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I can understand why a lot of people dislike tvt: In longer games it can feel like nothing's happening, or that you're just slowly losing ground the whole game. I just finished up one of my first longer tvt matches (clocking in at around 40 minutes or so). While it was a bit frustrating to not see anything work, I know that I can improve somehow, and throughout the game I was having fun. I kind of like digging into the longer games myself. As I understand it, this is not the norm.
At any rate, here's the skinny: I'm currently in the bronze league, and, as such, this was an even bronze matchup. I'm currently using your standard MMM build. It seemed that no matter where my bio ball went, it could not penetrate his mighty wall of siege tanks and sizable MMM of his own. Towards the end he finally gave a push and I fell. It felt like I was doing alright throughout, but obviously something wasn't going right.
I have the replay available for public perusal. If anyone would like to give it a gander and point out any mistakes I made, it would be much appreciated. You can find the replay here.
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I know what you mean about the slowly losing ground for 20 minutes straight. But it feels so fucking amazing when you can make a sick comeback with some sort of nice play.
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I haven't taken a look at the replay but you're probably using MMM in the wrong way.
You pretty much never want to attack into sieged tanks. Attacking into sieging tanks is still not so good but better, and obviously unsieged is best. Instead you should be using your medivacs to make drops around the map to exploit the lack of mobility siege tanks have, while expanding aggressively due to the mobility MMM has.
Sensor towers and smart scanning are really important because they allow you to catch tanks unsieged, and know where his army is at all times, so you can go around it.
Finally, some maps just aren't good for MMM. Maps like metalopolis and scrap station favor tank based play because of their narrow corridors and terrain which allow siege tanks to cover the major points of entry. It's a lot better on maps like Non close positions Shattered Temple and Tal'Darim Altar where a center with lots of open space greatly diminish the effectiveness of siege tanks due to the ability of MMM to get a better spread and setup surrounds.
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In tvt my biggest flaw is not having map vision. I am so cheap with my units that I don't even scout. I want all of my units to be mining or be defending my base. However, I think this is flawed thinking. It is actually costing me more not to put a marine by his front door or near the attack paths.
I need to be doing better with map vision and watching the minimap.
In tvt, one has to worry about drops and also worry about his tanks moving towards you.
I cant have it all: ie all mules and all scv mining and keeping all the marines home (ie I am stingy that I don't want my lone marine to be picked off. ) This type of thinking is costing me more in his surprising me with forces that i am not expecting to show up at my door.
bad.
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By the way, TvT is one of the most situational matchups for me. For the other matchups, the opponent has to react to me b/c I have a solid build to which it is the opponent who must answer to my build. Not so, however, in TvT. There are so many things that can happen: banshee, hellion drop, tank siege in your face, mass marine no gas rush, etc.
Be as it may, due to my power builds in the other two matchups, I have gotten complacent about scouting. I often won't even send a scout. This is really bad for tvt. So, last game I decided to change it up. I decided that no matter what the race, I would scout. As it happens, I got a T as opponent on ladder. So, I sent scv out to scout. On the way there, on the minimap, I saw his scv towards my base (situation #1). So, I lined up two marines such that his scv would be trapped. [ I had two rines by then because I had 2 rax and also b/c it was the last position he scouted .] Sure enough, I killed his scv before he even saw anything. Also, on replay, all he saw was two marines (I hid my third marine so as to not tip him off that I had 2 rax).
I was doing a 2 rax no gas FE. Normally, i would have turtled with bunkers. However, this time, b/c I had scouted his base, my scv only saw one single marine at the front door. I immediately pulled back and thought: hmm 1 lone marine when I already had 3 . . . (This is situation #2). So, I decided to take my 3+2 marines to poke up his ramp. Sure enough, his only army was 1 marine. He was teching hard with 2 gas and reactor on factory and rax and building a starport--all without a bunker.
As soon as he saw my force, he gg'd. His army was 50 minerals to my 250+ more rallied marines.
