In games of 3v3 or 2v2 the marines are screwed unless you do this strat. I have used it in ALL versions of ns against good players. I would do this 3 games in a row and they would just complain the whole time instead of thinking of how to beat me since this is sooo weak.

What I do is listen for their hive and then pay very close attention to the rts by their hive. They dont want to end the game quick by rushing. In small games they would probably succeed. So in 2v2 or 3v3 they usually all go gorg. When I hear them gestating next to a rt I place an rt there. So then they eitehr go back to skulk, place an o chamber, move on, or call a skulk over. It takes forever for a skulk to kill a rt without stamina so after he destroys one I immediatly place it again. You make think this is a huge waste of res, but in small games if you can keep them to only 1 rt and make them waste res on o chambers to kill rts, switching back to skulk, or spend their time chewing on rts your team can freely move around building rts. This also greatly slows them from going fade of getting 2nd hive which is a HUGE help. You can only build 1 ip and nothing else at the start to have the res to do this.

So what to do with the res I am not spending on maintaning all the rts on the map??? Upgrade armory first. Do not get arms lab first. You have to get jps asap. If one decides to save for onos the jp hmg will rape him. When the armory starts upgrading you will have res to then get an arms lab or if there or at least 2 ochambers attacking an rt you can cc block it. When you get jp shotties have everyone go including yourself and cc block all the o chambers. If they take out your base you will have several cc around map by now. (I do get tf an ob to scan hives and stuff too but how detailed do you want me to get).

It does take awhile in 3v3 for 3 d chambers to be placed and for someone to go fade with only 1 rt. Plus you will get less res from killing marines as it is hard to find one on a small map and its not worth camping a spot to give you an advantage in attacking. If they get a second rt you MUST take it out. I love it when they are like ok you go skulk and kill rt and I will immediatly place the rt. Marines are faster and placing stuff(a click a click a click like med spam)

This has been mentioned before and is generally frowned upon. A common counter is gestating on the resnode.

As mentioned above, gestating on the res node and rushing marine start will counter this strategy, after all, the marines can't go around building the nodes if they have to defend their base.

In a small game if the aliens want they can rush the base as skulks and win unless marines spend res on base d or sit in base, but if the marines do either of these they will lose in the long game. Also, I usually just go ahead and place all the rts on the map starting mostly on their side. If you are really good and have time(as in small games) you can actually follow any type of alien around the map by listening. I played 2v1 once and gave constant updates on the position and what the alien was doing on non-team talk just to make the other person mad.

If aliens dont rush in the early game they will lose to this.

I guess in small games the best defence is a couple of electrified TFs, since turrets take too long to build.

Assuming the map has 6 free nodes at the start, the comm could cap them all right at the start. 6x15=90.

The aliens would have plenty of time to see it coming if they see all the nodes having an rt on them, and munch them as skulks thus destroying your res investment.

Obviously this is a very poor way to spend your res when you could upgrade your armory right off the bat, observatory, perhaps a turret factory+elec to defend base.

In a small game like 2vs2, and 2vs3 normal strategies that involve manpower are shot in some way. The aliens benefit from a non-universal res pool in small games, and the marines benefit from the shared res pool/shared upgrades in large games.

EDIT
Just in case you didn't catch my line of thought, 6 is not how many are on the map.

A 3 on 3 game where aliens have 1 node aliens will get the same flow as a 9v9 game where aliens have 3 nodes. (assuming rfk is can be balanced out of the equation on average)

So, if you spend ALL your res on blocking rts, aliens will still get the same res as a slightly below average normal game. But also you will have a poor res flow because you cant spare marines to build all those nodes.

Also, marines do not have the res to drop every node at the start, most maps have at least 8 OPEN nodes which would cost 120 res to cap, even if you skip every other structure (suicidal) you can't afford to cap them all.

