Version 1.04
Ok... this guide is not to explain the interface. Please loadup a training map and look at it yourself. Much more effective.
This guide is however ment to give some basic points for alien commanders to push you in the right way.
(A wiki version of this guide now exists, it may be easier to read for you!
http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Alien_Commander_Guide)
We assume public play in this guide!
Additions & debate always welcome. Fresh & different opinions keep tactics fresh.
Alien play is based on:
* Pushing marine RTs, killing them off.
* active scouting.
* Attacking a base or outpost en mass while you force a beacon on another spot.
* Don't give them breathing room.
* Keeping your own bases alive.
* Priorising the lifeforms in order of resource cost.
At start:
* Send out skulks to scout and kill of any RT unguarded by marines.
* Have someone go gorge to speedbuild RTs.
* Let skulks scout ahead of the gorge to prevent gorge death.
* Infest outside the hive in both sides.. (up/down or left/right) and grab the first rt. (Keeping in mind it must be safe, see scouting)
* Send out drifters to assist in scouting.
* Pug play will do fine with NOT starting a hive specialisation as soon as you can. While it is a valid tactic, you do not know what your team can use best. Work on the other items in the list.
Infestation:
Aliens in NS2 need infestation on the ground to be able to build. Infestation is the green growth which is being spread by yellow glowing cysts. You as commander place these cysts.
Cysts have a minimum range in which no other cyst can be placed. If you do, the previous one will self-destruct. Cysts also have a maximum range and outside this range you can not place cysts.
Cysts at the moment work with pathing. This means you can not place a cyst 'in range' if the previous cyst is a lot higher or lower. You have to imagine that you must follow a path a wheelchair needs to follow.
Cysts grow slowly together with their infestation. If a cyst dies, the infestation dies off and recedes (goes away). If a cyst does not glow, it shows red on the map and is dying. Cysts which are not dying show green. Sometimes a cyst can not be placed if you do not have the area in the middle of the screen. (Its a bug, move the view so it is in the middle)
Cysts can be selected, and for a small resource cost can be ruptured. This explodes the cyst, splashing all marines in range so the marines can temporarily see little. This does not harm the cysts. This is a underused but very helpful technique.
Cysts cost res to place. When infestation hits a mine, the mine blows up.
At the moment marines can not build on infestation. Testing is happening to determine if this should be changed to 'can build but with a penalty' like armor damage to structure.
Due to the pathing nature of infestation, you can unfortunately not build in areas you can not reach with cysting.
Building Basics
When a structure is not on infestation, it starts to die.
Your upgrades are very interesting to marines to shoot. While it can be interesting to clump upgrade structures together to hide them behind something, if a marine finds it you may lose all. For this reason some commanders spread out structures in different spots and different hives.
Structures can be protected by whips, gorge hydra's and gorge clogs. Whips usually not worth the effort.
Structures can be best placed near walls. Infestation (on high only) may cover the structure, hiding it. Also the alien infestation growth acts as a sort of cover.
Regardless placement NO structure is safe. In reality no placement is correct. Your only true cover is clogs & aliens. (results may strongly cary on player skill)
Whips should be placed among corners or walls. They must stand in any place where a marine must stand in melee range and can NOT shoot it from afar. Whips not or no longer on infestation do nothing but will not die. (whips can walk). In some matches whips can protect upgrades or your hive from marines as long as you place them from a angle they can not be shot at. Usually whips are not worth the res.
Whips can protect against Grenade Launchers (GL) and be upgraded to bombardment for a long range attack.
Crags heal and should be actively put on the front where aliens need a base. A few in the hive or growing hive will boost the survival chance of the hive. Crag heal limit is 3 crags per target.
Shifts main use is to boost energy levels of aliens within range. This can be used to speedheal & speedgrow hives, bases, or recover faster in between attacks. Shifts can also spawns eggs at resource cost. This can create a temporary spawn point near a base but is rather expensive and risky as bases are usually near fights. (hence the energy boost received the main use)
Shades are used to cloak everything within range, cysts included. They can also ink their own surroundings with some resource cost, also countering scans.
All chambers have aditional usages you should get accustomed to. Crags can overheal (heal faster) for a short time versus a resource cost.
