|
On February 19 2011 11:24 PaleBlueDot wrote:
Its not as much that hes making the most mobile force possible as it is just a regular ass protoss army gets that much mobility.
Against a mech Terran stalker-collosus is definitely a force chosen for mobility, because it sucks ass in a straight up fight. If you aren't playing bio, your opponent isn't going to make an anti-bio force. To compete with a proper mech Terran they need immotals, maybe voids, they absolutely need a HT or two for feedback or ghosts will rip them apart, they need chargelots, they basically need everything other than stalkers and collosi. Very few of those units have any decent mobility.
|
So a couple immortals, some voids, and some HT. That still leaves a good number of stalkers and maybe 1-3 colossus, the only thing it straps them on is gas, but late game they will probably get blink anyway. Watch the goody replays, some people do not agree with his style of mech over his bio, but it is still there.
|
How do you deal with phoenix based mid game. He can run around and just lift any patrolling hellions. In large fights he can also neutralize all your tanks with phoenix long enough to dominate the remaining ground.
|
On February 19 2011 12:46 naventus wrote:
How do you deal with phoenix based mid game. He can run around and just lift any patrolling hellions. In large fights he can also neutralize all your tanks with phoenix long enough to dominate the remaining ground.
I think phoenix is a good counter to it as far as neutralizing the hellion harass, thing that is nice though is Mech is still good anyway even if they do neutralize your hellion harass (and TBH if you break them once with it they are pretty much on their heals the whole game, say you realize you kill their phoenix's with your thor or something you just use the hellions to harass again)
Id definitely recommend phoenix against it though. Mech army is good anyway (with mass hellions and 3-4 thors that will take out the phoenix's (a few vikings too)) so even if they do stop harass you can still beat them anyway.
|
im a 3100 masters terran. I usually open with 2 rax expo into 4 rax (generally favor heavy marines). collossus are dealt with by vikings for me. once i run into the big high templar and macro late game is when i started to have big problems as i was trying to go marauder/marine/medivac/ghost which works to somewhat efficiency. what i have been doing lately is once hts hit the map generally i see mostly zealot/hts so what i do is i lift about 2 to 3 rax off reactor, make them tech labs and put factories onto the reactors for helions
basically late game i swap out marines for helions as once upgrades get higher i find them much more effective against zealots than marines are. I opt for less ghost numbers as marauders can tank a storm or two with medivacs and the helions make zealots evaporate. It has been working pretty good for me, it just requires you to be a little more careful about army hotkeys as you dont want your helions too far ahead of your army. feel free to criticize, this is not thlhe end-all late game ticket, itis just something i have been playing around with.
PS sorry for punctuation/capitalization as i am on my phone (tl app android rules)
|
I think terran also have a difficulty in keeping up with upgrades when going mech.
Zealot, Stalker, Immortal, and Colossus get incredible mileage out of weapons and armor. For 100/100 the entire ball is getting pretty good bang for their buck, of course these upgrades increase in cost for both terran and protoss, but they still come from very different areas. Of course if we get on more bases we're also looking at more chronoboost which means faster upgrades.
As the game progresses, cost for cost, we're looking a 100+ food army that has been upgraded for 525/525 and that also has a considerable amount of health on a terran army. On top of that you can usually account for a guardian shield or two to be covering PART of an army which obviously, every bit counts.
Terran on the other hand can spend the same amount, and only have an upgraded bio (which will obviously do better depending on positioning and micro, but will still burn up), or an upgraded mech support, or spread the two so they are both 1-1 and 1-1 maybe 1-2, find me a game where anyone has had 2-2 in both mech units and bio and still had an army to match a protoss army. This isn't of course a complaint, it's once again how the armies are different.
I think actually terran may have a gas problem, which causes us to really invest money in a unit comp that we feel may take us the farthest. I mean the tech lab on a factory alone has 400/400 worth of upgrades and two of them are both user initiated (as opposed to charge/colossus range). I think we end up spending lumps of gas rather than doling it out a little better like protoss does.
I think one thing is that both smart terran and protoss know that terran need that 3rd gas geyser and 3rd income source to keep dumping these lumps of money into upgrades. Armed with that, you know that the terran may not be in a position to attack you just yet, so you just need to know where his army is and you can expand as well or more just to get more gas yourself.
In the end, regardless of upgrades, I think ghosts (yet another heavy gas unit) are needed to swing it your way. So I think starting upgrades earlier may help out, though unfortunately it may come at a price of a tank which could the difference in holding a position...
|
I play mech 90% of my games vs protoss and when they blink into my base I feel like I autowin, unless they have a mothership ready to recall.
If I'm aware of their mothership I just base trade, but if they don't have one I just siege up some tanks outside my main's cliff and then I slowpush up my ramp and into my base.
If he tries to blink back down 50% of his army is going to get lost in translation from tank fire. If he tries to be cute I just use my raven to throw down a point defense drone.
It's so much easier to win with mech late game than it is to win with bio, and it's really not that hard to play mech once you get good at scouting and decision making + tank/building placement.
What I usually do is
Rax
Fact
CC
Engineering bay
2 more factories (unless stargate tech scouted)
2 tech labs 1 reactor
Armory
3rd CC
Starport get 1 raven then swap to a reactor and make vikings (if he has air)
Ghost academy
2 more factories (1 tech lab, 1 reactor)
Protoss air is cheese vs mech, if you have sufficient number of vikings you can just run him over because his ground army will be mostly gateway units as a result of his gas allocation.
