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Hey TL, rank 6 Gold Terran here and I'm having a heck of a time with this one.
I can handle drops reasonably well for my level of play. My macro is pretty good and getting better with more and more practice. But one area of my play that I've had huge problems with is Siege Tank control.
Their cumbersome siege, unsiege, resiege, movements, pushes, positioning. I just cannon get a grasp on moving and resieging my tanks properly when combined with having to micro infantry forces as well.
What are some techniques for handling tanks during slow pushes forward? I try to leap frog and I understand air superiority for vision advantage, but how do I handle moving infantry and tanks properly together to be a potent combination? I feel this is vital to improving in my TvZ and gameplay overall as tanks are obviously a signature unit of Terran.
Are there any general tips you guys can throw out that might help me?
I don't really have a replay of tank play on ladder right now as I try my best to avoid using the unit I'm such a novice with.
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2.5K diamond terran here, and I hate using siege tanks too. You obviously understand the basic concept. If you're having trouble with the micro, I'd suggest keeping it as simple as possible to begin with: one hotkey for all of your infantry, and one for all of your tanks. Keep your tanks behind your infantry, and advance as far as you feel you safely can advance (e.g., to the edge of the creep against zerg), then siege up all of your tanks. Ideally, you want them spread out a bit so as to mitigate any splash damage from enemy banelings/tanks/etc., but to begin with, just focus on the timing of sieging up, pushing forward a bit with infantry, moving tanks up, etc. After you get the hang of that, starting microing individual tanks a bit more. No trick, really, just takes practice...
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One thing that should be quite helpful is that you can shift-siege your tanks. What I mean by this is, you can select your tank(s), right click a spot in the distance, and (hold shift) press E.
This will make the tank go to the spot, and then siege up. This means you can go back to your base and macro quickly, or control the rest of your army, while at the same time your tanks are getting into position.
Also, using a separate control group for infantry and for tanks is really helpful. That way if you want all your tanks to unsiege and move with your army you can just press 2 D. My control groups looks like this: 1 infantry / thors, 2 siege tanks, 3 medivacs/vikings.
You can maybe get away with using only 2 control groups but I like to have medivacs separate from infantry so that when you stim and kite, the medivacs will stay still and heal instead of moving and not healing.
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What I find really useful is just having a lot of vision (sensor towers help) take the xelnagas you need them really badly.
Now specifically for TvZ
I have my infantry out the front and my air units a little further forward if I see units stim back and lure them back into the tank line and set your infantry on/around the tanks, but you need to pay attention to them and your minimap.
For pushing forward unsiege like 3-4 tanks (no more than 1/3 IMO) and move them forward to just infront of your other tanks.
If there is something high priority like a hatch just have only 1 siege tank shooting it from just in range to force engagement you don't want like 7 tanks shooting at a hatch at once it's just not needed and can pull your army out of position.
DON'T leave your tanks alone they will die the infantry are there to kill roaches/lings/mutas the tanks are to soften them up and force engagment.
Tank rine medivac/viking is a really powerful combination it just needs to stay together one with out the other is severly weakened (that doesn't mean you can't leave tanks on important high ground by you base the high ground gives them an advantage) but you can split them into smaller groups of those units.
About using units your not good with... screw that it's the ladder who the hell cares this game is meant to be fun, but do not take that attitude into a tournament. I can't remember who said it but the quote went something like this ''I don't think I've ever wished an oppenent good luck in a tournament I play to win I hope his playing under a ladder with a black cat in attendance''
EDIT: Also you can go overlord hunting with vikings if they don't have a bunch of mutas
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Generally when i go i siege them all up, then advance in pairs while leaving 6-10 marines to defend each pair from mutas. Generally the tanks move up about half the range of the circle, siege, bring in some marines. Move up the tanks in the back, move them forward, seige, put guardian marines.
Also generally speaking the air superiority is for Tvt. Kind of hard to get air superiority with viking vs. muta/corruptor/broodlord
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I always used to like siege tanks in brood war, but by comparison the tanks in SC2 feel so much weaker and more expensive, especially when compared with marauders.
I've played with siege tanks a lot and there are two critical weaknesses of the siege tank in my opinion. Firstly is the lack of anti air in the factory. The goliath is now the viking, and it's made at the starport. This means any serious many-factory play is not going to work because the other player will simply get air units and roll you. You must get starports and then you must build out of them, which means fewer tanks, since if you were running more factories you could get more tanks or more goliaths as the situation permitted.
The second critical weakness is their mobility. The real issue with tanks is that a single tank is not that much stronger than a single marauder, but when sieged you trade away all mobility which you could be using to roll around the map and stomp people. A tank has 160 hp to the marauder's 125, they both have 1 armor, their damage (unsieged) is quite similar, and their damage when sieged is actually much lower, but splashes. Marauders move faster, can stim, have concussive grenades, can be healed and easily transported by medivacs, and are made out of a barracks which is cheaper and has a very effective anti-air unit: the marine. Clearly a big ball of sieged tanks is more powerful than a big ball of marauders, but the marauders are more flexible, and can be everywhere, while the tanks cannot move at all. It is my feeling at this time that tanks do not get enough in return for this huge strategic concession. I play terran, and I think the marauder just makes the tank somewhat superfluous at the moment. I don't like this at all, and I'm all ears for anyone who has an idea for making tanks work in serious games.
