On December 31 2010 11:11 avilo wrote: I used to exclusively ghost mech TvP ages ago...but I scrapped that when it turned out to not be viable anymore. A combination of protosses getting much better at this game, and the patch completely killed tank based mech.
Every time you do it, just like serv said, toss takes a free 4th/5th, and one of those might even be a gold. Then they just go carriers, mass immortal/templar/gates with collosus, and will re-max zerg style and kill you, while you're barely on one maxed out supply limit, and with Terran you cannot reproduce your army instantly, while P can.
So mech if you want to, but from my personal experience it got to the point where I had to ask myself: do I want to play this game for fun and win TvPs like this vs weaker players or do I want to start winning SC2 and get better? The choice was pretty obvious.
So if you play for fun, by all means, keep going for that mech TvP.
Avilo I am pretty familiar with your ghost mech. You state that the expansions are the hardest part to deal with. Does this usually mean a toss fast expand? (some people in this thread have noted that toss will attempt this if they know you are meching.) I've encountered problems like this an FE from a protoss is alot harder to hide than a terran's FE. With your ghost mech build it would seem you would notice the FE long before you wanted to put down your factory not to mention your starport. If you notice it what I have been trying to work on is a tank hellion timing attack to discourage toss from FEing. I gain the second 100 gas about the time the factory is about 3/4 done and instead of saving it for a starport I build a second factory. (both gain tech labs) Build tanks when you have the gas and hellions otherwise. Start the blue flame upgrade asap and about 30sec into the research start the siege mode upgrade so they will both finish simultaneously. My push occurs at the moment around the 7:00-7:30 mark (still working on it I think I can do it faster) with 4 tanks/4 hellions/ and about 14-16 marines. I'm no expert with protoss builds but doing a rough protoss build with a gate on 12 and nexus on 14 (probably not optimal but like I said I'm not good with protoss timings) I did nothing but chrono boost probes and both were saturated around the 5:30 mark. You should be able to do some sort of pressure with your marines early on to discourage the constant boosting of probes.
Even if a double factory timing push turns out not to work. Ive been experimenting with goody's marauder/reaper early pressure transition into mech. From what I see standard toss builds have trouble with that pressure so there is not a doubt in my mind that FE would have that problem.
Another transition I use to some sucess if the toss goes for air play is obviously to get alot of marines. I make sure and get a techlab on at least 3 of the raxes I would want to produce infantry from. Once I have the ghost count I want I can produce reapers 3 at a time (for the same price and build time as a ghost) Doing 2 pronged attacks with reapers and hellions seems to keep the toss busy as there are some things that reapers can harass that hellions couldn't dream of harassing.
On December 31 2010 11:11 avilo wrote: I used to exclusively ghost mech TvP ages ago...but I scrapped that when it turned out to not be viable anymore. A combination of protosses getting much better at this game, and the patch completely killed tank based mech.
Every time you do it, just like serv said, toss takes a free 4th/5th, and one of those might even be a gold. Then they just go carriers, mass immortal/templar/gates with collosus, and will re-max zerg style and kill you, while you're barely on one maxed out supply limit, and with Terran you cannot reproduce your army instantly, while P can.
So mech if you want to, but from my personal experience it got to the point where I had to ask myself: do I want to play this game for fun and win TvPs like this vs weaker players or do I want to start winning SC2 and get better? The choice was pretty obvious.
So if you play for fun, by all means, keep going for that mech TvP.
Avilo I am pretty familiar with your ghost mech. You state that the expansions are the hardest part to deal with. Does this usually mean a toss fast expand? (some people in this thread have noted that toss will attempt this if they know you are meching.) I've encountered problems like this an FE from a protoss is alot harder to hide than a terran's FE. With your ghost mech build it would seem you would notice the FE long before you wanted to put down your factory not to mention your starport. If you notice it what I have been trying to work on is a tank hellion timing attack to discourage toss from FEing. I gain the second 100 gas about the time the factory is about 3/4 done and instead of saving it for a starport I build a second factory. (both gain tech labs) Build tanks when you have the gas and hellions otherwise. Start the blue flame upgrade asap and about 30sec into the research start the siege mode upgrade so they will both finish simultaneously. My push occurs at the moment around the 7:00-7:30 mark (still working on it I think I can do it faster) with 4 tanks/4 hellions/ and about 14-16 marines. I'm no expert with protoss builds but doing a rough protoss build with a gate on 12 and nexus on 14 (probably not optimal but like I said I'm not good with protoss timings) I did nothing but chrono boost probes and both were saturated around the 5:30 mark. You should be able to do some sort of pressure with your marines early on to discourage the constant boosting of probes.
Even if a double factory timing push turns out not to work. Ive been experimenting with goody's marauder/reaper early pressure transition into mech. From what I see standard toss builds have trouble with that pressure so there is not a doubt in my mind that FE would have that problem.
Another transition I use to some sucess if the toss goes for air play is obviously to get alot of marines. I make sure and get a techlab on at least 3 of the raxes I would want to produce infantry from. Once I have the ghost count I want I can produce reapers 3 at a time (for the same price and build time as a ghost) Doing 2 pronged attacks with reapers and hellions seems to keep the toss busy as there are some things that reapers can harass that hellions couldn't dream of harassing.
Thats basically just like the 2 fact push in BW you did to kill a 1 gate FE that you pump out 2 tanks and push with your marines and rally vultures to follow.