Read my post before responding. The aliens dont gestate on the rts 99% of the time, so when they start to gestate then you drop it. You dont announce you are doing this. Then when you do this once so they waste some res at the begining then you drop all the other rts. Mean while the other people on your team are building rts without having to worry about aliens b/c the are munching on other rts. The first rt a skulk kills could be considered a waste, but if you immediately place another rt the skulk will be out of stamina and this will take forever to kill. Both teams get few kills in small games and 1 rt for 3 aliens means 1 res every 12 seconds. They need this res for chambers and hive and some will waste the little res they have on o chambers. When they destroy a rt as a skulk you need to be able to replace it before they can gestate on it. Even if you do succeed, you should have 3 marines(comm can get out if rt is semi close) to but rape you asap.

There are 2 counters to this. They ignore all the rts you drop and just rush your base(no base d b/c of all rts), but in small games this will always give the win to aliens so most dont do it. The other is all 3 of them prevent the marines from getting any rts also and 1 place 3 d, 1 place hive, and one go fade.

Thats mostly silly - unless you can't keep up with killing their RTs and need to dent their rate, or to gain a tidbit of time with a rare instance of this fairly weak tactic, its a total waste.

2 Shotgunners, which cost 20 res, can easily get to a node in a small game, both empty their clip into it and add 1 knife slash, and its a dead node. And assuming they're putting up RTs, 2 Skulks (1 gorge on building duty) vs 2 Shotgunners is a fairly easy battle.

If they don't drop RTs, you just start pressuring their hive with some static D while they don't have lifeforms yet, cap a few of your own and ideally take down their 1 base RT with a shotty/catpack rush - forcing them to gorge again, leaving lifeforms out of the game even longer.

While mildly dependant on your marines skill, small games don't need 'supar leet secrat trix!111' to be won.

Edit :
As for counters to it, an unbuilt RT has 50% HP. A Skulks Adren bar depletes about 60% of an RTs HP. Assuming 2 Skulks work together, they'll take out each RT fairly quick and using only half their Adren bar a turn - and you likely wouldn't be able to afford RTs for both eventualities, the Gorge running around for other nearby RTs or staying at the node, meaning one down every ~20 seconds (in other words, you'd need 3 active nodes to support the dropping alone), odds are decent they'll outpace you res wise at that rate.

Its great to see an unconventional strategy like this. One observation and one problem:

• Economics
  There are some encouraging economics behind this approach. First, looking at the difference between the amount of time it takes for a skulk to take down an RT, vs. how much time it takes to accumulate the resources to put down the RT (or, how long it takes for this strategy to pay for itself); you will find this quantity is slightly negative... which would indicate that it is not helping you, however, in the small game the time value of each player early in the round is critical. Trading in some res accumulation in the early game for res denial in the middle game seems smart!
  
• Teamwork
  This could never work on a pub. But i'm sure you all knew that. Pub players would just get mad and vote you out of the chair instead of doing their job.

-stooop

The key is your team is building rts while you keep them to 1 rt. If you get shotguns and kill their nodes to keep them to one well you wasted res on sg and you didnt build any rts. This is for 3v3 so only 2 marines can walk around. Even if 2 marines try to kill a rt with sg they could get ambushed.

When you have 5+ rts and they have 1, then you will see the benifit of this strat. This has worked for me everytime with good and bad players and no one has ever bitched except for the aliens calling me an exploiter. HAHAHAHAHA

Any good player that has played ns since 1.04 knows about this strat. But of course there arent that many good players from 1.04 compared to the billions of people who now play. This has worked in all versions and is still a good strat.

Actually with sg rush the marines can get ambushed, spored, or the sg bug can get a good player killed. This strat will lose if they rush, but like I said if they do no matter what in 3v3 this will force you to lose anyways.

A skulk WILL see the marines leave the base together with sg. Thats its downfall usually b/c this gives aliens time to setup ambushes or go lerk(only needs 5 res). If you got 1/2 way to hive without encountering an alien then it will usually win.

NS doesn't really work well in small games, hence Combat. But in any case....


