The Most Insane Stratigy Ever
Swiftspear
Custim tital Join Date: 2003-10-29 Member: 22097Members
Custim tital Join Date: 2003-10-29 Member: 22097Members
<div class="IPBDescription">that results in rine wins every game</div> Credits go to newborn for fudging around as a comm until he figured this one out, it probably would never have been thought of otherwize. Basicly this is all but a glitch that exploits the fact that a electrified res node pays for itself within three minutes. Unfortuneately aliens require four minutes to get a fade.
What you do is have every marine rush out of base with the exception of one, who's job is to build a TF and later ips. All the marines rush the closesest 2 res nodes to marine start and work together tooth and nail to put them up as soon as possible at all costs. The commander drops only a TF in base, and as soon as the two res nodes are up he electrifies them emidiately. At this point the marines are holding 3 res nodes at less then one minute into the game that cannot be taken down until the very earliest 4 minutes into the game. That means that for at least one minute you have a guarenteed positive res flow from three nodes, more or less the best you can hope for in a game without electrifying nodes anyways.
After this point the com builds one or possibly two (up to his discretion and dependent on how many of his team members are dying) Ips and an armory. Hopping out of the chair to help your in base TF builder build is a good idea here, as your base is exceptionally weak before the IP's are up, expecially if more then one or two marines have already died and are unable to spawn yet. Now that you have three undestroyable nodes working towards your expansion, its time to really drive in the screws. Get your marines to move through the map capping every node possible and emidiately electrifying them. With a little luck you should be able to at least have five nodes capped before the aliens even have lerks or chambers, even if you can't afford to electrify one of them immediatly. If you have done it right you should have effectivly sealed possession of five res nodes while restricting the aliens to a MAXIMUM of five nodes, that you can now devote all your energy towards killing due to the fact that you need to spend nearly no further resourses or marine time worrying about defending the majority of your nodes. And with an incoming res flow from five nodes, you can extreamly rapidly afford to upgrade and tech up. The last game I played we did double obs double arms lab and still had an average of 50 res in que at all times that the comm dropped as shotties.
Continue taking nodes and electifying them as much as possible, and if you grab a hive node use your insane res flow to immediately drop a PG by it, as an electified node with a pg beside it is all you really need to lock down a hive from a team of skulks, which is what you will be seeing for the vast majority as the aliens are restricted slowly to 2 or less res nodes.
Of course by this time fades are on the map and maby even onos, the aliens may even succeed in taking out one of your hive lockdowns and getting hive 2, but that is really errelivent because you have 7 electrified nodes on the map in you can easily afford to equip your whole team of L3 armor marines with L3 shotguns and HMGs, so just make the fades overwhelming task of single handedly taking down 7 electrified nodes harder by gaurding them as much as possible with HMG or shotty marines.
I'm positive that there are probably extreamly effective counters to this style elec rush, expecially since you don't drop ips until after people are already dying, but the fact is they are counterintuitive to the general play style of the alien game, which is to fight for the early nodes and defend thier own nodes enough to afford fades and the hive. If the aliens do not attack base they really have no chance of defeating this stratigy, because this stragtigy extreamly rapidly denys them the res they need to GET the hive up and GET the fades they need to destroy the electrified nodes.
If you doubt this works, I welcome you to cruch the numbers. having 3 untakable nodes instantly on the map is undenyable progressive res flow, and they won't be taken out for quite some time, giving the electricity more then enough time to pay for itself. It is really comparable to starting the marines with 3 nodes in the begining of the game rather then one. The great thing is it only requires reasonable marine teamwork too, enough that your average marine team who would have a chance of winning the game normally will easily be able to muster. It isn't like a mass alien cloak rush which requires intense ammounts of cooperation, it plays like a normal rine game, just with a MASSIVE starting boost.
Try it some time, I can all but guarentee it won't dissapoint.
What you do is have every marine rush out of base with the exception of one, who's job is to build a TF and later ips. All the marines rush the closesest 2 res nodes to marine start and work together tooth and nail to put them up as soon as possible at all costs. The commander drops only a TF in base, and as soon as the two res nodes are up he electrifies them emidiately. At this point the marines are holding 3 res nodes at less then one minute into the game that cannot be taken down until the very earliest 4 minutes into the game. That means that for at least one minute you have a guarenteed positive res flow from three nodes, more or less the best you can hope for in a game without electrifying nodes anyways.
