On November 11 2010 08:25 ensis wrote:your first rep is completely pointless and just off topic as whole. the second... ok, at like 9:30 my mate has 15 scvs 1 raven 4 tanks 3 banshees and 21 marines with stim at your freaking door. you have 3 sentries 4 zealots 4 stalkers and 3 phoenixes.... you get my point?
So based on what u just told me, he spends: 9x50 + 100 + 4x150 + 3x150 + 21x50 = 2650 minerals 200 + 4x125 + 3x100 = 1000 gas you spend: 3x50 + 4x100 + 4x125 + 3x150 = 1500 minerals 3x100 + 4x50 + 3x100 = 800 gas 2650 - 1500 = 1150 which allows you to get 23 probes (29 total), which in turn, boost your mineral mining by more than 2x. The math tells you that you didn't spend any of this extra minerals. Not to mention the 200 gas difference, which allows for the time of a worker to mine a geyser 25 times.
So, what were you actually doing while he massed his army?
I usually go for HT's, even without storm - you can always get storm when your secondbasegas is running... With 2 to 4 HT's you can feedback the ravens rendering them absolutely useless... I agree of throwing down the robo bay, but the stargate tech is not cost effective imho, since the phoenix are fragile against marines, and the tech gives you almost nothing (unless you want to go for carriers!).
In the video shown by Daniel C (video by Horst) the T goes for dual starport with marines... The thing I had most diffculties in beating, was the MM+tank+raven push. With HT's however, you can feedback the raven - hell, you can even feedback the PDD! Later on the Archons are really usefull for beating down marines, the splash will eat them up. He will be forced to build ghosts, but even ghosts can be feedbacked. This I usually counter by seperating the HT's from each other (EMP has a very small aoe!).
This is how I win easiest against 1-1-1 with two racks added before timing push. But against marine,raven,banshee the feedback will eat up everything, and stalkers are still usefull!
Regardless it will involve cutting probes. I know this goes against the very thing you're trying to do while Fast Expanding (Having a better economy) but you NEED lots of zealots for those marines to kill even with banshees shooting you. You'll see after holding this off that when you resume production from both nexus you take a substantial lead.
Youtube video is a good approach, chargelots and phoenix.
I'm a 2100-ish diamond Terran, and I almost exclusively go for a Polt timing push, with the exception of maps with a really super small rush distance. I go two rax, one factory one starport, and I push when I have out a raven and two banshees without cloak. I immediately expand as I start to push.
I win almost 90% of games that way in TvP, so many that when my opponent complains that it's unfair I kind of agree, haha.
Anyway, sometimes people do manage to hold it off. The key to the P player winning is to be able to fight the battle away from the PDD, so I think the simplest way to do this is to make sure the PDD is put in a non-essential location. Basically, if you just sit in your base, you're gonna lose. Because I'll just run into your base, throw down the PDD, and your range attacks will be cancelled. You can't really escape, since I'm on your ramp. You could run away from the PDD to the back of your base, but your army will probably be broken up and at any rate I can probably destroy your production buildings while staying in safe range of the PDD.
But if you engage me elsewhere, you can force me to throw down my PDD in a non-essential location and then get the hell out of there. It takes a while to get enough energy for a second one, so this gives you time to do a potentially damaging attack on me.
One guy won against me because he built all the buildings in his base very far from his ramp. He forced me to throw the PDD at the choke, then backed up, and could engage me away from the PDD, especially with some nice forcefields. It's the same basic thing though, just make me put it in a non-essential location. If you can engage me in an open field, that would be best, and then just run.
I've also had people use some really interesting ways. I had a guy really really annoy me with immortal drops, and he had crazy micro (mostly picking off supply depots, reactors, tech labs, etc.). It distracted me a lot, and he had been building up void rays while keeping me busy with the drops. When it came time for my push, which was already behind, he had three or four void rays and took me out easily.
So, I can't actually play Toss at all, but that's how people have won against me.
On November 11 2010 08:27 GoldenH wrote: I've had success against this build by going 2 robo 1 gate, pumping stalkers + 1 sentry out of the gate, and immortals.
Stop talking, you obviously don't know what the polt attack is. Immortals are almost useless against the marine/raven/shee version of this build, and not substantially better off against the bizarre and slightly later MM iterations of the build.
The only "good" answer to this build (IE assume players of equal skill not making big mistakes) is a stargate + 2-3 phoenix, plus 3gateways of constant production, but first you have to scout it, which necessitates either an obs or hallu, or you just go blind and pray he isn't actually rushing thors, or only 1-porting a couple banshees. Of course, failing to get obs is also autolose if they get cloak... I honestly think the real answer is a balance patch allowing obs to be built from either starport or robo, but absent that I think you have to open phoenix when you see only marines and a bunk at his front, and pray you aren't wrong.