Lets say you have a 200 supply Terran army, and your Zerg opponent has 200
Your opponent has mostly Ultralisks but some Hydrolisks/Infestors and a handful of lings.
We went Thors/Siege tank/Hellion/marines/rauders, killing off the creep tumors so their units don't run as fast.
Everything is upgraded, but his upgrades are a little ahead because he knew he was focusing on Ultras.
The only unit I think we didn't try was BattleCruisers, but in theory unupgraded BC would never kill an Ultralisk because Ultras have like +6 armor and the BC only does like 8, so a BC would just sit above Ultralisks as the Ultralisks killed your entire base. Maybe if BC were the initial goal, we could have had upgrades for them.
Maybe Bancheese would have been ok, but I think if he would have seen it, he'd have went heavy hydrolisks. And don't heavy hydrolisks beat heavy bancheese?
So I'm just wondering: If you know they're going heavy ultralisk composition, what unit composition counters it as Terran?
Marauders/tanks/thors. They die fast, but they kill fast too. You are best off using hellions to tank the hits, or even rines as ultras don't too thaat much to light units. Marauders especially are effective.
Also try to fight them in enclosed spaces.
And yes BCs are pretty bad vs. zerg in general since zerg gets corruptors, hydras are decent.
Upgraded MMM tear through hydras, tanks are kinda underwhelming with the large damage nerf, but I guess they still do their job if you don't expose them.
Counter to ultras is to end the game before he spams a dozen of em every 60 seconds.
I've heard/read ghost snipe spamming supported with the above (tanks, marauders, thors) make ultras dissolve quite quick, since snipe ignores armour. Haven't played enough games to see mass ultralisks yet.
1-2 Yamato cannons? I'd guess they can just make more faster than your energy replenishes though...
Or...if you can protect your BCs from corruptors with vikings, maybe you can go on a base race while you keep a CC in the air? lol...
As people have said, MMM is a solid solution. Against Zerg I like to go for a mech army of thors, hellions and banshees. It actually works surprisingly well, as thors can go 1v1 against ultras, and banshees just add damage to that. Blue flame hellions do dirty things to hydras. It's not as easy as MMM but it works.
As a zerg player the only thing that gives me trouble late game when i have mass ultra/hydra is hellions and marauders. The key thing is that u need to arc and spread ur marauders so they dont take too much splash damage and hellions melt hydras
On October 06 2010 10:45 GoodNewsJim wrote: ~1100 Diamond play
Lets say you have a 200 supply Terran army, and your Zerg opponent has 200
horrible way to think. in BW a Terran 200/200 mech army with full upgrades was unstoppable and everyone knew it. but the game was balanced. why? because you dont fucking attack something that big head on.
you're not going to counter it directly. ultra's are incredibly expensive and precious and slow to build. you need to be constantly whittling down the ultra numbers as best you can. other things you can do are things like dropping the main and killing the ultra cavern. scanning and catching ultras out of position. then there's the old attack his army and trade armies and reinforce faster.
many ways, none are "make A if he has B and he loses"
On October 06 2010 12:35 aztrorisk wrote: Thor + 250mm cannon. Keep the thors in the back of your army and each thor should be able to take down a Ultralisk.
Considering that 250 mm takes time to set up, doesn't stun, pins the unit while its active, and does a bit less dps, I really don't think thats the way to go.
The short answer is that there is no counter. The matchup is just like that.
It's like in PvT, where if you let your Terran opponent mass an army of BC/Tank then you are basically screwed. This doesn't make the matchup imbalanced but it does dictate the way the game is played somewhat.
The best advice is to avoid this situation in the first place. If you allow your Zerg opponent to macro and tech up to an army like this, you're already in a lot of trouble and it's going to be difficult to win. You need to gain an advantage earlier in either army or economy before Ultras come out. Harrass him. Snipe Overlords. Deny his third. Be aggressive. If you are ahead going into the lategame then Ultras won't magically save him, but if you are on equal footing then Ultras will tip the balance drastically in his favour.
If you do get stuck in this position then Tank/Thor/Marauder is the best army composition, but you generally can't fight head on unless it's at a really narrow choke. Look to abuse drops (Marauders can take down a Hatchery in like 6 seconds) and try to split up his army to take out parts of it at a time.
Battlecruisers counter it because of yamato cannon, but he can hard counter your BC's much easier and faster than you can counter his ultralisks. If the game lasts that long, you really are almost screwed as a terran. Mass thor actually will counter ultras but it takes too long to get a critical mass of them. Try doing maurader/medivac hatchery snipings
On October 06 2010 13:24 Parra wrote: Battlecruisers counter it because of yamato cannon, but he can hard counter your BC's much easier and faster than you can counter his ultralisks. If the game lasts that long, you really are almost screwed as a terran. Mass thor actually will counter ultras but it takes too long to get a critical mass of them. Try doing maurader/medivac hatchery snipings
What he say, thor take a long time to build and we cant make like 10 at a time, thor also need to funnel ultra to win or they are going to lose. BC is laughably stupid to go since they do so little damage and can be easily kill with corruptor, if you want to keep the malive you are going to need viking in other word very little ground so blahh.
