On November 05 2010 02:52 Chairman Ray wrote: Since the metagame is relatively new, people feel that they can simply counter air with good micro skills. After a while, people will start dropping too many games because they didn't build turrets and such, and it will become more standard.
I disagree with you.
When you are doing a drop, if you see a turret you just move around it. This means that it's a lot harder to protect your base with static defenses like turrets.
More importantly if you see a series of turrets you cannot ignore, you just don't go through with your drop.
A couple well positioned vikings on the other hand, will not only stop the drop from happening but also kill all the units in the transport putting you much further behind than if they had just stopped the drop from happening.
If I build 4 missile turrets, I've spent the same as I would on an expansion. At this point, my opponent can freely take an expansion, knowing that he's "keeping up" in terms of cost spent on army.
I'm a big fan of banshee harassment, I see turrets/cannons/spores going up, and either A) move around to shoot something else, B) expand if he has so many turrets that I can't hit anything.
well, in regards to banshees, it's because they are INCREDIBLY effective at killing tons of workers from any given point in ur mineral line. so... u need 3 or *maybe* 2 perfectly placed spores/cannons/turrets to stop 1 banshee from killing like a dozen workers
and guess what, if u actually do that.. the banshee was already successful.
in sc1 u could build some static d because there wasnt any air that they could just make 1 of and kill a million workers with, so if they were committing to air harrass it meant they actually had to invest considerably resources. with a banshee this just isn't the case.. it really doesn't take much resources at all.
it's funny, a lot of you who say "build turret to stop banshee"... well... if u were playing in that game, and u built 2 turrets (200 minerals) to stop the banshee, chances are u wouldn't be covering every spot of ur mineral line. well guess what, the pro ur playing against is just going to fly the banshee to that exact spot, hold position, and proceed to kill all the workers that try to mine from that mineral patch. so you wasted 200 minerals and accomplished almost nothing.
and even if ur good enough to cover the mineral line, he's going to fly the banshee over and kill ur supply depots instead.
basically, anti air isn't good unless it's to stop a considerably resources commitment from the other player. which is exactly how it was in sc1.
That's not completely true. Cannons, turrets and spore crawlers have a sight range of 11 and are detectors. One on of them in your eco line will probably be enough to detect all banshees harassing your eco lines.
There are several reasons why the pros don't go for stationary defenses as Protoss and Terran, but the biggest reason is probably that they can be circumvented. Aerial Harass can poke around a base looking for undefended tech, supplies, production buildings or mineral lines and hit where the defenses are not. Cannons are incredibly frail and bunkers are very expensive to fill up.
Now stationary defenses you do see with some frequency amongst the pros are the Zerg Crawlers and the Terrans putting out a lot of late game Planetary Fortresses. Zerg Crawlers are a major exception because they are not as frail as the other units, can be healed pretty well with queens without endangering workers, and hit fairly hard. Add to all this that they can be repositioned as deemed necessary. Add to this that mid-late game zerg are pretty gas bound so often they have less gas than they do larva and minerals that they can make use of so a number of the extra larva for drones and then to crawlers just to keep on par with their opponents spending without being rendered utterly useless by the addition of say a Colossus or a few hellions like Zerglings are.
On November 05 2010 09:08 Perscienter wrote: That's not completely true. Cannons, turrets and spore crawlers have a sight range of 11 and are detectors. One on of them in your eco line will probably be enough to detect all banshees harassing your eco lines.
i don't think detection is the primary problem, it's actually killing the banshees that is generally the problem
sure, sometimes detecting them is the problem... but it doesn't matter if u can detect them if u don't have stuff at ur mineral line to stop them from killing ur workers
I think they make the minimum because they think they can get away with it, often maps that are good for air, both players will end up going air, so provided you have some map awareness you can shutdown any harass or force them to lose their air army to yours. I think the trend is similar to SC1 where pros would try to create a "line" of turrets on maps like Python where mutalisks cant harass from multiple angles, as its easy to leave your force in your base to defend if they fly past the turrets.
On November 05 2010 03:04 jinorazi wrote: since bw i've always been stuck with the mindset, "if you got money for a canon, get a dragoon instead".
i use static defense for detection or blocking off choke @ expo in a another starting location. or FE
This makes more sense when a goon is about equal to a cannon. Photon cannons are way better than stalkers if all you want to do is defend a point (150/150 vs 80/80 hp/shields, range of 7 vs range 6, 20 damage against everything vs 10/14 for the stalker). If you time things correctly, you can often build cannons and get a much better economy with less risk, and end up with a similar army at around the same time down the road... with more defense.
Although that doesn't really apply to air defense.