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thors may not be as good as goliahts considering cost and magic box but just a couple with marines deter mutas from your tanks pretty well. they have sick range.
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On January 19 2011 13:58 Jackal-lber8046 wrote:
Hey TL, rank 6 Gold Terran here and I'm having a heck of a time with this one.
I can handle drops reasonably well for my level of play. My macro is pretty good and getting better with more and more practice. But one area of my play that I've had huge problems with is Siege Tank control.
Their cumbersome siege, unsiege, resiege, movements, pushes, positioning. I just cannon get a grasp on moving and resieging my tanks properly when combined with having to micro infantry forces as well.
What are some techniques for handling tanks during slow pushes forward? I try to leap frog and I understand air superiority for vision advantage, but how do I handle moving infantry and tanks properly together to be a potent combination? I feel this is vital to improving in my TvZ and gameplay overall as tanks are obviously a signature unit of Terran.
Are there any general tips you guys can throw out that might help me?
I don't really have a replay of tank play on ladder right now as I try my best to avoid using the unit I'm such a novice with.
Tank micro is one of the trickier skills to get a grasp of in SC2 from what I've found in personal experience. Here a few tricks I picked up with them.
Pre-position your tanks as you push by selecting each tank, clicking where you want them to go and pressing shift-E to have them automatically siege when they reach their destination. This is useful to create a quick concave when you arrive.
In TvT, tank positioning is extremely important, and you have to manage tanks, infantry and your viking force to get that slow push just right. The best way to slow push into a Terran's tank line is to use your vikings to spot ahead for enemy tanks and maintain air control with a superior number. Once you see the enemy tanks, you can actually click that tank and see its siege radius. Provided you have air control, you can creep a couple tanks just inside that radius and siege up to kill it with your superior range. This makes it so you can easily find that sweet spot where you can hit them and can't get hit.
You also want to be careful with your infantry during all this. They have a bad habit of auto-aggroing to targets and can run to chase something that inside the enemy's siege vision. You can remedy this by keep your infantry just behind your tanks and having them hold position. This keeps them safe and they still attack any renegade forces that try and power through your siege line. It's also good to keep them there to shoot any vikings down that try and fly over you. A Thor can help shoot down viking flowers with their awesome range and splash, on that topic.
In TvZ, you want to leap frog through the creep. Keep your tanks near walls so they're tougher to get surrounded by lings. You want to spread your tanks prematurely, and keep them spread enough so that they don't take friendly splash, but can shoot the lings off other tanks. If you see baneling/speedling running at you, stim your infantry and run them around your tanks so that they can shoot them down and you take less casualties.
I think that's all I've got. Just be sure that you always have a few tanks in the back sieged when you move up so you don't get completely off guard when you're unsieged and trying to get a positional advantage.
Hope that helped!
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I'm high plat (diamond 2v2) and I love siege tanks, but they require a totally different approach to combat. Synystyr makes some good points but I think there are a few things to add.
-) Positioning is essential. This means that if you are using tanks correctly most of your micro happens BEFORE the first shot is fired in battle.
-) If you are sieging up while your marines are shooting, you have already lost the battle. You must be in position and sieged up before the fighting starts.
-) You can do this because tanks have 13 range. This means you siege up in range and start shelling. Make them attack into your defensive position. Just setup your defensive position at the edge of their base.
-) Hold Position on your infantry. This is essential in TvT or they all run forward and get themselves killed in the enemy tank line. It's also helpful in other matchups to avoid them getting over excited and running away from the tanks. Remember: the tanks are there to do the damage. The infantry is just there to protect the tanks when the enemy charges in.
-) Tanks have sight 11 and range 13. In order to utilize this, you will need spotters. Vikings, medivacs, ravens, floating buildings, comsat, cloacked ghosts and even a simple scout marine all have their pros and cons as spotters, and are more useful in different situations. (e.g. vikings are needed in TvT, but medivacs are often better vs P.) Flying ones are important for seeing up cliffs (very powerful).
-) If they don't attack you, just keep shelling and slowing leapfrog in. They eventually will be forced to attack.
-) To leapfrog use the shift+rightclick+E to queue up a move then siege order for one or two tanks as a time.
-) When they do attack, a-move the infantry, then stim. After that, spend your APM to micro your tank fire into the center mass of their army. The AI tends to shoot at the closest enemies, meaning you waste the half splash and hurt your own guys more. Controlling the fire to keep fire into the center of their units makes tanks far more effective.
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All of the above information has given me a lot more to think about. Specifically I have been forgetting to hold my infantry. Now that I think about it I think the annoying aggroing marines are one of the things that made me feel so bad a controlling the tanks. I'm going to practice my tank use a lot and hopefully there will be some positive changes (and replays). Thanks all. I greatly appreciate it!
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EPT