The best way i found to deal with ultra is to harrash a lot since ultra are only really good once there is a good number.
On October 06 2010 12:53 mOnion wrote: horrible way to think. in BW a Terran 200/200 mech army with full upgrades was unstoppable and everyone knew it. but the game was balanced. why? because you dont fucking attack something that big head on.
So the Zerg 200/200 army is just superior to a Terran 200/200? Yeah it does seem that way.
Sounds like a plan. We tried killing his army before he had 200, because my friend had +1 expo on him... We figured we could replenish faster, but his unit composition was better than tank/thor/hellion/infantry. The game plan was: Go for his army just to whittle it down, so we could replenish, but it didn't work out as well. Then he pushed his advantage and took down my friend's gold.
If we would have known: Don't engage mass ultra except in chokes, we would play differently.
We're going to do the following when we hit 200/200: MASS Planetary fortresses at expands, 2-4 each mineral patch. A Bunker crawl AND Extra factories to replenish Thor/Hellion
So the future looks reasonable: Mass static defense, and a mobile army that can fight in chokes. The bunker crawl is to bring the battle without getting fungaled and extra health to the battle. Kill the creep highway and come in with mass bunkers. For some reason, Blizzard thinks its balanced to give 100% mineral on salvage, so you can make like bunkers to a forward position, and then salvage all the bunkers back at the beginning of the trail. Now I'm not sure bunkers will be enough to really tip the scales of a 200/200 army, its something to add health to the board.
Everyone saying Marauder/Thor/Hellion, Yes, thats the composition thats preferable, but if you engage 12 ultralisks in open ground, it will not win. So at this point, it really comes down to the map I guess. Its funny how Terran needs to use chokes early game, and late game they're still using them.
Update: My friend just 200 vs 200 again, but got rolled by non upgraded Ultra/ling/mass baneling in a semi choke. My friend was making 3 PF at his newest expansion, but since the opponent got 200 supply(thats the magic number for most people to start their attack), my friend couldn't even slightly stop the army with Thors/Marauders/marines. I think the trick is to get the bunkers ASAP. Don't mess with PFs at expands, you can support them with units, but get 6-10 bunkers down where you want to defend at. We'll try that the next matchup.
I played a lot of games with an ~1400 zerg recently (I was happy he asked me too mass games ^^). I tried thors/banshee (with support units like hellion/marine/raven/... ) and it works quite good against ultralisks.
The only problem I had is that the zerg I played against refused to go muta/ling/bling and I wanted to try it against that =/.
It may sound stupid but if you have plenty of minerals, try placing a planetary fortress or two in key chokes and using marauders/marine to kite near them. It will drive the Zerg insane.
If you get a good group of hellions you can scan around to reduce the creep and burn the hydras in case he makes a mistake. Hold your ground and slowly push him back, make PFs, bunkers and turrets so your thors and tanks can survive. The longer it goes more thors with full energy you are going to have, just leapfrog your way in and when he comits, snipe the ultras (even without the stun, the cannons are worth using against high armored targets).
Upgrades also help a lot, +3 hellions melt hydras and run from ultras with ease. Even blowing 4 medivacs full of hellions to kill a mineral line can be worth it that late in the game.
A maxed Thor Hellion army can defeat any zerg army that does not contain broodlords (but in case of broodlords you can just mix in vikings and you'll be fine). Even on an open field on creep, this army does okay against any zerg ground army and in chokes, zerg doesn't stand a chance. On top of that, you have much better harassment because of hellions, so you should usually be in a better economic situation.
Hellion blue flame make bbq of hydras marine + marauder or marine + ghost tanking pretty much kill ultras if u stim , infestor are the tricky part but i would say tanks + raven if they burrow ... and banshees cloaked can keep doing damage while not much it´s permanent ...
most fights aren't about "he has this army, i have that army, X will win". Unit composition matters somewhat, but imo positioning is a lot more important. If the zerg manages to get a decent surround with his ultras while all his hydra's are relatively safe in the back in a good arc adding DPS then yes, you WILL lose. If he's fighting through either a narrow choke or you block his ultra's path with a few hellions / bunkers, his ultra's suddenly become a lot less effective and you can take down a good chunk of em.
