Updated to reflect 3.0 changes - Remember that a lot of posts are discussing older versions and may not apply anymore.

The Kharaa Resource Model - Classic
Kharaa receive their resources in two different ways at the same time:

Method 1

• Resource nodes collect resources and puts it all into one big resource pool.
  
• The resources are split up into equal shares and given out to the players.
  
• Note that resources overflow once you have filled up. Any resources you receive when you already have 100 is put back in the pool and given to somebody who can take it.
  
• You still receive resources while you are dead. Needs to be confirmed - may have been removed
  
• The amount of resources each Resource Tower gives per minute is always the same, so on larger servers you will receive resources more slowly as it has to be split up amongst more players.
  
• If someone leaves the game or goes to the ready room, their resources are lost.

Method 2

• Each marine you kill earns you, and only you, 1-3 resources (randomly).
  
• Note that resources still overflow. If you have 100 resources then any extra you earn is put into the pool for other players.
  
• If someone leaves the game or goes to the ready room, their resources are lost.
  
• Offensive chambers that kill marines earn resources for the gorge who built them (even if you've evolved into something else already)

Just to be clear, both of these work at the same time, and one method of income will not affect the other in any way.

Experience Points and Levels - Combat

• Each time a marine is killed, whoever got the last hit and anybody near him will gain experience from it.
  
• The higher the level of the marine killed, the more experience he will give out. This experience is evenly split up among everyone close enough.
  
• A team-play bonus is given out at the same time. The more who gained a share of the experience points, the more this bonus will be.

Quirks explained!

Classic: Good players can earn resources faster than other players by killing marines more often. This also means that this player will almost always gain resources faster than any permanent gorge could. Consider earning some resources from kills before evolving into a gorge, or evolving into something else once you have run out of resources so you can earn more again.

Classic: If you are running around with 100 resources, don't worry too much. Any extra you earn is being given to other players, such as the gorges who tend to spend a lot more.

Both: Players who die often and don't kill many marines or destroy many structures will end up helping the enemy more than they help their allies. They earn resources or experience every time they kill you too, so be careful!

Combat: If two aliens team up and kill two marines together, they will have more experience points than if they had each killed one alone (because they would not have gotten that teamplay bonus for either kill). Obviously though, if those two aliens just kill one marine, than they each have less experience than if one of them had made the kill alone (because they each got only half of what the marine was worth, and a bonus on top). A single high level alien can make all the difference in a round if they get there before the marines are ready for it, which you can get if a single alien is getting most of the kills by himself. However pouring all the resources into one alien is risky, because the rest of the team will not be able to keep up with the marines that way.

Don't forget one thing: When you are dead, you don't count for sharing. So a big early rush by everyone but the Gorge either wins the game or keeps the Gorge EXTRA fat ... you can get that first resource tower in about 2.5 minutes.

Nice and concise. This should be stickied.

Good post, but I disagree with a couple of your points.

Personally, I will usually build a resource tower first (normally I run to the next hive and do the node there), then I will put up 2 OTs and a DT at each entrance to the hive for a rudimentary defense. Then, another node. Then I save for a Hive.

If there is another gorge, I will tell the other gorge what I am doing and which Hive I am attempting to stake out, and I will usually ask him to shore up the main hive's defenses after he gets 1 or 2 RP towers up. I feel that some sort of defenses are necessary early on, because it's rare in a pub game that you don't find a few rambos running around loose behind your skulk line.

If there is a 3rd or 4th gorge, I'll usually rant a bit to try and get one of them to skulk, and if unsuccessful, leave the game or go marine if teams allow.

Thanks a lot for that. The Kharaa resources aren't as "personal" as they're made out to be, as you can actually hurt your team badly by wasting them.

Some more questions:

If you evolve from one of the higher levels to a lower level critter, say from an onos to a skulk, do the resources get added back to the hive stock, or are they just lost forever?

Late in the game, you often see that everyone goes Lerk or Fade or Onos, and the team has no Gorges at all. I don't really see what's wrong with that, but the game does keep nagging for builders: "We need builders.". Is the game wrong, or do you need gorges all the time, even when there is really nothing for them to do? (no hives or defenses need rebuilding and all resource nodes are taken, either by you or by the marines)

Well, in the late game a Gorge still has some great capabilities. Health spray is never bad for supporting your bigger alien friends, and some well placed webs and babblers are truly disruptive.

