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On December 03 2010 01:44 goiflin wrote:Show nested quote +I feel that the objective of this is not exactly to break the game with some superb early build as everyone's talking about with why it won't work. Yes, you can get rushed early because you're not building a supply depot. To use this exactly as was stated in the OP is basically.. stupid. stupid as hell. But if you can get past early game with a standard build and then go back to some good ol brood war style and play like everyone's favorite cartoon Franklin the turtle, I feel like this could be viable, especially since everyone knows bunkers don't cost money.
If one can put this to use in the MIDGAME while turtling vigorously, this could be very cool and probably really stupid. The biggest problem would be then keeping up production with this insane income. As someone else said, 60 marines every minute is not exactly viable. But with this, especially against zerg, you can prepare a huge midgame push to end the game, because everyone knows terran hates late game vs zerg.
And yeah, I'm a zerg player, so don't take all of this as great knowledge. Just adding potential theory for others to test out. I suppose this wouldn't exactly the opener to the build, but in any event, you are still going to have to halt army production to start pumping out 550 mineral/125 second OC's. I don't know about you, but it's not like terrans can just faceroll through the midgame with ten marines, or something. They have to build units, multiple production facilities, etc. to stay alive in the first place. It's not like all the terran players in the world are sitting on 600 minerals in the mid game all the time. The benefits will take a while to come in, as well. There are simply going to be times that you can be crushed, by an opponent with half a brain, because you simply won't have the production facilities to supplement a large force to counter a push that's coming to your base. I also enjoy how nobody has mentioned how hard this would be to actually build in one base/natural. Command centers aren't the same size as a supply depot, and terran armies are pretty immobile, so it's not like you can just put these CC's down at random expansions, the opposing player will just punish you for it.
Another "inside the box" thinking post. You're assuming everyone, including pros keeps their minerals down to ~50 at all times. I've lost count how many times I see top ladder playing sitting with >1000 minerals in midgame, and have to throw down about 5 production buildings to cut it down so they don't look retarded. Instead of making them all rax/fac/star, throw a CC or two down too. 3 minutes later you'll be cranking out the minerals.
Heck, I saw one toss player, minigun, a #1 ranked ladder player, slip in his army production/macro, and was sitting on over 3k mineral off 3 bases, about 17 minutes into a cross position metal game. His answer was throwing down 10 farking waprgates. Obviously he's toss, but even then, what if he threw down 3 extra nexus instead? That's a mega-fark-ton of chronoboost to use on whatever. Same with zerg. When I see zerg get mineral heavy, they throw down expos at every available expo, even knowing they sure as heck can't defend them, much less saturate them. Why not throw down in-base hatches for extra larvae? Same principle for Ts, they just get an even bigger advanatage.
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I said zomg this would be amazing until I remembered the time to build a CC, the time it takes to make the OC isnt huge but I think the best time to mass OC's is after you've safely tucked yourself into a turtling position then land/build a CC on a high yield and just mine it out with the OC's you've made then the returns would be ridiculous since mules are so OP. After that building a mech army wouldnt be out of the question with a mixed bio in there since you can afford to march 10-20 SCVs with auto repair on even for defensive purposes. I'm going to test this idea out against the computer on a few games then actually apply the Terran mineral obesity onto a few league games.
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On December 03 2010 02:30 Saechiis wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2010 01:41 Sm3agol wrote:
Some of you people need to....ummmmmm, wake up? All you people bashing it are bashing it off of a pure no supply depot, no SCV build conception. If you mix it in gently with a more normal turtlish T build, I think it will do just fine. Obviously this is all still theory-crafting, but I think the concept has massive potential. Just do a more or less standard build, work in another CC or two into a normal build, turtle a bit more than usual, then when you get your massive mineral pile going start massing CCs, rax, marines, hellion, whatever eats through your minerals. Just because you have a crap ton of minerals doesn't mean you won't have any scvs mining gas or w/e. You'll just have a mega-ton of minerals. Build about 10 reactored rax mid-game, and start suiciding groups of 30 marines at his base every minute or so while your more normal army gets up to strength.
