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I recently posted a history of the ghost in the SC2 general forum. In that post I noted that the MMMGV strategy dominated the TvP matchup, nearly to the extinction of other builds. Sure, Yoshi Kirishima came out with that TvP Pure Air build a while back, but the matchup has been largely based on this strategy for a while now. The other dominating trend was the 1-1-1. And I think everyone knew the 1-1-1 wasn't going to last. It's still a powerful build, but it was obviously a strategy that had found a local maximum, but didn't have a lot of room to improve and would eventually get figured out and beaten.
I believe Terrans have done themselves a disservice by playing in this way, even if in the short term they offered excellent win rates. To illustrate my point, I draw an analogy to the theory of evolution, specifically the term "genetic variation."
Genetic variation is the principle that a species will have greater chance of survival in the long run if its population has a variety of genetic traits. In present conditions these traits may or may not be more successful, but with greater genetic variation, then should conditions change suddenly, a trait could just as suddenly become very much successful. And the greater the genetic variation in a population, the higher chance that at least a few members will have such a trait, such that the species will be able to continue to thrive.
I propose that a race in SC2 would benefit from a similar principle. That is, if different Zergs played different styles, and every zerg had his or her own unique style that required a different response, then Terrans and Protosses would suddenly be significantly worse off against Zerg. Even if these varied strategies were fully predictable (so that each T or P was aware of the style he or she would be facing at the beginning of the game), they would have to prepare differently for each Zerg they faced.
The analogy holds strongest on this point: if some catastrophic event changes a match-up completely, be it a metagame shift or a patch or what have you, greater strategic variation would mean more graceful degradation of that race's standard play. If rather than just mass ghost, Terrans had found a variety of late-game builds in TvZ, the match-up would be less impacted by the ghost nerf. If they had a variety of styles in TvP, a new and innovative Protoss standard of play might fare well against one TvP style, but get crushed by some of the others.
The analogy appears to break down at this point: genetic variation is important in species' populations because species cannot change their traits at a whim. Theoretically a starcraft player could switch to whatever strategy was most advantageous at a moment's notice simply by making different decisions in-game. But the analogy is stronger than it appears on this point. Players cannot change styles at a whim; strategies are worked out by mass testing against a wide variety of builds, with adjustments made constantly to maximize the value of that strategy as much as possible. If a bizarre patch suddenly made MMMGV worthless TvP but made mass grounded viking unstoppable, it would take a lot of work and effort for Terrans to figure out how best to transition to this new strategy. So working on maximizing strategies now, even when there are other strategies that have been figured out more and therefore tend to work better, would result in a stronger and more interesting metagame for all three races.
So why doesn't more strategic variation exist?
Well, some of it does. Everyone always wants to come up with the new build that will become their race's standard of play, so they search and theorycraft and analyze in search of that holy grail build that will earn them fame and glory. They may not find it, but what they usually do find is some particular strain of the standard style of play that particularly suits them, and so they will have their own take on the matchup that differs slightly from everyone else.
But mostly, there is very little strategic variation. Professional gamers play to win, before anything else. Whatever strategy will help them achieve that win more reliably, they will flock to in hopes of upping their win rate. If they're losing, they'll innovate until they're winning again. If they're winning, they'll just keep on winning.
And perhaps the scene doesn't have the resources to innovate in too many directions at once. If Terrans had been working on strong mech plays while they were doing MMMGV, MMMGV wouldn't have advanced as far. Depth typically beats breadth, so Terrans would be better served by one excellent strategy than ten mediocre ones.
But I think there is still room for more strategic variation. Other races will innovate based on the current state of the match-up, so while your race's standard of play may suffer, so will your opponents' response to it. By the same token, if you are working on a more underdeveloped strategy than your race's standard, then your opponents' responses will also be more underdeveloped. All it takes is for players to rethink the assumption of "if there's already a strategy to beat that, then I don't need to invent a new one". If the problem is already addressable, but you invent a new solution to the same problem, then it makes both solutions more likely to succeed. If you're lucky, your response will be stronger than the existing standard, and players will flock to your solution.
