fade requiring 3 hits to get a kill versus 2.... it's night and day no matter how you rephrase it. 2 hits is practically an instant kill, and any marine who can kill a good fade with a0 is a god.
Its not really about the upgrades, its about the kills.
If you think a fade is more likely to die against armour upgrades than weapon upgrades, then we have the same goal, but different opinions on how to achieve it.
If you think keeping free marines alive is more important than killing 50 res fades, then we have different goals entirely.
Armor 0 --> Armor 1 is worthless until fades come out.
Weapons 1 / Weapons 2 is absolutely amazing for killing skulks
Have armor 1 by the time fades are out. Until then, weapons upgrades.
So we usually go Weapons 1 -> Weapons 2 -> Armor 1, which lines up to usually be a minute or two before fades (but if I had gotten weapons 3 we wouldn't have it up by then)
The problem with that logic is that shotguns exist. Shotguns crush skulks at any upgrade level with good aim, which means that the combination of armor 2-3/shotguns holds far more effective power than a W2 rush.
Armor 0 --> Armor 1 is worthless until fades come out.
Weapons 1 / Weapons 2 is absolutely amazing for killing skulks
Have armor 1 by the time fades are out. Until then, weapons upgrades.
So we usually go Weapons 1 -> Weapons 2 -> Armor 1, which lines up to usually be a minute or two before fades (but if I had gotten weapons 3 we wouldn't have it up by then)
The problem with that logic is that shotguns exist. Shotguns crush skulks at any upgrade level with good aim, which means that the combination of armor 2-3/shotguns holds far more effective power than a W2 rush.
This is a good point, and offers some form of a replacement for weapon upgrades. However, it must be acknowledged that the res cost is quite great.
You need to determine what kind of game you are playing. If you intend to win with Exos and a great deal of tech, then you cannot offload the burden of dealing damage onto the pRes of your marines. Those strategies are at odds with each other.
However, if you plan on winning with small tech like jetpacks, or you plan to play an ARCing game, then shotguns and armour may be a very effective combination.
fade requiring 3 hits to get a kill versus 2.... it's night and day no matter how you rephrase it. 2 hits is practically an instant kill, and any marine who can kill a good fade with a0 is a god.
Its not really about the upgrades, its about the kills.
If you think a fade is more likely to die against armour upgrades than weapon upgrades, then we have the same goal, but different opinions on how to achieve it.
If you think keeping free marines alive is more important than killing 50 res fades, then we have different goals entirely.
i look at it from the fade POV. you don't even need to know about weapon upgrades, the existence of shotgun is the only weapon intel you require. but knowing how many times you have to hit a marine to kill him is groovy. marines just melt away to fade without that 3rd hit insurance.
a1 is such a significant breakpoint for the fade. too important to ignore.
It takes 2-3 bullets less to kill a skulk with W1 compared to W0. A1 gives you an extra 5+ bullets before you die.
Simple maths, really.
fewer bullets necessary means the skulk is more likely to die at range before armor even comes into play. Shots are much easier to land at range, it almost doesn't even matter if the skulk takes 3 bites or 4. Which do I want, 5 more bullets with 0 chance of hitting, or 2 less bullets needed to hit?
Of course the numbers were wrong to start with, but that's the idea.
This is a debate? A1 helps the pub player far more than W1 ever could. W1 does nothing whatsoever against a skulk while A1 guarantees 3 full bites. People can justify it however they wish, but A1 over W1 is backed up by the numbers. You are then free to pursue however many W upgrades you want until the 12-13 minute mark where it is highly recommended to have A2.
I think A1 and then straight to W3 ist the best way to upgrade.
A1 helps SO much not only against skulks but also against Hydras and Groges which most people tend to forget. As a Marine I feel much more confident early game with A1 than with W1. A gun with like 200 dps does not need mor edamage against a 100 HP lifeform....
People are making the mistake of directly comparing only A1 and W1. While I don't agree, I can easily see why people think that, point for point, A1 just seems to add more to your marine than W1 does.
However, you forget that without W1, you can't get W2, and without W2, you can't get W3.
Both time and resources are against you when it comes to upgrades. Sacrificing a little at the start can get you more bang for your buck in the long run.
But the point is you dont sacrifice a little at the start but basically at least 40 HP _UNTIL_ W3 is finished
The A1 really takes not alot of time and basically increases your HP by 25%.
