so does this strat really work?
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It eats aliens alive, and spits out HMGs and HA.
would probably only work if u were up against a really unluck alien team :)
seems like today was elec rt all you cant eat smorgasborg :(
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We won a game against you when you early onosed.
Really it is acctually quite similar to a normal game when the aliens learn to counter it. Silence and focus are really effective and 2nd hive DC allows fades and onos to smash up elec RTs...
Still, if you let the marines 2 hive lockdown or shotty down one of your hives, the game is really over for you, unlike with normal strats when the loss of one hive sometimes isn't really that huge a deal.
Funny how people keep saying that it won't work, it won't work, without even trying it. Well, it works, and it's pretty damn frustrating, knowing the marines have ~4-5, or even 3, nodes, and you can't do anything about it. Last night, on eclipse, Dead_Meat and I tried to take down T-junction node that was electrified, while our hive was Maintenance. We bit the node a few times, went back to heal. Rinse, repeat - and this took ~3 minutes, enough for the node to pay for itself. There's just one example of how this strategy is quite useful, but it's more of a hit and miss thing - I'm sure the Aliens can do something radical and just win the whole thing right there. Maybe base rush? Or something.
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i've used the strat since elec came out man. its really crappy now. i'm sorry. it works GREAT versus newb alien teams or ones that lack teamwork, etc. situatinos any strat would win. but its crap when you have good players on aliens fading, onosing, and giving advice. early base hit with assistance by all the aliens will cause a total loss. chair will die before marines can get back to ms.
How does 5 minute a1 work againist 30 second SC aliens?! Did they forget to get fades, chambers and a second hive?
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Supposedly, they couldn't afford them.
How does 5 minute a1 work againist 30 second SC aliens?! Did they forget to get fades, chambers and a second hive?
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Supposedly, they couldn't afford them.
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very much showing how much people underestimate the alien res system. its actually quite good, even with like 2 nodes. very slow, but the res and rfk adds up very fast. with the lack of armor/weapons etc, aliens will recieve even more rfk. then you add in the fact that its going to be spent in less places since you have electrified everything, you'll see MORE fades+onii and chambers. kind of hurts you more if you can't pick up the game fast enough by the time they get it. you need early pgs/armor, quite badly =\
If Aliens go for RT's early this strat is as good as throwing pebbles at an Onos: Expecting to win is highly unlikely.
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It definitely does happen though, I would even wager a guess that there have been more elec rush wins then normal strat wins on LM in the last 3-4 days. It is DEFINTALY counterable, and we have done so many times. But if you just laugh it off and say, "bleh elec, he's wasting his res" you are pretty much guarenteed a loss. If you treat the elec with respect you can take it down pretty decently, but otherwize you are going to get pwned.
The best counter is just to stay well in control of the map the way the aliens are supposed to. Remember, under this strat IPs go up late, so marines you kill in the first 20 seconds aren't going to spawn for a little while. Use that fact to make sure you don't LET the marines get 5 RTs up in the first 2 minutes, because if they do you are screwed.
yeah.. first 2 games i played against newborn was a breeze.. thanks to the aliens not sucking ass.... we just killed the rts before the elec could finish... 3rd time i played against it the aliens were horrible.. i kept tellin em to take down rts before they elec but they wouldnt listen.. they just blew me off and said "piff.. elec?... hell just waste all his res..."
thats when i leave the server....
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Heh, ya. Once I learned to respect the elec it wasn't as dangerous as it was before. But if you let the marine team put up and electrify 5 RTs I don't know what the hell you have been doing, but it sure wasn't playing a good alein game.