Note that I am not criticizing professional Starcraft II players or saying that they have been irresponsible or lazy in any way. Professional gamers respond to win rates above all else, and an underdeveloped strategy probably has less chance of winning. But I would like players to at least recognize the value of developing a broader base of strategies with which to play. Greater strategic variation would, in my opinion, lead to more competitive matchups, more interesting gameplay, and an overall better SC2 experience.
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This is very interesting. There are a number of interesting parallels between evolutionary systems and starcraft, but I hadn't thought about it in precisely this light before.
The most interesting thing to me is the way that certain strategies organize themselves into ladder strata. The ladder is an interesting evolutionary system with a well-defined fitness function.
Do you have any interest in memetics?
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Memetics is an interesting alternative way to analyze culture. I feel like evolutionary models of culture have always had inherent problems. Evolutionary models are meant for systems in which the state of the system at time t+1 is determined to a significant degree by a function of the state of the system at time t, so for genetics it works well because genes typically stay largely the same with a few alterations here and there.
Starcraft strategy works a little less well, since the system changes fairly rapidly and introduces elements that were entirely absent previously, but players still keep their strategy mostly the same from game to game, or they switch to an entirely new build, which can for our purposes be treated as a new organism.
Culture, by contrast, is such a massive, chaotic system that it seems like there are inherent problems in treating it with a model built for gradual change over time. The best you can do is highlight a few continuing trends within certain time periods
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Italy12246 Posts
In terms of other tvp unit compositions specifically, things that aren't mmmvg tend to get less cost effective, faster; terran tech units are genereally destroyed by protoss tech units like chargelots, templars and ranged colossi. This is also why 111 is so strong: it's a tech based unit composition that hits a protoss before he can get the tech needed to kill it cost efficiently, so the best way to beat it is just to have a lot of stuff..
Consequence of this, you do see some variations like marine/tank, marine/thor/banshee, thor/hellion etc, but only as1- 2base timing attacks/allins because it's basically impossible to beat a protoss army 25 minutes into a game with that same composition, when the protoss has all the tech needed to counter it.
Currently i find tvp is very similar to what pvz was in the roach/hydra days, where terrans (zergs) do (did) basically a single build, with tiny variations, and the correct response to it was very straightforward (turtle up till maxed), so every game you can basically blind counter the other guy. I know that if 2base techy timings were more common, pvt would scare me a lot more than what it does now.
Regarding your (awesome) analogy, tt's also interesting to note that Protoss builds differ widely, against what is basically the same terran unit composition. Different builds put emphasis on basically anything protoss can do but air, be it a fast third, fast upgrades, fast colossus or fast templar, or just lots of gateway units to kill the opponent as fast as possible. MMMVG guilds tend to be a bit more similar to each other, and have only subtle differences.
And by the way, this is what i love so much about science. The models and predictions you can make for a single phenomenon can useful and applied to a looot of other things. It's fascinating.
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Why is culture a more massively chaotic system than the biosphere? They are both so chaotic we might as well stop keeping score.
also...
the state of the system at time t+1 is determined to a significant degree by a function of the state of the system at time t
Isn't this like... every system? Unless you're arguing that culture is random, which it isn't.
There's actually 2 separate questions:
1) Is culture an evolutionary system (the answer to this turns out to be "yes, trivially")
and
2) can we model it? (the answer to this turns out to be "no, except for tiny little pieces")
My field is critical theory. Much of the theory that has dominated the late twentieth century is significantly challenged by the application of a sophisticated understanding of evolutionary dynamics. You have to apply the principles of evolutionary dynamics qualitatively rather than quantitatively (this is the nature of the field). So the models are limited, yes, but if you extrapolate principles from the models you can learn a lot.
After putting two years of very hard thought into the matter, I'm convinced that culture is LITERALLY an evolutionary system, and that understanding it in this way is crucial for theorizing the information age, in particular.