I assume you're referring to boxer v hopetorture (lol at both nicks btw) boxer was aiming for mineral heavy - exp+marine push build if he built eng-bay and 1 turret at main and exp that's 6 marines less in his push as well as some mining time lost cause your scv will be building
some might say scan = mule = minerals but they'd be wrong ; )
I've seen lots of games where harvesters get rocked and I wondered why pros don't build static defense. I'm pretty sure the real reason is that they feel giving up edges like wasting mins on defense is giving up too much early game. In the pro's, even small edges aren't something they are willing to part with. It's a gamble to some degree. They are hoping they can defend it with their army and many times they can. But sometimes, they can't and the tradeoff is something they are willing to live with.
Defensive structures definitely need more range for them to be used more frequently, especially spore crawlers.
I'm more surprised by the lack of Thors used by a lot of the top players against heavy Muta play. I feel like getting one Thor would do a lot to compliment the marine forces.
On November 05 2010 03:12 Typhon wrote: The pros know how much they can get away with. It's kind of like how a BW Terran would build pure tank/vulture, and the armchair strategist would be thinking "OMG IF YOU WENT MASS CARRIER YOU COULD DEMOLISH HIM"
Also, nothing in the game is free. The banshee player is sacrificing army size and expansion timing by spending money on tech. The defending player has to deal with 2 risks: a) he doesn't defend enough, and loses too much to the banshee b) he overcommits (i.e. spends almost as much as the attacker did on the banshee) to defense, and the banshee pulls back. If you've thrown away your army or expansion potential advantage, you're left one banshee down in the next engagement.
nalgene sums it up relatively well. When your opponent sees the turrets, he can just pull his banshee back and add it to his army. Every turret you make is that much money less for your army, while his banshees/mutas/voids can join into their army.
On November 04 2010 23:50 gREIFOCs wrote: Pros tend to change off game resources (Positioning, APM, Looking at the minimap, ect) for in game resources. With good control you only need "Shoot at this" stationary defenses to buy time for ther army to come.
Hit the nail on the head. Many pros would rather "spend" some of their APM addessing Anti Air and instead spend minerals on immediate other needs, than spend hundreds of minerals on an air threat that may or may not come. Having high apm saves you minerals.
People saying that it's wasted resources that should go into army are just as wrong as them really, there is no reason not to invest 325 minerals to prevent multiple 15 kills banshees.
if we convert the banshee cost into marines, it'll be around 5~6 marines. so if you can kill that banshee, it means you now have 6 more marines than your opponent. if those resources went on the turrets, you would break even on the army count.and please, don't call pro gamers idiots.
Bad argument, any decent player will outmicro most of those marines w/o stim, and adding stim would be another investment.
if the decent player can kill 6 marines, then, yes he'll be in a good shape army wise, otherwise not. on top of that, he will also repell the harass anyway with the mobile marines.
if one goes for cloak banshee, it means that he doesn't have much of an army, since he's teching hard, so you'll be far ahead on your army count and probably would already have stimpacks.
November 05 2010 00:07 Rhymenoceros wrote: Because they're are all flawless creations of god. We can have a discussion about mistakes they make and a general reluctance to make stationary D.
In the specific case being discussed, stationary D would have helped.
i'm not saying that they're gods, i just don't like the cocky attitude some people have around here calling someone on the GSL stupid, while they are struggling to get to diamond on the ladder. i'm not even trying to start a discussion about mistakes pro makes, and unlike you, i shared my point of view instead of just replying "yeah, turrests would help".
Are you at least aware that the fact cloaked banshees are huge investment helps my point even more, as I already said in my post .. ? It seems like your only point was "hurrdurr, they are progamers stfu".
In TvZ for example, you get turrets out right before you go timing push if you know he got mutas.
It's pointless to just mass up aa if you have units that can handle it in base. Ofc 1 on each base can be helpful if you meeting cloacked units so you don't have to waste scans and so on.
The thing about static defences like turrets is that the enemy can choose not to fight them. If I go muta I normally start with 3 to 5 in the starter wave just to test the defences and see what's up ahead. If then then see that a Terran as built 5 turrets on a mineral line I cheer because it's less units to fight. And I start macroing up a big ground force instead. Suddenly the turrets are just there and they can't help against a big ground push. Yes the argument is that you didn't lose a ton of workers but you could have done that with normal units too. Or I can move my air force to a different location and kill tech structures that isn't covered.
Static defences can never join you in the offense. So for pure detection and AA they will be in your base. It can provide nice cover for your base while you are out of it, but it's still a lot of resources that could have been in your army.
I think one the main things in the game is to build up momentum. You want a driving force that can be used to destroy the enemy. A big line of defensive structures helps you live not kill. And again... the enemy can choose to not fight you there because it's not where the battle will be won.
EPT
