EPTWhen you command an abriter to recall, it instantly creates the first portal over your targetted units for transport, but the second portal which appears under your arbiter, transports the units with about a second's delay after your command. Once the recall has been initiated and the first portal has appeared, an emp won't interrupt it. A lockdown, however, can stop the arbiter mid-recall, giving the ghost about an extra second to work with over the science vessel. That's before considering that ghosts move slower and that you have to directly target the arbiter, but it's still something to consider.
[i] Theory: Ghosts instead of Vessels vs Arbiters - Page 3
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zobz
Canada2175 Posts
When you command an abriter to recall, it instantly creates the first portal over your targetted units for transport, but the second portal which appears under your arbiter, transports the units with about a second's delay after your command. Once the recall has been initiated and the first portal has appeared, an emp won't interrupt it. A lockdown, however, can stop the arbiter mid-recall, giving the ghost about an extra second to work with over the science vessel. That's before considering that ghosts move slower and that you have to directly target the arbiter, but it's still something to consider. | ||
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xxpack09
United States2160 Posts
On January 14 2011 11:38 zobz wrote: In regards to the convenience of having vessels for detection, don't forget that you depend even more on your reaction speed if you rely on scans. Running out of energy isn't the only problem. Without a form of detection that's constant and continues when you look away from your army, you're more vulnerable to a dt mine drag or that kind of thing, or simply scanning a moment too late when protoss engages with their main army which is the same effect as a late siege. When you command an abriter to recall, it instantly creates the first portal over your targetted units for transport, but the second portal which appears under your arbiter, transports the units with about a second's delay after your command. Once the recall has been initiated and the first portal has appeared, an emp won't interrupt it. A lockdown, however, can stop the arbiter mid-recall, giving the ghost about an extra second to work with over the science vessel. That's before considering that ghosts move slower and that you have to directly target the arbiter, but it's still something to consider. In addition, even if you have PERFECT scanning ability and PERFECT ghost micro while PERFECTLY macroing (read: no one) you're using so many scans on army that you can't use them to scout for expos or tech or army position, etc. Scans are critical and having vessels gives you dozens of extra scans to use for intel throughout the game | ||
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xxpack09
United States2160 Posts
On January 14 2011 08:32 infinity2k9 wrote: Actually it's happened in regular TvP too besides the Triathalon game. It is viable to some degree, Really has done it a few times successfully plus i think maybe Leta. As far as i remember they did not skip Vessels however. The game i mainly remember is Really's... i'm not certain that nukes should be written off as gimmicks in TvP, it worked well in that game for sure. Nukes in TvP are INCREDIBLY map-dependent. Match Point and HBR, for example. Match point you can nuke from the main to the expo right next to it. HBR you can drop a ghost in the cracks by 11 or 5 and nuke it | ||
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Chef
10810 Posts
On January 14 2011 11:06 Lightwip wrote: Ok seriously, it's fine to ask people to listen to your ideas, but it sounds like you're not too willing to listen to criticism and just want approval. In the strategy forum guidelines "Idea" threads are denoted with an [i]. In idea threads, the goal is to discuss a strategy which is unpopular or unrefined. I am not looking for approval of my ideas. I am looking for people to contribute ideas. I thought it was an interesting topic. What if someone made a topic about using valkyries 2 years ago? No one was using them in pro games. There's a million other things Terran can do. They're expensive. 2 scourges can kill them, they pause when firing, and they require an armory and a bunch of other stuff. They're very situational. But they also have some really useful applications in a variety of places. What you don't seem to get is that I'm looking for people to generate new ideas. Not just think of reasons things can't work (which generally involves creating a situation where it can't work, which is very much worthless input). I'm not denying that vessels help a lot when dealing with arbiters. The same way no one would deny that marines and turrets are good defence vs muta harass. But aren't valks an option too? Don't new opportunities open themselves up when you change your response? You can move out quite quickly when you get valks. You have mobility. I think if you're killing more arbs than you normally would, that would equally change the game. You can't think of it in such simple terms. You have to think of how it affects the whole game. I could have just thought about it really hard on my own, but I wanted to utilize the power of many minds to brainstorm. I didn't provide a coherent game plan in the OP. I wanted a discussion. I guess in my queens thread the only reason I got discussion was because Eriador and Chill supported me. Right now this thread has just turned into me trying to steer people toward what the topic is about, so nothing is getting done. It's pretty pathetic. Vessels are a very natural choice. I want to talk about what ghosts can offer. Why is that so hard? Ghosts don't even have to be better. I just want to think about how they would change the game. | ||