After this point the com builds one or possibly two (up to his discretion and dependent on how many of his team members are dying) Ips and an armory. Hopping out of the chair to help your in base TF builder build is a good idea here, as your base is exceptionally weak before the IP's are up, expecially if more then one or two marines have already died and are unable to spawn yet. Now that you have three undestroyable nodes working towards your expansion, its time to really drive in the screws. Get your marines to move through the map capping every node possible and emidiately electrifying them. With a little luck you should be able to at least have five nodes capped before the aliens even have lerks or chambers, even if you can't afford to electrify one of them immediatly. If you have done it right you should have effectivly sealed possession of five res nodes while restricting the aliens to a MAXIMUM of five nodes, that you can now devote all your energy towards killing due to the fact that you need to spend nearly no further resourses or marine time worrying about defending the majority of your nodes. And with an incoming res flow from five nodes, you can extreamly rapidly afford to upgrade and tech up. The last game I played we did double obs double arms lab and still had an average of 50 res in que at all times that the comm dropped as shotties.
Continue taking nodes and electifying them as much as possible, and if you grab a hive node use your insane res flow to immediately drop a PG by it, as an electified node with a pg beside it is all you really need to lock down a hive from a team of skulks, which is what you will be seeing for the vast majority as the aliens are restricted slowly to 2 or less res nodes.
Of course by this time fades are on the map and maby even onos, the aliens may even succeed in taking out one of your hive lockdowns and getting hive 2, but that is really errelivent because you have 7 electrified nodes on the map in you can easily afford to equip your whole team of L3 armor marines with L3 shotguns and HMGs, so just make the fades overwhelming task of single handedly taking down 7 electrified nodes harder by gaurding them as much as possible with HMG or shotty marines.
I'm positive that there are probably extreamly effective counters to this style elec rush, expecially since you don't drop ips until after people are already dying, but the fact is they are counterintuitive to the general play style of the alien game, which is to fight for the early nodes and defend thier own nodes enough to afford fades and the hive. If the aliens do not attack base they really have no chance of defeating this stratigy, because this stragtigy extreamly rapidly denys them the res they need to GET the hive up and GET the fades they need to destroy the electrified nodes.
If you doubt this works, I welcome you to cruch the numbers. having 3 untakable nodes instantly on the map is undenyable progressive res flow, and they won't be taken out for quite some time, giving the electricity more then enough time to pay for itself. It is really comparable to starting the marines with 3 nodes in the begining of the game rather then one. The great thing is it only requires reasonable marine teamwork too, enough that your average marine team who would have a chance of winning the game normally will easily be able to muster. It isn't like a mass alien cloak rush which requires intense ammounts of cooperation, it plays like a normal rine game, just with a MASSIVE starting boost.
Try it some time, I can all but guarentee it won't dissapoint.
Comments
I've been part of four games in which this strat has been applied, 3 as aliens and 1 as marine. 2 of the alien games we acctually had vastly higher K/D on average then the marine team, expecially after the 4 min fades came out, also it helped that they didn't die for at least a good two minutes. But when the **** hit the fan our fades couldn't manage to take out more then 2-3 electric nozzles, we never got more then 3 nozzels up for any long period of time, and the marines never had less then 4 nozzles. The marines were able to afford tonnes of shotties and upgrades extreamly fast after they overcame the original 2 elec node res hit.
Crunch the numbers yourself. Give each team a reasonable ammount of nodes they get within the first few minutes of the game, deduct all the original 100 res for the marines, and then just let the game run through without deducting any marine nozzles until four minutes into the game. The numbers are stagaring. The marines may start getting upgrades late, but once they start they easily have enough res to double arms lab. Honestly I was expecting to reach L3 A and W much later then in a normal game when I played as a marine, but in reality they came faster then I am used to getting them. I honestly don't think an alien win is possible unless they luck out and can prevent one of the original two nodes from going up, or they can exploit the fact that the marine base is uncharacteristicly weak for the first 2 minutes of the game. Niether of which are generally prioritized alien stratigies.
This stratigy is insane, and it is rediculously counter intuitive, but it is EXTREAMLY effective, far beyond the point I ever would have dreamed. The trick to it is, you always have your marines where the action is happening and where they are doing the real damage to the alien infastrucure and res flow. The aliens cannot rely on thier early super units to dig them out of the hole that you have made WAY too deep.
