I was reading IMMVP's TSL interview and he said something about Terran's difficulty on long distance maps here's what he said to be exact" + Show Spoiler +
Q: You won the GSL January 2011. But you were eliminated from Code S by losing two fast games to Julyzerg. What do you think about the current state of Code S? Are you confident you will be able to do well in future GSLs?
With longer starting distances on the new GSL maps, it has become very bad for Terran, I think it’s pretty obvious when all the Terrans were eliminated from GSL. If Terran gets nerfed again, I think it will be hard to produce good results. I’ve even considered changing races for the next tournament, but I’m not sure about what I’ll do yet.
I haven't been playing sc2 for awhile, but I do watch streams and tournaments on a daily basis, so I was wondering if its true what he said about long distance maps becoming very bad for terrans.
Terran units are slow. The longer the map, the less opportunity they have to be aggressive, so they have to expand. However, the other races can do either, and zerg in particular can benefit more from no aggression, but they also can just as easily be super aggressive themselves on larger maps because their units are that much faster.
To put it simply - the slow a race's units, or production distance is (protoss can still 4gate on large maps) - the worse larger maps are for that race.
I personally think SC2's design is horrible in the regard that maps differences can significantly change game balance. I think it would be better if all the races had different ways of exploiting map features, so the map variety would encourage different styles rather than one race always winning on particular maps.
It is true to an extent, but the difference matter little in lower level play. The problem is that terran can't reinforce as quickly or rush as fast in the early game. Just shows how the slightest change can turn around a match up
In my opinion if the maps had forward mining bases the Terran would be able to mitigate some of this deficiency by taking those forward bases with PFs. Long rush distances then could be partially "fixed" for the Terran player if they take those forward bases and not expand parallel to opponent.
The problem is the siege/unsiege time. In order to move across a long map vs Z you need to siege leapfrog. If it takes 10 siege/unsieges to get to your opponent, then he's going to have twice as much stuff as you by the time you get there. Add to this the fact that mutalisks cut off reinforcements.
Personally, I've already downvoted Terminus after playing it only once. I didn't really see any non-cheesy way to win on the map if I were playing an equally skilled opponent.
Hmm i'm not a Terran player (anymore(bw)) but couldn't Terran just play bw ish on bigger maps? i mean terran had the same issue with not a lot of mobility but that didn't really stop them from doing just as good.
On March 24 2011 03:40 StalinRusH wrote: Hmm i'm not a Terran player (anymore(bw)) but couldn't Terran just play bw ish on bigger maps? i mean terran had the same issue with not a lot of mobility but that didn't really stop them from doing just as good.
Didn't you watch BW? Marine Medic Tank. Nothing has changed. The only thing more mobile then this was SK Terran which sucks because Ravens can only hold 1 HSM even with full energy bar. And HSM is 125 energy which is a crap ton. Further more compared to Sci Vessels Ravens are Ubber Slow.
GinDo, like someone said before, in BW, Zerg did not have creep and larvae inject, and Protoss did not have warp in. I thought I would enjoy longer maps as a Terran player, but I have found that because my units are so unbelievably slow I can't put on agression and by the time I move out they will already of had more units. Also, when a P attacks you, the distance of the map does not matter, Protoss has the advantage right now and I can't stand it. Zerg has creep, and any decent Zerg knows how to spread this (3.3k+ in mind). Also, in BW, we had vultures, hellions are retarded and die to banelings and all of protoss units except zealots and probes.
On March 24 2011 03:40 StalinRusH wrote: Hmm i'm not a Terran player (anymore(bw)) but couldn't Terran just play bw ish on bigger maps? i mean terran had the same issue with not a lot of mobility but that didn't really stop them from doing just as good.
Didn't you watch BW? Marine Medic Tank. Nothing has changed. The only thing more mobile then this was SK Terran which sucks because Ravens can only hold 1 HSM even with full energy bar. And HSM is 125 energy which is a crap ton. Further more compared to Sci Vessels Ravens are Ubber Slow.
Ah yes, however, ravens in large numbers are also nigh invincible to any kind of counter fire because of pdd. If you've got a murder of ravens going, it's nothing to just drop down a pdd and some auto turrets to cover your retreat. The only things that can shoot ravens through a pdd move slower or the same speed as a raven. (With the possible exception of the pheonix. Don't know if their lasers can be pdded or not)
And ravens are kickass for harrasment and for johnny on the spot defense too. Auto turrets can block off a critical location to allow those slow reinforcements to arrive... Wandering around the map with them is going to give you a lot of map control and be able to keep tabs on your enemy. Seeker missile is also a nice way to deal with pesky broodlords as you can use pdd to keep you safe from the escort corrupters, charge in and soften them up enough that your marines can finish them off.
You know, I'm going to have to go and try this out now. I'm thinking a large marine/marauder/hellion medivac composition with tanks for defending key locations and adding long range support and then a crap ton of ravens once I secure 6 gas with corvid reactor, structure armor and hi-sec auto tracking upgrades. Marine/Marauder would then comprise your mobile core, tanks would be moved to critical locations like watch towers and high-ground control areas which would leave your ravens free to do the actual damage to the enemy. You'd have to be building missile turrets basically everywhere to supplement anti air defense, but because you're getting the building armor and hi-sec upgrades for the ravens, that's actually a really nasty thing and keeping scvs in a forward location gives your ravens a forward area to go back and heal when they get beat up.
i don't think the issue is too big i mean we could see a few small changes in the future (faster medivacs - yes, they nerfed their speed before because of small maps, faster siege mode, perhaps even some kind of raven buff - i'd love to see seeker missile buff, faster projectile or less mana) but i think it's ok. Just practise and find new ways, like hellions usuage during the mid and lategame since they are superfast etc.
The problem is on equal skill levels the longer the map, the more favored Zerg and Protoss are. Also, most Protoss open up phoenix on me to stop banshee/drop harass. Phoenix completely takes all air control, Terran can't do anything against that.
the problem is hunter seeker costing 125 energy...
make it 75 ffs. it's such a cool idea for a spell, but not efficient at all.
it deals 100 to single unit, 50 to units in 'storm radius' and then 15 damage to a sliver of area larger than storm. plus the damage can be mitigated by any unit faster than ~2.5 speed.
until then, raven will just be a PDD bot with the ability to drop a tough marine.
On March 24 2011 03:35 TurtlePerson2 wrote: The problem is the siege/unsiege time. In order to move across a long map vs Z you need to siege leapfrog. If it takes 10 siege/unsieges to get to your opponent, then he's going to have twice as much stuff as you by the time you get there. Add to this the fact that mutalisks cut off reinforcements.
Personally, I've already downvoted Terminus after playing it only once. I didn't really see any non-cheesy way to win on the map if I were playing an equally skilled opponent.
I'm assuming you mean Tal Darim? I am actually surprised by how close the bases are (non cross- positions. So far, as T, I have 1 rax-FEd against Zerg. As Predy suggested, hellions are great. On this map, there are enough wide chokes that you can find a way into a Zerg expo and do eco damage.
And Terran drops are made more powerful, imo, on large maps. Mutas are less of a threat as they can't be everywhere at once and Zs have to be more methodical about OL placement to cover the entire map. Like typical TvZ or TvP on smaller maps, hit two places at once.