So at the cost of getting W3 30 sec later you sacrifice 25% HP during the entire early game.
I totally agree taht A2 and A3 is no neccessary before W3 but in a game where most rounds are decided before the 5 minute mark early A1 really makes worlds of difference.
Are you stating that a marine with more armour is less likely to die in a fade attack than a marine with more weapon upgrades? I can accept that.
The problem is that the converse, which you would think would naturally follow, isn't true. Namely, the idea that a fade attacking a marine with more weapon upgrades is less likely to die than one attacking a marine with more armour upgrades. This is because the fade can retreat at any time. As long as he isn't a bad fade, and bases his retreat on his health rather than on the health of his enemies, he will survive for longer.
Now, taking the fact that a marine with weapon upgrades is more likely to die than a marine with armour upgrades, and a fade attacking a marine with weapon upgrades is more likely to die than one attacking a marine with armour upgrades, combine that with the cost of a marine compared to the cost of the fade, and you might understand why I make the choice I make.
TL;DR Marines are free, fades are not.
What an incredibly one-dimensional argument.
No one is saying weapon upgrades aren't essential versus fades, or anything else for that matter. We're saying disregarding armour upgrades in favour of exclusively getting weapon upgrades is a bad trade-off for what you get in return and is a classic example of short-sightedness. A1 and A2 both make it take an additional swipe/bite more to kill a marine each. I'm willing to bet that, statistically, the less armour upgrades you have, the more encounters you will lose overall, and I'm also betting this vastly outweighs aliens having a theoretically higher chance of dying faster the higher your weapon upgrades are. Yes, marines are free. So are skulks. You know what isn't free? Losing encounters that end up costing you RTs and map control. Losing equipment on the field. Losing important locations due to being meatgrinded on a PG with absolute ease. And all just because aliens need one or two clicks less to kill.
Regarding the whole Fade thing, let's ignore that armour upgrades give you extra time to shoot more bullets into the enemy and in turn raise your actual damage output against, in my experience, about 98% of all Fades. Even if what you're saying were true more than 2% of the time, a dead Fade means nothing when losing more encounters overall decreases your chance of holding anything, because aliens are in turn more likely to expand to 4+ RTs and can drop Fade eggs left and right while you're getting absolutely nowhere.
In other words, in every other scenario but your entire marine team consisting of cyborgs who kill literally every alien before it gets anywhere near them, having at LEAST Armour 1 is extremely vital. There's a good reason A1 -> W3 -> A3 has been the standard for 10 years. Because it is, plain and simple, mathematically and statistically better.
It takes 2-3 bullets less to kill a skulk with W1 compared to W0. A1 gives you an extra 5+ bullets before you die.
Simple maths, really.
fewer bullets necessary means the skulk is more likely to die at range before armor even comes into play. Shots are much easier to land at range, it almost doesn't even matter if the skulk takes 3 bites or 4. Which do I want, 5 more bullets with 0 chance of hitting, or 2 less bullets needed to hit?
Of course the numbers were wrong to start with, but that's the idea.
In most cases, you will never even see good skulks from range until they're at your feet. That one bite more it takes to kill you could very well mean that medpack you just picked up or that one more dodge away from the skulk saves your life. A1 is quite simply more beneficial on average. W1 first being better is highly situational at best, namely when your marines can aim and you're either holding a long corridor/big room or egglocking a hive. Point is, you can't usually plan these situations on pubs as they just happen unless you're specifically going for it, so A1 as the failsafe standard makes more sense.
What a lot of people are forgetting here is that once your armour is gone, having A1, 2 or 3 is useless, whereas weapons are always useful.
I tend to go armour first JUST BECAUSE it's the one public players moan about most - why? Well you can see armour in your HUD in the bottom left, so people notice it more if they don't see 50, 70 or 90.
Armour 1 first. What I like doing on occasion is skimping out on med kits here, IP there and gets a second arms lab. Provided you have the res, you can literally turn your men into super soldiers, and as a side benefit, save for exo (no gl's or flamers with this strat).
Also @BestProfileName, no one was saying A3 before W3, it seems to be the best tactic to rush Weap after A1.
It takes 2-3 bullets less to kill a skulk with W1 compared to W0. A1 gives you an extra 5+ bullets before you die.
