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[D] PvP FE? - Page 2

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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atrain117
Profile Joined August 2010
United States54 Posts
August 15 2010 00:40 GMT
#21
on the topic, would it be viable to wall off your nat's choke instead of your normal choke?
even without the FE down using your first gates and pylons.
"I think we could make a successful merger." -High Templar
monitor
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States2409 Posts
August 15 2010 00:45 GMT
#22
I just tried a forge FE in PvP, didn't work to well - got 4gated and owned.
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Monitor
kcdc
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2311 Posts
August 15 2010 00:45 GMT
#23
Updated OP with the replay.
xDaunt
Profile Joined March 2010
United States17988 Posts
August 15 2010 01:00 GMT
#24
On August 15 2010 09:40 atrain117 wrote:
on the topic, would it be viable to wall off your nat's choke instead of your normal choke?
even without the FE down using your first gates and pylons.


Yes, you can build there. However, there are two major weaknesses with doing so. First, you're going to open your front to stalker harassment (ie stalkers shooting your gateways) and it will be difficult for you to stop without fighting the toss in the open. Second, you'll expose yourself more to drops in your mineral line. Basically, if you're going to wall off your natural, you better make sure that you're playing aggressively.
kcdc
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2311 Posts
August 15 2010 02:08 GMT
#25
On August 15 2010 10:00 xDaunt wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 15 2010 09:40 atrain117 wrote:
on the topic, would it be viable to wall off your nat's choke instead of your normal choke?
even without the FE down using your first gates and pylons.


Yes, you can build there. However, there are two major weaknesses with doing so. First, you're going to open your front to stalker harassment (ie stalkers shooting your gateways) and it will be difficult for you to stop without fighting the toss in the open. Second, you'll expose yourself more to drops in your mineral line. Basically, if you're going to wall off your natural, you better make sure that you're playing aggressively.


IMO, if you wall off, you're stronger against zealots, but weaker against stalkers. If you're worried about 2-gates, walling off will help, but you'll have to play aggressively as soon as stalkers come into play.
Ndugu
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States1078 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-15 02:20:21
August 15 2010 02:11 GMT
#26
Ive seen FE builds and I just expand without cannons =/

Cannons are better against other Toss than against marauders, thats for sure. And if they decide to tech for Collosi without getting a few immortals it will be a build order loss to blink stalkers i think, depending on micro.

Edit: looks a lot closer to viable than i expected.

Has the added benefit of perhaps forcing your opponent to be on the offensive, which has its own added risks.
citi.zen
Profile Joined April 2009
2509 Posts
August 15 2010 05:07 GMT
#27
I think a straight 4 warpgate push, with a pilon somewhere close to your front, would have been really hard to defend. Once those 4 gates start producing you fall behind in army size really, really fast. No colosus needed, just continued warpgate production. Illusion missed the best timing windows, allowing your economic advantage to kick in. Since the 4 warpgate style is so popular, your opening seems very risky to me.
Aut viam inveniam, aut faciam.
Floophead_III
Profile Joined September 2009
United States1832 Posts
August 15 2010 06:24 GMT
#28
On August 15 2010 07:46 kcdc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 15 2010 07:32 Floophead_III wrote:
I've been working on a PvP stargate expo build with cannon sentry voidray as your defensive army. I haven't played it enough and I'm pretty mediocre with protoss right now, but the big boon to the strategy is being able to charge rays on your own buildings. Charged voidrays are imbalanced, and since you always can be charged if you're defending, beating stalkers shouldn't actually be that hard. The cannons/sentries buy time.

The transition is to *insert drumroll* mass voidray with air ups and void speed. COMPLETELY IMBALANCED if you are on the same economy.

So yes, the question is surviving/handling a korean 4 warpgate more than anything. If he goes colossi to break you cannon line, you win because voidrays will decimate him. It's SO funny when you get 6 charged speedvoids with +2 weapons =P


Voids to defend an expo are a pretty decent idea since they handle the collosi and immortals which are the obvious threats to cannons. Blink stalkers are the not-so-obvious threat to static cannons, however, and might pose more of a problem.