But yeah one thing to note about avilo's way of Meching was that he goes super Captain Turtle like not to be a dick he's obviously without a doubt a way better and more experienced player than me but like if you go on youtube you can find a game between him and Huk on Steppes of War which is just a classic example of how at least I wouldn't go about meching on Steppes. Like he turtles to the max and never really pushes out and he spends way too much on ghosts than he should and he gets very few hellions for harass (and uses both them and the tanks in drops which i don't think is the best way to use your tanks) and almost no marines if any and he just turtles to the max and pushes his tanks up towards his third instead of where he should be pushing which is straight across the middle. i don't care what matchup you play Tank pushing across the middle of steppes is just amazing.
I watched a game of MorroW's back when he played terran where he went Mech against a toss pushing straight across the middle with bunkers supply depots turrets and of course tanks and he just steamrolled his opponent. the reason being for doing this is because you force him to attack your army cuz if he doesn't then he will lose his natural. If he tries to flank or go into your third on the cliffs with the watch towers you can unsiege and trap him in there where he's either gunna walk into your tanks or your planetary,
Steppes is not a map where you want to wait for maxed tanks and ghosts (and pretty much nothing else) and then try and push you really just gotta get ur first group of tanks and marines just start pushing in a straight line just like you would say on Python if you were at 2/3 o'clock position and P would be at 6 o'clock. You also gotta be flexible and use the map to your advantage that's part of just being good at the game.
Avilo also saw Huk get carriers and would get like 6 vikings and a thor and then mass turrets and yet again turtle.
I mean Mech you obviously turtle but eventually you gotta start crawling towards him but in all the replays and VODs i saw of avilo's Mech he basically just waited for 200/200 with about 80% tanks 15% ghosts and 5% hellions which is obviously not a very good composition. And then he would never transition out of it very much even if he scouted Air tech. In avilo's defense that was like back in the beta and MorroW's game I saw was i think in some Gosugamers stream awhile back a little bit before he switched to Zerg i think anyways. I wish i knew where to find a VOD of the game so i could post it.
On December 31 2010 18:30 gavss wrote: templars and chargelots are very good against marine tank builds. because you can never make enough ghosts if you build tanks.
terran needs mines !
I don't think mines would help much man. Like for one thing they wouldn't do anything to HTs as HTs float plus how often do you think an HT would run into range of one. And against Zlots it would be just another thing for Zlots to exploit to use against your tanks and whatever else you have because of how charge works compared to zlot speed in bw i just can imagine mine dragging would be a lot simpler for the toss. Hellions are better at killing Zlots anyways. I garantee that 10 hellions could kill 16 zlots faster than even 15 vultures ever could.
If you think about it though, Hellions are mineral only, fast and deal splash dmg...splash on a mineral only unit. Ground should not be a problem at all for mech. The air transition that happens allot faster then in BW due to CB is though.
Avilo,Raiznhell, when Protoss goes for double expand (from 2 base to 4) couldn't Terran do the same with PF? They should be safe until some time. The people i play against react in the exact opposite way, are afraid to expand and just turtle lol.
For mech to work you need constant scouting of the and you have to where his units are and what his composition is. You have to use the tanks with other units to protect them - hellions, marines, thors (vikings if he goes colosi). If he goes mass air you can start adding more marines much easier than he can add air units. Early upgrades are crucial and I dont think you need ghosts, marines and hellions take out their shields good enough. Chargelots are no no vs hellions. Surely the toss can double expand but there should be a way to punish him. And sensor towers are just awesome.
On December 31 2010 18:30 gavss wrote: templars and chargelots are very good against marine tank builds. because you can never make enough ghosts if you build tanks.
terran needs mines !
I don't think mines would help much man. Like for one thing they wouldn't do anything to HTs as HTs float plus how often do you think an HT would run into range of one. And against Zlots it would be just another thing for Zlots to exploit to use against your tanks and whatever else you have because of how charge works compared to zlot speed in bw i just can imagine mine dragging would be a lot simpler for the toss. Hellions are better at killing Zlots anyways. I garantee that 10 hellions could kill 16 zlots faster than even 15 vultures ever could.
I am in total agreeance with you raiznhell about vultures and hellions vs zealots. Mines would actually actually not change much. Not the say that they wouldn't help mines would definately help but IMHO they aren't necessary. However, one thing I feel is worth noting is that mines also served the purpose of delaying the dragoon advance as the dragoons could not get in range of the tanks until the mines were cleared.
As many people here have said the main problem with mech is aa.
watch that Kiwikaki vs Idra. Use the same build order you have 2 immortals in your base at 6 minutes. 8:33 in the Jade replay you have a wholesome army of 11 marines, now if you think you can fend this off with 11 marines, you are wrong. I'm giving you 2:33 seconds extra too so this should take into account the scouting factor.
I don't care about Jade's opening build order and whatever cheeses might kill it. It looks pretty solid, might have to be swapped around a bit, who knows, thats not what this thread is about. It's about mech as a midgame/lategame strategy in TvP, whatever it may take to get there.
You should probably watch the replays considering Jade was the protoss and I was talking about the weakness of this build. Second off, how would this work lategame when a stargate is almost guaranteed.
Remember in BW how Mech would be working strong then the protoss would bust out the Carriers and the Terran would then proceed to shit his pants and bust out a load of Goliaths and ultimately win.
That's why i get 3 starports with reactors before doing any intense pushing action. So that when i see stargate i can bust out so many vikings so fast toss can't believe it.
This can be remedied with marines bunkers and turrets but goliaths worked out much better vs carriers for 2 reasons. 1. goliaths were able to attack carriers while still fulfilling the vultures meat shield role. 2. goliaths benefitted from mech upgrades while vikings do not.
While mech is still useful with things as they are the change(s) that would benefit it the most is altering the viking or altering the thor.
