Hello.
I have around 18 hours on NS2 now (Great, addicting game, by the way), and I'm getting a good taste of commanding. I enjoy marine comming a lot more than being a kham, since alien commanding system is confusing for me and wants to eat my soul. However, I've consistently run into a problem when comming as a marine. In early game (first four minutes, let's say), I'll medkit-check the location of the alien hive, and then have my rines take the tech points that are directly adjacent to their hive (building RT's all the way). Usually, this is successful enough that I can push the aliens down to 1 or 2 tech points, depending on how good my team is. After that... I tend to put up phasegates at the forward bases, but I'll never break through their lines. I can beacon my team to a location to push, but they end up getting killed by a couple Lerks as soon as they enter the enemy hive room (even with nano and medspam...). I can give them an AA and use a bit of TRes to give them GL's, shotties, flamers and jetpacks, and they get butchered by fades during a siege. I'll give them dual exos, and they'll get those blown up by bile bombs while they were focusing on shooting the skulks jumping around at their feet. Hell, I'll build an ARC factory and try to ARC the aliens out, and my marines just get run over by a horde of skulks while bile bomb melts my expensive siege cannons. At this point, despite having vastly superior map control, we're basically unable to push out into the enemy base, and all we're left to do is wait until they get Onos, and lose all the progress we've made so far. Is this just an issue with having an inferior team, or am I just doing something wrong?
For reference, I usually go PG's first, and put down armories at the tech locations to make for an effective base; then I usually start spending res on the arms lab. Depending on how much my extractors are getting harassed, I either get mines or save up for AA; I start researching shotguns when Fades show up, or there's more than 2 Lerks on the field.
Someone recommended that I should try and reduce my frontlines while increasing the enemy's. The problem is, I have no idea how to go about this. Isn't it an inevitable side effect of superior map control that you have a bigger frontline?
tl;dr: How do I properly push into a hive?
I have around 18 hours on NS2 now (Great, addicting game, by the way), and I'm getting a good taste of commanding. I enjoy marine comming a lot more than being a kham, since alien commanding system is confusing for me and wants to eat my soul. However, I've consistently run into a problem when comming as a marine. In early game (first four minutes, let's say), I'll medkit-check the location of the alien hive, and then have my rines take the tech points that are directly adjacent to their hive (building RT's all the way). Usually, this is successful enough that I can push the aliens down to 1 or 2 tech points, depending on how good my team is. After that... I tend to put up phasegates at the forward bases, but I'll never break through their lines. I can beacon my team to a location to push, but they end up getting killed by a couple Lerks as soon as they enter the enemy hive room (even with nano and medspam...). I can give them an AA and use a bit of TRes to give them GL's, shotties, flamers and jetpacks, and they get butchered by fades during a siege. I'll give them dual exos, and they'll get those blown up by bile bombs while they were focusing on shooting the skulks jumping around at their feet. Hell, I'll build an ARC factory and try to ARC the aliens out, and my marines just get run over by a horde of skulks while bile bomb melts my expensive siege cannons. At this point, despite having vastly superior map control, we're basically unable to push out into the enemy base, and all we're left to do is wait until they get Onos, and lose all the progress we've made so far. Is this just an issue with having an inferior team, or am I just doing something wrong?
For reference, I usually go PG's first, and put down armories at the tech locations to make for an effective base; then I usually start spending res on the arms lab. Depending on how much my extractors are getting harassed, I either get mines or save up for AA; I start researching shotguns when Fades show up, or there's more than 2 Lerks on the field.
Someone recommended that I should try and reduce my frontlines while increasing the enemy's. The problem is, I have no idea how to go about this. Isn't it an inevitable side effect of superior map control that you have a bigger frontline?
tl;dr: How do I properly push into a hive?