When is it worth recycling RTs?

halfofaheaven · June 2013

RTs stop collecting res as soon as you hit recycle and, as we all know (right?), recycling structures only gives back an amount of res based on their hp.

With 1-2 skulks biting, you get the same amount whether you recycle them or leave them. Which means all you do by recycling RTs is saving aliens time.

A lot of people already know this, but I'm bringing it up because I still see loads of commanders doing it, and while some will go "oh okay I didn't know that" when I call them out on it and explain, some will claim it's the right thing to do no matter what I say and/or call me an idiot or other lovely things.

Please stop recycling RTs. Your marines will love you for it.

Love,
snb

edit: Changing the whole purpose of this thread to a discussion after having tested it again. See my post below!

So, here's roughly how much res you get for recycling / leaving skulks to bite an RT respectively:

1 skulk: recycling = 7, leaving = 4
2 skulks: 5, 3
3 skulks: 3, 1

Basically, you get 2-3 more res from recycling RTs than you get from leaving them. When do you recycle RTs and when don't you, apart from obvious situations when a marine is on their way? When can you justify having skulks occupied for a few more seconds in return for losing 2-3 res?

Ghosthree3 · June 2013

Yeah, I've made posts like this before, I've thought and thought on it, and there is never a good situation to do it in, with one exception, the skulks are biting the power and about to kill it, and the RT is still full hp with no one on the way to save it.

halfofaheaven · June 2013

Ghosthree3 wrote: »

Yeah, I've made posts like this before, I've thought and thought on it, and there is never a good situation to do it in, with one exception, the skulks are biting the power and about to kill it, and the RT is still full hp with no one on the way to save it.

This should never happen unless skulks are dumb or it's a whole base that's lost. Either way, I'd personally still wait for the power to actually go down before selling it because you'll get a few ticks meanwhile, so my point stands.

Ghosthree3 · June 2013

Should never happen, happens all the time, it's sad in a way. When I said "about to go down" I really did mean like 2s, that way the RT doesn't have a chance to tick but also won't take too much damage so it's value is less when selling.

halfofaheaven · June 2013

Okay, after someone told me they tried this recently and found you get more res by recycling, we tried it again, and it's different than it was when I last tried it, which might have been in beta days. I don't recall anything changing about RT health or recycle time since then, but apparently something has changed.

So basically, I look like a huge asshat now. Please disregard everything I said.

Therius · June 2013

What halfofaheaven is saying is that you get 2-3 res more by recycling if you do it immediately when the skulk(s) start biting on it. Also, if you manage to recycle the extractor just before the skulk engages it (after, for example, seeing a marine lose to a skulk in a fight in the room), you get the full 8 res as opposed to 4-5 res it ticks against one skulk. The more skulks in the room, the more you win by recycling the extractor before they hit it.

This should be still be done very rarely. An extractor saved is always better than an extractor sold, and in the time it takes for one skulk to destroy an extractor (28 seconds), there is a huge chance that a marine will be able to save it. Even the outermost extractors rarely are farther away from the base/a pg than 20 seconds, so there is always a chance somebody spots it and saves the day. Biting the res nodes also keeps the skulk occupied, and paying 2-3 res for a skulk that's wasting almost half a minute without opposing you is a small price to pay.

The guideline of "never sell your powered rts" is still valid for a learning commander, since it's almost always the correct conduct and it allows the commander to spend time on more crucial matters.

Ghosthree3 · June 2013

8 full res is unlikely, maybe 7 since 8 is the return for 100% hp. However I think the 4-5 ticks are worth it more than 7 guaranteed res as it means your marines do not have to rebuild the RTs later and the skulks time is consumed.

Therius · June 2013

What do you mean by the marines not having to rebuild the RTs? The extractor is gone whether you sold it or the skulks gnawed it.

Ghosthree3 · June 2013

There's a chance it could be saved, should have stated. The other point is the most important though.

halfofaheaven · June 2013

Well, this is mostly about situations where it's 100% certain it won't be saved.

Roobubba · June 2013

I think it comes down to deciding whether the 2-3 res you save by recycling versus not is worth it to take a skulk out of the field at that specific moment. If you're getting ready for a push or you think the aliens are about to push, I'd argue that res is well spent, otherwise, recycle. It's very situational.

Khyron · June 2013

Ghosthree3 wrote: »

Yeah, I've made posts like this before, I've thought and thought on it, and there is never a good situation to do it in, with one exception, the skulks are biting the power and about to kill it, and the RT is still full hp with no one on the way to save it.

Pretty much agree. If you can start recycling it basically as soon as it starts getting attacked, or ideally you prime it if you know it's about to be attacked. I haven't tested but I assume it's still 70% of the health value, which means the armour really helps maintain the maximum recycle value for that little bit longer. Also I believe the game tracks floating values so even if it only shows 6 it could be 6.5.