Things to watch out for :
1) hidden stargates rallying void rays to the corner of the map to hide them until he has like 99 and you have no AA (scan regularly and scout the entire map with hellions, you don't need 999999 minerals when you go mech since you just spam hellions with them anyways)
2) Maxing out on ground units and then the toss switches to air units and runs you over because you have no supply room ( sac a bunch of units and spam turrets in the interim)
Landed vikings are actually a really good buffer for your tanks if you can afford them over hellions. Once I split the map I tend to make a lot of vikings and I just land them. They have more health/armor and do more DPS to armored units than hellions so as long as you have enough blue flame to take out the zealots, the vikings while expensive boost the standing strength of your army.
I don't really know of a protoss army composition that takes out tanks/hellions/vikings/ghosts/raven hands down, but I know of a bunch that automatically lose to it.
Protoss needs a LOT of robo units + HT/DT to combat mech with any degree of effectiveness. The best protoss will use this composition and then have a TONNE of warpgates once they have their side of the map. What this allows them to do is a "300 food push" where their first army is a tonne of strong robo/templar to widdle down the mech ball, but then the instant reinforcement with the built up cash is what actually kills the mech ball, exactly like ZvP when zerg overmakes corrupters to take out collosi and then floods with roaches and hydras to clean up the rest.
When you play good protosses what you have to do is kill their first army, and then immediately retreat to a defensive position and build your army back up to 200/200 and then take out their remaxed warpgate composition. After this is dead you can proceed to win the game.
Planetary fortresses synergize so well with mech, since your army is immobile it's really nice to be able to plant turrets and fortresses at stategic defensive positions while you lock down other parts of the map with tanks.
REPLAYS:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/141277-1v1-terran-protoss-metalopolis
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/141275-1v1-terran-protoss-metalopolis
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/133834-1v1-terran-protoss-shakuras-plateau
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/133833-1v1-terran-protoss-shakuras-plateau
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/141279-1v1-terran-protoss-jungle-basin
|
On February 19 2011 10:56 Ezekyle wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2011 10:44 rauk wrote:On February 19 2011 10:41 Ezekyle wrote:On February 19 2011 10:35 rauk wrote:On February 19 2011 10:26 Ezekyle wrote:On February 19 2011 10:16 rauk wrote:On February 19 2011 09:52 XXXSmOke wrote:On February 19 2011 09:04 PaleBlueDot wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 18 2011 16:50 Jayrod wrote:
Is this the part where we wait for someone in GSL to show you how to play the game?
I kid, but I honestly think terran is in a weird place right now. I think alot of terran players don't have the right mindset when it comes to how to win a given game. Its like you want an army comp that will defeat the protoss death ball. You won't find it... thats not how terrans built and if this game was each races deathball vs the other races deathball it would be dreadfully boring. I would challenge any terran to simply win their next 10 wins by not launching any big attacks. Win through attrition. You have the tools to win through attrition and/or containment. Good macro terrans are very rare because you have people like iechoic promoting bad builds that are easy to stop and rely on a drop to be effective. Its got half of these forums in the wrong mindset.
Tanks for instance. Tanks in TvP are not useful as your primary combat unit in a straight up fight. They aren't meant to be, but yet people seem to think they should compete with the protoss deathball. Tanks are best for controlling space and there are so many ways that you can use tanks to great effect that doesnt involve seiging them up in the open to become food for zealots. They are for containment. They help you win through attrition. Quite ironically, they aren't the best when it comes to seiging someones base normally. For a terran to beat protoss in the lategame two things need to happen. You need to be able to not get out expanded and you need to be able to not die. That is it. The protoss, even in deathball form, is at a disadvantage when attacking into a foritified position. The challenge for the terran then is controlling space... forcing the only stage for an attack to be where the terran wants it.
I dont think Terrans will win with anything other than patience late game against protoss. Protoss has too many tools lategame to defend with, making all attacks that arent a part of some sick timing really risky. IMO the terran should focus on gaining slight economic advantages throughout the game and wherever possible, but never attack for the sake of attacking or just because you hit 200 food. DONT attack unless you are sure you have a superior army, which will be very few timings.