Sure it might not ever be a completely viable standard build, but if you play someone that you've played before in ladder and know he doesn't push early, or goes tech heavy, try it out. Marines are so ridiculously useful that your basically never going to be just "suiciding" them unless you're intentionally doing so.
Imagine having a typical TvX late macro game, only instead of 60 SCVs, and a 140 supply army, you have 18 SCVs on gas, 4-8 constantly building random buildings and random groups of 30 hellions/marines to do whatever the fark you want with while you still have your normal supply army out battling. And you don't care what happens to that 30 supply group, because you have more minerals than you can possibly use.
Now imagine a 2 v 2 ZT vs XX, where your teamate, the T, leaves, you go mass CC with his units while still building normal Z army. Also build an inbase hatch or three in every normal expo and extra queens so you can send a constant stream of zerglings off 9 hatcheries to your opponents base, lol. Imagine 300 strong army of zerglings popping out of your base every 30 seconds, lol.
/theory crafting
All-in-all, I don't see this being the end of supply depots or anything else drastic, but I definitely do see T late games transforming into mass CC/planetary to eat up minerals and free up supply. Lol, people aren't bashing it for the no supply depot, no-scv build alone, they are also bashing it because it implies Terran can just build mass Command Centers and survive. Instead of proposing how OP it would be in a late-game situation, come with some suggestions or replays showing how you get to that point without them killing you with a handful of zealots or lings. The funny thing is that your opponent can take another base for every in-base CC you build, Zergs might even be able to take 2. Maybe you need to wake up?
Again, i don't think you see the potential. Sure, they can't just mass CCs and survive. Noone is saying that, I don't think.
What I'm trying to say is, work some extra OCs into a normal build. Once you get to 4/5/6 OCs, and you've made it to mid-late game, then the MULE mechanic becomes ridiculous. Drop a CC at a gold with 5 scvs, morph into OC while building refineries. Drop in 10 MULEs. 10 MULEs at 380 min per 90 seconds.........2500 minerals per minute. How is that not huge? You could basically send half of more of your mining SCVs to get suicided, and get that much bigger of an army. And be better off economically. 2500 minerals a minute.......Enough for 50 marines. Off one base in one minute.
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Day[9] had a daily a few weeks ago where QxC fought a protoss player using a mass reaper strategy. He was able to pin the protoss into his base for a good 10 minutes using nothing but reaper harass. Obviously not every harass will be as effective but even 7 or 8 minutes of uninterrupted play is probably enough for this strategy to take off.
It's important to note that aside from pinning the opponent in his base for a good period of time, mass reaper builds are relatively mineral light and gas heavy due to the long build time and light mineral costs of reapers. Reaper builds also reduce the need to save orbital energy for scans since you know exactly what your opponent is doing while you have troops. The resources required to build the command centers will come naturally as a result of this build.
The extra minerals are normally used to fast expand and/or start mass barracks, but if OP's theorycrafting is accurate maybe instead of tossing down an expansion and five barracks you could toss down two or three CC's and fewer extra barracks. Since you know the exact timing and nature of the protoss's push you can balance barracks, troops, and extra CC's accordingly.
There would probably still be a small window of vulnerability but if you planned well and fight off his initial timing push (if he is even able to scout what you are doing in time) your production will easily blow past his within a few minutes.
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550 minerals for ~5 scv's and 11 supply plus the most delayed army production in the history of RTS games.
if you're oversaturating then you should be thinking 'expand', not 'ned more mulez'. if you're not oversaturated then:
24/7 mule is 3 extra minerals per second.
24/7 chronoboosted nexus, ergo 33% faster worker production (~33% more workers), is a cumulative 0.2 minerals per second, and therefore equals the income of the mule after 168 seconds... then continues to increase as long as your base is not oversaturated.
