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Hi, I'm in Silver league and of course I'm still struggling with the fundamentals of the game. Mainly production. I could open with a gasless FE on Taldarim now and get the game going, but sometimes I just face a block like this where the opponent sieges up, and I do not have the chance to attack.
The replay shows how I actually won the game by doing a mass drop in his base. Is this a viable solution to break this contain? Because before that I've tried everything to break his siege contain and the stagnant game. He was expanding furiously I guess, while I was still on 3 base. After the drop did a substantial amount of damage, I proceeded to bang on his front door as I saw his army was in a mess. (All unsieged and out of position)
And also... Was my macro okay? I still managed to remax after I lost several of my marines... (Built lots of barracks). Didn't build any add-ons as I could easily add them later on if I need to. I read this somewhere before in TL forums...
Yup, I'm still new so kindly help me out, thanks! 
http://drop.sc/75735
Didn't post this in strategy section because it's not really a specific problem that I'm looking into, but I want to know to improve my play.
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Not going to watch your replay but in general when you do these fast expand builds siege contains are definitely a strong option for the other player, but there are a couple ways to get around them.
The best way is to kill the army before he sets up the contain or hit it while it's still weak. You can pull this off by making a lot of marines since you'll have a lot of minerals from your expansion, with combat shield (finishes quicker), and some scvs. The reason why it's ok to bring scvs is because if he's going for the quick contain he will be behind economically because he chose to tech quicker, and therefore you will still have a better economy because you can produce more scvs (2 command to 1 command), and have more mules, but you should only do this if necessary.
How you can go about doing this is to have control of the watch tower so you can see when his army is coming (this shouldn't be too difficult since you get a lot of marines with early expand builds). You should then have enough time to set up a surround with your superior marine army and crush his stuff before his tanks siege. If he surprises you and gets the contain up before you can react, you can still break it with a decent amount of spread scvs (6-8), and marines, but you have to be sure that you can kill 90% of his stuff and that your reinforcing marines can kill the rest.
If you successfully pull this off, your own siege tanks should be arriving shortly and you can fend off any additional contains.
If he does manage to contain your in a strong contain that would be extremely cost inefficient to break, you can still win though. Keep your own tanks in such a position that his contain can't inch forward, and get around it using lots of drops, or banshees. The thing about contains is that it keeps a large amount of tanks / units away from his main base, so it will be easier to attack, as well as leaving his other expansions lightly defended as well.
The key to this strategy is to still have enough tanks of your own to stop any attempts he might have to push into your natural. You will naturally need less tanks because of the tank's defenders advantage, and because if you are doing it correctly, your army that you dropped in the map can cut off reinforcements to his contain.
Hope this helps.
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Thanks a lot!!
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Going through the replay, here are some notes:
- He went 2 rax off the bat, and you weren't doing anything defensively. I don't think he was being aggressive but you shouldn't assume that, a bunker early on would have been a good idea. You got one after expanding, but his build could have easily been aggressive sooner than 6 minutes.
- You want doublegas as soon as possible in TvT; factory tech is really important. Even if you're going bio medivacs are so integral that you want them as quickly as possible, and you definitely have the money for it if you went for a doublegas.
- You build your starport/factory up front then float them into your base, this is a little weird. I don't know if you had a good reason for it, but I can't think of any.
- It's 11:30 and you're still playing blind. A scan of the main at 6:30 (the third opportunity to do so) is standard, and you have no idea what he's doing at this point.
- Upgrade stim/combat! Get another tech lab and possibly reactors (some people like naked rax, I'm not really a fan though).
- Keep making supply depots. Have one scv per base (so two on two base) make depots constantly. Even if you have too many, this is way better than having too few! At your level, the problems caused by having too many are negligible.
- You don't have enough production. Rule of thumb is 3 rax with addons (techlab or reactor) and 1 factory per base, with one starport reactored usually. You're at half that right now.
- He has a light seige contain, and dropping is a correct response, as long as you're keeping tabs on what he's doing with the contain.
- 18:00 you don't have, and aren't getting, combat shield. This upgrade is crucial, seeing as he's going very tank heavy and you're going very bio heavy.
- 23:00 you've got a very strong position, and the question is how to press that advantage. The obvious answer is to expand and prevent his expansions, but you can also try and drop around his defense of your position. Dropping is very acceptable in this case.
- You could also run around and kill his third pretty easily most of the time.
- Your lack of scouting is killing you. You drop his natural with a double drop despite him having vikings and turrets there, while his main is relatively unprotected and his third is as well. SCAN AHEAD BEFORE DOING THINGS.
- You keep trying to attack into his seige line. Once you establish the position on the watchtower, and he's forced to defend with his army there, circumvent his army and attack other places. This is key in TvT.