The test games were all preformed on Lunixmonster server with an aproximate reg attendence of 60%. I personally belive this stratigy could effectivly transfer to low skill pubs and clan play due to the fact that it required no extream cohersion on the marine team and it effectively attacks the high level alien stratigies where they are weakest. At very least I can assure you that if you try this on mid/high skill level pubs you will see the marines win the vast majority of the games they use it.
I'm seeing far too many weaknesses for this to be seriously effective.
It has the other benefit of being a SC-counter as well, if that is the chamber dropped.
However, it'll only be for big games of 8v8 and above, and not for tourny as marines will not have the res to counter-tech 3-4 minute fades and a 2nd hive.
If your team is anywhere decent, you should cap the 2 closest RTs, but don't electrify. Head deeper into the map, and cap another 2 RTs, and electrify those 2.
The rationale is that RTs near your base are easily defended by respawning marines, and capping RTs further away will also deprive kharaa of res.
If your team is anywhere decent, you should cap the 2 closest RTs, but don't electrify. Head deeper into the map, and cap another 2 RTs, and electrify those 2.
The rationale is that RTs near your base are easily defended by respawning marines, and capping RTs further away will also deprive kharaa of res. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
And then comes the mighty PG and after that those nearby rt`s are "bye bye"
Dont we all love killing 10s walk ms rts due marine logistics with pg?
I'm seeing far too many weaknesses for this to be seriously effective. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I had it used against me once when we went DC first and twice when we went MC first. The elec RTs go up so fast that by the time fades get on the map, even regen fades can't kill enough of them to pull the aliens out of the hole... We got SO close one game, MC first, I went up about 16/2 as a fade and we acctually got 4 map nodes up, but the marines were able to hold thier two hive lockdown that we had given them in favor of getting some nodes ourselfs.
I agree though, a good base rush would absolutly decimate this strat. All the RTs in the world don't mean anything if you can't afford to drop IPs after the aliens force a RL. The thing is, it has to come early to counter, because with the TF in base it is easy to just lay a couple turrets around once the res really starts rolling in, so you have to know that the marines are trying to pull it off and counter with the base rush immediatly.
Honestly, if you get 5 res nodes down, it doesn't really matter if electrified nodes take 3 minutes to pay for themselfs. You will still have enough res to counter fades with weapon ups and shotties when they start appearing.
[edit]
MistenTH: if you can get nodes farther away from the base without building IPs then this strat would absolutly decimate the aliens. The trick to it is getting the elec nodes up in time to use the incoming res flow to pay for your ips because that means your electrified nodes start paying for themself almost immediatly. Tfac = ten res, 2 elec RTs = 90 res, so your initial 100 res is used up right from electrified structures, leaving you only profit to spend on proper base start structures. It is ABSOLUTLY NESSICARY that whatever two nodes you electrify DO NOT get taken down before they can finish thier electrification. the loss of an initial 45 res without the gain of a long term invincible res node would spell certian defeat for the marine team. Once your marines have a node up, have them stay in the area to make sure it stays up long enough to finish electrification (it only takes 30 seconds, but 2 skulks working together can take a node down faster then that).
Abra: I play mostly Lunixmonster, one of the more popular western classic servers.
<a href='http://www.lunixmonster.org/' target='_blank'>LM website</a>
So, by the time your armory has gone up, the aliens have just about finished laying down their sensory network. Note: you have 0 res, no obs, no arms lab, and your team will have to go against upgraded aliens and possibly a lerk. With no obs and no AL, and with sensory being the most commonly dropped chamber nowadays, how the heck are your marines going to survive against cloakus skulks? Even if SCs weren't dropped, you've pretty much given the aliens a BIG head start. Your marines won't be able to expand much at this point against aliens that are competent at ALL. It'd take another 32 seconds to get enough res for an arms lab (costs 25) and that is STILL assuming you have dropped no meds and ammo. Another 28 seconds to be able to START researching armor1 at about 2 minutes into the game.
Your marines should be dying left and right about now, and of course you only have one IP. You can't take down alien nodes becuase your marines can't survive due to no upgrades/very little med/ammo support, and you can start seeing those focus Fades about a minute after armor1 finishes. With this kind of tech, and still without an obs, how are you going to kill the second hive?
