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I have been working on various builds based around mid-game raven use and then crushing them late game with a massive number of ravens. This works great if you can make it to late game with all the nice upgrades raven turrets receive. HSM is usually the last upgrade I get but I think that I should try to squeeze it in earlier, as it really reminds me of a plague/sc1-storm type of ability which is game breaking and allows your smaller/inferior army to come out on top with good play and timing of the ability. I have been doing an early marine/hellion with a wall and obviously with continuous scouting until I feel secure enough to get ravens. If they go early mass-muta obviously I have the engi bay at some point before that in order to get raven upgrades and to add on to my wall, so I build turrets and the marines should be enough to hold that. If you see roach, a tech switch is needed, or at least a different transition before you go into ravens is very necessary, especially with large numbers of roaches. Possibly get 2 rax's with tech labs and have 2-3 bunkers with marauder/marine/hellion support in order to secure your natural and then transition into raven's, that is if they go roach. If not get your CC pretty early only watching out for baneling bust, I feel it is quite necessary to put a few buildings in front of nat covering 2-3 bunkers depending on what you scout, 2 base with 4 gas is very much needed for a late game raven strat. It will allow amazing map control, and once you start getting 6+ Ravens you become amazingly powerful. I am going to post some replays soon but I have figured out some pretty useful strats for using the Auto-Turrets.
Raven Strategy/Tricks
5+ Raven's with 50%+ energy can be very very deadly and game changing, especially if you execute the use of auto turrets perfectly. What I do is before I move in for the harass to their base I scan their main with said raven group decently close and shift queue a ton of turrets in a tight area in a critical position by their base, if you can manage to block a ramp in their base and catch their army outside of it, this could easily win the game for you as long as you have building armor upgrade/range upgrade for the turrets. I like to make a tight wall/ball of turrets and shift-queue them and all the sudden 12+ turrets pop out of nowhere and they don't have time to move in range to block areas where you could set turrets down.
If I have HSM I like to create a semi-wall (especially vs zerg) that forces zerg units to funnel into a certain area and try to bait them in to clump up and 1-2 HSM's + 8-12+ turrets clean up the rest without question.
Using HSM defensively even if it does not go off can buy you a TON of time. IE: 10+ Mutas roll up in your base and you are short on turret/marine count. HSM + throw some turrets down, the mutas will run for 15+ seconds because they have to outrun the hsm or die to 1-4 turrets after the hsm explodes on top of them. This is assuming they don't know which muta the HSM is targeting so that they cannot micro the 1 out, but I haven't seen really any players do that with mutas since it is very hard to tell. This buy's you much time, even if the HSM does not go off to throw up turrets and replenish marine count. (Obviously this applies to mass muta as well, but with 2-3 hsm's basically HSM's + Turret is such a cost effective defense vs any clump of muta)
Point defense drones are so critical late game in huge fights, throw down 2-3 of them and stim your army and watch them roll any group of hydra roach muta infestor or whatever they may have.
Turrets are amazing vs ultras as they block the living hell out of them, if I see ultras and am unable to harass their base with turrets, before engagement I set up 1 space holes between turrets which completely fuck up the ultra pathing and they get caught in the holes blocking the rest of the army while marines/hellions/marauders etc clean up without a problem.
Turrets soak up banelings and waste their minerals like no tomorrow, 2-3 spread out turrets against an a-moved army with banelings will create fatal consequences as they just wasted about 6-10 banelings on 50 energy turrets.
Hope you guys enjoyed this semi-addon about the discussion of raven use! BTW I am High Platinum (Constantly between rank 1-5....damn resets)
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I just watched the rep vs. StyGGen. I think your first barracks should have made a tech lab. This would allow you to swap it with the starport. You moved the barracks anyway and for the low rax/fax/rax wall.
Getting that tech lab early would save you 25seconds of research time and build time on your first ravens.
I was also thinking you could use the early ATs against the expo, Mutas make it hard either way. On that map it is almost a given he will go for air quickly also.