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xxpack09
United States2160 Posts
On January 14 2011 12:41 Chef wrote: In the strategy forum guidelines "Idea" threads are denoted with an [i]. In idea threads, the goal is to discuss a strategy which is unpopular or unrefined. I am not looking for approval of my ideas. I am looking for people to contribute ideas. I thought it was an interesting topic. What if someone made a topic about using valkyries 2 years ago? No one was using them in pro games. There's a million other things Terran can do. They're expensive. 2 scourges can kill them, they pause when firing, and they require an armory and a bunch of other stuff. They're very situational. But they also have some really useful applications in a variety of places. What you don't seem to get is that I'm looking for people to generate new ideas. Not just think of reasons things can't work (which generally involves creating a situation where it can't work, which is very much worthless input). I'm not denying that vessels help a lot when dealing with arbiters. The same way no one would deny that marines and turrets are good defence vs muta harass. But aren't valks an option too? Don't new opportunities open themselves up when you change your response? You can move out quite quickly when you get valks. You have mobility. I think if you're killing more arbs than you normally would, that would equally change the game. You can't think of it in such simple terms. You have to think of how it affects the whole game. I could have just thought about it really hard on my own, but I wanted to utilize the power of many minds to brainstorm. I didn't provide a coherent game plan in the OP. I wanted a discussion. I guess in my queens thread the only reason I got discussion was because Eriador and Chill supported me. Right now this thread has just turned into me trying to steer people toward what the topic is about, so nothing is getting done. It's pretty pathetic. Vessels are a very natural choice. I want to talk about what ghosts can offer. Why is that so hard? Ghosts don't even have to be better. I just want to think about how they would change the game. The fact is that there isn't a terran player in the world that can play the lategame properly without vessels. It's too hard to always instantly scan where you need it when you need it, allowing you to take unnecesary damage during your reaction time. EMP is a spell with a whole lot more utility than lockdown, and vessels as big fast fat flying balls are a lot easier to control than ghosts which die very easily and are hard to pick out. What should be in the discussion is not use of only ghosts and no vessels (this isn't viable) but perhaps the idea of incorporating ghosts AND vessels into your army composition. This is of course a question dependent on maps your opponent's army composition (arb count/templar count/carriers?) Notice how no one in the world uses exclusively valks to defend against muta harass, you'll die to well controlled muta/scourge if you don't have some other form of antiair (marines/turrets, although sometimes greedy progamers try to get away with no turrets and just microing hard if they're planning on eventually switching to mech--that way they don't have to build an e-bay). The same applies here. Using ghosts without vessels is just dumb since there are roles the vessel fits that the ghost simply does not. Using them both in tandem however is a possibility | ||
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OMin
United States545 Posts
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Chef
10810 Posts
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OMin
United States545 Posts
On January 14 2011 13:19 Chef wrote: You have to get both EMP upgrade and Lockdown upgrade, but I think that's a viable thought. It seems to have happened in at least a few pro games as well, but I'd like to see people trying to bring ghosts with their army a few times. yeah yeah, im thinking even if you want to go ghosts, theres no way you cant have any vessels at all just for the detection they offer. honestly, if you are far enough into the game to be at ghost/vessel tech, you are pretty much working off 3 gases, so i think the costs of the upgrades are really not that big of a deal... each upgrade is like sacrificing 1 tank, and since you already will get one upgrade or the other if you play normally, you are really just sacrificing one tank to reach the extra tech. | ||
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XXGeneration
United States625 Posts
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Lightwip
United States5497 Posts
Perhaps it would be useful at a specific point in the game though. | ||
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krndandaman
Mozambique16569 Posts
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Falling
Canada11349 Posts
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Spazer
Canada8031 Posts
What if you used ghosts to create goon walls? The whole point of having vultures and minefields is essentially to slow the protoss force so that your tanks can melt them. It'd be like a poor man's equivalent of forcefield. Observers lose detection when lockdowned, but this doesn't really seem like a great use of the spell, considering its energy cost. | ||
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ShadeR
Australia7535 Posts
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zobz
Canada2175 Posts