So, by the time your armory has gone up, the aliens have just about finished laying down their sensory network. Note: you have 0 res, no obs, no arms lab, and your team will have to go against upgraded aliens and possibly a lerk. With no obs and no AL, and with sensory being the most commonly dropped chamber nowadays, how the heck are your marines going to survive against cloakus skulks? Even if SCs weren't dropped, you've pretty much given the aliens a BIG head start. Your marines won't be able to expand much at this point against aliens that are competent at ALL. It'd take another 32 seconds to get enough res for an arms lab (costs 25) and that is STILL assuming you have dropped no meds and ammo. Another 28 seconds to be able to START researching armor1 at about 2 minutes into the game.
Your marines should be dying left and right about now, and of course you only have one IP. You can't take down alien nodes becuase your marines can't survive due to no upgrades/very little med/ammo support, and you can start seeing those focus Fades about a minute after armor1 finishes. With this kind of tech, and still without an obs, how are you going to kill the second hive? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm in the process of doing a complicated full scale calculation of the res ammount for a 6v6 game. By my calculations so far, at 4 minutes the marines would probably have armor one, and at LEAST 5 res nodes with 4 of them electrified (base RT doesn't get eleced) most likely 6 with 4 elec. At 5 RTs a marine com can afford to drop a shotgun every 8.5 seconds, and it only takes him 17 seconds to have enough res to get weapons one/obs. in one minutes time he can has aquired ~ 75 res enough to shotty equip an entire team, recearch L1 weapons and within 7 seconds drop another node. Even if the fade immediately begins node smashing when he finishes up at 3.10ish, without focus he takes around one minute to chew down an electrified node, assuming he doesn't come into conflict with ANY marines and at this point in the game the greatest help the other lifeforms can be is to lerk or OC gorge. Lerks get chewed up agianst L1 shotties, and an OC takes about 4 minutes to take down an RT. The earliest possible time the aliens can limit the marines to > 4 nodes is ~ 7 minutes and that is if the shottied marines do an ABSOLUTLY TERRIBLE job of defending thier electrified nodes, at that point it is quite conciveable for the armory to be upgraded, a proto dropped, the marine team fully equiped and reequiped a few times, and weapons 3 recearched, all the while the marine team STILL has 3 nodes up, 2 of which are probably still electrified. Even if the aliens get several fades or a few onos, there will be enough res for HMGs to SERIOUSLY contend with them as a threat, and if they do devote that kind of res to higher lifeforms they will have an increadibly difficult time recapping nodes that the marines manage to take down, and generally placeing the 3 hive 2 chambers.
So, by the time your armory has gone up, the aliens have just about finished laying down their sensory network. Note: you have 0 res, no obs, no arms lab, and your team will have to go against upgraded aliens and possibly a lerk. With no obs and no AL, and with sensory being the most commonly dropped chamber nowadays, how the heck are your marines going to survive against cloakus skulks? Even if SCs weren't dropped, you've pretty much given the aliens a BIG head start. Your marines won't be able to expand much at this point against aliens that are competent at ALL. It'd take another 32 seconds to get enough res for an arms lab (costs 25) and that is STILL assuming you have dropped no meds and ammo. Another 28 seconds to be able to START researching armor1 at about 2 minutes into the game.
Your marines should be dying left and right about now, and of course you only have one IP. You can't take down alien nodes becuase your marines can't survive due to no upgrades/very little med/ammo support, and you can start seeing those focus Fades about a minute after armor1 finishes. With this kind of tech, and still without an obs, how are you going to kill the second hive? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm in the process of doing a complicated full scale calculation of the res ammount for a 6v6 game. By my calculations so far, at 4 minutes the marines would probably have armor one, and at LEAST 5 res nodes with 4 of them electrified (base RT doesn't get eleced) most likely 6 with 4 elec. At 5 RTs a marine com can afford to drop a shotgun every 8.5 seconds, and it only takes him 17 seconds to have enough res to get weapons one/obs. in one minutes time he can has aquired ~ 75 res enough to shotty equip an entire team, recearch L1 weapons and within 7 seconds drop another node. Even if the fade immediately begins node smashing when he finishes up at 3.10ish, without focus he takes around one minute to chew down an electrified node, assuming he doesn't come into conflict with ANY marines and at this point in the game the greatest help the other lifeforms can be is to lerk or OC gorge. Lerks get chewed up agianst L1 shotties, and an OC takes about 4 minutes to take down an RT. The earliest possible time the aliens can limit the marines to > 4 nodes is ~ 7 minutes and that is if the shottied marines do an ABSOLUTLY TERRIBLE job of defending thier electrified nodes, at that point it is quite conciveable for the armory to be upgraded, a proto dropped, the marine team fully equiped and reequiped a few times, and weapons 3 recearched, all the while the marine team STILL has 3 nodes up, 2 of which are probably still electrified. Even if the aliens get several fades or a few onos, there will be enough res for HMGs to SERIOUSLY contend with them as a threat, and if they do devote that kind of res to higher lifeforms they will have an increadibly difficult time recapping nodes that the marines manage to take down, and generally placeing the 3 hive 2 chambers. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Basically you assume your marines will actually get to the nodes they want to build, and can keep the nodes untill elec is finished. This without a1 or shotguns, and with minimal medpacking.
