EPTMy general thoughts are that this game is great and its changes from bw are very nice. Not necessarily inherently better, but certainly more convenient in some ways. For example, being able to queue units in empty buildings despite being supply locked, paying for your buildings before you build them so you don't accidentally prevent yourself from making something else (often more important), allowing you to place a building where you have units instead of having to deselect your worker, move the units, and then reselect your worker and make the building, and being able to tab through different unit abilities for units mixed in the same hotkey. The last thing doesn't just make infinite selection/infinitely large hotkeys very convenient/viable, it would've been nice in bw too, like in tvz controlling mass amounts of medics and marines, would've been nice to be able to stim those marines despite having say a single medic selected, or with z not being able to hit 'a' cuz you had a single burrowed lurker selected too, etc.
My complaints about bnet2 itself is in the lack of channels, inability watch replays with people, and just the general difficulty in doing things WITH people. Also, you have no control over your ladder games. I get so few points and such easy games sometimes I wonder if it didn't put me against a bronze player. There's an option to vote against maps, but it puts you on those maps just as often anyway. If you get a map/mu/player you don't want to fight you can't just leave the game in "lobby". I haven't tried leaving game at very start, but a guy disconnected like 10 seconds in once and I got the win and points, so I'm not going to try that. On the one hand this makes abusing impossible, but on the other it makes a lot of laddering luck, just a matter of are you being put against the highest point-worth player you can beat or are you being put vs low point noobs. Mostly I hate having no control over the maps. Oh, and it's really annoying to be seperated out in all of these divisions, why can't everyone platinum be in one division? This way your rank really means very little because you're only being compared to some random group of ~50 people. You could be #10 in your div, and be #10 in world, or #1000 in world, and you can't know. Atleast in iccup you can see you're D through A, and you know how that compares to everyone else. It's bad enough you're seperated by region, can't see how you compare to others, or look up some friend of yours outside your region, but then you're being randomly seperated in addition, it's very odd and isolating. I don't get why beta's bnet2 is so lonely. They took all this time to give us the most lonely boring ladder/bnet ever? The game is absolutely great, bnet is awful.
I don't like workers carrying only 4 gas at a time though, makes the double gas mechanic very annoying imo. It's not really a mechanic by that point, you're just forced to take and use both fairly early. I also don't like gases just being empty when they're mined out, I liked the reduced mining rate of depleted geysers in bw. You could really just run out of gas in a longish game pretty easily, and everything is so gas dependent in this game.
My initial bo is the same for all 3 mus atm:
11rax
11gas
11depot
11orbital cc upgrade
11tech-addon to rax
Mule asap, scout with the scv who made the depot. I haven't decided for sure yet, but I usually get a 2nd rax somewhere between 11 and 14, occasionally later too. Sometimes I get my 2nd depot at 11 too, to complete the wall (rax/addon/depot/depot in some combination, sometimes need 3 depots though). It's also sort of lazy, nothing is happening at that time, waiting on scv to scout opponent, orbital to finish, tech-addon to finish etc, and then a lot starts happening when all of those do finish so I don't want to worry about a depot too, but it also results in the loss of minerals that scv would be getting, so I dunno if I'll keep doing that or not. I tend to get my 2nd gas at same time as factory, or possibly earlier, around 19 or so. I haven't quite decided on when to get 2nd gas, and when I should get it earlier or later.