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I think you're not disagreeing that culture changes much more rapidly than organisms do. Biospheres are chaotic, but genetic codes are pretty stable compared to cultures (compare the time frames in which a culture radically changes to time frames in which a species undergoes radical evolutionary change). That said, I also think I'm not disagreeing that theoretically, most (if not all) of culture is not created, but recycled or at least heavily influenced by existing culture. In which case it could hopefully be modeled, and even if it couldn't practically be modeled, knowing that the system will generally follow the rules of an evolutionary system would lead to valuable understandings.
That said, when the creation of memes is sufficiently easy and (even if it always draws from existing elements) has a sufficiently broad base of cultural elements from which it could draw, the system at t+1 is less and less likely to resemble itself at t. With diverse enough possible sources of influence (say, in a globalized environment where understanding of world cultures can be accessed fairly easily), new memes may as well be created entirely by genesis, since tracing their roots could quickly become, for all intents and purposes, impossible. This, to me, is where evolutionary understandings will break down.
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On February 24 2012 18:15 ChristianS wrote:
I think you're not disagreeing that culture changes much more rapidly than organisms do.
Not at all, but it's irrelevant.
Biospheres are chaotic, but genetic codes are pretty stable compared to cultures (compare the time frames in which a culture radically changes to time frames in which a species undergoes radical evolutionary change).
You are correct here in that if the mutation rate exceeds a certain critical threshold evolutionary dynamics break down. However, keep in mind that in culture the entire process speeds up, not just mutation, so the changes in scale are commensurate. Also I would note that how fast something changes bears no relation to how chaotic that change is.
knowing that the system will generally follow the rules of an evolutionary system would lead to valuable understandings.
Exactly! I'm making a career out of this.
That said, when the creation of memes is sufficiently easy and (even if it always draws from existing elements) has a sufficiently broad base of cultural elements from which it could draw, the system at t+1 is less and less likely to resemble itself at t.
Resemblance != causal dependence. A system that undergoes catastrophic phase transition between t and t+1 still fulfills the "t+1 depends on t" criterion. edit: and we can still understand the mechanism behind that phase transition. In fact, these are the most interesting points in history to examine (revolutions).
With diverse enough possible sources of influence (say, in a globalized environment where understanding of world cultures can be accessed fairly easily), new memes may as well be created entirely by genesis, since tracing their roots could quickly become, for all intents and purposes, impossible. This, to me, is where evolutionary understandings will break down.
Evolutionary models don't care about where certain -emes came from. We don't "trace the roots" of particular mutations or speciation events, either. What we do is examine the environment in which these new mutations become successful. The goal of this is that we would be able to predict, given some new environment, what sort of -emes would be successful there.
The question is not so much "which other old ideas is this idea made of," although that's a useful thing to know and we do that too, but "why is this idea so powerful in the contemporary world-space."
You are correct that globalization creates a radically new environment for memic evolution. My undergraduate thesis (on William Gibson's fiction) was in large part concerned with this problem. The untraceability worry is not as problematic as you might think; it's what I call, after a scene in Virtual Light, "chasing turds around."
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So why doesn't more strategic variation exist?
In TvP?
Because it's the only viable strategy. No more evolving. That's it. You certainly haven't tried to play Mech or biomech in TvP.
In TvZ?
Because blizzard keeps nerfing units so they have no purpose anymore.
But I think there is still room for more strategic variation. Other races will innovate based on the current state of the match-up, so while your race's standard of play may suffer, so will your opponents' response to it. By the same token, if you are working on a more underdeveloped strategy than your race's standard, then your opponents' responses will also be more underdeveloped. All it takes is for players to rethink the assumption of "if there's already a strategy to beat that, then I don't need to invent a new one". If the problem is already addressable, but you invent a new solution to the same problem, then it makes both solutions more likely to succeed. If you're lucky, your response will be stronger than the existing standard, and players will flock to your solution.
Not if these other strategy's are so fucking awfull anybody can beat them doing standard shit really badly executed.
