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View Poll Results: Do you enjoy metarushes as a xeno

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  • I play xeno and I like facing marines head-on

    15 19.48%
  • I play xeno and I dislike facing marines head-on, I'd prefer X

    8 10.39%
  • I play marine and I like moving frontlines

    46 59.74%
  • I play marine and I dislike moving frontlines, I'd prefer X

    8 10.39%
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Thread: My take on CM midgame and some ways how to avoid it

  1. #1
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    Cool My take on CM midgame and some ways how to avoid it

    rushing and chokepoints duh duh.

    Admit it, you've been there. A round you wished for, you and all your friends are playing. First 15 minutes are quite normal, marines drop and go to max sec, everyone is having a good time. Good marines are padding their KD on cocky mature T2s and vice versa. And then something, something goes terribly wrong. The metarush siren, admins start wilding in MOOC and all the 2020 moderators are yelling at the CO that briefed you to walk west on prison for making such a terrible mistake. You open LOOC, pump up spotify volume and start typing the hard R word followed by a randomly picked online admin's name. Sadly, before you can finish the sentence you're rushed by 3 admin spawned T3s making you shut off the game and drink yourself to unconsciousness

    Lately there has been a rapid increase in interventions from staff side, spawning layers after layers of walls to block off or cut off marines behind enemy lines, increasing the amount of burrowed, adding T3s or Ravengers etcetera.
    Why? It was never enforced that hard in the past (If I exclude Apop/Feweh era and few cursed balance periods in 2017/18) and now, in 2019/20 when the average marine & xeno skill level is at it's lowest, we're getting slapped for it and forced into boring stalemates in 3x3 nightmarish chokepoints because most of the community doesn't have the balls to hold the E button on Big Red or the A button on Prison station, instead we're defending 4 cade layers or two million square kilometers of thick resin walls and effectively growing an enormous brain tumor - I will refer to this stage as CBT - Chokepoint and Boiler Tragedy also known as the Midgame.

    As we all know, CBT is not a pleasing experience. How to avoid it you may ask?

    1. Walling off rushes, reinforcing X side, spawning more X to compensate etc.
      • Let the round continue, good hives with good queens were always able to hold their ground. There's nothing much to say, really. Could be just me, but it's the best part of a round for me when I'm playing xeno because it actually requires effort to stop the ongoing attack.

    2. Voting badly designed maps
      • Here are all the bad maps as of 23/01/20
      • Ice - Ice syndrome, rush or run out of food & water in real life and die.
      • Prison - West Walk Station, if you're a xeno player and hate 'rushing' deadass don't vote for it. 9/10 times the round will be swift, resulting in a marine victory in the 1/10 case everyone will suffer with shitty FPS in 2x2 & 3x3 chokepoints. Ice syndrome.
        OOC: Sargash : An order to scout west is an essentially the same as an order to push into the hive. SLs. and SOs have the responsibility of reporting a meta rush when it happens, not helping it happens - haha what the fuck am I reading
      • CORSAT - Considering the frames per second when Corsat pop hits it's better if you just avoid it. There's so much room for xenos to delay and the never ending wave of Americans that are hopping on makes the round even worse. Ice syndrome.
      • Trijent 2020 - Everyone has their own opinion on it, that's why nobody plays it. I'm sorry Vic.
      • Sorokyne - Big laggy mess with snowstorms that cripples flanks and pushes from both sides, indirectly delaying the round and slapping xeno brawlers & small marine groups, basically forcing them into CQB. And CQB on Sorokyne is atrocious.

        LV has to be the best map, unpopular opinion [?] but balance wise it is.

