Natural Selection 2

I popped in for a second, but didn't know either of you so I bolted. I'll stick around tonight which is really the only night this weekend I'll be able to play

I suck COMPLETELY at this game, but I'm having fun. Has anyone made a strategy guide for playing each side? I watched the videos and they're ok, but I think I'd really benefit by a more focused howto.

I fucking love commanding in this game. It's like DoW2 where the IG get angry when I swear at them!

Aliens are fun as fuck, my second game commanding as them I managed a come from behind victory by cloaking our main base (technically our secondary base, but I had been upgrading there rather than at main because we were way close to the marine base) just before they wiped our main base which gave us time to get our shit together, rebuild and wipe them the fuck out with ONOOOOEZ. It got to the point where I was like "guys there are tons of upgraded eggs at our base" and they were like "i'm good bro, onozing all over their exos".

Aww yiss. Even the marines were like "well done, that guy."

I can't shoot for shit though. If I maintain a 1:1 ratio it's because the other team is stoned. Basically I need to be in der box or I will be a totally useless floppycock.

edit: yes, I have the IG recolor. WHAT?! WHAT?! BRING IT!

SEAL OF APPROVAL.

How do you cloak your marine base?
edit: Nevermind, you were aliens, though I still don't think I've ever seen that from a Marine perspective.

well of course you didn't see it

Actually... I'm thinking that I did. I thought it was lag from the high detail settings of the alien goo stuff, because the server I was on was just laggy in general. Now it makes sense.

I have a question about the server browser. What does the performance rating mean next to the ping on the server listing?

Commanding humans sucks. I can't make giant walls of invisible flailing doom penises. Also the ARC is a piece of shit and the MAC is too.

Commanding aliens is awesome. You can make your flailing doom penises uproot themselves and move them into the enemy base en masse, then cloak the silly things. Also there's no limit on the number of flailing doom penises you can have in one place. I got so invisible doompenisy on one match that the marines were basically forced to flame every inch of the creep for fear of getting eight penises to the face.

I give this game a 15/10 for allowing me to beat people to death with invisible penises.

By the way aliens have awesome support buildings like the one that cloaks, the one that heals and the one that makes them faster. Support them with an army of pensies and your idiot minions will be free to waaaaagh into random shit because the pukes won't be able to push.

No fucking clue but if you find out please tell me.

So basically you love penis?

I like the game but I am horrible at it. So is basically everyone I play with (sorry, guys). And it takes a really long time for games to end sometimes even if the outcome is a foregone conclusion. All this adds up to me not wanting to play very often because it stresses me out. :(

Navigation seems like much more of a pain in the ass than it was in the first one. Then again, I seem to recall that the basic strategy for the first one was also FORTIFY THE HELL OUT OF EVERYTHING, maybe it's just that it's been so long I'm not used to it anymore.

Don't fortify using turrets as this is the path to failure. The marine sentries can't stop anything but a single skulk that tries to gnaw at your resourcers in a remote part of your base. Anything else, including two skulks will take out the sentry battery before the sentries will take out the attacker.

Building sentries everywhere is the hallmark of a bad marine commander. It's a bit different for the aliens as their tentacle turrets have additional uses, but again don't rely on them to stop a single marine.

So how do you harden your installations?

The general approach is to build phase gates at the command stations or any built up forwards base. That way Marines can phase in whenever there's trouble. Usually the resource nodes are left undefended as a couple of forward bases (with phase gates) gives fairly easy access to them.

Turrets aren't completely useless, there's the odd chokepoint where they can be handy, especially as a point to fall back to, but yea - for the most part they simply aren't effective enough to be worth it.

Having an armory helps, which ties into the biggest thing really is having multiple people on the ground actually there defending. The primary way this is accomplished is through Phase Gates.

I think the place sentries serve is if you're in a game that has a low number of players, because you won't have the manpower to defend every spot and otherwise a lone skulk can wreck havoc with impunity.

On the alien side, Whips can be cloaked, can move around, and don't have the same limits on building as sentries do (which is one set of 3 sentries per room). I think they're a mite more useful.

All right, thanks.

I've been commander several times on each side and usually been okay but I still struggle with the command interface. I assume my problems are mostly user error, but I often have a hard time finding the commands I want, and it sometimes feels as though those commands aren't always in the same place. Particularly when commanding the Aliens and trying to evolve new abilities, it feels like sometimes I get one set of commands when I click on the structure once and a different set when I click the same structure later on.