Elec = dangerous! Only you can prevent electrification forests!
strictly in my opinion, it shouldnt work that well because every time i comm for some danged odd reason i'm always against a team of invincible aliens and like 5 HD's or something
but anyway, i haven't actually tried it myself yet because it's hard for me to imagine that it works very well
there's a *massive* drain of resources in the beginning to elec the nodes, and to fuel it with any speed u need ur rines to be shooting well, which doesnt happen too often.
in doing so, u also lack any base defense whatsoever, and if the aliens manage to rush ur base, it's GG and time for a new round
granted it does scare skulks off in the beginning, but there's also a time constraint to it
as an example, i was up against newborn's elec strat and i caught one of his rines building an rt
he finished it just as i killed him, and i immediately began chomping on the node while he began electrifying it
by the time it elec'd i had the thing down to 2 bars, i simply had to heal twice and it was down
now, if the alien team is coordinated, which *just so happens* every time i'm a comm, all the nodes go down either before or relatively quickly after they elec
i dont know, it sounds good, but i dont think it's better than a standard tech rush..
just me though. do i sound a bit biased? i don't know, but it's how i think..
again this is all my opinion because i've not actually tried this yet, and my opinion might change once i get the nerve to test it on the field
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If I belive a node I want to electrify won't be able to at least hold yellow bar status before it finishes I will cancel electrification. This strat DOES work well under certian conditions, but basicly those conditions are that the marines take the majority of the res nodes on the map at a faster rate then they would in a normal game. A good marine team really helps pull this off because they have to bunch together less and are more inclined to fast movement throughout the map then a poor marine team, and a good alien team hurts this because it is simply much harder to expand enough to offset the cost of several electrified nodes if the early aliens kill your marines as soon as they get more then one RT's distance out of MS.
The two best counter habits I have seen to date to screw this strat over, is pairs of skulks camping the closest nodes to marine start and delaying the initial node rush as long as possible, and a player gorging to drop chambers as soon as the gamestart ping finishes ringing. L1 celer or L1 cloak may not the end all be all at 1:30 into the game, but at 0:25 they make a HUGE difference. Going DC first agianst this strat is the most risky, because although it helps nodesmashing fades, your early skulks will be less able to stem the initial res rush, and the initial res rush is what makes or breaks this strat for the marine team every time it is used.
[edit] acctually I have found from experiance that early base rushes are rarely any more successful against this strat then against a normal strat. Ips go up soon enough that the base is not realisticly all that much weaker then a normal base except while the marines are still fairly close building the intermost resnodes. It is more effecive to set up lots of ambush spots near MS and put half assed pressure on the marine base (not so much that you will die trying to kill the CC, but enough that they feel they need to keep base gaurds near MS) The alien conterpriority should be stemming expansion and forcing them to fight for every inch of ground they take. If the marines have 3 electrified nodes up by the time you get your first fade you are still fine, if they have 4 you are pushing your luck, and if they have 5 you have let them expand FAR too fast.
The aliens number one priority in 3.0f should be preventing the marines from taking ground in the early game, When you reach the mid game your fades are able to take down electrified nodes that the marines have put up, and if they have not electrified nodes, your fades should be able to tie up the upgraded shotty teams long enough for skulks to take down the unelectrified nodes and your second hive to go up.
I'm often amazingly slow when it comes to things like this... I think I have been on both sides of this strat for a few times without really noticing.
I remember a Hera game where our commander (which may or may not have been Newborn) had a tf and an IP in base, and nothing else. I was rather surprised. No armory? No obs? Then HD came (as a bloody skulk, too!) and all our base were belong to him. Marines died right as they spawned off the lone IP due to lack of armour upgrades, no obs for bacon, commander jumped out to kill HD but failed, the rest of the team got picked off one by one as they trekked back through the map in a frantic but futile attempt to get to the chair alive. Baseraped.
Then I remember an Origin game where I was on aliens. Wasn't even a very noticeable game. Marines were kinda slow and seemed to leave us alone for the most part. I noticed a few electrified nodes, but didn't think much of them. "I'll just leave those to Fades and Onos." At hive two, with two Fades and an Onos, all those precious elec rts went down real fast, and the marines had nothing left. And that's that, really.
But from the sound of it, I'll gladly believe that it's ridiculously effective against an unprepared alien team.
In the end, NS is a game of counters, and this strategy has one as well. The only thing that can't be countered is massive skill unbalance.