About the only thing I can add to this excellent guide is the following rule of thumb and note on "advanced gorge tactics":

If you're gorge and you're over 20-30 RPs and you're not currently building, actively going somewhere or saving for a hive you are doing something wrong. Obviously this doesn't apply in the late winning game since resources are coming in faster than they are going out but otherwise if a gorge isn't building, moving or saving he is hurting the team.

As for the advanced building tactics if you have 50-60 units saved up (say trundling from point A to point B) and you want to place several different chambers down, drop them all first and then go back to build. This is because they do self-build and it takes less time total than the build, complete, build, complete cycle.

amen. now lets spam email this out to every person on the NS forum database :D:D:D:D:D

i have a conundrum for you.... say you are a gorge early in the game and you save up 75 resources, and you are about to start building the 2nd hive... when suddenly you get wasted by a random marine... now when you spawn as a skulk... your max resources is 33, so what happens to the other 42 res points, do they dissapear forever or go back into hive pool? I have no clue! does anyone else?

QUOTE (Wraithman @ Nov 18 2002, 08:26 PM)

i have a conundrum for you.... say you are a gorge early in the game and you save up 75 resources, and you are about to start building the 2nd hive... when suddenly you get wasted by a random marine... now when you spawn as a skulk... your max resources is 33, so what happens to the other 42 res points, do they dissapear forever or go back into hive pool? I have no clue! does anyone else?

They go back out into the pool and are redistributed.

I fail to see how lerking early does damage. If a non-Gorge player has gotten 33 resources, it would seem the gorge has gotten roughly 99... 3/1 ratio for Gorge to non-Gorge...

While it's argueable that the 33 RPs could be better spent elsewhere (morph to Gorge, RT, and later back to skulk), a Lerk has quite a few decent early capabilities - the least of which is being able to spike a turret or factory from out of range...

I don't think you are wrong, Revenge. I just don't understand how that works.

-Saturn

Smart Lerks are effective in the early game. Hiding out in the vents and harassing turrets and marines works well.

A skulk who keeps 33 resources stored up does not collect any more, so any resources he WOULD have collected go to other people instead. An entire team of players who remain as skulks for a long time and all have the resources maxed out mean that the gorges get ALL of the incoming res sent straight to them. This allows them to get the money for hives and resource towers a lot quicker

Example:
8 players on a team. One gorge.
The incoming res is split into 10 shares, with one each going to the skulks and 3 going to the gorges. Once all the skulks are full up, the gorge starts receiving all 10 shares to himself!

Admittedly, there are some skillful lerk players out there who could do wonders for their team by going lerk early on, and only one skulk going lerk in the above example would be alright:

Example:
6 skulks with full resources, one empty lerk (just evolved), one gorge.
Now the lerk receives 2.5 of those earlier shares while the gorge gets 7.5. The lerk fill back up fairly quickly while the gorge maintains a decent income.

Example:
5 skulks with full resources, two empty lerks (just evolved, one gorge.
Now each lerk receive 2 shares each, while the gorge gets 6 (2+2+6=10). Now the gorge is collecting almost half as quickly as he could do if the other lerks stayed as skulks. It will take the lerks slightly longer to fill back up than if just one had done it.

I wasn't thinking of getting the skulks to spend their money at all, but rather to simply keep their wallets full "for the good of the team". As for the gorge having 99 resources, as greydmiyu says, that gorge is doing something wrong. Very wrong.

Now Chompy: How often do you see those resource towers attacked before you start building your second hive (given that the second hive is started within 10-20 minutes, I'm not talking about the games where the gorges NEVER get round to building the hive...). Far more importantly, which ones normally get attacked before the construction of the second hive?

Marines often try to claim a straight line of resource towers from their base into an empty hive (attempting at all costs to avoid the aliens), or claim the nearest 2 or 3 hives to their base. As long as you keep away from those "high-risk" zones you should be able to get away with no defenses there for a short while. After a while the game gets too unpredictable to judge where the pesky meatsacks will rambo off to... But until then, you can start making a few risky bets, as they often pay off.

