First off, I suck at Starcraft, which is why I'm not going to present the results of my own experiments - I'm so bad in other ways, that my strategic choices are comparatively irrelevant. I'm really more of a fan than a player.
I'm watching these pro games, where the terran has to get a barracks to make factories, and has to get an academy to get comsat, but other than that, they just sit idle. You almost never see a medic.
Because vultures and siege tanks are so awesome vs. protoss ground, terran is usually short on air defense, which protoss can abuse with shuttles and observers. I think a few early medics with optic flare seem a cheaper, better, faster, and easier investment in air defense than early goliaths.
Top unseen uses for medics in a terran metal vs. protoss game: 1) optic flare shuttles - super annoying 2) optic flare reavers - blind shuttle + blind reaver = ? 3) optic flare drop dragoons or anything else spotting for reavers 4) optic flare small groups of dragoons - a pair of fully-charged (non-cadeuceus) medics can blind a group of up to four dragoons and make them near-helpless until they retreat or get reinforced - I believe this is a feasible micro task
This is without mentioning the obvious target of optic flare: observers. Flaring small carrier groups would also be very annoying. Flared dark templars would be much less useful, and there are often a manageable number of them to flare.
Small medic groups are pretty tough. Besides their bit of armor, if they take damage, it goes away fairly quickly, and they're casters, so if you keep them alive, they recharge and become useful again eventually. They can stay useful to the end of the game and open up new options.
I think they should be used in pairs at minimum, not just for healing each other, but so you have enough flare in one spot to get a shuttle, its reaver, and its pair of zealots (worst case shuttle load in terms of spotting for the reaver).
Admittedly, 200/150 is a high price to pay early in the game for a pair of flaring medics (assuming that you have the academy for scans), but it would be money well-spent if you stopped a reaver drop cold, nullified a couple of surviving dragoons after vultures took out their zealot escort, or took away his observers when he's pinned by mines.
Later on, they could prove valuable again to make zealot-bombing clumsy, keep making protoss pay for new observers and take time to shoot down his old ones (or live without the psi they took), and help make stragglers easy pickings for vultures.
They also seem to combine well with other less-used units. Sci vessels and medics can wreck observers without spending scan. Wraiths can more easily hunt down blind shuttles and pick away at blinded dragoons. Obviously they support the other bio units (firebat/medic drops into the probe line, protect ghosts by flaring observers and healing the ghost, help keep initial marines alive to pick away at shuttles).
My questions are: has this stuff been tried seriously by good players? Is the micro just too much? The cost too high?
I'm sure it can't be as great an option as it seems when you don't see it in pro games. What's the fatal flaw here that I don't understand?
I think the observer has the full range of "detection" even when blinded, as long as other units produce the sight around the observer.
Flaring a carrier (or group of) wont do much since interceptors have vision too.
Flaring a shuttle will be hard because you don't know which direction the shuttle is coming from. And flaring reavers will be difficult because you would have to flare each one, and the shuttle.
Lastly, a terran player would be to preoccupied macroing to have a sci vessel and medics running around.
Before anyone rams a cock down my throat, I want to say that these are my opinions, based solely on playing at D rank on ICCup and from watching pro games. I am by no means an expert.
Even though blinded units can't SEE as far, their attack range is the same. That means that once Protoss starts using both Zealots and Dragoons, blinded Dragoons would still be able to see and therefore attack targets at a distance. Your argument for small groups of Dragoons isn't valid, I think, because when that early Dragoon push may come, you have your standard 4 marines 1 tank 1 vulture with mines, at most; maybe a little more or less, depending on whether you go 2 fact or FE. In this case, I think the Dragoon is more powerful (with decent micro of course) than whatever the Terran has, so Terran is forced to be on the defensive. Because ranged Dragoons are so powerful and such a hallmark early PvT unit, any serious deviation from a relatively strong unit/defense-based opening could leave you at the mercy of that early timing push. On top of that, if you leave one Dragoon unblinded, they will all still be able to attack as long as that one Dragoon lives.
On top of that, there'd be no way to have enough medics or enoug energy to cast all those optic flares, even if it is just 4. If you opt for a really early Academy, as such a build would require, your factory would be slow, and therefore your strong anti-Dragoon units would be too late. If you opt for a biomech build, the chances of you having enough resources to spare to get things such as optic flare and to use it effectively in a game is low, I believe. This is because biomech is generally weak mid to late game versus Protoss, and is only used as a surprise tactic early on. That's part of the reason why infantry are generally unused in long games versus Protoss. In general, I think even if it was plausible, it would require quite a lot of micro.
