I've yet to see Marines successfully pull off largescale undefended expanding... as a Skulk, there's nothing I love more than an undefended Node... not only is it easy to destroy, but I get lots of kills when the Marines come to save their node and I eat them instead.
Let's face it. If you hold a Node for a little more than a minute, and it gets you 22 resources before dying, that's a big loss to your team. For that minute, you had less resources than you would have had if you didn't build that node. Even if the Node gets back 30 resources, that's still a loss - for the minute before it became profitable, you had 22 less resources to build stuff, research tech, and equip your marine, and afterwards you only have 8 extra resources. To truly pay for itself, a node has to stand for 2 minutes. If an undefended Node remains standing for 2 minutes, you are facing a truly incompetent Alien team, one that would lose whether you defended your nodes or not.
There are *very* few maps where you can defend a "resource node up ahead" and leave other resource nodes undefended. In maps like Eclipse or Tanith, virtually all of the resource nodes on a map are halfway in between a Hive and the Marine start. In a map like Hera or Caged, the seemingly protected resource nodes have vents or alternate pathways allowing Skulks to enter. Try defending the Holoroom on Hera, and leaving Reception undefended, and you guarantee that the Skulks will be well-fed by your Reception node.
Expanding defenseless is only a good tactic against newbie teams.
Comments
Let's face it. If you hold a Node for a little more than a minute, and it gets you 22 resources before dying, that's a big loss to your team. For that minute, you had less resources than you would have had if you didn't build that node. Even if the Node gets back 30 resources, that's still a loss - for the minute before it became profitable, you had 22 less resources to build stuff, research tech, and equip your marine, and afterwards you only have 8 extra resources. To truly pay for itself, a node has to stand for 2 minutes. If an undefended Node remains standing for 2 minutes, you are facing a truly incompetent Alien team, one that would lose whether you defended your nodes or not.
There are *very* few maps where you can defend a "resource node up ahead" and leave other resource nodes undefended. In maps like Eclipse or Tanith, virtually all of the resource nodes on a map are halfway in between a Hive and the Marine start. In a map like Hera or Caged, the seemingly protected resource nodes have vents or alternate pathways allowing Skulks to enter. Try defending the Holoroom on Hera, and leaving Reception undefended, and you guarantee that the Skulks will be well-fed by your Reception node.
Expanding defenseless is only a good tactic against newbie teams.