Simple maths, really.
fewer bullets necessary means the skulk is more likely to die at range before armor even comes into play. Shots are much easier to land at range, it almost doesn't even matter if the skulk takes 3 bites or 4. Which do I want, 5 more bullets with 0 chance of hitting, or 2 less bullets needed to hit?
Of course the numbers were wrong to start with, but that's the idea.
In most cases, you will never even see good skulks from range until they're at your feet. That one bite more it takes to kill you could very well mean that medpack you just picked up or that one more dodge away from the skulk saves your life. A1 is quite simply more beneficial on average. W1 first being better is highly situational at best, namely when your marines can aim and you're either holding a long corridor/big room or egglocking a hive. Point is, you can't usually plan these situations on pubs as they just happen unless you're specifically going for it, so A1 as the failsafe standard makes more sense.
Were not talking about good skulks. Pros already have their order and probably wouldn't care what we had to say about the matter anyway. We are talking about pubs on both sides. Pub marines are unlikely to score any hits once the skulk is biting, and they are very likely to empty the mag before scoring a kill. Weapon ups, even the minimal w1 help with both of those situations. Pub skulks aren't very good at hiding.
On a sidenote, it's pretty much pointless to drop a medkit for a marine missing armor. The health only matters when you have armor to back it up so if someone isn't welding the marines you are just wasting your time and resources as com. If someone IS welding though those health drops are critical. Ammo on the other hand is always invaluable.
Were not talking about good skulks. Pros already have their order and probably wouldn't care what we had to say about the matter anyway. We are talking about pubs on both sides. Pub marines are unlikely to score any hits once the skulk is biting, and they are very likely to empty the mag before scoring a kill. Weapon ups, even the minimal w1 help with both of those situations. Pub skulks aren't very good at hiding.
In my experience, there's always at least a few good skulks as well as a few good marines on any renowned pub server. For the sake of this argument, let's assume a decent mix of skill levels on both sides from bad to good.
- If your argument is bad marines can't aim and W1 helps them kill a skulk before it gets to them, all I can say is the skulk will get to them, because they can't aim. A1 gives them more attempts to hit the skulk, meaning, as I stated before, actual damage output will eventually be higher.
- If your argument is a bad skulk won't get to a marine before dying, taking 2 bullets less for it to die won't make as much of a difference to justify giving up the huge advantage A1 makes in the first scenario.
- Now, if we assume roughly equal skill level for both marine and skulk, let's say on a scale from 1-10, no matter where on that scale both players are, A1 is the safe route to take because it gives the marine the larger advantage from about skill level 1 to 7.
- If we assume marines are stacked and you're aware of it, you can get W1 to end the game faster, but eventually it won't matter because the outcome is carved in stone either way.
- If we assume aliens are stacked and you're aware of it, A1 is clearly the better choice as outlined in the first scenario.
- If we assume either team is stacked and you have no way of knowing this in advance (because you're unfamiliar with the players), you usually can't tell real team balance including all factors until way past the point where you already chose which upgrade to go for.
Ergo: On public servers, A1 is not only the failsafe choice for every possible scenario, but also by heaps and bounds the clearly superior choice for all but one of the above scenarios and generally for nearly every scenario imaginable.
(On a sidenote: I would love to see comparison statistics for skulk deaths with A1 researched until W1 is done and W1 researched until A1 is done respectively. Just to clear this up once and for all.)
Mostly this. Even if they do reach you, most NS2 combat is 2v2 or greater, where the benefit of w1 increases dramatically with more marines shooting.
Also, people seem to be neglecting the value of increased damage vs alien structures. A match is typically won or lost in early-game fight over res nodes, such that added firepower towards killing harvesters (or hives) can have a huge impact.
A1 is nice, but unless you getting it just before the fades come out, its a defensive strategy. In NS2, defensive strategies typically lose you the game.
I prioritize armor upgrades at every juncture because I like to build a lot of armories, rush jetpacks, and MAC support, so I usually keep my marines at full armor, If you are trying to hold a room with an armory in it, armor upgrades are pretty dominant.
blindJoin Date: 2010-04-17Member: 71437Members, Squad Five Gold
My personal upgrade order for the moment is A1-W1-W2-A2. Then I decide whether I want A3 (vs. tons of fades) or W3 (if I know people save for onos) first. In NS1 A1 was a must since parasites were much more common and glancing bites didn't exist so the extra bite was too powerful to ignore. In NS2 I experimented a bit with W1 (since paras are way less useful unfortunetaly), but I feel A1 is stronger since it also helps you with the glancing bit mechanics.