On March 24 2011 05:13 DemonCitrus wrote: GinDo, like someone said before, in BW, Zerg did not have creep and larvae inject, and Protoss did not have warp in. I thought I would enjoy longer maps as a Terran player, but I have found that because my units are so unbelievably slow I can't put on agression and by the time I move out they will already of had more units. Also, when a P attacks you, the distance of the map does not matter, Protoss has the advantage right now and I can't stand it. Zerg has creep, and any decent Zerg knows how to spread this (3.3k+ in mind). Also, in BW, we had vultures, hellions are retarded and die to banelings and all of protoss units except zealots and probes.
if you actually read my post im actually or your side. In my post i was addressing how some people were saying we should play more BW esq style. So i responded that we already were and it was not working. lol xD
I noticed on a couple streams i watch, especially in TvZ. I notice that most zergs go muta vs terran nowadays, with this being true. One of the basic units that terran's have to counter muta's are thors. Thors are really really slow, how do you get it across the map to stop the muta harass on each thor that automatically gets rallied near the enemies base if you want to contain him or put pressure on him:S ^ I've seen this on some stream I was watching a week ago, each thor that was going to the rally point always been picked off. I know some of you would say to just rally in front of your base to gather up enough thors and then push so your thors don't get picked off, but what if you wanted to keep sending thors to put pressure on the opponent?
On larger maps T can "dig in" effectively with bunkers, turrets, and a proper siege line. While somewhat vulnerably to harass, these effects can be mitigated with good building placement. You can still poke with your army to keep them on their toes, but always keep a reserve at your base in bunkers (get the cargo space, building armor, and PF/turret range upgs).
A pretty well-defended expo costs 950 min / 150 gas. (not including units) CC - 400 PF - 150/150 3 BUNKERS - 300 1 TURRET - 100 = 950/150
Keep pressure with a mobile bio force, poking at expansions and the natural, then retreat back. What you're looking for are opportunities to apply pressure while building a strong production economy that lets you macro just as well as P or Z. You want to be running off 3-4 bases ASAP.
If you need a quick injection of cash, you can salvage the bunkers. Also, if you need quick reinforcements, use the units in your bunkers.
As a terran player I don't feel like the immobility is the biggest problem. Hellions and medivacs can still make for good harassing, even if your "main army" is moving around the map at a slugs pace.
What tends to worry me in longer games is the that it takes for me to remax. I feel like terrans can take on any army, but once the dust settles, they rebuild much slower. Protoss can use a combination of warpgates and chronoboosts to rebuild really fast, and zerg of course has larva. When both players have a large number of bases/banked resources, terran can feel extremely awkward. Their whole design is much more unforgiving.
Mules and reactors mean that we can crank out stuff like marines real fast, but marines alone are not that hard to counter.
He makes a good point. Because the maps are a lot bigger now it is very easy for faster armies like the zerg to do counter attacks and never having to actually engage the army of the Terran. This GSL we seen more base races then ever before because Terran can't make it back to there base in time to defend so they might as well try and kill off the base. But any player who has an immobile army should fortify the hell out of there base. Turrets,Plantarys, Bunkers, Cannons, Spines and Spores. Load your base with them! If they do kill all of your static defenses it at least slows them down big time. With the ability for Terrans to get a full refund on bunkers there should be no reason why you can't leave a small group of infantry in a few bunkers. You get the 100 mins back anyway.
As some previous posters said, Phoenix or Muta can give a Protoss or Zerg complete air + map control, meaning things such as banshees/medivacs for transportation are completely out of the question. Also previously mentioned, Terran units are SLOW, unbelievably slow. Aside from the Reaper or Hellion, every Terran ground unit is 2.25 speed or slower. (I hope everyone that doesn't play Terran understands how slow 2.25 actually is)
So what about the Reaper or Hellion? Well, they both succeed at killing two things, workers, and light units. Sooo. workers, and Zerglings/Zealots. Luckily for us though, Zerglings on creep rape hellions, and Zealots are always accompanied by stalkers or sentries. So we have mobile units that are good at harassing workers, but suck at pretty much everything else.
This brings us back to the original problem, Terran doesn't have any mobile forces that are actually good in combat, so to deal with long travel distances on larger maps, Terran pretty much just has to deal with being slow, there is no real alternative.
To compare, Zerg typical ground units OFF CREEP / ON CREEP (assuming full upgrades) Zergling - 4.7 / 6.1 Roach - 3.0 / 3.9 (often times I hear zerg complain about how ungodly slow roaches are without speed upgrade. Well, an unupgraded roach is 2.25, which is exactly what marine/marauder/tanks are... think about that one) Hydra - 2.25 / 3.375 (again I often hear complaints about how slow Hydras are off creep. They are the SAME speed as marine/marauder/tanks) Infestor - 2.5 Ultralisk - 2.95 / 3.835 Baneling - 2.95 / 3.835
Every single zerg unit is faster than any Terran ground unit (excluding reaper/hellion), and the "omg slow" zerg units (unupgraded roach/hydra/infestor) are still just as fast if not faster than every Terran unit. Luckily when we do actually engage, we have stim to compensate, but we can't exactly stim our way across the map when we need to travel. Remember, these speeds are not relative to how they impact actual engagements, but how the impact travel time (because I would argue Zerg units NEED to be this fast in order to engage properly).
Now for the Protoss, Protoss is closer to Terran than Zerg, but there are still quite a few units that are both good in combat AND fast. Zealot - 2.75* Stalker - 2.95* Sentry - 2.25 High Templar - 1.88 (sadface) Dark Templar - 2.81* Archon - 2.81* Immortal - 2.25 Colossus - 2.25
So 4 of the 8 Protoss ground units are faster than the typical Terran ground unit, and now just for good measure I'll list all the Terran ground units because I can Hellion - 4.25 Reaper - 3.83
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Now that we've clearly established that Terran units on average are slower than both Protoss and Zerg (remember, we're still talking about speed in terms of transportation), let's talk about other means of transportation. As previously mentioned in this post and others, on larger maps both Protoss and Zerg tend to favor getting units like Muta and Phoenix to negate medivacs AND maintain air control, so we'll take medivacs mobility out of the picture (for now). What other modes of transportation does each race have if they don't want to hoof it on ground?
Zerg - Their units are already blazing fast, especially on creep, but when they need an alternative, there is always the underused NYDUS worm! The Nydus Worm (or worms) can transport an entire army across the map in seconds.
Protoss - Warp Gate units can be warped in anywhere the Protoss can supply a power field with a pylon OR Warp Prism. Also, the very underused Mothership Recall. Often an underused ability because the Mothership itself is so slow, and Protoss love keep their mothership with their army, but if separated the Mothership can warp in the Protoss army to its location from anywhere on the map.
Terran - ... umm... uhhh... ...
OK then.
So now let's bring up the medivac, because I know a lot of you want to argue that it is viable despite the mutas and phoenix on the map. If the Terran loads up units in to a medivac(s) (whether it be 8 marines, or 16 medivacs with his entire army) he risks losing every single unit if intercepted by phoenix / mutas in the wrong place.
Similarly, it's not like Zergs don't have overlord upgrades or Protoss don't have Warp Prisms. I'm not going to argue that Overlords or Warp Prisms compare to medivacs as UNITS, because the medivac is clearly the winner (imo), but in terms of TRANSPORTATION only, which is what this thread is about (i think?), I think the "dropship" option is about even across the three races, right? I hate to do this, but not exactly... Speeds - Remember this is all about transportation speed. Warp Prism - 2.5 (3.375 upgraded) Medivac - 2.5 Overlord - 1.88 (poor ovies)
I'm running out of steam to keep writing, and I actually wrote this hours ago but forgot to submit, damnit.