Against these types of compositions, 1 A ing isn't going to work, just like it never works for zerg unless maybe with mass baneling (and even then, attacking at the right time in the right place is important).
still, ravens can help here: PDD helps with hydras, autoturrets can help choke the ultra's for a short time, giving you some free early shots and HSM just wrecks hydra balls.
The real "counter" to something like that, is not getting into that situation in the first place. I'm not the best player ever so I can't give you any specific tips, but I would suggest you focus on smoothing out the early game and being a little more agressive early on, even if you do no real damage, you want to make sure to be in the enemy's face all the time so that they're scared away from making drones.
Don't think "what kind of army can I make to beat his army?" Think about "when's the best time for me to attack so that he can't make a good army?"
Hydra Ultra even if your in a better econ position as Terran I've found can't really be beaten because his second army comes in faster. Biomech does work unless he has just 1-2 infestors get off a fungal, then ultras cleave through all the bio in 3 seconds and its gg...
the hard thing about dealing with ultras is that about 6+ pop out at the same time, which doesn't give you any time to prepare unless you scouted the ultra den.
unless you have a very high number of siege tanks, you'll get owned. but in that case, zerg player should have opted for broodlords.
On October 07 2010 00:52 hoovehand wrote: the hard thing about dealing with ultras is that about 6+ pop out at the same time, which doesn't give you any time to prepare unless you scouted the ultra den. -snip-
I have to say I found this pretty amusing.
If the Zerg player is really sitting on 1200+ gas, plus the 36 extra supply needed to fit in 6 ultras. (Not counting the extra for the armor upgrade, which is almost required for them to be good)... Then something is wrong in this game. Either the Zerg is sitting on more bases than he can defend, or he's not macroing well and can be killed at any moment, or he's getting them 2 at a time and you aren't scouting or something.
Lets start over on this and talk about a checklist type system instead of the 200/200 thing i'll explain why in just a moment.
First does the zerg own the majority of the map? If so give up if they get ultras, you have lost.
Are you upgrades equal? If yes good, if no make them equal asap.
Do you have almost the same amount of expansions they do? If no get them quick, If yes good but...
...Do you have an ability to churn out units almost as fast as the zerg? This is the key to the silly 200/200 battles other races get into with zerg.
Zerg will lose head on 200/200 unit per unit BUT they will be replacing units faster than you can. This is how zerg wins the 200/200 battles and why they get soooo freaking many expansions. Its really the way you close the game as zerg.
You can not win a 200/200 reliably versus a zerg when they have 6 expos and you have 1.5. They will throw that 200 supply army at you expecting to lose it all but reduce you by 2/3's while they instantly build a new and improved 200 supply army to counter your predominant unit and you produce 30 supply worth of units in the same time period.
On October 06 2010 10:45 GoodNewsJim wrote: ~1100 Diamond play
Lets say you have a 200 supply Terran army, and your Zerg opponent has 200
horrible way to think. in BW a Terran 200/200 mech army with full upgrades was unstoppable and everyone knew it. but the game was balanced. why? because you dont fucking attack something that big head on.
you're not going to counter it directly. ultra's are incredibly expensive and precious and slow to build. you need to be constantly whittling down the ultra numbers as best you can. other things you can do are things like dropping the main and killing the ultra cavern. scanning and catching ultras out of position. then there's the old attack his army and trade armies and reinforce faster.
many ways, none are "make A if he has B and he loses"
What? trading armies and reinforce with terran faster than a zerg opponent? Are you serious? Whittling out ultra numbers? How do you do that effeciently? Killing ultra cavern is nice but zerg needs probably just 1 second to build all those ultras. It seams you are talking about a tvt or tvp, not about tvz.
To the topic. Hydras are very weak with no support. Try going for a timing push to kill him before hive tech kicks in, or die trying.
There is one counter that beats any zerg lategame unit, but it may not be your idea of the perfect army composition.
Mass fucking raven.
Yes. Mass. Fucking. Raven.
List of units that counter ravens: HT
List of units that raven doesn't counter: HT
Bratok had games with much better raven use than that, but I can't find them. You'll just have to take my word for it, but ravens are fucking awesome and they even counter voidrays, phoenixes, carriers, bc, motherships, corruptors, mutalisks and vikings.
Shit turrets in enemy main, shit turrets at all enemy expos, shit marauders in enemy main, hsm enemy army to oblivion. Turret+HSM mutalisks and corruptors if they try to fight your ravens. HSM rapes hydra.
Thors can focus down ultras and ultras can't cleave well against them anymore. Micro hellions around to splash hydras to death. You gotta micro though, and you have to have as many thors as he has ultras.
I have the best idea evar! IF you get to 200/200 and ultras/hyrdas are what he has i have a crazy counter that might work! Block off all chokes to your bases with multiple planetary fortress's with a few marauders behind to hit ultras faster and scvs to repair. Make a shit ton of vikings and just constantly harass around landing in multiple bases at once or multiple huge landings.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned much is obstructions of various types are quite effective against zerg ground in general, including ultras. So look for tight terrain or create some with buildings.