The idea for Shuttles makes more sense, but once again, if they have an Observer the point is lost. It's just too easy in most cases to overcome an optic flare-based defense by simple increasing your view of the enemy base with other units. Sure, if the Protoss suspects nothing, they will go with a Shuttle and Reaver and both will get blinded and he will get fucked up, most likely. But most Protoss will be good enough with scouting with their Observers (unless it was a straight to Reaver drop build, which is rarely seen nowadays) to see that you have random Medics standing in your base or at the edges of it. This alone should tell them what's up, because it's not like the Medics are there to cast Restoration or something. The Protoss will then be prepared with Observers, or could just scrap the build alltogether, or strike elsewhere with his Reaver. The Reaver's range will be unaffected in a battle because there will be other units there providing the vision. The minimap skills of the Terran would also have to be high to see the Shuttle fly in and to blind anything before the Reaver possibly kills the Medics.
I guess if you make some Turrets and medics, then Reaver drops would be halted. But this would only hurt an all-in Reaver drop Protoss, as I said before. I'm not even going to get into Wraith/Science Vessels that you proposed - that is entirely too late game for this context, IMO.
MORE COMING WHEN I COME BACK FROM SCHOOL.
EDIT: Nevermind. Don't care enough + no directed response.
before u can blind every unit your opponent has your medics will fall to pieces and it just takes a lot of time to macro/micro medics into the mix. I guess you could bring them into the battlefront and blind observers but other than that i cant really think of any other useful abilities for medics against P other than blinding observers.But then protoss will probably have more observers faster than u can blind so it wont really help that much... its too hard to set up perfectly you would have to ask boxer.
Nevermind the optical flares, what I want to know is why noone is using restoration in TvZ. It's a sad sight every time I see a bunch of plagued vessels go down from a single muta when you could counter it so easily. Hell, using restoration on a bunch of plagued rines would probably be more mana-efficient than just waiting for it to go away.
I'd like to clarify that I don't mean massed medics as a major part of the fighting force. I mostly mean a very small number of medics as anti-shuttle, and some other specialized purposes.
You see this fairly often, that a shuttle is running around with impunity, while the terran player is sitting there hopelessly underneath with tanks and vultures. Blinding the shuttle would help a lot, and if you run medics around underneath, you might also blind what it drops.
Occasionally, they might also be useful in a dragoon/zealot vs. vulture situation. A small number of dragoons can be a big deal when you have no tanks, but blind three healthy dragoons (edit: with the zealots dead - presumably after a fight where you lost your tank and he lost his zealots), and your two red-healthed vultures can pick away at them without taking hits, run around them and plant mines in their retreat route, or whatever.
These are the two main applications I'm interested in, the rest was just "Hey, why not?" sort of stuff.
On November 20 2007 21:11 nitram wrote: I think the observer has the full range of "detection" even when blinded, as long as other units produce the sight around the observer.
Flaring a carrier (or group of) wont do much since interceptors have vision too.
Flaring a shuttle will be hard because you don't know which direction the shuttle is coming from. And flaring reavers will be difficult because you would have to flare each one, and the shuttle.
Lastly, a terran player would be to preoccupied macroing to have a sci vessel and medics running around.
No, when blinded they can't detect at all, even if the invisible unit is right on top of them.
On November 20 2007 21:47 sushiman wrote: Nevermind the optical flares, what I want to know is why noone is using restoration in TvZ. It's a sad sight every time I see a bunch of plagued vessels go down from a single muta when you could counter it so easily. Hell, using restoration on a bunch of plagued rines would probably be more mana-efficient than just waiting for it to go away.
in general, the idea was that restoration took up too much time to do before it saved you significant damage.
edit: i know you said you were not much of a gamer, but you can try this things on games to see how they work out yourself and find out how practical they are to use. Sure makes the game more fun to have some variation. The other day i discovered that having 1 queen with broodling sitting in your base is great to stop turtle terrans from nuking you with a matrixed ghost (it was FFA, don't look at me like that ).
edit2: the best scenario i can think for this is to have an opening with marines + 1 medic and research Optical Flare straight away (plus a comsat). When you push out with and initial around 5 marines, 1 medic, 1-2 tanks and incoming vultures, you can blind their first observer and set the push in their base. They will have to suicide their units to your push or wait for the next observer, in which you may be able to have turrets and siege up. Still no idea of how the timings work out for this.
- T normally doesn't get infantry in TvP, so no medics too. If you do, you'll just waste money on them which you need for factory units
- All micro-intensive spells which are just "nice in some situations" instead of "essential" simply aren't used because they require too much attention. Players normally only use strong, area effect spells like storm, plague, swarm, stasis, maelstrom. Anything that requires manual clicking on a single unit is usually not worth the hassle, the game is simply too fast for that, i.e. your macro will suffer too much while using these spells. The only two exceptions are Irradiate and Yamato. (That's also why repair is only rarely used)
Flaring observers is troublesome, but it will be even more troublesome for the protoss if you do it well. I don't think Flaring would be gamechanging in many cases though, since you could just make a couple of extra observers. UpMagiC tried this vs Bisu a while ago, but as you can see in the VOD it wasn't very successful.