Spbelky makes a very compelling point backed up with facts. In terms of reinforcing a push, Terrans are by far the slowest. We can pray that Blizzard will attempt to balance this, but it doesn't seem possible until Heart of the Swarm comes out. As Spbelky points out, we would need an entire new mechanic (nydus worm/mass recall etc.) to compensate for the overall slow travel time. Makes me wonder if the Ghost "drop pod" ability that was removed can be incorporated in the expansion somehow. But alas, that is wishful thinking.
Until then, we need to try and adapt. While I don't personally prefer it, the slow tank/thor push (against zerg anyhow) is a staple strategy. What else can relocate at about the same speed as the mech push? Every one of our production facilities. I don't know how viable it is, but maybe Terrans need to start bringing production facilities with our main armies. As you leap frog your tanks, inch a couple barracks with the group too... maybe even include tech labs.
Techlabs? Well yeah, that's the only way to get the advanced but slow tech units out. What if we started adding techlabs once we hit about the halfway point between our base and the enemy's? A nydus network cost 150 minerals 200 gas... so basically 3 tech labs. But there is the build time to consider...I dunno, it's probably not worth it.
Taking along some naked rax is an interesting idea though. They don't cost gas, can act as a partial wall to mitigate surrounds, and can be used to scout ahead or spot the high ground without risk of being instantly sniped. Your marines also are reinforced directly to your army, rather than being at risk of being slaughtered by roaming zerglings.
On March 24 2011 05:46 PredY wrote: i don't think the issue is too big i mean we could see a few small changes in the future (faster medivacs - yes, they nerfed their speed before because of small maps, faster siege mode, perhaps even some kind of raven buff - i'd love to see seeker missile buff, faster projectile or less mana) but i think it's ok. Just practise and find new ways, like hellions usuage during the mid and lategame since they are superfast etc.
You can't fight any decent army composition with this. It would only be restricted to worker harass and thats it. A faster siege mode would be a huge help though, that is a good idea for helping the massive immobility problems.
Plz PLZ make the medivacs the same speed as ground based anti air such as stalkers or hydras. I can dig that air units can run down transports but not fucking stalkers. How many times have you done a harrasment drop on protoss in the early game, done a little bit of nibbling damage, maybe picked off a pylon and when you load up to head out again, friggin stalkers run down your medivacs in open field. There's no sense unloading your troops if you have, say 4 damaged marines and a nearly dead marauder, they'll just die anyway.
The whole purpose of transports is to give mobility to otherwise immobile units. At the very least, give us a techlab upgrade to turbo charge the dropship engines. I'd pay extra money for it like the protoss have to with the warp prism or the zergs with their overlords, but I want medivacs that aren't going to die because they got rundown by ninja fast stalkers.
Not even blink stalkers mind you, that I could accept, just regular old stalkers running down my poor medivacs over open ground. Gives me the rage!
Terran's immobility in BW wasn't so dramatic. Everyone's ability to reinforce and handle harrassment were pretty similar, with Terran having the best harassment due to mech and dropships. However in SC2 Protoss has Warp-In, and Zerg has creep spread and nydus worms, while Terran has an incredibly strong turtle ability. Sadly, even the Blizzard maps goes against Terran sometimes, since bases past the third are often far from the third base. It's even worse if the third base is far from the main/natural. It's honestly just a trait that Terrans just have to work around until Blizzard does something about it. Unnerfing the Medivac speed (which I saw as a kneejerk nerf) would be a good start.
I believe the one thing Terran has is their ability to turtle, but this is actually something that hasn't been embraced by most Terrans right now. We have Tanks, Planetary Fortresses, Turrets, Bunkers, and Vikings. Coupled with Sensor Towers and Scan from Orbitals, Terran can stop any attack no matter how big. Terran is designed to have an imbalanced defender's advantage. In fact, we abuse this whenever we do Siege pushes and the opponent charges at us.
The one thing about Terran expansions is the benefits of getting more expansions are not as direct as Protoss/Zerg. Zerg obviously needs more expansions for the extra larva, and Protoss needs expansions for extra Cronoboosts. For Terrans, it's a choice between Orbitals and PFs, If we get an Orbital, it obviously means more Mules and more minerals to dump into. Planetary Fortress however essentially means you're taking this expansion and you can't have it. Zerg and Protoss has to use so much resources to take down a heavily fortified expansion.
I think for long distance/GSL maps we'll have to embrace our ability to turtle and expand with siege tanks and bunkers, and constantly use economy harass with hellions, banshees, and/or drops, then spend resources to heavility fortify each expansion. Hinder the economy of the opponent so much until we have enough to make one strong push. Between any deflected attacks and economy damage I can this working. Obviously this is theorycraft but that's what I get when I look at Terran in SCII, and think back on how they worked in Brood War.
You frequently see T beating Z in macrogames, even in GSL so that MU is fine. Marine/Tank/Thor or just plain Mech are very good in this MU.
The real problem is P because of the way the race works, mainly WGates and Colossus. On big maps you can't really punish P early because they'll always be 2 production circles ahead (remember, P production is frontloaded) by the time you arrive and at the same time can't play too greedy or you die to stuff like 6gate. But if you don't play really, really greedy Colossus based play just fucks you over so much. Ofc now some silver dude is going to tell me "go mech!!" but that's already sub-par on medium sized maps, on big maps mech is laughably bad.
On March 24 2011 05:46 PredY wrote: i don't think the issue is too big i mean we could see a few small changes in the future (faster medivacs - yes, they nerfed their speed before because of small maps, faster siege mode, perhaps even some kind of raven buff - i'd love to see seeker missile buff, faster projectile or less mana) but i think it's ok. Just practise and find new ways, like hellions usuage during the mid and lategame since they are superfast etc.
You can't fight any decent army composition with this. It would only be restricted to worker harass and thats it. A faster siege mode would be a huge help though, that is a good idea for helping the massive immobility problems.
that's definitly not true, upgraded helions are strong and in combination with tanks they are just as much part of the army. think back to bw vultures, very similiar. upgraded blue flame helions are a hard counter to zealots (it's actually incredible how fast they kill them) and you can use them very easily to negate the shield ability of immortals by target firing them until their shields are gone (ussually takes only 1 shot because they have a big range and deal splash). not to mention they can chase armies, and like you said 4 blue flame helions is not something you want in your base.
what i ussually do vs protoss is let my helions lead the way as spotters while my tanks/thors run after them. the helions can easily poke and retreat, when the enemies chase them i siege up and attack them with my helions again once they're in range of the tanks.
however i don't like mech vers zerg at all (feels like camping) and i'd reaaaaaaally like to see the raven speed buffed... like what purpose does it have, you can't properly harras with them because if you encouter some muta's there is no way you can escape anymore. SK terran is supposed to be a dynamic style but the raven speed just makes it too slow to be fun.
I feel the community fought so hard for so long to get larger maps, and the instant they arrive they're suddenly terrible?
Sure Protoss can reinforce with warp gates - providing all they want is gateway units. If they want to reinforce with immortals, voids or colossi... they move at the same speed as the slow units you're complaining about, and take longer to build. Zerg can reinforce quickly, providing they're on creep. Hopefully you're not seriously claiming that's unfair, given the fragility of their units and their macro mechanics in general.