        - If we roll the perfect scenario with no fog gaps, no nightmare caves while also keeping central fog xenos have enough time to prepare & mature for the incoming rush and marines have enough time to prepare their defences, flanks, coords and basically everything that is needed.
        - T-Fort offers the best mid-game experience, can be cleared with CAS/OB while also remaining very easy to re-weed by frenzy drones and hivelords. It's a perfect place for long range engagements & close range brawling.
        - Western flank is often not used, but can be exploited by clever marines or ambushers to get behind enemy lines. Pushes through there have to be swift, otherwise it's CBT. But thankfully this map has many more flanks.
        - Eastern flank, in it's perfect layout offers the same experience as the western one.
        - Central caves, network of tight caves that requires teamwork with at least one flanking squad to push.

        also, flow of the round is decided by how many flanks you're holding not by how many boilers you have in one 3x3 hallway.

        Almayer while not really being a separate map, it's still the second best, especially when it's a fair medpop or lowpop fight - marines get wiped planetside and xenos don't have more than 20 sisters or whatever you call other xenos. This then turns into a 20 minute long, intensive battle where xenos are pushed by time (See what I'm aiming at?) or it backfires and turns into 20 minutes of Agony, Idiotswithgrenades, Desperation and Shrapnel = shorty, AIDS. No really, don't sit behind cades and wait for queen to AOE stun you. Just rush and have fun, enjoy the last moments of a round when you have the best gear and make some plays.

        Last but not least, Big Red - third best; it really depends on the level of competence both sides have, most long rounds are on Big Red thanks to all the stupid chokepoints. But if one side manages to push out and the fight is around Bar or Engineering OR deep inside caves, behind the central-east chokepoint it's actually very entertaining with many flanking routes. Good for both sides.


    3. Force players out of a stalemate
      • More frequent HC announcements for those 40 damned marines sitting behind sentires and 4 layers of wired plasteel cades at the FOB & More queen mother announcements for elder empresses with 20 xenos sitting behind a chokepoint
      • Instead of deleting marine pushes at 12:30 snap the chokepoints at 13:30. Give us an announcement and expand the chokepoints or completely snap them



    tl:dr in one image
    Last edited by Avalanchee; 01-23-2020 at 05:39 PM.

  2. #2
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    Handholding will continue until da babies learn to walk

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    I'm in favor of removing all the cave roofs that prevent CAS and fire support, it makes it a lot harder to delay if you can't have 1% of your xeno forces (a boiler) stop 75% of the marines.

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    Insofar as metarushes are concerned, it's mostly an issue with map design. Good luck metarushing on trijent, sorokyne or LV (kinda). I like all of the maps thematically and at large, but I think more features like the old prison lockdown (but ones that are not broken), could solve this issue. Half of the time when the metarush alarm goes off, it goes off on prison, and the reason the marines are there is because they have literally nowhere else to go and nothing else to do aside from funneling west. Power is right next to the LZ and is on the way to civ res, and civ res itself (and the areas east of it) literally act like a funnel into the Queen chamber. Civ res is easy to defend as a xeno kinda, but anything east of it is literal hell vs the marine force. I think CORSAT did was prison station was going for better, it has enough wide hallways and wide open areas/rooms to allow for fighting in more places than like three. In prison, most of the fighting happens in civ res (because it's open enough to fight in), around the chapel (because it's open enough to fight in), and the cafeteria/LZ (because it's not a 2x18 hallway that is hell to fight in).

    Big red I think gets called out for metarush unnecessarily sometimes. If the xenos nest in ETA then they're probably going to get fucked, but normally they hold ETA and retreat to lambda through the four or so cave exits that allow them to fight on turf that's much easier to defend, the caves.

    Until there are more objectives for marines to complete aside from FOB & power, sending two squads to go scout is the only viable order. For anything else, you might as well announce "Ok everyone else stand perfectly still in the middle of the map so that God does not get mad at us."

  5. #5
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    I feel that LV is the best map because the SERVER handles when the big brawl begins. Admins rule more fairly when the big decisive engagement begins because the SERVER did something rather than one side holding their arrow keys too long.

    If other maps would take this from LV and use them, we’d all have an easier time.