There is nothing viable outside of MMMVG. Except sacing scv's to get more MMMVG.
I recently posted a history of the ghost in the SC2 general forum. In that post I noted that the MMMGV strategy dominated the TvP matchup, nearly to the extinction of other builds. Sure, Yoshi Kirishima came out with that TvP Pure Air build a while back, but the matchup has been largely based on this strategy for a while now. The other dominating trend was the 1-1-1. And I think everyone knew the 1-1-1 wasn't going to last. It's still a powerful build, but it was obviously a strategy that had found a local maximum, but didn't have a lot of room to improve and would eventually get figured out and beaten.
This air build has never been viable at a pro level(ok ok, in beta they were quite good), let alone at a high master level, let alone at any master level. Just because somebody makes a nice post doesn't mean it's a good strategy lol.
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I honestly don't understand how people can assume there are no more decent builds out there just because MMMGV has been developed really well and nothing else has. It might even be true, but there's precisely no way to know that at the present time.
I didn't say TvP Pure Air was viable at pro level. Just that nothing was being figured out. There's some definite room for improvement in MMMGV, particularly in finding a better maxed army to build. Something like tanks or banshees or ravens might easily play a role in that. But nobody is currently working with other builds, so they aren't developing very quickly and anybody that tries them is, as a result, at a disadvantage
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On February 25 2012 04:36 ChristianS wrote:
I honestly don't understand how people can assume there are no more decent builds out there just because MMMGV has been developed really well and nothing else has. It might even be true, but there's precisely no way to know that at the present time.
I didn't say TvP Pure Air was viable at pro level. Just that nothing was being figured out. There's some definite room for improvement in MMMGV, particularly in finding a better maxed army to build. Something like tanks or banshees or ravens might easily play a role in that. But nobody is currently working with other builds, so they aren't developing very quickly and anybody that tries them is, as a result, at a disadvantage
Ya, exactly. You don't understand the TvP matchup at all. Firstly dare to suggest terran players haven't tried to use tanks and banshee's lategame and secondly suggest that they would be a good idea.
They are not. The amount of gas you invest for something that does really shit damage(tank) and makes you immobile or the amount of gas you invest in banshee's which can't shoot.....up and can get feedbacked. It has all been tried, really hard.
Raven's, i'll give you that, would be good. But no more then 2 I can see as viable, also it will make the terran's job lategame even more rediculous and probably there would be a need for 4 army hotkeys just to keep your slow ass raven's alive against blink stalkers. But yes they definitely have utility, TvP lategame is already rediculous hard so we aren't seeing it yet. Battlecruisers are worthless, there damage isn't good enough, too high food and mostly they are too slow of a transition. They can be seen from miles away and hardcountered, but even if you don't hardcounter it doesn't really matter, blink stalkers are cost efficient. Thors are just really bad because they get feedbacked instantly and get owned by chargelots. Anyway, I could definitely see raven's having a use in zoning your enemy out just like nukes have.
There is no terran lategame outside of MMMVG. Not in theory, not in practice. In theory protoss lategame composition rape everything outside of MMMVG, in practice they rape it even more.
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I think terrans should investigate upgraded bunkers in the late game against protoss. They don't cost any supply and they give you a position to fall back to, which would have saved Alive in his recent game against genius on entombed valley while he waited for his 21 barracks to cycle through.
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On February 25 2012 04:49 Recognizable wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 04:36 ChristianS wrote:
I honestly don't understand how people can assume there are no more decent builds out there just because MMMGV has been developed really well and nothing else has. It might even be true, but there's precisely no way to know that at the present time.