Just wanted to state a critical flaw in this build that might cause a lot of terran users some pain. Its that a well executed 4gate will run over one bunker. You usually need two if ur keeping urself alive off of one reactored rax. Also, another flaw is that once a protoss has 6gas mining as a terran it is really difficult to stop. Your build that does allow map control for the other user will prompt the toss to expand earlier at higher levels especially if he is abusing the mobility of your mech army.
I'm a Terran that would like to play mech rather than bio, but still plays bio because it's stronger. Well, this thread makes me happy, checked 4-5 reps then went laddering beating 2 toss with this. Great work @ OP, I can see some potential for this build! Two things I got in mind: 1. How important are upgrades for this build? As stated by the OP, vehicles weapons is obvious. Does it also make sense to upgrade vehicle armor or infantry weapons? 2. In the few reps I've watched from the OP there wasn't a single Thor. I'd say after 12-15 tanks, I'd might be a good idea to switch to thors because you've got enough tanks anyway. What do you guys think?
On January 01 2011 01:47 Ender Wiggin wrote: Just wanted to state a critical flaw in this build that might cause a lot of terran users some pain. Its that a well executed 4gate will run over one bunker. You usually need two if ur keeping urself alive off of one reactored rax. Also, another flaw is that once a protoss has 6gas mining as a terran it is really difficult to stop. Your build that does allow map control for the other user will prompt the toss to expand earlier at higher levels especially if he is abusing the mobility of your mech army.
yeah I'm sure the 1 rax FE isn't the safest build in the world. I think the safest Openings for Mech will always be a 2 rax opening with some early marauder play or the 1/1/1 tank/marine/raven-banshee then go mech when you expand.
the best build for mech is the 1/1/1 with fast drop hellion(blue flame) and one bunker, then exp+bay, after the cc+bay, add 1 fact(with lab, so two fact with lab...and build only tanks no stop) and one armory and after that(not immediatly, but when you have the money ofcourse...), other 3 factory(1 with lab the other two with reactor). you also have very early the starport so u can pump viking very fast if the opponent go void
On December 31 2010 11:11 avilo wrote: I used to exclusively ghost mech TvP ages ago...but I scrapped that when it turned out to not be viable anymore. A combination of protosses getting much better at this game, and the patch completely killed tank based mech.
Every time you do it, just like serv said, toss takes a free 4th/5th, and one of those might even be a gold. Then they just go carriers, mass immortal/templar/gates with collosus, and will re-max zerg style and kill you, while you're barely on one maxed out supply limit, and with Terran you cannot reproduce your army instantly, while P can.
So mech if you want to, but from my personal experience it got to the point where I had to ask myself: do I want to play this game for fun and win TvPs like this vs weaker players or do I want to start winning SC2 and get better? The choice was pretty obvious.
So if you play for fun, by all means, keep going for that mech TvP.
Avilo I am pretty familiar with your ghost mech. You state that the expansions are the hardest part to deal with. Does this usually mean a toss fast expand? (some people in this thread have noted that toss will attempt this if they know you are meching.) I've encountered problems like this an FE from a protoss is alot harder to hide than a terran's FE. With your ghost mech build it would seem you would notice the FE long before you wanted to put down your factory not to mention your starport. If you notice it what I have been trying to work on is a tank hellion timing attack to discourage toss from FEing. I gain the second 100 gas about the time the factory is about 3/4 done and instead of saving it for a starport I build a second factory. (both gain tech labs) Build tanks when you have the gas and hellions otherwise. Start the blue flame upgrade asap and about 30sec into the research start the siege mode upgrade so they will both finish simultaneously. My push occurs at the moment around the 7:00-7:30 mark (still working on it I think I can do it faster) with 4 tanks/4 hellions/ and about 14-16 marines. I'm no expert with protoss builds but doing a rough protoss build with a gate on 12 and nexus on 14 (probably not optimal but like I said I'm not good with protoss timings) I did nothing but chrono boost probes and both were saturated around the 5:30 mark. You should be able to do some sort of pressure with your marines early on to discourage the constant boosting of probes.
Even if a double factory timing push turns out not to work. Ive been experimenting with goody's marauder/reaper early pressure transition into mech. From what I see standard toss builds have trouble with that pressure so there is not a doubt in my mind that FE would have that problem.
Another transition I use to some sucess if the toss goes for air play is obviously to get alot of marines. I make sure and get a techlab on at least 3 of the raxes I would want to produce infantry from. Once I have the ghost count I want I can produce reapers 3 at a time (for the same price and build time as a ghost) Doing 2 pronged attacks with reapers and hellions seems to keep the toss busy as there are some things that reapers can harass that hellions couldn't dream of harassing.
Thats basically just like the 2 fact push in BW you did to kill a 1 gate FE that you pump out 2 tanks and push with your marines and rally vultures to follow.
But yeah one thing to note about avilo's way of Meching was that he goes super Captain Turtle like not to be a dick he's obviously without a doubt a way better and more experienced player than me but like if you go on youtube you can find a game between him and Huk on Steppes of War which is just a classic example of how at least I wouldn't go about meching on Steppes. Like he turtles to the max and never really pushes out and he spends way too much on ghosts than he should and he gets very few hellions for harass (and uses both them and the tanks in drops which i don't think is the best way to use your tanks) and almost no marines if any and he just turtles to the max and pushes his tanks up towards his third instead of where he should be pushing which is straight across the middle. i don't care what matchup you play Tank pushing across the middle of steppes is just amazing.