In very small games on pubs I tend to gorge and hoard res, going straight for upgrades while my teammates generally rush MS and lay the smack down. Its a pretty desperate strat, but if the marines have spent lots of res on RTs, and you've got 3 DC, then you can really romp through MS.



Edit-

Of course as others have pointed out, you could always drop some sensory and ambush MS.... or MCs and go nuts on bitespam.

1 rt for 3 aliens with low kills takes forever to get higher lifeforms. Someone needs to put up hive and chambers so only 1 can go higher alien. Its all about the jp rush. 3 aliens especially without web and most dont go lerk in small games will find it impossible to kill. If they have o chambers you cc block.

CC and node blocking.... its certainly a dirty strat, I don't see many players getting away with this on an admined server.

I don't see many good small games.

Most people dont get mad at the end b/c the first reaction is like omg the marine com is a nub and is wasting all this res. Then at the end its like omg the comm is an exploiter that b a s t e r e d.

I hope thats not you dodging the swear filter.

Umm.....No I was just making it look cooler....lol. S O R R Y ! ! !

Regardless of what other people say this always works for me at least(the first time you do this you will probably mess up somewhere). The hardest thing is stopping them from getting the 2nd rt, b/c thats double the res flow. It seems that you waste res with rt blocking, but you take their res and time away and you should be building rts at the same time. If they are very persistant for a rt next to their hive you can cc block the node. That really gets them mad!!!

I think everyone will agree that CC blocking a node is exploiting, since there is no way that it could be useful for you.

Here's my counter in a 1v1 game. Save to 50 res, doing whatever you feel like in that time. It will only take 100 seconds. Make sure you are a gorge in an empty hive at the end of the 100 seconds. Put up the hive. Two minutes later, you can put up 3 mc's. There should be a marine node in the hive you just put up, so put one of the mc's close enough to help you bile bomb it later. The other two can go in that hive, or you can have 1 in each hive. Then you grab adrenaline. 280 seconds into the game you have bile bomb and adrenaline. Bile bomb the nearest rt, standing close enough so it can't be replaced, then drop your own (you will have enough res immediately). Find a couple more rt's to replace like this. Electricity is the only counter to this. However, you can always place an OC really close to the rt, then bile bomb it from a distance. A little bit of heal spray and the OC won't die before the rt is down. Of course, you don't get res quite fast enough if there are 2 aliens, and 2 marines means that you will probably be stopped (if the comm is paying attention).

1v1 games are imposiible in 3.0 to win. In 1.04 you had an ok chance and in 2.01 you had a small chance.

If CC blocking is considered legit, then why not do it in larger games also? Find a node close to the alien hive where only one alien will be, wait until they are an egg, then drop a CC on it. If you do that to a few nodes, you either cut off a few alien rt's, or you occupy several aliens with killing it while you take over the map.

WOW, not sure if you knew this but i posted this exact same thing about two versions ago when i was active on this forum, I don't wanna take anything away from you but its nearly verbatim to what my strategy was....

I stated this was a strat used by good players since 1.04 and it has proven to be effective. So arguments against it are stupid. hehehe

Hehe, I have a modified version of this strat I do in pubs sometimes.

As marine, I just head for a hive, any old hive will do. Wait outside and listen for a gorge to start gestating, wait for him to build, and rush and kill him. Most of the time you can knife the tower to death before any skulks respond. Its actually quite funny when this works.

I've been like "commander, im right outside Blah Hive, waiting for the gorge to build, keep me resupplied". Ended up killing the resource tower, a few skulks, the same gorge that came back(unguarded of course) and we ended up coming to that hive first to conquer

Nobody expects a marine to be chillin right outside the hive in the first few minutes. Head away from the fighting and you end up running into a bunch of gorges who think everythings cool beans over in this spot

If you do that you cant build any rts. At the same time you dont have to spend res to block it. Of course a comm with good ears is needed just incase they try to build else where.