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On July 06 2010 21:15 Sethronu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2010 20:54 Sabresandiego wrote:
You gravely overestimate the impact getting an early command center has on your military. You do realize that you can have a thor of your own using this build almost as quickly as a terran who was going for a straight thor drop would land in your base? This build doesnt have you as far behind as you imagine. No, you can't. You're both mineral blocked AND gas blocked for lengthy periods of time; your factory comes out a lot later, AND you're not going to have the early defensive units either - unless you opt to delay your Factory even further. The fastest you can have a Thor out with getting a second CC before gas the way you do, is a little past 8 minutes gametime mark, and this is with holding back on Marine production and placing all your buildings next to your base rather than moving SCVs to wall-off spot. It might not look like a big deal, these extra 30-50 seconds, and in many ladder games you'd probably get away with it - but anyone doing a timing push correctly would annihilate you. Another reason why this build isn't that great is, your main is close to being fully saturated with workers right about the time your second OC is finished - having an extra MULE is nice, but the SCV production isn't all that useful; and with most Terran builds being as gas hungry as they are, the extra MULEs don't really make up for the loss of gas. Really, it's just not worth it over going for a normal FE build - that you place after scouting and after you're confident you can hold your own.
You are correct here with the timing of the first thor. It comes at 8:00 gametime if you are optimal but I can walloff, get a bunker, and still get the thor out at 8:00 GT. The blinking stalkers will arrive right when the Thor comes out, so it is a very close call whether this build will survive or not. 6 marines, 5 marauders, 1 thor, 1 hellion, 1 bunker and a choke vs 12-15 stalkers. Terran defense holds IMO
Also, how did you know that the first THOR arrives at 8:00 GT with this build? did you test the build?
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On July 06 2010 21:19 Sabresandiego wrote:At 8:30 Gametime I have 1 thor, 5-7 marauders, 6 marines and a bunker at my choke. This will hold off 15 stalkers, and I highly, highly doubt 15 stalkers will be at my door before 8:30 gametime.
Well, I don't have much to add to the discussion seeing as you continue to ignore my points so I'll just go away.
@ your second post, yes I did test it, and I still don't see how you can bunker & wall-in while getting some early Marines and still manage a 8 minute Thor, but whatever.
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I don't disagree with your points. They are valid concerns, but they don't make the build unusable.
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On July 06 2010 21:29 Sabresandiego wrote:
I don't disagree with your points. They are valid concerns, but they don't make the build unusable.
They don't - I'm sure the build could work under certain circumstances - it's just annoying how you keep saying "you cant have stalkers before x, you cant have stalkers before x", when I just ran the BO I use for a Stalker timing push 3 times just to make sure I have the numbers right.
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On July 06 2010 21:31 Sethronu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2010 21:29 Sabresandiego wrote:
I don't disagree with your points. They are valid concerns, but they don't make the build unusable. They don't - I'm sure the build could work under certain circumstances - it's just annoying how you keep saying "you cant have stalkers before x, you cant have stalkers before x", when I just ran the BO I use for a Stalker timing push 3 times just to make sure I have the numbers right.
How did you know that the first Thor arrives at 8:00 GT in this build, have you been testing it? BTW I get the Thor out at 8:00 GT +- 15seconds without stopping production of scv, marine, or marauder and with a nice wall off. I agree that the timing of this THOR is critical, but it arrives just in the nick of time to save you where the build is at its weakest (6:00 GT to 8:00 GT)
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On July 06 2010 21:31 Sethronu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2010 21:29 Sabresandiego wrote:
I don't disagree with your points. They are valid concerns, but they don't make the build unusable. They don't - I'm sure the build could work under certain circumstances - it's just annoying how you keep saying "you cant have stalkers before x, you cant have stalkers before x", when I just ran the BO I use for a Stalker timing push 3 times just to make sure I have the numbers right.
Im more interested in when the 15 stalkers are actually at my walloff, not when you have them. Thats why I feel that your times may be slightly fast. 15 stalkers at 7:30 at my front door will almost always beat this build, but at 8:00 this build survives due to Thor. Thats why slight exagerrations completely change everything.
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To get the Thor out at 8:00 GT without sacrificing constant marines/marauders SCV you do the following.