  6. #6
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    We've been through several balance eras of CM, such as the Mutator Era, the QFA AP Era, the Queen Charge era - and so on.
    But by god is this era arguably the worse. Why? Because we're in the

    Era of Stalemates


    The most annoying and boring part of the game is the waiting. Waiting for briefing, waiting for REQ, waiting to evolve, waiting for armor, waiting for marines to land, waiting to age, waiting for the Alamo, waiting for surgery, waiting to get defibbed, waiting to get a larva, so on and so forth. A game isn't fun when you literally aren't playing the game but just looking at a still monitor.

    It literally only takes 1 Boiler and 1 Hedgehog Ravager to camp East Caves and effectively stall 75% of the marine force. Hivelords can wall off central caves and effectively stall a flank because spending 40 minutes of your time, ammo, and sanity to play minecraft isn't fun - and involves even MORE WAITING Supposedly the XSS rework will fix that aids but this is purely on the current state of the game.

    XENO STALEMATES

    FOB fights aren't fun if it's an autism fort. It basically consists of Boilers, Crushers, and Queens doing all the work while all the other xenos wait around half the time, or suicide into cades because they've gone brain dead from playing Tower Defense Simulator. The Engineering rework might spice it up but I fear it'll essentially just make FoB defense more boring.

    Rounds are literally frequently becoming 3-5 hour snoozefests with Sseths on both sides banging their head into the wall. We literally had a day a couple weeks ago that had, and I'm dead serious and can go find it in new-round-alert if needed, 5 back to back 3-5 hour rounds.

    MARINE STALEMATES

    This is due to the amount of latejoining PVTs and the amount of free burrowed xenos get from said latejoining PVTs. It doesn't help that with the addition of perma-nests, random retarded PVT at LZ2 while the FoB is at LZ1 gets nabbed and gives free larva. That, and the fact that if the Queen reaches Ancient, she can literally run around the caves and delay for 2 hours with frenzy speed, rapid fire neuro, and zoomie health and armor. If there's literally any stunning caste with her, she isn't dying.

    Players come to play the game, not sit behind a cade for 2 hours and shoot at xenos. Defending as a marine literally isn't fun at all. Oh boy am I having such fun taking pot shots at xenos who stray near the cades. It's the offense for the marines that's fun, and the defense for the xenos when the marines push past the chokes.

    FRONTLINE VS DEFENSE

    I also feel that the interpretation of 'frontlines' may also just lead to even more FoB snoozefest battles. When we say frontlines, we don't mean staring down the 2 tile cave entrance south of Chapel on Big Red as Young Boiler XX clicks once every so often and prevents your entire squad from pushing.

    When we say frontlines we mean actively engaging and fighting the xenos with no cades to hide behind, EG: When the fog goes down and marines start pushing T-Fort. That's a frontlines. Mobile combat is fun. Stationary waiting and defending is not fun at all. There's already too much waiting in the game, we don't need to add more waiting. This also means we don't need to make it even more brain dead for xenos to defend their turf. The weed slow down is already enough of an advantage for even the slowest xenos. The fact that they can passively regen plasma, heal, get a speed boost, make traps, build walls, etc etc on weeds is enough of a boost to easily defend the hive.

    In my opinion, adding an additional stat boost to xenos in the hive will literally just drag rounds on LONGER as it encourages xenos to camp chokes and turtle even MORE​. Marines don't get a permanent hold order just because they're at their FoB, for example. CAS/OB/Mortar is needed to dislodge Mature Boiler SN-360-P3 from Filtration Caves.

    METARUSHING

    The only map that metarushing is Prison, because it's literal walk-west station. If xenos get metarushed on Big Red, it's because they're bad. Don't hand hold bad players. Marines didn't waltz through the 2 tile hallway and enter south-east caves in 5 minutes because they rushed. They did it because xenos were retarded and didn't make any defenses, didn't weed the place, didn't have Boilers to meet the marines, and so on.

