you know what, this is even funnier in custom 3v3s on arakan citadel. 4 oc to start, and then pushed on 200/200 off like 10 raxes (adding 5 more later). drop a scan and took tanks off the cliff, trash talked a little (because they trash talked me before the game started), big fight, whole army died while doing serious damage. Double expanded from gold to island and middle.
they replied with a "oops sorry" after my entire army died but without having scouted my base. 3+ minutes and 4 OCs later another mega army arrives at their front door with tank support. they go wtf and another big fight happens. whole army dies again but I take most of them out + their expos.
3 mins later again another horde of upgraded mm and 10 tanks roll towards their now rather diminished base. they called me the biggest cheater they ever saw. resource collection per minute is 3k+
Imo. 4 oc is one too much. It delays the pressure too much and allows zerg to drone up a bit too much. Either way you'll notice I have way too many ressources at the end 5k mineral? I just didn't have enough raxes to keep up and zerg, properbly didn't have enough larva.
P.S. Jungling this much micro macro is hard :S
The macro / micro is quite intense, I find my self getting supply blocked at least once between the 9-14 minutes, there's just SOO much production going on.
From playing this build In my experience 3 OC is better and is enough. 4 OC takes too long and by that time you'll need a raven to spot burrowed banelings/roach.
The most important thing about playing terran vs zerg is attack timing. When you watch your own replay, you'll see an average difference of 2-3 thousand more spent on technology(replay spending tab) than the zerg, and that is a lot of infrastructure( all those rax) and it is questionable whether brute forcing with mule spam is any good. Also have a look at the Units Lost tab(replay tab) and you'll see that there's almost a 1:1 ratio of units lost. If you built more than one turret per mineral line the technology difference becomes like closer to 3k worth of gas and minerals.
If terran is to win by efficiency then it means that the units lost difference(t-z) must be less than the spending on technology difference (t-z). That's very difficult to achieve.
On December 09 2010 03:11 shadymmj wrote: you know what, this is even funnier in custom 3v3s on arakan citadel. 4 oc to start, and then pushed on 200/200 off like 10 raxes (adding 5 more later). drop a scan and took tanks off the cliff, trash talked a little (because they trash talked me before the game started), big fight, whole army died while doing serious damage. Double expanded from gold to island and middle.
they replied with a "oops sorry" after my entire army died but without having scouted my base. 3+ minutes and 4 OCs later another mega army arrives at their front door with tank support. they go wtf and another big fight happens. whole army dies again but I take most of them out + their expos.
3 mins later again another horde of upgraded mm and 10 tanks roll towards their now rather diminished base. they called me the biggest cheater they ever saw. resource collection per minute is 3k+
Just tried this build vs a 1900 diamond and won so easy it wasnt even funny. I'm 1700 diamond not that great but hey it worked for me I will be using it again
I switch between this build and a banshee harass build...I'm currently winning around 75% of tvz matchups. We should lock and delete this thread before people catch on
I haven't seen any high quality replays of aggressive zergs on maps with wide open naturals to completely convince me of this build's effectiveness yet...
I tried this build funny enough on blistering sands. 4 Orbital commands allowed me to support about 7 rax as I did not feel like waiting for 200/200 supply to push on a small map like that. My zerg opponent went pure hydra. I dont know why, but its the second time ive seen a zerg do that on the ladder. The MM with 1/1 stim and shield traded out evenly versus the hydras. I just continued producing from the ridiculous economy you get through all the mules and a constant stream of units arriving at his base pissed him off enough to not even say gg.
When the zerg sacks an overlord in your base and scouts like two CC just chilling if he is smart he will realise A. In four or five minutes he is going to die if he does not stop this, as to me it is similiar to expanding to a third and not taking geysers lol B. There are only two barracks producing only marines, and how effecting a ling roach all in will be against this, maybe b-lings.
So I think 4OC is too greedy, as any SC2 zerg player with a functioning brain will never let this ultra economy establish.
Just tried this build for the first time last night. Went 4-0 against Zerg. I am a horrible player, but the income helps me have TONS more stuff than the Zerg. Thank you OP for the OP build!
