On April 21 2010 20:54 Tyrannon wrote: I think HSM is the only way to stand a chance vs Mutas. They won´t get hurt, but they´ll keep running and running.
well Thors are the ultimate counter to mass mutas. the HSM can buy you time for the slow Thors to get there, though. Also, if you're going mass Ravens, you should have lots of extra minerals to spam missile turrets everywhere (or marines and bunkers).
On April 21 2010 20:54 Tyrannon wrote: I think HSM is the only way to stand a chance vs Mutas. They won´t get hurt, but they´ll keep running and running.
well Thors are the ultimate counter to mass mutas. the HSM can buy you time for the slow Thors to get there, though. Also, if you're going mass Ravens, you should have lots of extra minerals to spam missile turrets everywhere (or marines and bunkers).
due to those incredibly huge spare amounts of minerals it's relatively easy to defend the own base against mutalisks. The only problem is that it makes it so hard for ravens to harass because they're so slow. On the other side, when he puts too many ressources in mutalisks he is quite an easy target for the marines. Marine+Raven really hurts them.
in the replay all the zerg player had to do was either: expand after his initial muta harass and mass up drones (very easy to do when he sees you have just ravens) or nydus worm your island expansion instead he tried to attack your main, backed off, then didn't do much for a while. your turret harass was actually very weak; this was compounded by the fact you didn't p lace the turrets in the mineral line, but you placed them above the gas. (not to mention you spent exactly 1700 minerals on missile turrets) But since you're giving the zerg total map control (ravens give you none at all) all zerg has to do is mass expand and hold off your antics until he overwhelms you.
On April 21 2010 12:37 Tor wrote: This strategy seems like it could be best used as a transition out of a planetary fortress fast expand into quadruple gas or something ridiculous like that. Engineering bay as part of your wall off, increased attack range and armor benefitting the fortress, a large number of marines with a few key turrets to hold off mutas and a couple of bunkered marauders if you see a roach push. Use the starports to build a couple of medivacs to escort your ravens (16 marines/2 medivacs does a good number against mutalisks. Easy to build banshees instead of ravens if you see mass roach play. Problems seem to be: you gotta be careful against nydus drops and you'll be lacking aggression early on. Worth testing.
One base raven harass just isn't going to do much as you'll just get out econned early game or run over with mass roaches or you'll lose your ravens to 3 mutas because you're too slow to run. And to top it all off you'll have zero map control.
Try not to focus on using the raven as a one unit gimmick and focus more on creating a versatile strategy that sets yourself up to utilize and maximize the ravens late game strength. You suggest an awful lot of set-up just so you can do auto-turret harass and because you theory crafted turrets being cost effective versus lings/hydralisks with the armor upgrade (ignoring that even a few roaches will ruin your day completely).
This is the line of thinking that would make this a real viable strategy. Quadruple gas taking it from gimmick to solid play becauase it lets you pump out some ravens very fast. I could even see the build working well by starting out with early double gas but only really getting a little marine / hellion harrass going while you FE. Maybe use this early stage of the game to get your 2 medivacs or early viking to keep zergs supply in check. Vikings kicking his OL ass will make him want to skip roaches and go straight to hydras or mutas. I could even see it being viable to add on an early reactor to pop a couple vikings and drop ships asap then as your 2nd base goes online with the extra gas and the static defenses are up drop a few extra starports and pump 3 ports at once. With your late game being a BC push.
. Don't forget the hellions for hit and runs. Its another mineral sink and could probably be used very well in combo with the turrets & pdd. I'm thinking something like push in with 4-5 hellions (around the time you'd normally be making use of your first 2-3 ravens) and lure his units to chase you only to run into a pdd / turret field.
Hellions also help a lot in map control. If his response is to take a bunch of extra bases at least you'll be well aware of it and able to pick off drones.
On April 21 2010 21:24 cartoon]x wrote: in the replay all the zerg player had to do was either: expand after his initial muta harass and mass up drones (very easy to do when he sees you have just ravens) or nydus worm your island expansion instead he tried to attack your main, backed off, then didn't do much for a while. your turret harass was actually very weak; this was compounded by the fact you didn't p lace the turrets in the mineral line, but you placed them above the gas. (not to mention you spent exactly 1700 minerals on missile turrets) But since you're giving the zerg total map control (ravens give you none at all) all zerg has to do is mass expand and hold off your antics until he overwhelms you.
How do ravens give you no map control? The way I see it, map control is the ability to attack a large number of places on the map. It allows you to punish his base any time his army leaves his base. This is EXACTLY what ravens do. They can do mobile harass much better than mech, much better than anything really except for pure MMM. If he's building lots of drones and expansions, your ravens can have a field day just flying from one to the next, dropping off turrets.
No. Having map control is being able to expand and prevent the opponent from expanding. The player can spread weak attacks all over the map, but if the player can't move out of their own base to take their natural, they don't have map control. If the player can't prevent the opponent from expanding, they don't have map control. The auto turrets are not strong enough of an attack to prevent the zerg player from expanding. He can leave a few forces in his main and have plenty of forces to protect his natural, a third, and eventually a fourth expansion. Not to mention the zerg player can see the attack coming because he has overlords positioned around his base. Infact, the auto turrets barely killed anything. In the replay the only way the Terran player expands is by getting lucky. I put my overlord at the Terrans island, so I would of seen it coming and flown my mutas there. I would of killed that expansion and won the game, guaranteed. The ravens will not be having a field day, they will be lucky if they escape from the mutalisks alive after harassing one base. I have an idea, though. How about instead of talking about it, we test it out. We can have someone try the build against me in a custom game on the US server and see how it does. Just PM me and we will set up a game. Mech actually is far better at mobile harass with thor drops and hellion drops.