You have the advantage of having a new strategy\BO that isn't played often. However you have to find a way to counter whatever build is typically going to counter the popular Terran builds.
So your new BO needs to possess some ability to counter Zergs current BO to the typical Terran BO.
I think when you start to see a bunch of roaches you might consider Seeker Missle. 2 missles will kill a group of roaches, and you had 5+ ravens at that point.
Still eager to watch this develop. Post more reps of wins and losses!
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I find this strat really really interesting, i'm going to have to give it a try with one of my friends (practice partner.) Thanks for the input.
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Interresting, but that terran should repair the Ravens way more back in the base. He is also saving up to little energy for Point defense drones vs mutas favoring a couple of more cannons. Result is expensive Ravens dying in vain.
I like the +2 armor and range upgrade, and I will try to incorporate more Ravens in all matchups.
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Noone seems to use point defense drones..
Honestly vs zerg now i am going mass banshee, timing push with enough energy for 4 PD drones then I roll him if he has invested heavily in roach/hydra.
It was a lzgamer replay iirc that introduced me to the ridiculousness of them 
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Here I got another replay:
http://www.mediafire.com/?g2zwykm3ddm
It's been a bit more developed in terms of buildorder etc, also felt much easier already. Game came up when he said "no way that tactic can work, I'm gonna bash you" ;P
I think I slacked a few times like placing gas too late, not sure right now, however it worked kinda smoothly.
(Chat in the beginning is about the game before where my hellion came out at the wrong side, I lifted the fac and didn't notice that he had a ling seeing it, so he ran in and owned me. However we played a second match as this executional fail doesn't say anything about the viability of the tactic. I was kinda angry that I made this stupid mistake)
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I've been using Ravens in a similar manner recently also.
Once you start building ravens, with the upgrades, that is your gas. The only other unit you can produce is marines, but i'll tell you, you can produce a hell of a lot of them.
Ravens are good for harass, but I don't always go for it.
I tend to use Ravens to create a hard contain, backed up by marines. Once your turrets are fully upgraded, and you have about 4/5+ Ravens, stick the turrets down outside his natural at the choke. Because of how long they last, it feels like the amount of turrets just keeps on increasing (which is does, because you keep producing more ravens).
Then will then push my marines forward, and slowely build every new turret infront of the previous ones. If they have static defences up, keep the turrets out of range and start darting your ravens in, laying the turrets inside the base. If you have enough marines by this point, you can probably just walk in.
Wall off your base, slap down 300000 missile turrets. Minerals are really not an issue with this build. You can start throwing up command centers over the shop.
It isn't just a build to play against Zerg though. It's pretty effective against protoss, providing you can live through the very early game. It's also worked against Terran but i'll be honest, my opponent was a bit... sPeShaL.
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The strat is basically like, investing your gas to get future returns. Initially, the gas consumption is huge, but as long as you keep that unit alive, you technically have a whole new economy system
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I would jsut mass roach with some hydra vs this and walk over you because you can't expand without it dying:|
seriously nothing you build counters roaches...
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On April 21 2010 08:58 AcidReniX wrote:
I've been using Ravens in a similar manner recently also.
Once you start building ravens, with the upgrades, that is your gas. The only other unit you can produce is marines, but i'll tell you, you can produce a hell of a lot of them.
Ravens are good for harass, but I don't always go for it.
I tend to use Ravens to create a hard contain, backed up by marines. Once your turrets are fully upgraded, and you have about 4/5+ Ravens, stick the turrets down outside his natural at the choke. Because of how long they last, it feels like the amount of turrets just keeps on increasing (which is does, because you keep producing more ravens).
Then will then push my marines forward, and slowely build every new turret infront of the previous ones. If they have static defences up, keep the turrets out of range and start darting your ravens in, laying the turrets inside the base. If you have enough marines by this point, you can probably just walk in.
Wall off your base, slap down 300000 missile turrets. Minerals are really not an issue with this build. You can start throwing up command centers over the shop.
It isn't just a build to play against Zerg though. It's pretty effective against protoss, providing you can live through the very early game. It's also worked against Terran but i'll be honest, my opponent was a bit... sPeShaL.
