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I've been struggling to harass as Terran at the Platinum level.
- Reaper rushes (that don't cut economy struggle) to do much damage.
- Vikings fill such an important niche role in the Terran army that risking them to kill a few workers is rough.
- Dropships full of infantry work pretty well, but it's very costly and and risky to commit some of your 'blob' to reach-arounds.
- Hellion drops/harassment seem effective for the price. Their speed lets them suck up more time from the opponent as they race from expo to expo clearing out workers.
But that's about it. I've seen Thor+Dropship hijinx used recently which may have some potential. Maybe Ravens throwing turrets or HSM's can be added, but the big thing in all of these harassment schemes is their price. Even when they're effective, they're very costly.
I'm looking at Nukes as a way to potentially get some harassment in that's very cheap or example.
Even if it flusters your opponent for 10-15 seconds as he tries to evacuate workers, get an observer/troops to the area etc, that may be significant.
Has anyone seen nukes used cost-effectively at the Platinum level?
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Nope, due everyone being able to switch to the place where the nuke happens its not that great..
so basically you waste resources on nuke (maybe cloak too) and it won't harm a single fly.
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On April 15 2010 03:54 Frenzied_Tank wrote:
Nope, due everyone being able to switch to the place where the nuke happens its not that great..
so basically you waste resources on nuke (maybe cloak too) and it won't harm a single fly.
It might not kill anything, but stopping a player from harvesting for 15 seconds (ish) is worth 100 minerals / 100 gas for nuke... and if you keep raining them down you might be able to garnish a win that way... IDK i havent tried it in almost 500 games as terran lol.
EDIT:A conservative estimate for 16 scvs harvesting 8 mienral patches and 6 scvs harvesting 2 geysers for 15 seconds ( 3 trips?) = 16 x 5= 80 x 3 = 240 minerals lost and 8x5=40 x 3 = 120 gas lost. Net win for the nuker.
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I watch a LOT of plat / high gold stream / replay usage and all I can say is that when they are used and actually hit it is the most devastating thing that you can do to an opponent aside from all out victory. Especially if you coordinate multiple nuke strikes at one time. There is NOTHING worse than losing nearly 100% of miners all at once. And if attacking multiple bases you can literally shut down production cycles. using One ghost at a time is almost worthless however. For buildings only supply depots / turrets die outright. One ghost is also very easy to find and kill.3-4 ghosts is not easy, however with each building you create and nuke the larger you sink into the red econ wise until you can be effective. Heavy nuke use is amazing, they can be used defensively also.
Just my $.02
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It's a rather large investment for a rather low result. Ghosts are an expensive diversion from your main army unless you are fighting toss. But all toss have obs floating everywhere. So, pretty much, the result is:
Toss: Nukes get spotted a mile away by obs.
Terran: You get killed by a superior army.
Zerg: You get killed by a superior army.
Albeit late game you could probably use ghosts fairly well as a harassment, but early to mid they are not very efficient.
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They are very viable if you understand how to reach the point in the game where it is ok to build x3 nuclear silos.
If you go nukes, do not invest in only 1 silo, you need x3 so you can snipe expansions while using your main army elsewhere.
they really are viable mainly in tvp, but there are some specific uses tvt as well, and probably could be in tvz too but not as viable there.
also, if you play a toss that clusters pylons to power gateways, like 8-10 of em, it is worth it to nuke the pylons. Same goes for if you go x3 nukes, nuking gateway/pylon clusters can many times be better than nuking a nexus or multiple expansions. If you know your main army is stronger, go for the gates/pylon clusters.
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My friend sent me a rep yesterday of him playing TvP on LT at 3 and 12 vs incontrol where he used nuke successfully to control the map. Was a pretty fun game to watch and went into the mid-late game where both had a gold expo. inc had 5 colossus at one point and the t ended up winning using only marine, marauder, ghost, and micro. The tooltip says snipe only works on biological, but i'm pretty sure he was using snipe to kill sentries very quickly... but i could be wrong. I've tried using nukes but it only works vs bad people so far.
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They work great for taking out a corner of massed supply depots or pylons.
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Ive seen defensive nukes used to great effect a few times.
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As a zerg plat ~50 I've had 2 different terrans use them very effectively on me, both times on desert oasis. I assume, due to the distance on that map many zerg wont use the bane/bust bo, which probably would own the nuke start... anyway...