Well the quick answer is stalkers need vision to blink so you need an obs and therefore robo to make it work. You could try to zerg past the cannons but I have sentries so you'll just end up getting trapped and kill more likely than anything lol.

I think the korean 4 warpgate is the biggest burden for this build. I think your best bet is kinda cheesing a bit by going for the world's fastest stalker and killing the probe and securing your ramp asap so you can safely dedicate cannons to the nat entrance. I don't know though, korean style 4 warpgate cheese is SO annoying.
Half man, half bear, half pig.
Alou
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States3748 Posts
August 15 2010 06:29 GMT
#29
If I see a fast expand I'm just going to put my feet up and take the free win. Don't see how this could ever be viable if the opponent is playing decently. You can't really defend it long enough for the reward to outweigh the risk.
Life is Good.
Keren
Profile Joined June 2010
United States67 Posts
August 15 2010 06:31 GMT
#30
You acknowledged that the Korean 4gate would be a problem, but you don't necessarily have to 10-gate to make it work. Really the only early game investment is saving up some Chrono so if you fast expand he just plops down 3 gates, chrono's warpgate and collects his win. Also, keep in mind that by fast expanding you won't have out a whole lot of units and certainly won't be able to kill his scout in time so I expect if you do go for this you're gonna end up with a whole lot of pylons and zealots in your main. Don't get me wrong, if you can somehow get it to work, I'll be super interested and do it all the time, but I just don't see how and I'm gonna need some convincing before I go trying it a whole bunch.
Floophead_III
Profile Joined September 2009
United States1832 Posts
August 15 2010 06:52 GMT
#31
On August 15 2010 15:29 Alou wrote:
If I see a fast expand I'm just going to put my feet up and take the free win. Don't see how this could ever be viable if the opponent is playing decently. You can't really defend it long enough for the reward to outweigh the risk.


The reward is you've been pumping voidrays. Voidrays are the best unit in PvP. If you get enough you can't lose is my conjecture and the point of FEing would be to have a safe way to get many voidrays. Otherwise you could simply cannon you base and make infinite voidrays but he could expo and make enough stalker or enough of his own voidrays to beat you. Expoing might let him expo for free, but it puts you on equal ground economically with you having the better army cause it's voidrays.
Half man, half bear, half pig.
bluefuzz
Profile Joined March 2010
United States112 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-15 10:10:25
August 15 2010 09:47 GMT
#32
On August 15 2010 15:24 Floophead_III wrote:
Well the quick answer is stalkers need vision to blink so you need an obs and therefore robo to make it work. You could try to zerg past the cannons but I have sentries so you'll just end up getting trapped and kill more likely than anything lol.


Don't know how you are going to trap blink stalkers with FF. If you FF your ramp to your main then i'll just blink behind your nats mineral line., kill me some probes. Then it's 1 base vs 1 base, with you contained, and having wasted minerals on cannons.
In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro
kcdc
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2311 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-15 13:14:28
August 15 2010 12:44 GMT
#33
On August 15 2010 15:24 Floophead_III wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 15 2010 07:46 kcdc wrote:
On August 15 2010 07:32 Floophead_III wrote:
I've been working on a PvP stargate expo build with cannon sentry voidray as your defensive army. I haven't played it enough and I'm pretty mediocre with protoss right now, but the big boon to the strategy is being able to charge rays on your own buildings. Charged voidrays are imbalanced, and since you always can be charged if you're defending, beating stalkers shouldn't actually be that hard. The cannons/sentries buy time.

The transition is to *insert drumroll* mass voidray with air ups and void speed. COMPLETELY IMBALANCED if you are on the same economy.

So yes, the question is surviving/handling a korean 4 warpgate more than anything. If he goes colossi to break you cannon line, you win because voidrays will decimate him. It's SO funny when you get 6 charged speedvoids with +2 weapons =P


Voids to defend an expo are a pretty decent idea since they handle the collosi and immortals which are the obvious threats to cannons. Blink stalkers are the not-so-obvious threat to static cannons, however, and might pose more of a problem.


Well the quick answer is stalkers need vision to blink so you need an obs and therefore robo to make it work. You could try to zerg past the cannons but I have sentries so you'll just end up getting trapped and kill more likely than anything lol.