10 depot
12.5 rax (meaning queue 1 additional scv at 12 before building rax)
16 marine, build marines nonstop
17 (Stop at 16 scv's and 1 marine in production) command center 2
18 orbital command 1
19 depot ----> optional bunker when depot finished (my preference)
19 double refinery
-orbital command 2 when cc2 is finished
-factory with first 100 gas
-next 150 minerals to second rax
-tech lab with next 25 gas after 6 marines
as soon as factory is finished make an armory immediately and a hellion. Get tech labs on both rax and pump marauders nonstop at this point. As soon as hellion finishes send it into the enemy base to see whats going on and get a tech lab on factory. Make sure you aren't supply blocked (Thors take lots of supply) and queue a Thor the instant your armory finishes. It should be complete by the 8:00 mark +- 15 seconds if you performed the build optimally.
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That's more or less the order I went for; there's just too much downtime while waiting for gas etc to get it anywhere before 8 minutes - while being extremelly vulnerable to any kind of pressure all the way up to it.
The Stalkers are going to be at your base as soon as they're finished - which is as early as 7:30 because warp gate is so overpowered and you simply have no way of killing my proxy pylon outside of your base.
And the biggest issue is, assuming you did survive until your Thor completed and are starting to feel comfortable... my main is going to be fully saturated all the same so you really have no econ advantage apart from extra MULEs (but you're gas blocked anyway...) until you push out to your natural - which is simply not going to happen unless your opponent allows you to.
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On July 06 2010 22:01 Sethronu wrote:
That's more or less the order I went for; there's just too much downtime while waiting for gas etc to get it anywhere before 8 minutes - while being extremelly vulnerable to any kind of pressure all the way up to it.
The Stalkers are going to be at your base as soon as they're finished - which is as early as 7:30 because warp gate is so overpowered and you simply have no way of killing my proxy pylon outside of your base.
And the biggest issue is, assuming you did survive until your Thor completed and are starting to feel comfortable... my main is going to be fully saturated all the same so you really have no econ advantage until you push out to your natural - which is simply not going to happen unless your opponent allows you to.
Thats true, except for the fact that I have double mules which is quite signficant. You are correct that if I can't push out of my base then I'm in trouble. Getting siege tanks after my second Thor will break any contain. The true problem with this build is surviving the 6:00 GT to 8:00GT window where a timing push can end the game. If I can survive to my first Thor, the game starts to tip in my favor.
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Nice idea man Ill be looking forward to testing this in phase 2=)
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rkiga
United States44 Posts
On July 06 2010 18:25 Sabresandiego wrote:
Thanks for your reply. You bring up valid concerns initially but you seem to end your post with hostility and complete falacies about this build. I want to address your critique the best that I can. This build is untested in ladder, and may very well be unviable due to something I overlooked. However, from my current tests against the AI and comparisons on YABOT I can completely defend this build specifically from the points you make, including the lies.
1) At 7:00 real time your military is roughly equal to an opponent who has not expanded. At 8:00 real time you are slightly ahead of an opponent who has not expanded. HOWEVER, if your opponent plays exactly as you said and expands in response to your double CC, your military will catch up to the strength of his extremely rapidly considering that he just dumped 400 minerals himself, and surpass it even sooner. His fast expand will not yield a stronger military for several minutes, meaning you can lift off and expand yourself. Thus, you maintain your lead because you had your expansion already built and more scv's because of it.
2)You are completely correct in your analysis but you forgot one huge factor: Mules. The oversaturation of SCV's is primarily in order to be able to quickly fully saturate your expansion when you do expand. The big thing you are overlooking here is mules. Your analysis also neglects SCV's who are building or scouting. Saturation has no effect on mules, and you are able to call in double the mules as you normally would, thus rapidly spiking your mineral income. The Yabot numbers do not lie, at the 7:00 real time mark you have +1000 minerals and -200 gas compared to a standard terran build.