I watched a game of MorroW's back when he played terran where he went Mech against a toss pushing straight across the middle with bunkers supply depots turrets and of course tanks and he just steamrolled his opponent. the reason being for doing this is because you force him to attack your army cuz if he doesn't then he will lose his natural. If he tries to flank or go into your third on the cliffs with the watch towers you can unsiege and trap him in there where he's either gunna walk into your tanks or your planetary,
Steppes is not a map where you want to wait for maxed tanks and ghosts (and pretty much nothing else) and then try and push you really just gotta get ur first group of tanks and marines just start pushing in a straight line just like you would say on Python if you were at 2/3 o'clock position and P would be at 6 o'clock. You also gotta be flexible and use the map to your advantage that's part of just being good at the game.
Avilo also saw Huk get carriers and would get like 6 vikings and a thor and then mass turrets and yet again turtle.
I mean Mech you obviously turtle but eventually you gotta start crawling towards him but in all the replays and VODs i saw of avilo's Mech he basically just waited for 200/200 with about 80% tanks 15% ghosts and 5% hellions which is obviously not a very good composition. And then he would never transition out of it very much even if he scouted Air tech. In avilo's defense that was like back in the beta and MorroW's game I saw was i think in some Gosugamers stream awhile back a little bit before he switched to Zerg i think anyways. I wish i knew where to find a VOD of the game so i could post it.
You obviously watched 1 random game and made astounding general statements about how I play which are not only completely wrong, but don't make any sense. I never have dropped tanks in a TvP, that's stupid. You're not familiar with how i played mech at all if you're saying things like this. And are you really trying to lecture me on mech tvp? I've played probably a thousand games of mech tvp between beta and now.
I've played pretty much every mech variation there is in this game, and all of them end up with you giving free advantages to protoss. I was one of the few people to abuse hellions in beta with blue flame hellion drops, but protosses were also horrible at defending it back then...because very few people ever did it. Also, please don't try and say what i know and don't know based off of one shitty game posted on youtube when the game was in beta stages too.
I've done thor/banshee mech b4 that was known about, mass banshee/viking airmech style with ghost, tank/hellion/thor/ghost/viking, mass hellion/tank, thor mech, etc. When you go mech and are reaching max you don't want your army to be heavily hellion based, you want that supply to be thors/tanks/vikings.
Because every protoss unit tears through a hellion based mech army like it's nothing in late-game...and mech vs protoss games went late game all the time because that's how mech plays out...
mech will work at lower diamond levels tvp because those protoss have no idea wtf you are doing and haven't seen it much, but when you start getting higher you'll wonder why you ever were trying mech TvP when at the same timings had you gone bio you'd have your expo, map control, and lots of times be able to pressure protoss and kill them half the time or stay even.
It's not just me saying this stuff either...every other experienced mech player here is describing similar situations and reasons why mech tvp is not good right now. Perhaps everything has not been explored to the fullest, but when even the players that LOVE mech tvp here and used it a lot are saying that it's bad to do...there's a reason for that...
And a huge reason of why you can't mech anymore like before is because zealots armor was changed to be able to take extra tank shots, and tank damage was reduced.
Those two things alone made mech tvp go from viable to downright impossible. Zealots that last through more tank shots combined with immortals that already can take plenty of tank shots, combined with range 9 collosus which means more vikigns less tanks, combined with phoenixes that will easily lift up your tanks...means that protoss simply 1a clicks into your army and if you were unsieged or just sieging at that moment you automatically lost the game.
That means you can't attack with mech, and when you do, you're actually vulnerable to a run-in of zealot/immortal + whatever else they have so protoss always will have their free expansions and simply outmacro you no matter how good your mech play is.
And that's where the metagame is right now TvP. Mech is obsolete, so most good Terrans already were going bio, or have re-learned marauder/marine/viking/ghost bio, and face the situation of needing to pressure and kill protoss before they reach the khadayrin amulet, otherwise it's often GG.
And then that's where you have forum noobies saying, "omg you shouldn't go bio tvp! you're asking to get stormed!" and those are the people that literally understand nothing about SC2.
If you find some mech TvP that works a large percentage of the time at 3k+ diamond that does not give protoss free advantages, please share when you reach that level!
edit: and please don't take this as discouragement of continuing your mech play, it's just that compared to bio based TvP, mech play has too many weaknesses and is too easily abused by good protosses. I myself will probably go back to the drawing board on mech TvP...eventually...to see if there's anything workable there. Mech is playable in TvT/TvZ, so it may still be possible in TvP at some point or versus certain styles.
On January 01 2011 01:47 Ender Wiggin wrote: Just wanted to state a critical flaw in this build that might cause a lot of terran users some pain. Its that a well executed 4gate will run over one bunker. You usually need two if ur keeping urself alive off of one reactored rax. Also, another flaw is that once a protoss has 6gas mining as a terran it is really difficult to stop. Your build that does allow map control for the other user will prompt the toss to expand earlier at higher levels especially if he is abusing the mobility of your mech army.
Also, had to quote what wiggin said here because it's another weakness of trying to play mech TvP.
You can't ever go directly into mech - you always have to start off with a reactored barracks opening, or a marauder opening, or something. And when protoss does a 4gate he basically does get complete map control, which sounds incredibly stupid because you'd think 4gate is all-inish or gimmicky, but they are free to expo because you have virtually no production in comparison to them.
You end up stuck on 1/1/1, so other than tank/marine/raven/banshee timing, you cannot attack 100% of the time, but if you don't attack, they expo free, and if you do attack, they can 4gate and try to kill you early, or even 3gate robo and mass zealot/immortal or what not.
There are just toooooo many ways toss can do something stupidly easy to punish you economically or kill you when you're going for a mech style.
On December 31 2010 11:11 avilo wrote: I used to exclusively ghost mech TvP ages ago...but I scrapped that when it turned out to not be viable anymore. A combination of protosses getting much better at this game, and the patch completely killed tank based mech.
