To Electrify Or Not To Electrify~

[Lito]

you can basically divide ye olde cornmandores into two groups:

Electrification whores.
non-electrification whores.

Both have thier advantages, and both have thier disadvantages.

Many people say that experienced commanders do not use electrification to hold thier resnodes because they pressure the aliens so much, that they don't have time to chew them down, and they reccomend that newer, or inexperienced commanders that electrification is a must.

opinions? statistics? post them here

[ShootBang]

ELECTRIFY. You COULD go and build 3 turrets near base and spend the same res... but aliens can find a hole in most turret setups. A well-placed elec. TF in base will keep the skulks away.

At res nodes I still think it's a good idea to Electrify. I'm not to great at holding onto resnodes without elec. Electrified Res also give you a good opportunity to place phase gates without having to worry about keeping them alive through the earlier parts of the game.

/edit spelling hax

[SaltzBad]

Lets assume for a moment you have the resnode Overlook on ns_veil captured at 1:30. Assuming you don't electrify it, and it holds for 3 minutes because this is the area your marines are generally walking past, you've netted something along the lines of 30 res from it.

Assuming you do electrify it, 4:30 or those 3 minutes is the moment you've netted ZERO res from it - 4:30 incidentially being the average time for a Fade to complete gestation. The time you're gaining res is the time it takes a Fade to decide to take it down - 1 minute is just about realistic. You'll net 12-15 res from that.

Theres the advantage to that, you've denied the Aliens putting up an RT in that spot - but unless its in a place that would put them at a serious disadvantage, like an alien-friendly node, they won't care. Theres a limit of about 4 RTs you can hold down against decent 'rines anyway - anything outside that is usually not even attempted until the ~8 minute mark at least.

Thats the upside. But the downside to electrification for protection is alot more drastic - it doesn't remove those 30 res you'd have at 4:30, it removes them at 1:30. Thats very, very, very bad in a game providing any challenge at all - those 30 res could be any upgrade, shotguns or an AA or any other item you need fast before Aliens get the chance to expand. Early electrification shoots itself in the foot - electrification only being useful against largely dominated alien teams to avoid comebacks, but hampering map-domination in itself.

So the main uses of Electrification that remain :
- Base defense, great for crowded spots
- Limiting the options of 1-Hive aliens
- Boosting TFs, especially important ones on the offense (and/or defending a TFs Sieges. Its decent for Sieging as it requires no building)

[Dark]

interesting opinion there saltz but now i understand why when you are com we get upgrades and other things really quick :ph34r:

[Niteowl]

yes, what saltz said.

elect what is far away from your usual patrol/where you are projecting your force. try to elect as LITTLE as possible. the only time i'll for sure elct is if i'm trying to hold a position, and need a pg there. or, if i'm about to set up a siege area, and it's being HEAVILY hit by skulks. you can't expect the rines to build turrets (no N there shootbang), so you elect the tfac.

[BobTheJanitor]

I base it on the team's ability. If I know I've got good people who can stay in a squad and manage to hit the aliens more than eachother while actually GOING to their waypoints, I don't waste the res. If half the team rambos away, half goes to the first RT and dies several times and then streams back there one at a time to continue to die, I'll usually electrify that bad boy. Not that it matters by then anyway...

Otherwise I'll do it if the game is going quite well and I've built up surplus res with nothing to spend it on. By then it's usually unimportant too, but it annoys the skulks, so why not?

[fatty]

i am for electrifying nodes, but not one at a time, i like to get 3-4 and then start electrifying them all.

one game i remember on ns_metal:
aliens team was losing kind of bad. holy_devil and i agreed over teamchat that if saltz had electrifyed the nodes he had in power bank, flight, and the one between smelter and the top hive, he would have walked all over us. instead, one skulk (me) was able to go around behind the lines and take them all down unopposed. we ended up coming back and winning, as saltz couldn't afford enough toys.

