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Lately in TvZ, I’ve watched Terrans open with a reactor hellion expand. When the hellions force zerglings, banelings and/or roaches to be made, Terran makes banshees to follow up the hellion pressure. This harass allows the Terran to heavily punish the lack of anti-air. When the pressure ends, Terran switches into marine/tank or mech. But as I was idly watching a TvZ on stream one day, I came up with a thought: Why stop making hellions and banshees? What if I could integrate the units into a bio-mech unit composition? I like switching into a marine-tank composition sprinkled with a few marauders to soak up baneling hits. However, I wondered if I could make a hellion/banshee/marine/maurader/medivac composition work. I also decided I’d add in Thors if the game went long enough. Curious, I set out to try creating this unit composition on ladder.
The problem is that I’ve never created a build from my own ideas before. I have been concentrating on “standard” Terran builds and trying to multitask more efficiently (i.e making units at home while I push out). I’m not sure how to improve and tweak the build as I move forward. I do know that I like the build and unit composition; it’s different and I really enjoy it. Hellions with blue flame upgrades roast the damned banelings and zerlings, leaving the bio ball to deal damage. Also I become super mobile which allows me to attack in multiple places. I also feel like because it is so different, people aren’t sure how to react to it.
However, I’ve run into a few issues. I’m not exactly sure when my buildings should be made. I don’t know how many factories and raxes that I can support per the number of bases I have. While I enjoy the extremely heavy harass I’m allowed to execute, I never know how far I can push. Often I lose the advantage I had because I get greedy. I also feel unsure how to transition when faced with mass infestors or mutas. Against infestors, I tried ghosts and using hellion or marauder hit squads. But I didn’t feel 100% that those were the most comfortable solutions. If I didn’t split my army or EMP properly, I just melted. Against mutas, I feel like my pressure throws the standard timing on mutas so I never know when to switch into marine/thor/turret production.
My ultimate point is that I have a simple question: How do you tweak a build you’re working on? Do you grind it out on ladder, do you practice it against a computer, do you use build order testers? With builds that I’m more familiar with such as reactor expand into marine/tank or marauder/hellion into MMM, I just smoothed out the builds against a computer then executed on ladder. With a build that I created and I’m trying to refine, I don’t have a system.
Side Note: I know this could easily be tweaked into a post that could fit into the strategy section but I don’t feel like I’ve played the build enough to have a clear issue to solve. I also wanted to see how much I could tweak the build on my own before asking for help. It’s fun creating my own style.
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Personally, I'm huge on math so I just figure out what I can afford. I might have some useful information for you. This is directly related to gas timings.
Gas Refineries Taken / Gas Mined / Time when gas benchmark was obtained
1 gas / 100 gas / 50 seconds
750 gas / 6 minutes 27 seconds
2 gas / 100 gas / 26 seconds
750 gas / 3 minutes 10 seconds
3 gas / 100 gas / 19 seconds
750 gas / 2 minutes 12 seconds
4 gas / 100 gas / 15 seconds
750 gas / 1 minute 40 seconds
'Staggered'
3 gas / 100 gas / 40 seconds
750 gas / 2 minutes 41 seconds
'Staggered'
4 gas / 100 gas / 40 seconds
750 gas / 2 minutes 25 seconds
'Staggered' is the point where you immediately throw down a refinery after one has completed. The benefit to this is that you are producing 2 scvs before you have to put scvs into the completed refinery. Gas is what really determines a build you want to do. I chose 750 gas because that covers basically all the initial infrastructure costs and neccessary upgrades. (Stim, Shields, Factory, Siege, Starport, addons, and either +1 or a few medivacs/tanks before your gas income becomes steady)
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For me I grind it out and save all the losing replays and see what the build is weak against. If you can transform frustrating losses into learning experiences it makes your builds a hell of a lot better. Also it's important to learn to not get too attached to a build. I've been using a build for almost a year now that I made and have been adjusting, and I might be ready to make some huge changes to it (aka scrap it) because the timings are weak to the metagame and the opponents macro timings.
When it comes to upgrade timings, reverse engineering the gas timings are usually what I do. as for compositional builds I think the best way is to play a ton of games with it.
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EPT