One thing I've been wondering a lot more about than Flare though is why Feedback isn't being used much... I mean, with 2 dark archons you can negate all storms and arbiters fairly easily. And their range is better than the templars so the templars can't get any storms off. Sure, it's micro intensive, but nothing a 200+apm player couldn't handle. And a few storms can be devastating.
Even if by some miracle you flare every single dragoon in a group as it's attacking, it still does absolutely nothing. When your rines and tanks start shooting, they reveal the fog over themselves and let the goons hit anyways.
i played around with the idea of tvp medics a couple of months back. i had some success with it, but i feel i was held back by my level of tvp rather than the medics just being ineffective
at first i opened with a marine medic build with scv cutting to get the medics out as fast as possible but later i just decided it would be less risky to just expanded then build a fast academy afterward then go f went for a 1 addon 4 fact rush. when i was pushing with them i would try to grab as much ground as possible, then just contain them for as long as i could while expanding and building my economy to overtake theirs
not only did i find it a fun way to play and incredibly pimp, it also lead to several humorous occasions of players asking why their observers had stopped working
ive uploaded a rep pack, but just be warned that i was a pretty bad player when i was active a year ago and i wasnt a terran player either. also i only ever really saved the replays where the medics pretty much outright won the game
as for the idea of teching to science vessels to use medics: optic flare is only really an option in early to mid game. you dont have the window to get all that tech out and still have an army capable of threatening the protoss. and even if you did, by the time you got it all the clashing armies are so big that you dont have the time to snipe the observers before your mine field is clear
flaring units is pretty much useless as well. barring shuttles and arbiters, they will always be covered by other units to give sight for them. you might as well get lockdown if you want to do that
On November 20 2007 23:05 SoMuchBetter wrote: flaring units is pretty much useless as well. barring shuttles and arbiters, they will always be covered by other units to give sight for them. you might as well get lockdown if you want to do that
... Starcraft Design Bug #2872 Scout costs too much.
Starcraft Design Bug #2873 Covert Ops is Science Facility add-on, not Academy add-on.
this is one of those things that would be awesome if a terran had perfect multitask and unlimited attention to spread around. as it is it's simply infinitely easier to play standard and take care of observers and shuttles with goliaths while keeping your macro up, instead of trying to be fancy and getting raped.
basically, the marginal benefits in annoying the toss doesn't pay off considering the sacrifice you are making in other areas of your game
edit: this is similar to the 'why don't zergs use queens?' question. queens are along the tech tree, can extremely effective (more so than medics in tvp), and are cheap. and yet most zergs don't use them, most likely because there is too much going on to really apply it. chill predicts that in a few months queens will be regular in progamer zvx games as players push the envelopes more and more.
I can totally see a pimpest play coming if you flare a shuttle who then blindly dies to a turret in any remotely important game Flaring a scouting unit in stead of wasting time chasing it is kind of cool too imo, hehe.
But if a carrier lacks observer, just cloak those wraiths? Flaring a bunch of observers have been done by Boxer as mentioned, he rarely wins those fancy games though (a fanboy speaking :|).
Flaring the 1-2 observers Protoss has early in a game (with a vulture/mine build)? Why not, although I am not sure of the time needed for the research. Scanning and killing it with other units is possible too though.
Flaring random groups of more than one unit? Really situational I think, and probably not worth it for cheap units.
But to pull it off vs an evenly matched opponent you: - need to have medics and flare in stead of other units/tech/supply - need to have a medic with enough energy when it happens, where it happens, and not mess up the micro. - need to neglect less macro than you win from the flares
So if you research flare immediately, does your flare make it in time for the reaver drop? If so, that could be really cool, and really piss off the P player.
Later in the game, it's not worth it to try to blind every P unit (you'll need, what, like 20+ flares to do anything), so instead you use it.... ON YOUR OWN MINES
On November 21 2007 00:10 Chill wrote: Damn right I predict that. You heard it here first!!
I dunno, hasn't drone been saying that for several years now?
When i saw this topic i actually thought you resurected a topic that i made a while ago. My suggestion is better (from my neutral point of view) so if you want to play with medics, go ahead and read it here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=45717
To comment on this suggestion: The clasic Reaver drop comes way to early for you to have medics without it seriously affecting you strategy. Goon blinding = no. Toss has 6-7 goons(at least) by the time you would be able to make 1 medic with upgrade (and enough army to be able to deal with the goons).
Well i think a terrans multitask can be spent else, like laying mines during battle, microing units, macroing. I mean if yo ucan do all that and find yourself with some extra time, then try some cute medic manuvers.
