Since when does the level of one's authority affect the effectiveness of his statement?
He doesn't mention which RTs he electrifies, so I'm assuming that's all.
It's pretty idiotic to question my questioning of another based merely on the other's reputation, "OMGz! It's HAMBONE!!!!11 LETz PAY OMAG3z0rz TO HIM!!!!11one"
HAMBoneProbably the best CommanderJoin Date: 2003-04-02Member: 15139Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
edited March 2004
eh, he had a valid analysis. The reason I said to use electrification is because if your whole team sucks then you as the commander alone can win the game, but it is very slow. It's better to waste 30 res and hold a node then have no nodes. But you're absolutely right, it would be a waste of money to electrify a node that your team could hold on their own. It's a pub-specific strategy, I would never use it in a scrim or on a skilled server, but I have found that if you do not have good marines then it is not worth the res for medpacks to keep them alive when you could just electrify the node. I think you could easily spend 20 res in medpacks on marines guarding 1 node within a 2-3 minute time period, and even still many times the marines guarding your node will die and won't be able to return your medpack investment by saving the node, so elec can work very well(plus it frees up marines that would've had to guard to go pressure the alien nodes)
Not to mention that I'd rather have the marine die while guarding it, and have him spawn free, while another marine fresh from the spawn cycle heads toward that node.
Edit: You are a playtester after all...is the next beta going to reduce the cost 2/3?
Edit2: Not to mention, even in the worst of pubs you are still stuck with the same scenario...
For an electrified res tower to be start churning profit, it must be active for 3 minutes, compared with the regular res tower, there is a two minute difference.
Second, electrification is primarily used in the early game, where no fades are present and skulks dominate the alien team. This means that even if your node IS attacked, you can recycle it successfully and recuperate 7.5 res not to mention that the res node was probably attacked from anywhere between 30 seconds to 2 minutes of its time after you built it.
In the early game, it's about expanding and getting res to upgrade and research, you can't afford to electrify. In the late game, you have fades and onos, which will slice through your 45 res investment...
In short, the electrification is simply useless, it is not practical to use in either the early game nor mid game.
HAMBoneProbably the best CommanderJoin Date: 2003-04-02Member: 15139Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
You are mostly right which is why nobody does this in scrims or high level pubs(although I don't really agree with your assesment of fade effectiveness vs electricity, when your marines get there the fade will be hurt and will either run away or die quickly) However, I have found that on average-skill-pubs where medpacks are a waste of res that electrifying 3-5 resource nodes at the farther locations is a very solid investment. I have tried clan strats many times on pubs and seen them fail many times, while the electrification strategy tends to yield me something like a 99.9% success rate, and I really do not think in the context of this post(newbie commander trying to get started) that suggesting electrification is as terrible advice as you are making it out to be.
After reading through your ever so clever posts, I comm'ed my first game in months with confidence. I dropped an ip and an armory in the beginning, then used the "first marine to build a rt gets a shotgun" trick. Bam, 3 more rts in no time. The lucky marine who got the shotgun happened to be excellent, and rambo'd his way to their starter hive. By the time that he had rambo'd over there, I had phase tech. PG in, shotties all around, GG.
I realize that I probably just got lucky in that my shotty marine was a studmuffin, but them's the breaks. I will comm my second game tommorow and probably lose, but I am getting the hang of it more.
Lookout Im about to give you the best advice in this thread and it has nothing to do with strategy. Don't hive up when you lose. Even the best commanders have lost their share. The important thing is to be active when you are in the chair, try to keep a "can do" attitude (it can be really tough sometimes I know). If you get overwhelmed by a skulk rush or you can't think of what to do in a situation don't feel bad, the important thing is to learn from it and build up your comfort level with the large variety of situations that commanders need to deal with.
As for electrification... I wouldn't listen to anyone who says it is useless, electricity is a very powerful tool not just for ensuring resource flow, but for area control as well. But you have to be very careful how you use it, it is very very easy to fall into a trap where you spend too much res on electricity around the map and now aliens are teched up and you don't have the tech to maintain all that expensive map control.