I didn't say TvP Pure Air was viable at pro level. Just that nothing was being figured out. There's some definite room for improvement in MMMGV, particularly in finding a better maxed army to build. Something like tanks or banshees or ravens might easily play a role in that. But nobody is currently working with other builds, so they aren't developing very quickly and anybody that tries them is, as a result, at a disadvantage Ya, exactly. You don't understand the TvP matchup at all. Firstly dare to suggest terran players haven't tried to use tanks and banshee's lategame and secondly suggest that they would be a good idea. They are not. The amount of gas you invest for something that does really shit damage(tank) and makes you immobile or the amount of gas you invest in banshee's which can't shoot.....up and can get feedbacked. It has all been tried, really hard. Raven's, i'll give you that, would be good. But no more then 2 I can see as viable, also it will make the terran's job lategame even more rediculous and probably there would be a need for 4 army hotkeys just to keep your slow ass raven's alive against blink stalkers. But yes they definitely have utility, TvP lategame is already rediculous hard so we aren't seeing it yet. Battlecruisers are worthless, there damage isn't good enough, too high food and mostly they are too slow of a transition. They can be seen from miles away and hardcountered, but even if you don't hardcounter it doesn't really matter, blink stalkers are cost efficient. Thors are just really bad because they get feedbacked instantly and get owned by chargelots. Anyway, I could definitely see raven's having a use in zoning your enemy out just like nukes have. There is no terran lategame outside of MMMVG. Not in theory, not in practice. In theory protoss lategame composition rape everything outside of MMMVG, in practice they rape it even more.
I don't understand the TvP match-up at all despite following the professional scene since release, focusing particularly on this matchup since it has given me the most trouble of late? Good thing you're inside my head and have any knowledge of what I know and what I don't.
The gas comment is ridiculous. Terrans have complained for some time that they have nothing to spend their gas on in late game. KawaiiRice actually said the ghost cost change from 150-150 to 200-100 was a nerf, not a buff, because Terrans often find themselves with lots of gas late game and no minerals. The fact that you count banshees out just because they can be feedbacked is an obvious indication that you haven't read Yoshi Kirishima's guide, or you would know that he solved that problem by rapidly cloaking and uncloaking them to drain energy until feedback was no longer cost efficient.
Your general mindset that nothing else works so there's no use trying is absurd and poisonous to the game. We're not much more than a year past release, the metagame has NOT reached its resting point just yet. As for the specific cases you mentioned:
Higher numbers of ravens would obviously still be useful, especially considering the afore-mentioned mineral-heaviness of the Terran army. HSM could provide much-needed AoE damage since tanks aren't used much and EMP has been nerfed so that the toss army can't be reliably EMP'd to zero shields and energy any more.
Battlecruisers trade very favorably with blink stalkers, you just need equal upgrades. Void rays beat them handily, but battlecruisers scale better than void rays do, so Air Terran isn't automatically beaten by Air Protoss.
EMP your thors to solve the feedback problem. As for getting raped by chargelots:
1) So is MMMGV.
2) Thors are damage-takers, not damage-dealers. and they die slower to chargelots than marauders or marines, so realistically, Thor-marine-marauder is stronger than marine-marauder against chargelots, assuming the thors are taking the hits.
Tanks are really good against much of the protoss army, and the units that respond well to tanks are units that are dealt with very easily by other units. So pure tank gets raped by zealot immortal, but tank-banshee-hellion does pretty decently. Colossi do well against tanks while not being so easily destroyed by other Terran units, but still die fast to vikings. In other words, tanks by themselves have no place in TvP. Tanks in combination with other units have potential in the match-up, and may very well begin to be used as MMMGV gets figured out and Terrans are struggling to find a new style for the match-up.
In other words, your reasoning is built entirely on generalizations and on the premise that if you haven't seen something yet, you never will. That premise is a fallacy, and as such, your conclusions are unsound.
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I like your OP. This is exactly why Ghost nerf should never happen in it's current form, especially since the official reason for the nerf was ZvT late game.
I have to say I'm eagerly awaiting bio hellion tank in TvZ and more Ravens in general.
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On February 25 2012 10:24 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 04:49 Recognizable wrote:On February 25 2012 04:36 ChristianS wrote:
I honestly don't understand how people can assume there are no more decent builds out there just because MMMGV has been developed really well and nothing else has. It might even be true, but there's precisely no way to know that at the present time.