Maybe they could also be used to block a ramp in a base that's being drop-harassed. It could be used the same way stasis is sometimes used. As long as it was enemy dragoons you were locking down, it would block fairly well and force the remaining units to manually target their own comrades to get up the ramp. It would be harder to make a zealot-tight seal though. Not really worth it overall. It would be pretty neat to make a nuke-attack with multiple ghosts. Two or three could stand cloaked around the target as decoys. Ghosts can be ordered to stand still without shooting while cloaked though i'm not sure whether it's with hold or stop. When the enemy forces arrive you could lockdown the observer, and it would be very hard to defend. They'd have to come with more than one observer at the ready, and even then you could still possibly lockdown all of them. In this way you could have a good chance of taking down a base even if he knows right away what the target is, and you could thus feel more free to just attack his probes so that they can't avoid damage just by dodging the nuke. You could also block a ramp with 2-4 cloaked ghosts, and lockdown any observer that comes along. Since their units can't even get in, what you have in their base doesn't even have to be cloaked, thus ghost/tank drops, or ghost/vulture drops. Cannons in range of the ramp at either the top or bottom could be a problem, however. Theoretically you could use your tanks to kill any such cannons as the first order of business, then move on as quickly as possible to cloak-blocking the ramp and sieging the nexus. But that, or a couple dragoons with an observer posted at the ramp by a protoss who knows you're going ghosts, may make things more difficult for you. Still, as in its time DT harass vs zerg demonstrated, putting strain on your opponent to defend new and unexpected tactics in a thorough and solid way is often a good strategy in itself. It can be stopped, but can your opponent stop it? It would be most useful of all for locking down carriers, and for nukes. The rest could simply act as a small bonus to justify that. In fact with many options layed out it's just likely that your opponent will have trouble defending against all of them consistently, to the point where you should be able to benefit from having a few ghosts around. | ||
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gongryong
Korea (South)1430 Posts
-Ghosts are smaller, and harder to spot amongst the terran army than vessels Makes them harder for you to click as well Also, I'm not sure why it matters if it's harder for the enemy to spot them... wont a ghost in an army be hk'd? | ||
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djcube
United States985 Posts
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Chef
10810 Posts
Yeah, and obviously you know where your own units are because you're moving them around lol. It's not a major point since most decent toss will be able to find it in a second or two, but that second or two might be what you need to get your lock down off. Whereas if you see a big vessel you pretty much know what to do with your Arbs. Thank you to whoever mentioned SKT Protoss.. 2base arbs. That's a good point, since they don't have the gas to build templar even though they technically have all the buildings. | ||
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gongryong
Korea (South)1430 Posts
On January 14 2011 06:09 Sayle wrote: That is completely false. Progamers practice for 12 hours a day every day. They have plenty of time to try out new strategies. More importantly, they train together as teams, which gives them the opportunity to discuss and experiment with new strategies in custom games rather than just trying to win on a ladder. I can 100% guarantee you that many pros have tried using ghosts in their games. The reason nobody does it is that these pros have found it to be less viable than other options after hundreds of games of experimenting. Chef, Sayle is right on this one. If by feasible you mean being used in a game in a more or less standard manner, there is no better way to test a certain strategy or BO than in progamer practice rooms. with hundreds of them and thousand of hours poured into practice, it is logical to think that ghost play has been exhausted to a considerable degree already. the fact that it has not become used in any considerable way could only mean that nothing substantial has come out of it. still, there is always a day when someone just wakes up with a spark of brilliance and discover/invents/executes it. but not now. otoh, there have been potential uses for it, namely: 1. catch off guard opponent arbiter who is expecting a vessel 2. nuke drops 3. army combo vs all lockable units in open field war as you can, in all scenarios above, all we've seen in progames at one time or another, the element of surprise and deception is crucial. yet it is easy to counter and adapt to it that it just undermines its purpose bottomline. which is why they are not used (often). xD | ||
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Chef
10810 Posts
Having watched SC for so long, I've seen how this game evolves. It is a combination of new maps being made to compensate for balance when players discover new strategies, and of new maps unexpectedly creating new viable strategies. But if something is working right now, players tend to continue doing it. Players didn't even use Vessels to counter Arbiters for a long time. It used to JUST be scans. Likewise, people didn't even used to use arbiters. It used to just be carrier/ground switches. Just because this game is 12 years old and people play it 10 hours a day doesn't mean it's figured out. Far from it  Both you and Sayle are really pissing me off by derailing this thread and not contributing. Please stop posting here unless you have good ideas. Vessels with EMP used to be considered gimmicky/gosulol too. Now it's basically mandatory. | ||
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