Shifs can echo (move) chambers within range to anywhere on infestation.
Shades can create hallucinations at resource cost. Which hallucinations depends on the amount of hives.
Hives do not need infestation to grow and are the source of the initial infestation. Hives give you more spawn points, more upgrade potential and a higher drifter limit. The 2nd infestation source can at times be a very nice bonus. Hives can not share a location with a marine command chair. They scream when hit by anything painful. Use this to be a commander.
You can use mist to speed up the maturation on structures (aswell as lifeforms and eggs).
Drifters:
Cheap, fast, cloaked. Drifters are your scouting force when no alien is around to do the job. Marines can only detect these when they do damage to the drifter, scan, or if it is inrange of a observatory. (build 346)
Anything in Line Of Sight (LOS) of the drifter can be spotted and seen by every alien, dead or alive, including the commander.
Drifters acts as a early warning system. They should be placed around possible choke points, hive power nodes or any other spot where you gain intel on marine behavior. A good placed network of drifters is one of your best tools to pervent marines sneaking up on your bases, or worse, hives & upgrades.
They are limited to 5 per hive.
Drifters can do small damage and can kill marines if they get enough time or are used in packs. This is ill adviced most of the times due to the need to use drifters for your intel network.
While sending most of your drifters is unwise in most cases, it can however be very beneficial to send 1 or 2 drifters in with a alien force. They can block bullets to more costly targets, dying instead of.. lets say a fade.
They can also be a distraction. Most important is the use of enzyme. While it costs resources it speeds up the attack speed of all aliens within the impact area for a short time. (A skulk bites faster for example)
Keep a eye on your drifters and actively use them.
Hotkeys:
Hotkeys can be made with CTRL+Numberkeys 1-9. For example.. if I select the hive and press CTRL+1, I select that hive every time I click 1 on the keyboard.
It also places a icon in the left of the screen you can press.
Any structure can be hotkeyed but the main use is the hive. You can actively change the end location a spawned drifters show up at, to speed up drifter placement.
You can also more quickly upgrade stuff at your hives.
If you press spacebar you will go to the latest alert. For example a player requesting a mist.
Growing territory:
The middle and furthest to reach parts of your territory should be the safest, although there are no guarantees. Since you lose territory if it is not connected to a hive, most fights are located at the edge of your range. So infestation is used to push along, creating bases and fallback positions for your aliens.
You should early game actively seek out to grab and hold 1 techpoint, aditional to the one you already have so you can grow a 2nd hive. It is important to do this quickly with help of scouting. Keep areas which are keen for marine chokepoints around your 2 hive spots well infested to prevent getting choked.
Any threat to both hive locations or a breach of such a key part of the cyst chain should be treated seriously and actively crushed by one or more aliens. The more marines, the more aliens needed.
Unlike marines, alien outposts while valuable, are of much less importance due to the aliens inherit speed. So they need less priority in terms of a threat to your hive or cystchain.
When resource allows, alien commanders (also nicknamed Khammanders or Khams) will often make more then one cystchain to important areas and hives to prevent a breach.
Any gap in your infested area is a security breach and should be checked out.
Marines should not have other techpoints or a double resource spot for prolonged periods, so you usually want to crush this as fast as possible after securing a 2nd techpoint.
Upgrades:
Unlike marines, aliens do not all benefit from every upgrade. While Crag, Shift & Shade upgrades benefit all lifeforms, additional abilities like leap only benefit the alien type which can use the ability.
This makes chamber upgrades solid allround upgrades but it makes ability upgrades the stronger yet riskier kind. (results may strongly vary on player skill).
A skulk with carapace may survive more bullets, but a leaping skulk may not even get hit in the first place.
Most important is choosing upgrades which complement your team and counter marines.
Carapace is useful versus the marines with good aim.
Celerity is useful versus the marines without good aim.
Silence is useful to push early on and somewhat limit experienced players (as they rely heavily on sound).
Regeneration can shorten the time before a lifeform can enter the battle again.
Adrenaline allows for a longer push in terms of energy.
Cloak allows to sneakup for the marine who is deaf (mostly rookies) or when a marine commander simply does not scan.
