A bit of an old topic, not sure if anyone will read this.
I voted YES for power on early.
I think this is better for all games, especially for 2 players who want to get far quickly.
For 4 players and with all randoms, early power is debateable but probably still better.
I've read the bowie knife comments in here, and I agree.
Normally I would turn the power on in round 3 or round 4. This depends on power-up drops, if you get a Nuke while knifing it would leave you with less points, if you get a x2 you will have more points to open it quicker.
Basically I would turn the power on as quickly as i can to get bowie knife. Having the bowie knife earlier is good for points and good for speed. My team mate and I would either not buy a gun at all (not even MP40), or just buy the M14 in the first room. The reason for the M14 is that it is cheaper than the MP40, and we save points to get knife as quickly as we can. We would always just do a couple of body shots and still knife for the kill even before the bowie knife.
The cost per bullet for the M14 and MP40 is about the same so the end profit margin is roughly the same, we just want to save points at the start that's why we use M14. (or just starting pistol and knife).
We would then both basically bowie knife everything until round 9, and bowie knife gas crawlers until round 12. We don't care much for wall guns at the start, we'll just keep hitting the mystery box until both have Monkeys and 1 person's got the thundergun. After that we would use MP40 to round infinity and beyond.
Early power on is just faster, if you are only playing with people who can solo at least round 60+ at toten then survival doesn't really matter how you play. If you want speed, power makes it faster.