On April 21 2010 22:04 cartoon]x wrote: No. Having map control is being able to expand and prevent the opponent from expanding. You can spread weak attacks all over the map, but if you can't move out of your own base to take your natural, you don't have map control. Does a dropship filled with 8 marines give a terran player map control? No, that's not map control. If you can't prevent your opponent from expanding, you don't have map control. The auto turrets are not strong enough of an attack to prevent the zerg player from expanding. He can leave a few forces in his main and have plenty of forces to protect his natural, a third, and eventually a fourth expansion. Not to mention the zerg player can see the attack coming because he has overlords positioned around his base. Infact, the auto turrets barely killed anything. In the replay the only way the Terran player expands is by getting lucky. I put my overlord at the Terrans island, so I would of seen it coming and flown my mutas there. I would of killed that expansion and won the game, guaranteed. The ravens will not be having a field day, they will be lucky if they escape from the mutalisks alive after harassing one base. I have an idea, though. How about instead of talking about it, we test it out. We can have someone try the build against me in a custom game on the US server and see how it does. Mech actually is far better at mobile harass with thor drops and hellion drops.
That's the million dollar question, isn't it? I really doubt that the zerg player can divide his army in 4 and still have enough to shutdown the auto turrets from massed ravents. But I agree, the only way to be sure is to try it out a lot and see what happens.
Get a game set up and I will show you myself on 4, maybe even 5 bases and the opponent on 1 base. That's if he's not already dead. Just PM me if you want a game.
I like this idea of playing mass raven out of FE/Fortress with 4x gas, especially since one really doesn't have to rely on those additional mules with this style of playing. Seems like there are so many variations in which mass ravens might be playable, gonna have to try alot of them :D Last thing I tryed was old BO but with a banshee instead of first raven and gas before rax so I had pretty early techs and 5 turrets when I went for his base first time plus he went for Hydras. Sadly it's not really proving anything as the opponent was too bad.
Apart from all the theory crafting going on I think this might be a bo that at least won't get totally busted such as streloks mass-banshee-attempt on protoss ^^
Thanks for posting this, I have been giving it a try and it really is a fun way to play. Heads up and please: keep working on this and let us know about the developments. Once again, great stuff
Seems like a good idea. Upgraded auto turrets stay around for a TON of time. He really needs to kill them to make them go away since they will kill the hatch otherwise. Also stopping raven production later for a more massable army and getting hunter seeker gives you a perfect composition against anything he can have unless he stops your expo. I tried this build briefly and it worked well even though I improvised quite badly..
On April 21 2010 18:37 link0 wrote: PDD is overrated. It's basically a slightly better defensive matrix (+200hp) from SC1. It has enough energy for maybe 22 shots. Ideally, the PDD is shooting down high damage/bullet projectiles. On average, you'll get about +250 hp from it. It's decent, but nothing special.
...Except defensive matrix protected one unit, while PDD protects your entire fucking army.
Yes PDD doesn't seem quite effective to me once the fights get huge. So far I use those ravens to keep the opponent small however, so when the marine comes the opponent should have quite a few units which suffer alot from 2-5 PDDs. On the other hand its quite clear that few PDDs won't have this huge effect anymore, if you have like 10-15 however it might be really hard ^^ (10 PDDs against hydras will be 200x12 (assuming he has as many attack upgrades as terran defense) dmg so 2400 health you don't loose. That's equal to almost 45 upgraded marines. Too bad they don't work on roaches, this would be really sick with 16 dmg per shot and their slow attack speed.
Tors revisions to the strategy are actually very good, but should be tested
On April 22 2010 01:50 Lythis wrote: But defensive matrix didn't cost any energy, PDD is out of juice after 0,5 s in big fights.
defensive matrix wore out as it took damage. PDD wears out as it takes damage. Energy measures the time it takes for PDD to wear out. raw damage absorbed is the measure for defensive matrix. The only difference this implies is that PDD is even more effective vs. high damage attacks and not as effective vs. low damage attacks; though it's still effective. (Assuming it takes an equal amount of energy to shoot down any missile attack)
Just heard of the idea of opening with 1 Viking so he doesn't see first ravens coming, stops sliming expos and might even be supply blocked when autoturrets arrive. Plus some zerg loose their desire of teching mutas when they didn't already and ofc it comes very quick so he will most likely not have ovi speed already.
Why you should get ravens^^. Sure the zerg can run away from them with his mutalisks but not without taking damage from a thor. When the missile dies and he comes back, fire another missile at him when he focuses your thors. He is forced to run away again and most of his mutas sit at 30-40 hp from the thor shots. Raven (to kill/block corrupters) + viking also very good at killing broodlords if he switches to those.
I am not that good but I usually build 1-2 sensor towers/control the watch towers and when I see the zerg army starting to mass, i shoot the seeker missiles since He is probably macroing/not paying attention and I can usually kill many units for free. The zerg doesn't have enough time to constantly watch his army and 3 seconds can mean the difference between 150 food and 130 food.
Bumping this thread because I am intrigued by the strategy. Have you guys had any more success with it? I won a game with the basic build in a placement match on Desert Oasis, but have not had the balls to use it on any other map (and have not had a TvZ on Desert Oasis since).
At this point, after having my mech build rocked by infestors multiple times, I am ready to revisit this strat. I may try the PF FE tonight.
EPT