Flaring obs: If you can see the ob to blind it you might as well kill it. Flaring shuttles: Firstly, you still need a few turrets to kill the shuttle before he drops the reaver. If your opponent suddenly sees missiles hitting the shuttle and panicks and retreats then you kill it. If he keeps coming all that'll happen is he can't shuttle micro, there will still be a reaver in your mineral line, something which a fast academy build is poorly suited to deal with. And we are of course assuming he is using the shuttle without scouting, whereas they almost always have an ob where they wish to drop. Much more likely however is that he will keep the shuttle with his army once it is flared and the flare will have no effect. That and flare in no way stops storm drops which are suicidal anyway.
On November 21 2007 01:01 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Optic Flare is always, no matter what, a waste of time and money. Simple as that.
Actually, it would be useful against zerg in mid game before sci vessel, when you are going for it's expa and the zerg has 2 lurkers above the ramp. Flare both lurkers, get through ramp (without attacking) and either deal with expo or micro against 2 lurkers. Rare, but possible practically.
On November 21 2007 01:01 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Optic Flare is always, no matter what, a waste of time and money. Simple as that.
Actually, it would be useful against zerg in mid game before sci vessel, when you are going for it's expa and the zerg has 2 lurkers above the ramp. Flare both lurkers, get through ramp (without attacking) and either deal with expo or micro against 2 lurkers. Rare, but possible practically.
Gotta try this! If it works, my nightmare has ended. Fuckin zerg expos without worry. 2lurker > 586 marines.
EDIT: I also get blind almost every TvZ, it pwns guardian harras.
flare TvZ might work, like Flaring some ovies and stuff.
I think a few medics in TvP might work too, if you place them right outside of your army so goons will attack them while the zealots charge in and die.
Wow this almost seems practical - the blinding of expansion ramp lurkers. But certainly it would depend on where they are placed? If they are in the center of the ramp, you still won't be able to avoid them on the way up.
On November 20 2007 21:47 sushiman wrote: Nevermind the optical flares, what I want to know is why noone is using restoration in TvZ. It's a sad sight every time I see a bunch of plagued vessels go down from a single muta when you could counter it so easily. Hell, using restoration on a bunch of plagued rines would probably be more mana-efficient than just waiting for it to go away.
in general, the idea was that restoration took up too much time to do before it saved you significant damage.
Somehow I doubt that. Get a bunch of vessels plagued, and you could at least save a few of them from the '1-hit-kill' death by quickly putting restoration on them, doesn't take more than a second or two.
With decent APM, you can save at least 3 vessels without interrupting your other micro. Consider how much you potentially might lose if they go down to 1 hp, it's a worthwhile investment IMO. Also, you seldom get time to repair them, since that takes much more time.
I am not arguing your point, i'm repeating what the guys that play at a decent high level say about it. I guess they know better by experience. If you can pull it, go for it.
Blind could be useful for making a toss think he has an observer with his army when he really doesn't so he walks right into a minefield. But why not get 2 goliaths instead? It helps you kill shuttles and gets rid of observers too.
I tried it once and I found it to be a big waste of time and money. First it gives you a brand new task, which is to manually select a scanner, waste a scan to try to find an obs, select a medic nearby, and try to flare it. Obs are small, and after the first flare, my opponent was making a lot of observers, and was dodging carefully when saw medic approaching. The only time i found it to be useful was when used in the middle of an attack, so he would have to pull dragoons back else they step on mines. But you can pretty much do the same thing with goliath or marines depending where obs is standing, and its much easier. Specially late game when you have vessels, its done automatically.
On November 21 2007 00:06 intrigue wrote: edit: this is similar to the 'why don't zergs use queens?' question. queens are along the tech tree, can extremely effective (more so than medics in tvp), and are cheap. and yet most zergs don't use them, most likely because there is too much going on to really apply it. chill predicts that in a few months queens will be regular in progamer zvx games as players push the envelopes more and more.
I don't think they are similar. Queens can have an incredible impact on the game with any of the three skills that they offer, even just one for fast scouting and parasite. The other two skills, ensnare and broodling, are definitely game-changing if used in the right circumstances as well. It's just for some reason pros aren't incorporating them into their play *cough savior goes straight to defilers* and it's a shame.
Medics really aren't that useful unless you're going medic/marine, and if you're going medic/marine, odds are you don't have that many vultures, at least early game, meaning the flare would be pretty useless anyway (the only good reason I can think of to use flare is so they can't detect your mines). Like other people have said, if you are able to detect the observer, you probably should just kill it instead of wasting your time trying to flare it.
I think that it can be potentially useful in deterring drops (reaver drops in particular), especially along with a small MM squad, or catching someone who isn't paying attention off guard and blinding the observer that they think is going to be detecting mines, but I don't know if it's worth it to research Flare and actively try to do such things, when you could be doing something else instead, maybe better vulture harrass or just concentrating on better macroing.
In short, I think queens have WAY much more potential than flare with medics in TvP does.
edit: i think it'd be pretty funny and pimp to bring like 1 medic along with your huge metal force, even if only to make the opponent go "WTF?" though, lol Hey add one firebat too, only 50 gas total. Instant gg.