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as a zerg player, i'd like to see this exploited to its fullest potential... yes... exploit away...break the game.. mua hahaha.
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United States17042 Posts
This sounds like this kind of build is going to work amazingly for one of the genetic testers that are floating around - you're going to need a few supply depots to defend early game pressure, but maybe you can change some of the genetic testers to give you checkpoints?
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On December 03 2010 01:30 mlbrandow wrote:
First, the most important bit I've gathered so far:
[b]14CC is not efficient for mass CC build. In fact, with ideal timing, I don't think you should even start your 2nd cc until your first OC starts at 16 supply.
Actually if you 14 CC you can double OC and then go mass MMM + more CCs. As sooner you start with your second CC your economy allows you to build another one.
Also a lot of people asuming you dont have to build depots anymore. Actually you can just cut 2 or 3 when the next CC is done. The real goal of this build is a maxed army with just 30-40 SCVs (not figured out yet) and a lot of free supply for your army. After getting more than 8 OC you can even kill 15 workers and use the rest for gas mining only.
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Another important thing to note is that zerg players already have to work this idea of balancing unit production with drone production. This CC/mule concept just takes this a step further, as the potential benefits of cutting 8 marines for an extra CC produces far greater long term benefits with much greater short term risk.
So, (using an contrived example here with imaginary numbers) if the terran player sees a protoss start a robo facility with two gateways already down and he expects a colossus timing push to arrive at his base in around 320 seconds he might quickly calculate that he can throw a CC down while still getting enough troops during that time to hold off the initial push. Taking this risk and then holding off the push, the extra mule income and faster main + nat saturation would probably put him decently far ahead for the midgame.
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I would love to see replays of this working
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If this works and people started doing it on a regular basis then blizzard would do one of a few things:
1) nerf mules to high heaven either by reducing what they mine, how long they live for or energy cost or a combination of them.
2) remove mules all together
3) nerf morph time for OC
4) add a cooldown to mule use
Any of these things would ruin the game for people who play the way the game was intended. While this build seems fun, I don't think you will ever see it come to fruition.
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On December 03 2010 03:20 HTX wrote:Also a lot of people asuming you dont have to build depots anymore. Actually you can just cut 2 or 3 when the next CC is done. The real goal of this build is a maxed army with just 30-40 SCVs (not figured out yet) and a lot of free supply for your army. After getting more than 8 OC you can even kill 15 workers and use the rest for gas mining only.
Exactly. I think a few too many people are hung up on a way to 'break the game' with this or turn it into some form of cheese. The implication of the main post just says that building as many Orbital Commands as you can afford to do without dying is very efficient.
Imagine a build with constant aggression and constant expanding. You'll have SOME depots, but every expansion you take increases your income and every army-trade keeps your supply low. It would be very efficient.
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Very interesting theory. I can think of a few advantages to using supply depos and scvs instead of mules and command centers. The first is that having 3 scvs instead of 1 mule means 3x the repair which is an importiant ability for terrans. Second scvs can attack while mules cannot, sure in the late game 50 supply of extra army instead of scvs is better but until then having the extra attack power of scvs can help immencely. Another is more of a concern for lower level players but its much easier to wall off quickly with depos than command centers. My last concern is the extra apm required for mules. If you have eight orbital commands its an extra 12 clicks to worry about 90 seconds or so. Sure that doesn't seem like much but during the heat of late game when you're dealing with multiple drops, trying to set up more production buildings and microing your main army in the middle you could easly forget to drop the mules for a couple minutes and run out of minerals extra fast. Its an extra thing to worry about like larva injection for zerg. Besides those things I think you have a great idea and I look forward to hearing from players better than I on how viable and potentially game breaking a strat it could be.
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On December 03 2010 02:20 itsMAHVELbaybee wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2010 01:29 TheToast wrote:On December 02 2010 17:12 30to1 wrote:
Mules
Mules are incredible. So incredible that I think they may legitimately break the game if used to their fullest potential.