Beyond that, its most effective to bother recycling if its very early in the game when res is time critical. Late game when you've finished all the research its easily better to just let them chew it.

DC_Darkling · June 2013

in realistic situations you never recycle a working RT.
A working RT also shoves out pres, may be saved, keeps them busy biting it. I dont even see the contest.

Ghosthree3 · June 2013

Yea I forgot to mention the pres.

xen32 · June 2013

1 skulk: recycling = 7, leaving = 4
2 skulks: 5, 3
3 skulks: 3, 1

These are some bad calculations, if one skulk is biting your RT you will never get full 7 res back, health will go down and you will get less. Another thing is that you have to react instantly. Unless you are Korean, it is almost never possible.
And let's not forget about pres here. Recycling won't pump you anymore pres. One tick gives 0.125 pres to all of your marines. Let's say on 18 player server it if you get 4 ticks, it's 4 pres distributed to your team.

Another thing is keeping that alien busy. Recycling just means he will do harm somewhere else. And let's not forget that there is always a chance that someone will come and save extractor or some urgent alien situation will happen and skulk will be forced to leave and help his team.

Ghosthree3 · June 2013

The other thing you must realise is where does it end? If you cave and recycle immediately, he'll jump on the next RT, do you recycle that as well? If you do, do you keep doing it? Soon you have no RTs left, your team has to recap the entire map instead of just the one that the skulk took ages to kill.

Uzver · June 2013

Khyron wrote: »

Also I believe the game tracks floating values so even if it only shows 6 it could be 6.5.

// We round it up to the nearest value thus not having weird
// fracts of costs being returned which is not suppose to be 
// the case.
local finalRecycleAmount = math.round(amount * scalar)

ruprecht · June 2013

http://www.reddit.com/r/ns2/comments/16mwbg/is_it_better_to_just_not_recycle_rts_while_aliens/

Khyron · June 2013

Uzver wrote: »

// We round it up to the nearest value thus not having weird
// fracts of costs being returned which is not suppose to be 
// the case.
local finalRecycleAmount = math.round(amount * scalar)

Oh. Well that's another nail in the coffin for recycling extractors.

ezekel · June 2013

1) When the power is out and you know it won't come back

2) When you know a large group of aliens are coming towards an RT and your team is not near it, recycle ASAP if it's only one it's better to keep it as the res drain > length of one skulk, however a group attack won't get any real benefit from letting it drain; best if you can sell it before they jump on it (that's up to you as the com being aware, you should notice when your team is making a focus push or at one specific part of the map that someone from the alien team will be rotating/clearing out RTs that aren't defended)

Khyron · June 2013

xen32 wrote: »

These are some bad calculations, if one skulk is biting your RT you will never get full 7 res back, health will go down and you will get less. Another thing is that you have to react instantly. Unless you are Korean, it is almost never possible.

Start of game, you've got your base extractor and the two nearest ones. You drop a forth one at a tech point. The marines built it then move to the next point. They get ambushed on the way and are wiped out. You know the skulk pack is heading for the techpoint to check for res. The nearest marine has just spawned in at your base, so you know he won't get there in time. This is a pretty common scenario and is the most effective time to recycle. There are plenty of variations on that in the first few minutes of the game where I think it's worth recycling. In those situations you don't at all have to be Korean... there's not much else for a comm to be doing at that stage of the game.

xen32 wrote: »

And let's not forget about pres here. Recycling won't pump you anymore pres. One tick gives 0.125 pres to all of your marines. Let's say on 18 player server it if you get 4 ticks, it's 4 pres distributed to your team.

True, and that's probably the main factor in deciding whether to recycle or not. For my money, tRes is way more important than pRes in the first five minutes of the game.

xen32 wrote: »

Another thing is keeping that alien busy. Recycling just means he will do harm somewhere else.

Yeah there's some truth in that. But a skulk just running around the map is not actually doing economic damage, and a smart team/comm will predict where the skulk will threaten next and move to intercept.

ScardyBob · June 2013

Easy answer: Never recycle.

As it currently stands, the 1-7 TRes you'd get back is almost never worth the cost in lost PRes gain, you attention, and the delay it forces on the skulks to bite structures rather than players.

Khyron · June 2013

Scardy, can you break it down for me? Just give me the bottom line. I'm not interested in any nuance and subtly the game has to offer.

Uzver · June 2013

I analyzed a LUA code and did a modelling of destroying building by doing a normal 75 damage in time with a rate of fire of skulk. This a not a 100% accurate, but I tried to do my best. You can notice that in the start RT mines an one TRES in less than 6 seconds. I did this because it's very rarely to start bite RT in the start of mining process of RT.

biz · June 2013

there's no answer because pres != tres

When is it worth recycling RTs?

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