For every order "rushing" a higher level upgrade consider that you need to invest 10 more TRes for level 2 and it takes more time. That's why going by a more "natural" order (both level 1 ups, then both level 2 ups, etc) is more effective, unless you have a certain strategy in your mind (exo rush?).
Dusteh's order is classic NS1 3.2 btw, but I wouldn't sign that for NS2. Sometimes I went with that, but in general I switched over to above setting.
Remember I talk about 6v6 games, pubs have many different factors to take into consideration, although the above order doesn't hurt a pub comm at all.
Even if what you're saying were true more than 2% of the time, a dead Fade means nothing when losing more encounters overall decreases your chance of holding anything
Early game, winning encounters is vital. Mid-game, killing fades is vital.
Also:
>What an incredibly one-dimensional argument.
That was unnecessary.
If your argument is bad marines can't aim and W1 helps them kill a skulk before it gets to them, all I can say is the skulk will get to them, because they can't aim. A1 gives them more attempts to hit the skulk, meaning, as I stated before, actual damage output will eventually be higher.
Bad marines can hit skulks as they approach. Bad marines can't hit skulks when they're in melee range. Accordingly, W1 will help bad marines kill skulks, A1 will not.
I'm willing to bet that, statistically, the less armour upgrades you have, the more encounters you will lose overall, and I'm also betting this vastly outweighs aliens having a theoretically higher chance of dying faster the higher your weapon upgrades are. Yes, marines are free. So are skulks. You know what isn't free? Losing encounters that end up costing you RTs and map control. Losing equipment on the field. Losing important locations due to being meatgrinded on a PG with absolute ease. And all just because aliens need one or two clicks less to kill.
Nice use of the words statistically and theoretically. You make one sound more credible than the other, even though they are synonymous.
First thing you need to do is define what losing an encounter means. If I have a res node being attacked, and 4 of my marines go there, and get attacked by 3 skulks and a fade, if the fade does, I can lose everything else there, and I still haven't lost that encounter.
The other thing is that, as the commander, you essentially control those variables of lost RTs, lost equipment, lost map control. If I'm rushing weapons 3, I'm not going to be locking down a third tech point. Which means I can't lose the second one, because there isn't a third to dilute the forces. It means I'm not trying to do forward phase gates which can easily be taken out by attrition against low defence. It means I'm not getting jetpacks which die too quickly without armour.
You obviously play to the strengths of whatever path you choose, and in my opinion, the long term benefits of the weapons path outweighs that of the armour path. Considering that this thread is "Weapons 1 or Armour 1", I'm inclined to agree with some that weapons 1 potentially does very little, and armour one provides more utility straight up. However, weapons 2 is far superior to armour 2, and weapons 3 blows armour 3 right out of the water.
But the question is kind of pointless to be honest. As some have told me, the difference between A1 or W1 first is the difference between getting W3 "30 seconds later", so in the average case, who cares whether you get W1 or A1 first? What long term difference is it really going to make?
However, in the non average case, where your first choice makes an impact on your long term goals, where you are rushing upgrades and need to be as fast as possible, then the order definitely matters.
So when I look at the question posed in the OP, what I see is "Do you rush W3 or A3?".
You obviously play to the strengths of whatever path you choose, and in my opinion, the long term benefits of the weapons path outweighs that of the armour path. Considering that this thread is "Weapons 1 or Armour 1", I'm inclined to agree with some that weapons 1 potentially does very little, and armour one provides more utility straight up. However, weapons 2 is far superior to armour 2, and weapons 3 blows armour 3 right out of the water.
But the question is kind of pointless to be honest. As some have told me, the difference between A1 or W1 first is the difference between getting W3 "30 seconds later", so in the average case, who cares whether you get W1 or A1 first? What long term difference is it really going to make?
However, in the non average case, where your first choice makes an impact on your long term goals, where you are rushing upgrades and need to be as fast as possible, then the order definitely matters.
So when I look at the question posed in the OP, what I see is "Do you rush W3 or A3?".