Terran has a terrain advantage too: you can pick any spot on the map, and *punish* anyone that tries to take it. How about, when you're maxed out and structures are idle, shorten your own reinforce time by floating some out to your army. It'll cost a few resources to get addons again, but then again so does having to build pylons everywhere or throwing down a nydus. Or don't even float them, just build some new ones at handy locations? Rax especially are cheap in the lategame.
(actually you have another advantage - vision. Why we STILL don't see many sensor towers on these large maps is a total mystery to me.)
But you're not seriously comparing the vision of sensor towers with observers and creep tumors are you? Generally sensor towers simply alter you to the incoming direction of the things that are about to kill you.
On March 24 2011 19:44 Mercury- wrote: You frequently see T beating Z in macrogames, even in GSL so that MU is fine. Marine/Tank/Thor or just plain Mech are very good in this MU.
The real problem is P because of the way the race works, mainly WGates and Colossus. On big maps you can't really punish P early because they'll always be 2 production circles ahead (remember, P production is frontloaded) by the time you arrive and at the same time can't play too greedy or you die to stuff like 6gate. But if you don't play really, really greedy Colossus based play just fucks you over so much. Ofc now some silver dude is going to tell me "go mech!!" but that's already sub-par on medium sized maps, on big maps mech is laughably bad.
The medivac speed was nerfed a couple patches ago and that really needs to be restored with these huge maps. Especially since stalkers are faster than medivacs. They should be able to blink on a medivac, but not run it down.
I also played Tal'darim Alter for the first two times yesterday and I fucking hate that map!!! The huge maps are becoming excruciating to play as a terran. As much as it pains me to think about it, I could switch to Protoss soon
On March 24 2011 20:48 FoFo wrote: uhm mech is actually really good (3000 diamond T)
Come back when you're a 4000 masters.
In addition to what others have said, terran has no mechanic to quickly rebuild their army like zergs (mass larva) or protoss (warp in speed + chromo boost).
On March 24 2011 20:48 FoFo wrote: uhm mech is actually really good (3000 diamond T)
Come back when you're a 4000 masters.
In addition to what others have said, terran has no mechanic to quickly rebuild their army like zergs (mass larva) or protoss (warp in speed + chromo boost).
Actually i think that with the TvZ match up, many things are pretty even. Lategame is hard for both but not hugely imbalanced. That mu is more a give and take game, where the one with most eco harass prob win in the end.
In TvP althou, i'm raging hard.
Anyone who say's that mech works good in TvP arent meeting good opponents. Sure it can work, but it sure as hell can be soo overrun by any decent toss who know that to do against it. And the opptions is soo many.
And when the bigger maps comes in play, we either have to FE and lose to any hard 4gate, 3gate void, and such. Or lose to the reference that the protoss has expanded before you, and in all ways you can think of denying everything you try to do.
On March 24 2011 20:48 FoFo wrote: uhm mech is actually really good (3000 diamond T)
Come back when you're a 4000 masters.
In addition to what others have said, terran has no mechanic to quickly rebuild their army like zergs (mass larva) or protoss (warp in speed + chromo boost).
On March 24 2011 20:48 FoFo wrote: uhm mech is actually really good (3000 diamond T)
Come back when you're a 4000 masters.
In addition to what others have said, terran has no mechanic to quickly rebuild their army like zergs (mass larva) or protoss (warp in speed + chromo boost).
well although larger maps are great for the game as a whole, it will undoubtedly be a huge benefit to protoss in p vs t, a match up which was quite balanced for the whole and certainly did not favour terran. the issue is that while the wealth of openings protoss has at its disposable remain open, you can opt to go 1 gate cyber expand and be safe, but alterantively you can do a super strong all in, which unless terran have done a super safe build, will have no chance of holding. i would imagine this is the general idea OP is getting at. rush distances effect terran far, far more than protoss and zerg. at least with zerg attacks/counter will be slightly delayed, but warp gate mechanics mean there are so many strong all ins from protoss which are totally unaffected, meanwhile the opposite is true of any early game terran aggression or all ins. they will all be substantially weaker.
On March 24 2011 19:44 Mercury- wrote: You frequently see T beating Z in macrogames, even in GSL so that MU is fine. Marine/Tank/Thor or just plain Mech are very good in this MU.
The real problem is P because of the way the race works, mainly WGates and Colossus. On big maps you can't really punish P early because they'll always be 2 production circles ahead (remember, P production is frontloaded) by the time you arrive and at the same time can't play too greedy or you die to stuff like 6gate. But if you don't play really, really greedy Colossus based play just fucks you over so much. Ofc now some silver dude is going to tell me "go mech!!" but that's already sub-par on medium sized maps, on big maps mech is laughably bad.
On March 24 2011 03:40 StalinRusH wrote: Hmm i'm not a Terran player (anymore(bw)) but couldn't Terran just play bw ish on bigger maps? i mean terran had the same issue with not a lot of mobility but that didn't really stop them from doing just as good.
The ratio of Terran speed to other races' speeds is greater in SC2. Terran is essentially the same, Zerg has creep and Toss has warpin.
On March 24 2011 19:44 Mercury- wrote: You frequently see T beating Z in macrogames, even in GSL so that MU is fine. Marine/Tank/Thor or just plain Mech are very good in this MU.
The real problem is P because of the way the race works, mainly WGates and Colossus. On big maps you can't really punish P early because they'll always be 2 production circles ahead (remember, P production is frontloaded) by the time you arrive and at the same time can't play too greedy or you die to stuff like 6gate. But if you don't play really, really greedy Colossus based play just fucks you over so much. Ofc now some silver dude is going to tell me "go mech!!" but that's already sub-par on medium sized maps, on big maps mech is laughably bad.
uhm mech is actually really good (3000 diamond T)
Many things are really good in Diamond.
well i got my mech build from a guy who's mid masters
I play at the 3.5k master level as Terran and have found that push distances have been a noticeably more difficult, but I wouldn't say it leaves Terran behind the other races. Naturally the immobility of Terran is the point of weakness the other races have to exploit, and short push distances, especially with tanks were REALLY strong. Large maps are a somewhat new thing, and it will inevitably change the approach Terran will have to take to the match ups. I would say we need to give it more time to determine whether balance will require adjustment here.
While MVP is definitely a talented, respected Terran player; even top tier players can fall victim to shortsighted, hasty opinions on balance (as we see happen time and time again). I don't think we should take his statement as a huge indicator about the current state of balance as even he hasn't had extensive periods of time to evaluate the required changes that need to be made on the newer map sets.
While it's definitely something that we should keep a watchful eye on, we mustn't be hasty in our conclusions.
Terrans have harder time because they are used to small maps. Just look at Jinro playing vs. Idra on large GSL maps. I mean Idra is one of the best macro zergs out here but he is loosing those maps.
Keep in mind that the larger map is, the harder is for zerg to spread creep and usually fights are happening off creep. Medivac harass on large maps is also more stronger.
The "Terran has awesome turtling ability" is poorly thought out. In BW Terrans could turtle because Terran mid-late game was comparatively on par to Zerg and Protoss. In SC2 this is just a joke, there is no point to turtling if you will get roflstomped late game. By definition, turtling is the art of "dragging the game out".