Okay that's a lot of specific stuff. Big problems?
-MACRO. Your macro, while better than his, was atrocious. There are two parts to macro: having the correct production and cycling through that production to make things. The latter for you is pretty good for a silver level player (there's room for improvement), but the former is really bad. See the good rule of thumb for marine/tank I noted earlier: per mining base, 3 addon raxes, 1 factory. You should probably add another rax per base because you're not at a good level for production cycles yet but it's better than what you did.
-SCOUTING. You regularly do things blindly without knowing if they'll work, just becuase they're "good to do". Dropping is good, setting up at the watchtower is good, but why are they good in these situations? If you know what your opponent is doing exactly it is impossible to play incorrectly, and you want to be as close as possible to that without sacrificing much else.
The former list is sort of nitpicky things in that game, if I were you, I would focus on improving macro and scouting specifically.
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I think you've corrected my misconcept of having to face an army head-on in order to win a game. That's the reason why I keep moving my marines into his siege line. Usually when faced with such a situation I'll just have to force him to get out of position?
As for floating the buildings... I was thinking about the travel distance but I realised it didn't matter after a while. I don't really know what was I doing...
Thanks for the tips and guidance!
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On December 18 2011 13:45 LantisPlay wrote:
I think you've corrected my misconcept of having to face an army head-on in order to win a game. That's the reason why I keep moving my marines into his siege line. Usually when faced with such a situation I'll just have to force him to get out of position?
Drops tend to serve two purposes: one is to do damage (obviously), and the other is to force him to make his main army weaker in order to defend it and force him out of position. Your drop shows why it's useful in TvT, and in TvZ you drop when mutas are out to force them to defend and not harass you / defend whatever push you're doing.
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On December 18 2011 13:06 Sc1pio wrote:Going through the replay, here are some notes: - He went 2 rax off the bat, and you weren't doing anything defensively. I don't think he was being aggressive but you shouldn't assume that, a bunker early on would have been a good idea. You got one after expanding, but his build could have easily been aggressive sooner than 6 minutes.
- You want doublegas as soon as possible in TvT; factory tech is really important. Even if you're going bio medivacs are so integral that you want them as quickly as possible, and you definitely have the money for it if you went for a doublegas.
- You build your starport/factory up front then float them into your base, this is a little weird. I don't know if you had a good reason for it, but I can't think of any.
- It's 11:30 and you're still playing blind. A scan of the main at 6:30 (the third opportunity to do so) is standard, and you have no idea what he's doing at this point.
- Upgrade stim/combat! Get another tech lab and possibly reactors (some people like naked rax, I'm not really a fan though).
- Keep making supply depots. Have one scv per base (so two on two base) make depots constantly. Even if you have too many, this is way better than having too few! At your level, the problems caused by having too many are negligible.
- You don't have enough production. Rule of thumb is 3 rax with addons (techlab or reactor) and 1 factory per base, with one starport reactored usually. You're at half that right now.
- He has a light seige contain, and dropping is a correct response, as long as you're keeping tabs on what he's doing with the contain.
- 18:00 you don't have, and aren't getting, combat shield. This upgrade is crucial, seeing as he's going very tank heavy and you're going very bio heavy.
- 23:00 you've got a very strong position, and the question is how to press that advantage. The obvious answer is to expand and prevent his expansions, but you can also try and drop around his defense of your position. Dropping is very acceptable in this case.
- You could also run around and kill his third pretty easily most of the time.
- Your lack of scouting is killing you. You drop his natural with a double drop despite him having vikings and turrets there, while his main is relatively unprotected and his third is as well. SCAN AHEAD BEFORE DOING THINGS.
- You keep trying to attack into his seige line. Once you establish the position on the watchtower, and he's forced to defend with his army there, circumvent his army and attack other places. This is key in TvT.
Okay that's a lot of specific stuff. Big problems? -MACRO. Your macro, while better than his, was atrocious. There are two parts to macro: having the correct production and cycling through that production to make things. The latter for you is pretty good for a silver level player (there's room for improvement), but the former is really bad. See the good rule of thumb for marine/tank I noted earlier: per mining base, 3 addon raxes, 1 factory. You should probably add another rax per base because you're not at a good level for production cycles yet but it's better than what you did. -SCOUTING. You regularly do things blindly without knowing if they'll work, just becuase they're "good to do". Dropping is good, setting up at the watchtower is good, but why are they good in these situations? If you know what your opponent is doing exactly it is impossible to play incorrectly, and you want to be as close as possible to that without sacrificing much else. The former list is sort of nitpicky things in that game, if I were you, I would focus on improving macro and scouting specifically.
This is so thorough. I'll just add something, be sure to add the proper timings of each match up. It is one of the most important things to victory
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EPT