3)What TLO did is very similar to this build, but less effective. The main difference is he neglects gas and tech for much longer than this build and instead goes heavy minerals into mass infantry. His expansion does not even start mining until 6:30 real time and with no SCV saturation whatsoever due to being on an island. My build has you expand at either the 8:00 RT mark, or exactly 1 min after your opponent begins construction on his own expansion (which can be very early). You get gas MUCH faster with my build than TLO's and are also much faster in tech than TLO, and would have those vikings much sooner than he did. This is the part I'm not following you because your critique was intelligent at first but now is just an outright attack with falacies thrown in. And if you rewatch the first big battle in that match, it occurs at 7:00 real time which is exactly where this build begins to shine.
4) Who says you are trading 200 minerals for 200 gas? That is only at the 7 minute mark, by the 8 minute mark you have over a thousand mineral advantage, entirely due to mules. Also the expansion is not late, you expand as early as safely possible. 8:00 is when you expand if your opponent has not expanded, but if he has expanded then you expand earlier yourself. Have you forgotten that Terran buildings can fly and you can expand as early as you deem safe...
I'm not trying to be hostile, just to address what I see as faults. I'm not saying that your build sucks or that it won't work, I just don't think it's nearly as safe or advantageous as you do. Terran is not my main, but I can't see how your build is any better than a normal safe FE with however many bunkers you need to secure it. This will probably come out as overly negative, but critiques tend to be that way:
1) Let's ignore zerg and focus on protoss so we don't have to have multiple arguments. Anyway that's my most played race so I'm more comfortable. Forget 7 minutes real time, that's 10 minutes into the game, there's way too much stuff that happens before then. You keep mentioning it as if it's an important benchmark, but it's not. You need to get there first, you're not playing in isolation. At 6-7 minutes Game Time, you will NOT be anywhere near even army size with a protoss that did some combination of 2-3 gate robo on 1 base. That's as standard a build as protoss has. How are you even going to live through the first 1-2 immortal timing push when you have all those minerals invested into your two CC/OC? This is going to happen well well before 7-8 minutes RT.
But forget the immortal push, that's too late too. Let's think earlier in the game than that. You're not building your factory until after your 3rd CC are up, so you're walling with your Rax+CC which means any poke is going to spot this right? When he pokes up your ramp he's going to see at least one CC at the ramp and that your army is weak. He has better options than attacking now:
He will expand right away and then park his army at the bottom of your ramp and take whatever watchtower is near for reaper spotting. He can prevent you from expanding with an inferior army as long as he has a couple sentries to cut you in half if you try to move down your ramp. So you're giving your opponent an uncontested expansion and letting him contain you with a small group of sentries and whatever else he has. He doesn't need to invest any more into his army now. This will last until you get siege tanks or dropships, or whatever air you fancy. But your factory is delayed a bit and your gas is later than normal, so that'll be a while, right? So I don't see how you can possibly stop him from macroing harder than you because you can't expand when you want to. Am I wrong?
2) Yes I know that scvs have to build unlike protoss, so just compare 18 scvs vs 26 then, the argument is still exactly the same.
I thought you already said that you're not +1000 minerals, you're only about +200 because of the cost of the CCs, minus the cost of 22 supply and whatever implicit cost to scvs making buildings instead of mining. But again, you're talking about 7 minutes of real time which IS NOT important if you can't get to that point. Up until then you'll be down. Most importantly you'll be down ~800 minerals when your supply is still in the 20s. That is HUGE. You said yourself that you're still down in tech 7 RT minutes in, so that's a big timing window to exploit.
3) Again, TLO's build and yours are very different. Just because he makes a OC before expanding doesn't make it the same. He is aggressively early expanding as soon as is even remotely safe. You are passively not expanding and MULEing on one base and delaying your expand with another CC/OC. You think you can just take your expand whenever you want to, but I disagree as stated above.
Sorry I didn't notice his late late gas in that VoD; it is a moot point anyway. With so many differences, I'm failing to understand how you think TLO's build is in any way the same as yours. You're thinking of teching to tanks/thors which the protoss will get immortals for, and since he won't have to tech all the way up to colossi, nor wait for two colossi to build, nor wait for 200 gas to research extended range, nor wait for that research to finish before attacking. Toss can push with his standard 2 immortals so much earlier. If you only meant mech vs Z, then ignore that. But you still have to deal with the forcefield contain without the range advantage of tanks, and the slow tech to air to break the contain.