On March 24 2011 03:40 StalinRusH wrote: Hmm i'm not a Terran player (anymore(bw)) but couldn't Terran just play bw ish on bigger maps? i mean terran had the same issue with not a lot of mobility but that didn't really stop them from doing just as good.
Didn't you watch BW? Marine Medic Tank. Nothing has changed. The only thing more mobile then this was SK Terran which sucks because Ravens can only hold 1 HSM even with full energy bar. And HSM is 125 energy which is a crap ton. Further more compared to Sci Vessels Ravens are Ubber Slow.
I'm going to focus on mobility in TvZ, because I play it most and I also find that the mobility is less an issue for me personally in TvP because I go heavy rax/drops.
I am in the 2000's diamond. I find this is an issue for me too. More recently I've tried doing massive tank spreads and crawling on a larger scale, it works to a point but, it only really seems to work if I'm way ahead of my opponent already.
Maybe its the nature of the game, but the late game seems to be decided by the mid-game for me, and the immobility will be key here: (note this all has to do with my playstyle as well)
If in the midgame, I am able to harass to great effect - Med drops primarily - then once the number of Mutas/Infestors gets high enough to start denying it nearly completely, I'll generally have been able to safely expand, get some PF's up around the map, get ahead, and just out-mass produce the and move agressively across the map, contain, and win. Heres a replay.
My problem is that, even if I macro well and keep up with the Zerg, if my harass isn't affective, and I am not well ahead in the late game, it feels impossible to deal with Zerg's mobility. Heres another couple replays where I felt like I was playing pretty well for the most part. Definitely more issues in the game than the mobility alone, but still, these each have some major examples of mobility-based sadfaces.
http://replayfu.com/r/BBfrqt http://replayfu.com/r/sS7hWk http://replayfu.com/r/s9CPWm - this third one has I think only one good example, the baneling bust on my third, the whole game was played pretty poorly by me but, my point here is the mobility of popping in, destroying a whole mining base, and out in like 5 seconds, where even though I was nearby - very nearby - I couldn't move into position to stop it.
Once late game pushes start across open maps, you get set up, you're out on the map, and Zerg can relatively easily bust your tertiary expo's and move back to defend before you move far.
The necessity of Siege Tanks, and their incredible immobility, makes me feel stuck in the late game. Where on Tal'darim Altar for instance (see one of the above replays), when I have my big Tank/Marine spread out on the map, and I see him heading for one of my couple mining bases left, even with its PF and turrets, I just say to myself..... ssssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggghhhhh. In one of the replays I decide to try to get quickly into his base while he's out of position, but notice the incredibly small distance I have to travel versus him, and then how he's back before I'm even really set up . (Granted in this specific instance I also failed miserably against banes - sadface)
Also, the only reason I added that quote was to clarify, its not HSM its SM, its just called Seeker Missle. I don't think we should create acronyms that are wrong.
Also, I took a break in the middle of writing this so if it was poorly put together - apologies. To clarify - I feel like this is an issue too.
On March 24 2011 05:46 PredY wrote: i don't think the issue is too big i mean we could see a few small changes in the future (faster medivacs - yes, they nerfed their speed before because of small maps, faster siege mode, perhaps even some kind of raven buff - i'd love to see seeker missile buff, faster projectile or less mana) but i think it's ok. Just practise and find new ways, like hellions usuage during the mid and lategame since they are superfast etc.
We can dream right?
I don't think its the fact that tanks siege/unsiege slow. Its just that Terran has passive no map like Creep Speed or warp in. Maybe auto turrets if those things are supposed to be the new spider mine but you need so many ravens to pull it off. They only gave Terran the Sensor Tower which isn't so useful yet.
At any rate, the way I see it is that map control for Terran comes at the price of your maxed army. Its not just throwing a down pylon or expanding creep. Terran gets multiple map-hax but can't effectively take advantage of it. I dunno, maybe people will start abusing MulEconomy(tm) more for the free supply.
Also, the only reason I added that quote was to clarify, its not HSM its SM, its just called Seeker Missle. I don't think we should create acronyms that are wrong.
There were called Hunter Seeker Missile during Beta, and since noone really use them, everyone forget they change the name. =d
The answer is obvious. More reaper/hellion based play and hope you can win before mid-end of mid-game. Or just veto all the large maps. This is going to be a painful season for Terran.
It will be more than painful, I am just going to have to sit through all the diamond league players saying how OP Terran is, when they are not in masters because it seriously is a big difference.
On March 24 2011 23:36 Deltablazy wrote: The answer is obvious. More reaper/hellion based play and hope you can win before mid-end of mid-game. Or just veto all the large maps. This is going to be a painful season for Terran.
Are you serious? Better watch how really good terrans play, times changes, 1 base allins no longer wins you are game.
blizzard failed to realize that their god awful maps were the cause of terran imbalance/abusiveness. they honestly shouldnt have nerfed terran mechanics until after they saw how they played in larger maps.
On March 24 2011 23:36 Deltablazy wrote: The answer is obvious. More reaper/hellion based play and hope you can win before mid-end of mid-game. Or just veto all the large maps. This is going to be a painful season for Terran.
Are you serious? Better watch how really good terrans play, times changes, 1 base allins no longer wins you are game.
1 base allins are/were so popular because the longer a game lasts, the less chances the terran has. Our lategame yet remains to be fixed. I'm not saying that terran can't win lategame or on large maps, but terrans certainly don't have near 50% win rate in 20min+ games.
Give me a fighting chance in real lategame macro scenarios and i will gladly give it a try. I play about 50:50 of my games with early aggression/allin style and macro lategame style. And while i got about 70% win rate with the former, i only got about 40% with the latter.
On March 25 2011 00:01 b0urne420 wrote: blizzard failed to realize that their god awful maps were the cause of terran imbalance/abusiveness. they honestly shouldnt have nerfed terran mechanics until after they saw how they played in larger maps.
Well put, we didn't get to see how Zerg and Protoss would be effected on larger maps, turns out they have a large advantage and T doesn't. They then proceed to nerf T and there you go.
On March 24 2011 23:36 Deltablazy wrote: The answer is obvious. More reaper/hellion based play and hope you can win before mid-end of mid-game. Or just veto all the large maps. This is going to be a painful season for Terran.
Are you serious? Better watch how really good terrans play, times changes, 1 base allins no longer wins you are game.
1 base allins are/were so popular because the longer a game lasts, the less chances the terran has. Our lategame yet remains to be fixed. I'm not saying that terran can't win lategame or on large maps, but terrans certainly don't have near 50% win rate in 20min+ games.
Give me a fighting chance in real lategame macro scenarios and i will gladly give it a try. I play about 50:50 of my games with early aggression/allin style and macro lategame style. And while i got about 70% win rate with the former, i only got about 40% with the latter.
Explain me then why I recently saw players like Idra, ret, July, Zenio, moonglade dieing in straight up long macro games? Fast 3 base terran is extremely strong with huge production capabilites.
By the way macro game =/= turtling until 200/200. Good terrans do not allow zerg to get huge amounts or resources + larva.
Now, Im not gonna attempt to say everything is completely balanced right now, because im honestly not qualified to even begin to make that statement, but what I do think is that we need a little more time and to use our heads a little bit more before we go OH EM GEE BROKEN.
I mean, terran are still taking games off of p/z (SuperNova got 2nd in code A) And the larger maps are still so new. Everyone is far too quick to jump on the bandwagon of imbalance. I mean, remember in season 2 when alot of people were saying "protoss is broken and imbalanced" and then with very few changes a protoss dominated season 3.