Its time to break away from shit like hellion drop builds and other things that, when failed, leave you outrageously behind. Drops are great, but don't make one drop the centerpiece of your build unless your plan is to constantly keep their army split. What's happening is you are botching some thing that looks small, that gives them enough of an advantage to win 15 minutes later. Terran needs a new mid-game approach against protoss IMO and that should be to stop suiciding into a deathball. The "invincible collossus/phoenix army is actually quite poor at actually attacking a fortified position... If you can put the squeeze on a protoss at the right time and make him feel like he has to attack into your fortified position because if he doesnt he will lose. To be honest, the guy with the bunker layout is getting warmer than every post Ive read and on face value his post looked the most ridiculous. I guarantee you if you take a defensive positions with forward turrets and seige tanks set in a way where the toss is forced to break the contain to expand again or whatever, you will start winning more lategame with mech in TvP. Unfortunately, its going to take Jinro or Sjow to show you this. Every single word of this is wrong, honestly I have never seen anything like it. Thinking protoss wont out-expand you in entrenched positions. Thinking protoss will attack your "entrenched" position when they can just blink up---->colossus into your bases among a ridiculous amount of other options. Most of your text is nonsensical at the very best, and shows the kind of thinking that makes me think you either don't play terran or do not have very much experience with it at all. Oh, and Terrans with macro skill are actually fairly common, its just that they actually know it does not work as well as people would think. Its actully not wrong at all, Stalker and collsus are heavily countered by tanks and vikings. So if your basing your whole strat around blinking and cliff walking into my base then what happens when I have a sensor tower right on my cliff and I see your plan a mile away and already have tanks on the ledge to wreak havoc on your onslaught. Then you end up with a composition that is already hard countered by mine and you can tell me how well that will work. When you play mech you are focused on getting expos rather than attacking, so the anwser is yes I can easily match P on expos. The differance is that with consistent hellion harass I am keeping the protoss economy in check killing tons of probes, so usually my economy pulls ahead when I go mech. Care to suggest anything else that makes mech completely wrong as you are so claiming? mech sucks on certain maps because you're just spread too thin trying to defend everything whereas protoss can keep his entire army together. if you've got like 3 or 4 tank on the ledge, his entire blink stalker colossi army can waltz into your base no problem. if you unsiege your entire army to bring it back, then he just cliffwalks/blinks out of your base. i've been experimenting with solid rings of turrets around my base and some patrolling vikings but i dunno how well that works against a dedicated harasser. So get sensor towers. If you can see him coming before he gets there you can move in and trap him. Get a few tanks and turrets in your main, as he walks in to poke the rest of your army moves over, he tries to just cliffwalk away and finds himself sandwiched between your defensive units and the rest of your army. On top of that, you can send hellions into his base every time his army moves out, and a dozen blue flame hellions is going to do a shitton more economic damage than even an entire stalker/collosus army. Once you've killed all his workers he can't make another army, so he's stuck with stalker/collosus against tank/viking/thor. it doesn't work like that. what league/rating are you playing? you need more than "a few" tanks to be able to actually deter a blink stalker/colossi army. if you don't have enough he's just walked right into your base and all your shit is outside of it and you lose every single production building. you are also hoping that protoss has zero obs and is not watching your army. Observers can be killed, and if his entire army is inside your base then of course a few tanks won't kill it. But if his entire army is in your base you can just do a base trade, and since Terran buildings can fly away the Protoss would have to already be at a massive advantage to win that. He can kill depots, refineries, ebays and armouries, while you kill every building he has and all his probes too, thanks to your hellions. you're doing a base trade wrong if you're moving out to attack his base when you've already been forced to lift up your production facilities. hellions are good but with pylon wall + cannon + warpin stalkers they slowly get less effective at killing probes to the point it's not really worth it unless he's on more than 3 bases (and when does that ever happen in sc2?) Well why are you moving out to attack when he's already in your base? Mech terran is not mobile. If you see your opponent making the most mobile force possible in order to take advantage of that weakness, either keep your army in your base to defend or have it right outside his base, with sensor towers so you can walk into his base and kill him the moment he leaves it. There's no reason to ever have your army sitting in the middle of the map against someone whose entire plan consists of leaving his base undefended so he can poke at yours.
You don't understand this terran mech. I'm 100% sure that a) you are master but never played mech or b) you played mech but on diamond level. Imagine playing lost temple. You tanks are at the xel naga tower. You see red dots moving towards your main. You unsiege your tanks, then you move them to your main.
1) You move everything to your main? He can retreat.
2) You move 50% to your main, 50% to the cliff, so you can sandwish him. You never moved tanks up your cliff and then sieged them, right? It takes forever and if he catches you unsieged (which is very possible, thx to blink) he will kill your 50%. Gratz, you now have 50% tanks outside your main and your production facilities are all picked off. Now you can move the other 50% towards your main, or you can counter attack him. You will lose in both cases because a good toss will expand like a zerg while you are defending like a mad dog! Then there is 0 chance that you will win.
Some people tell to spread your tanks out. Well, indeed, lets place 5 tanks in my main, and then continue my line towards my nat and my third. The line will be so thin that it's a party for a 200/200 mobile protoss army. He will pick off your main tanks, kill your production buildings, retreat and then delay your 4th and 5th.
Am I not seeing certain things? I crushed several 3400+ masters with mech. They 1a'ed into my tankline and they played against me like they do when I play bio. Against such a players mech is just awesome, I AGREE. But against a protoss player that expands like a zerg and abuses my tank immobility, I lose so hard, even after killing a big amount of probes.
|
On February 19 2011 18:05 Dente wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2011 10:56 Ezekyle wrote:On February 19 2011 10:44 rauk wrote:On February 19 2011 10:41 Ezekyle wrote:On February 19 2011 10:35 rauk wrote:On February 19 2011 10:26 Ezekyle wrote:On February 19 2011 10:16 rauk wrote:On February 19 2011 09:52 XXXSmOke wrote:On February 19 2011 09:04 PaleBlueDot wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 18 2011 16:50 Jayrod wrote:
Is this the part where we wait for someone in GSL to show you how to play the game?
