Hitting The Marines Where It Hurts
Salaman
Join Date: 2002-11-23 Member: 9711Members
Join Date: 2002-11-23 Member: 9711Members
<div class="IPBDescription">In the wallet... LONG</div> One of the increasingly popular trends among marine commanders is to forsake turrets and turret factories in almost all areas save double node areas and hives in favor of more RUs to work an offensive. With marine players shouting "OMG TF IN SPAWN, N00B, EJECT NOW!!!1" whenever a comm favors a more defensive strategy, you can bet that, at some point in the early game, when the marines are pressing all they have on that 2nd hive, that the marine base and expansions are more or less completely unguarded during the early game, expansionist phase. Exploiting this glaring weakness in the marine strategy takes skill, patience, strategy, and stealth.
Killing vulnerable and vital structures in the marine base can cause untold grief to the commander and marine forces. In the event you come across an unguarded marine base, quickly call for assistance over voice comm, and begin your attack. You have a limited window before the commander recalls his forces or new marines spawn in and taking the time to type out reinforcement requests can cost you that one building you would've destroyed.
With such limited time, you need to do the most damage you can in the shortest time. The first order of the day should be the observatory, it dies within 10 bites, and prevents distress beacon from bringing in a wave of reinforcements, and stops marine expansion dead by preventing phase gates. If you're lucky, you can kill it while its researching motion tracking (you'll know because the HP bar doesnt move when you damage it while its researching), resulting in 70 RPs lost for a minimal of effort. Should you take out the observatory, work on the phase gate. Taking both phase gate and observatory sets the marines back drastically, and can give your team an opportunity to lock down that 2nd hive. If you've got both of those, and you still haven't been wasted, proceed to the IPs, watch the side of the screen, and get ready to bite any marines who die and will be respawning shortly. Taking out the usual two IPs will usually result in the comm having his remaining forces relocate the base to one of the hives. Foolish or overconfident comms may jump out of the seat before setting a new chair, taking him out when he does will assure victory for the alien team.
Though taking out an unguarded marines base is a skulk's wet dream, you'll more often than not be stopped before you can destroy everything. Even still, RUs or manpower will be expended defending the base, as the comm knows that you know the base is vulnerable. Other opportunities to harm the marines will commonly present themselves though. Many comms decide to cap obscure nodes and leave them unguarded, and with good reason. Unknowledgable alien teams may leave the tower more or less untouched throught the entire game. This is where you come in, finding routes to these obscure towers that bypass marine forces is important.
Take one of my favorite routines in ns_caged. 95% of the time when comms head out from the base to take generator hive, they cap the stability monitoring resource, and then proceed to lock down the gen hive. Wait until they've moved on and you can take out the resource tower fairly easily. For that extra kick in the pants, you can hide somewhere in the skulk friendly room, and wait until another marine passes by, comm drops a RT, you drop on the marine builder and feast. You proceed to take out the half built RT, and the marine comm proceeds to curse your name over open chat <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> . You'll learn from experience which nodes are commonly capped, but then left undefended (docking wing and foreboding antechamber ns_nothing, unlabeled room outside base in ns_nancy, triad generator ns_eclipse)
All in all, you can cause hundreds of RUs in expenses as a single lowly skulk over the course of a game delaying or preventing the onset of equipped marines, as comms lose out on RUs that would've been obtained, had you not killed that collector. Replacing lost structures gets expensive, as do 100+ RU turret farms.
Hopefully those of you who read this will learn something, and those of you who practice a strategy similar to this can add their own tactics. Now go forth and keep the gorgies fat and the marines starved of resources <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo-->
Killing vulnerable and vital structures in the marine base can cause untold grief to the commander and marine forces. In the event you come across an unguarded marine base, quickly call for assistance over voice comm, and begin your attack. You have a limited window before the commander recalls his forces or new marines spawn in and taking the time to type out reinforcement requests can cost you that one building you would've destroyed.
With such limited time, you need to do the most damage you can in the shortest time. The first order of the day should be the observatory, it dies within 10 bites, and prevents distress beacon from bringing in a wave of reinforcements, and stops marine expansion dead by preventing phase gates. If you're lucky, you can kill it while its researching motion tracking (you'll know because the HP bar doesnt move when you damage it while its researching), resulting in 70 RPs lost for a minimal of effort. Should you take out the observatory, work on the phase gate. Taking both phase gate and observatory sets the marines back drastically, and can give your team an opportunity to lock down that 2nd hive. If you've got both of those, and you still haven't been wasted, proceed to the IPs, watch the side of the screen, and get ready to bite any marines who die and will be respawning shortly. Taking out the usual two IPs will usually result in the comm having his remaining forces relocate the base to one of the hives. Foolish or overconfident comms may jump out of the seat before setting a new chair, taking him out when he does will assure victory for the alien team.
