the eggs are destroyed, new aliens cannot be born, and the ability of aliens to fight is significantly diminished.

As far as marines being harder and more complicated... I think most marine roles are similar in complexity to runners, and none are more complex than the queen.

[Dyne]

Queen is easy-peasy. Especially compared to (good) CO/XO/BO/RO/SL. But thats another issue.

The real "resource" is the amount of alien players at some points.

[Gentlefood]

Hm... Seems to have flipped.

Is there anything that can be given to the Marines to help even this out a little? Or is this due to bouts of incompetence on their side?

A lot of the rounds I've lost as marines can be accredited to poor leadership more than anything else.

[speedybst]

It may be the attrition rate from SSD striking during the mop-up period allowing the xenos to get a foothold again, and to then swarm the weakened marines.

[Arachnidnexus]

Curious to see how the stats are with respect to population. Low pop aliens have an advantage just because marines need a fair bit of infrastructure to work (BOs, RO, medbay, SM not being dead or exploded).

[WyattH]

Curious to see how the stats are with respect to population. Low pop aliens have an advantage just because marines need a fair bit of infrastructure to work (BOs, RO, medbay, SM not being dead or exploded).

The transition from low-pop to high-pop marines nearly always win since all the joining players keep flooding in as marines, it's more of the opposite for high into low pop though.

It's not too hard to win at low-pop alien, you kill any humans since you have more monkey hosts than you'll ever use up and you generate ghosts to be new aliens for you, whereas during high-pop you NEED the marine hosts alive to pop otherwise late-round you won't have anymore spawns left.

[Toroic]

Queen is easy-peasy. Especially compared to (good) CO/XO/BO/RO/SL. But thats another issue.

The real "resource" is the amount of alien players at some points.

I can't imagine how you thought this statement is true.

Queen has the most effect on whether the aliens win or lose of all the players in the game. They need to build, lead, and fight to effectively lead the aliens to victory.


I'm sure the marines have won with Bill Carson as CO/XO, which means that marines can effectively work around that position being unfilled.

[Arachnidnexus]

Apply Dermaline to burn. But aliens do have fewer resources to worry about in general which makes logistics a lot easier.

[Mac]

It's probably a bit of both. The incompetency can be quite rampant at times.

[LordLoko]

Perhaps we need to move the shuttle LZ farther away to make it more difficult to retreat,

I like that idea, maybe expand the map to east and make the dropship there. Or make it to the far south of engineering, it's strange how the map stratches far west but the south is a small line between jungle and the colony.

[Mac]

I like that idea, maybe expand the map to east and make the dropship there. Or make it to the far south of engineering, it's strange how the map stratches far west but the south is a small line between jungle and the colony.

I'm not sure about the size of the LV-624 map, but SS13 maps are limited to 255x255 areas.