Because the only reason to destroy a power node is to power down all the structures in an area, and unless you're in their base, there aren't going to be any structures that are more important to power down than they are to kill. Then, once you've killed the structures, it's a waste of time to destroy the power node because all it does is turn out the lights and then waste a bit of marine time when they come to repair it.
Basically there is always a better use of your time than biting a power node unless taking down that power node will leave the marine main base down for the count (which is very good because they won't be able to spawn unless they have backup infantry portals at another base).
new alien players:
don't eat the power node unless you're in their base.
Ok.
Why?
You're not denying them resources by chomping it.. it costs nothing to rebuild except time. You're just wasting your time to waste their time.
It can be useful to draw some attention though. If your team is getting a lot of pressure, a skulk sneaking to some remote corner and biting a few pieces of hardware may get a couple marines to come investigate, giving your team some space to breathe.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
And if there are things to power down, then it comes down to "Is it easier to kill the thing we need to power down, or shut off the power for it to stop working?" And in this case we're talking about Phase Gates and Observatories, which take far less time to eat than a power node does.
The Main Base is useful to power down due to the sheer amount of crap that would otherwise have to be destroyed.
DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
Excellent, thank you for the fine elucidation. I was ready to take everyone on their word for it, but as a new player I want to get the mechanical reasons for the whys and why nots.
Killing the power node of a contested room can be very useful because it makes it much more difficult for marines to reclaim that area. Gives you a lot more time and opportunity to kill them while they try to repair it. You should at least take down the power for tech points that you reclaim. Otherwise it's a low priority for when you're killing time in the area.
Similarly though one mistake a lot of marines make is to think that killing cysts is important. It really isn't at all. Killing the cyst next to a Harvester is a waste of time, because it's a cinch for the comm to replace and it takes a very long time for infestation starvation to kill a structure. Better to focus down the Harvester immediately. Even afterwards, if the RT is in enemy territory, leave the infestation where it is and move on. If the comm drops it again that's good for you, it means you can kill it again.
The only time you should be killing a cyst is when the infestation needs to be cleared for you to build there, or you're waiting for something and have nothing better to do. You should never spend rifle ammo shooting a cyst. And DO NOT attack a cyst when the alien team isn't yet aware of your presence, you're blowing the element of surprise.
Wow, I disagree with a lot of the suggestions on this page.
Zek nailed it with power nodes. They take a long time to repair, longer than building a phase gate. That can buy your team crucial time to arrive and stop the setup. Even with res nodes it more than doubles the time required for the enemy to reclaim the node, which slows their resource recovery. The lights are a nice bonus, too; even when they come back on, the emergency lighting gives skulks and lerks more shadows to sit in, and makes roaming Silence-enhanced aliens even harder to notice.
Destroying cysts can similarly slow down the other team. Unless aliens are swimming in resources, wiping out a room or two of cysts can slow alien acquisition of an upgrade (should they rebuild them), as well as comm placement of crags and other support buildings should the room become contested.
There IS some conventional wisdom to provide on these topics (which I think powers the over-reaction of "never do this"):
* As aliens: if there's just a res node and a power node, munch the res node first. An exception to this is if the power node was already severely damaged from an earlier attack.
* As marines: ignore cysts during forward attacks. If you're moving on taking a map location, attacking cysts will waste ammo, make you vulnerable to skulk rushes, and alert the alien team about your progress. Instead, destroy cysts if you must in order to build a forward base, or if you are establishing control over an area of the map (but not attacking a fortified location, such as a hive or a whip/gorged room). In those cases, start with a connecting node (like at the hallway entrance to the room) and then take out the now-unconnected nodes inside the room.
* On either team, power nodes and cysts should have lower priority than assaults or defense against assaults. Aliens should mostly hit nodes when on roaming interference; marines should hit them while teching / building up a zone.
* On either team, if you're losing the resource battle, you should probably ignore power nodes and cysts until you've taken out several enemy resource nodes. On the other hand, if you're winning the resource battle (or if it's even), attacking those strategic targets is a great way to push harder on overall map control.
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Zek nailed it with power nodes. They take a long time to repair, longer than building a phase gate. That can buy your team crucial time to arrive and stop the setup. Even with res nodes it more than doubles the time required for the enemy to reclaim the node, which slows their resource recovery. The lights are a nice bonus, too; even when they come back on, the emergency lighting gives skulks and lerks more shadows to sit in, and makes roaming Silence-enhanced aliens even harder to notice.