Yeah thats a nice idea. As I said mine mainly was replacing Banshees, this is a whole new thing to use many ravens for.
On April 21 2010 09:04 Butigroove wrote:
I would jsut mass roach with some hydra vs this and walk over you because you can't expand without it dying:|
seriously nothing you build counters roaches...
Yeah surely the first thing YOU will do when seeing a starport is going mass roach 
Ah that reminds me of the reason why I did not use techlab switch yet. First I only started harassing having 2 Ravens which made the timing depend alot on when I have enough gas anyways. Second I thought "I can't put the starport in first line so he can see it easily", but possibly it is not such a bad idea to present it to him because it might make many zergs going for hydras because they think of Banshees.
I guess that single waves of harassment should be timed for Energy and ofc Tech Status, so maybe it's more wise to start with 200 overall energy or possibly even with armor tech rather than the way I did it before (starting with 150 Energy without armor tech)
Gotta keep an eye on zergs' timings.
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well, i´m honest^^ I´d build just one Banshee to harass and make him think there´ll come some more
I´d love to see some more replays.
The Mainproblem of your strategy is that you lose Mapcontrol big time!
Any Zerg will go for Mass expansion and simply steamroll you with Roaches, Hydras Mutas whatever since Until you got a little mass of Ravens, they are kind of weak.
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On April 21 2010 09:16 Tyrannon wrote:well, i´m honest^^ I´d build just one Banshee to harass and make him think there´ll come some more The Mainproblem of your strategy is that you lose Mapcontrol big time! Any Zerg will go for Mass expansion and simply steamroll you with Roaches, Hydras Mutas whatever since Until you got a little mass of Ravens, they are kind of weak.
So far I had a kinda good feeling about scouting and then also map control when I used the tactic.
Adding expansions will spread him over the map. Now I have an expansion anyways so if he has 1-2 it's manageable. He instead splits his forces, looses more drones, looses more units or mining time, as he chooses, if he either kills turrets with smaller groups (actually, often this will lead to the turrets winning ^^) or waits for reinforcement.
Later, with around 10 Ravens, it really takes him alot of scouting when you just drop single turrets at certain spots such as cliffs with xel'naga towers underneath them so he needs at least 2 hydras to maintain vision there.
Keeping the harass going makes it hard for him to get an actual mass of units that can steamroll over your marines.
It is so different to banshees. It's not like 5 Hydras or a few defensive spore crawler solve the problem of harassing for you, rather it will mean you will loose 5 hydras or some spore crawlers if you don't give them more assistance.
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There are some things i didn´t like in the Last Replay besides some Mikro mistakes.
The First Drop is a no go like that. IF the Zerg actually wanted to play a Wallbreakstrategy you need that 2 Turrets for defense. That doesn´t even hurt since they can´t do any dmg anyway. If theres no attack you can save that energy for the upgrades to complete.
Or even build ONE Banshee before, just to show him that Roaches are a really bad Idea.
Another Mistake was, since you got no mineralproblems here, to not Scan before dropping the Hornets into the basket.
If there are some Hydras around the Base, pls place one Pointdefensedrone(this little thing gets boosted with the turretupgrades as well) where you intend to drop Turrets. You simply can´t afford to lose any Ravens to that Hydras.
Next Thing, build more Hellions. They can cruise around the Map and scout new expansions. Ready to get some Ravens in their face.
And last, i think you should one Viking as well. He´ll constantly scout the map and snipe some Overlords.
Also i think you should never ever Build a Reactor on a Rax in this strategy since you need every Gas you can save. Instead build just more Baracks.
Talking about Sporecrawlers....
How do you end up vs any Zerg building SPINEcrawlers? Huge Range, +Dmg vs Armored and pretty much Standard on any Expansion of a well Zerg.
In Addition to that, the Zerg shouldn´t Suicide his Hydras into your Turrets. There was simply no Mikro from that Zerg.