On November 21 2007 05:34 stenole wrote: Blind could be useful for making a toss think he has an observer with his army when he really doesn't so he walks right into a minefield. But why not get 2 goliaths instead? It helps you kill shuttles and gets rid of observers too.
As I understand it, unupgraded goliaths need 6 hits on an observer, and around 8 or 9 (?) on a shuttle. If they only get a couple of hits in, this damage might later turn out to be nothing, since the shields recharge. Both, when they are left idle, instinctively run from goliath fire even without active evasion micro.
Optic flare does its effect in one shot. If a shuttle or observer dips in a medic's range, you can blind it with no hope of escape.
You need the Charon Booster to come close to optic flare's range, and there is no such upgrade for the ground attack. It's quite possible to have 2 goliaths in your base, be actively managing them at the exact time the drop comes in, and still have them both killed by a reaver drop without inflicting significant damage to the drop forces.
Optic flare's range is longer than the reaver's range, and longer than the shuttle's sight range. The shuttle can be blinded before it even sees the medic. There's no sound effect warning that's in danger, either, unlike the missile launch sound of goliaths and turrets. There's no way for anything in a reaver drop to escape unblinded, if you have enough medic energy and your micro is up to the task.
Once you research flare for 100/100, medics are only 50/25, while goliaths are 100/50. Usually, you'll have an idle barracks to make marines and an idle academy to research flare, while you must use precious factory time to make goliaths, and scarce machine shop time for charon booster.
Goliaths are also very clumsy in terms of pathfinding, while medics are agile little things, good for rushing through bases to interfere with a drop.
There are good reasons why pros very often neglect to build goliaths, even when they're being harassed with shuttles.
Just saying: there are advantages to flaring medics over goliaths, in price, convenience, and potential effectiveness. The advantages goliaths have over medics, on the other hand, are obvious: basic combat capability, toughness, and auto-attacking.
On November 21 2007 05:34 stenole wrote: Blind could be useful for making a toss think he has an observer with his army when he really doesn't so he walks right into a minefield. But why not get 2 goliaths instead? It helps you kill shuttles and gets rid of observers too.
As I understand it, unupgraded goliaths need 6 hits on an observer, and around 8 or 9 (?) on a shuttle. If they only get a couple of hits in, this damage might later turn out to be nothing, since the shields recharge. Both, when they are left idle, instinctively run from goliath fire even without active evasion micro.
Optic flare does its effect in one shot. If a shuttle or observer dips in a medic's range, you can blind it with no hope of escape.
You need the Charon Booster to come close to optic flare's range, and there is no such upgrade for the ground attack. It's quite possible to have 2 goliaths in your base, be actively managing them at the exact time the drop comes in, and still have them both killed by a reaver drop without inflicting significant damage to the drop forces.
Optic flare's range is longer than the reaver's range, and longer than the shuttle's sight range. The shuttle can be blinded before it even sees the medic. There's no sound effect warning that's in danger, either, unlike the missile launch sound of goliaths and turrets. There's no way for anything in a reaver drop to escape unblinded, if you have enough medic energy and your micro is up to the task.
Once you research flare for 100/100, medics are only 50/25, while goliaths are 100/50. Usually, you'll have an idle barracks to make marines and an idle academy to research flare, while you must use precious factory time to make goliaths, and scarce machine shop time for charon booster.
Goliaths are also very clumsy in terms of pathfinding, while medics are agile little things, good for rushing through bases to interfere with a drop.
There are good reasons why pros very often neglect to build goliaths, even when they're being harassed with shuttles.
Just saying: there are advantages to flaring medics over goliaths, in price, convenience, and potential effectiveness. The advantages goliaths have over medics, on the other hand, are obvious: basic combat capability, toughness, and auto-attacking.
The thing about Goliaths vs. drops and observers though is that they can effectively scare the opponent off from ever even attempting to drop.. and medics, well.. you still have to kill the unit, or scan to reveal the observer in the right place and THEN flare it. But hey, MM squad or Goliath+Medic ftw
Sometimes it's wisest to not repair vessels because the battles are very frequent and you need the irradiates, the vessels will be repaired (when plagued) when they all their energy is used.
Regardless, Optic Flare is great fun against people who suck at the game (ie: 3v3s, 4v4s, etc.).
Blinding stuff to nuke noob friends is fun as hell, after they get nuked their always trying to nuke you back, and when you let them you have made another SC:BW player who shall start visiting TL and get sucked into the vortex of Esports and competitive gaming.
I once pushed my Toss opponent on luna with a surprise 2fact. He was forced to get up his ramp and he made some comment like ^^; after an intense micro battle that was prior to it. Then, when he was ready to push out coz he had obs, i blinded him. he said "now thats just rude". I used that time to double exp, but it wasnt enough as he was powering like crazy and rolled over me a few minutes later.