It's totally rediculous against a decent alien team.
You can't expand because right now, alien early game >= marine early game, and marines *need* upgrades right away against decent alien teams.
Tsojan, why don't you give us some projected res node counts, resource counts, tech counts, and alien lifeform counts for us at various times? with this strat, when can we expect the 2nd hive to finish?(i.e, marines lose their res nodes?)
Yeah, thats a real toughie. I just don't see any good reason for it - the closest thing to a good use of elec I've seen is in relocations or on a doublenode with a PG - covering 2 nodes and a Phasegate is well worthwhile.
The only possible benefit from mass electrification is between 4 and 6 minutes, those 2 minutes you earn (off 5 nodes) 150 res while they won't have the time to deal with them as the second hive goes up. Still not coming out ahead as opposed to just mass-capping though.
To me it sounds more like newborn has finally figured out that resnodes are awesome. Yay. Maybe his shittastic comming will be less annoying now.
You have at least 4 marines with absolutly nothing to do besides work together. Any RT they move on is going to be capped, and alien RT they move on is going to go down. Until 3.10 the aliens don't have a fade, and a fade is the only thing that can effectively stop 4 marines moving together from capping node to node through the map, unless the skulks are INCREADIBLY lucky in thier attacks. Keep in mind, your 4 marines are not ninjaing for phase gates or trying to put siege up by hives quite yet. Why would any normal alien team bother pushing all the skulks on such a large group of marines at one time? they still need at least one of them dropping chambers until ~2 minutes into the game, and any decent alien team will have at least two skulks patroling for rambos at all times as well. The largest coordinated group of skulks the marines are likely to encounter is 3, and in most situations 4 vanilla marines can handle 3 skulks.
The earliest the aliens are able to take down ONE electrified node is 4.0 minutes into the game, and by that point the marine commander has ammased enough res for 5 shotties, weapons one and armor one. If the marines aren't still making progress by then they probably would have lost a normal game long ago anyways.
[edit]Godlol, stop flaming me. I seriously doubt that you were there when this was played earlier, and you are taking quotes from me compleatly out of context.
If you don't belive this can work FRIGGING CRUNCH THE NUMBERS. Scenarios like "marines can't acctually get 5 res nodes" and "weapons 0 marines just get raped by early fades" are unrealistic, because THE GAME IS NOT OVER AS SOON AS THE EARLY FADE COMES ON THE MAP. A fade at the top of his game takes around one minute to smash down an elec RT, and he is forced to retreat if even an LMG comes to contend with him because elec RT smashing eats up ALOT of health. If the marines have 3 electrified RTs at 3.10 a single fade left ONLY to node smash wouldn't be able to take all 3 of them out until ~ 6.0. By that point the commander has recieved 135 res. More then enough to bring a marine team to the point where it can contend with SEVERAL fades.