Viel Spaß bim Testen
Tyrannon
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Actually I think I already did most of those things in more recent games such as adding 1 viking, more hellion scouting and using PDD before moving in when there are some units.
(I guess the game you watched was that one on desert oasis, was one of the very first attempts of playing this)
Spinecrawlers indeed are quite useful against those turrets, however the usual amount of crawlers is not enough especially when they ahve to be relocated. Good thing is that they take a long time to root so if one just drops the turrets out of range of most of them it is not too hard to avoid them.
I'm not quite happy with the very start as well, those 3 turrets without upgrade don't do as much damage as the energy they cost might cause later. However I guess i'm gonna wait for armor upgrade so I can drop like 5 turrets with upgrade and give him a hard time getting rid of them. Just have to check for timings, like when does he have too many hydras to be dropped successfully to get a good timing on it.
Right now i'm actually playing mainly against Zerg because I want to know about those issues and how to counter or avoid them. Gonna try to find some really good Zergplayers to see how they respond out of an ordinary build order and find good timings to switch army composition to something else.
Need them to crush this build when they start in a situation that allows it originally to check for further details and timings.
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I watched the one on Desert Oasis and the ScrapStation replay. I think SpineCrawler will be a the Way to kill that Strategy. the first Drop will get results and then Zerg responds in Crawler.
At hte same time going for a little Army and Expansions.
Of course i assume its a normal game, but Zerg knows that this Strategy does exist, since it won´t be "secret" forever. Let me observe your games^^
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If you're going to turn this into a real tactic, the thing you have to do is ensure secrecy. The Zerg cannot be allowed to see your Raven until you're about to make your first harass. Otherwise, just a few Spine Crawlers or Roaches will be used to defend against it.
Fortunately, a Zerg can't tell the difference between what you're doing and a Banshee build until the Raven actually comes out. The best way to ensure secrecy: Sensor Tower. Throw one down and keep any Overseers/Changelings away.
If they do catch you doing this, expect to be Roach-dropped in your main to counter.
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The beauty of this still lies in the fact that ravens themselves are the ultimate "juke" or pump-fake.
They see starport, hell they even see a raven. Their first thought is not gonna be: "OH SNAP!11!! I need to counter turrets with super high armor!"
That just isn't how it will play out. They see the starport and air, and they start to couter air. All of a sudden they are up against a few PDD and mass turrets.
THIS IS HUGE! Even when they scout it, they have no idea. Especially if you harass early. I almost think a bit of early marauder, like just a few would be good too. That would prevent roaches possibly, letting you then switch into marines or hellions and ravens.
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seems like a pretty cool idea, gonna give it a shot tonight. Do you favor the building armor upgrade or +1 range upgrade? i know get both but which 1 first.
When do you build the Ebay? my build going fast banshee is usually something like this, where would you throw in an Ebay? (im not at home atm so i cant view replay)
10 supply
11 refinery
12 racks
factory/orbital right after (i lose track of scv count)
refinery #2 during factory
Starport/supply
also might not fit exactly into this thread, but another idea may be to start off with banshees, then when the opponent responds with hydras or static def bring in a couple ravens /w point defense drone.
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Please don't let this Raven play catch on. I can't stand Raven's, they are easily the strongest unit in the game. If a Terran player has Ravens and HSMs I can't win, flat out. Everything dies. I could have a 200 supply army and he has like a 50 supply one, and as long as three Ravens can launch HSMs in there, I lose my entire army. It's incredibly frustrating, especially on 2v2s on that stupid Twilight level, where it's nigh impossible to stop a Terran from getting them without cheesing. HSM is just so insanely strong and too easy to cast, if you ask me. Make it like storm, where atleast they have to click a spot on the ground and it'll harm his own units. I think I've lost ever single match where HSM's have come in to play. And before you say "just dodge them", that's not the answer every time. Sometimes you're forced to engage a force, and I shouldn't have to run to the other side of the map because the Terran player hit a single button. Nor is sending the targeted unit out of the group the answer most of the time either; the Terran players simple march the Ravens too close to the group to react and launch there.
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EPT