On November 21 2007 09:11 niteReloaded wrote: I once pushed my Toss opponent on luna with a surprise 2fact. He was forced to get up his ramp and he made some comment like ^^; after an intense micro battle that was prior to it. Then, when he was ready to push out coz he had obs, i blinded him. he said "now thats just rude". I used that time to double exp, but it wasnt enough as he was powering like crazy and rolled over me a few minutes later.
Shouldn't you have just expoed once, then powered yourself? I mean, expoing a bunch of times and getting attacked before your econ advantage kicks in isn't exactly indicative of your econ not being "enough".
On November 21 2007 04:06 naventus wrote: Wow this almost seems practical - the blinding of expansion ramp lurkers. But certainly it would depend on where they are placed? If they are in the center of the ramp, you still won't be able to avoid them on the way up.
Haha that's a terrible idea, You blind lurkers and when you try to walk over them ARRRRGG STOP LURKAR!
Unless you want to walk carefully and not step on them? : ) Dunno, flaring zerg overlord is kinda bleh, there's nothing invislbe that terran has, ghost? we don't use them much, wraith? we can just kill the ovi.
On November 21 2007 01:01 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Optic Flare is always, no matter what, a waste of time and money. Simple as that.
Yea BoxeR got into pimpestplays by doing a complete waste of time and money move.
The ironic part of this comment is that BoxeR still lost that game.
To be fair, TheFoReveRwaR said it was a waste of time and money 'no matter what.' Whether Boxer won or not isn't really related. Of course, Boxer only did that because he knew he was probably gonna lose anyway (or so I'd imagine). BTW, XCetron I was thinking the same exact thing haha.
You must agree also that boxer was pretty fucked before doing that move. If boxer did it under more equal circumstances, it would have been totally cost effective.
On November 21 2007 09:11 niteReloaded wrote: I once pushed my Toss opponent on luna with a surprise 2fact. He was forced to get up his ramp and he made some comment like ^^; after an intense micro battle that was prior to it. Then, when he was ready to push out coz he had obs, i blinded him. he said "now thats just rude". I used that time to double exp, but it wasnt enough as he was powering like crazy and rolled over me a few minutes later.
Shouldn't you have just expoed once, then powered yourself? I mean, expoing a bunch of times and getting attacked before your econ advantage kicks in isn't exactly indicative of your econ not being "enough".
Yup ^^ It was the first time i decided to do that move, and i obviously didn think much so i miscalculated stuff. If i expoed normally and added facts, i'd probly have won the game.
On November 21 2007 12:35 evanthebouncy! wrote: Unless you want to walk carefully and not step on them? : ) Dunno, flaring zerg overlord is kinda bleh, there's nothing invislbe that terran has, ghost? we don't use them much, wraith? we can just kill the ovi.
On November 21 2007 12:35 evanthebouncy! wrote: Maybe team game you go flair+DT. Mmm!
I might have been to much of a newb by then, but from my experience it's not practical on a 2on2 on LT, playing standard. At least not against zerg (not enough flares for the ovies he has/can get) and toss usually had cannons. So yes, i'm talking about the noob level were PT is not that bad of a team. Maybe for an island map...
Oh, and about the lurkers, still with flare you can get them to kill 1 marine (that attack, the only one they spot) on one side and attack with the rest from the other. With enough marines you should be able to kill one before it attacks again. It needs high precision but it's doable.
i think the limiting factor is not the cost and time it takes to get but the human factor - takes a lot of attention and micro to pull off. just like a lot of other spells that aren't used - feedback/ensnare/mind control etc
Wow, never thought of using flare against reaver/shuttle. That's freaking hilarious! I'll definitly try that against a pal of mine who ALWAYS tries to reaver-harrass. Of course, turret/tank is prolly more effective, but it's worth the look on his face :-)
Man it's so cool when I face a protoss with only 1 or 2 obs, then I blind them, and set mines everywhere. They still see their observer in their groups but maybe doesn't know they are blind :D. So the troops go to my minetrap
On November 21 2007 00:10 Chill wrote: Damn right I predict that. You heard it here first!!
I'll beat you at prediction as I predict them used is specifically in ZvP and specifically to kill those annoying corsair fleets.
Crazy predictions aside, flare can indeed be very effective vs reaver harass (you don't need to flare the reaver, just flare the shuttle, he HAS to see where he unloads to), but the problem is that there's exactly zero point in building an academy in that single case you know he is going reavers. Better get a tank or two turrets, or a tank and two turrets considering you also have to research flare and build a medic. Also take the sheer possibility that he unloads at a wrong time and manually kills the medic with his first scarab. Gameplan broken? It was shaky in the first place.
On November 21 2007 01:01 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Optic Flare is always, no matter what, a waste of time and money. Simple as that.
QFT.
Now lets analyze this.