I think the korean 4 warpgate is the biggest burden for this build. I think your best bet is kinda cheesing a bit by going for the world's fastest stalker and killing the probe and securing your ramp asap so you can safely dedicate cannons to the nat entrance. I don't know though, korean style 4 warpgate cheese is SO annoying.


Yeah, we don't know the timings right now as to how you could shut down blink stalkers w/ a FE void play. Observers are one way to get vision to blink up, but other options include hallucinated phoenix and sacking a stalker by running him by the cannons and blinking him onto the ramp so that the others can blink to the high ground. A void ray into blink stalker opening could also be trouble.

Here's why I'm not that worried about the Korean 4-gate. Once you have a stalker and 4 zealots (or less if you control well), units warping into your base just aren't threatening. Even if you don't match your opponent's production capacity, you can kill the first round without losing much, and continue to build your unit count advantage despite your lower warpgate count. (He warps in 4 zealots, you kill 4 and lose 1. He warps in 4 more zealots as you produce 3 zealots. Now it's 6 zealots + a stalker against 4 warping zealots....) So the Korean 4-gate is really only a problem if it hits before you have 4 zealots and 1 stalker. If I'm going to FE, I'm definitely going to be constantly producing chronoboosted zealots off of my 1 gateway, so for the attack to hit me in time, he's going to have to start his gateway early and save chronoboost, both of which I'll scout well before I commit to my FE.

So, IMO, a Korean 4-gate forces you not to FE, but by the time your opponent scouts your FE, it will be too late to do a responsive warp-into-base attack. The other consideration about a delayed warp-into-base attack is that you'd see the pylons going up, and you could just add a couple cannons in your main. You already have the forge, and the cannons build quickly enough that if you started them shortly after your opponent starts warping in pylons, you'd be able to hold pretty easily.
Ftrunkz
Profile Blog Joined April 2007
Australia2474 Posts
August 15 2010 13:12 GMT
#34
On August 15 2010 00:03 kcdc wrote:If you could identify a 4-gate and rule out a void ray or counter-expand, you could always throw down some extra cannons as well.

You go do that. And I'll go find God, quit drinking, get in touch with myself emotionally, and we'll meet right back here at half past impossible. Mmmmm'kay?
@NvPinder on twitter | Member of Gamecom Nv | http://www.clan-ta.com | http://www.youtube.com/user/ftrunkz | http://www.twitchtv.com/xghpinder
kcdc
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2311 Posts
August 15 2010 13:18 GMT
#35
On August 15 2010 22:12 Ftrunkz wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 15 2010 00:03 kcdc wrote:If you could identify a 4-gate and rule out a void ray or counter-expand, you could always throw down some extra cannons as well.

You go do that. And I'll go find God, quit drinking, get in touch with myself emotionally, and we'll meet right back here at half past impossible. Mmmmm'kay?


Know what you can hold at any given time, and scout his unit count and his nat for an expansion. It won't be perfect, but with experience, I bet you could get a sense of how many cannons you need/can afford to build at various points through the game.
Ftrunkz
Profile Blog Joined April 2007
Australia2474 Posts
August 15 2010 13:24 GMT
#36
On August 15 2010 22:18 kcdc wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 15 2010 22:12 Ftrunkz wrote:
On August 15 2010 00:03 kcdc wrote:If you could identify a 4-gate and rule out a void ray or counter-expand, you could always throw down some extra cannons as well.

You go do that. And I'll go find God, quit drinking, get in touch with myself emotionally, and we'll meet right back here at half past impossible. Mmmmm'kay?


Know what you can hold at any given time, and scout his unit count and his nat for an expansion. It won't be perfect, but with experience, I bet you could get a sense of how many cannons you need/can afford to build at various points through the game.

yeah but that was kind of my point, you have no way of scouting other than probes that are insanely easily hunted down by stalkers... and at a high level when he realizes your giving up every bit of map control, he's going to sit a stalker at your watchtower or out-side your choke and not let you get eyes on the map, his army composition, his natural, anything.