I haven't timed it, but I'm pretty sure the time to destroy a power node is equal to the time to repair it, assuming equal numbers. You're literally exchanging your time for their time.
Killing the lights is of debatable utility. The 5 or so seconds of pitch black is certainly a big deal, but only if there's fighting actively taking place. The emergency lights don't hide alien movements all that well in my experience.. all you have to do is see a couple pixels twitch and shoot at it.
If you have a magical "kill the node" button then yes press the button, you will slow down their resource node reacquisition, but it takes you so much time to down the node that it's usually not worth it, especially because if they send two people with welders the node comes back pretty fast. Killing cysts lets the aliens know you're coming, so it can be a good distraction, but if you're doing it not for strategic purposes but just to do damage to the aliens, you can probably find better uses of your time. Cutting a cyst chain can be helpful though because if that goes unnoticed it can do some real damage, and since you only killed one cyst it's more likely to go unnoticed for a little while.
base with phase gate and other junk -> kill the phase
main base -> power
what you do after killing the power in their spawn is situational depending on if they have another cc, how many rines are coming back to save it etc. i usually go for the ips, it most directly leads to a win
Wow, I disagree with a lot of the suggestions on this page.
Zek nailed it with power nodes. They take a long time to repair, longer than building a phase gate. That can buy your team crucial time to arrive and stop the setup. Even with res nodes it more than doubles the time required for the enemy to reclaim the node, which slows their resource recovery. The lights are a nice bonus, too; even when they come back on, the emergency lighting gives skulks and lerks more shadows to sit in, and makes roaming Silence-enhanced aliens even harder to notice.
Destroying cysts can similarly slow down the other team. Unless aliens are swimming in resources, wiping out a room or two of cysts can slow alien acquisition of an upgrade (should they rebuild them), as well as comm placement of crags and other support buildings should the room become contested.
There IS some conventional wisdom to provide on these topics (which I think powers the over-reaction of "never do this"):
* As aliens: if there's just a res node and a power node, munch the res node first. An exception to this is if the power node was already severely damaged from an earlier attack.
* As marines: ignore cysts during forward attacks. If you're moving on taking a map location, attacking cysts will waste ammo, make you vulnerable to skulk rushes, and alert the alien team about your progress. Instead, destroy cysts if you must in order to build a forward base, or if you are establishing control over an area of the map (but not attacking a fortified location, such as a hive or a whip/gorged room). In those cases, start with a connecting node (like at the hallway entrance to the room) and then take out the now-unconnected nodes inside the room.
* On either team, power nodes and cysts should have lower priority than assaults or defense against assaults. Aliens should mostly hit nodes when on roaming interference; marines should hit them while teching / building up a zone.
* On either team, if you're losing the resource battle, you should probably ignore power nodes and cysts until you've taken out several enemy resource nodes. On the other hand, if you're winning the resource battle (or if it's even), attacking those strategic targets is a great way to push harder on overall map control.
It's important to remember that every single thing you do is a time investment that has to be weighed against your other options. Clearing a room of all cysts takes time that could have been spent fighting elsewhere. That time you spent killing all those cysts while the aliens were dead might have translated into pushing further and killing another Harvester, but that window of opportunity will be closed afterwards. There are exceptions to every rule, but I think it's better to go by a clear rule of thumb that's correct 90% of the time than to confuse people with all the what-ifs. Right now most marine teams suffer from a serious lack of aggression that frequently costs them the game.
here's something I watched happen last night in veil:
2 onos, a gorge & a skulk left pipeline heading towards marine start.
1 onos and the gorge stopped to kill the power node in c12, even though there were no buildings in that room & I asked them to stay with the others.
when the others got to control, the skulk died and the other onos was just barely able to escape without a healer. their comm didn't even have to beacon.
If there's no rush though it makes sense to just instagib an RT power node with two onoses and a gorge. IMO when that happens the people who charge ahead without their backup are responsible for themselves. It's like the exos who don't retreat when no one is with them and then complain that they had no welders.
After all this discussion, I just played a game where the aliens were the absolute worse at knowing what to chomp. 4 Aliens rush into the marine base. 2 of them go for the armory, one for the res node, and one for the power node.
In fact, the only time they would go straight for a powernode was when it was alone in a hallway with nothing to power or near the res node.
WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
I was just in a game where the comm kept telling me to build random power nodes. Not only in areas where nothing was built, but where nothing WOULD be built. In a hallway outside the hive 2 minutes into the match? GET THE POWER UP DUDE GO GO GO.