Optical Flare Medics:
Research from: Academy. Requires: Medic Casting Cost: 75m Effectiveness: Only To Detectors / Small unit groups. Range: 8 Length of Cast: Permanant. Mineral Cost: 150 Vespene Cost: 150 Research Time: 166 (seconds) Amount of Medics on Average Required: 4 - 6. 4-6 Medics: 200 / 100 (Minerals/Gas) ; 300 / 150 (Minerals/Gas)
Ok, now lets take this into consideration. Since 2 Medics is equivlent to 1 Tank, that mean that you will need a faster second refinary to compensate for the gas. Which means that you must also Sacrifice 3+ Workers to mine the gas.
In addition, the 150/150 Is basically a factory, whereas the 166 time limit is 3x a factory building time.
The 4-6 Medics = 1 Factory or 1 fact + 1 tank OR 2Tanks. Or 2 scanners + 4 vultures.
Medics will require a hotkey for themselves for cloning so now this means 1:Tanks(for me, other players use vultures?) 2:Vultures 3:Vultures 4:Vultures 5:Medics 67: Factories 8: Scanner / Factory / Scv? 90: Scanner.
Due to this, lets see what would happen on certain maps that require timing pushes / timing push players.:
4 Factories(maximum! Since the 4-6 medics + 150/150 Upgrade + Faster Academy). Less Tank (due to gas consumption) Less Gas overall. Less Vulture Power reinforcement (due to factory cut).
Advantages: -Blinded observers(The observer is 1+ Supply, and 25/75.) -Blinded Shuttles(early on-effective). -Constant Recharge since its a spell. -Medics last long. -Provides On-Field presence / Heals scvs In a timing push.
Disadvantages: -Cut in gas -4-6 Supply is being Taken up. -Will generally only be used in a timing push. For those saying "IT WILL HELP VS REAVER DROP!!!" You obviously need to understand YOU CANT WASTE minerals that early in the game, you will need your tanks/factories. -Loss of minerals -Cut in factory amount -Cut in tanks -Cut in vulture reinforcement/production -FORCES early academy -Takes up a hotkey -Requires mana(can run out) -1 Medic is worse than 1 Turret in a timing push. -3 Medics is worse than 1 Turret in a timing push. -Completly a waste late game. -Hard to control optical flare shots -Teching to Science Vessle would be better / same amount of gas/minerals being used + Sci.V is actually a unit to counter-act the Protoss Arbiter / High Templar. Also, allows you to see Observers and kill them. -Slow units, bad by themselves.
Clearly the disadvantges heavily outweigh the advantanges.
Now people can sit there and say "you purposely looked for all the disadvantages, blah blah blah. Here are the advantages!". Truth is, 1 little mistake in progaming / ANY GAME with an equal player will cost you, equal players MUST spend time investing into actual units / factories. If they don't it will only cost them.
This is obviously a theorycraft, and nothing more. The idea of it is "cute" and generally will only be used to embarass a player, not in actual scenraios. Even if a unit is "blind" if a unit around it has vision, then the "blind" unit can shoot and act as if it' snot blind. The only good thing, is a blinded observer, and only because it takes up supply, but ultimately it can still see, just not detect mines.
It's a waste of teching cost and a waste of money overall. You need too much early game nowadays, and early / midgame transition is becoming the BIGGEST of all the gameplays(thank god). Also if you want to actual use a 'theorycraft', well its not really a theory craft, you can do the 4factory + Vessle timing push.
For replays of the 4factory + Vessle timing push, I'm sure It's in Odin[fOu]'s replay pack, for he is the one that taught me it. Now THIS is an actual thing to be scared of, making all goons 1 shot kills for tanks is VERY scary. and it provides on-field prescene with detection / goliath to clear out observers / shuttles.
Since EMP takes 100 energy it has very limited use. Only long-term it can be effective, must be more than 20 minutes, but probably more than 30. In that stage EMP starts getting useful. 4 fac push + EMP is unrealistic. Can turn out to be gamelosing because of the high gas-cost so early in the game.
ANYWAY: I don't doubt the usefulness of medics, even if they're not the most optimal unit, because against players who are not extremely good, players will be unused to the play style. Plus, you'll end up with some really fun replays, which is worth so much more than 50 standard PvTs. Personally, I've even gone so far to develop a weird style that I'll use Ghosts and Science Vessels in TvP occasionally (lockdown for reavers/shuttle, EMP for High Templar, and DT detection). It's really fun, and I think in the end that's the goal anyway. Who cares about winning when there's always going to be someone who could beat you 10-0 standard?
I say use it to your hearts content. I've tried using it against Zerg Overlords so I could go mines (supplemental to a small m'm army) and enjoyed moderate success.