I presume this is my error and not an interface problem but it is really frustrating. It would be nice if they had proper tutorials built in and not a bunch of fucking YouTube videos.

You can harden alien institutions using the alien structure that cloaks nearby buildings/units + a bunch of whips, and the speed structure (which allows you to build eggs). Crag is a great alternative to cloak because it gives you healing/armor + the carapace upgrade from the relevant hive. Shift hive and the extra eggs it allows are absolutely required for the early game and should be your initial build for your first hive. Lots of alien commanders don't know how to build eggs so that's not always a problem for marines, but when you've got aliens spawning right outside the marine base it's almost impossible for marines to expand (functionally equivalent to AoE barracks rush).

Marine structures, I disagree re: turrets. I think turrets are nigh on essential for delaying enemy attacks and giving marines an effective force multiplier. Enemies will have to choose between hitting the generator (takes out phase) while taking sentry fire and hitting the battery (leaves phase operational). Time is good! Couple the sentries with effective use of EL BACON (observatory clickable) and you can practically guarantee that your bases will be defended by all the marines + 3 sentries. Generally that's enough firepower to melt anything short of a gorge supported multi-onos push. Too many commanders are hesitant to bacon and prefer to rely on phase gates even though the cost of a base is significantly higher than the cost of the 10 res and wasted travel time.


I'm having trouble finding a good solution to the problem of onos rushes. Aliens can easily get basic upgrades (shift hive + celerity) and then commanderbuild an onos egg before the 10m mark. They can do that while expanding and pressuring very effectively. Your only possible option is pushing out and denying the second hive long enough to get your shit together, and that's generally extremely difficult. Either that or you need to get extremely lucky and snipe the onos during the initial rush + survive the subsequent influx of fades and p-res onos. Onos + gorge is very difficult to stop without heavy marine presence, which requires a ton of obs + gates + serious pressure. It can be done, but only if marines are able to beat aliens in 2v3 reliably. I think my biggest problem is that I go for upgrades and adv armory -> proto factory -> jetpack way too early and should instead expend significantly more res on expanding and hardening forward positions.

I wasn't suggesting mass fortifications as a primary strategy so much as I am saying that because it was regularly done in NS1 (back when you could mass as many turrets as you could afford) that it's probably the case that moving troops around was as big a problem then as it is now.

It seems to me that the NS1 dynamic was that aliens were more mobile but needed map control to get upgraded while the marines were slow and resource intensive but could fortify very effectively, so the strategy was to try to deny hives while creeping forward and building income. It feels to me like in the current setup the aliens are no worse at fortifying and holding ground, since marines are limited to three sentries and the aliens can get additional structures through gorges if necessary, so I'm not really sure what the marine strategy is now.

I didn't update my drivers, they did update the game, and now I get 150 fps in the menu. Guess that means I'm good to go if and when you kids put a group together again.

Now that I've played some more, I've realized that the cost of a base is far, far beyond the material cost of the structures (which is far greater than 10 res and travel time) because the marines are fucking awful at pushing bases before you get exos. So in all probability if you lose a base early on you will never, ever get it back.

The marines are in a brutally awful slugging match to stay alive long enough to put together an exo, at which point they win win win their way to the end.

I think the mandatory upgrades are armor 1 + gun 1-3 as soon as possible, welders, observe+phase gate. Beyond that you can mostly ignore upgrades and focus on base builds until positions are stable. Shotguns should be the go to upgrade when marine res gets too high. I think you need armory, turrets, phase, observe, and spawn portal at every command center (secondary spawn portals are incredibly important for ensuring you don't instalose if the main base power goes out). Forward positions need a phase, armory and turrets at minimum, with obs/portal at chokes. Forward positions are basically the creep nodes of the marines. If you don't have a few out there you'll be spending a lot of time defending base rather than pushing alien extractors.

Not really sure about extractor defense. Turrets can handle an isolated skulk but mid game fades will rip that shit up unless a marine is in there defending the battery with a shotgun.

Don't rush two gun exo, a one gun backed by a welder marine does just fine. Basic exo, jetpack, then armor upgrades.