I didn't say TvP Pure Air was viable at pro level. Just that nothing was being figured out. There's some definite room for improvement in MMMGV, particularly in finding a better maxed army to build. Something like tanks or banshees or ravens might easily play a role in that. But nobody is currently working with other builds, so they aren't developing very quickly and anybody that tries them is, as a result, at a disadvantage Ya, exactly. You don't understand the TvP matchup at all. Firstly dare to suggest terran players haven't tried to use tanks and banshee's lategame and secondly suggest that they would be a good idea. They are not. The amount of gas you invest for something that does really shit damage(tank) and makes you immobile or the amount of gas you invest in banshee's which can't shoot.....up and can get feedbacked. It has all been tried, really hard. Raven's, i'll give you that, would be good. But no more then 2 I can see as viable, also it will make the terran's job lategame even more rediculous and probably there would be a need for 4 army hotkeys just to keep your slow ass raven's alive against blink stalkers. But yes they definitely have utility, TvP lategame is already rediculous hard so we aren't seeing it yet. Battlecruisers are worthless, there damage isn't good enough, too high food and mostly they are too slow of a transition. They can be seen from miles away and hardcountered, but even if you don't hardcounter it doesn't really matter, blink stalkers are cost efficient. Thors are just really bad because they get feedbacked instantly and get owned by chargelots. Anyway, I could definitely see raven's having a use in zoning your enemy out just like nukes have. There is no terran lategame outside of MMMVG. Not in theory, not in practice. In theory protoss lategame composition rape everything outside of MMMVG, in practice they rape it even more. I don't understand the TvP match-up at all despite following the professional scene since release, focusing particularly on this matchup since it has given me the most trouble of late? Good thing you're inside my head and have any knowledge of what I know and what I don't. The gas comment is ridiculous. Terrans have complained for some time that they have nothing to spend their gas on in late game. KawaiiRice actually said the ghost cost change from 150-150 to 200-100 was a nerf, not a buff, because Terrans often find themselves with lots of gas late game and no minerals. The fact that you count banshees out just because they can be feedbacked is an obvious indication that you haven't read Yoshi Kirishima's guide, or you would know that he solved that problem by rapidly cloaking and uncloaking them to drain energy until feedback was no longer cost efficient. Your general mindset that nothing else works so there's no use trying is absurd and poisonous to the game. We're not much more than a year past release, the metagame has NOT reached its resting point just yet. As for the specific cases you mentioned: Higher numbers of ravens would obviously still be useful, especially considering the afore-mentioned mineral-heaviness of the Terran army. HSM could provide much-needed AoE damage since tanks aren't used much and EMP has been nerfed so that the toss army can't be reliably EMP'd to zero shields and energy any more. Battlecruisers trade very favorably with blink stalkers, you just need equal upgrades. Void rays beat them handily, but battlecruisers scale better than void rays do, so Air Terran isn't automatically beaten by Air Protoss. EMP your thors to solve the feedback problem. As for getting raped by chargelots: 1) So is MMMGV. 2) Thors are damage-takers, not damage-dealers. and they die slower to chargelots than marauders or marines, so realistically, Thor-marine-marauder is stronger than marine-marauder against chargelots, assuming the thors are taking the hits. Tanks are really good against much of the protoss army, and the units that respond well to tanks are units that are dealt with very easily by other units. So pure tank gets raped by zealot immortal, but tank-banshee-hellion does pretty decently. Colossi do well against tanks while not being so easily destroyed by other Terran units, but still die fast to vikings. In other words, tanks by themselves have no place in TvP. Tanks in combination with other units have potential in the match-up, and may very well begin to be used as MMMGV gets figured out and Terrans are struggling to find a new style for the match-up. In other words, your reasoning is built entirely on generalizations and on the premise that if you haven't seen something yet, you never will. That premise is a fallacy, and as such, your conclusions are unsound.