And whoever said detection is still the same if you're blind... not in my experience
On November 29 2007 09:17 MooNDog. wrote: dont forget that boxer used medics in that game where he went medic wraith and took out a lot of carreirs but still lost
It wasn't due to lack of effectiveness of the medics. That move took out like 6 carriers. Boxer had pretty much lost the game already, for other reasons (the 20 or so carriers in the game alone should give that away )
On November 20 2007 22:36 Brutalisk wrote: - T normally doesn't get infantry in TvP, so no medics too. If you do, you'll just waste money on them which you need for factory units
- All micro-intensive spells which are just "nice in some situations" instead of "essential" simply aren't used because they require too much attention. Players normally only use strong, area effect spells like storm, plague, swarm, stasis, maelstrom. Anything that requires manual clicking on a single unit is usually not worth the hassle, the game is simply too fast for that, i.e. your macro will suffer too much while using these spells. The only two exceptions are Irradiate and Yamato. (That's also why repair is only rarely used)
Feedback has a lot of potential, and Mind Control shows up sometimes
Personally, I think parasite will come into occasional use vs P sometime soon.
I am bumping this topic because I was recently re-reading the Strat Forum guidelines and saw this post linked, and saw that I posted on this listing reasons why it wouldn't work. My friend is C-/C and I am C-, to preface this: I have gotten raped by this more times than I'd like to admit because of observer blinding. 75 gas every time you lose an obs is a high price to pay, even higher when you consider that to be safe you have to keep sending an obs in front of the natural/on top of a tank line to see him moving out. Also, the obs in his main is also crucial, and getting that blinded is a pain as well. I wouldn't mind hearing some new thoughts on this as well, in case some people have tried it, (I believe Light did this not too long ago? And UpMagic a few years ago?).
Look at Really's games on Match Point. In fact, Day[9] did a Daily on one of them which is probably the best place to start. Light as well tried a sort of flare + timing attack against Pure around the same time. In a winner's interview, Really said he was trying to find a way to generalize the strategy to work on other maps, but I can't remember any other games of his where it was used off the top of my head.
Light later on also did his own specific anti-obs build where he gets a fast vessel and wraith and goes hunting:
Blast from the past. If anyone wants to see my interpretation of a TvP medic build you can watch this game i played back in 08 or 09. I'm not sure what patch is out now but it was a fun game as I remember it.
On January 22 2009 21:24 SoMuchBetter wrote: A while ago I was playing around with the idea of using optic flare against protoss to make vultures more effective.
this is the most entertaining game I played using that strategy.
don't expect high level play, but i think overall the game was fairly high paced and fun.
actually you need goliaths eventually, and the armory works for early upgrades so... no need in getting medics instead of golis early game...
but in the mid-late game... when big push happens, optics can make the terran ball more effective by making observers complete useless against mines...
I cant remember which game, but there was a TvP last year where P went carriers, and T went cloaked wraiths so the end game was this desperate attempt to scan kill/flare observers, which was rather exciting...
On February 20 2011 08:30 Murderotica wrote: I am bumping this topic because I was recently re-reading the Strat Forum guidelines and saw this post linked, and saw that I posted on this listing reasons why it wouldn't work. My friend is C-/C and I am C-, to preface this: I have gotten raped by this more times than I'd like to admit because of observer blinding. 75 gas every time you lose an obs is a high price to pay, even higher when you consider that to be safe you have to keep sending an obs in front of the natural/on top of a tank line to see him moving out. Also, the obs in his main is also crucial, and getting that blinded is a pain as well. I wouldn't mind hearing some new thoughts on this as well, in case some people have tried it, (I believe Light did this not too long ago? And UpMagic a few years ago?).
as soon as you notice your opponent doing this strat you should be able to pump enough obs to make this turn in your favor since he spent so much time and money on flare and also a lot of apm on flaring your obs, as long as you have one obs functioning you should be fine and he doesn't dare push as hard.
though it is quite map specific where narrow linear movement is what map movement looks like, i'd imagine this strat doesn't really work on maps like python or luna for example.
i dunno about this, but bio is kind of weak vs toss, so if your making medics, you won't have a floating rax to see over walls. if you get medics while doing mech, they are practically useless except for some occasion, they usually have an observer on the close by out of ground sight
On February 21 2011 23:19 Holgerius wrote: Really really made this seem so strong on those games on MP. It's a shame we pretty much haven't seen it ever since. Very entertaining stuff.
the opening was largely map dependent. If you take a look at matchpoint theres one main path and two side ones. With mines+ medic you can pretty much lock down your half of the map easily without contention.
On November 21 2007 01:01 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Optic Flare is always, no matter what, a waste of time and money. Simple as that.
Actually, it would be useful against zerg in mid game before sci vessel, when you are going for it's expa and the zerg has 2 lurkers above the ramp. Flare both lurkers, get through ramp (without attacking) and either deal with expo or micro against 2 lurkers. Rare, but possible practically.
I was reading the strategy forum guidlines and it linked to this post and I was like : O + Show Spoiler +
EPT
).
Flaring a scouting unit in stead of wasting time chasing it is kind of cool too imo, hehe.
Hey add one firebat too, only 50 gas total. Instant gg.
Very entertaining stuff.
