Rt/dc

comrade · January 2005

<div class="IPBDescription">is it worth it?</div> Lately many teams in Europe have been having one of their RT building gorges go back to the hive and sit there building the DC one at a time. This frees one player up to early lerk, have a third fade, whatever and it's good if you can pull it off but I personally don't think it's worth having one less player out on the field, especially if your nodes get taken down. It can take up to ten minutes just for three DC this way.

Anyway, do you think it's worth it and why? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif' />

MrBen · January 2005

If you hold your RTs then the extra fade or early lerk will easily make up for 1 missing skulk. However if you lose your RTs or the gorges get killed before they get back to the hive then you're totally ****. It can take ages to get the DCs up again and depending on the rest of your strat you don't leave much room for recapping.

If you do go for an early lerk then you have to make sure he's careful, there'll be a period of a minute or so when he has no DCs at all and getting trapped in a vent or clipped on the way back to the hive because of no regen isn't exactly ideal.
I'd personally not encourage the use of 3 fades, from experience i've found that 3 fades just leads to more deaths. Too many cooks ruin the meal and all that. It's easy to block each other or hinder each others progress. Of course there are scenarios where 3 fades could be super duper go faster useful, but my general alien plan is to avoid them.

The other down side is that the poor guy who has to sit in the hive will be bored
out of their minds and It's a pretty mean thing to ask people to do. "just sit there and don't move, k."

I think if you have a good enough early lerkand a player is happy to take the role then it certainly does have advantages. An early lerk can really boost your early game and slow down marine progress. It gives you some room to manuever and allows you to pressure their RTs whilst defending your own more comfortably.

tjosan · January 2005

But I mean, if you got a guy like MrBen on the team, you'd probably get more out of the round if you had him drop DCs instead of skulking.
"eheheheh".

Anyway jokes aside, with the introduction of free upgrades, it will probably be more advantageous to drop chambers early instead of late since carapace or silence works wonder with skulks.

In addition as mentioned above, you run a higher risk of losing your rts with one less skulk on the field, and if you got no rts, you'll get no chambers. I really cant see that this will ever be a mainstay strategy, even though it might work on certain maps or against team you know play passively as marines.

fanatic · January 2005

Good job actually starting a discussion here, mu. :E

Personally I, and Knife for that matter, have decided not to follow this trend, as it's
too risky and doesn't give all that much of an advantage in return. You lose a
skulk on the field, which is vital for the survival of your nodes, and you're going to
have serious trouble getting res for more RTs later in the game. A third Fade can
be useful, but early Lerks are a waste of res in my opinion.

kavasa · January 2005

Seems like a holdover from the 1.0-2.0 transition to me. This is sort of how we'd play games when we had a 1.0 mentality and it was basically "ok get as many fades as possible live as soon as possible". And, as has been said, it simply turned out to be too risky of a strategy. It's essentially banking on a one-hive win, and unless you've been totally shutting their resources down, you'll be trying to force a fast end with no umbra vs. HMGs. gl with that.

comrade · January 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (kavasa @ Jan 11 2005, 01:00 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Seems like a holdover from the 1.0-2.0 transition to me. This is sort of how we'd play games when we had a 1.0 mentality and it was basically "ok get as many fades as possible live as soon as possible". And, as has been said, it simply turned out to be too risky of a strategy. It's essentially banking on a one-hive win, and unless you've been totally shutting their resources down, you'll be trying to force a fast end with no umbra vs. HMGs. gl with that.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
What usually happens is one RT builder runs back to the hive to drop DC slowly and the person who would usually build DC in an rt/rt/dc/hive/fade/fade strat goes early lerk, helping defend nodes and the building hive and then the game carries on as normal.

Albino · January 2005

This strat is pretty good if you know what to do when things go wrong. There seems to be a problem with it when you get to mid game and you have 3 fades, rt lerk, gorge and one skulk. Having only one skulk for the odd jobs such as rt chewing and parasiting is not so great.

Lancelot · January 2005

Being from an inferior clan with less experience I don't have the authority you guys command, but even we experimented with both versions.

We even tried 2 Gorges (Rt) -> Skulk (both! losing 20 res..) -> defend RTs -> when 19 Res go Gorge and build 1 DC each, one stays Gorge until he gets another DC.
But we played against a even worse clan so we don't really know if the strategy was really usefull, but everything worked out fine. We had 6 Skulks defendind the RTs durign the crucial time, and we had one early Lerk and 2 Fades.

Major disadvantage: No res for an additional RT or for recap.

We were doing something similar in tonights GO Match and it worked, we won the alien round thx to the lerk, that spored the relocate.

mfg

Lance

Armageddon · January 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (comrade @ Jan 11 2005, 12:18 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Lately many teams in Europe have been having one of their RT building gorges go back to the hive and sit there building the DC one at a time. This frees one player up to early lerk, have a third fade, whatever and it's good if you can pull it off but I personally don't think it's worth having one less player out on the field, especially if your nodes get taken down. It can take up to ten minutes just for three DC this way.