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That's the key here. The marine team needs to move like they have a fire lit under thier ass if they want any chance of success. You must have 4 electrified nodes up before the aleins have fades, and you need to have pushed through several alien resnodes by the time there is any more then one fade on the map. The 4 min fade should have to contend with no less then 5 electrified res nodes if you expect to win by any safe margin as a marine team trying to pull off this strat.
And almost immediately, I deliver proof:
Nooblet tried this on Origin. The marine team passed through double on their way to vent, killing everything and putting the nodes up. When I came there, one of the nodes was electrified, so I chomped the other one. While I was chomping it, it finished electrifying. I was a skulk, so I had no choice but to back off. I proceeded to laserdrilling because the node there was parasited, but it was also electrified. At this point, I suspected that this strat was exactly what was going on - and then it occurred to me that there was probably only a single IP and a tf in the marine base. So I quickly ran there, and I turned out to be right. The IP went down right quick, but the comm never got out of the chair. I later noticed that the marines were busy trying to siege ventilation, our one and only hive, so I guess Nooblet was too busy and never noticed that his IP went down until his marines complained that they weren't spawning. I started camping the commchair, waiting for Nooblet to get out, and was then joined by another skulk. To cut it short: Nooblet got out of the chair and went down in two bites without putting a single bullet into me. The other marines were picked off one by one. Despite intense fighting at the hive and four siege cannons (from what I could see on my minimap), it only went down to about 50%.
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yes, i was on the rine team, and i was the last rine at the siege fort in vent
we rushed res and about 10 seconds in, i figured this would be the elec strat
we capped laser drilling, comp lab, bio and double really quickly i believe.
we were ordered to stay in cargo until both nodes started electrifying, and after they started we moved to vent.
about this time our base went under attack, but everyone got to vent and we were able to fend off the skulks
I had hoped that our rpesence would cause enough urgency to recall the skulks attacking base back to the hive so we called for a TF (as most aliens know, when u see a TF outside ur hive u go HIVE HIVE HIVE!!!)
we were informed our IPs went down, but we got a few turrets up and i was keeping an eye and an ear out for the locations of skulks and relaying it to the team
we were low on ammo so we got ammo spammed, however base went down by now
we had about 70 res so we dropped 5 sieges
unfortunately, this was endgame because nooblet got out of the chair because he said he thought he could take out the ONE skulk (there were 2, u say?) and he died.
that was it, we had to take out vent or lose, and we tried our best to hold our location
skulks came in mass numbers, overwhelming our LMGs and rines started falling, we managed to get 4 sieges up and i was building the 5th
we had to manually spot the hive, so we shot it and several ran in to their deaths, but got the sieges going
i got the 5th siege up and shot the hive a bit to fire off the sieges again
by this time i was the only one alive, and 2 skulks were running towards me
i was reloading so by the time i finished, the skulks were jumping past the line of sieges, and i couldn't take both out and we lost. IF i had managed to kill both, the hvie might've went down, but we might've lost anyway as i probably would've died to the skulks that would start dying near the hive
in any case, this is the main reason i dont believe the strat works very well because as it stands, granted the base WILL have an IP and a TF, there is NOTHING else there, because every rine HAS to be out getting resources and guarding them.
the comm can only do so much and when u hop out, u are disoriented for about a second. yes, they will spawn, but with the IP as the only structure to take out, a lone skulk can end MS pretty easily.
yes we have buttloads of res, but we can't use it.
so does this strat really work?
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It eats aliens alive, and spits out HMGs and HA.
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ONLY if the marines have skills.... try it with an underarmed team and you are up crap creek without any toilet paper.
Personally, my strat starting off alien, is one of two choises - drop an RT and then do the following, or just go find a nice cozy place to hide where I know *I * would head if I were a rambo'ing 'rine.
Then just demolish them. Anytime I play, you'll see this in action as i'm using at the top of the scoreboard very quickly becuase I ambush so much.
Now, if you had enough aliens that played like that, the elect strat wouldn't work becuase the marines wouldn't get any upgrades and would be very slow to respawn, ect.