At that point it becomes incredibly risky because it almost becomes like pvz in broodwar if you lost your initial scout-probe to the first lings spawned and couldn't get another one out... You're forced to guess at one of the options he has, if your right you win or go into an even game, if your wrong he wins or the game continues with a huge deficit to yourself.
@NvPinder on twitter | Member of Gamecom Nv | http://www.clan-ta.com | http://www.youtube.com/user/ftrunkz | http://www.twitchtv.com/xghpinder
SugarBear
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States842 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-16 13:59:59
August 16 2010 13:29 GMT
#37
I was thinking about PvP FE this morning, and here's what I was thinking:

Nexus cost is 400 minerals. So in theory you are 400 minerals behind your opponent if you build a fast expansion. Therefore the biggest threat to you is that he will bring in a proxy pylon and kill you after his warp gates finish researching because his army is 400 minerals bigger than yours.

But what about chronoboost? You could throw down the nexus after your cyber core (forget the forge entirely, cannons are completely useless on a lot of maps, i.e. metalopolis), then play exactly a four-gate build as if the 400 minerals had never been spent. Don't chronoboost warp gates, instead use that chronoboost to get out four zealots. Your army will then be exactly equal to your opponents (assuming he went four gate) so that even if he comes in with a proxy pylon, your army size should be the same.

Then after your second nexus finishes you can stop spending chronoboost on probes altogether, since you will have 2x probe build speed by having two nexus/nexi/nexuses/nexusasaurases. This allows you to spend the extra income from your expansion immediately until you can get up some extra production facilities to make full use of your expansion.

I haven't tried this but I'd be interested to find out how it works for higher level players.
Staff vVv Gaming | "So what did you do today?" "Oh not much, mined some minerals, harvested some gas, spawned some zergs, the usual"
ArdentZeal
Profile Joined March 2010
Germany155 Posts
August 16 2010 14:31 GMT
#38
if i see a forge and cannons at the choke of the natural, i just put down a nexus immediatly.

He spent 3*150 = 450 (at least) , i spend 400 for the nexus and have a faster and safer expansion (because he is not able to attack)
kcdc
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2311 Posts
August 16 2010 14:36 GMT
#39
@Sugar

I think you're right. After playing around with the cannon expand, it could maaaaaybe work if you really scout your base for pylons and perfectly time out when to add more cannons, but it just feels too hard. When something is going to work, it usually feels strong pretty quickly, but this one isn't.

I'll go back to working on an expansion after core. If you constantly chronoboost units out of your gateways as they finish, it actually takes quite a while to save up enough minerals to start your 3rd and 4th gateways. I believe constant unit production with chronoboost off of 3 gateways will actually result in a larger army well into the game than the way people usually do a 4-gate where they mostly let their gateways sit while they chronoboost warpgate research. So at least for now, you should be able to save 150 minerals relative to a typical 4-gate, and then by delaying your second assimilator and keeping those 3 extra probes on minerals, you could probably squeeze out an additional 150-200 minerals relative to your opponent by the time they'd attack. So with some good scouting and some well-timed probe cutting, I think you could more or less match your opponent's unit count and make up any slight difference by pulling probes. The expand after core can probably be done. But if it can, it will be super-close.
Catch]22
Profile Blog Joined July 2009
Sweden2683 Posts
August 16 2010 14:39 GMT
#40
Normally, I'd say you were crazy, but after converting all those naysayers, including me, about 1 gate core nexus PvT, I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.

If you watch Day9s White-Ra PvP video, he plays a PvP on LT against a blue toss, and Day9 mentions that this toss very often favors a gas-less zealot army into a really fast expand, Nadir, was it? Same thing with Melon the orange, late-but-double-gas-toss later in the video.

So i defo think you MIGHT be on to something (not saying you are yet tho, since a number of strats could wreck this, you say you could defend from a warp-in, yes, but not warping in WHILE dropping?

You fight 3 zealots and 1 stalker (dropped) while 4 more units are warping in, figure out WHEN he can do this at the earliest, and how much YOU can possibly have at that time, if you figure both of those out, and prove that you can still beat it, people will believe you and end the travesty that is current PvP.
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