The fact is if the fade were even to do that, he would essentially be leaving the map to the four marines to do whatever they please with anyways, it is ludicous to think that they would not be able to drop more RTs while the fade was nodesmashing, or just simply bother the fade while he is trying to node smash, signifigantly increasing the time it takes for him to get all 3 nodes down. The earliest any other life from can even START to fade is 5.30 minutes, and that is assuming they can take and HOLD 4 nodes as fast as possible from the begining of the game. By the time the early fade gets help from his other lifeforms there is no reason why the entire marine team can't be equipped with shotguns, have A1 and W1 and be recearching W2. And all the mathimatical scenarioes I am describing are INCREDIBLY generous to the aliens anyway. A marine team that needs to put no concern into defending existing structures WILL generally take down alien nodes. A single fade swiping down an electrified RT usually WILL be interupted. A marine team with nothing better to do WILL expand and take more res nodes in the 3 miuntes it takes for the early fade to effectively take down all the electrified RTs.[/edit]
Face it. Marine without upgrades are toast after the 1-1:30 mark. We assume that both teams have the same amount of teamwork for fariness sake, and through scent of fear (from the sensory network) they can easily tell where your big group of marines are heading and ambush accordingly, and you still can't scan until who knows how long. Your towers take 30 seconds to electrify, and if you have 4 marines stay in one group, unless the first res you cap is double, you'll need 30 seconds to get to, and build the first node, and then 30 seconds more to protect it while it electrifies. That's already one minute into the game for one node. You'll need to spend on average one minute to cap each node (getting there, building it, waiting for it to electrify). All the while only using plain, no upgrade marines while dropping next to no ammo/meds. Please tell me how your marines will expand against upgraded aliens. Sensory especially will tear your marines to pieces.
EDIT: Your a0/w0 marines can be taken down by competent skulks just because for the fact they have upgrades and you don't. Hell, ONE competent lerk will drain you of resources so quickly you'll be waiting forever to get upgrades. With all of your marines in one big group, the lerk can force you to drop lots and lots of meds, and then you either won't have the res to electrify or upgrade. Besides, you're spending 30 seconds extra on each res node because you need to defend it until it electrifies! That's time taken away from attacking alien nodes!
The peak of delusion comes when you expect 4 armor 0 LunixMonster marines to hold up against remotely competent aliens. At best they'll end up blocking eachother, at worst they'll just kill eachother outright the first time they see a Skulk. But with some optimism I can see even these guys capping nodes together. Skill aside, neither the best or worst marine team is useful while pressuring with Armor0 - unless aliens suck to the point where you wouldn't need an IP to win anyway.
I'm just plain old baffled by the powerful ignorance you managed to summon to think of "OMG FOUR MARINES! FOUR!" as a new, useful or relevant idea. People have been using groups of 4 on occasion since the dawn of time - 4 man acidic rush, to use last weeks CAL map as an example (lots of fresh HLTV demos to observe there). In a 6v6, every alien team in existence attacks your marines wether they're 4 or 2 or 1 or 3 or 5 or even 6 the moment they threaten a resnode or pass a dangerous chokepoint. Its so completely a fact of life the most successful pressure strats utilize hitting multiple of these response points at once, in different strength, to disband alien coordination. That you think an alien team wouldn't do that just makes my flipping EYES BLEED SENIOR.
The more I read from you I strongly suspect you wouldn't know viable strategy if it came up to you and licked your asscrack.
[edit]Godlol, stop flaming me. I seriously doubt that you were there when this was played earlier, and you are taking quotes from me compleatly out of context.
If you don't belive this can work FRIGGING CRUNCH THE NUMBERS. Scenarios like "marines can't acctually get 5 res nodes" and "weapons 0 marines just get raped by early fades" are unrealistic, because THE GAME IS NOT OVER AS SOON AS THE EARLY FADE COMES ON THE MAP. A fade at the top of his game takes around one minute to smash down an elec RT, and he is forced to retreat if even an LMG comes to contend with him because elec RT smashing eats up ALOT of health. If the marines have 3 electrified RTs at 3.10 a single fade left ONLY to node smash wouldn't be able to take all 3 of them out until ~ 6.0. By that point the commander has recieved 135 res. More then enough to bring a marine team to the point where it can contend with SEVERAL fades.
The fact is if the fade were even to do that, he would essentially be leaving the map to the four marines to do whatever they please with anyways, it is ludicous to think that they would not be able to drop more RTs while the fade was nodesmashing, or just simply bother the fade while he is trying to node smash, signifigantly increasing the time it takes for him to get all 3 nodes down. The earliest any other life from can even START to fade is 5.30 minutes, and that is assuming they can take and HOLD 4 nodes as fast as possible from the begining of the game. By the time the early fade gets help from his other lifeforms there is no reason why the entire marine team can't be equipped with shotguns, have A1 and W1 and be recearching W2. And all the mathimatical scenarioes I am describing are INCREDIBLY generous to the aliens anyway. A marine team that needs to put no concern into defending existing structures WILL generally take down alien nodes. A single fade swiping down an electrified RT usually WILL be interupted. A marine team with nothing better to do WILL expand and take more res nodes in the 3 miuntes it takes for the early fade to effectively take down all the electrified RTs.[/edit] <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fades go up at around 3:30-40 now and why should a fade go after res when they have vennila marines, and a undefended marine start? A smart alien team would also realize that if they were horrible enough to let the marines get that many rts up, that ms would be totally undefended, and all those electrified rts would have done nothing.