Bigger problem is getting marines to fucking obey a command call. I lost one game because we spawned right next to aliens and most of the team just sat in the adjoining chamber fighting over an extractor we weren't gonna hold while we were getting clobbered trying to set up a secondary base.

That really does seem to be the problems with marines. If they don't listen to the commander, it's game over. Where the alien commander does pretty much whatever they want.

You can get around it to a degree by building robots to repair/build stuff (these are fucking GLORIOUS for repair chaining marines/exos, build like 20 and toss them into the fight and your marines/bots will pretty much never die), but you need someone guarding the robot while it builds.

It's incredibly frustrating, but that's all part of playing on team GUNZ GUNZ GUNZ.

The flipside of this, though, is that the marine commander also needs to be able to clearly articulate what the fuck it is that he wants you to do. I had one game where the commander would ping a location and I'd go there and 20 seconds later he'd be like "why the fuck are you over there, there's nothing over there, get to this place all the way across the map!" Eventually, things went wrong, he got super angry and recycled everything.

I've pretty much given up on Marines in pubbie games unless it's a server I know competent commanders frequent.

I'm starting to feel the same way. It's far too easy for the Kharaa to expand and get Onos. I really do not believe it should take a team of 4+ fully upgraded marines to kill 1 Onos. Especially since it's becoming increasingly clear how easily 1 skulk can kill an Exo. Also the base defense that the Kharaa has... in comparison to the Marines... It's really kind of incredible. I haven't played with a well coordinated group vs a well coordinated group. But I"m guessing it's just as bad. If it isn't then having 2 rule sets, 1 for Competitive play and 1 for public play would be great.

In my opinion, there just needs to be something changed about Onos. What is is i can't put my finger on. less HP, slower movement, less armor, slower HP regen, make them bigger so they can't fit into places a fucking crouching marine can! With Base defense, if marines can only have 1 set of turrets in a room, why can the Khraraa have unlimited base defense?

This game also has to do something about the marine flashlights, they're awful. Give them a night vision upgrade like the Kharaa has. I couldn't tell you how many times I'm blinded by my teammates flashlights and they... always.... have... them....on.....

I've also been joining rookie servers to get a better grip on commanding, maps, and a feel for the game without getting demolished on a regular server. It's pretty sad the people that join those servers who are obviously vets of the game just so they can demolish newb teams. That wasn't a problem even 2 weeks ago, but now it is.

I really do enjoy playing this, an RTS/FPS is right up my alley. I just wish they'd make some crucial changes before they lose a lot of players. I know it's been almost 10years since the last game... I'm remembering now why I stopped playing.

TL:DR Joining marines in a public match is a certain loss.

If I'm remembering things correctly, what is going on here is that at the end of NS1's life cycle people had discovered that it was possible to just fortify and deny with marines to the point where in order for the aliens to even have a real shot at winning, they had to completely dominate the early game. So they had a bunch of ideas to correct this, but then instead of picking one or two, they decided to implement all of them at once.

So now you have the particularly galling situation that where once fortifications were a marine strength--and one they actually did kind of need, given their relative lack of mobility (phase gate used to be high up the tech tree)--now aliens can fortify all they want and even make those fortifications invisible and self-repairing, while the marines are limited to three not-very-powerful turrets hooked up to an Achilles's heel combined with the ENTIRE FREAKIN' ROOM being hooked up to an even BIGGER Achilles's heel.

Given the marines' flashlight situation and dependence on phase gates, observatories and armories for defense, you can basically write off any room where you've lost power. If it's one skulk you can kill it, but it takes forever to repair the damn power node, much longer than it took to build the power node in the first place--so long, in fact, that the skulk in question often has time to respawn, evolve traits, and run back before the marines finish repairing. And there's no really good way to protect them, especially in rooms (and there are quite a few of them) where everything important is way the hell away on the other side of the room from the power node.

If the marines have two bases in midgame and you send a Fade after a power node while everyone else attacks the other base, what do the marines do? As often as not, they lose a base, which is usually the beginning of a long slide towards defeat, and even if they fend it off they'll have lost all offensive momentum.

