Do arcs bring anything to the game?

[<<dab)(dab>>]

Why do marines get arcs? They seem totaly redundant, and why, now that marines got them, does aliens not have something equivalent? 4 times of 5 marines win as soon as they get the exo. That's not enough?

[Thaiden]

Yeah, I'm sure they have an 'intended' use for all the units, however, the game does still require more balancing at the moment; mid/end game can just get ridulously stupid sometimes. An entire army of 10-20+ ARC's? Yeah, it happens.

[<<dab)(dab>>]

Originally posted by Mongoose:

OP, clearly you've never seen gorge bile bomb rush in action.

Yeah but someone plays that position, if you compare arcs with gorges. As gorge you are depending on someone to defend you. Of course you can do some dmg, but unless u're very skilled as gorge u wont surivie vs a marine. And of course you don't shoot through the walls. Pile bomb is VERY powerfull, no doubt about it.

[Ltchase3]

OP , The teams haven their strengths and weaknesses. You play to them not try to play the same way on either team. Its pretty obvious the aliens are centered around making themselves do everything and not have something else do the dmg for them IE Marines use tech to fight better Aliens use evolution. I mean shifters are basicly the quivalent. I suggest you play the aliens more and learn more about the game. Also they needed to give marines the ability to command something or else there would be less involvement for the marines comm other then to drop med packs and ammo/recycle build structures.

[Cim]

Originally posted by Thaiden:

Yeah, I'm sure they have an 'intended' use for all the units, however, the game does still require more balancing at the moment; mid/end game can just get ridulously stupid sometimes. An entire army of 10-20+ ARC's? Yeah, it happens.

The thing is, if a team amasses 10 Arcs... there's a reason for that. They obviously had a ton of resources to spend which means the alien team weren't doing their job.

If a team gets 10 Arcs, they had at least 175 resources to spend on them. At some point one team will win and if they manage to get so much more resources than the other team, that's just the better team and they deserve it.

The unit itself is fairly balanced as you can easily counter it with Gorge Bile Bomb if there's a lot of Arcs. It's also a very slow moving unit so should the marines defending them die, they are pretty much lost. That's resources down the drain.

[Calego]

Arcs are one of the things in NS2 that are pretty balanced as is. They have to have an escort, they cost a reasonable amount. Their range is just about perfect. And they're slow, very slow. Once deployed they have no armor, making bile even more effective.

The only problems remaining are Map design flaws, which are almost all gone now. Arcing Locker from bar is gone, Deposit from Central, etc. Recieving to Hydro is still pretty bad, but with all the cover and the double level nature of Recieving, it's not too hard to attack. And they might be working on it.

The game is assymetrical, Aliens don't have an Arc unit. Marines don't have a Fade unit. Marines don't have Onos, Lerk, or anything that Aliens have, same goes the other way around. That's the design of the game.

Having an army of Arcs means exactly what Cim said, the marines had the res to sink on Arcs to take out your bunkered hive. Now if the marines were able to sneak all 10 of those arcs right into your hive without you knowing, there's something even more wrong.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by Thaiden:

Yeah, I'm sure they have an 'intended' use for all the units, however, the game does still require more balancing at the moment; mid/end game can just get ridulously stupid sometimes. An entire army of 10-20+ ARC's? Yeah, it happens.

If Aliens let marines get 20+ arcs, they've already lost well before that.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

ARCs are a lot less useful in 244 then they were in 243. As calego pointed out, several map changes have resulted in making an ARC attack far more vulnerable. Before it was easy to ARC enemy bases from significently far away. Now because of map changes, ARCs have to get relatively close up. Generally, they have to be around the corner to be able to hit them. Back in the days of 243 and before, you could ARC from several rooms away making an Alien counter attack far more difficult.

An ARC attack is actually safer than an Exo attack. It's slower, but you don't have to risk Marines and Exos as much. A slow steady ARC push is really hard to counter if Marines stay put and guard the ARCs. Requires a coordinated attack by Aliens. Generally have to resort to Spore + Bile + Onos to be able to take out a strongly defended ARC position. And if they have two Duals guarding the ARCs, that gets really hard to stop.

Also, Marines getting Exos doesn't mean they win 4 out of 5 times. It's when Marines get 5+ Exos at once that Aliens have real problems. On teams of 12, 5 exos supported by Macs and marines hitting a Hive is hard to stop. As Aliens you have to seperate Exos from each other, seperate them from Marines and gang up on Exos. An Exo showing up doesn't mean you lose any more than getting an Onos means you win.

[Calego]

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

An ARC attack is actually safer than an Exo attack. It's slower, but you don't have to risk Marines and Exos as much. A slow steady ARC push is really hard to counter if Marines stay put and guard the ARCs. Requires a coordinated attack by Aliens. Generally have to resort to Spore + Bile + Onos to be able to take out a strongly defended ARC position. And if they have two Duals guarding the ARCs, that gets really hard to stop.

Also, Marines getting Exos doesn't mean they win 4 out of 5 times. It's when Marines get 5+ Exos at once that Aliens have real problems. On teams of 12, 5 exos supported by Macs and marines hitting a Hive is hard to stop. As Aliens you have to seperate Exos from each other, seperate them from Marines and gang up on Exos. An Exo showing up doesn't mean you lose any more than getting an Onos means you win.

Always remember that as aliens, if you can't kill the marine push because there's so many marines pushing, none of those marines are at the base gaurding. I can't tell you how many times we've won by pushing past an oncoming force and taking down base power. No IPs, no Arms lab, maybe even a beacon, all of these stop a marine push dead.