While i agree that with the current meta game, terran are having problems, I feel like the answer isnt crying imbalance, its attempting to find solutions to the problem, and if there are honestly none you know blizzard will fix it. Lets not act like the wow community and just whine till we get our way. We are thinkers, lets try and think our way through problems and find our own solutions.
pss. if im not mistaken wasnt bw terran thought to be really really up for a long while until people figured out how to make up for their problems?
On March 25 2011 00:13 Lurk wrote: [...] I'm not saying that terran can't win lategame or on large maps, but terrans certainly don't have near 50% win rate in 20min+ games.[...]
Explain me then why I recently saw players like Idra, ret, July, Zenio, moonglade dieing in straight up long macro games? Fast 3 base terran is extremely strong with huge production capabilites.
By the way macro game =/= turtling until 200/200. Good terrans do not allow zerg to get huge amounts or resources + larva.
Did you even read my post ? Of course terran CAN win in long macro games and on large maps, but the odds are stacked against it.
The same way that zerg CAN win on close pos metalopolis and steppes of war but is not likely to.
All the people saying distance doesn't matter for protoss, obviously don't play toss. You don't know what your talking about. Distance doesn't matter when you 4 gate, but it's not like we see that every game. Certainly not against terran. In fact protoss's army is just as slow as terrans. Colossus, HT's, Zealots (without charge), sentries, void rays all have the same movement speed as an unstimmed marine. Colossus and HT's are support units, they need to be in your army for a battle. You have to move that army across the map. So this whole "Distance doesn't matter to protoss" is complete bullshit.
It some ways it matters more for toss, because terrans have sensor towers and PF's to help control bases they take beyond their natural. Zerg has creep and very fast units. Every unit in terrans arsenal is good for some kind of harass (except bc's). What mechanic does protoss have to assist in taking later bases? We gotta do it the old fashioned way, lots of cannons and please don't say hurp derp just warp in. WTF is warping in 6 units to save a base, while it's getting crushed by an army or dropped by 2 medevacs worth of mm, going to do? Die, that's what. Honestly, I can count the number of sensor towers I've seen in GSL on 1 hand. Those things are amazing, but no one is using them. Terran has banshees, hellions, drops, sensor towers, all of these things can mitigate mobility. I'm not saying it isn't a challenge to adapt to larger maps, but all the people acting like protoss gets some huge advantage over terran because of map size are just wrong. As for the harass, protoss has 3 good harass units, prisms, DT's, and phoenix. All of which can be dealt with by the same thing, well placed missle turrets and that other thing terrans never make, sensor towers. I'm sorry if I come off like an ass, but seriously a sensor tower is like a build-able xel naga watch tower. They should be used almost every game, especially on large maps.
On March 25 2011 00:13 Lurk wrote: [...] I'm not saying that terran can't win lategame or on large maps, but terrans certainly don't have near 50% win rate in 20min+ games.[...]
Explain me then why I recently saw players like Idra, ret, July, Zenio, moonglade dieing in straight up long macro games? Fast 3 base terran is extremely strong with huge production capabilites.
By the way macro game =/= turtling until 200/200. Good terrans do not allow zerg to get huge amounts or resources + larva.
Did you even read my post ? Of course terran CAN win in long macro games and on large maps, but the odds are stacked against it.
The same way that zerg CAN win on close pos metalopolis and steppes of war but is not likely to.
Thing is you have no proof that odds are against terran. Terrans are winning in straight up macro games vs. zerg, why do you thing zerg has advantage here? Is it just from your own experience?
When i started playing terran in sc2 i used sensor towers a lot. I still used them when i was in high diamond. However, i started to realize that almost never they actually did me any good. Since the opponent can see the exact radius of the tower, he will never fly through it if he wants to drop you, he'll just maneuver around it. Also, very rarely does a zerg or protoss actually attempt to drop - most of the time you're harassed by phoenix or mutas, in which case sensor towers don't do you any good because they're too fast anyway.
So i stopped using sensor towers other than in TvT, simply because they're not worth their cost in the other matchups. Getting 2-3 missile turrets instead is a better investment almost every time.
Long distance maps make fast units more useful. I don't believe that statement can be debated.
If we look at Zerg we can see that Zerg has the zergling and the mutalisk that are both fast units (even off creep in the case of the zergling). We all know that Zerg gets to control the towers in TvZ because of Terran's lesser mobility. On a large map like Tal'Darim, Zerg has full vision because of creep, towers, and overlords. When the Terran player tries to move out, the Zerg player will easily cut off reinforcements and just start making tons of units and spine crawlers to defend the push. Meanwhile, the Zerg player can counterattack with impunity because the Terran army is gone.
If Terran waits to get 200/200, then Zerg expands several times and then has enough money to do whatever he wants. Whenever I see a pro Zerg player lose a game on Tal'Darim it's always because they have poor scouting and decision making.
For Protoss, the long rush distance allows them to cheat and build less gateway units. They can get templar faster, a deathball faster, or get DTs safer. The problem for the other two races (Zerg and Terran are both weak to Protoss on Tal'Darim) is that they have to play Protoss like a 4 gate is coming. You can't cheat Protoss on any map because Protoss can warp units in anywhere on the map. As soon as Zergs and Terrans start trying to cut corners on their build orders like Protoss does, they'll get smacked with a 4 gate.
The game is just not balanced for these large maps. In the short term, sensor tower range should be proportional to map size. On a large map sensor towers become less effective, which is terrible because you need them more on those maps. Additionally, static defense becomes less effective (static defense is most useful to delay pushes until you can reinforce) because units can't back up the static early enough. If the game isn't rebalanced for these large maps, then we're probably not going to see many pro Terran players doing well in tournaments.
On March 25 2011 00:46 Alpina wrote:Thing is you have no proof that odds are against terran. Terrans are winning in straight up macro games vs. zerg, why do you thing zerg has advantage here? Is it just from your own experience?
It's my own experience - and that of practically every terran player i know. Go around and ask terran players if their win rate is higher in short or long matches and you'll see.
It's nothing new nor it is any kind of imbalance. It's just the reason why terrans tend to try to end things quickly. Because the longer you drag it out, the less you chances of winning are. A terran winning a 60 minute macro fest against a zerg does not disprove this.
On March 25 2011 00:48 Lurk wrote: When i started playing terran in sc2 i used sensor towers a lot. I still used them when i was in high diamond. However, i started to realize that almost never they actually did me any good. Since the opponent can see the exact radius of the tower, he will never fly through it if he wants to drop you, he'll just maneuver around it. Also, very rarely does a zerg or protoss actually attempt to drop - most of the time you're harassed by phoenix or mutas, in which case sensor towers don't do you any good because they're too fast anyway.
So i stopped using sensor towers other than in TvT, simply because they're not worth their cost in the other matchups. Getting 2-3 missile turrets instead is a better investment almost every time.
I totally disagree, putting them in position so they cover the sides of your bases to the edge of the map (so they CAN'T be avoided) would help. I find it hard to believe that you wouldn't want early warning of muta raids, or prisms. I agree you still have to make missile turrets, but being able to maneuver your marines early will always help. Another thing I'd like to point out is terrans range upgrade for missile turrets and pf's, also the +2 armor for buildings at the engineering bay . I have seen this used once in gsl. (granted, I haven't watched every match but of the ones I have seen)
Like I said in the earlier post, some adaptations need to be made for larger maps by terran. But I feel that terrans aren't using a lot of the options they have available. The fact is that 3 sensor towers can give terran vision of almost half the map, even on these huge gsl maps. How you think that is not worth it, and doesn't give you an advantage to dealing with harass and mobility is a mystery to me.
