You don't need phase gates first
Shino
Join Date: 2012-11-26 Member: 173316Members
Join Date: 2012-11-26 Member: 173316Members
Obs: 15 Res
Phase Tech: 15 Res
Phase Gate x2: 30 Res
Total: 60 Res
Arms Lab: 20 Res
Weapons 1: 15 Res
Weapons 2: 25 Res
Total: 60 Res
For the same price, you can bring skulks from taking 14 bullets (130+1 natural regen) into 11 bullets. Or, if you're going against bads, 10 shots (90 + 1 natural regen) into 8 bullets.
Alternatively, you can get Armor 1 and Armor 2, bringing your marines from 100/30 to 100/70 (4 bites excluding glancing bites)
On every map right now (Summit/Docking > Veil/Mineshaft > Descent/Refinery), arms lab no phase gate is viable.
Phase Tech: 15 Res
Phase Gate x2: 30 Res
Total: 60 Res
Arms Lab: 20 Res
Weapons 1: 15 Res
Weapons 2: 25 Res
Total: 60 Res
For the same price, you can bring skulks from taking 14 bullets (130+1 natural regen) into 11 bullets. Or, if you're going against bads, 10 shots (90 + 1 natural regen) into 8 bullets.
Alternatively, you can get Armor 1 and Armor 2, bringing your marines from 100/30 to 100/70 (4 bites excluding glancing bites)
On every map right now (Summit/Docking > Veil/Mineshaft > Descent/Refinery), arms lab no phase gate is viable.
Comments
Adding on to this, if you delay phase gates you open up the following:
6:00 Exos (as in research completed) with 4 RTs
6:30 Jetpack/shotgun armor 2 with 4 RTs
6:30 Armor 3 with 4 RTs.
You give up an enormous amount of combat power by going phase gates first, and the benefits you gain are more illusion than reality. Marines who have more upgrades are able to be far more aggressive, and as a result you end up keeping most of your RTs due to the pressure you can put on the other team. A smart commander who goes upgrades first and supplements with well placed forward armories ends up with dramatically more map control than rushed phase gates.
And the best part? You can still get phase gates at most of the timings listed above - so long as the phase gates come after your upgrades in priority. You're really only delaying phase gates by 2-3 minutes for a massive jump in power.
Rushing phase gates is bad. Stop rushing phase gates.
Just the opposite really. Average pub marines are awful at shooting, which also means they won't actually be pushing in to anything without some level of combat advantage. Rushed phase gates simply ensure that you'll be able to (sometimes) hold what you were able to build a phase gate at. Rushed upgrades mean that even awful pub marines can usually make meaningful and significant pushes due to the gigantic combat advantage they're working with.
What makes early upgrades even more effective is the fact that your average alien commander isn't particularly smart either. Shift first is still the most common (90%+) strategy in most pubs, and building a second hive is often delayed. Meaning that it's not at all rare to see an alien team which doesn't have carapace until 8-9 minutes into the game. It'd take a truly awful team even by pub standards to not completely crush an alien team with jp/shotgun/armor 2 against mere celerity skulks. Seriously.
but the problem here is thinking that pub marines are organized enough to go to the places they need to be at and defend them. Chances are without phase gates marine players tend to wander, run the wrong way and ignore vital parts of the map they should be defending. phase gates keeps them focused in 1 area you really have to divert the flow of marines with phase gates, expecting them to use their head and actually go where they need to is asking to much of most of them.
a good example of this is locker room , send marines there and dont build a phase gate and watch them slowly start to wander out of locker getting picked off one by one or ignoring the huge skulk rush into locker whilst they all fire at a gorge wall in maintenance.
He's not saying that PG will never come. It will come when its ready. Weapons 2 is nothin' to sneeze at.
This approach is limited entirely by map layout. You can do it on mineshaft with an operations spawn quite easily and effectively, but you can't do it with a repair spawn. Similarly, if you try doing this on a map like descent or veil, it will bite you in the ass.
The problem is that it relies on being able to easily and swiftly eliminate life forms who are defending an area, which is very useful. However, if the alien commander identifies your strategy, and fortifies 3 tech rooms with structures, your weapon upgrades won't count for anything.
You can get meds and ammo from the commander, anywhere on the map, and during combat.
Medpacks are the most under utilized part of marine play in pub games.
I stick to the tried and tested method.
Armoury > Obs > phase tech > res > res> etc
I still ended up getting phase tech earlier than I really wanted to, but the marines got the hang of what I wanted very quickly and we won quite comfortably. All the engagements went heavily in our favour early on in the game which gave a great boost.
Surprisingly, it was clanners who objected most to the lack of rushed phase...
this, otherwise you can't hold 4 RT's against a decent alien team.
mines and phase gates make the game a lot easier.
If a Marine player has no structure to build, he will move to the next room within about 5 seconds.
Out of interest, why do many people feel W1 before A1 is "better"? Genuine question, I'm intrigued.
killing buildings i guess.
A1 is only really helpful (practically essential) against fade, because skulks hardly ever use parasite*. as long as A1 comes before fade, it's no problem.
*even if skulk does use parasite, it stands to reason that the marine can get some shots in on the skulk negating or at least delaying the advantage 2-bite kill. not to mention that parasite gives the marine a "hoooowdy mr marine, i'm over here" greeting.
Tbh, I don't feel like weapons upgrades really matter against skulks. It's only a 1 bullet difference between upgrades (although I think if they have cara there's a 2-bullet jump between one of the weapons upgrades, forgot which). It's good to start the upgrading early though so they're ready for when fades come out. On pub servers however, it's difficult for the marines to maintain any kind of presence without the positional/mobility advantage that early phase gates give.
If the answer is Yes: You don't have to rush Phase Gates. You are probably also not playing in your average pub.
If the answer is No: Rush Phase Gates. RIGHT NOW.
Well, if your team is good enough it doesent matter if u go pg or armslab first, right? So ask yourself which tech is better.
This isn't true. Different tactics and techs are better for differently skilled teams. An extreme example would be that armor upgrades are completely redundant if your marines are so good that they never get bitten, but it doesn't make armor upgrades objectively useless.
Like everyone's said already, phase gates aren't that necessary when your team knows where to go, knows how to shoot and can actually push the sprint button, and in that case early upgrades are for the better. But if your team wanders aimlessly, you need to funnel them towards important locations via phase gates, and in that case early phase gates are better.
What we are talking about? Public? How can u know everyone of an 18 slot public server.
edit: I was indicating with my last post that PG is the better upgrade.
Overall I am also saying that "Different tactics and techs are better for differently skilled teams.". But not in this case
I'm not talking about public or competitive, I'm just saying that different play styles and skills are better supplemented by different tech. Phase gates aren't objectively better, they just happen to be better on a regular public server because without them you can't expand since nobody knows where to go and what to do.
Yeah, if u got 3-4 badass rines in your team that get 19-1 stats it doesent realy matter. Just rush through the hive kill the eggs and its gg. But I am talking about balanced teams.