I kid, but I honestly think terran is in a weird place right now. I think alot of terran players don't have the right mindset when it comes to how to win a given game. Its like you want an army comp that will defeat the protoss death ball. You won't find it... thats not how terrans built and if this game was each races deathball vs the other races deathball it would be dreadfully boring. I would challenge any terran to simply win their next 10 wins by not launching any big attacks. Win through attrition. You have the tools to win through attrition and/or containment. Good macro terrans are very rare because you have people like iechoic promoting bad builds that are easy to stop and rely on a drop to be effective. Its got half of these forums in the wrong mindset.
Tanks for instance. Tanks in TvP are not useful as your primary combat unit in a straight up fight. They aren't meant to be, but yet people seem to think they should compete with the protoss deathball. Tanks are best for controlling space and there are so many ways that you can use tanks to great effect that doesnt involve seiging them up in the open to become food for zealots. They are for containment. They help you win through attrition. Quite ironically, they aren't the best when it comes to seiging someones base normally. For a terran to beat protoss in the lategame two things need to happen. You need to be able to not get out expanded and you need to be able to not die. That is it. The protoss, even in deathball form, is at a disadvantage when attacking into a foritified position. The challenge for the terran then is controlling space... forcing the only stage for an attack to be where the terran wants it.
I dont think Terrans will win with anything other than patience late game against protoss. Protoss has too many tools lategame to defend with, making all attacks that arent a part of some sick timing really risky. IMO the terran should focus on gaining slight economic advantages throughout the game and wherever possible, but never attack for the sake of attacking or just because you hit 200 food. DONT attack unless you are sure you have a superior army, which will be very few timings.
Its time to break away from shit like hellion drop builds and other things that, when failed, leave you outrageously behind. Drops are great, but don't make one drop the centerpiece of your build unless your plan is to constantly keep their army split. What's happening is you are botching some thing that looks small, that gives them enough of an advantage to win 15 minutes later. Terran needs a new mid-game approach against protoss IMO and that should be to stop suiciding into a deathball. The "invincible collossus/phoenix army is actually quite poor at actually attacking a fortified position... If you can put the squeeze on a protoss at the right time and make him feel like he has to attack into your fortified position because if he doesnt he will lose. To be honest, the guy with the bunker layout is getting warmer than every post Ive read and on face value his post looked the most ridiculous. I guarantee you if you take a defensive positions with forward turrets and seige tanks set in a way where the toss is forced to break the contain to expand again or whatever, you will start winning more lategame with mech in TvP. Unfortunately, its going to take Jinro or Sjow to show you this. Every single word of this is wrong, honestly I have never seen anything like it. Thinking protoss wont out-expand you in entrenched positions. Thinking protoss will attack your "entrenched" position when they can just blink up---->colossus into your bases among a ridiculous amount of other options. Most of your text is nonsensical at the very best, and shows the kind of thinking that makes me think you either don't play terran or do not have very much experience with it at all. Oh, and Terrans with macro skill are actually fairly common, its just that they actually know it does not work as well as people would think. Its actully not wrong at all, Stalker and collsus are heavily countered by tanks and vikings. So if your basing your whole strat around blinking and cliff walking into my base then what happens when I have a sensor tower right on my cliff and I see your plan a mile away and already have tanks on the ledge to wreak havoc on your onslaught. Then you end up with a composition that is already hard countered by mine and you can tell me how well that will work. When you play mech you are focused on getting expos rather than attacking, so the anwser is yes I can easily match P on expos. The differance is that with consistent hellion harass I am keeping the protoss economy in check killing tons of probes, so usually my economy pulls ahead when I go mech. Care to suggest anything else that makes mech completely wrong as you are so claiming? mech sucks on certain maps because you're just spread too thin trying to defend everything whereas protoss can keep his entire army together. if you've got like 3 or 4 tank on the ledge, his entire blink stalker colossi army can waltz into your base no problem. if you unsiege your entire army to bring it back, then he just cliffwalks/blinks out of your base. i've been experimenting with solid rings of turrets around my base and some patrolling vikings but i dunno how well that works against a dedicated harasser. So get sensor towers. If you can see him coming before he gets there you can move in and trap him. Get a few tanks and turrets in your main, as he walks in to poke the rest of your army moves over, he tries to just cliffwalk away and finds himself sandwiched between your defensive units and the rest of your army. On top of that, you can send hellions into his base every time his army moves out, and a dozen blue flame hellions is going to do a shitton more economic damage than even an entire stalker/collosus army. Once you've killed all his workers he can't make another army, so he's stuck with stalker/collosus against tank/viking/thor. it doesn't work like that. what league/rating are you playing? you need more than "a few" tanks to be able to actually deter a blink stalker/colossi army. if you don't have enough he's just walked right into your base and all your shit is outside of it and you lose every single production building. you are also hoping that protoss has zero obs and is not watching your army. Observers can be killed, and if his entire army is inside your base then of course a few tanks won't kill it. But if his entire army is in your base you can just do a base trade, and since Terran buildings can fly away the Protoss would have to already be at a massive advantage to win that. He can kill depots, refineries, ebays and armouries, while you kill every building he has and all his probes too, thanks to your hellions. you're doing a base trade wrong if you're moving out to attack his base when you've already been forced to lift up your production