Remember that for the price of two offensive chambers you could already have another res point on the way. Which is more efficient? Spending 78 resources building one resource tower, 2 offensive chambers and 2 defensive chambers, or spending 66 resources on 3 undefended towers and losing one of them? While you still had three towers you were pulling in resources REALLY fast, so you can afford to defend your fourth tower!

Notice that a resource tower, 2 offensive chambers and 2 defensive chambers cost almost as much as a hive?

Yeah, defending resource towers at the getgo is a waste of time, it's more efficient to build 3 and defend later when the resources are pouring in.

QUOTE (Revenge @ Nov 19 2002, 04:03 AM)

Now Chompy: How often do you see those resource towers attacked before you start building your second hive (given that the second hive is started within 10-20 minutes, I'm not talking about the games where the gorges NEVER get round to building the hive...). Far more importantly, which ones normally get attacked before the construction of the second hive? Marines often try to claim a straight line of resource towers from their base into an empty hive (attempting at all costs to avoid the aliens), or claim the nearest 2 or 3 hives to their base. As long as you keep away from those "high-risk" zones you should be able to get away with no defenses there for a short while. After a while the game gets too unpredictable to judge where the pesky meatsacks will rambo off to... But until then, you can start making a few risky bets, as they often pay off. Remember that for the price of two offensive chambers you could already have another res point on the way. Which is more efficient? Spending 78 resources building one resource tower, 2 offensive chambers and 2 defensive chambers, or spending 66 resources on 3 undefended towers and losing one of them? While you still had three towers you were pulling in resources REALLY fast, so you can afford to defend your fourth tower! Notice that a resource tower, 2 offensive chambers and 2 defensive chambers cost almost as much as a hive?

My resource towers aren't usually attacked, because the first nodes I go to are located in a strategic location. That way, building a defense for my node also has another benefit. Either I go to another hive first, so that defending that node also defends a future hive, or else I'll do a node at a jnuction somewhere that I can wall up to limit marine movement. (for example, Aft Junction on BAST).

If the marine team is any good at all, I will assume that they are going to take a hive. That's fine, that means they are leaving me alone long enough to get 2 hives and my towers up unmolested. There will be more than enough time to get them out of there with Fades. Soon as 2 are up, I web the crap out of all of the entrances to the hive the marines have, and build DTs and OTs right up to the corners, as close as I can to the marine turrets. This heals my Fades and keeps the marines from getting in reinforcements.

I don't know whether this is going off topic or not... but it seems like this could just be the place to ask..

Last few days... when I'm playing Aliens... they said that if i pressed f4... i could "donate" my resources to them..
This this... well... legal to the general game..? Did the people do that on purpose..?

Using F4 to "recycle" or "donate" your resources is an exploit that Flayra has said will be fixed in the next patch.

So will donating be taken out or changed so we won't have to "f4"?
Cause i like the idea how i can give my resources to dudes cause i like playing the eating dude.

QUOTE (Revenge @ Nov 15 2002, 07:04 PM)

If someone leaves the game or goes to the ready room, their resources are sent back to the pool. It will then get split up among the rest of the players.

The people who are doing this are exploiting this feature of the alien resource system.

In my view it might offer an immediate advantage, but you will suffer slightly afterwards if you don't capatalise on it. Using the donated resources to build upgrade or offensive chambers or hives means that when the players rejoin the the alien team they will once again cause the resource collection to go slowly. This is especially true for hives:

Scenario: 5 players, 1 gorge
Each player has 33 resource points to their name, the Gorge who has been saving for a hive has got 40.
At this moment any and all resources extracted by the resource chambers go straight to the gorge.

All the players except for the gorge now exit the the ready room. 132 have just poured into the Kharaa resource pool. 60 of this is given the gorge and 72 remains in the pool.

The hive begins building the hive and is knocked down to 20 points. All 72 remaining resource points in the pool are now given to the gorge again, and now all the players rejoin the alien team. Each player has no resources, and the gorge has 92. The gorge will presumably continue building, so they will all start collecting resources slowly. Furthermore, going from experience, even if the kharaa have four resource nodes by now they wont hit 33 resources before the hive is completed. Once the hive is completed they must all earn another 33 resource points in order to get maxed out again. This is an awefully long time to play with a crippled income for the gorge. The gorge will spend his 92 resource points after placing 3 defensive chambers and 3 offensive chambers. Hardly a worthwhile effort, is it?