Gorge tunnels cut down travel time inbetween large parts but can be used by marines!
Leap can help skulks cover distance and kill jetpack.
Bilebomb lets a gorge destroys buildings, arcs, macs and exos.
Spores are a lerks area denial effect and erode health and armor and lessens visibility
Blink allows a fade better plat versus jetpack & better fleeing and control.
Xeno is a skulks low grade self destruct.
Umbra for a lerk blocks 50% (less in balance test) of all bullets on targets in the cloud & lessens visibility. Gets removed with flamethrower and does not work versus Grenade Launcher.
Vortex places the object you vortex outside this world for a short time. (Its to short for any real usage in almost all cases) It can however be used to temporarily disable a structure like a obs to prevent a beacon. Marines imprisoned in the vortex receive no damage.
Stomp for a onos stuns any marine on the ground.
Be sure to check which lifeforms you have, can expect shortly and how many you got. Upgrade accordingly.
Select a egg and pick a lifeform to create a lifeform egg with team resources.
10 res for a gorge egg (1hive)
30 res for a lerk egg (1hive)
50 for a fade egg (2hive)
75 for a onos egg (3hive)
At times it is smarter to create lifeforms rather then upgrade. Sometimes outposts are also better then upgrades.
Stuff to remember:
* Make sure skulks are actively killing rts, even lategame.
* A mix of lifeforms and upgrades is usually better then specialising in only 1 lifeform.
* When there is a stalemate use lesser used tactics like ruptures and hallucinations to break the stalemate.
* Beacons on multiple bases at the same time are your friend.
* Use mist and boneshield often but with reason. Boneshield is a wall of spikes absorbing gunfire and blocking the way for a short time. It can also get a marine stuck in it. (And aliens also!)
* Scout scout scout scout.
* If you haven't seen most of the marines in a while, something is very very wrong.
* Be clear and active in your orders. "Ironhorse, please go gorge and speedbuild the hive" works better then "someone heal my hive" or "hive".
* Inform your team what you do and why. You can be surprised how many will work with your strategy to victory.
>edit.. bloody new layout system<
Ok... this guide is not to explain the interface. Please loadup a training map and look at it yourself. Much more effective.
This guide is however ment to give some basic points for alien commanders to push you in the right way.
(A wiki version of this guide now exists, it may be easier to read for you!
http://wiki.unknownworlds.com/ns2/Alien_Commander_Guide)
We assume public play in this guide!
Additions & debate always welcome. Fresh & different opinions keep tactics fresh.
Alien play is based on:
* Pushing marine RTs, killing them off.
* active scouting.
* Attacking a base or outpost en mass while you force a beacon on another spot.
* Don't give them breathing room.
* Keeping your own bases alive.
* Priorising the lifeforms in order of resource cost.
At start:
* Send out skulks to scout and kill of any RT unguarded by marines.
* Have someone go gorge to speedbuild RTs.
* Let skulks scout ahead of the gorge to prevent gorge death.
* Infest outside the hive in both sides.. (up/down or left/right) and grab the first rt. (Keeping in mind it must be safe, see scouting)
* Send out drifters to assist in scouting.
* Pug play will do fine with NOT starting a hive specialisation as soon as you can. While it is a valid tactic, you do not know what your team can use best. Work on the other items in the list.
Infestation:
Aliens in NS2 need infestation on the ground to be able to build. Infestation is the green growth which is being spread by yellow glowing cysts. You as commander place these cysts.
Cysts have a minimum range in which no other cyst can be placed. If you do, the previous one will self-destruct. Cysts also have a maximum range and outside this range you can not place cysts.
Cysts at the moment work with pathing. This means you can not place a cyst 'in range' if the previous cyst is a lot higher or lower. You have to imagine that you must follow a path a wheelchair needs to follow.
Cysts grow slowly together with their infestation. If a cyst dies, the infestation dies off and recedes (goes away). If a cyst does not glow, it shows red on the map and is dying. Cysts which are not dying show green. Sometimes a cyst can not be placed if you do not have the area in the middle of the screen. (Its a bug, move the view so it is in the middle)
Cysts can be selected, and for a small resource cost can be ruptured. This explodes the cyst, splashing all marines in range so the marines can temporarily see little. This does not harm the cysts. This is a underused but very helpful technique.