Every time you do it, just like serv said, toss takes a free 4th/5th, and one of those might even be a gold. Then they just go carriers, mass immortal/templar/gates with collosus, and will re-max zerg style and kill you, while you're barely on one maxed out supply limit, and with Terran you cannot reproduce your army instantly, while P can.
So mech if you want to, but from my personal experience it got to the point where I had to ask myself: do I want to play this game for fun and win TvPs like this vs weaker players or do I want to start winning SC2 and get better? The choice was pretty obvious.
So if you play for fun, by all means, keep going for that mech TvP.
Avilo I am pretty familiar with your ghost mech. You state that the expansions are the hardest part to deal with. Does this usually mean a toss fast expand? (some people in this thread have noted that toss will attempt this if they know you are meching.) I've encountered problems like this an FE from a protoss is alot harder to hide than a terran's FE. With your ghost mech build it would seem you would notice the FE long before you wanted to put down your factory not to mention your starport. If you notice it what I have been trying to work on is a tank hellion timing attack to discourage toss from FEing. I gain the second 100 gas about the time the factory is about 3/4 done and instead of saving it for a starport I build a second factory. (both gain tech labs) Build tanks when you have the gas and hellions otherwise. Start the blue flame upgrade asap and about 30sec into the research start the siege mode upgrade so they will both finish simultaneously. My push occurs at the moment around the 7:00-7:30 mark (still working on it I think I can do it faster) with 4 tanks/4 hellions/ and about 14-16 marines. I'm no expert with protoss builds but doing a rough protoss build with a gate on 12 and nexus on 14 (probably not optimal but like I said I'm not good with protoss timings) I did nothing but chrono boost probes and both were saturated around the 5:30 mark. You should be able to do some sort of pressure with your marines early on to discourage the constant boosting of probes.
Even if a double factory timing push turns out not to work. Ive been experimenting with goody's marauder/reaper early pressure transition into mech. From what I see standard toss builds have trouble with that pressure so there is not a doubt in my mind that FE would have that problem.
Another transition I use to some sucess if the toss goes for air play is obviously to get alot of marines. I make sure and get a techlab on at least 3 of the raxes I would want to produce infantry from. Once I have the ghost count I want I can produce reapers 3 at a time (for the same price and build time as a ghost) Doing 2 pronged attacks with reapers and hellions seems to keep the toss busy as there are some things that reapers can harass that hellions couldn't dream of harassing.
Thats basically just like the 2 fact push in BW you did to kill a 1 gate FE that you pump out 2 tanks and push with your marines and rally vultures to follow.
But yeah one thing to note about avilo's way of Meching was that he goes super Captain Turtle like not to be a dick he's obviously without a doubt a way better and more experienced player than me but like if you go on youtube you can find a game between him and Huk on Steppes of War which is just a classic example of how at least I wouldn't go about meching on Steppes. Like he turtles to the max and never really pushes out and he spends way too much on ghosts than he should and he gets very few hellions for harass (and uses both them and the tanks in drops which i don't think is the best way to use your tanks) and almost no marines if any and he just turtles to the max and pushes his tanks up towards his third instead of where he should be pushing which is straight across the middle. i don't care what matchup you play Tank pushing across the middle of steppes is just amazing.
I watched a game of MorroW's back when he played terran where he went Mech against a toss pushing straight across the middle with bunkers supply depots turrets and of course tanks and he just steamrolled his opponent. the reason being for doing this is because you force him to attack your army cuz if he doesn't then he will lose his natural. If he tries to flank or go into your third on the cliffs with the watch towers you can unsiege and trap him in there where he's either gunna walk into your tanks or your planetary,
Steppes is not a map where you want to wait for maxed tanks and ghosts (and pretty much nothing else) and then try and push you really just gotta get ur first group of tanks and marines just start pushing in a straight line just like you would say on Python if you were at 2/3 o'clock position and P would be at 6 o'clock. You also gotta be flexible and use the map to your advantage that's part of just being good at the game.
Avilo also saw Huk get carriers and would get like 6 vikings and a thor and then mass turrets and yet again turtle.
I mean Mech you obviously turtle but eventually you gotta start crawling towards him but in all the replays and VODs i saw of avilo's Mech he basically just waited for 200/200 with about 80% tanks 15% ghosts and 5% hellions which is obviously not a very good composition. And then he would never transition out of it very much even if he scouted Air tech. In avilo's defense that was like back in the beta and MorroW's game I saw was i think in some Gosugamers stream awhile back a little bit before he switched to Zerg i think anyways. I wish i knew where to find a VOD of the game so i could post it.
You obviously watched 1 random game and made astounding general statements about how I play which are not only completely wrong, but don't make any sense. I never have dropped tanks in a TvP, that's stupid. You're not familiar with how i played mech at all if you're saying things like this. And are you really trying to lecture me on mech tvp? I've played probably a thousand games of mech tvp between beta and now.
I've played pretty much every mech variation there is in this game, and all of them end up with you giving free advantages to protoss. I was one of the few people to abuse hellions in beta with blue flame hellion drops, but protosses were also horrible at defending it back then...because very few people ever did it. Also, please don't try and say what i know and don't know based off of one shitty game posted on youtube when the game was in beta stages too.
I've done thor/banshee mech b4 that was known about, mass banshee/viking airmech style with ghost, tank/hellion/thor/ghost/viking, mass hellion/tank, thor mech, etc. When you go mech and are reaching max you don't want your army to be heavily hellion based, you want that supply to be thors/tanks/vikings.
