A Guide to Hive Defence - No Metarush For You
Prelude
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So for a year now I noticed a trend in how Xenos set up their hive defences and it always tend to lead to a cycle of things to come.
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Recently, I have observed that the xenos were not only coordinating nor preparing well but eventually get stomped so much they try unfeasible tactics to fight marines. One of which involves metarushing the LZ1 in Big Red With the Hive set up in Marshalls (Queen dead by 12:33, later jobbanned I was told).
It's like the xenos forgot how to...defend themselves. So when the coordination and preparation gets thrown out of the window, marines are allowed to take a walk into the hive and get xenos mad over 'metarush', which in most cases arent even metarushing. At the pace they go, it's more like pushing. In fact, the way marines push is even slower now. There are, as I said, times when marines push at 12:33 or 12:35 and they can still end the game by 12:50.
So here is the guide I made, which the style is written to encourage and help new queen/xeno players get creative with their style of defending the hive. It is not made to make your thinking rigid. So it should cover the basics.
Principles & Concepts
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Hive Defence has many methods. In principle, they can be deduced to:
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Your Objectives to Hive Defence should be simple:
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Drone castes are very important in Hive Defence. A breakdown shows their usefulness(Including a Boiler a Praetorian which are not Drone Castes):
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The more drone caste you have, the stronger your hive defence is and the more likely you are to survive. But the more drone caste you have, the less likely you are to win a Shipside battle. So balance is very important here.
All else are mere tools to play(That includes boilers)
Methods and Styles
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I think this is best explained by breaking down the principles. Note: How you play can combine many of these principles depending on your Hive Composition and your play style. This guide does not aim to make you rigid where you stick to one principle at a time.
Mobility
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Attrition
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Deception
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Battlefield Preparation
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Maturity
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Ground Control
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Strategy, Tactics, Courage and Robustness
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Population
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Teamwork and Coordination
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Scenarios
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Just as Military History provides basis of context and understanding of Military Principles and development of warfare, here are some case examples for study. If you want more, observe more and laugh at FFs.
Case No 1.(Game Ended 12:46 on LV)
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Case No 2. (Prison; Same tactic and strategy on 2 games so it's 2 games on this case)
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Case No 3. (Prison; Windhealer CO)
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Screenshots for Illustrations
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Make Checkered Stickies as ONE HEDP Nade can remove all stickies in a radius. Spreading them out saves time and is equally efficient as well as reducing the exposure of your stickies to a single nade. This is your general go to pattern for stickies.
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Another good example why checkered stickies are better is because of this. When marines were pushing and clearing the stickies they just clear a path to walk to and leave the surrounding behind. This forces marine reinforcement and retreats to deal with them in masses and everyone has to gamer on 1x1 paths.
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Stickies like these are discouraged cause one Incen or HEDP nade can wipe all your hard work of stickies off, and it is quicker to clear them with flamers with their 4-5 tile range. Whereas with the Checkered stickies shown above, the flamer can hit at least 2-3 depending on where it hits.
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4x4 blocks like these with 2x2 paths gives xenos some room to fight with decent cover. Marines can only be slowed if xenos are around. But don't expect marines to be effectively slowed if there are no checkered stickies. Remember this build is very situational. But in image 2 these are quite ideal in slowing down marines. You can do 2x3 structures(rectangle) and put stickies, but prepare to get out of there because very likely they will have to bomb that place to push
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This here is a list of all known FFs from nades, explosives, you name it. Notice that they always happen during crowded situations. So when I say the more crowded they are the more they would FF, it wasnt some random statement I made in thin air. You might as well call this animal science.
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I hope this guide helps