W3 takes 80 + 100 + 120 sec pure research time. A1 takes 80 sec as does W1.
So the real question here is:
Is it worth to delay A1 für 5 minutes in favor of getting W3 80 sec earlier?
So you can either have A1/W2(W3 at 33%) or W3 5 minutes after getting arms lab.
I think the benefit of already having A1 for nearly 4 minutes outweights the additional 80 sec you have to wait for W3.
So when I look at the question posed in the OP, what I see is "Do you rush W3 or A3?".
Then that's your problem entirely. My whole point was there's no reason to skip A1 when it makes the team so much more resistant in exchange of having weapon upgrades only a tiny bit later. Like I said, the standard upgrade order is A1 first and then "rushing" W3.
Bad marines can hit skulks as they approach. Bad marines can't hit skulks when they're in melee range. Accordingly, W1 will help bad marines kill skulks, A1 will not.
I guess we can both only speak for ourselves then. I have terrible aim but my movement is great, so I almost never kill a skulk before it's in melee range. Pretty much the only way I kill skulks is by buying me more time to shoot them by 'juking' and surviving as many bites as my armour allows.
Early game, winning encounters is vital. Mid-game, killing fades is vital.
That is... my point exactly? This thread is about the early game, because it is about A1 vs W1 first. Accordingly, everything I said was implying that killing Fades mid-game won't matter when you lost the early game and let aliens have 5 RTs and 2 fortified hives, whereas when the lack of armour didn't cripple you early game, you can still kill Fades perfectly fine, as you will usually have A1/W2. It's an exaggerated 'worst case' vs 'best case' scenario, but it gets the point across.
Mostly this. Even if they do reach you, most NS2 combat is 2v2 or greater, where the benefit of w1 increases dramatically with more marines shooting.
Also, people seem to be neglecting the value of increased damage vs alien structures. A match is typically won or lost in early-game fight over res nodes, such that added firepower towards killing harvesters (or hives) can have a huge impact.
A1 is nice, but unless you getting it just before the fades come out, its a defensive strategy. In NS2, defensive strategies typically lose you the game.
You have some valid points, but buying yourself added survivability is not necessarily defensive, because it allows you to play more aggressively in turn as well. For example, it can mean you just barely win those encounters that allow you to even get to the RT you wanted to shoot and still be medded to 100 health, where W1 might have let you be killed. Or it might not have, entirely depending your ability to aim.
Which leads me back to my point that, in public play, A1 is always the safe and therefore better choice.
Comments
Its not really about the upgrades, its about the kills.
If you think a fade is more likely to die against armour upgrades than weapon upgrades, then we have the same goal, but different opinions on how to achieve it.
If you think keeping free marines alive is more important than killing 50 res fades, then we have different goals entirely.
The problem with that logic is that shotguns exist. Shotguns crush skulks at any upgrade level with good aim, which means that the combination of armor 2-3/shotguns holds far more effective power than a W2 rush.
This is a good point, and offers some form of a replacement for weapon upgrades. However, it must be acknowledged that the res cost is quite great.
You need to determine what kind of game you are playing. If you intend to win with Exos and a great deal of tech, then you cannot offload the burden of dealing damage onto the pRes of your marines. Those strategies are at odds with each other.
However, if you plan on winning with small tech like jetpacks, or you plan to play an ARCing game, then shotguns and armour may be a very effective combination.
i look at it from the fade POV. you don't even need to know about weapon upgrades, the existence of shotgun is the only weapon intel you require. but knowing how many times you have to hit a marine to kill him is groovy. marines just melt away to fade without that 3rd hit insurance.
a1 is such a significant breakpoint for the fade. too important to ignore.
fewer bullets necessary means the skulk is more likely to die at range before armor even comes into play. Shots are much easier to land at range, it almost doesn't even matter if the skulk takes 3 bites or 4. Which do I want, 5 more bullets with 0 chance of hitting, or 2 less bullets needed to hit?
Of course the numbers were wrong to start with, but that's the idea.
A1 helps SO much not only against skulks but also against Hydras and Groges which most people tend to forget. As a Marine I feel much more confident early game with A1 than with W1. A gun with like 200 dps does not need mor edamage against a 100 HP lifeform....
However, you forget that without W1, you can't get W2, and without W2, you can't get W3.