If marines get 5+ exos, just base rush. I don't frequent the larger servers (there are a few problems with alien spawn system that disrupt the overall way things work with that many players), but on a more managable size server, this is a death warrant for marines. Exos can't be beaconed, and they can't phase. If your whole team (minus two to dealy the exos) rushes a base, the beacon will be no more than 3-4 guys that you can mop up easily and continue taking down the base. From there, run to the next base. gg.

But yeah, I agree that multiple exo pushes are quite tough to take out, even with onos support.

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by Calego, Elf-Friend:

Always remember that as aliens, if you can't kill the marine push because there's so many marines pushing, none of those marines are at the base gaurding. I can't tell you how many times we've won by pushing past an oncoming force and taking down base power. No IPs, no Arms lab, maybe even a beacon, all of these stop a marine push dead.

Well, you may not be able to stop the push, but you can win the base killing game. I do think that Marines should keep their Exo ratios below 50%. I've seen games where Marines all went Exo, lost their MACs to bile bomb and then couldn't build replacement IPs after their Com and IPs went down. That game went badly after that for the humans.

If marines get 5+ exos, just base rush. I don't frequent the larger servers (there are a few problems with alien spawn system that disrupt the overall way things work with that many players), but on a more managable size server, this is a death warrant for marines. Exos can't be beaconed, and they can't phase. If your whole team (minus two to dealy the exos) rushes a base, the beacon will be no more than 3-4 guys that you can mop up easily and continue taking down the base. From there, run to the next base. gg.

On an 8 player team, 5 exos is a bad, bad, bad idea. On a 12 player team, it's pushing the limits of safety, but not too dangerous. On a 16 player team, 5 exos is kind of low. I tend to play on the 12 player teams (partially out habit from TF2, I'd go 16, but those are always full).

But if the Marines have most of the map and pushing with Exos, Aliens are going to have a problem. It's worse when Marines leave 2 jetpackers to hold down the rest of the map. I played this one game where we had 4 exos and ARCs pushing and me with a JP/SG and another guy with a JP/FT were constantly doing base security. Between us, 3~4 skulks were never really a problem. And because it was late game, I was mine spamming. When you're down to skulks and gorges, taking down a combined ARC/exo push is fricken' hard. You can't even compete in the base rush game either.

But yeah, I agree that multiple exo pushes are quite tough to take out, even with onos support.

Especially if the Marines wait for Duals.

I have YET to see a railgun exo win in a 1 on 1 onos. I've yet to see a rain gun exo win on a 1 marine welder + rain gun aganist a lone onos.Every time a railgun without regular exo support goes up against an onos, it always ends badly for the railgunl

[Kree]

I've always seen ARCs as a way to finish off an alien turtle. The same way that a stomping onos and a couple of gorges finish a marine turtle (or just a bunch of gorges).

[nickwithtea]

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

Originally posted by Thaiden:

Yeah, I'm sure they have an 'intended' use for all the units, however, the game does still require more balancing at the moment; mid/end game can just get ridulously stupid sometimes. An entire army of 10-20+ ARC's? Yeah, it happens.

If Aliens let marines get 20+ arcs, they've already lost well before that.

You won't be able to get 20 arcs in the future, in BT there is a building limit on spammable items (however this may or may not make it into the game, my guesses are that it will though).

[KingGambit]

If your opponents are getting an 20-arc train, they already won a long time ago by besting you in the economic battle.
That said, I do think Marines have a certain advantage in some aspects; I feel like if the marines get to that point of critical damage, it's nearly impossible for aliens to ward them off efficiently (and counter-attacks aren't viable in many scenarios), especially if the position favors them in either large open areas or a long choke point. That range attack helps a lot for seiging away at a hive in a bunkered position.

[Atticus]

I've won several times as commander by getting arcs because our force wasn't strong enough to hold RTs and not good enough to fight the other players. When in doubt, arc it out. Good for last resort. Also many times alien commanders are so busy they won't notice an arc train moving into their hives

[100% Recycled Awesome]

Originally posted by ezekel:

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

If Aliens let marines get 20+ arcs, they've already lost well before that.

You won't be able to get 20 arcs in the future, in BT there is a building limit on spammable items (however this may or may not make it into the game, my guesses are that it will though).

Doesn't matter though. 20+ ARC is just a manifestation (literally) of how Marines have dominated the economic aspect. If they can't build 20 ARCs, they'll do something else, like go dropping exos like crazy, building sentries all over the place, blocking off rooms with mass construction, so on and so forth. If Aliens let Marines have enough Res to build that many ARCs, they've lost well before the ARCs start firing.

[Calego]

Originally posted by 100% Recycled Awesome:

Originally posted by ezekel:

You won't be able to get 20 arcs in the future, in BT there is a building limit on spammable items (however this may or may not make it into the game, my guesses are that it will though).

Doesn't matter though. 20+ ARC is just a manifestation (literally) of how Marines have dominated the economic aspect. If they can't build 20 ARCs, they'll do something else, like go dropping exos like crazy, building sentries all over the place, blocking off rooms with mass construction, so on and so forth. If Aliens let Marines have enough Res to build that many ARCs, they've lost well before the ARCs start firing.

It's that simple. You gotta admit though, there's something awesome about oneshotting the last bunkered down hive (the magic number is 15 arcs I think)