So, even in a FE where I had already spent $400 on a CC, there are timing windows to hit hard with marines. I guess I am going be more pro-active about information gathering and reacting to situational windows. Not doing so was my biggest down fall in tvt.
cheers.
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For what it's worth, MMM isn't really standard as the bulk of your army in TvT. I'm watching this replay and neither of you seem to have really crisp TvT oriented builds. I'd watch a pro replay and copy down exactly what they do, preferably with the ability to replicate it down to the millisecond. I just recently switched to Terran and my TvZ build order(together with notes on what might have been a response to the other player) takes up an entire page(on a piece of notebook paper) - this kind of detail is good.
Next, honestly, you had this game won when he stopped producing harvesters waaaay before you did. You lost it when you started floating thousands of minerals, let him catch up in harvester count(when you were still 20 or so workers below what you should have been at, had you taken a third) and then repeatedly walked your forces into his nat for no reason I can ascertain. You even walked right past his mining gold base at one point. Hilariously, he picked it up and relocated it before you noticed it.
I don't know what your plan was. He had a couple of sieged up tanks (and thors for whatever reason) at his nat, but absolutely zilch at his other expansions. You could've easily killed them in spite of your inferior army(and a lot of it was medivacs, although I thought it was cute that you upgraded ship plating for them).
Your #1 problem, the ONLY thing you should be thinking about fixing, is your macro. If you worked on your macro, your attacks, ill-conceived as they were, actually would have worked on this guy. If you attacked by the time he had tanks out, which was pretty late by my standards, there's a possibility you would've lost your army, but your ability to reproduce could've been so much better than his that you could've walked over him anyway with another army. I saw instances where you had thousands of minerals but were only producing out of your single factory late game. Why? Produce out of your other structures. This is what's really killing your game.
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You spent money in a lot of weird places. You got ship weapons and plating when the majority of that guy's army was maruader/marine/tank/medivac, if you're not fighting with your air units there's no reason to upgrade them.
spend your money!!!! if you've got enough money to support another unit producing structure, build it! i know this can feel really ambiguous and strange at times, but if you're gonna go MMM a good rule of thumb is be up to 5 rax by the time you expand the first time. Your worker production was kinda on and off, but for bronze it was pretty standard.
MMM is not the typical TvT build of choice, but that doesn't mean you can't make it work! MMM is extremely mobile and you didn't exploit that at all in this game. instead you pressed your bio's faces into Planetary fortresses and got crushed. I would never ever ever recommend pushing with bio against a PF or a seige line, instead, find out where he isn't! use your scans, find his expos do little drops here and there and begin to do some "chipping damage." there was a span of like 14 minutes where a single medivac with marines in it could of dropped the empty back of his main and done soooooooo much dmg before any seiges could of got in range of you. He made you come to him all game long, and you never really once got to exploit the immobility of his army. If you're going to play MMM in TvT then know that he is going to turtle hard almost all game which is PERFECT for you, because that allows you to max out faster and be everywhere, which will tire him out eventually and cause him to do something stupid with his tank lines which will cost him the game.
Mechanically you're alright...you need to work on specific things like keeping money low, staying ahead of supply, and expanding, but thats not what cost you the game. What cost you the game, is you walked right into a bear trap time after time after time because of your build. The only aggression your opponent showed all game was the reaper drop (this is extremely uncommon and you shouldn't worry about seeing it all too often it made me giggle a little) and then he sat in his base turtled up all game. Do not feel pressured to attack if your opponent is turtling. if he is turtling drop him! harass the piss out of that guy until he does something dumb, and then you win! you dont have to kill the guy with a drop, but the drops do more than just kill units. they frustrate your opponent, they make him worry about "when is the next one comming" they make them spend money in ways like building turrets and bunkers in dumb spots. and while he is doing that....expand! take the map! punish that guy for being so turtley and eventually when you do max out then push somewhere!
gl to you in the future!
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EPT
