Effective Starting Defense

BattleTech

On a beginning of a game during ns_bast, I jumped into the commander's chair and dropped a turret factory and ip and armory, I electrified it by accident when our base was under attack by the entire alien team (12v12) game. As usual, all the marine's died leaving only five skulks left to chew the IP. While they chewed the IP, they got zapped by the turret factory that I placed directly next to the IP and killed all of them. Short story short, we won the game.

Starting off, drop a turret factory and electrify it, make sure to squeeze it in nice and tight. Most of them will just ignore the turret factory going if you drop it second or third, going for the IP and Armory.
Drop an IP, and armory after.
Also, since the electricity is long ranged, you can squeeze more buildings around it and it'll keep your base pretty well defended. Which two or three turrets can't do if you run around it.

<img src='http://members.aol.com/battlet3chvx/placement01.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image'>

<img src='http://members.aol.com/battlet3chvx/placement02.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image'>

Xzilen

Yes, very well known already, but it should help others.

Necrosis

Nota bene - Clustering a base will work against you in the long run, especially if the skulks are smart enough not to kill themselves.

Secondly, with that number of skulks they can chomp anyone who spawns, while 2 gorges layeth down teh OC.

Useless strat, in its purest essence, but as with ALL base strategies you need to be competent and observant.

taboofires

Actually, the pic brings up an interesting point. If you drop the TF first, you can place the IP in a way that is better covered by the electricity (half-in the building, really).

DFAVengeance

that may be good for early game but for mid/later games your just setting your base up to be murdered by bile bombs if u clump all your stuff around tfs/rts

Demented

Just use mines.

Alternatively, 3 turrets can cover your base better than 1 elec tf can. Moreover, you will make life harder for lerks. (which will have a field day sporing the hell out of your respawning rines).

Stakhanov

I'd say elec the TF first in decent games , then drop turrets when you have the res or the need arises (lerk or whatever)

ZERG

Um yeah, any of you actually try an elec tf? Don't knock it until you've actually done it. I can see no reason how a skulk can avoid getting fried by electricity with this buildup. Its better than mines. Mines all blow up if they are near each other and open up holes and can avoid them by clinging to the building instead. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> Same with turrets. Elec tf is the best early base defense.

Like Xzilen said, its already a well known technique.

*The only flaw to this is that later, you'll want to put down some turrets when things get heated and your base expands to the point that you can no longer place buildings adjacent to the TF.

r3dsk4r3

i do this all the time, for one, you can leave your base completely unattended until 2 hives. and after that you already have an elec tf to fend off onii (with the help of shotguns of course). if its possible, i like to put the ip in between the legs of the rt and then elec the rt, works just as well but no need for a tf. this is definitely something to take into consideration, as with elec you have no blind spots, just a short range, which isn't really an issue with one hive. if i had to compare 3 turrets vs an elec-cluster, i would have to go with the latter for starting defenses. but that really depends on your playing style. i like to move rt to rt and take hives on the way, so i usually don't have a plethora of buildings at base until i have more than enough res to defend them with turrets. and don't even talk about mines, it takes one skulk to null the whole defense. give it a try, yeah it has bad points, but so does everything else. its definitely far from 'useless'...



on a side note, tell your rines that if they get skulk rushed and are reloading to crowd the elec structures. most times the elec will finish them off before they can bite. its like an extra man.

Tyrsis

While turrets are great and all (not), electrifying the TF (only in pubs), is extremely effective start game strategy. Not only does it flat out stop skulk attacks in the beginning, but also gets your marines out of the base faster. If they're sitting in base building turrets, you lose a good 45-60 seconds of resource rushing. In this time a skulk has gone gorge, built a res node, and gone back skulk. The reason this start game came about really was the realization that if marines don't have more than 3 resource nodes by a certain amount of time, and hold them long enough, they will fall behind far too quickly to compete against the aliens. So you're seeing a lot more marine movement around the map. And strategies like this help momentum. Get them moving and get them moving quickly. Eventually a few turrets go down to stop any brave gorges from dropping OCs, but beyond a base rushing onos, most aliens just decide to forget about it and worry about other things. Like the group of shotgunners heading towards their hive <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->

Tyrsis

MrPink

Yeah thats what I do pretty much every game, I prefer to reserve slots next to it for proto, arms, obs, and IP

Stoneburg

TF+Electrify is enough res to get armslab+armor upg, which in my opinion is a much better investment.

Marq

I also find clustering to be quite useful for building up phase gate points like in a hive location or somthing. What you do is you build the res first, then get it electrified. Then you build the phase gate up against the res tower. If you get lucky enough the game will actually drop the gate on top of your res tower. Your phase gate is now protected. You can do the same with your turrent factory, and this is really useful because res towers have more health and is a better investment to upgrade electricity than TFs.