Was in a game where we lost our main base as marines and were down to our two tech points with no additional res nodes and some onos and fades outside. Some of the aliens said "gg" and we had a couple people vote to surrender. But we held out, sieged nano and finally cleared them out with an exo/mac/arc train. Those are the sweetest victories, when you get to prove your critics wrong.
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WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
I commanded a game where we marines were down to 2 RTs and one base. The other team really wanted to fight it out, so I didn't recycle. I figure it's nice to let the other team make that last fulfilling push once in a while. Recycling is so anticlimactic. The problem is that they were only good enough to corner us, not to finish us off. I think it was 15 minutes of back and forth before we got sick of it, recycled anyway, and made a "stone age" offense with nothing more than axes. Bo-ring.
I commanded a game where we marines were down to 2 RTs and one base. The other team really wanted to fight it out, so I didn't recycle. I figure it's nice to let the other team make that last fulfilling push once in a while. Recycling is so anticlimactic. The problem is that they were only good enough to corner us, not to finish us off. I think it was 15 minutes of back and forth before we got sick of it, recycled anyway, and made a "stone age" offense with nothing more than axes. Bo-ring.
It's definitely a little unfortunate that games often drag out in the end, but a big part of that is people just not being so good at the game yet, I think. Taking out the power is a pretty good blow right to the internal organs of a Marine team, and 2 Onoses + 2 Gorges + a Lerk for umbra pretty much guarantees a downed power node and a game over for the Marines. People are just too uncoordinated or too timid or just not very skilled, though, so until people get a bit better at busting in, some games will definitely drag out.
there's also the fact that the game is not balanced for 10v10 play.
9 marines turtling with weapons3 can take out a single onos in a flash. in a tech point with long sight lines (like, say, cafeteria) I've seen them kill a 3 onos push easily.
the entire team has to coordinate b/c as a whole the marines are doing twice as much damage as 'intended'
Was in a game where we lost our main base as marines and were down to our two tech points with no additional res nodes and some onos and fades outside. Some of the aliens said "gg" and we had a couple people vote to surrender. But we held out, sieged nano and finally cleared them out with an exo/mac/arc train. Those are the sweetest victories, when you get to prove your critics wrong.
its always fun when main bases go merry-go-round on the map. once i saw 2 onos together with gorge and lerk following i thought here we go we'll lose cargo now but they didnt stay together for whatever reason.
TC is right, end game marine turtle happens so often because currently the vast majority of pub games arent won through strats carried out by a team, just clunking around until 1 side gives way. like the incident with the 4 marines and the phase gate in nano in that game above is a perfect example. so trying to get 4-5 randoms who think they are awesome and dont need a team because they saved for an onos to coordinate when theres marines shooting at them doesnt work
0
WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
I commanded a game where we marines were down to 2 RTs and one base. The other team really wanted to fight it out, so I didn't recycle. I figure it's nice to let the other team make that last fulfilling push once in a while. Recycling is so anticlimactic. The problem is that they were only good enough to corner us, not to finish us off. I think it was 15 minutes of back and forth before we got sick of it, recycled anyway, and made a "stone age" offense with nothing more than axes. Bo-ring.
It's definitely a little unfortunate that games often drag out in the end, but a big part of that is people just not being so good at the game yet, I think. Taking out the power is a pretty good blow right to the internal organs of a Marine team, and 2 Onoses + 2 Gorges + a Lerk for umbra pretty much guarantees a downed power node and a game over for the Marines. People are just too uncoordinated or too timid or just not very skilled, though, so until people get a bit better at busting in, some games will definitely drag out.
They had that exact combo and took our power down twice, but we still managed to repair afterwards. Maybe their comm was stupid? I don't think I saw any bile bombing and they definitely didn't have stomp, despite having 7 uncontested res nodes for 10+ minutes.
I think there is a game design problem with marine turtling right now. It shouldn't take far more coordination to end the game than it took to win it. Competitive play never gets to that point because those marine players will just GG instead of turtling uselessly. IMO the issue is that Hive 3 abilities aren't powerful enough. Umbra is good, Stomp is okay, but Gorges don't have anything and Xenocide/Vortex are worthless. When the aliens get those abilities it should be game over unless the marines pull something off real fast.
here's something I watched happen last night in veil:
2 onos, a gorge & a skulk left pipeline heading towards marine start.
1 onos and the gorge stopped to kill the power node in c12, even though there were no buildings in that room & I asked them to stay with the others.
when the others got to control, the skulk died and the other onos was just barely able to escape without a healer. their comm didn't even have to beacon.
