I'm wondering about the viability of BCs in late-game TvT bio vs tank play.
I'm not talking about mass BC of course, just two or three of them.
In TvT, if you're focusing on Bio - your opponent won't have vikings (air advantage isn't necessary unless both sides go tank/viking since they're quite useless on the ground)... so BCs could be very useful since the only Terran counter to them is vikings. Thors are only good against light air and marines' low-damage-high-attack-rate is ineffective against high armor units.
By getting BCs, you would force the other player to get vikings. This means even if your BCs do minimal damage, you still would have forced your opponent to use the same amount of resources to counter... and both sides come out even.
The ability to snipe tank lines with the 91831 range yamato cannon seems like it could be really useful - and you can immediately pull the BCs back into your infantry line if the opponent's vikings attack (vikings take 20 volleys to kill one BC). They also serve as a decent gas dump since you're usually mineral strapped going MMM.
Thoughts? Are they really as bad as people make them out to be?
No one makes em out to be bad in TvT, and even with the emergence of carrier play they're becoming more viable TvP. However, to get to your point their have been many long TvT's where battlecruiser tech switches have one the game, so they are definately more then just viable late game TvT, it's what most people consider the right tech choice I believe.
I don't think you even necessarily need to have vikings already. Ravens with PDD are a key unit for supporting them, and marines and thors provide an alternative way to combat the opponent's vikings. As far as actually utilizing the BCs, I like using them just as they were often used back in Brood War TvTs, which is for breaking through tank lines and sniping key units and/or buildings with Yamato.
^ravens cost way too much gas. A pdd only blocks 20? viking shots. That is like 2 volleys midgame and less than 1 volley late game. Also, vikings can kite BCs forever with proper micro. Vikings are good because they are relatively cheap in terms of gas.
When I play TvT if I see my opponent is going for the standard tank+viking mix I like to outexpand them, get way more vikings, a few banshees, and then get battlecruisers to seal the deal once I have 4+ bases. I dump all my excess minerals into barracks and marines. I only make enough tanks to defend my base so he can't just waltz in and kill me.
I like viking + banshee because they both benefit from air upgrades that carry over nicely into the BC transition. 3/3 BCs are basically unkillable if you have viking support.
The main reason I end up getting BC is because once my opponent sees that I have a ton of banshees and I'm doing a lot of drops they will spam turrets at their expansions. Yamato a few turrets and send in medivacs to clean up.
TLDR: BCs are amazing in TvT, you just have to transition properly and make sure they are upgraded. BCs without upgrades are a terrible waste of money.
Part of me wants to see if late Game Thor + BC would work but I'm too lazy to play TvTs this snow day.
Thors and Yamato have 10 range, vikings have 9 range and almost always clump :-\ And as someone who has encountered mass BC late game, I can say that BC + Anti Viking ends up being more cost efficient than Mass Viking late late game. I would think that BC + Thor + Tank probably wins in a mine out situation against Tank/Marine/Viking.
tanks will take care of ground anti air so no marines or thors. Bcs are an option if you have the air control. But armor + range upgraded turrets will do wonders against bcs. So its not autolose if you don't have air control.
On paper at least, doesn't make a whole lot of sense to go for probably the most immobile unit in the Terran arsenal in a strategy that has it's main strength in mobility.
Main issue I would see is the potential for drops countering this. Vikings can pick off medivacs, but essentially useless against marines. And BCs are too slow to defend. But if you're going for a straight line kill shot against your enemy, a strong bc/viking force should work wonders.
There has been threads about this before, but I absolutely think cruisers are awesome in tvt. Nothing on the ground can can even touch them. I have won games with 2 cruisers and a stack of Vikings. The normal fulcrums of tvt apply though. If you are contained it probably won't work and if you have map control it should work great. I do recommend generous use of sensor towers. This is a late game transition, I usually aim to take a third base, drop some extra starports, and make sure I have air superiority.
Banshees can often fill the role but they don't fight marines quite as well and they melt to thors. They also cannot engage vikings at all, while cruisers can lend extra dps in a showdown. I don't really have anything bad to say about banshees though, for their cost and build time they are awesome dps against all the races and cloak can be pretty unfair. They can do great surgical strikes to soften up a tank line in a stalemate if your opponent isn't proactive with turrets.
On February 02 2011 08:02 Senorcuidado wrote: There has been threads about this before, but I absolutely think cruisers are awesome in tvt. Nothing on the ground can can even touch them. I have won games with 2 cruisers and a stack of Vikings. The normal fulcrums of tvt apply though. If you are contained it probably won't work and if you have map control it should work great. I do recommend generous use of sensor towers. This is a late game transition, I usually aim to take a third base, drop some extra starports, and make sure I have air superiority.
Banshees can often fill the role but they don't fight marines quite as well and they melt to thors. They also cannot engage vikings at all, while cruisers can lend extra dps in a showdown. I don't really have anything bad to say about banshees though, for their cost and build time they are awesome dps against all the races and cloak can be pretty unfair. They can do great surgical strikes to soften up a tank line in a stalemate if your opponent isn't proactive with turrets.