This is the future of Terran I think. Or at least, if not this particular 4OC build (although this looks great at the moment), then the in general concept of extra OCs for mule abuse. The extra Supply + Zerglike production, when combined with the inherant power and efficiency of Terran units, just makes for a devastating combo. It's not unbeatable--no build is, and no build should be. But the potential is there to be very, very dangerous.
Which makes me happy. Zerg macro and lategame are already insane, and Chronoboost is currently grossly underused by even Pro-level Toss (watch any Pro Protoss and by mid to late game they're just sitting there with 200 energy on all their nexuses), which makes me think Toss macro has a substantially higher ceiling than has currently been reached, which when combined with their crazy T3 units will just be terrifying.
And that's great. All 3 races *should* be scary as hell if you let them play an unhindered economic game. Zerg and to a lesser extent Protoss being lategame races while Terran all-ins is just dumb.
On December 03 2010 05:09 Itrees wrote: Fascinating. Two extra OCs costs 400 mins per CC, plus another 150 per for the upgrade, meaning 550 per OC, 1100 min total? If a mule is 300 mins, that means you're back to even after just 4 mule calldowns, which should happen , so after the fourth mule calldown, it's all profit.
I can see why this might've worked really well on jungle basin.
One mule mines up to 270 minerals on [Blue] minerals after 67.5±0.50 IRL seconds
Orbitals = 550 in total
Two Mules = 540 ( 480 ( 2x240 ) if you cast on far minerals ) minerals in total ( but only after 67.5±0.50 IRL seconds ) Orbitals start with 50 energy, first cast = free It pays for half of itself immediately after 67.5±0.50 IRL seconds if the first cast is timed exactly
First Orbital = 150 ( Main CC = free / - 400 ) Gain 120 minerals after 67.5±0.50 IRL seconds First Orbital starts producing 270 after the first cast every 67.5 IRL seconds
Mules only mine 270 if you mine the closest patches, further ones only get to 240 ( so find the patches with closer ones ) Call down supplies = 100 minerals instantly
The second one pays for itself after 2x67.5±0.50 IRL seconds
Since you have 4 Orbitals in total ( Main+3 extra ), you might as well build supply depots instead of using Call down supplies? It won't be instantly, but you'd get 170 more over all after 67.5±0.50 IRL seconds
you have... an armory at 20 minutes... 1/1 till 20 minutes
you could get stim/shield quicker ( you had the gas and at least two tech labs ) you'd have enough minerals if you had less energy on all 3 orbitals, given their energy, you'd mine like 600ish more minerals at that same time to support everything you were building + getting upgrades
you opened the depots for scvs to get attacked several times
one time you didn't go defend against it ( units outside but you didn't move them back in )
energy could be used 20 seconds earlier or immediately after upgrade
at some point, you had over 300 energy over the 3 orbitals ( sometimes even up to 500 energy over the 3 orbitals )
it wouldn't hurt to add a few turrets since you have 3 orbitals and possibly more scvs ( extra to expands shortly after need scvs/gas on expand your income should've exceeded 2000... but you were at like 800-1000 instead...
i had a game on xel naga caverns where the guy did not go baneling aggressive, and went mutas, and eventually lost.
and i told him i was going to get orbital first, its on my friends computer so i need to have him send me the replay.
i spawned top
he went heavy mutas after expand, he attacked me with 14 or so when i had like my 9th barracks about to finish. i decisively did not build turrets so i could have maximum army production, and just went for his base. i scanned at the moment he started to panic and morph a billion bane lings. they got there just before the eggs hatched so i was able to get a great position on him and lost all my army to his, with him having 6 mutas as the only survivors. at this point he could not have counter attacked my nat because his mutas set his econ back pretty seriously.
i quickly rebuilt a 140 food army, and killed his nat hatchery which had 200 hp left, and stagger stepped my mm until they were at his valley expo (in xel naga caverns, the one where u blow up the rocks) and suicided the rest of my army there because the banelings did not morph fast enough.