Because every protoss unit tears through a hellion based mech army like it's nothing in late-game...and mech vs protoss games went late game all the time because that's how mech plays out...
mech will work at lower diamond levels tvp because those protoss have no idea wtf you are doing and haven't seen it much, but when you start getting higher you'll wonder why you ever were trying mech TvP when at the same timings had you gone bio you'd have your expo, map control, and lots of times be able to pressure protoss and kill them half the time or stay even.
It's not just me saying this stuff either...every other experienced mech player here is describing similar situations and reasons why mech tvp is not good right now. Perhaps everything has not been explored to the fullest, but when even the players that LOVE mech tvp here and used it a lot are saying that it's bad to do...there's a reason for that...
And a huge reason of why you can't mech anymore like before is because zealots armor was changed to be able to take extra tank shots, and tank damage was reduced.
Those two things alone made mech tvp go from viable to downright impossible. Zealots that last through more tank shots combined with immortals that already can take plenty of tank shots, combined with range 9 collosus which means more vikigns less tanks, combined with phoenixes that will easily lift up your tanks...means that protoss simply 1a clicks into your army and if you were unsieged or just sieging at that moment you automatically lost the game.
That means you can't attack with mech, and when you do, you're actually vulnerable to a run-in of zealot/immortal + whatever else they have so protoss always will have their free expansions and simply outmacro you no matter how good your mech play is.
And that's where the metagame is right now TvP. Mech is obsolete, so most good Terrans already were going bio, or have re-learned marauder/marine/viking/ghost bio, and face the situation of needing to pressure and kill protoss before they reach the khadayrin amulet, otherwise it's often GG.
And then that's where you have forum noobies saying, "omg you shouldn't go bio tvp! you're asking to get stormed!" and those are the people that literally understand nothing about SC2.
If you find some mech TvP that works a large percentage of the time at 3k+ diamond that does not give protoss free advantages, please share when you reach that level!
edit: and please don't take this as discouragement of continuing your mech play, it's just that compared to bio based TvP, mech play has too many weaknesses and is too easily abused by good protosses. I myself will probably go back to the drawing board on mech TvP...eventually...to see if there's anything workable there. Mech is playable in TvT/TvZ, so it may still be possible in TvP at some point or versus certain styles.
Really sorry about harsh criticisms towards your play when obviously you are better than me and know a lot more but like I watched the Huk game and the Ziddy game as well as a few replays you posted that you won in. And in the Huk vid you did drop a tank with 2 hellions on his naturals mineral line. I just thought that in all of those games you pushed the turtling a bit too far. I haven't seen any of your other Mech stuff other than your version of ghostmech.
But you are of course right in that Mech has those weaknesses i suppose but bio is seeming to have a lot of weaknesses of it's own if Protoss can hold out like a hero.
I have a hunch and while i won't be sad if it doesn't happen but i just feel that any future changes to terran are going to involve some sort of Bio nerf and a Mech buff cuz blizzard stated themselves it seems terran struggles late game and right now the only unit that looks like it could use any tweaking for late game is the siege tank. I dunno what they'd do to bio but im expecting something like probably stim doing a percentage hp hit instead of just 10 hp.
I dunno regardless Mech should be something that is at least a map specific strategy like I haven't lost a Mech game yet on Steppes and Delta Quadrant (other than them nailing me at that 7 minute timing as i'm expanding). Those maps plus i find Jungle Basin is super strong for Mech because you can just take the center with the towers and pretty much have full map control without even moving.
@ Psycho-SoniC. Yeah it would be an awesome idea to switch to thors because something that can bust your hump is when they go for a Zlot HT void ray/Carrier thing and you've been dominating the ground battles with your tanks but now they sort of lost the need to have a a ton of them so getting rid of half your tanks (suiciding to take out an expansion or something necessary, they kill nexus soo damn fast unsieged) and then replacing them with thors and the necessary vikings and hellions for the zlot templar VR/Carrier. What the thors do in this case is defend you against an instant warpin of stalkers while your low on tanks as you still have a few tanks and the thors just kill everything (except armored air -_-) ridiculously fast.
First off, i must say, i absolutely LOVE your macro. I watched a few games, and you had a bigger army than your opponent for the most part.
However the fact is that most of the games you completely outplay your opponents. It really didn't show that mech would be any stronger than bio, i'm sure that if you were to bio mech, you would still end up winning.
I noticed that your play style is VERY similar to that of TvP in sc1.
Also, wouldn't be smart to get stim? Stim on marines just does amazing things when you push. I noticed that during your macro, you would end up with a lot more minerals than gas. Putting up some barracks and producing more marines never hurt, especially if your opponent isn't going to be going high templars or collosi to fight your mainly mech army.
I mech'd a bit back in the beta. I mostly just Bio Mech at the moment but after watching A few of your reps. I think i'll take it up again. It reminds me of the good ol' BW days
A lot of people are saying that mech is inferior because going bio all game long is too good not to do. However, As the previous 34 page QQ thread showed, straight bio runs into severe problems late game]. If people were to open mech or at least transition into it as the game progresses, a lot of those problems would disappear. Sure new ones might open up, but a pure gateway army wouldn't kill a mech based army like it does to bio. That's why I have little respect for the comments of those people in the other thread; they throw all their resources into a strategy that's meant to kill the opponent in the midgame, then act surprised when it doesn't work, and they walk into the late game at a disadvantage. You have to PLAY for the late game if you want to excel there, not just stumble into it after a big failed 2-base play. Mech seems like it could be a good way to play for a winning lategame, even if it comes as a transition from early bio stuff.