On the other hand, if the kharaa had remained honest, and had not used this exploit, the gorge would have reached 80 resources fairly quickly with 4 resource towers. After building the hive, each player would only have to collect 33 resources to fill up, which is only half the time for the gorges to remain crippled.

EDIT: This would however greatly benefit a team who spent all the donated res on resource chambers...

Donation through F4, or any other method, will be removed. I'm not sure how exactly he's going to fix this, but it may involve simply deleting the RP that were possesed by the player that F4'd/disconnected.

Well that's hardly fair!

Unless marines who get disconnected from the server incur large penalty when they drop.

Every marine who is in a game increases the amount of resources the marines collect, same as any kharaa does. The only difference between each is that kharaa actually carry their own resources. A player who evolves to onos, gets 3 upgrades, fills up his resource gauge again and then drops from the game (bad connection, lag etc) would then take a whopping away 176 resources with him. A marine who is given a grenade launcher and heavy armour and then drops would still only take 58 resources away.

If those same players were intentionally leaving the server, the Onos would STILL take the 176 resources down the drain with him, but the marine could give his grenade launcher to another player before disconnecting. This would cause the marines a total penalty of 25 resources...

That's hardly a logical scenario. If you have an Onos on your team with 100 RP in the bank, there must be a huge amount of RP in the communal pool already. Losing the Onos' 100 isn't going to break you.

Whereas in the first few minutes of the game, everybody gets a free 10 RP to start. Recycling is the basis of taking those 'bonus' resources and using them in unbalancing ways. Theoretically, you could start building a 2nd hive before the marines have finished their turret factory.

I like the idea of getting everyone to stay skulk but its hard to enforce. In my opinion lerks shouldn't be available till second hive is up as they do almost no use cept for annoyance at the begining of the game. They don't become fully useful until second hive is up and umbra is available. With lerks disabled till second hvie is up everyone saves resources and it make it less likely that the aliens get owned. I noticed that the more marine turrets there are the faster they lock on in beta 1.03, is this intentional? Its a total pain when alien turrets dont lock on as fast but if i attack marine turrets when there are like 6 i get shot at the second i round a corner as skulk, no one could even touch this one area because of those turrets and we ended up getting wasted. I wish aliens had weapons that could fire through walls and let us attack them without actually running into em like their siege cannon does to aliens, maybe when 2nd or possibly third hive is up?. Honestly for the power those sieges have they are way too cheap. And as for removing ability to use that alien res exploit you should make it so when someone enters the quit, disconnect, or ready room commands all res should be deleted but if htey lag out they get added to the pool.

Lerks are an essential part to a well planned Kharaa offense. relying on skulkrushes isn't a bad tactic but getting a lerk into the fray as well as having them hide in vents nailing anything that looks hostile always gives additional support.

Take caged as an example. Most commanders either forget about it or don't use the res to make turrets defend that part early on in the game. A lerk up there spiking the TF or even individual turrets will quickly get the marines attention. If a skulk uses this to rush in and munch the resource tower, then hes a smart skulk but even if not, the lerk can spike the marines as they run by and most wouldn't even think twice about what they were just doing-they'd concentrate on finding that pesky lil bastad. Until they get GL or jetpacks, hes safe for as long as he can handle, just get regen and adren if its avail and go at it.

But the lerk is also an second unit you can chose from the start. Most players like having a little bit of a choice in what they can be, and not everyone likes to go fade or onos (I suck at onos and usually never evolve into one, always fade for support.)

A well played lerk is a very evil lerk.

I'm not about to say I can play a lerk well, as my flying skills under pressure are definately needing some work (ie when swooping at marines for a chomp or when making a quick get away), but I have noticed that with a bit of strategy I can make good use of a lerk with just my spike shooter.

Dont forget that the spikes are 100% accurate, and after a certain distance (half the average corridor I think) if you and a marine stand there shooting each other the marine will fall first. The further away you can keep from the highly inaccurate marine weapons the more you will kill before you fall yourself.