i then built about 15 bunkers in staggered position around the gold while he was at a bad 0 income state (i had no army at this point, but i could rebuild with a lot of money saved), and put in a marine or 2 in each, while researching building armor. i landed in the gold right when my nat/main ran out, and i've been ninja expoing the top left expo for 3 minutes at a time (before his mutas get there)
my bunkers (and tanks within them to stop banelings, at this point he was going pure banes like 20 in a control group) stopped him from running zergling raids into my valley expo, and he couldnt kill the tanks because they were in a bunker field 4 bunkers deep.
constant drops and a transition to tank to fight his eventuall ultra baneling infestor muta combo. which wrecked havock on my mmm + 3 tank army. i fell back to my 15 bunkers and he suicided a few ultras into them, thinking he had to have attacked.
i then rebuilt a maurauder thor tank and 10 marine army, and won by inching my position from the sight tower to his gold expo, while constantly doing drops on his 4th and 5th expos.
2.1k Terran here. I`ve been talking with Griffith a bit and been primarily using this strategy as a main in ladder/custom games in TvZ..I' see a lot of promise on it.I've beaten countless number of 1.9-2.4k zergs with this build while I do have my fair share of losses.
As mentioned in the thread..the strong point of this strategy is that it rips apart zergs which play passively and engage in the macro game with you. I mean, there's perfect reasoning of why a lot of zergs would react in this fashion simply because, that is zerg's goal to get to the late game have their 3-4 bases up and crush the T army.
The 200/200 army depends on not the 4 OC's but how fast you can secure the natural. As well of course, not getting supply blocked..keeping up macro/production of workers expenditure of mules etc...but how fast you secure your natural determines the kind of army you will end up having. If you view a lot fo the replays, the strategy it's been done is on Jungle basin, a map where the natural is free (practically), and has a large space to prepare for the 4OC build quite nicely. Zerg's counter to this would be to constantly pressure the natural, deny it as if you look at this build 1. Its heavy marine composition early (note the 31/32 gas) meaning very late tech so zerglings/bling pressure does really well in denying the Terran the accessibility to the minerals to create this horde of an army. If you can hold the natural long enough, the terran cannot retrieve that 200/200 army and what youre looking at is 140-150 composition for bioballl or mech play at the 15minute mark, which zerg should be easily capable of defending against.
So overall, it's somewhat map dependent. Maps like Xel Naga Caverns, Metapolis (unless cross positioned) not really recommended (due to the open ground and a lot of routes involved) Jungle basin, Shakuras Scrap or even a map like Lost Temple? By all means go for it.
Yeah, 4OC is pretty rough on metalopolis (esp close position). It's probably better to just 5-rax all-in or do the standard terran all-ins/cheese methods. Its kind of ironic now that close-positions are actually not too favorable for the 4OC setup mainly due to the 8-9 2base pressure from zerg.
Amended OP to include favorable/unfavorable map selection.
And also, I'd love to see 3v3 and 4v4 Videos of it... especially if one Terran goes 4 OC straight off while another goes 4OC shortly after the first 4 OC starts putting out the Bioball spam.
On December 10 2010 06:44 Conrose wrote: Any replays of the Mech transitions yet Griffith?
And also, I'd love to see 3v3 and 4v4 Videos of it... especially if one Terran goes 4 OC straight off while another goes 4OC shortly after the first 4 OC starts putting out the Bioball spam.
And can someone get a 4OC vs 4OC replay?
There are several 2.5k+ mech transitions demonstrating slow-push in several top in-houses, unfortunately I've also agreed to not release those replays yet (until the build becomes fairly mainstream) and also because they are preparing for several tournaments using it.
There's a lot of room for improvement in the execution aspect of mech transition, seeing how you can't just a-move your mech ball. Simultaneous micro/macro ability is critical. I can't pull it off well enough as I find that the instant I look away, my tanks get sniped or something along those lines.
I think CatsPajamas has a replay of an 8player 4OC FFA. (http://www.own3d.tv/video/45007/Viewer_FFA_only_using_4OC_build)
Out of curiosity to all the zerg ladder players, how often do you run across 4OC these days?
EPT