@avilo: As a protoss, I have a really tough time dealing with mech, which is why I think it's a good strategy. I haven't experienced any of the free advantages that you claim protosses get. So what are some general rules I should be using to get these easy wins over mech? I don't care how OP you think protoss units are, you couldn't 1-A units into large groups of tanks in BW and you can't do it now. Even chargelots get decimated by a well defended tank line before they can kill any more than the front line. I've tried going air, which are the only times I've been able to successfully defeat it, but quite often it just gets shut down by a combination of vikings, turrets, and marines. And as long as the terran isn't just leaving all his tanks in his base like a gold league tank masser, you're not going to get all these free expansions. Is there something obvious I'm missing in all of this?
On December 31 2010 11:11 avilo wrote: I used to exclusively ghost mech TvP ages ago...but I scrapped that when it turned out to not be viable anymore. A combination of protosses getting much better at this game, and the patch completely killed tank based mech.
Every time you do it, just like serv said, toss takes a free 4th/5th, and one of those might even be a gold. Then they just go carriers, mass immortal/templar/gates with collosus, and will re-max zerg style and kill you, while you're barely on one maxed out supply limit, and with Terran you cannot reproduce your army instantly, while P can.
So mech if you want to, but from my personal experience it got to the point where I had to ask myself: do I want to play this game for fun and win TvPs like this vs weaker players or do I want to start winning SC2 and get better? The choice was pretty obvious.
So if you play for fun, by all means, keep going for that mech TvP.
Avilo I am pretty familiar with your ghost mech. You state that the expansions are the hardest part to deal with. Does this usually mean a toss fast expand? (some people in this thread have noted that toss will attempt this if they know you are meching.) I've encountered problems like this an FE from a protoss is alot harder to hide than a terran's FE. With your ghost mech build it would seem you would notice the FE long before you wanted to put down your factory not to mention your starport. If you notice it what I have been trying to work on is a tank hellion timing attack to discourage toss from FEing. I gain the second 100 gas about the time the factory is about 3/4 done and instead of saving it for a starport I build a second factory. (both gain tech labs) Build tanks when you have the gas and hellions otherwise. Start the blue flame upgrade asap and about 30sec into the research start the siege mode upgrade so they will both finish simultaneously. My push occurs at the moment around the 7:00-7:30 mark (still working on it I think I can do it faster) with 4 tanks/4 hellions/ and about 14-16 marines. I'm no expert with protoss builds but doing a rough protoss build with a gate on 12 and nexus on 14 (probably not optimal but like I said I'm not good with protoss timings) I did nothing but chrono boost probes and both were saturated around the 5:30 mark. You should be able to do some sort of pressure with your marines early on to discourage the constant boosting of probes.
Even if a double factory timing push turns out not to work. Ive been experimenting with goody's marauder/reaper early pressure transition into mech. From what I see standard toss builds have trouble with that pressure so there is not a doubt in my mind that FE would have that problem.
Another transition I use to some sucess if the toss goes for air play is obviously to get alot of marines. I make sure and get a techlab on at least 3 of the raxes I would want to produce infantry from. Once I have the ghost count I want I can produce reapers 3 at a time (for the same price and build time as a ghost) Doing 2 pronged attacks with reapers and hellions seems to keep the toss busy as there are some things that reapers can harass that hellions couldn't dream of harassing.
Thats basically just like the 2 fact push in BW you did to kill a 1 gate FE that you pump out 2 tanks and push with your marines and rally vultures to follow.
But yeah one thing to note about avilo's way of Meching was that he goes super Captain Turtle like not to be a dick he's obviously without a doubt a way better and more experienced player than me but like if you go on youtube you can find a game between him and Huk on Steppes of War which is just a classic example of how at least I wouldn't go about meching on Steppes. Like he turtles to the max and never really pushes out and he spends way too much on ghosts than he should and he gets very few hellions for harass (and uses both them and the tanks in drops which i don't think is the best way to use your tanks) and almost no marines if any and he just turtles to the max and pushes his tanks up towards his third instead of where he should be pushing which is straight across the middle. i don't care what matchup you play Tank pushing across the middle of steppes is just amazing.
I watched a game of MorroW's back when he played terran where he went Mech against a toss pushing straight across the middle with bunkers supply depots turrets and of course tanks and he just steamrolled his opponent. the reason being for doing this is because you force him to attack your army cuz if he doesn't then he will lose his natural. If he tries to flank or go into your third on the cliffs with the watch towers you can unsiege and trap him in there where he's either gunna walk into your tanks or your planetary,
Steppes is not a map where you want to wait for maxed tanks and ghosts (and pretty much nothing else) and then try and push you really just gotta get ur first group of tanks and marines just start pushing in a straight line just like you would say on Python if you were at 2/3 o'clock position and P would be at 6 o'clock. You also gotta be flexible and use the map to your advantage that's part of just being good at the game.
Avilo also saw Huk get carriers and would get like 6 vikings and a thor and then mass turrets and yet again turtle.
I mean Mech you obviously turtle but eventually you gotta start crawling towards him but in all the replays and VODs i saw of avilo's Mech he basically just waited for 200/200 with about 80% tanks 15% ghosts and 5% hellions which is obviously not a very good composition. And then he would never transition out of it very much even if he scouted Air tech. In avilo's defense that was like back in the beta and MorroW's game I saw was i think in some Gosugamers stream awhile back a little bit before he switched to Zerg i think anyways. I wish i knew where to find a VOD of the game so i could post it.
You obviously watched 1 random game and made astounding general statements about how I play which are not only completely wrong, but don't make any sense. I never have dropped tanks in a TvP, that's stupid. You're not familiar with how i played mech at all if you're saying things like this. And are you really trying to lecture me on mech tvp? I've played probably a thousand games of mech tvp between beta and now.