You are the kind of person that sits on the couch during a Soccer match and gives the players you favor directions and then scream loudly if they don't follow them and even more so if they mess up. Because you think they should've listened to you.
I doubt you actually play this game on a decent enough level, and if you do, I doubt you actually think about why stuff works and why it doesn't.
You truly have a complete lack of understand of the Terran vs Protoss matchup, but no worries. I'm here to help you.
The gas comment is ridiculous. Terrans have complained for some time that they have nothing to spend their gas on in late game. KawaiiRice actually said the ghost cost change from 150-150 to 200-100 was a nerf, not a buff, because Terrans often find themselves with lots of gas late game and no minerals. The fact that you count banshees out just because they can be feedbacked is an obvious indication that you haven't read Yoshi Kirishima's guide, or you would know that he solved that problem by rapidly cloaking and uncloaking them to drain energy until feedback was no longer cost efficient.
You are completely gas starved in the TvP matchup until your 7th and 8th gas. Yes it was a buff, because you tend to get ghosts earlier then before your 7th and 8th gas. You max on your 5th and 6th gas. Generally if no trades happen your gas will slowly increase over the course of the game when you get your 7th and 8th gas. But if you are constantly trading you have very few leftover gas however enough to thrown in some ravens/bc's if that's what you want.
Higher numbers of ravens would obviously still be useful, especially considering the afore-mentioned mineral-heaviness of the Terran army. HSM could provide much-needed AoE damage since tanks aren't used much and EMP has been nerfed so that the toss army can't be reliably EMP'd to zero shields and energy any more.
Maybe you should go in the unit tester and see how much damage the HSM missile does to the protoss army. I will give you a hint: Almost nothing, and that's when the units aren't even spread. I can't even imagine how useless they will be when protoss learn to spread also the damage/energy ratio is really bad aswell and they can get feedbacked. However, ravens truly haven't been tried enough and they should, maybe 5+ ravens do have potential.
Battlecruisers trade very favorably with blink stalkers, you just need equal upgrades. Void rays beat them handily, but battlecruisers scale better than void rays do, so Air Terran isn't automatically beaten by Air Protoss.
Thank you for debunking your own argument. Like I said, you are completely gas starved until your 7th and 8th gas. What does this mean? This means you don't have the gas to spent on air upgrades aswell as on your ground upgrades. What does this mean? Stalkers will be 3-3 before your bc's are even 1-1.
EMP your thors to solve the feedback problem. As for getting raped by chargelots:
1) So is MMMGV.
2) Thors are damage-takers, not damage-dealers. and they die slower to chargelots than marauders or marines, so realistically, Thor-marine-marauder is stronger than marine-marauder against chargelots, assuming the thors are taking the hits.
Again, it baffles me you think this hasn't been tried extensively by all sort of really good terrans around the world. Gretorp I remember tried to make this thor army work for a long time, but in the end he just went back to MMMVG. So why don't thors work? Why is thor marine marauder actually bad? Because you'd rather have 3 marauders then 1 thor, they are cheaper, they tank almost as much damage, they can get healed and together they do more DPS. And again, thors can get feedbacked. Please don't tell me to EMP my own thors, this is not practical. Especially when you'd rather EMP and snipe(prepatch) zealots and EMP the rest of his army
Tanks are really good against much of the protoss army, and the units that respond well to tanks are units that are dealt with very easily by other units. So pure tank gets raped by zealot immortal, but tank-banshee-hellion does pretty decently. Colossi do well against tanks while not being so easily destroyed by other Terran units, but still die fast to vikings. In other words, tanks by themselves have no place in TvP. Tanks in combination with other units have potential in the match-up, and may very well begin to be used as MMMGV gets figured out and Terrans are struggling to find a new style for the match-up.
You said tanks are really good against much of the protoss army.