As a lerk, always grab carapace over regen, because you can fly past any static defenses with ease, and you can travel the map faster than anything else if you can fly well (so you can get to your hive and back to heal faster than sitting in a corner regening would), and if you get carapace, the added absorption rate of damage means you'll stop dying with some armour left like lerks normally do.

Possible method to eliminate the readyroom 'rp donation' exploit.

I agree it's best for newbs to keep the 33 and pass the rest of the resources on. But if you wanna do the best good, switch to gorg.... drop a resource nozzle.... build it... go skulk. It brings in more resources and you dont have to cheat (which was fixed 1.03). I just think its a better solution and it really helps the gorgs out. They can save for hives after theyve dropped just one or two RTs down.

"switch to gorg.... drop a resource nozzle.... build it... go skulk"

The only time you should do this is if your resources have maxed out.

Say that you're playing on a 1 hive game, 33 resources, nothing in the bank. You find a nice quiet resource tower far away from marines.

You spend 13 resources changing to a Gorge. You then have 20 resources, so you're in good shape to spend the 22 points on a resource tower, and you spend 4 points on a skulk. The kicker is that you have to change back IMMEDIATELY. Don't hit the use key to try and force growth. Drop it and run.

It takes a while to actually build a resource tower, but they'll grow on their own. Unless you change back immediately, you're sucking up the resources that should go to the other gorge, wasting them. This may sound stupidly picky, but seconds count in the early game; you can't afford to change to a gorge and wait for the resources to build the tower, nor can you waste time hanging around to see it bloom.

There should be one gorge in the early game hunting out resources nodes in the first 5 minutes; if you time it right you should be at the 3rd node with 24 points and can save up for a hive after that point. Everything in the early game should be centered around holding off the marines while feeding the gorge resources for a second hive.

I guess it all depends on what is more efficient. Going back to skulk immediately, or 'building' the resourcer so that it goes up faster. I'm afraid I don't have the numbers handy to justify either one, however.

Right. I guess i shouldnt complain, but let me play the devils advocate..

Tired of people bitchin at you for being the third gorge because THE OTHER GORGES suck!!?!?!?!

just take that into consideration..
Ive been bitched at enough cause of that.

Heh what I do if someone says to me "OH, GREAT ANOTHER n00b gorge!!" is switch to marine, then kill them. Then, next game, switch back to alien & go gorge & enjoy the blissful silence. =)

I don't think in 1.03 you can team switch anymore....

Another Great Sticky post. Thanks for the information.

QUOTE (Saturn @ Nov 19 2002, 12:29 AM)

I fail to see how lerking early does damage. If a non-Gorge player has gotten 33 resources, it would seem the gorge has gotten roughly 99... 3/1 ratio for Gorge to non-Gorge... While it's argueable that the 33 RPs could be better spent elsewhere (morph to Gorge, RT, and later back to skulk), a Lerk has quite a few decent early capabilities - the least of which is being able to spike a turret or factory from out of range... I don't think you are wrong, Revenge. I just don't understand how that works. -Saturn

In general though there aren't that many skilled early Lerk players to justify the resource cost.
If there is, great, be Lerk then.

i think the best thing that people, expecially newbs can do, is change from gorge to skulk when their more experienced teamates tell them to.
Example: I played on one server as alien. We had 4 skulks and 4 gorges, so we were getting resources slow as **obscenity**. But anyway, all 4 gorges sucked, and refused to change back to skulk. Somehow finally we managed to get a second hive up, and most of us skulks changed to fade. However, while we asked for d and movement chambers, it took all of 20 minutes, no joke, 20 MINUTES, for one single chamber from all 4 gorges. I just think they need to change when their teamates want them to.
::skulk::

I agree that skulks changing to gorge temporarily can be a good boost for resources, but there's a few cautions to doing it. First of all, why didn't the primary gorge get this resource? It may be in an area that's not well defended by skulk traffic, or it may be directly in the warpath of the marines. Think for a second before you change, a dead resource tower isn't a crippling loss, but it's still not good for the team.