    Marines don't reach north-east LV caves in 5 minutes because they rushed. They reached it because xenos somehow were incapable of holding a 3 tile gap, somehow didn't create any defenses spanning from T-Fort to Containers, and somehow couldn't hold the 50 chokes each cave corner has, and died. Why are you rewarding bad players? I don't see Admins fixing T-Comms for marines when an Engineer still hasn't fixed it by 12:40. I don't see Admins spawning sentries and M56Ds when xenos are knocking at the LZ before an hour has passed. I don't see admins doing any of this - but by god should a known name Deltard be past the fog gap by 12:30, you might as well gib him on the spot.

    By god if Charlie walks 3 tiles outside of Engineering on Big Red, the CO will get crucified. Because apparently having 30 minutes to build a hive and sit at a choke and wait for marines is somehow not enough time???
    Last edited by TrollerNoob; 01-23-2020 at 09:59 PM.
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  7. #7
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    Honestly, I think moving frontlines aren't so much the ideal anyways. I'd prefer maps with a stronger emphasis on flanking around fairly set/determined frontlines, maybe with "deep strike" esque shenanigans a la Paratroopers or Xenos making new tunnels. This'd put much more emphasis on actually controlling the territory you've swept over by maintaining some level of awareness over your back lines, and if coupled with some engineering buffs and maybe a couple new Hivelord structures, this could make Squad Engineer a worthwhile role again in building these static frontlines.

  8. #8
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    Yeah this literal most recent round just enforced the idea that Admins go to retarded measures to deal with metarushing.

    East fog gap is open. Delta solos the xenos at east gap and pushes through. 3 Deltards literally get cut off and 4 xenos are too afraid to go kill them. Fog ends up dropping early due to the nightmare variant. Boilers get OB'd because they're retarded. Xenos get snowballed due to lackluster defenses and bad players. 1st queen dies an Elder Queen.

    Admins then proceed to delete 1 tile gaps into the cave walls so xenos can hide, while also making the new Queen STRAIGHT into an Elder Empress, while also repeatedly forcing a power failure on the Almayer to unnecessarily delay the round.

    It's almost like fog gaps, and fog dropping early nightmare variant is to encourage combat - why are they, quite literally, making young Queens into Elder Empresses when xenos lost the fog gap to one person? Why are they deleting walls to let delayliens delay more when the fog LITERALLY dropped early? There REALLY needs to be a look at what measures can be taken and what can be classified as a metarush. I can go Queen and have marines knocking on my door after 3 T3s die to survivors, and probably get Ravengers spawned for free. It's ridiculous.
    The fabled WEEB


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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by TrollerNoob View Post
    We've been through several balance eras of CM, such as the Mutator Era, the QFA AP Era, the Queen Charge era - and so on.
    But by god is this era arguably the worse. Why? Because we're in the

    Era of Stalemates


    The most annoying and boring part of the game is the waiting. Waiting for briefing, waiting for REQ, waiting to evolve, waiting for armor, waiting for marines to land, waiting to age, waiting for the Alamo, waiting for surgery, waiting to get defibbed, waiting to get a larva, so on and so forth. A game isn't fun when you literally aren't playing the game but just looking at a still monitor.

    It literally only takes 1 Boiler and 1 Hedgehog Ravager to camp East Caves and effectively stall 75% of the marine force. Hivelords can wall off central caves and effectively stall a flank because spending 40 minutes of your time, ammo, and sanity to play minecraft isn't fun - and involves even MORE WAITING Supposedly the XSS rework will fix that aids but this is purely on the current state of the game.

    XENO STALEMATES

    FOB fights aren't fun if it's an autism fort. It basically consists of Boilers, Crushers, and Queens doing all the work while all the other xenos wait around half the time, or suicide into cades because they've gone brain dead from playing Tower Defense Simulator. The Engineering rework might spice it up but I fear it'll essentially just make FoB defense more boring.