It is a long slide isn't it. The 2 games I played last night for 2 hours total and I quit out of the last game before it was over. 1st at the 30min mark, there was no doubt we lost the game (as marines). But they kept going for 30 more minutes...I couldn't convince them to quit and get a new start. The 2nd game we were actually doing well in the beginning, as marines, then we lost a commander, no one noticed and he wouldn't spend the 200 resources saved up on giving us weapons, exo's, etc.. and it took about 5 mins for the Kharaa to demolish our expo's and turn the tide. We spent the rest of the game trying to recover to no avail and I ended up rage quitting when they wouldn't restart. ( 5 onos rushing, lord knows how much support, creep up to our last command center and basically 15mins of trying to make our last stand. I just don't see how that is fun for anyone.

3 games last night, all lost on the marine side. I really do not understand why people who are obviously veterans of this game always join Kharaa on rookie servers. It's just a lousy and shady thing to do. These games are over in the first 15mins and they last an extra hour because the marines don't realize there is no coming back. These fiends store up resources to do a full Onos rush, their alien commander is obviously very good. It's like they're mocking people. This is how games die. I'm about 2 nights away from giving up on this nonsense.

Yeah I came to the same conclusion as you guys and haven't loaded the game up in a week, even after I got my desktop running and could play the game at high framerates thinking that would somehow give me an edge as a marine shooting at skulks that don't have to really aim at you as they bunny hop around your feet in circles.

I'll be damned if I wasn't on the exact opposite type of server. I was on the Kharaa side, and 3 games in a row marine's won. One long never ending game was an hour plus and I swear they just tortured us in our little 2 zone base till they got exo's and arc's.

At one point I felt like a profanity filled 12 year old xbox user and unleashed rage upon my mic.

I save that for SC2 :-). Some of those people don't deserve any better

I'm probably going to be going through my case of Magic Hat and playing this tonight until I'm no longer coherent. If you want to join me, hit me up on steam. Even if you see me playing another game I'll switch over.

Incidentally, can anyone tell me how ARC's work? I think those are very underutilized by marines and I have no idea how they operate. They appear to have a move and a fire position. What are the mechanics here, do they fire while moving? only while stationary? Is is powerful fire, long range, rapid?

No, if you have some fortifications in your base, and your whole team is there (as will be the case when you're down to that one base), it's actually quite difficult to take it out without ARCs and exos--most commanders do not build forward phase gates, so you will have more spawn pressure. In fact, even the reverse is true--if marines have reached full weapon/armor upgrades, it can take quite some time to wear down their last base, unless you have Onos out. But in neither case is it possible to actually recover. The difference is that for aliens, you can take some setbacks in the early and midgame and still come back to win. The marines cannot do this--they must succeed essentially at all times or lose the game.

I'm actually a ludicrously bad alien player--lateral motion makes me disoriented, so I basically can't track targets to melee them--but even though I go 5 and 20 a lot, I still win most of those games. I don't think I've ever won a marine game without a significant plus score.

I have found the key with marines to kill skulks is burst fire. You lay on that trigger you're going to miss. Burst and you'll hit if you have aim.

I am horrible at killing skulks, and I am horrible at being skulks. When I'm a marine they dart around and I can't track them with my gun. I do sometimes manage to unload quite a bit into them but it doesn't matter because I can't finish them off and then they kill me. When I'm a skulk, I try to do all the things I'm supposed to do -- ambush from walls and ceilings, leap, dart around to be hard to shoot, and all that, but I must suck at it, because most of the time I can't do adequate damage before they shoot me, if I can even get close enough to bite them before they gun me down.

You're not actually supposed to dart around and ambush. You're supposed to try to run directly into their player model so that they have to aim at their feet, and run do bunny hops while pulling 180° turns to hit them with your "aoe" bite. It's why skulks are bullshit and it's no fun to kill them.

As I understand it the key is cover fire. Never go by yourself, always count on your teammates to cover each other and low level skulks should be a piece of cake. Do not hold down the fire button when shooting skulks. I can't stress that enough.

As a skulk, don't hold the fire button down either. Only chomp when you have a clear hit on the player, hitting the side does less damage.

however, in saying that, I do agree that skulks are bullshit. But good teamplay will stop them. Some random and I covered each other in a hallway against 4-5 skulks for a good 15mins as our marine buddies were busy being terrible on another part of the map. We lived because we covered each other. They simply couldn't get past us.

also. Always turn your flashlight off unless you need it!

Why turn the flashlight off? Aliens all have thermal vision, they don't need your flashlight to find you.