Both time and resources are against you when it comes to upgrades. Sacrificing a little at the start can get you more bang for your buck in the long run.
The A1 really takes not alot of time and basically increases your HP by 25%.
So at the cost of getting W3 30 sec later you sacrifice 25% HP during the entire early game.
I totally agree taht A2 and A3 is no neccessary before W3 but in a game where most rounds are decided before the 5 minute mark early A1 really makes worlds of difference.
No one is saying weapon upgrades aren't essential versus fades, or anything else for that matter. We're saying disregarding armour upgrades in favour of exclusively getting weapon upgrades is a bad trade-off for what you get in return and is a classic example of short-sightedness. A1 and A2 both make it take an additional swipe/bite more to kill a marine each. I'm willing to bet that, statistically, the less armour upgrades you have, the more encounters you will lose overall, and I'm also betting this vastly outweighs aliens having a theoretically higher chance of dying faster the higher your weapon upgrades are. Yes, marines are free. So are skulks. You know what isn't free? Losing encounters that end up costing you RTs and map control. Losing equipment on the field. Losing important locations due to being meatgrinded on a PG with absolute ease. And all just because aliens need one or two clicks less to kill.
Regarding the whole Fade thing, let's ignore that armour upgrades give you extra time to shoot more bullets into the enemy and in turn raise your actual damage output against, in my experience, about 98% of all Fades. Even if what you're saying were true more than 2% of the time, a dead Fade means nothing when losing more encounters overall decreases your chance of holding anything, because aliens are in turn more likely to expand to 4+ RTs and can drop Fade eggs left and right while you're getting absolutely nowhere.
In other words, in every other scenario but your entire marine team consisting of cyborgs who kill literally every alien before it gets anywhere near them, having at LEAST Armour 1 is extremely vital. There's a good reason A1 -> W3 -> A3 has been the standard for 10 years. Because it is, plain and simple, mathematically and statistically better.
I tend to go armour first JUST BECAUSE it's the one public players moan about most - why? Well you can see armour in your HUD in the bottom left, so people notice it more if they don't see 50, 70 or 90.
However, I go W3 before A3 every time.
Also @BestProfileName, no one was saying A3 before W3, it seems to be the best tactic to rush Weap after A1.
Were not talking about good skulks. Pros already have their order and probably wouldn't care what we had to say about the matter anyway. We are talking about pubs on both sides. Pub marines are unlikely to score any hits once the skulk is biting, and they are very likely to empty the mag before scoring a kill. Weapon ups, even the minimal w1 help with both of those situations. Pub skulks aren't very good at hiding.
On a sidenote, it's pretty much pointless to drop a medkit for a marine missing armor. The health only matters when you have armor to back it up so if someone isn't welding the marines you are just wasting your time and resources as com. If someone IS welding though those health drops are critical. Ammo on the other hand is always invaluable.
- If your argument is bad marines can't aim and W1 helps them kill a skulk before it gets to them, all I can say is the skulk will get to them, because they can't aim. A1 gives them more attempts to hit the skulk, meaning, as I stated before, actual damage output will eventually be higher.
- If your argument is a bad skulk won't get to a marine before dying, taking 2 bullets less for it to die won't make as much of a difference to justify giving up the huge advantage A1 makes in the first scenario.
- Now, if we assume roughly equal skill level for both marine and skulk, let's say on a scale from 1-10, no matter where on that scale both players are, A1 is the safe route to take because it gives the marine the larger advantage from about skill level 1 to 7.
- If we assume marines are stacked and you're aware of it, you can get W1 to end the game faster, but eventually it won't matter because the outcome is carved in stone either way.
- If we assume aliens are stacked and you're aware of it, A1 is clearly the better choice as outlined in the first scenario.
- If we assume either team is stacked and you have no way of knowing this in advance (because you're unfamiliar with the players), you usually can't tell real team balance including all factors until way past the point where you already chose which upgrade to go for.
Ergo: On public servers, A1 is not only the failsafe choice for every possible scenario, but also by heaps and bounds the clearly superior choice for all but one of the above scenarios and generally for nearly every scenario imaginable.
(On a sidenote: I would love to see comparison statistics for skulk deaths with A1 researched until W1 is done and W1 researched until A1 is done respectively. Just to clear this up once and for all.)