Cysts cost res to place. When infestation hits a mine, the mine blows up.
At the moment marines can not build on infestation. Testing is happening to determine if this should be changed to 'can build but with a penalty' like armor damage to structure.
Due to the pathing nature of infestation, you can unfortunately not build in areas you can not reach with cysting.
Building Basics
When a structure is not on infestation, it starts to die.
Your upgrades are very interesting to marines to shoot. While it can be interesting to clump upgrade structures together to hide them behind something, if a marine finds it you may lose all. For this reason some commanders spread out structures in different spots and different hives.
Structures can be protected by whips, gorge hydra's and gorge clogs. Whips usually not worth the effort.
Structures can be best placed near walls. Infestation (on high only) may cover the structure, hiding it. Also the alien infestation growth acts as a sort of cover.
Regardless placement NO structure is safe. In reality no placement is correct. Your only true cover is clogs & aliens. (results may strongly cary on player skill)
Whips should be placed among corners or walls. They must stand in any place where a marine must stand in melee range and can NOT shoot it from afar. Whips not or no longer on infestation do nothing but will not die. (whips can walk). In some matches whips can protect upgrades or your hive from marines as long as you place them from a angle they can not be shot at. Usually whips are not worth the res.
Whips can protect against Grenade Launchers (GL) and be upgraded to bombardment for a long range attack.
Crags heal and should be actively put on the front where aliens need a base. A few in the hive or growing hive will boost the survival chance of the hive. Crag heal limit is 3 crags per target.
Shifts main use is to boost energy levels of aliens within range. This can be used to speedheal & speedgrow hives, bases, or recover faster in between attacks. Shifts can also spawns eggs at resource cost. This can create a temporary spawn point near a base but is rather expensive and risky as bases are usually near fights. (hence the energy boost received the main use)
Shades are used to cloak everything within range, cysts included. They can also ink their own surroundings with some resource cost, also countering scans.
All chambers have aditional usages you should get accustomed to. Crags can overheal (heal faster) for a short time versus a resource cost.
Shifs can echo (move) chambers within range to anywhere on infestation.
Shades can create hallucinations at resource cost. Which hallucinations depends on the amount of hives.
Hives do not need infestation to grow and are the source of the initial infestation. Hives give you more spawn points, more upgrade potential and a higher drifter limit. The 2nd infestation source can at times be a very nice bonus. Hives can not share a location with a marine command chair. They scream when hit by anything painful. Use this to be a commander.
You can use mist to speed up the maturation on structures (aswell as lifeforms and eggs).
Drifters:
Cheap, fast, cloaked. Drifters are your scouting force when no alien is around to do the job. Marines can only detect these when they do damage to the drifter, scan, or if it is inrange of a observatory. (build 346)
Anything in Line Of Sight (LOS) of the drifter can be spotted and seen by every alien, dead or alive, including the commander.
Drifters acts as a early warning system. They should be placed around possible choke points, hive power nodes or any other spot where you gain intel on marine behavior. A good placed network of drifters is one of your best tools to pervent marines sneaking up on your bases, or worse, hives & upgrades.
They are limited to 5 per hive.
Drifters can do small damage and can kill marines if they get enough time or are used in packs. This is ill adviced most of the times due to the need to use drifters for your intel network.
While sending most of your drifters is unwise in most cases, it can however be very beneficial to send 1 or 2 drifters in with a alien force. They can block bullets to more costly targets, dying instead of.. lets say a fade.
They can also be a distraction. Most important is the use of enzyme. While it costs resources it speeds up the attack speed of all aliens within the impact area for a short time. (A skulk bites faster for example)
Keep a eye on your drifters and actively use them.
Hotkeys:
Hotkeys can be made with CTRL+Numberkeys 1-9. For example.. if I select the hive and press CTRL+1, I select that hive every time I click 1 on the keyboard.
It also places a icon in the left of the screen you can press.
Any structure can be hotkeyed but the main use is the hive. You can actively change the end location a spawned drifters show up at, to speed up drifter placement.
You can also more quickly upgrade stuff at your hives.