I'd actually recommend staying as a gorge long enough to finish building the tower. Chances are, you're building in a place that wandering marines will find soon. Best to get that sucker up and collecting as fast as possible, so that it can pay off it 35-resource debt. Having an extra gorge will temporarily hurt income, but that player will also hit the maximum 33 sooner as a result, and make up for hogging resources earlier. An undefended tower will certainly be killed, the only trick is to keep it alive long enough to come out ahead.

Also, unless there are a lot of respawners queued, just kill yourself when it's time to go back to skulk. Save 4 resources, and jump back into the fight in a better location.

The one thing missing from this is... what happens when an alien is dead? You don't collect resources when you're dead; are your resources distributed amongst the rest of the team? Not an issue other than the fact that post-skulk/marine rush, there can be a respawn pool a minute deep and I'm clueless as to whether they're not counted, their resources disappear into the ether or they're spread out amongst the survivors.

QUOTE (that swanky kid @ Jan 15 2003, 01:46 PM)

The one thing missing from this is... what happens when an alien is dead? You don't collect resources when you're dead; are your resources distributed amongst the rest of the team? Not an issue other than the fact that post-skulk/marine rush, there can be a respawn pool a minute deep and I'm clueless as to whether they're not counted, their resources disappear into the ether or they're spread out amongst the survivors.

When you die your excess goes to to the pool which is distributed, same with gesting to a smaller res class. Thus if theirs 2 gorges (which you shouldnt have in the first place ) and your tryin to get that third hive, you can bug the other to go skul and toss his res's over 33 to the pool for you. If the main gorge dies, if your team is a well oiled machine you should have a back up skul gest and go take his spot to maximise your gorge output (note: 2 gorges does NOT do this rather wastes a class.... it doesnt take so much time to click a structure down for more then one gorge needed... rather go skul and kill stuff). Usually if theres a disturbance enough to kill a gorge, its best to just have the whole team stay attack classes, clear whatever caused the gorges death and have the old gorge go back to gorge when hes ready. Meanwhile the pool will get 2 more res's to distribute to these atacking classes to be a strong force.

-=K=-

Guys, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE dont do the skulk -> gorge -> res -> skulk trick because it is just as bad as evolving to lerk. It resets you back down to zero res, which means that while you are collecting res again you are wasting some other gorge's valuable time as they sit there waiting to get enough res for whatever it is they are doing.

Sure, you get another res tower, but the current gorge could have also built a tower in that time, and atleast if you left him to it, he's still be collecting a lot faster.

If you want to see this system in action, and working extremely well, come play in New Zealand servers. We seem to have developed an efficient gorge routine that seems to happen even on pubs. We often do build def chambers early, but only if we decide that we need their upgrades before we get fades. Teamwork is usually not a problem over here.

Not when you die, when you're dead. You can sit in respawn for up to 8 ticks in seriously dire circumstances and your RPs are where you left them when you come back. As a gorge, I've never noticed RPs coming faster with lots of dead aliens and they're not collecting so... where do they go? Are they simply not used in computing resources per tick?

ResNode in a hive location the double bladed edge...
I have mixed feelings about this. As a gorg I try to actually stay away from additional hive location because the marines I play with (if the comm knows what he is doing) will usually try to rush an open hive and drop a phasegate there. If I am in the open hive when they rush in I am dead. Resources wasted. If I get the tower up then then rush in they (this time if the marines are smart) will wait till they get the phasegate up then call in one or two more marines then take out the resnode then kill the skulks as they come in to defend it. This wastes the 22 res on the res node and makes the team limp along till the respawn cycle is done. In large pub games (10 per side) can take quite a while.

When I drop res nodes I like to do it out in the open map. Usually a com won't dop a phase next to it because it is pointless long term. If one or two marines try to knive it a skulk that knows whats up can take them out.

When I am playing with a clan member on the other team that knows what they are doing I have to assume they are com and will send the marines to an open hive. So in this situation I avoid open hives until I have a few skulks with me, even after it is verified that it is open, and enough res to start the hive right off.

It really depends on what the com is doing. The gorg must be dynamic. As soon as a routine is setup the attack plan is broken. If you know the comm is going to go one way that is going to butt heads with your plan, you must have a fall back that will not set you too far back.