Also, people seem to be neglecting the value of increased damage vs alien structures. A match is typically won or lost in early-game fight over res nodes, such that added firepower towards killing harvesters (or hives) can have a huge impact.
A1 is nice, but unless you getting it just before the fades come out, its a defensive strategy. In NS2, defensive strategies typically lose you the game.
For every order "rushing" a higher level upgrade consider that you need to invest 10 more TRes for level 2 and it takes more time. That's why going by a more "natural" order (both level 1 ups, then both level 2 ups, etc) is more effective, unless you have a certain strategy in your mind (exo rush?).
Dusteh's order is classic NS1 3.2 btw, but I wouldn't sign that for NS2. Sometimes I went with that, but in general I switched over to above setting.
Remember I talk about 6v6 games, pubs have many different factors to take into consideration, although the above order doesn't hurt a pub comm at all.
A1 > W1 > W2 > A2 > A3 > W3!
A1 > W1 > A2 > W2 > W3 > A3!
Early game, winning encounters is vital. Mid-game, killing fades is vital.
Also:
>What an incredibly one-dimensional argument.
That was unnecessary.
Bad marines can hit skulks as they approach. Bad marines can't hit skulks when they're in melee range. Accordingly, W1 will help bad marines kill skulks, A1 will not.
I should know.
Nice use of the words statistically and theoretically. You make one sound more credible than the other, even though they are synonymous.
First thing you need to do is define what losing an encounter means. If I have a res node being attacked, and 4 of my marines go there, and get attacked by 3 skulks and a fade, if the fade does, I can lose everything else there, and I still haven't lost that encounter.
The other thing is that, as the commander, you essentially control those variables of lost RTs, lost equipment, lost map control. If I'm rushing weapons 3, I'm not going to be locking down a third tech point. Which means I can't lose the second one, because there isn't a third to dilute the forces. It means I'm not trying to do forward phase gates which can easily be taken out by attrition against low defence. It means I'm not getting jetpacks which die too quickly without armour.
You obviously play to the strengths of whatever path you choose, and in my opinion, the long term benefits of the weapons path outweighs that of the armour path. Considering that this thread is "Weapons 1 or Armour 1", I'm inclined to agree with some that weapons 1 potentially does very little, and armour one provides more utility straight up. However, weapons 2 is far superior to armour 2, and weapons 3 blows armour 3 right out of the water.
But the question is kind of pointless to be honest. As some have told me, the difference between A1 or W1 first is the difference between getting W3 "30 seconds later", so in the average case, who cares whether you get W1 or A1 first? What long term difference is it really going to make?
However, in the non average case, where your first choice makes an impact on your long term goals, where you are rushing upgrades and need to be as fast as possible, then the order definitely matters.
So when I look at the question posed in the OP, what I see is "Do you rush W3 or A3?".
W3 takes 80 + 100 + 120 sec pure research time. A1 takes 80 sec as does W1.
So the real question here is:
Is it worth to delay A1 für 5 minutes in favor of getting W3 80 sec earlier?
So you can either have A1/W2(W3 at 33%) or W3 5 minutes after getting arms lab.
I think the benefit of already having A1 for nearly 4 minutes outweights the additional 80 sec you have to wait for W3.
just stay within 10 feet of an armory like everyone else :P
I guess we can both only speak for ourselves then. I have terrible aim but my movement is great, so I almost never kill a skulk before it's in melee range. Pretty much the only way I kill skulks is by buying me more time to shoot them by 'juking' and surviving as many bites as my armour allows.
That is... my point exactly? This thread is about the early game, because it is about A1 vs W1 first. Accordingly, everything I said was implying that killing Fades mid-game won't matter when you lost the early game and let aliens have 5 RTs and 2 fortified hives, whereas when the lack of armour didn't cripple you early game, you can still kill Fades perfectly fine, as you will usually have A1/W2. It's an exaggerated 'worst case' vs 'best case' scenario, but it gets the point across.
That point being A1 is the safe choice.
You have some valid points, but buying yourself added survivability is not necessarily defensive, because it allows you to play more aggressively in turn as well. For example, it can mean you just barely win those encounters that allow you to even get to the RT you wanted to shoot and still be medded to 100 health, where W1 might have let you be killed. Or it might not have, entirely depending your ability to aim.
Which leads me back to my point that, in public play, A1 is always the safe and therefore better choice.