If you press spacebar you will go to the latest alert. For example a player requesting a mist.
Growing territory:
The middle and furthest to reach parts of your territory should be the safest, although there are no guarantees. Since you lose territory if it is not connected to a hive, most fights are located at the edge of your range. So infestation is used to push along, creating bases and fallback positions for your aliens.
You should early game actively seek out to grab and hold 1 techpoint, aditional to the one you already have so you can grow a 2nd hive. It is important to do this quickly with help of scouting. Keep areas which are keen for marine chokepoints around your 2 hive spots well infested to prevent getting choked.
Any threat to both hive locations or a breach of such a key part of the cyst chain should be treated seriously and actively crushed by one or more aliens. The more marines, the more aliens needed.
Unlike marines, alien outposts while valuable, are of much less importance due to the aliens inherit speed. So they need less priority in terms of a threat to your hive or cystchain.
When resource allows, alien commanders (also nicknamed Khammanders or Khams) will often make more then one cystchain to important areas and hives to prevent a breach.
Any gap in your infested area is a security breach and should be checked out.
Marines should not have other techpoints or a double resource spot for prolonged periods, so you usually want to crush this as fast as possible after securing a 2nd techpoint.
Upgrades:
Unlike marines, aliens do not all benefit from every upgrade. While Crag, Shift & Shade upgrades benefit all lifeforms, additional abilities like leap only benefit the alien type which can use the ability.
This makes chamber upgrades solid allround upgrades but it makes ability upgrades the stronger yet riskier kind. (results may strongly vary on player skill).
A skulk with carapace may survive more bullets, but a leaping skulk may not even get hit in the first place.
Most important is choosing upgrades which complement your team and counter marines.
Carapace is useful versus the marines with good aim.
Celerity is useful versus the marines without good aim.
Silence is useful to push early on and somewhat limit experienced players (as they rely heavily on sound).
Regeneration can shorten the time before a lifeform can enter the battle again.
Adrenaline allows for a longer push in terms of energy.
Cloak allows to sneakup for the marine who is deaf (mostly rookies) or when a marine commander simply does not scan.
Gorge tunnels cut down travel time inbetween large parts but can be used by marines!
Leap can help skulks cover distance and kill jetpack.
Bilebomb lets a gorge destroys buildings, arcs, macs and exos.
Spores are a lerks area denial effect and erode health and armor and lessens visibility
Blink allows a fade better plat versus jetpack & better fleeing and control.
Xeno is a skulks low grade self destruct.
Umbra for a lerk blocks 50% (less in balance test) of all bullets on targets in the cloud & lessens visibility. Gets removed with flamethrower and does not work versus Grenade Launcher.
Vortex places the object you vortex outside this world for a short time. (Its to short for any real usage in almost all cases) It can however be used to temporarily disable a structure like a obs to prevent a beacon. Marines imprisoned in the vortex receive no damage.
Stomp for a onos stuns any marine on the ground.
Be sure to check which lifeforms you have, can expect shortly and how many you got. Upgrade accordingly.
Select a egg and pick a lifeform to create a lifeform egg with team resources.
10 res for a gorge egg (1hive)
30 res for a lerk egg (1hive)
50 for a fade egg (2hive)
75 for a onos egg (3hive)
At times it is smarter to create lifeforms rather then upgrade. Sometimes outposts are also better then upgrades.
Stuff to remember:
* Make sure skulks are actively killing rts, even lategame.
* A mix of lifeforms and upgrades is usually better then specialising in only 1 lifeform.
* When there is a stalemate use lesser used tactics like ruptures and hallucinations to break the stalemate.
* Beacons on multiple bases at the same time are your friend.
* Use mist and boneshield often but with reason. Boneshield is a wall of spikes absorbing gunfire and blocking the way for a short time. It can also get a marine stuck in it. (And aliens also!)
* Scout scout scout scout.
* If you haven't seen most of the marines in a while, something is very very wrong.
* Be clear and active in your orders. "Ironhorse, please go gorge and speedbuild the hive" works better then "someone heal my hive" or "hive".
* Inform your team what you do and why. You can be surprised how many will work with your strategy to victory.
>edit.. bloody new layout system<