Electifying is very useful but it is something i use sparingly. I usually go for a TF after about 3 minutes or so, hopefully by the time i have a hive rt/a nice staging point in the map which needs protecting so my electiricty conincides with me getting PG tech. On a note about PGs, I find that whilst PGs at hives are very useful they're also massive beacons for roaming fades. The moment a fade or something comes on the scene the team will say "go clear hive location X" and he'll run off and you'll lose your an important position and a staging point on the map to get your marines elsewhere unless you get your marines through.
I've found that RTs at key locations but not hives have a better effect. Examples: Phase gates at south loop on eclipse, supply way on metal, processing on hera. Often these sort of PGs will go untouched as the fades are off doing they're thing but they allow you to get your marines into key loactions in the map easily.
<!--QuoteBegin-HAMBONE+Mar 25 2004, 11:26 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (HAMBONE @ Mar 25 2004, 11:26 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> You are mostly right which is why nobody does this in scrims or high level pubs(although I don't really agree with your assesment of fade effectiveness vs electricity, when your marines get there the fade will be hurt and will either run away or die quickly) However, I have found that on average-skill-pubs where medpacks are a waste of res that electrifying 3-5 resource nodes at the farther locations is a very solid investment. I have tried clan strats many times on pubs and seen them fail many times, while the electrification strategy tends to yield me something like a 99.9% success rate, and I really do not think in the context of this post(newbie commander trying to get started) that suggesting electrification is as terrible advice as you are making it out to be. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> You must be playing at the worst alien pub server possible.
While the fade will be weakened when you attack him, the fade will still have the advantange, if he is smart.
Usually when I fade and I see an electrified res node, I attack it, once my armor goes below 50, I stop and regain it. That way, even if 2-3 marines do come to rain on my parade, I can still kill one, and leave, and get the others and proceed on destroying the electrified tower.
Remember, 3 minutes to recuperate for the ERT, only one for the RT.
Area control is not necessarily dictated by the electrified resource tower, a well placed network of phase gates are.
<!--QuoteBegin-HAMBONE+Mar 25 2004, 09:46 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (HAMBONE @ Mar 25 2004, 09:46 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> eh, he had a valid analysis. The reason I said to use electrification is because if your whole team sucks then you as the commander alone can win the game, but it is very slow. It's better to waste 30 res and hold a node then have no nodes. But you're absolutely right, it would be a waste of money to electrify a node that your team could hold on their own. It's a pub-specific strategy, I would never use it in a scrim or on a skilled server, but I have found that if you do not have good marines then it is not worth the res for medpacks to keep them alive when you could just electrify the node. I think you could easily spend 20 res in medpacks on marines guarding 1 node within a 2-3 minute time period, and even still many times the marines guarding your node will die and won't be able to return your medpack investment by saving the node, so elec can work very well(plus it frees up marines that would've had to guard to go pressure the alien nodes) <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> HAMBONE does have somewhat of a point, if you play in large enough games (larger than 10v10) aliens get res so slowly elec works really well as aliens are skulk 90% of the time, instead of 80% of the time.
<!--QuoteBegin-Forlorn+Mar 26 2004, 09:08 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Forlorn @ Mar 26 2004, 09:08 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> HAMBONE does have somewhat of a point, if you play in large enough games (larger than 10v10) aliens get res so slowly elec works really well as aliens are skulk 90% of the time, instead of 80% of the time. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> He also makes a good point regarding fades and electric RTs. While fades do slice through them, it wastes quite a bit of their time, especially if they don't have metabolize yet. Plus I think we've all killed fades by sneaking up on one that's batting around an electric RT and letting his HP get too low.
What Forlorn is saying is the cardinal rule of electrification: team size is directly proportional to effectiveness. Completely useless in 5v5, game-dominating in 12v12.