Though taking out an unguarded marines base is a skulk's wet dream, you'll more often than not be stopped before you can destroy everything. Even still, RUs or manpower will be expended defending the base, as the comm knows that you know the base is vulnerable. Other opportunities to harm the marines will commonly present themselves though. Many comms decide to cap obscure nodes and leave them unguarded, and with good reason. Unknowledgable alien teams may leave the tower more or less untouched throught the entire game. This is where you come in, finding routes to these obscure towers that bypass marine forces is important.
Take one of my favorite routines in ns_caged. 95% of the time when comms head out from the base to take generator hive, they cap the stability monitoring resource, and then proceed to lock down the gen hive. Wait until they've moved on and you can take out the resource tower fairly easily. For that extra kick in the pants, you can hide somewhere in the skulk friendly room, and wait until another marine passes by, comm drops a RT, you drop on the marine builder and feast. You proceed to take out the half built RT, and the marine comm proceeds to curse your name over open chat <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> . You'll learn from experience which nodes are commonly capped, but then left undefended (docking wing and foreboding antechamber ns_nothing, unlabeled room outside base in ns_nancy, triad generator ns_eclipse)
All in all, you can cause hundreds of RUs in expenses as a single lowly skulk over the course of a game delaying or preventing the onset of equipped marines, as comms lose out on RUs that would've been obtained, had you not killed that collector. Replacing lost structures gets expensive, as do 100+ RU turret farms.
Hopefully those of you who read this will learn something, and those of you who practice a strategy similar to this can add their own tactics. Now go forth and keep the gorgies fat and the marines starved of resources <!--emo&::gorge::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/pudgy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='pudgy.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
Um.... yes and no. It depends on how they're securing the second hive. If they're simply going out to secure a hive after putting down SOME kind of infrastructure at base (obs, PG) then by all means, attack main base. However, if they're actually relocating, or if there really isn't that much stuff in base, attacking their spawn is the absolute worst thing you can do.
I was playing... nothing, I think (cargo, psilo, viaduct) and the marines made a move for cargo quite early. I don't think they defended spawn at all. Anyway, I reached cargo quite early and yelled warnings over voicecom, and typed, that they'd moved in to cargo. Unfortuately, my team were a bunch of morons. Despite my increasingly frantic calls for assistence, I didn't get any help attacking cargo. This was because the team were convinced that it was FAR more important to destroy the CC and IPs at spawn than to attack the new marine base. By the time they'd finally destroyed that bloody CC, the marines had locked down cargo like a fortress.
I agree with what you're saying in general, though - always hit them where it hurts most resource-wise. The important thing is to know where exactly it is that will hurt them most.
Purpose of skulk rush is delaying.
If marines allow you to kill their base to skulks, then you hav half a chance anyway.
Arms lab and proto should go down first, then armoury, then obs, then spawns.
i have a huge surplus of money, that by the time they finally locked down one hive, and started looking for RTs... i had 500+ in reserve, with my entire marine squad fitted out with Jetpacks and HMGs... killed one fade... then the game was over...
Of course, if you are the commander, it would be in your best intrest to fort nodes at least a little, especally if you want to hold them for the RPs. The more minibases you have, the more the aliens will be split between attacking them, and the more minibases at any one time will NOT be under attack, and getting you RPs without any threat of a skulk coming along and chomping the tower.
Try and take over the map.
oh and i enjoy taking out their observatory first
no distress beacon and such works well
Weeell... If a Fade takes out three unguarded resource towers and then gets fragged by a turret, while the res cost of the kills is greater than the res cost of the Fade they haven't really earned their keep.
In the late game, as someone already said, the proto or armslabs are the best buildings to rush in and take out fast. Really sets back the marines as it delays the deployment of their toys by a whole lot.
Say what ?!? If any alien, no matter what class, takes out 3 Marine RTs, they have more than earned their keep : they probably just saved your whiney Alien butt from HA/HMG/GL/JPs !! Let me put it this way : allowing the Marines to KEEP more than 3 resource nozzles will most likely spell your doom.
While I'm glad to see that you think those are more important than the IP's, I disagree. I think the Observatory should go first as it is the easiest to kill and is almost a guarenteed 25 sources lost for the marines, next the phase or perhaps the arms lab/proto, depending on how you think the marines are teching up. Then I believe the IP's should go.