Tvp I usually save 100 gas and get reaper speed asap, get reactor for 2nd rax when it finishes, harass with 2-3 reapers. I usually wait til I have 3 reapers then attack at once, but in my last tvp I rallied my first one to him and got in before he killed my scv (before speed) and started harassing immediately while rallying in the new reapers, and that worked out pretty well. The harass stops whenever they get 1-2 stalkers really. If I see very fast stalkers I'll stop making/sending reapers, even with speed it's hard to harass with stalkers around. Killing probes and zlots is fun, but shooting pylons and buildings he just started is better. Any building he JUST starts if you attack it with 2+ reapers will die instantly, it's great~
From there I get maurauders at my tech rax and marines at my reactor rax, getting stim when I both have 150 gas and remember I need stim still. I then attack with my marine/maurauder force when stim is a little more then half done, backing off if he's got a lot of units waiting for me, until stim finishes. I usually get my 2nd gas and my fact at the same time. Unless I'm afraid of dt or something I usually keep my depots down and rally to his nat. I think I could viably take my nat at this time instead of getting fact -> tank/siege/port, but I've always done the latter. Once my wall is complete I spread my depots around main (like pylons in bw), this lets me notice any kind of drop or harass, such as a proxy pylon either in my base I didn't notice earlier or just outside my base but close enough for him to warp units in with.
Things change when he goes fast dt, I have to get an ebay and a turret in main/choke; I go for a quicker nat expo since it's not viable to attack (not worth saving energy for multiple scans, the mules are too critical on 1base). vs colossus rush I could possibly forgo some marines and put the money into faster 2nd gas and fact. Ravens are critical vs dt once you plan on moving out. I've been using tank/maurauder vs colos, but I think banshee and/or viking would be a better choice, colos seem to rape clumped maurauders in their dying breaths. I haven't faced much air rushes, but my marines tend to be sufficient vs that. I suppose vs better/more air based harass and attacks I'd need vikings. Thors even with medics are pretty immobile and expensive.
If my attack doesn't end the game one way or the other, I fall back and expo if I haven't already, get my 2 nat gases and get 1-2 more factories. I get an armory and get +1 attack, and start putting my money into tanks and some thors. Medics are good for moving thors around, as well as marine drops at expos and stuff. 4-hellion raids are great at killing probes at expos.
I don't have a whole lot of lategame experience with tvp, so I can't really say what happens next. Tanks/maurauders don't do very well vs mass colos, think banshees or vikings would be better if that's what p is doing. Air units are a pain with this kind of play, because as the game goes on I start getting fewer and fewer marines, so especially as they start to build up beyond my current marine count's capabilities, air units are difficult to kill or fend off. Thors are nice, but slow, and surprisingly weak to focused fire.
Tvz I play almost identically, except without the reaper harass (though I'm considering making/sending a single reaper in case they do the FE -> ling/roach -> muta build, seems to me like with a late queen they'd be pretty vulnerable to harass that way). My mnm (marine/maurauder) attack comes at the same time unless I already know they're going heavy hydra. You absolutely need tanks vs hydra in my experience, marines and maurauders even with medics tend to get vaporized pretty quickly. Once you expo, a mix of thors and tanks are nice. Thors' spell attack are good vs ultra and hydra, and tanks (with good positioning) are good vs hydras. The problem is that the infantry die very quickly, and the hydras rape the tanks quickly once they're in range to do so, so you must make sure your tanks are fairly spread out (within reason) both so that you can back-up a bit so that your infantry don't die while giving your tanks time to fire more, and so that once you do backup the hydra are not within range to kill your tanks. I haven't a good solution vs muta yet, but my theory is viking/marine/medic is the best solution. Again, 4hellion raids make short work of drones. Spread depots are good to spot nyduses in your main. If you scout/suspect nydus, it could be worth it to get a fast viking to snipe ovys so he can't nydus your main. If he does get a nydus, presumably it'll be timed when your army is moving out or is already gone, or atleast will be in the far corner from your army. Just put all your scvs on the nydus and you should kill it before he can get any units out. Moving-burrowed-roaches are annoying since you can't see them coming, but if you suspect it just keep your forces more inward your main, so he can't just pop-up in your mineral fields away from your army. A raven lets you not worry about burrowed things as you move out. Maurauders are pretty good vs roaches, especially with stim. They're also good vs sunks, and not bad vs the very early lings (speedlings on creep rape them very badly though).