facilities. hellions are good but with pylon wall + cannon + warpin stalkers they slowly get less effective at killing probes to the point it's not really worth it unless he's on more than 3 bases (and when does that ever happen in sc2?) Well why are you moving out to attack when he's already in your base? Mech terran is not mobile. If you see your opponent making the most mobile force possible in order to take advantage of that weakness, either keep your army in your base to defend or have it right outside his base, with sensor towers so you can walk into his base and kill him the moment he leaves it. There's no reason to ever have your army sitting in the middle of the map against someone whose entire plan consists of leaving his base undefended so he can poke at yours. You don't understand this terran mech. I'm 100% sure that a) you are master but never played mech or b) you played mech but on diamond level. Imagine playing lost temple. You tanks are at the xel naga tower. You see red dots moving towards your main. You unsiege your tanks, then you move them to your main. 1) You move everything to your main? He can retreat. 2) You move 50% to your main, 50% to the cliff, so you can sandwish him. You never moved tanks up your cliff and then sieged them, right? It takes forever and if he catches you unsieged (which is very possible, thx to blink) he will kill your 50%. Gratz, you now have 50% tanks outside your main and your production facilities are all picked off. Now you can move the other 50% towards your main, or you can counter attack him. You will lose in both cases because a good toss will expand like a zerg while you are defending like a mad dog! Then there is 0 chance that you will win. Some people tell to spread your tanks out. Well, indeed, lets place 5 tanks in my main, and then continue my line towards my nat and my third. The line will be so thin that it's a party for a 200/200 mobile protoss army. He will pick off your main tanks, kill your production buildings, retreat and then delay your 4th and 5th. Am I not seeing certain things? I crushed several 3400+ masters with mech. They 1a'ed into my tankline and they played against me like they do when I play bio. Against such a players mech is just awesome, I AGREE. But against a protoss player that expands like a zerg and abuses my tank immobility, I lose so hard, even after killing a big amount of probes.
I agree to a certain extent, but you can overcome a lot of it with good placement and good game sense. My story is pretty much exactly like yours... But it's easy to fall in that trap of "I can't do anything against it" when in reality there is always a way, you just have to find it.
|
On February 19 2011 18:05 Dente wrote:
You tanks are at the xel naga tower. You see red dots moving towards your main. You unsiege your tanks, then you move them to your main.
1) You move everything to your main? He can retreat.
2) You move 50% to your main, 50% to the cliff, so you can sandwish him. You never moved tanks up your cliff and then sieged them, right? It takes forever and if he catches you unsieged (which is very possible, thx to blink) he will kill your 50%. Gratz, you now have 50% tanks outside your main and your production facilities are all picked off. Now you can move the other 50% towards your main, or you can counter attack him. You will lose in both cases because a good toss will expand like a zerg while you are defending like a mad dog! Then there is 0 chance that you will win.
Some people tell to spread your tanks out. Well, indeed, lets place 5 tanks in my main, and then continue my line towards my nat and my third. The line will be so thin that it's a party for a 200/200 mobile protoss army. He will pick off your main tanks, kill your production buildings, retreat and then delay your 4th and 5th.
Well, I don't have access to a computer with SC2 on it at the moment, so I can't check things like tower and tank ranges, but this is a general idea of how I would defend on Lost Temple, assuming cross positions. Blue circles are sensor towers, blue squares are turrets and the curvy line done with the MSPaint Airbrush is your tanks. The rest of your army (if you have 200/200 of tanks then obviously you'll be outmaneuvered, you should have a fair thor/hellion/viking force too) is probably hanging around near your Xel'Naga tower. So, assuming they try to attack through routes A, B or C (I can't see any other viable ways):
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/LoDit.jpg)
A: Straight through the middle, they walk into your army and die horribly. I'm not sure whether tanks in the position I put them would reach the fight; if not they may need to be placed a bit closer, which won't change much.
B: Sneaking around into your main to wreck production and kill workers. You'll see it coming and be able to reposition your army fast enough to defend against it. Assuming you place a couple of turrets in key positions (and you have enough minerals to) no observers will be able to see your army reposition, and their attacking force walks straight into it and dies. If they back off, you back off too and nothing happens, so everything is fine.
C: Going around the other side to hit your gold base, the stalkers blink across while the collosi use their long range. With proper sensor tower placement you can see it coming from miles off and either block it by moving your army in (again, if you've denied observer scouting they'll walk into your army and take casualties before backing off) or you can wait until they reach your base, then move around the back of his army, trap it and destroy it. Vikings deal with the collosi easily and thor/hellion/ghost can take care of stalkers even if your tanks don't arrive in time.
This is assuming you're playing defensively; if you can get a contain by getting up to their Xel'Naga or further all you need is a sensor tower or two to spot them going around the side so you can simply walk in and demolish their base.
Close positions is similar; if you can get to the Xel'Naga all you need is a marine at the other Xel'Naga to spot them walking all the way around the map to hit your base and you can just base race them, in which case you will win. Even if you can't get to the Xel'Naga you're probably stuck on 2 bases, in which case there's very little surface area for your tanks to defend anyways. If you somehow have 3 bases in close positions LT without having map control then wtf is going on. Close air positions is certainly more difficult to defend, at least at first glance, but maybe that's just the random number generator's way of telling you to not go mech this game. Imbalanced maps and spawns happen.
|
On February 19 2011 18:59 Ezekyle wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2011 18:05 Dente wrote:
You tanks are at the xel naga tower. You see red dots moving towards your main. You unsiege your tanks, then you move them to your main.