4) I think I addressed this already in previous points. Namely that talking about 7-8 minutes real time doesn't matter, that he can cut your force in half until you get tanks/air, etc.
5)This is just what toss has to offer. I'm sure you can figure out problems to deal with for TvZ and TvT. I also didn't mention all the other stuff P has before 8 minutes of GAME time:
-Any air rush which I didn't even start to think about.
-Blink stalkers.
-Immortal drops + pressure at your front.
-Pylon warp-ins inside your base with any combination of the above (build a pylon along the cliff edge of your main, then get vision to warp in past the wall. Attack the ramp for vision, or obs, or illusion). This is crucial, as your wall will be breached right away and once the 1 barracks goes down, you can no longer re-wall yourself, and his warpgates will outproduce you with 0 travel time.
-Etc, etc, etc.
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I just tried something out and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but before you can get your thor out I can have 3 +1 void rays out, and all you got to defend yourself with is a bunker. How are you going to deal with that?
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This I build I feel is acctually really strong against protoss because you have extra energy for scans that you normally wouldn't have, allowing you to stay ahead in scouting info, snipe obs, and protect your self from early DT rushes. Against Zerg and Terran this build is suicidal. Zerg will outmacro the crap outta you, knowing its safe to pump drones because you are behind on army for early harass. Your wall is worthless against terran because they will seige it. Also, minerals are not that important in TvT, gas is the problem and that requires expansions.
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8751 Posts
Sabresandiego, in my HDH series against TLO he did a similar build in every TvP (4 games) and it worked only the first time. And to be honest, I almost never go straight Colossus in PvT so I had no idea what I was doing in that first game haha. You should check out the next three TvP's in that series and see what you think. I'm not saying the fast expansion build is proven ineffective by those games but I am saying that you'd have a better chance of developing the build by addressing games where it fails.
I do believe that the way TLO was doing it (later gas, keeping the 2nd CC in his base for a while) is a safer way to do it against some early game dangers. If you adjust the build to expand sooner and get gas sooner so that you're safer against the mid game threats, I'm almost certain you're going to be more vulnerable to early game threats.
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On July 06 2010 23:57 Liquid`NonY wrote: I am saying that you'd have a better chance of developing the build by addressing games where it fails.
Truer words have never been spoken :D
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You're cutting probes to get this up early (I assume). If so your investment is higher than 550 (400+150 for orb).
Until you have a chance to play against other humans you likely won't know for certain how weak/strong the build is, but I imagine you're going to lose against aggressive one-base play.
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Since in TvT the terran would be 1 min ahead on tanks, wouldn't a proxy factory on a map like desert oasis destroy this build? Wouldn't this build be weak to all sorts of proxys as it would nullify to the travel time advantage you are possibly relying on?
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I'm telling you this will NOT work, but it's hard to explain to you why. The only way this would work is if your enemy didn't scout or apply any pressure at all.
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Thanks for all the replies. This build obviously has several theoretical weak points, which can only be addressed by actually playing against real people instead of the computer. It is very possible that this build is simply not worth it.
That being said, we can still look at a few critical timings of this build and compare it to its biggest threats.
8:00 GT = First thor emerges from factory if you decide to go Thor/Infantry and are extremely proficient with the build. You should have about 6 marines, 5 marauders, 1 hellion, 1 thor at 8:00 GT. This will hold any timing push
The problem comes with timing attacks that occur before 8:00 GT. A proxy pylon can have stalkers at your door or a proxy factory can have tanks at your doorstep sieging your base much sooner. All you have to defend at this point in the game is 4-6 marines, a bunker, and 1-2 marauders. Can you survive or does the build autolose to pushes before 8:00 GT? That is a good question.
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On July 07 2010 01:13 TheFinalWord wrote:
Since in TvT the terran would be 1 min ahead on tanks, wouldn't a proxy factory on a map like desert oasis destroy this build? Wouldn't this build be weak to all sorts of proxys as it would nullify to the travel time advantage you are possibly relying on?
The build is very weak to proxy, proxy factory is probably the worst. What is the timing on a proxy factory tank with siege mode fully researched? Timing is everything, but most likely the tank is there early enough to defeat this build (unless I modify it).
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EPT