I've played pretty much every mech variation there is in this game, and all of them end up with you giving free advantages to protoss. I was one of the few people to abuse hellions in beta with blue flame hellion drops, but protosses were also horrible at defending it back then...because very few people ever did it. Also, please don't try and say what i know and don't know based off of one shitty game posted on youtube when the game was in beta stages too.
I've done thor/banshee mech b4 that was known about, mass banshee/viking airmech style with ghost, tank/hellion/thor/ghost/viking, mass hellion/tank, thor mech, etc. When you go mech and are reaching max you don't want your army to be heavily hellion based, you want that supply to be thors/tanks/vikings.
Because every protoss unit tears through a hellion based mech army like it's nothing in late-game...and mech vs protoss games went late game all the time because that's how mech plays out...
mech will work at lower diamond levels tvp because those protoss have no idea wtf you are doing and haven't seen it much, but when you start getting higher you'll wonder why you ever were trying mech TvP when at the same timings had you gone bio you'd have your expo, map control, and lots of times be able to pressure protoss and kill them half the time or stay even.
It's not just me saying this stuff either...every other experienced mech player here is describing similar situations and reasons why mech tvp is not good right now. Perhaps everything has not been explored to the fullest, but when even the players that LOVE mech tvp here and used it a lot are saying that it's bad to do...there's a reason for that...
And a huge reason of why you can't mech anymore like before is because zealots armor was changed to be able to take extra tank shots, and tank damage was reduced.
Those two things alone made mech tvp go from viable to downright impossible. Zealots that last through more tank shots combined with immortals that already can take plenty of tank shots, combined with range 9 collosus which means more vikigns less tanks, combined with phoenixes that will easily lift up your tanks...means that protoss simply 1a clicks into your army and if you were unsieged or just sieging at that moment you automatically lost the game.
That means you can't attack with mech, and when you do, you're actually vulnerable to a run-in of zealot/immortal + whatever else they have so protoss always will have their free expansions and simply outmacro you no matter how good your mech play is.
And that's where the metagame is right now TvP. Mech is obsolete, so most good Terrans already were going bio, or have re-learned marauder/marine/viking/ghost bio, and face the situation of needing to pressure and kill protoss before they reach the khadayrin amulet, otherwise it's often GG.
And then that's where you have forum noobies saying, "omg you shouldn't go bio tvp! you're asking to get stormed!" and those are the people that literally understand nothing about SC2.
If you find some mech TvP that works a large percentage of the time at 3k+ diamond that does not give protoss free advantages, please share when you reach that level!
edit: and please don't take this as discouragement of continuing your mech play, it's just that compared to bio based TvP, mech play has too many weaknesses and is too easily abused by good protosses. I myself will probably go back to the drawing board on mech TvP...eventually...to see if there's anything workable there. Mech is playable in TvT/TvZ, so it may still be possible in TvP at some point or versus certain styles.
Everything basically got summarized here. Its quiet funny because i also was one of the few that mech for a long time and i can definitely say that it is note that good. All i gotta say is that it is an experience you must experience yourself to truely understand why mech doesnt work. Even late game, it will fail against Carriers + HT. I have been going back to mech by transitioning into it late game. Trying to skip starport if possible and go straight to tanks and out muscle the collosus with tanks + bio and ghost. Then as the game progress ill start swapping addon and transition into pure mech since at the point i can effeciently produce tanks in large quantity and have a decent count to be aggressive with. Then from there ill just keep pressure and dont let them transition to carriers.
On January 01 2011 17:49 giuocob wrote: A lot of people are saying that mech is inferior because going bio all game long is too good not to do. However, As the previous 34 page QQ thread showed, straight bio runs into severe problems late game]. If people were to open mech or at least transition into it as the game progresses, a lot of those problems would disappear. Sure new ones might open up, but a pure gateway army wouldn't kill a mech based army like it does to bio. That's why I have little respect for the comments of those people in the other thread; they throw all their resources into a strategy that's meant to kill the opponent in the midgame, then act surprised when it doesn't work, and they walk into the late game at a disadvantage. You have to PLAY for the late game if you want to excel there, not just stumble into it after a big failed 2-base play. Mech seems like it could be a good way to play for a winning lategame, even if it comes as a transition from early bio stuff.
@avilo: As a protoss, I have a really tough time dealing with mech, which is why I think it's a good strategy. I haven't experienced any of the free advantages that you claim protosses get. So what are some general rules I should be using to get these easy wins over mech? I don't care how OP you think protoss units are, you couldn't 1-A units into large groups of tanks in BW and you can't do it now. Even chargelots get decimated by a well defended tank line before they can kill any more than the front line. I've tried going air, which are the only times I've been able to successfully defeat it, but quite often it just gets shut down by a combination of vikings, turrets, and marines. And as long as the terran isn't just leaving all his tanks in his base like a gold league tank masser, you're not going to get all these free expansions. Is there something obvious I'm missing in all of this?
The point is that terran can not really push out without a good number of tanks. By good number of tanks i am saying about 10 or so tanks if he is going pure mech. Otherwise, a good number of gateway unit + immortal could smash him like nothing. This will give you time to easily take an easily third. Since mech also need 2 base to be efficient so when they take their natural you could technically take your third right away and there nothing he can really do. By the time he has a large army of tanks (which he shouldnt to begin with), you have a much better economy and can easily trade units and come out on top. Your probably not abusing the immobility of mech. If you dont want to be passive then just go quick blink play and you can gg him right off the bat. Lastly, a late game transition to carriers usually end mech play if you been abusing his immobility and decide to transition to carriers the game is basically yours and it is not uncommon to do so. Viking do NOT counter carriers. They only do decent against carriers.
EPT