<!--QuoteBegin-Doobie Dan+Mar 29 2004, 08:40 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Doobie Dan @ Mar 29 2004, 08:40 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> <!--QuoteBegin-Forlorn+Mar 26 2004, 09:08 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Forlorn @ Mar 26 2004, 09:08 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> HAMBONE does have somewhat of a point, if you play in large enough games (larger than 10v10) aliens get res so slowly elec works really well as aliens are skulk 90% of the time, instead of 80% of the time. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What Forlorn is saying is the cardinal rule of electrification: team size is directly proportional to effectiveness. Completely useless in 5v5, game-dominating in 12v12. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Which is a symptom of how slowly aliens get res in large games, but hey, no one even bothers to listen to the rediculous things I have to say so eh
Comments
He doesn't mention which RTs he electrifies, so I'm assuming that's all.
It's pretty idiotic to question my questioning of another based merely on the other's reputation, "OMGz! It's HAMBONE!!!!11 LETz PAY OMAG3z0rz TO HIM!!!!11one"
Not to mention that I'd rather have the marine die while guarding it, and have him spawn free, while another marine fresh from the spawn cycle heads toward that node.
Edit: You are a playtester after all...is the next beta going to reduce the cost 2/3?
Edit2: Not to mention, even in the worst of pubs you are still stuck with the same scenario...
For an electrified res tower to be start churning profit, it must be active for 3 minutes, compared with the regular res tower, there is a two minute difference.
Second, electrification is primarily used in the early game, where no fades are present and skulks dominate the alien team. This means that even if your node IS attacked, you can recycle it successfully and recuperate 7.5 res not to mention that the res node was probably attacked from anywhere between 30 seconds to 2 minutes of its time after you built it.
In the early game, it's about expanding and getting res to upgrade and research, you can't afford to electrify. In the late game, you have fades and onos, which will slice through your 45 res investment...
In short, the electrification is simply useless, it is not practical to use in either the early game nor mid game.
I realize that I probably just got lucky in that my shotty marine was a studmuffin, but them's the breaks. I will comm my second game tommorow and probably lose, but I am getting the hang of it more.
Thanks guys, you're awesome.
As for electrification... I wouldn't listen to anyone who says it is useless, electricity is a very powerful tool not just for ensuring resource flow, but for area control as well. But you have to be very careful how you use it, it is very very easy to fall into a trap where you spend too much res on electricity around the map and now aliens are teched up and you don't have the tech to maintain all that expensive map control.
I've found that RTs at key locations but not hives have a better effect. Examples: Phase gates at south loop on eclipse, supply way on metal, processing on hera. Often these sort of PGs will go untouched as the fades are off doing they're thing but they allow you to get your marines into key loactions in the map easily.
Or something.
You must be playing at the worst alien pub server possible.
While the fade will be weakened when you attack him, the fade will still have the advantange, if he is smart.
Usually when I fade and I see an electrified res node, I attack it, once my armor goes below 50, I stop and regain it. That way, even if 2-3 marines do come to rain on my parade, I can still kill one, and leave, and get the others and proceed on destroying the electrified tower.
Remember, 3 minutes to recuperate for the ERT, only one for the RT.
Area control is not necessarily dictated by the electrified resource tower, a well placed network of phase gates are.
HAMBONE does have somewhat of a point, if you play in large enough games (larger than 10v10) aliens get res so slowly elec works really well as aliens are skulk 90% of the time, instead of 80% of the time.
He also makes a good point regarding fades and electric RTs. While fades do slice through them, it wastes quite a bit of their time, especially if they don't have metabolize yet. Plus I think we've all killed fades by sneaking up on one that's batting around an electric RT and letting his HP get too low.
What Forlorn is saying is the cardinal rule of electrification: team size is directly proportional to effectiveness. Completely useless in 5v5, game-dominating in 12v12.
What Forlorn is saying is the cardinal rule of electrification: team size is directly proportional to effectiveness. Completely useless in 5v5, game-dominating in 12v12. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Which is a symptom of how slowly aliens get res in large games, but hey, no one even bothers to listen to the rediculous things I have to say so eh