Yah. Skulks can't hold a candle to turrets if there are no blind spots on the tf. What can take down a turret farm is a coordinated skulk rush or a Fade, only the latter of which is common. A PG more than doubles the usefulness of a turret farm, too.
Also, a turret farm of four or five turrets is almost impossible to get past alive for a skulk. If placed in a chokepoint, you effectively deny skulks access to that part of the map. Gorges sometimes lame up chokepoints, and it works rather well.
For example, one of the more successful (pub) tactics on tanith back in the days of b5:
OCs with gorge support in central access tunnels. This would completely cut off the most popular route to cargo, forcing marines to go through chemical transport and acidic resolution instead. Either that, or mount a coordinated assault on central access, one that would often fail anyway because the gorge would cry for help. Even a few skulks were able to wreak havoc on marines busy with OCs.
It's also much harder to get the alien team organised to take down a turret farm in a chokepoint, if that chokepoint is not in or directly outside a hive. Getting aliens to respond to a possible siege or to clear out a turret farmed hive is not that hard, but try to convince your team that the turret farm in a chokepoint somewhere is a priority, and you'll see how sluggish the alien warmachine sometimes reacts.
All this has to be backed up by PGs, though. Any turret farm can be taken down by attrition if there's nobody near to weld damaged structures and replace destroyed turrets, and you cannot rely on marines getting there on foot alive. There's no guarantee that they'll make it.
I believe that confused is right: The game is all about map control now. Inherently the marines are at a disadvantage because they cannot use the same shortcuts (i.e. vents) as the aliens and move slower. The marines have to compensate this through a phase network. Some of the strongest marine games I've seen in b6 relied on a good phase network. Marines were able to get almost anywhere in twenty seconds or less by taking a phase to a nearby location. Not having to walk the map as much also greatly reduces the chance of getting ambushed. In games where aliens go sensory first, this can be combined with a network of observatories, to greatly reduce the advantages of cloaking, especially the SCs cloaking radius, which is extremely potent in combination with sof or focus.
I realise that commanding just got harder, and that I'm asking of the commanders what I could never do myself, but please: Don't give up. And know that I have the utmost respect for a good commander.