This strat is largely similar to the old slash/burn strat. Get nodes, keep nodes, kill enemy nodes.
Works well on alien teams where everyone is bled out across the map, and noone has the conviction or authority to get enough people to rush base. Even then, with the amount of res floating about, you can easily for for a ninja pg rush on a hive.
On times where I've seen a base rush work against this, generally the comm has enough res for a good relocate, meaning he loses no momentum. Once MS is down, aliens will tend to scatter again.
This strat does of course get proportionately harder as you decrease the skill of marines and increase the skill of aliens. It also varies by map, as some nodes lend themselves to defence better than others.
Like the old slash/burn strat, this one is definitely devastating on pubs so long as you can pull enough marines together to keep it working. Once its started, its generally very hard to stop as the res pool makes it easy to shift your base to elsewhere (ie a hive or suitably nasty choke).
This is true, and it could work, the aliens would still have to work fast however, because if they take even one full minute to kill all the marines and push them back to thier IP with 5 RTs on the map the marines have recieved 75 res and are going to come back with shotguns and weapons ups.
The weakness of marine start is one of the greatest weaknesses of this stratigy, but forcing the aliens to attack marine start is rare in NS games.
Face it. Marine without upgrades are toast after the 1-1:30 mark. We assume that both teams have the same amount of teamwork for fariness sake, and through scent of fear (from the sensory network) they can easily tell where your big group of marines are heading and ambush accordingly, and you still can't scan until who knows how long. Your towers take 30 seconds to electrify, and if you have 4 marines stay in one group, unless the first res you cap is double, you'll need 30 seconds to get to, and build the first node, and then 30 seconds more to protect it while it electrifies. That's already one minute into the game for one node. You'll need to spend on average one minute to cap each node (getting there, building it, waiting for it to electrify). All the while only using plain, no upgrade marines while dropping next to no ammo/meds. Please tell me how your marines will expand against upgraded aliens. Sensory especially will tear your marines to pieces.
EDIT: Your a0/w0 marines can be taken down by competent skulks just because for the fact they have upgrades and you don't. Hell, ONE competent lerk will drain you of resources so quickly you'll be waiting forever to get upgrades. With all of your marines in one big group, the lerk can force you to drop lots and lots of meds, and then you either won't have the res to electrify or upgrade. Besides, you're spending 30 seconds extra on each res node because you need to defend it until it electrifies! That's time taken away from attacking alien nodes! <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
By my calculations the marine armory starts going up between 1.00 and 1.30 with this strategy, and armor up follows almost immediatly after. Most games marines don't reach A1 W1 until after 2 minutes anyways, and unless you have 2 chamber gorges it take more then 2 minutes to drop all your chambers (the earliest it can start is 2.00) meaning that even if the aliens go sensory, you only have armor 0 marines VS full focus skulks for maby 10 seconds. It is highly unlikely that more then 2 of your marines will die at this stage, and you have enough RTs to afford weapons one as soon as armor one is finished, and then enough to fully shotty your marines less then one minute later.
[edit] Church, it isn't that you DON'T have an obs, the obs becomes a discretionary structure though, you need to predict weather or not you are going to be attacked in the first place, and you DO always have one marine in MS on all my calculated scenarios. An obs and a beacon is only 35 res, it takes will under a minute to be able to afford it even early on with this strategy, but it is true that you sacrifice the instantanios reacearch of armor and weapons if you do so.
Now, imagine these games played without a1 or shotguns. Also remove the obs and phasegate.
You leave base practically undefended, you delay upgrades, if skulks get upgrades, who's to say that even one skulk couldn't kill a group of four marines?
If I can't get armor 1 by 2 minutes into the game, if I started, then I consider either:
A. I am a complete retard.
or
B. My marines are complete retards.
You're counting on prolonging your vanilla marines via little or no meds and ammo when there is no armory? Good luck with that. I don't see armor 1 until at least 5 minutes if you bother to med/ammo your marines when they need it.
In short:
You win because of stupid aliens and really good marines.