On March 25 2011 01:04 Reborn8u wrote:Like I said in the earlier post, some adaptations need to be made for larger maps by terran. But I feel that terrans aren't using a lot of the options they have available. The fact is that 3 sensor towers can give terran vision of almost half the map, even on these huge gsl maps. How you think that is not worth it, and doesn't give you an advantage to dealing with harass and mobility is a mystery to me.
First, sensor towers don't provide vision. They cannot tell you if it's an overlord or a muta or a zergling. Also, the enemy can see that you can see him, which is also a big deal and can be abused.
Second, sensor towers are not exactly cheap and can be sniped easily (as everyone can see where they are).
And lastly, even though you can see the enemy units a few seconds earlier, you still have to have units ready to fend them off. If you don't have marines, thors or missile turrets ready near your mineral line, you will not fend off muta harass, no matter if you have a sensor tower or not.
There is a reason they're not used very often. And it's not that terrans haven't "discovered" them yet.
On March 25 2011 00:46 Alpina wrote:Thing is you have no proof that odds are against terran. Terrans are winning in straight up macro games vs. zerg, why do you thing zerg has advantage here? Is it just from your own experience?
It's my own experience - and that of practically every terran player i know. Go around and ask terran players if their win rate is higher in short or long matches and you'll see.
It's nothing new nor it is any kind of imbalance. It's just the reason why terrans tend to try to end things quickly. Because the longer you drag it out, the less you chances of winning are. A terran winning a 60 minute macro fest against a zerg does not disprove this.
Terran players do not have much experience on large maps, because whole year everyone was playing on small maps, that's why it is harder for them to play and win on large maps. But that absolutelly does not mean that odds of winning are against terran. Maybe odds winning on steppes for terran is 60%, and on Tal darim altar it is 50% - you may never know.
It is just much easier for terran to win on small maps but that does not mean they are at disadvantage on large maps.
On March 25 2011 00:46 Alpina wrote:Thing is you have no proof that odds are against terran. Terrans are winning in straight up macro games vs. zerg, why do you thing zerg has advantage here? Is it just from your own experience?
It's my own experience - and that of practically every terran player i know. Go around and ask terran players if their win rate is higher in short or long matches and you'll see.
It's nothing new nor it is any kind of imbalance. It's just the reason why terrans tend to try to end things quickly. Because the longer you drag it out, the less you chances of winning are. A terran winning a 60 minute macro fest against a zerg does not disprove this.
Terran players do not have much experience on large maps, because whole year everyone was playing on small maps, that's why it is harder for them to play and win on large maps. But that absolutelly does not mean that odds of winning are against terran. Maybe odds winning on steppes for terran is 60%, and on Tal darim altar it is 50% - you may never know.
It is just much easier for terran to win on small maps but that does not mean they are at disadvantage on large maps.
You can't be serious. On larger maps in TvP/TvZ it's much much harder to win, a medivac speed buff (reverse the nerf basically) is probably needed but dunno if it's all T need on these maps.
On March 25 2011 01:04 Reborn8u wrote:Like I said in the earlier post, some adaptations need to be made for larger maps by terran. But I feel that terrans aren't using a lot of the options they have available. The fact is that 3 sensor towers can give terran vision of almost half the map, even on these huge gsl maps. How you think that is not worth it, and doesn't give you an advantage to dealing with harass and mobility is a mystery to me.
First, sensor towers don't provide vision. They cannot tell you if it's an overlord or a muta or a zergling. Also, the enemy can see that you can see him, which is also a big deal and can be abused.
Second, sensor towers are not exactly cheap and can be sniped easily (as everyone can see where they are).
And lastly, even though you can see the enemy units a few seconds earlier, you still have to have units ready to fend them off. If you don't have marines, thors or missile turrets ready near your mineral line, you will not fend off muta harass, no matter if you have a sensor tower or not.
There is a reason they're not used very often. And it's not that terrans haven't "discovered" them yet.
Ya the whole sensor tower debate is kind of silly. Sensor towers don't make your units any faster, they just make your reaction time faster. And honestly the whole mechanic where the opponent can SEE the radius of your sensor tower is absolutely ridiculous. Logically it makes no sense. An observer / raven / overseer can see cloaked units because of whatever scientific mechanic (radar, psionic pulses, zergy spider senses, I don't know) but what scientific mechanic allows the player to see a LARGE WHITE CIRCLE INDICATING THE EXACT RANGE OF AN UNDISCOVERED SENSORTOWER...........................
I cant imagine IMmvp switching race. Maps like Tal'Darim altar are pretty bad for Terran. The game is not balanced for these new huge maps since P has the warp gate advantage they are quite strong as they still get a choice of builds they can use no matter the map size. TvZ is quite bad as well on big maps, not so much because of the size but because of the easy amount of expansions the Z can easily get the gas they need to get the critical mass of mutas. You can ask any T player if theyd prefer a medium sized map like xel naga or Tal'darim and you prolly wont be to shocked on which they pick.
On March 24 2011 11:24 spbelky wrote: As some previous posters said, Phoenix or Muta can give a Protoss or Zerg complete air + map control, meaning things such as banshees/medivacs for transportation are completely out of the question. Also previously mentioned, Terran units are SLOW, unbelievably slow. Aside from the Reaper or Hellion, every Terran ground unit is 2.25 speed or slower. (I hope everyone that doesn't play Terran understands how slow 2.25 actually is)
So what about the Reaper or Hellion? Well, they both succeed at killing two things, workers, and light units. Sooo. workers, and Zerglings/Zealots. Luckily for us though, Zerglings on creep rape hellions, and Zealots are always accompanied by stalkers or sentries. So we have mobile units that are good at harassing workers, but suck at pretty much everything else.
This brings us back to the original problem, Terran doesn't have any mobile forces that are actually good in combat, so to deal with long travel distances on larger maps, Terran pretty much just has to deal with being slow, there is no real alternative.
To compare, Zerg typical ground units OFF CREEP / ON CREEP (assuming full upgrades) Zergling - 4.7 / 6.1 Roach - 3.0 / 3.9 (often times I hear zerg complain about how ungodly slow roaches are without speed upgrade. Well, an unupgraded roach is 2.25, which is exactly what marine/marauder/tanks are... think about that one) Hydra - 2.25 / 3.375 (again I often hear complaints about how slow Hydras are off creep. They are the SAME speed as marine/marauder/tanks) Infestor - 2.5 Ultralisk - 2.95 / 3.835 Baneling - 2.95 / 3.835
Every single zerg unit is faster than any Terran ground unit (excluding reaper/hellion), and the "omg slow" zerg units (unupgraded roach/hydra/infestor) are still just as fast if not faster than every Terran unit. Luckily when we do actually engage, we have stim to compensate, but we can't exactly stim our way across the map when we need to travel. Remember, these speeds are not relative to how they impact actual engagements, but how the impact travel time (because I would argue Zerg units NEED to be this fast in order to engage properly).
