Expansion

grepdashv

<div class="IPBDescription">Resource Towers</div> Topic for discussion: in your matches, do you simply try to cap all of the resource nodes that you can, or do you limit yourself to a specific number of RTs and then work on keeping enemy RTs down? What factors do you consider when deciding which nodes to cap first?

fanatic

We generally work on having at least 3-4 RTs up, excluding base RT, before we start attacking alien RTs. Depending on whether or not we manage to do this, we adapt whatever we do to how the game seems to be progressing. IE. if we feel they're getting too much res, we drop shotguns and try to get it all down quickly. If we're really low on res, we ignore their RTs and concentrate on building RTs for ourselves.

A balanced tactic where you do a little of both is usually the most successful from my experience, though.

SquishyOne

Easy question. Rines cap every node they can as long as their capper isn't getting killed. They also like to cap the nodes behind their pressure team so that they are always protected.

Aliens in general cap the nodes close to them. That is only because those are the most easily defendable nodes though. It is much more critical for aliens to protect their nodes than it is for marines. In general you'll see 2 nodes capped early occaisonally 1 or 3. After that it depends on the flow of the game. If none of the alien nodes are taken down (which is critical for rines to do) The game is either over in the aliens favor or the rines went for a 2 hive lockdown. The aliens wil only start capping nodes not in easily defensible positions if they are able to hold the marines out.

TBH one thing not good about ns the way it is balanced is that the first battles have one focus in general. The aliens first 2 res nodes. If the marines can kill them fast they are set. If they aliens can hold them until they have fades they are set. The team that accomplishes this first goal will win at least 80+ percent of the time.

An example of an undefensible close node is powersub when you have comp core hive.

[Edit by Grendel] PM Nem about it. Don't bring it up again here, please. [/Edit]

fanatic

I wrote my post thinking most of what SquishyOne said was self-explainatory, but I see the point of reiterating it for players who're not neccessarily experienced in competitive NS.

Good point about the RT focus bit, it's probably the least dynamic part of NS gameplay right now.