Pretty much this.
I've had split map games on Scrap Station that came down to him over way investing in tanks (It was like his 15 to my 7 or somethign) and losing the viking battle, I rolled in with 5 cruisers made the tanks unsiege, and rolled in with marine/viking/BC while moving my tanks up.
Great way to end games, but there will be a timeframe where you are vulnerable, but its easy to miss in a lot of the semi-stalemated TvT's.
They're great but without viking superiority it's not hard for them to be kited to death. Yamato helps a lot, if you switch to BCs get yamato.
But without air superiority or yamato, a handful of vikings will kite any number of bc's forever and they won't be cost effective. Great units though, I always approve when I see them in tvt
They're a great way to use a viking lead lategame when you have the money for him. If he has given up on the viking war and started pumping marauders then it makes sense to get a few. I don't like massing them due to the cheap, easy and fast nature of massing vikings off reactored starports.
When I play TvT if I see my opponent is going for the standard tank+viking mix I like to outexpand them, get way more vikings, a few banshees, and then get battlecruisers to seal the deal once I have 4+ bases. I dump all my excess minerals into barracks and marines. I only make enough tanks to defend my base so he can't just waltz in and kill me.
I do exactly this.
The Thor/Tank/BC composition also sounds cool, but the upside of transitioning Marine/Tank/Viking into BCs is that you have map control with Vikings in the midgame. You're also usually behind in the tank count, so having air superiority is absolutely essential. Thor/Tank/BC is also really a lot of gas.
If you have air superiority, they're what will probably win you the game once it reaches a stalemate situation (like you usually see in tank/viking battles, which are happening less and less often it seems). They're fantastic at breaking siege lines, and so long as he doesn't pick you off with Vikings (a single viking can ruin your day), you can just kill off his tanks and so long as you have a ground army of your own there's little he can do about it.
BCs are a unit you either build your army around, or leave behind. They're extremely slow and very easy to deal with cost-effectively unless your unit composition revolves around keeping them alive. A single BC costs as much gas as 4 Vikings, and 2-3 BCs will die to even the paltry amount of Vikings most Tank-heavy players will build to keep vision advantage.
Most Tank players will also have so many Tanks that 2-3 Yamatos will not even phase their tank line (9 tanks will annihilate bio just as easily as 12), and while Yamato outrange Vikings, you have no vision unless you're willing to enter Viking range, as Vikings provide vision.
Thor/BC will die to Marine/Viking, and since no Terran worries about minerals after getting 2+ bases, your army is just not cost-effective.
Another thing is that upgrades for bio/BC is very hard to keep up, since there's no reason to upgrade air until BCs are out. 0/0 BCs are not very strong, and can be easily destroyed by mass stim'd Marines. If you're going to upgrade air anyway, may as well gain air superiority with Vikings. If you have more Vikings than he does, then you may as well invalidate Tanks by going BCs and keeping your entire army air. At that point, BCs are no longer support, but your main form of ground damage.
Another thing is that upgrades for bio/BC is very hard to keep up, since there's no reason to upgrade air until BCs are out. 0/0 BCs are not very strong, and can be easily destroyed by mass stim'd Marines. If you're going to upgrade air anyway, may as well gain air superiority with Vikings. If you have more Vikings than he does, then you may as well invalidate Tanks by going BCs and keeping your entire army air. At that point, BCs are no longer support, but your main form of ground damage.
i wholeheartedly agree. bcs are not cutesy play, they are a severe techswitch to which u have to commit if u want to be successful with it.
bc/viking is the ultimate tvt endgame unit composition. once a player in a tank/viking vs tank/viking stalemate is able to secure the air superiority and get some (3+) bcs out at the same time, he has basically won the game if he didnt get rolled over on the ground or lose air superiority in the meantime.
all he then has to do is to keep more vikings than his opponent. once the bc count grows, the amount of vikings u can take out with yamato also grows. as time goes on the bc to viking ratio can be increased safely. but usually if he loses the first viking battle and the bcs are still alive, its game over immediately.
this is all assuming at least moderate air upgrades. 0 armor upgrade bcs ofc get slaughtered by +3 attack upgraded stimmed marines. but with somewhat equal upgrades, bcs roflstomp marines.
On February 02 2011 07:12 Antisocialmunky wrote: Part of me wants to see if late Game Thor + BC would work but I'm too lazy to play TvTs this snow day.
Thors and Yamato have 10 range, vikings have 9 range and almost always clump :-\ And as someone who has encountered mass BC late game, I can say that BC + Anti Viking ends up being more cost efficient than Mass Viking late late game. I would think that BC + Thor + Tank probably wins in a mine out situation against Tank/Marine/Viking.
I want u to play moar plzz!
Seriously, I always love your ideas. I've been thinking about Thor/BC lategame as well and to be honest, I couldnt come up with an effective way to deal with it. Magic boxing Vikings would help against the Thors, but then they would be less efficient against the BCs and with a good number of Thors and Yamatos they shouldn't propose too much of a threat.