Unless the same thing happened twice in a row, that was me. I use the same name when playing online as when posting, so there's no secret in how I play.
First, that power node was almost destroyed already. It was down in under five seconds. For all this noise about skulk time vs. marine time, an onos plus a bile bomb destroys power absurdly fast. It's barely a speed bump.
Second, this was a round where the marines were constantly building little forward bases and pressuring the map, annoyingly prolific with gates and turrets (yes, I know turrets don't require power nodes). They were also swift at rebuilding destroyed extractors, but I noticed they were a lot slower rebuilding them if the power was also gone (they would often move on / skip it if the power was down). The last thing I wanted to see was a sudden forward push behind us while the rest of their team turtles marine start. I've seen this happen when aliens get careless like this and get too aggressive instead of asserting map dominance.
Third, this was a late game final push. We had three hives and most of the map. The final push takes forever anyway if marines turtle (these did, at least for a little while). After I arrived, it still took us a dozen charges and heals to take out Control (I think they recycled, actually).
Fourth... are you really upset about a dead skulk in marine base during final pushing?
There was no tactical advantage to rushing Control fast -- their team was not simultaneously occupied in some other part of the map. A steady push with total map control guarantees a win. The leading onos and skulk should have slowed down and stayed with me and the gorge.
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it was not my intent to call out a specific person or start an argument. imo as the commander of the match, that group had a chance to decisively hit control before the turtle even began, but that chance was missed.
AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
Try not to move over varying pieces of geometry. I see myself fall more when I'm bumping up and over objects and suddenly I "detach" than if I was just running along a flat ceiling.
Hopefully mappers start making ceilings with less random shit poking out because it's pretty maddening to be cruising around and get ejected because you hit a bump.
The stuff poking out does, sometimes, help to hide a careful skulk, or conceal hidey holes. I'm still finding little places I can tuck myself into a regen while the marines run by unawares.
The stuff to knock you off ceilings are annoying but not quite as much if you ever get in the habit of turning alien vision on and off to find dark spots to hide in. Or at least I seem to notice trouble spots easier without alien vision on.
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don't eat the power node unless you're in their base.
Ok.
Why?
Basically there is always a better use of your time than biting a power node unless taking down that power node will leave the marine main base down for the count (which is very good because they won't be able to spawn unless they have backup infantry portals at another base).
You're not denying them resources by chomping it.. it costs nothing to rebuild except time. You're just wasting your time to waste their time.
It can be useful to draw some attention though. If your team is getting a lot of pressure, a skulk sneaking to some remote corner and biting a few pieces of hardware may get a couple marines to come investigate, giving your team some space to breathe.
The Main Base is useful to power down due to the sheer amount of crap that would otherwise have to be destroyed.
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Similarly though one mistake a lot of marines make is to think that killing cysts is important. It really isn't at all. Killing the cyst next to a Harvester is a waste of time, because it's a cinch for the comm to replace and it takes a very long time for infestation starvation to kill a structure. Better to focus down the Harvester immediately. Even afterwards, if the RT is in enemy territory, leave the infestation where it is and move on. If the comm drops it again that's good for you, it means you can kill it again.
The only time you should be killing a cyst is when the infestation needs to be cleared for you to build there, or you're waiting for something and have nothing better to do. You should never spend rifle ammo shooting a cyst. And DO NOT attack a cyst when the alien team isn't yet aware of your presence, you're blowing the element of surprise.
How else will you top the team scoreboard?
I have mixed success.
Zek nailed it with power nodes. They take a long time to repair, longer than building a phase gate. That can buy your team crucial time to arrive and stop the setup. Even with res nodes it more than doubles the time required for the enemy to reclaim the node, which slows their resource recovery. The lights are a nice bonus, too; even when they come back on, the emergency lighting gives skulks and lerks more shadows to sit in, and makes roaming Silence-enhanced aliens even harder to notice.
Destroying cysts can similarly slow down the other team. Unless aliens are swimming in resources, wiping out a room or two of cysts can slow alien acquisition of an upgrade (should they rebuild them), as well as comm placement of crags and other support buildings should the room become contested.
There IS some conventional wisdom to provide on these topics (which I think powers the over-reaction of "never do this"):
* As aliens: if there's just a res node and a power node, munch the res node first. An exception to this is if the power node was already severely damaged from an earlier attack.