I feel like this fight is 100% related to the Terrain. On a ramp, with a barracks and depots blocking it, the Zerg has NO CHANCE. Though someone must've said this before, Yamato cannon does full damage to Ultralisks.
I'd say, marauder tank thor, a bunker or two, and a plannetary fortress + the choke. You can even put your production buildings in the choke to just make it unstoppable wall. Get your SCV's hotkeyed or something so a huge chunk can go repair the buildings (the SCV's won't be hit by cleave, anymore). Now you're going to think that in that case, the Zerg'll just take the entire map and break through with broodlords, banelings, nydus, doom drops, or sheer numbers.
Since ultralisks are pretty high tier and expensive as well, they won't be too far ahead. Then you just mass ravens.
Point defense drones make zerg AA mostly useless, hydras can't hit your ravens, and are very suceptible to the missles. Corruptors are their best bet, as mutas get annihilated by the missiles. Just fly around, putting auto turrets everywhere, preferablly in tight areas, like behind mineral lines and also on cliffs. Eventually, the Zerg player will be forced to come to you, which'll make him lose the game.
The reason why ravens, instead of banshees, is because raven's have energy that restores itself overtime, making them more and more cost effective. Try it! I know I want to, if only I had the chance.
One thing I've found to be pretty effective against just ultras is marines. Really.
For instance, if you're on the defensive, set up your marines in a spread pattern so that they don't all get splashed, but an ultralisk can't fit through the holes. Put them on Hold Position and add in some medivacs.
Ultralisks deal 17.5 damage per second or so to a marine. Medivacs heal 13.5 damage per second to the marine.
It takes the ultralisk like 13 seconds to kill a marine with combat shields who is being healed by a medivac.
Behind the marine blockade you have whatever ranged units you want to use to kill the ultras.
Attacking it's a bit more difficult to deal with because you can't set it up like that, but in general, having some marines with a good number of medivacs will seriously hamper ultralisk movement. Having a lot of marines in a blob obviously gets trashed quickly, and if more than one ultralisk can hit at a time the medivac healing becomes a lot less exciting, but if you can force their pathing to work against them (not too hard to be honest), the ultralisks quite often get caught up trying to kill a single near-immortal marine for way too long.
Advancing, or caught off guard you can help this situation out a lot by just taking your marine blob, putting them on hold position, (especially if they've managed to form a bit of a concave already) and then pulling half of your marine force away.
Whatever you do, I've found the best meat shield against ultralisks is just marines healed by medivacs.
are u terran/toss more scared of ultras or brood lords? as a zerg i lean towards brood lords in my late army over ultras because kiting ultras makes me rage hard. i love sending my broodlord/corrupter/muta ball of death across the map to end games.
mixing some infestors in with ultras is a whole different story tho...
DON'T be behind in upgrades. There is no reason to.
You will in a long game have to rely on both bio and mech because against zerg neither is selfsustained. Pure mech will die to mass muta and pure bio will die to banelings and die even harder to baneling/infestor/ultralisk.
Always get both vehicle and infantry weapon upgrades imo from the start and don't fall behind zerg. Armor upgrades I think are optional based on style and strategy but you should always aim for +3 bio weapons and vehicle weapons.
Then tank/thor/bio will do fine against ultras, just don't fight them in an awkward spot and most importantly FOCUS FIRE.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to focus fire ultralisks in a battle. They do soo much damage and they have soo much hp that if your units are shooting all of the ultras at the same time you won't stand a chance. You will just end up with a post battle scene of 10 ultras all at red health, and zero terran units. Ideally you should let your tanks shoot whatever the hell they like and then have your thors and marauders focus fire ultras, while keeping separate control groups or just selecting in battle to not have ALL of those units focus fire the same ultralisks.
You should always have Ravens along with your push in TvZ both because you need to clear creep tumors and scout burrowed units but also because they can PDD mutas or hydras. Two or more PDD's over the battlefield will ensure that the hydras remain nothing but a nuisance until the ultras are gone, and then those hydras are going to turn into pudding real fast.
Additional stuff to give you an edge is to not PDD until zerg has fully committed to the fight. Don't drop the drones until the ultras are in melee range otherwise zerg can just pull back and they will be wasted. Also don't drop all PDD's instantly, but drop them in sequences of two then the next two once the first are running low on energy. This also prevents zerg from making you waste them and then retreating.
If you have marines with your bio force try to sweep around your other units and make the marines form a wall for the ultras to chew through. Once marines are dead or if you have no marines use the marauders for the same purpose.
EPT