When Huk was on the Day9 Daily a week or two ago, he was talking about Mule issues too. Apparently some non-terran pro players are beginning to have problems in the late game because terran can continue to call down Mules instead of building supply consuming SCVs; allowing terran to devote much more supply to their army. If what you have suggested would be possible, even only to a small degree, it could give terran a HUGE advantage in supply-maxed battles. Even if you could cut SCVs in half, that's possibly an extra 30 supply to your army in the late game. I'm interested to see how this turns out. I really hope blizzard changes Mules to consume supply though, the current system as you correctly pointed out is broken. Can't see how this breaks anything since Zerg larva inject overload and the fact that a maxed out Protoss army beats a "normal" maxed out Terran army with mass colossi and psi storm. Not to mention Terran is the slowest at replenishing and reinforcing their armies.
I respect your opinion, but when someone like Huk talks about balance issues I tend to value their opinion more. And what he said makes sense, once terran has 3 or 4 OCs and they start losing SCVs, they can be replaced with MULEs and then make 150-160 worth of non-worker units (as opposed to maybe 140 supply or less). Also I'm not sure I believe that a 100 supply protoss army will always beat a 100 supply terran army, there are way too many variables that need to be considered to make such a statement.
However I should clarify, Huk didn't say it was "broken", that was my hyperbole about the situation 
On December 03 2010 02:20 itsMAHVELbaybee wrote:
Already there are complaints of lategame woes against Zerg from Terran so MULE abuse seems to be a recent solution. Honestly changing the MULE would be tough as it changes the entirety of playing from early to late game. Just like adjusting chronoboosts or larva inject.
That's true, any changes made to the MULE system would have to be done in conjunction with a dozen other tiny balance changes to terran.
Actually, LaLush talked quite a bit about MULE balance a while back in This Thread. Was pre-patch 1.1 but many of his points about the MULE system are still valid.
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I think this idea in concept would be pretty overpowered in a 2v2 or 3v3 game when you can feed so much minerals to your allies. Especially if you had a easy to expand Zerg who would only need to mine gas at his expos.
If they did consider nerfing this, they should add 2 supply for each mule.
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that tactic is stupid. you can have 100000 OC's, but if u cant get expand they are useless. to get expand u need army, if u need army = u need supply depots to get it fast.
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Its not the elimination of supply depots that I think is where the build/theory may go wrong, and I may not fully realize what is going on. But spending supply on units, instead of SCVs, and just play a standard game? I feel like If I saw someone doing this I would have to opt for what day9 likes to call just going and fucking killing him. I feel like I might catch a bit of flack from the people who really support the idea, but its almost like you see where its going if you scouted it.
Imagine, your little worker goes in after your pylon/depo/OL on 9 or whenever hummm... pretty standard, midgate scout "WTF BASES IN HIS BASE?" that would just tell me that killing of that guy needed to happen quickly
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On December 03 2010 03:31 Shlowpoke wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2010 03:20 HTX wrote:Also a lot of people asuming you dont have to build depots anymore. Actually you can just cut 2 or 3 when the next CC is done. The real goal of this build is a maxed army with just 30-40 SCVs (not figured out yet) and a lot of free supply for your army. After getting more than 8 OC you can even kill 15 workers and use the rest for gas mining only. Exactly. I think a few too many people are hung up on a way to 'break the game' with this or turn it into some form of cheese. The implication of the main post just says that building as many Orbital Commands as you can afford to do without dying is very efficient. Imagine a build with constant aggression and constant expanding. You'll have SOME depots, but every expansion you take increases your income and every army-trade keeps your supply low. It would be very efficient.
this
without some of the key in-game pegs (depots and scvs in this case) it will not work, if you get just enough of these it will work incredibly
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I've been building extra orbitals for a while, but I never sat down to do the math. I think the key to this is better base organization. No more random placement for me.
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anyone have a replay of this being used?
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EPT
