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Rushing mass thors TvP has always left a vulnerable window, but this was somewhat masked by the free strike cannon last patch, allowing a smaller thor army to be effective mid game. Now that thors will be extremely vulnerable in that timing, there seems to be few reasons to build them.
Let's compare costs: 500/thor(400/47)/6 = 500/4stimmara(420/40/60)/8.
The thor is slightly superior against zeals, which are a huge problems for the bio army. It is also better supply efficiency, which means you can fit in more of them at cap. But, it is prohibitive to build thors because they dont match the 3.5-1 min/gas income ratio, where as the cost of marauders allows them to spammed on income.
If we just substitute 9 marauders for 3 thors, say for the first time we hit 200 cap, the difference in HP and output is extremely minor. It would be unlikely to see a 10% change either way, in fact you would probably be behind in upgrades. So, it makes little sense to make that sort of substitution.
Assuming ~120 food army, we can imagine there being approximately 30 supply in vikings (14/15 viking crit mass to one shot colo), and 90 food in bio. Suppose 84 bio were marauders, then:
42 mara vs 14 thor
4200 hp vs 5600 hp; 420(630) DPS vs 658
That's nearly a 30-40% boost in army power at supply cap! The thors are superior (and this is not considering that upgrades give +3x2) IF you can substitute your ENTIRE ground army with them.
So given this knowledge, what does this mean for strategy? To get to this army, you need to keep thors alive, and keep massing them, and work around their gas requirement. But in the meantime, you have to be able to contest the P army and control his composition/income. To do both of these things, you can constantly trade your bio army. As the bio army dies, you replace with bio, remax, and attack, except you are stockpiling a thor every minute.
Off 3 base, if you dedicate 1 base of gas income to thor production, it will take 10-14m (imagine 30-40m game) to have a sizable amount of thors. If you have 4 bases, you will be able to speed up this timing by having 2 bases of gas dedicated.
The game gets decided during the ramp up mass bio phase, or ultimately by the P response to the final mass thor push. Depending on the number of expansions on the map, the destruction of the thor army can reset the whole cycle, or end the game.
 
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Ultimately, comparing thors to marines is completely absurd because of the humongous difference in gas costs, time differences, tech requirements, effectiveness against certain compositions than others, among other things.
I fail to think that the thor change really has altered its effectiveness as much as people claim - they aren't completely useless.
Edit: oh, also completely important is the vulnerability to AOE that thors don't really incur as compared to marines, as well as the fact that you can repair thors, which is more helpful for units with high HP.
Again, kind of absurd comparison
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Please read carefully, almost all those points were addressed.
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I'd like to see some replay's of this being done. I think its viable as a build and could be very strong depending on expansion timings behind it. However I'd really like to see some P's who react properly to seeing thors and make 4-5 ht's / immortal mass chargelot when they realize whats going on.
Also if they switch to voidrays before your upgrades are too far ahead for Mech VR's will actually beat the Thor's if the marines have to focus on the chargelots as well. Micro will be important for both sides in these fights so I'd be interested to have you post some reps. Good Idea overall good luck with testing on the ladder and in some in-house games.
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Hm, the way you put it feels a lot like how protoss expects their colossus to operate. Lose gateway units without losing colossus, get a good # of them, win game with a brutal timing push of your favorite (colossus/thor) units with whatever flavor of support.
The only catch I see with this is that marines are actually better dps than marauders (especially on light stuff) though they're vulnerable to splash.
Zealots are normally dealt with using some combination of marines, hellions (this was thorzain's main way of doing it), and armor upgrades - would they really distract the marines that long from the VRs? With good micro, you should be focusing your thors on clearing out ground targets and NOT the void rays, and use your marines to kill the Voids. With strike cannon near-useless now though, I can see immortals or templar supported by gateway units a lot more effective than pre-patch at cracking this terran deathball.
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I think there are a few other points which you might want to consider addressing.
1) Medivacs can increase Marauder's HP beyond it's normal limits (This increases marauders effective gas cost as well).
2) Marauder's are faster with Stim, and can slow. Better map control / positioning.
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On May 14 2011 05:22 OmniEulogy wrote:
Also if they switch to voidrays before your upgrades are too far ahead for Mech VR's will actually beat the Thor's if the marines have to focus on the chargelots as well.
The maxed army he describes has 15 vikings in it, and no marines.
On May 14 2011 05:43 sylverfyre wrote:
Zealots are normally dealt with using some combination of marines, hellions (this was thorzain's main way of doing it), and armor upgrades - would they really distract the marines that long from the VRs? With good micro, you should be focusing your thors on clearing out ground targets and NOT the void rays, and use your marines to kill the Voids. With strike cannon near-useless now though, I can see immortals or templar supported by gateway units a lot more effective than pre-patch at cracking this terran deathball.
?? again, 15 vikings and no marines in this composition
I think the point is that T can actually clear zeals pretty fast with enough thors, and this is the way T can build up enough to be effective.
On May 14 2011 05:44 Volshok wrote:
I think there are a few other points which you might want to consider addressing.
1) Medivacs can increase Marauder's HP beyond it's normal limits (This increases marauders effective gas cost as well).
2) Marauder's are faster with Stim, and can slow. Better map control / positioning.
yeah, these seem like really important factors but maybe the idea is that you manage to get up the death army of thors and win by the sheer hp/dps/supply efficiency of the # of thors.