* As marines: ignore cysts during forward attacks. If you're moving on taking a map location, attacking cysts will waste ammo, make you vulnerable to skulk rushes, and alert the alien team about your progress. Instead, destroy cysts if you must in order to build a forward base, or if you are establishing control over an area of the map (but not attacking a fortified location, such as a hive or a whip/gorged room). In those cases, start with a connecting node (like at the hallway entrance to the room) and then take out the now-unconnected nodes inside the room.
* On either team, power nodes and cysts should have lower priority than assaults or defense against assaults. Aliens should mostly hit nodes when on roaming interference; marines should hit them while teching / building up a zone.
* On either team, if you're losing the resource battle, you should probably ignore power nodes and cysts until you've taken out several enemy resource nodes. On the other hand, if you're winning the resource battle (or if it's even), attacking those strategic targets is a great way to push harder on overall map control.
I haven't timed it, but I'm pretty sure the time to destroy a power node is equal to the time to repair it, assuming equal numbers. You're literally exchanging your time for their time.
Killing the lights is of debatable utility. The 5 or so seconds of pitch black is certainly a big deal, but only if there's fighting actively taking place. The emergency lights don't hide alien movements all that well in my experience.. all you have to do is see a couple pixels twitch and shoot at it.
base with phase gate and other junk -> kill the phase
main base -> power
what you do after killing the power in their spawn is situational depending on if they have another cc, how many rines are coming back to save it etc. i usually go for the ips, it most directly leads to a win
a single welder on a node is 200 hps, and good marines will have multiples
attacking a node in a non-strategic location is a waste of time
It's important to remember that every single thing you do is a time investment that has to be weighed against your other options. Clearing a room of all cysts takes time that could have been spent fighting elsewhere. That time you spent killing all those cysts while the aliens were dead might have translated into pushing further and killing another Harvester, but that window of opportunity will be closed afterwards. There are exceptions to every rule, but I think it's better to go by a clear rule of thumb that's correct 90% of the time than to confuse people with all the what-ifs. Right now most marine teams suffer from a serious lack of aggression that frequently costs them the game.
2 onos, a gorge & a skulk left pipeline heading towards marine start.
1 onos and the gorge stopped to kill the power node in c12, even though there were no buildings in that room & I asked them to stay with the others.
when the others got to control, the skulk died and the other onos was just barely able to escape without a healer. their comm didn't even have to beacon.
In fact, the only time they would go straight for a powernode was when it was alone in a hallway with nothing to power or near the res node.
9 marines turtling with weapons3 can take out a single onos in a flash. in a tech point with long sight lines (like, say, cafeteria) I've seen them kill a 3 onos push easily.
the entire team has to coordinate b/c as a whole the marines are doing twice as much damage as 'intended'
its always fun when main bases go merry-go-round on the map. once i saw 2 onos together with gorge and lerk following i thought here we go we'll lose cargo now but they didnt stay together for whatever reason.
TC is right, end game marine turtle happens so often because currently the vast majority of pub games arent won through strats carried out by a team, just clunking around until 1 side gives way. like the incident with the 4 marines and the phase gate in nano in that game above is a perfect example. so trying to get 4-5 randoms who think they are awesome and dont need a team because they saved for an onos to coordinate when theres marines shooting at them doesnt work
They had that exact combo and took our power down twice, but we still managed to repair afterwards. Maybe their comm was stupid? I don't think I saw any bile bombing and they definitely didn't have stomp, despite having 7 uncontested res nodes for 10+ minutes.
First, that power node was almost destroyed already. It was down in under five seconds. For all this noise about skulk time vs. marine time, an onos plus a bile bomb destroys power absurdly fast. It's barely a speed bump.
Second, this was a round where the marines were constantly building little forward bases and pressuring the map, annoyingly prolific with gates and turrets (yes, I know turrets don't require power nodes). They were also swift at rebuilding destroyed extractors, but I noticed they were a lot slower rebuilding them if the power was also gone (they would often move on / skip it if the power was down). The last thing I wanted to see was a sudden forward push behind us while the rest of their team turtles marine start. I've seen this happen when aliens get careless like this and get too aggressive instead of asserting map dominance.
Third, this was a late game final push. We had three hives and most of the map. The final push takes forever anyway if marines turtle (these did, at least for a little while). After I arrived, it still took us a dozen charges and heals to take out Control (I think they recycled, actually).
Fourth... are you really upset about a dead skulk in marine base during final pushing?
There was no tactical advantage to rushing Control fast -- their team was not simultaneously occupied in some other part of the map. A steady push with total map control guarantees a win. The leading onos and skulk should have slowed down and stayed with me and the gorge.
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