1) You move everything to your main? He can retreat.
2) You move 50% to your main, 50% to the cliff, so you can sandwish him. You never moved tanks up your cliff and then sieged them, right? It takes forever and if he catches you unsieged (which is very possible, thx to blink) he will kill your 50%. Gratz, you now have 50% tanks outside your main and your production facilities are all picked off. Now you can move the other 50% towards your main, or you can counter attack him. You will lose in both cases because a good toss will expand like a zerg while you are defending like a mad dog! Then there is 0 chance that you will win.
Some people tell to spread your tanks out. Well, indeed, lets place 5 tanks in my main, and then continue my line towards my nat and my third. The line will be so thin that it's a party for a 200/200 mobile protoss army. He will pick off your main tanks, kill your production buildings, retreat and then delay your 4th and 5th. Well, I don't have access to a computer with SC2 on it at the moment, so I can't check things like tower and tank ranges, but this is a general idea of how I would defend on Lost Temple, assuming cross positions. Blue circles are sensor towers, blue squares are turrets and the curvy line done with the MSPaint Airbrush is your tanks. The rest of your army (if you have 200/200 of tanks then obviously you'll be outmaneuvered, you should have a fair thor/hellion/viking force too) is probably hanging around near your Xel'Naga tower. So, assuming they try to attack through routes A, B or C (I can't see any other viable ways): A: Straight through the middle, they walk into your army and die horribly. I'm not sure whether tanks in the position I put them would reach the fight; if not they may need to be placed a bit closer, which won't change much. B: Sneaking around into your main to wreck production and kill workers. You'll see it coming and be able to reposition your army fast enough to defend against it. Assuming you place a couple of turrets in key positions (and you have enough minerals to) no observers will be able to see your army reposition, and their attacking force walks straight into it and dies. If they back off, you back off too and nothing happens, so everything is fine. C: Going around the other side to hit your gold base, the stalkers blink across while the collosi use their long range. With proper sensor tower placement you can see it coming from miles off and either block it by moving your army in (again, if you've denied observer scouting they'll walk into your army and take casualties before backing off) or you can wait until they reach your base, then move around the back of his army, trap it and destroy it. Vikings deal with the collosi easily and thor/hellion/ghost can take care of stalkers even if your tanks don't arrive in time. This is assuming you're playing defensively; if you can get a contain by getting up to their Xel'Naga or further all you need is a sensor tower or two to spot them going around the side so you can simply walk in and demolish their base. Close positions is similar; if you can get to the Xel'Naga all you need is a marine at the other Xel'Naga to spot them walking all the way around the map to hit your base and you can just base race them, in which case you will win. Even if you can't get to the Xel'Naga you're probably stuck on 2 bases, in which case there's very little surface area for your tanks to defend anyways. If you somehow have 3 bases in close positions LT without having map control then wtf is going on. Close air positions is certainly more difficult to defend, at least at first glance, but maybe that's just the random number generator's way of telling you to not go mech this game. Imbalanced maps and spawns happen.
Route B is this:
You unsiege your tanks, then you move them to your main.
1) You move everything to your main? He can retreat.
2) You move 50% to your main, 50% to the cliff, so you can sandwish him. You never moved tanks up your cliff and then sieged them, right? It takes forever and if he catches you unsieged (which is very possible, thx to blink) he will kill your 50%. Gratz, you now have 50% tanks outside your main and your production facilities are all picked off. Now you can move the other 50% towards your main, or you can counter attack him. You will lose in both cases because a good toss will expand like a zerg while you are defending like a mad dog! Then there is 0 chance that you will win.
By the time you unsieged at the xel naga tower, he is in your main. Good luck moving your tanks up the ramp. You talk about turrets: the collossus will take a couple of hits, but then the stalkers have vision. No observers needed there.
|
On February 19 2011 20:20 Dente wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2011 18:59 Ezekyle wrote:On February 19 2011 18:05 Dente wrote:
You tanks are at the xel naga tower. You see red dots moving towards your main. You unsiege your tanks, then you move them to your main.
1) You move everything to your main? He can retreat.
2) You move 50% to your main, 50% to the cliff, so you can sandwish him. You never moved tanks up your cliff and then sieged them, right? It takes forever and if he catches you unsieged (which is very possible, thx to blink) he will kill your 50%. Gratz, you now have 50% tanks outside your main and your production facilities are all picked off. Now you can move the other 50% towards your main, or you can counter attack him. You will lose in both cases because a good toss will expand like a zerg while you are defending like a mad dog! Then there is 0 chance that you will win.