Anyway, do you think it's worth it and why? <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif' />  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
This kind of strat is kind of sketchy, imo, because if your team faders go fade early, they won't have 3 dcs available to them in that time.

Buggy · January 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (fanatic @ Jan 11 2005, 12:50 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> but early Lerks are a waste of res in my opinion.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
Care to elaborate?

(Just curious, no flames/criticism intended).

todd1Ok · January 2005

i feel early lerks are a vital part of any alien team, stripping marines of their armor and bring them back down from 3 bites, to 2.

kavasa · January 2005

Early lerks add that extra sexy spice to the alien early game that is otherwise sadly missing.

comrade · January 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Buggy @ Jan 18 2005, 05:16 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> </div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (fanatic @ Jan 11 2005, 12:50 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> but early Lerks are a waste of res in my opinion. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
Care to elaborate?

(Just curious, no flames/criticism intended).  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
hahahahaha

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Armageddon)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> This kind of strat is kind of sketchy, imo, because if your team faders go fade early, they won't have 3 dcs available to them in that time.</td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>

That really doesn't matter too much early on.

fanatic · January 2005

I would rather spend the res used on the early Lerk on other things, especially considering they don't make THAT much of an impact without DCs or MCs, and tend to die if they get careless. I'm not saying early Lerks can't be useful, but my opinion (and the general opinion in Knife) is that early Lerks aren't worth the cost.

Albino · January 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (fanatic @ Jan 18 2005, 10:09 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> I would rather spend the res used on the early Lerk on other things, especially considering they don't make THAT much of an impact without DCs, and tend to die if they get careless. I'm not saying early Lerks can't be useful, but my opinion (and the general opinion in Knife) is that early Lerks aren't worth the cost.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
I believe they are definitely worth the cost. With their high rate of speed and manuverability they are priceless if you have a skilled lerk. Lerks are the ultimate distraction. Everyone wants to blast a lerk in the butt.

NGE · January 2005

Holding your DC's off that long, and haveing that many less skulks seems like a surefire suicide to me.

Lancelot · January 2005

simple truth, you don't have to hold your DCs back. What you do is limiting your option to rebuild stuff... But there are always advantages and drawbacks.

Calculate:
1 Perma getting 1 node and 2 DCs -> 45 Res -> becoming skulk
1 Temp Gorge getting 1 node -> skulking to defend -> gorging again to get 1 Dc and stay new perma -> 45 Res
1 Hive guy -> 50 Res
2 Fades -> 50 Res
1 Lerk - 30 Res (or third fade -> 50 res)

The Hive Saver and the high lifeform savers will have more RFK thus being able to gestate earlier..but DCs could be up in time for the Fades.

IMHO

Lance

grepdashv · January 2005

You definitely don't want any of your players to just sit around waiting for resources to flow in. If you are going to have some kind of permagorge, it's best for that player to get boosted into a safe spot near the middle of the map so that teammates (skulks, especially) can stay more engaged in combat by not having to go all the way back to the hive in order to heal.

Gecko_God_Of_Dooom · January 2005

I find that strategy usefull on certain maps. having 3 fades is realy nice when your defending your hive. and after the DCs go up, you now have an extra skulk who can patrol and kill Rts. then you just have 2 fades defend hive thats going up along with lerk. and one fade herass thier base.

although I think having a late fade is better than a late lerk.

MrBen · January 2005

I agree with albino, the lerk isn't exactly a massive killer but it's a huge distraction and opens up opportunities for your skulks that weren't there before.

tjosan · January 2005

Sure, if you can manage without a lerk then it's surely better to spend res on other things. Most clans have a problem with their early game skulking though, and cant play as defensively as is required and succed, so they need something to make up for that. A lerk gives the extra spice to the alien early game and allows them to be more aggressive which lets them manage until fades are around.

Grendel · January 2005

The Lerk is the only weapon in the kharaa's armoury that can push marines out of an area in the first five minutes. With parasite, there's no reason why your Lerk should die and the medpack cost alone of sporing makes it all worthwhile, imho.

homicide · January 2005

While the idea of an earily lerk without chambers is optimistic, it never seems to work. An mc early lerk can be rather effective, but dropping any chamber that early is a big investment. Given the situation that started this thread, I would not sacrafice slow DCs and a player for an earily lerk. I really dont like early lerk with a DC strat period.

Router_Box · January 2005

In defense of the strat, I've seen it work extremely well.

2 fades
1 rt lerk
1 rt/dc
1 rt/dc/dc
1 hive

faster fades, faster second hive, and if you defend your nodes you get a 2 hive onos at about 9 min.

Rt/dc

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