Tvt
First I wanna say sorry to Tomed and Torch, I don't think I said gg when I lost to you two in tvts out of frustration, but I feel like I learned a lot from the games
Tvt seems quite flexible, I don't have a favourite style yet, and it just seems like there are many viable options. Most of my games seem to revolve around mnm and/or tank drops with early reaper harass, but things like repetetive reaper harass, banshee harass, and all-out mass banshee (with viking support, or even just all-out vikings) seem to be fairly popular too. I also had a guy go quick thors vs me which was a pain to fight, but I was a lot worse at that time. You have to consider using scan more often in tvt for scouting, just scv and initial reaper harass/scouting doesn't seem to cut it the way it does vs z/p. If you think banshees, get vikings. If you think vikings, get vikings. If you think drops, go drops yourself (alternatively you could go vikings and try to snipe drops before they happen). I had a guy make sensor towers to scout my drops way in advanced, but they seemed like a waste of money/effort. I just killed them with the drop and went elsewhere. You don't need to mass doom drop (although that seems to be popular), a maurauder or marine or hellion drop on their scvs can usually do plenty of damage, both economically and as a distraction. I like moving out with a medic supported land-based army (and carrying thors with medics is great in this situation) and doing a small drop on his minerals as I attack. Small drops like that not only distract him and potentially damage his economy, but it's also a great way to scout him to see if attacking at this time/in this manner is good or not, it can be hard to tell sometimes.
Units I haven't used much:
The raven. I used it once vs a dter, once vs a guy trying to abuse burrowed roaches, and once to find out what it did. I usually prefer making a medic, viking, or banshee with my port's queue and unless I have a problem with cloaked units haven't found a great need or use for the raven. You can't research seeker missile til you make fusion core, and it cost 125 energy. The autoturrets I haven't found make a difference, and more importantly they don't appear to detect.
The banshee. I try to use it, but don't actually find them that useful, which makes me sad. They're very frail. Hard to harass with them early on because they retreat very slowly, they are very unlike the wraith. Hydras, marines, stalkers all rape them individually pretty quickly, and they don't do a whole lot of damage. I don't usually get enough banshees to do a lot of damage at once because I'd rather make a viking or medic. I've never gotten cloak for them.
The ghost. I tested it a bit, in a 1v1 with a hydra they die together at the same time. I dunno if it's useful as a single unit to bolster your army ignoring its spells or not, haven't been brave enough to test it that way. 200 gas for a single ghost is a lot =/ I'd rather cloak just cost more instead. You can get ghost academy after you make rax, but can't get a nuke til you make a factory. I haven't found any window for nukes. I always have things I'd rather invest the gas into. A medic keeps a nuking ghost alive nicely though, which is convenient since you'll be using that medic to drop it somewhere to nuke. A nuke doesn't kill hatch/cc/nexus, so it doesn't strike me as being that strong. Snipe seems like too much cost as far as multi-tasking goes for its small benefit.
The battlecruiser. A single bc killed an extractor pretty quickly, so I imagine it could be useful for harass or as slight support in back of your army. Four bcs got raped by a fairly small group of hydras. I want to use bcs, but most of my games don't go late enough for me to consider getting bcs instead of medics.
The Thor. I actually use thors in most games that don't end in my first mnm attack, but I really don't know when thors are good. Mostly I mean, when it's better to make a thor instead of a tank. Tanks are always good, so I want to know when a thor would be more useful, aside from the obvious "he's making air units". Thors seem to be decent vs air units, and quite good as supporting units vs ground. In one game I demolished hydra/ultra using thor's spell attack.
a tvp (that I lose) vs Smuft: [url blocked]
a tvz (that I win) vs accordion: [url blocked]
a tvt (that I win) vs sheep: [url blocked]
Comments/questions welcome. I have plenty of other replays that I'd be willing to upload if you have requests, most of my games end with my first mnm attack though. I always feel like my losses are due to me just being stupid, but there's probably good stuff in those reps too.
I was streaming on my friend ton's stream here, but it's too glitchy, it shuts off multiple times every game so I have to keep watching the thing in top left corner and turn it on everytime, just not worth wasting my time/concentration on so I stopped. Also, I can't get audio to go through. I'd love to stream again if you guys can help me fix that.