Some people tell to spread your tanks out. Well, indeed, lets place 5 tanks in my main, and then continue my line towards my nat and my third. The line will be so thin that it's a party for a 200/200 mobile protoss army. He will pick off your main tanks, kill your production buildings, retreat and then delay your 4th and 5th. Well, I don't have access to a computer with SC2 on it at the moment, so I can't check things like tower and tank ranges, but this is a general idea of how I would defend on Lost Temple, assuming cross positions. Blue circles are sensor towers, blue squares are turrets and the curvy line done with the MSPaint Airbrush is your tanks. The rest of your army (if you have 200/200 of tanks then obviously you'll be outmaneuvered, you should have a fair thor/hellion/viking force too) is probably hanging around near your Xel'Naga tower. So, assuming they try to attack through routes A, B or C (I can't see any other viable ways): A: Straight through the middle, they walk into your army and die horribly. I'm not sure whether tanks in the position I put them would reach the fight; if not they may need to be placed a bit closer, which won't change much. B: Sneaking around into your main to wreck production and kill workers. You'll see it coming and be able to reposition your army fast enough to defend against it. Assuming you place a couple of turrets in key positions (and you have enough minerals to) no observers will be able to see your army reposition, and their attacking force walks straight into it and dies. If they back off, you back off too and nothing happens, so everything is fine. C: Going around the other side to hit your gold base, the stalkers blink across while the collosi use their long range. With proper sensor tower placement you can see it coming from miles off and either block it by moving your army in (again, if you've denied observer scouting they'll walk into your army and take casualties before backing off) or you can wait until they reach your base, then move around the back of his army, trap it and destroy it. Vikings deal with the collosi easily and thor/hellion/ghost can take care of stalkers even if your tanks don't arrive in time. This is assuming you're playing defensively; if you can get a contain by getting up to their Xel'Naga or further all you need is a sensor tower or two to spot them going around the side so you can simply walk in and demolish their base. Close positions is similar; if you can get to the Xel'Naga all you need is a marine at the other Xel'Naga to spot them walking all the way around the map to hit your base and you can just base race them, in which case you will win. Even if you can't get to the Xel'Naga you're probably stuck on 2 bases, in which case there's very little surface area for your tanks to defend anyways. If you somehow have 3 bases in close positions LT without having map control then wtf is going on. Close air positions is certainly more difficult to defend, at least at first glance, but maybe that's just the random number generator's way of telling you to not go mech this game. Imbalanced maps and spawns happen. Route B is this: You unsiege your tanks, then you move them to your main. 1) You move everything to your main? He can retreat. 2) You move 50% to your main, 50% to the cliff, so you can sandwish him. You never moved tanks up your cliff and then sieged them, right? It takes forever and if he catches you unsieged (which is very possible, thx to blink) he will kill your 50%. Gratz, you now have 50% tanks outside your main and your production facilities are all picked off. Now you can move the other 50% towards your main, or you can counter attack him. You will lose in both cases because a good toss will expand like a zerg while you are defending like a mad dog! Then there is 0 chance that you will win. By the time you unsieged at the xel naga tower, he is in your main. Good luck moving your tanks up the ramp. You talk about turrets: the collossus will take a couple of hits, but then the stalkers have vision. No observers needed there.
Not at all. Route B is this:
You unsiege your tanks, move them about half a screen to the left right while also moving most of your more mobile units along with them. He doesn't know you moved them, because you've been using turrets to block observers. He walks into range of your tanks and loses a fair chunk of his army instantly, then either backs off, having lost a few stalkers and taken damage on a bunch more, or continues moving forwards and dies.
You're assuming the Protoss player is maphacking. If you place your turrets and towers correctly they'll have no vision at all of half of the map, and will have to just blindly pick a route into your base while hoping you don't have any units there. And since your towers are giving you vision of half the map, you will have units there.
|
3.3k Master Terran
Helion/Tank has worked wonders for me in late game TvP.
Mix in vikings because they are just so good vs collosi or to deal with VRs. (Note that surprise VRs will kill you if you have no viking ready)
Mix in ghosts to help. I've found that I can handle full Protoss balls of immortals/ghost/whatever without EMP and do just fine.
During engagement, let your helions tank. Reinforce them as they die, try to keep tanks alive.
|
I don't get why everyones so obsessed with hellion/tank as your core, why not hellion/thor? Its still immobile but more mobile then hellion tank and it is already well setup to deal with immortals and to some extent colossus (theory). Why do you guys feel that tanks are better then thors in this scenario? I guess the thor has some range issues but I feel like these are helped alot by hellions getting rid of the zealot wall.
|
On February 20 2011 02:58 statikg wrote:
I don't get why everyones so obsessed with hellion/tank as your core, why not hellion/thor? Its still immobile but more mobile then hellion tank and it is already well setup to deal with immortals and to some extent colossus (theory). Why do you guys feel that tanks are better then thors in this scenario? I guess the thor has some range issues but I feel like these are helped alot by hellions getting rid of the zealot wall.
Thors are really really bad vs colossus
Tanks in large numbers > colossus (if targeted) and if you use your hellions to kill the zealots strictly they will get absolutely owned by the colossus before your thors even get to fire on them.
Tanks have splash as well obviously.
Hellions beat immortals anyway but I build thors basically as meat shields and to mess up pathing for the protoss (and they do pretty decent vs stalkers that arent focusing them down)
I dont build more than 4-5 thors though.
|
1. Thors are much more robust then tanks
2. They can absorve alot of storms
3. They can use their strike cannons vs key units (+ they stunning also when cannon is working) as immortals, archons, colossus and even snipe nexus fast.