[SaltzBad]

Question is though, would you have been walked all over by 4 node marines that had to spend 120 on elec? And afaik, this was all still under the 6 minute mark before Aliens started making their 'comeback'

I don't disagree though, if we'd have been able to pull that off PLUS elec, it would have been an easier win. But also only by a small margin, as the Aliens afforded themselves several Fades that could have taken that stuff down anyway and not necessarily before it netted us more res.

Really, I do believe what hurts marines least of all is one guy walking around recapping most of the nodes - it takes aliens more time and effort to just take them down than it takes us to put them up, and they usually stay up about 2 minutes anyway.

[fatty]

well, you also had top hive rt ( i should really remember that name) and marine start rt, so you weren't  '4'  node marines

[Grimm]

I don't really comm that often (I can count how many serious games I've commed on two hands), but I think electrifying the nodes, if you can get at least half of them on the map early enough (within the first few minutes), then you can be sure you won't be seeing fade for a little while longer. By then you should have lvl 2 weaps and some shotties passed around to deal with any fades that appear.

[DiscoZombie]

maybe one idea would be to electrify one or maybe 2 nodes max early in the game -- that way you're guaranteed to have at least 2 or 3 nodes for a few minutes instead of the 1 node good aliens tend to keep reducing you to if they're not electrified...

I'd also like to point out that a lot of reswhore fades don't 'trouble themselves' with taking down elec res nodes.  they'd rather be raking in the kills, while the marines rake in the res... so just because aliens CAN get a fade or two somewhat early in the game, doesn't mean they will, and if they do it doesn't mean your elec nodes are doomed...

not to mention that 1 hive fades with no DCs can't take out elec nodes much better than skulks can...

[SaltzBad]

Okay, but the same Fades will bother even less with non-elec nodes and/or make sure Aliens get Hive2 to BB those things away (lets not even mention OCs :p). Its simply that in my experience as an alien electrification increases the chance we have of recovering from a bad earlygame alot because marines will be advancing slower and tech less. Even if marines spend those 180 res on the 6 outside nodes on 16 turrets and 2 TFacs on the 2 hives would our chance of any recovery be significantly lower than if they electrified every RT.

Obviously, if we don't take that chance marines got a win on a silver platter handed to them - but that doesn't make electrification a real advantage.

Anyways, in short I do believe that elec at times can be useful - general, sweeping elec fails 90% of the time though.

[DiscoZombie]

yeah, I'm being swayed against electricity except at those vital spots like hives, usually defending a phase gate... an hour or two ago we played a game where the marines had about FIVE electrified RTs, I think under the 6 minute mark... and I was thinking as alien "omg we're screwed, how can we ever take out these nodes... they'll have an HA in no time..."

but it soon became obvious that they couldn't afford much besides those nodes, because the nodes slowly came down to the aliens and the marines couldn't seem to push to get them back with their low level weapons and such...

[Leaderz0rz]

i didn't read the posts and i don't play ns but here goes!

from my experience, eletricfy TF in spawn is a must, only electrify res nodes that are far from MS, one that is a 5 second walk is a waste of res.

[Diablus]

electrifying res nodes early game = Counter: OC spam <_< (tho it works out because thats 1 less person on aliens with resources)

electrifiying tf's is a waste. drop a pack of mines and your good for base guarding.

id say electrifying resource nodes works out really well early game. it sets up 1/2 points to set up a mini base to attack a hive, if marines are being chased by skulks usually skulks dont follow em or get crisped..

[Dark]

well an arguement toward elecing a base tf is that it offers more coverage for important base things for longer than a pack or 10 of mines

[Diablus]

usually skulks always try to find a blind spot for the electricity, so they can bite the building just a MM away from the electricity range, meanwhile doing that with mines is like walking onto a minefield with your eyes closed. Also, mines do (125 i think) and do splash damge to any aliens near it. so say u have 4 skuks rush a base. electricity only hits 2 at a time and your comamnder would most likely be forced to save the building risking dying, risking losing that building. with mines 1 skulk makes the mistake of going on one all 4 skulks die if theyre together. thats why more commanders do the mine drop rather then the 15 resource electrify tf