First off, you are again assuming tanks haven't been tried alot. THEY HAVE, jinro used to play mech for months on his stream, he quit. Mech doesn't work. Tank-banshee-hellion has been tried, alot. MMMtank has been tried, alot. To quote QXC: ''Tanks are useless, they are like a really slow really expensive marauder''
In other words, your reasoning is built entirely on generalizations and on the premise that if you haven't seen something yet, you never will. That premise is a fallacy, and as such, your conclusions are unsound
It's exactly the opposite. I have played with every single one of your proposals. I have played hundreds of games trying to make mech work. I have played atleast 50 games trying to make biomech work. Lately I have been playing around with lategame battlecruisers, I have played around with mass thor and biothor. Not only me, alot of Terrans have tried, again and again and have failed. Terran outside of MMMVG doesn't work. It takes too long to get the army you want, usually the army is very immobile, it is very costly but not strong enough to justify the cost, you can't transition out of MMMVG to anything else because off upgrades.
In other words; your entire reasoning is built entirely on generalizations and on the the premises that if you haven't seen something yet, it has never been given a try. That premise is a fallacy, and as such, your conclusions are unsound.
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Never claimed anything hadn't been given a try. Or even that people hadn't played dozens of games trying to make it work. But all it takes is a metagame shift, or a new patch, or some little adjustment to an otherwise-bad strategy, and all of a sudden your build becomes good again. Let's start with unit combinations: Terran has, as potential units, the marine, marauder, ghost, reaper, hellion, tank, thor, medivac, viking, banshee, and battlecruiser. That's 11 units. If we build a unit combination of 5 units, like MMMGV, then there are 11*10*9*8*7=55440 possible unit combinations. And that's not counting SCV's, which can be a powerful addition in many cases, nor is it counting the null set, since sometimes it's better to just make 2 or 3 units.
Now thousands of those combinations can be written off right off the bat for being worthless. Medivac viking thor tank battlecruiser is obviously pretty dumb. But a hell of a lot of them aren't so dumb; they just haven't been tried. Or, before you jump all over that statement, they might have been tried once, or twice, or even a dozen times. But it takes hundreds and hundreds of games to gain an understanding of how a particular game plan might work and adjust it accordingly. And that time has most certainly not been put in. Why the hell would pro players put it in, when a hundred games spent on a weird unit combination is, in most cases, a hundred games wasted?
So no, I don't yell directions at the players and get upset when they don't follow my directions. Because I don't know what they should do, either. But I do know that the realm of potential strategy is massive and complex, and that it has by no means already been fully explored and charted. Years into the brood war metagame people were still discovering new strategies, and there's no way that won't be true in SCII.
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I doubt we will see some completely new unit composition before HoTS that will be better then MMMVG. I very much doubt it, anything sensible seemed to have been tried already, but yes it could happen.
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Okay, so I think we're in agreement?
1. MMMGV is clearly the most viable strategy in TvP at the moment.
2. Other strategies may exist, but they have either not been tried, or have not been worked out to the point that they would be viable on the level of MMMGV.
3. HotS is likely to come out before anything especially revolutionary arrives to change the matchup.
This post was intended to add point four:
4. If Terran did come up with another strategy that appeared viable on the level of MMMGV, it would strengthen the Terran side of TvP.
And from the sound of things, I don't think you're disagreeing strongly with this, either.
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If Terran did come up with another strategy that appeared viable on the level of MMMGV, it would strengthen the Terran side of TvP.
Obviouslye, but bio works fine, lategame is where the trouble is. There is no real incentive to try something completely different, especially because no unit composition or strategy seems to make intuitive sense outside of MMMVG. Everything that did(Air, mech, biomech, bio into mech, mass thor, etc) has been tried and failed. Yes if terran did come up with another strategy that would be just as viable that would help massively, but the difference is that I believe the chances of there being one are really small, and there just might not be one. What we however should see is more innovation in lategame TvP, with maybe mass ravens/bc's. Right now terrans are constantly building orbitals throughout the game, obviously, but not only for expansions but also to get enough orbitals which allow you to sack 30 scv's. Right now this supply is just going into marauders/ghost/vikings and medivacs but maybe someone thinks of something else that is more effective. We will see.
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EPT