Well, I wouldn't go as far as to say its a great/viable composition but it might be a good place to start. Vikings demolish BCs but Vikings are not as 'durable' in the TvT matchup. That is they aren't as survivable so they must be constantly replaced. You should check out iEchoic's thread if you want something different that is concrete that works and transitions to BCs.
Otherwise, go fire up the 4v4 and see if the composition actually works late game. If it does, try to figure out how to get there in 1 vs 1.
Build turrets ( +1 range +2 armor ) +durable materials add ravens + marines + tanks +14 scvs+3medivacs+ a few bcs?
ravens/bcs kill vikings decently ( scan first though: you can precast all the yamatos on them to start and drop 2 pdd to block the initial 2 volleys )
10 bcs 4000/3000 + X? = 27 vikings = 4050/2025 +X? they just need some marines/turrets in the back to run to after casting spells and out of mana and the vikings can't do anything about it ( vikings only have 0 armor without upgrades, so the least marines do = 6 + they stim and out run the vikings/kills them really quick if they chase the bcs/ravens )
As long as the bcs have equal ups to the vikings, they only do 22 per shot ( 25 shots required ), but if you have 14+scvs...
it's possible to nuke a tank line/force them to run away if need be
On February 02 2011 05:53 zhouzhou wrote: Too expensive and takes way too long to get. Better off just getting cloaked banshees if the purpose is to kill ground units.
Made me rofl. "Cloaked" banshees end up costing almost as much as your first BC, and take almost as long. Furthermore, the opponent is bound to have marines to fend them off, and you won't force any unnecessary vikings. Since Yamato cannon is ridiculously useful in TvT (if their viking count is low, you can even snipe vikings with it and A-move through their tank line), and cloak makes no difference once late game hits for Terran (3+ orbitals makes cloaking useless), BC's are going to become more useful. You need something big to break tank lines, something unexpected that comes with a shock value, and BC's bring just that.
You should check out jinro vs MarineKingPrime in the round of 16. Jinro tech switched in the late game to battle cruisers and it worked fairly well. I think i watched another game of him playing a tvt in the gsl and he went for banshees instead. I don't play terran, but I think cloaked banshees to snipe tanks and win positioning games might be better. Either option is certainly viable.
You'll have to forgive my skepticism when I see something like thor/tank/bc. Is this a NR20min game?
I want to support battlecruisers as much as the next person, but honestly, how do you hide that tech for that long unless you're on 3+ starports (with techlabs mind you) and you haven't been scouted. We all know that air dominance is pretty much the key to TvT. So it's in any terran's best interest to at least get some air forces and have the production available to increase if needed, it's not as if we can't produce 4 food from a starport at a time.
Additionally, turrets do wonders vs bcs. Just hopping on unit tester (and of course this is all in a vaccuum) in 1v1 situations: (Battlecruiser has no armor or weapon upgrades)
1 turret brings a bc to 352/550 by itself before destruction 1 turret with +2 armor brings bc to 298/550 1 turret with +2 armor and +range brings bc to 280/550
Combine this with seige tanks, the bc offers some help to break a seige/viking/turret line but you still need a ton of other stuff to chew through it.
I think I understand blizzard's take on the bc as oppose to carrier/bl. A strong front line warship that can support its army. On open battlegrounds it might be a bit better, but assaulting a base I think it has a tougher time. This is of course provided you've completely surprised your opponent with more than 1 (which I think is unlikely) and somehow managed to get a way better econ without being contested by your opponent.
BC's actually get owned by marines since BIO is usually far more upgraded than air. Blizzard needs to un-nerf the slowest, most useless unit in the game.
You can use an early BC to trick your opponent... I did it for the day9 bc funday quite a lot. Rush to an bc, if your opponent is not likely to rush you (from scouting information) and attack early with them (may be a timing attack with thor), then switch to tank/thor. Dont let your bc's die if you cant kill your enemy and retreate. Many player will now start making a big number of vikings. You miht lose your air advantage, but now you have most of the times a ground advantage for another push... Might be a bit cheesy with out scouting, but works quite n1 and throws many opponents of guard. Download my replaypack for a build order and watch the BC funday replays... [url blocked]
Especially since someone going MMM will have much more mobility than someone going... Viking/Tank/BC is what I'm seeing in this thread.
You will get dropped on, you will lose expansions, and you won't be able to keep up with MMM/Viking.
And when you do get out, you'll probably face like 50-100 stimmed, combat shields, +2/2 or more marines, with medivacs. That takes out BCs pretty damn quick. Especially since they aren't going anywhere.
Ever since the ground attack nerf, BCs don't really roast marines any more, especially with armor upgrades.
If you get armor upgrades for your battlecruisers, they become extraordinarily hard to kill. I believe it's a base armor of 3, so with 3 upgrades that's 6 armor. Against a player who is using marines for anti-air support (or thors) they can easily trash them. Add to the fact that yamato cannon one shots a viking and your enemy will need a good number of vikings to beat your battlecruisers.
If you're going bio and you want air you may as well get banshees, I play Bio Mech and against pure bio players I get banshees and hellions with my normal TvT mix.
EPT