    Rounds are literally frequently becoming 3-5 hour snoozefests with Sseths on both sides banging their head into the wall. We literally had a day a couple weeks ago that had, and I'm dead serious and can go find it in new-round-alert if needed, 5 back to back 3-5 hour rounds.

    MARINE STALEMATES

    This is due to the amount of latejoining PVTs and the amount of free burrowed xenos get from said latejoining PVTs. It doesn't help that with the addition of perma-nests, random retarded PVT at LZ2 while the FoB is at LZ1 gets nabbed and gives free larva. That, and the fact that if the Queen reaches Ancient, she can literally run around the caves and delay for 2 hours with frenzy speed, rapid fire neuro, and zoomie health and armor. If there's literally any stunning caste with her, she isn't dying.

    Players come to play the game, not sit behind a cade for 2 hours and shoot at xenos. Defending as a marine literally isn't fun at all. Oh boy am I having such fun taking pot shots at xenos who stray near the cades. It's the offense for the marines that's fun, and the defense for the xenos when the marines push past the chokes.

    FRONTLINE VS DEFENSE

    I also feel that the interpretation of 'frontlines' may also just lead to even more FoB snoozefest battles. When we say frontlines, we don't mean staring down the 2 tile cave entrance south of Chapel on Big Red as Young Boiler XX clicks once every so often and prevents your entire squad from pushing.

    When we say frontlines we mean actively engaging and fighting the xenos with no cades to hide behind, EG: When the fog goes down and marines start pushing T-Fort. That's a frontlines. Mobile combat is fun. Stationary waiting and defending is not fun at all. There's already too much waiting in the game, we don't need to add more waiting. This also means we don't need to make it even more brain dead for xenos to defend their turf. The weed slow down is already enough of an advantage for even the slowest xenos. The fact that they can passively regen plasma, heal, get a speed boost, make traps, build walls, etc etc on weeds is enough of a boost to easily defend the hive.

    In my opinion, adding an additional stat boost to xenos in the hive will literally just drag rounds on LONGER as it encourages xenos to camp chokes and turtle even MORE​. Marines don't get a permanent hold order just because they're at their FoB, for example. CAS/OB/Mortar is needed to dislodge Mature Boiler SN-360-P3 from Filtration Caves.

    METARUSHING

    The only map that metarushing is Prison, because it's literal walk-west station. If xenos get metarushed on Big Red, it's because they're bad. Don't hand hold bad players. Marines didn't waltz through the 2 tile hallway and enter south-east caves in 5 minutes because they rushed. They did it because xenos were retarded and didn't make any defenses, didn't weed the place, didn't have Boilers to meet the marines, and so on.

    Marines don't reach north-east LV caves in 5 minutes because they rushed. They reached it because xenos somehow were incapable of holding a 3 tile gap, somehow didn't create any defenses spanning from T-Fort to Containers, and somehow couldn't hold the 50 chokes each cave corner has, and died. Why are you rewarding bad players? I don't see Admins fixing T-Comms for marines when an Engineer still hasn't fixed it by 12:40. I don't see Admins spawning sentries and M56Ds when xenos are knocking at the LZ before an hour has passed. I don't see admins doing any of this - but by god should a known name Deltard be past the fog gap by 12:30, you might as well gib him on the spot.

    By god if Charlie walks 3 tiles outside of Engineering on Big Red, the CO will get crucified. Because apparently having 30 minutes to build a hive and sit at a choke and wait for marines is somehow not enough time???

    Your last point about LV's east caves literally just happened too, and the admins got so mad about it that they spawned UPP, hostile freelancers, free xenos, and made the next queen evolve super faster. Marines (Mostly Delta) still won.

  10. #10
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    Stalemates are solved with CAS/Mortar/OB.

    Make every tile able to be JTAC'd on and we have an easy solution to lots of stalemates.

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