Originally Posted by aesop rock

(SOF just makes it that much easier). If I hear or see them coming, I simply duck into the vent and go hit the other node.

I always feel wierd getting SoF as a skulk, I feel like I should be parasiting people instead. In that particular vent though, I will say SoF can let you spot them trying to bait/trap you, but in most cases cloaking would get you out of the vent anyway.

I like the cloak silence combo for random ambush attacks which I like to do in between node hunts. Once in a while I camp near marine base just beyond the obs decloak range and either wait for the base to empty so I can much me some armory, or pounce on exiting marines.

I find what it comes down to between silence and celerity is if I get silence, I usually get in one more bite before they realize whats going on, but I find it much harder to get the remaining bites. (More specifically when the marine knows how to duck jump backwards quickly).

Silence is great for positioning yourself behind the marine you want to kill. Once they start to pass you, the cloak becomes irrellevant unless there are more marines coming. If you walk slowly so as not to make noise, you won't catch back up to the marine. I'm not sure I have ever bitten a marine in the back with silence and not gotten at least two bites, you just have too much working for you.

I think the best ambush hunting I ever did was on that same map, I forget the name, with west and overlook. We had two hives up, and all three chambers minus I think one movement. I had regen, silence, and cloaking. There is so little difference between silence with two chambers and three chambers in terms of how the marines react that I felt it was a better choice than an impared celerity. I managed to take down many JPs (probably after our precious nodes) simply from surprising them and getting in the bites without them having a chance to fly away until they only had one or two bites left on them. Thanks to regen I didn't have to stop back at the hive, and silence kept the noise of it down. I should probably mention the JPs almost all had lmgs, it would have been a very different fight if they had shotties. Leap helped alot too, since I probably wouldn't have been able to catch them again without it.

Most games don't give you the optimal conditions to do something like that, we were basically saving res so we would be able to do things. Since we weren't going to coordinate any big attacks without higher life forms, we settled for defending the hives, patrolling, and every so often poking at thier base with a couple skulks. Res for kills makes that plan even better when waiting.