4. They are more mobile then tanks, which helps alot when combined with hellions.
5. Thier DPS on 3 attack is insane as each upgrade gives them +6 dmg per round of attack.
6. Not as tanks, they can shoot from zero range, and they dont have any friendly fire.
7. I'll still use vikings in my army, but they are very viable once air get mass and toss isnt magic boxing.
|
On February 20 2011 03:36 dohgg wrote:
1. Thors are much more robust then tanks
2. They can absorve alot of storms
3. They can use their strike cannons vs key units (+ they stunning also when cannon is working) as immortals, archons, colossus and even snipe nexus fast.
4. They are more mobile then tanks, which helps alot when combined with hellions.
5. Thier DPS on 3 attack is insane as each upgrade gives them +6 dmg per round of attack.
6. Not as tanks, they can shoot from zero range, and they dont have any friendly fire.
7. I'll still use vikings in my army, but they are very viable once air get mass and toss isnt magic boxing.
What about cost, supply, build time, armory requirement? Strike cannons are useful only in smaller skirmishes.. The second the supply goes like 150+ you can forget about strike cannoning Colossus. Your Thors will dissapear the as they start the animation..
To start off Tank vs Thor discussion..
|
On February 20 2011 03:50 Everlong wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 03:36 dohgg wrote:
1. Thors are much more robust then tanks
2. They can absorve alot of storms
3. They can use their strike cannons vs key units (+ they stunning also when cannon is working) as immortals, archons, colossus and even snipe nexus fast.
4. They are more mobile then tanks, which helps alot when combined with hellions.
5. Thier DPS on 3 attack is insane as each upgrade gives them +6 dmg per round of attack.
6. Not as tanks, they can shoot from zero range, and they dont have any friendly fire.
7. I'll still use vikings in my army, but they are very viable once air get mass and toss isnt magic boxing.
What about cost, supply, build time, armory requirement? Strike cannons are useful only in smaller skirmishes.. The second the supply goes like 150+ you can forget about strike cannoning Colossus. Your Thors will dissapear the as they start the animation.. To start off Tank vs Thor discussion..
1. I didnt make a perfect comparsion with supply and cost i agree (will be nice i someone will do that), i just mentioned some "micro" issues that thors having the edge over tanks.
2. I agree that strike cannons might be not usfull on big clashes. but many people asked "How do i get to have mass thors and not dying first?" - Well, strike cannon might be the answer for these earlier scenarios..
3. Thors are not the answer to colossus, neither do i think tanks are, once i spot colossus i will start vikings production
4. Its really a matter of good position when thors are involved in ur army, I have lost many fight with them when i had same food count, and crushed many fight when i had same food count (both of them vs same deathball compostion), and i just found that on the battles i lost i had half of my thors not involving during the fight, cuz they are quite clumsy and slow - so its all of matter of good positioning, protecting them with hellions and vikings, and be ready to throw EMPs.
|
On February 20 2011 03:36 dohgg wrote:
1. Thors are much more robust then tanks
2. They can absorve alot of storms
3. They can use their strike cannons vs key units (+ they stunning also when cannon is working) as immortals, archons, colossus and even snipe nexus fast.
4. They are more mobile then tanks, which helps alot when combined with hellions.
5. Thier DPS on 3 attack is insane as each upgrade gives them +6 dmg per round of attack.
6. Not as tanks, they can shoot from zero range, and they dont have any friendly fire.
7. I'll still use vikings in my army, but they are very viable once air get mass and toss isnt magic boxing.
Thors die like instantly vs colossus so good luck going strike cannon -_-
|
On February 20 2011 04:10 dohgg wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 03:50 Everlong wrote:On February 20 2011 03:36 dohgg wrote:
1. Thors are much more robust then tanks
2. They can absorve alot of storms
3. They can use their strike cannons vs key units (+ they stunning also when cannon is working) as immortals, archons, colossus and even snipe nexus fast.
4. They are more mobile then tanks, which helps alot when combined with hellions.
5. Thier DPS on 3 attack is insane as each upgrade gives them +6 dmg per round of attack.
6. Not as tanks, they can shoot from zero range, and they dont have any friendly fire.
7. I'll still use vikings in my army, but they are very viable once air get mass and toss isnt magic boxing.
What about cost, supply, build time, armory requirement? Strike cannons are useful only in smaller skirmishes.. The second the supply goes like 150+ you can forget about strike cannoning Colossus. Your Thors will dissapear the as they start the animation.. To start off Tank vs Thor discussion.. 1. I didnt make a perfect comparsion with supply and cost i agree (will be nice i someone will do that), i just mentioned some "micro" issues that thors having the edge over tanks. 2. I agree that strike cannons might be not usfull on big clashes. but many people asked "How do i get to have mass thors and not dying first?" - Well, strike cannon might be the answer for these earlier scenarios.. 3. Thors are not the answer to colossus, neither do i think tanks are, once i spot colossus i will start vikings production4. Its really a matter of good position when thors are involved in ur army, I have lost many fight with them when i had same food count, and crushed many fight when i had same food count (both of them vs same deathball compostion), and i just found that on the battles i lost i had half of my thors not involving during the fight, cuz they are quite clumsy and slow - so its all of matter of good positioning, protecting them with hellions and vikings, and be ready to throw EMPs.
Mass tank and a handful vikings are fine to stopping colossus.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