I usually try to get the second resnode down before I figure out what they are doing. If they are trying to rush the main hive with a phasegate just outside the first hive I will drop a few D towers under the hive and tell the skulks to get back to main to kill the marines and the phase gate.

As soon as people develope "always" tactics they will be countered.

is it me, or (in 1.04) does the rez come really really slowly (slower than 1.03)
i read the changes, and nothing is mentioned....
. 1 gorge, 8 players on aliens.

I've noticed a definite increase in res points gained when teammates are dead, so those res are definitely being distributed. I also agree that going lerk early on isn't a good plan; lerks need some kind of upgrade to be useful. After you have two hives, lerks can be devastating... I once took out two fully guarded hive locations as a lerk by sniping the portals and then the turret fac.

I have to disagree with the one gorge mentality. In most clan games even in 6v6's we have 1 gorge initially but a 2nd goes gorge after 1st RT is down. Later in the game we are quite flexible with rotation. Once we have 3 RT's res is usually very quick. Further into the game i usually have so much res that I am leaving a bloody trail.

Most of you seem to be focusing solely on res distribution, whereas often in clan games the bottom line is 1 gorge can't do it all or be everywhere, and travelling can be dangerous - even with redemption a gorge having to keep walking back from hive is wasted time where marines are gaining ground.

Sometimes in NS you only have a short opportunity to do something, i.e. optional res capping - you could wait for the gorge to get over there or if you have the resource, evolve and drop a tower, as you are building just drop a spare OT behind you to build itself and hopefully cover you if you get attacked, or if you are on the other side of a map just build the RT.

Also you manage to break a marine hive, gorge is elsewhere then gorge yourself if res is there and secure it (not build) but at least stop marines getting back in.

I just feel there is a big opportunity cost being ignored. While yes max res aliens leave their spare to the gorge, there is a massive tactical advantage in having multiple gorges to get stuff up simultaneously rather than leaving a 33 res or whatever inactive - especially on the big maps. Your excess may go to the gorge, but 5 aliens all with 33 res is a lot of res not being used early on.

JAK.

I have read all the post and I have to agree with the last one the most. Although I am not real sure I think it is faster for two gorges to get 2 rt than it is for 1 gorge two get 2 rt. I think now my perfered start to optimize res is for 1 gorge to build a first res while everyone else rushes main base. After the first rush another person should then go gorge while everyone else defends. The first gorge after getting the first res should build dc and protect first hive. The second should gorge should get 2 res, the two closes to a hive that the aliens are going to take. Then he should save for hive. (Each gorge should use redemtion as soon as it is avaible.

I play on 69.1.79.62:27035 !!!Team Fun's Allergic Reaction v1.04!!! (Really good sever) and they usually only have one gorge. It's a 18 man sever that is usually always pretty full. At what point of the game can there be a second gorge without hurting the first gorge.? Becuase I want to learn how to gorge but I don't want to hurt the team by doing it.

QUOTE (Revenge @ Nov 24 2002, 12:24 AM)

Every marine who is in a game increases the amount of resources the marines collect

Im not sure but im pretty sure thats a common misconception. I'm pretty the amount of resources you get depends on the number of Enemies not friendlies. IE more marines = more resources for aliens. I found this out in a LAN game with my self and bots. When marines no matter how many marines there were i got the same amount of res but as i added aliens my res intake increases proportionally to that of the number of enemies.

Yeah you are right about that one, I'm pretty certain that was a typo (nov was a long time ago lol).

Anyways the resource system is going to get redone for 1.1 apparently, so I'll either be updating or replacing this thread as soon as the next version comes along

QUOTE (Inexorable @ Nov 23 2002, 11:53 PM)

Donation through F4, or any other method, will be removed. I'm not sure how exactly he's going to fix this, but it may involve simply deleting the RP that were possesed by the player that F4'd/disconnected.

how about the resources going to every alien on the team EXCEPT the gorge?

Ah yes but what happens when all but one of the players constantly F4s in and out? That last player waits until everyone is done F4ing, and THEN goes gorge...

Either way, the F4 exploit has been fixed I think... Or atleast made less effective. I can't remember anybody having done it lately either, so perhaps it is indeed fixed...