What these 2 players did, normal'ish supply wall with bunker, 1rax -->ghost bldg start producing nuke/ghost. They walk their ghost out (both avoided the los from towers that my lings were on) walk to obscure places below/across from my min line/extractors. Scan my base, drop nuke. never killed a single worker but forcing me off min line and Insta KILLING both extractors really hampered my tech. As one player followed this up with 3 more nukes in this fashion, forcing multi rebuilds of my extractors as well as heal for my lair which also takes quite a bit of damage with each nuke.
Other than that I havent had nukes used with much success against me as a Zerg.
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When DO you use nukes? Like, is there a situation where you would say OH, a nuke would be PERFECT right now!!
They only time I've used one sucessfully was on Twilight Fortress when a Huge army walk up the entrace of my base. I nuked the entrance and I must say it was pretty funny.
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in terran vs terran where both of you went tank/thor and can't break each other's lines
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nukes, good for killing depos and pylons, you can pretty easily put a tough supply cap on a player
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Building multiple Ghost Academies seems to get away from the point I'm trying to hit. I'm looking for very cheap cost-effective harassment. Terran has plenty of options for expensive harassment - I want something that doesn't autolose me the macro fight in the process.
In terms of matchups, I guess it makes sense to build a few ghosts against Toss for EMP, and they're alright against Zerg as well to hamper infestors/corruptors and snipe is useful in situations.
In those cases, building an additional nuke isn't prohibitively expensive if you can make it payoff. Again, paying 100/100 now for a potential payoff 60-90 seconds from now is rough. Hmm.
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That is such an awesome match, as in, amazing match, hmm, i might watch it again :D
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On April 15 2010 03:54 Frenzied_Tank wrote:
Nope, due everyone being able to switch to the place where the nuke happens its not that great..
so basically you waste resources on nuke (maybe cloak too) and it won't harm a single fly.
Didn't this end up being a false rumor?
In this thread about half way down page 2 a few people tested it and found it not to be true. You could center on places where nukes hit by hitting the spacebar to go through old notifications, but not center on it while a nuke was enroute. Honestly I haven't tested this myself, no one has tried to nuke me yet (I probably will test itwhen i get home).
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I've found defensive nukes very useful in TvP when he's pushing your choke. I've found if you're able to hold him at your choke for a short time or can lure him into it is best.
1) Hold him at your choke - When he runs in, place a nuke under his feet. Try to keep your troops at a place where you can try to fend him off while he stays where he is for the nuke. Doing this I'll cloak the Ghost and place him within the army. Normally if you got a few ghosts he won't be able to pick it off in time.
2) Lure him - When he's moving in, nuke your feet. After he moves in, run back. Hopefully he moves in early enough/you move out fast enough that he doesn't notice and you don't lose many (if any) units to the nuke. Offcentering the ghost seems best in this spot, or holding him where you move your units back to.
Other than defensive purposes, I don't see too much other uses of Nukes at current time. I have one replay with a 1-type defensive nuke if you'd like to see it and I definitely think it saved me the game after I screwed up terrible earlier and should have lost.
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I try to use nukes in my terran play, but they're often only effective on maps where I'm slow-pushing anyway. Sure a tank firing on your expo is annoying, but a nuke on your expo basically *forces* them to hit my contain.
I've also tried sending one little cloaked ghost off by himself to nuke a random expo during a bit fight. Have had mixed success.
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Nukes are actually very effective, and it is not that easy to stop them. Detection is not always present, scans can miss if you dont see the ghost etc. Ofc, they are not really viable as an early game strat but 2 bases can support them, especially against protoss as you will have ghosts anyway. The biggest problem I found with them is the amount of APM required.
Another possible way to use them is in battle (especially if you already used them elsewhere during a battle) the opponent may not notice and this is obviously a huge advantage, but more realistically he may panic and start to fall back while your marauders chase him or he is shot by tanks.
If you think about it the nuke really screws up macro. You will spend 10-20 seconds looking for the nuke, then you will have to start returning you workers, repairing damage etc. If you can keep someone constantly under the pressure of nukes (like one per two minutes) I imagine that they will feel much less comfortable and probably start making a lot of mistakes.
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EPT