P should probably respond to this style with zeal/stalker, counterattacks, VR/carriers... not entirely sure. I guess feedback is OK too.
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IMO Thor's suck now because Feedback can absolutely wreck them. A lot of Toss are going Templar these days because Archons got a buff.
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Thors were pretty bad in TvP before the patch and are completely useless after the patch.
Go back to spamming MMM every game because Blizzard loves killing diversity.
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Interesting analysis, but I think your Marauder numbers are off.
1 Marauder DPS = 6.7
1 Marauder DPS vs Armored = 13.4
1 Marauder DPS Stim = 8.9
1 Marauder DPS vs Armored Stim = 17.9
1 Marauder HP = 125
1 Marauder HP Stim = 100 HP
42 Marauder Stimmed HP = 4200 HP
14 Thor HP = 5600 HP
14 Thor DPS = 648 DPS
42 Marauder DPS = 281
42 Marauder Stim DPS = 373
42 Marauder vs Armor DPS = 562
42 Marauder Stim vs Armor DPS = 752
Then you also need to consider that Thor attacks are x2, so armor gets applied twice depending upon the target. Vs a 4 armor target with guardian shield, this results in a 10% decrease in dps. (although in reality its probably a bit less because shield upgrades lag behind armor upgrades)
14 Thor = 5600 HP * 648 DPS * 0.9 adjustment = 3,265,920
42 Marauder = 4200 * 752 DPS = 3,158,400
14 Thor = 4200/2800
42 Marauder = 4200/1050
Marauders are clearly more cost effective.
Another thing to look at is production capacity
1 Factory with Tech lab = 175/125
3 Barracks with Tech lab = 525/75
1 Thor build time = 60
3 Marauder build time = 30
Then there are a bunch of other "intangible" stuff to consider.
Thors:
1. Bust forcefields
2. Have 1 extra range
3. Have antiair
Marauders:
1. Have much faster speed
2. Have concussive shell
3. Are immune to feedback
4. Overkill much less than Thors
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Good point about the DPS, you are right my mara vs armored DPS numbers are incorrect. However, the x2 is not a problem because each thor upgrade is +3. Just one thor upgrade is enough to knock off all ground protoss upgrades.
Of course, none of this is particular enlightening because another piece of the puzzle that I haven't figured out how to theorycraft is effective HP/dmg. It doesn't matter that the thor does X dps because it 2shots every EMPed protoss unit - but there is a lot of overkill going on there. On the other hand, marauders take an extremely long time to DPS down EMPed zeals, nearly 3 cycles.
Production capacity issues are basically the entire focus of the conversation. Supposing that mass thors does give you a 30% army advantage, the point is that no P that is aware of the strategy will let you mass thors slowly, since production cycles + ratios are in his favor. That's why you have to match with bio, and slowly stockpile a thor count.
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On May 14 2011 07:35 roam wrote:
Good point about the DPS, you are right my mara vs armored DPS numbers are incorrect. However, the x2 is not a problem because each thor upgrade is +3. Just one thor upgrade is enough to knock off all ground protoss upgrades.
Of course, none of this is particular enlightening because another piece of the puzzle that I haven't figured out how to theorycraft is effective HP/dmg. It doesn't matter that the thor does X dps because it 2shots every EMPed protoss unit - but there is a lot of overkill going on there. On the other hand, marauders take an extremely long time to DPS down EMPed zeals, nearly 3 cycles.
Production capacity issues are basically the entire focus of the conversation. Supposing that mass thors does give you a 30% army advantage, the point is that no P that is aware of the strategy will let you mass thors slowly, since production cycles + ratios are in his favor. That's why you have to match with bio, and slowly stockpile a thor count.
Yes, each upgrade per thor is +3 x2 damage. But each upgrade for 3 marauders is +6 damage, and vs armored is +12 damage. And the marauders attack more quickly, which means they apply that upgrade damage more often.
HP/dmg is not a meaningful statistic because the greater the dps, the lower the overall result. Which is kinda counterintuitive =P HP * DPS is a more meaningful statistic.
Thors only have a 30% army advantage vs light and psionic units, they are equal with marauders vs armored. And even then, the Thor army costs a staggering 1750 extra gas. Thats almost 3x the gas cost of the marauder army.
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One big factor that swings such a fight in favour of marauders is that they will generally be getting off far more hits than thors. Thors are big and clunky and getting them into a nice firing concave is a fanciful wish. In most scenarios you will have lots of marauders firing and thors queueing up shouting "lemme at em!"
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I think these kind of comparisons are strange, because of all the variables you have to account for. For instance, every time a marauder is killed the dps output decreases; the same as the number as the number of thors die. However, I am not sure that in battle the rate at which thors dies and the rate at which marauders dies is equivalent such that the dps drop per battle is equivalent thus the dps over time is comparable (imagine integral of damage per unit time and comparing 2 charts).
Likewise, have you considered dps per unit area; small chokes versus large engagement and small (how many marauders can fit in the area of a thor) into the calculation. Likewise, a marauder army can be stimmed and healed while a thor army cannot (it can be repaired) so dps can also be variable. Finally maybe marauder army has more effective hp b/c it can be healed constantly by medivac support or retreated faster, while thors are slow and can be surrounded and die thus effecting the dps per unit time calculation. These types of things are all important to consider with strategy; not necessarily just the dps and hp. This generally echoes kNightlifes post and others.
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EPT