Now for the Protoss, Protoss is closer to Terran than Zerg, but there are still quite a few units that are both good in combat AND fast. Zealot - 2.75* Stalker - 2.95* Sentry - 2.25 High Templar - 1.88 (sadface) Dark Templar - 2.81* Archon - 2.81* Immortal - 2.25 Colossus - 2.25
So 4 of the 8 Protoss ground units are faster than the typical Terran ground unit, and now just for good measure I'll list all the Terran ground units because I can Hellion - 4.25 Reaper - 3.83
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Now that we've clearly established that Terran units on average are slower than both Protoss and Zerg (remember, we're still talking about speed in terms of transportation), let's talk about other means of transportation. As previously mentioned in this post and others, on larger maps both Protoss and Zerg tend to favor getting units like Muta and Phoenix to negate medivacs AND maintain air control, so we'll take medivacs mobility out of the picture (for now). What other modes of transportation does each race have if they don't want to hoof it on ground?
Zerg - Their units are already blazing fast, especially on creep, but when they need an alternative, there is always the underused NYDUS worm! The Nydus Worm (or worms) can transport an entire army across the map in seconds.
Protoss - Warp Gate units can be warped in anywhere the Protoss can supply a power field with a pylon OR Warp Prism. Also, the very underused Mothership Recall. Often an underused ability because the Mothership itself is so slow, and Protoss love keep their mothership with their army, but if separated the Mothership can warp in the Protoss army to its location from anywhere on the map.
Terran - ... umm... uhhh... ...
OK then.
So now let's bring up the medivac, because I know a lot of you want to argue that it is viable despite the mutas and phoenix on the map. If the Terran loads up units in to a medivac(s) (whether it be 8 marines, or 16 medivacs with his entire army) he risks losing every single unit if intercepted by phoenix / mutas in the wrong place.
Similarly, it's not like Zergs don't have overlord upgrades or Protoss don't have Warp Prisms. I'm not going to argue that Overlords or Warp Prisms compare to medivacs as UNITS, because the medivac is clearly the winner (imo), but in terms of TRANSPORTATION only, which is what this thread is about (i think?), I think the "dropship" option is about even across the three races, right? I hate to do this, but not exactly... Speeds - Remember this is all about transportation speed. Warp Prism - 2.5 (3.375 upgraded) Medivac - 2.5 Overlord - 1.88 (poor ovies)
I'm running out of steam to keep writing, and I actually wrote this hours ago but forgot to submit, damnit.
Don't forget that the speed is depend on the size of the units. For example, although hydra and marauders have the same speed 2.25, marauders will always catching up to hydra because hydra has bigger pixel graphic (can't explain why, but that how it work, alot of people state that), or although marauder and stalker has .7 speed different(more than a zealot charge) it always seems like marauder can barely keep up with the stalkers. But that bring up to the problem. Tank is not true 2.25 speed, and THORS is not true 1.88 speed lolz.
On March 24 2011 11:24 spbelky wrote: As some previous posters said, Phoenix or Muta can give a Protoss or Zerg complete air + map control, meaning things such as banshees/medivacs for transportation are completely out of the question. Also previously mentioned, Terran units are SLOW, unbelievably slow. Aside from the Reaper or Hellion, every Terran ground unit is 2.25 speed or slower. (I hope everyone that doesn't play Terran understands how slow 2.25 actually is)
So what about the Reaper or Hellion? Well, they both succeed at killing two things, workers, and light units. Sooo. workers, and Zerglings/Zealots. Luckily for us though, Zerglings on creep rape hellions, and Zealots are always accompanied by stalkers or sentries. So we have mobile units that are good at harassing workers, but suck at pretty much everything else.
This brings us back to the original problem, Terran doesn't have any mobile forces that are actually good in combat, so to deal with long travel distances on larger maps, Terran pretty much just has to deal with being slow, there is no real alternative.
To compare, Zerg typical ground units OFF CREEP / ON CREEP (assuming full upgrades) Zergling - 4.7 / 6.1 Roach - 3.0 / 3.9 (often times I hear zerg complain about how ungodly slow roaches are without speed upgrade. Well, an unupgraded roach is 2.25, which is exactly what marine/marauder/tanks are... think about that one) Hydra - 2.25 / 3.375 (again I often hear complaints about how slow Hydras are off creep. They are the SAME speed as marine/marauder/tanks) Infestor - 2.5 Ultralisk - 2.95 / 3.835 Baneling - 2.95 / 3.835
Every single zerg unit is faster than any Terran ground unit (excluding reaper/hellion), and the "omg slow" zerg units (unupgraded roach/hydra/infestor) are still just as fast if not faster than every Terran unit. Luckily when we do actually engage, we have stim to compensate, but we can't exactly stim our way across the map when we need to travel. Remember, these speeds are not relative to how they impact actual engagements, but how the impact travel time (because I would argue Zerg units NEED to be this fast in order to engage properly).
Now for the Protoss, Protoss is closer to Terran than Zerg, but there are still quite a few units that are both good in combat AND fast. Zealot - 2.75* Stalker - 2.95* Sentry - 2.25 High Templar - 1.88 (sadface) Dark Templar - 2.81* Archon - 2.81* Immortal - 2.25 Colossus - 2.25
So 4 of the 8 Protoss ground units are faster than the typical Terran ground unit, and now just for good measure I'll list all the Terran ground units because I can Hellion - 4.25 Reaper - 3.83
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Now that we've clearly established that Terran units on average are slower than both Protoss and Zerg (remember, we're still talking about speed in terms of transportation), let's talk about other means of transportation. As previously mentioned in this post and others, on larger maps both Protoss and Zerg tend to favor getting units like Muta and Phoenix to negate medivacs AND maintain air control, so we'll take medivacs mobility out of the picture (for now). What other modes of transportation does each race have if they don't want to hoof it on ground?
Zerg - Their units are already blazing fast, especially on creep, but when they need an alternative, there is always the underused NYDUS worm! The Nydus Worm (or worms) can transport an entire army across the map in seconds.
Protoss - Warp Gate units can be warped in anywhere the Protoss can supply a power field with a pylon OR Warp Prism. Also, the very underused Mothership Recall. Often an underused ability because the Mothership itself is so slow, and Protoss love keep their mothership with their army, but if separated the Mothership can warp in the Protoss army to its location from anywhere on the map.
Terran - ... umm... uhhh... ...
OK then.
So now let's bring up the medivac, because I know a lot of you want to argue that it is viable despite the mutas and phoenix on the map. If the Terran loads up units in to a medivac(s) (whether it be 8 marines, or 16 medivacs with his entire army) he risks losing every single unit if intercepted by phoenix / mutas in the wrong place.
Similarly, it's not like Zergs don't have overlord upgrades or Protoss don't have Warp Prisms. I'm not going to argue that Overlords or Warp Prisms compare to medivacs as UNITS, because the medivac is clearly the winner (imo), but in terms of TRANSPORTATION only, which is what this thread is about (i think?), I think the "dropship" option is about even across the three races, right? I hate to do this, but not exactly... Speeds - Remember this is all about transportation speed. Warp Prism - 2.5 (3.375 upgraded) Medivac - 2.5 Overlord - 1.88 (poor ovies)
I'm running out of steam to keep writing, and I actually wrote this hours ago but forgot to submit, damnit.
Don't forget that the speed is depend on the size of the units. For example, although hydra and marauders have the same speed 2.25, marauders will always catching up to hydra because hydra has bigger pixel graphic (can't explain why, but that how it work, alot of people state that), or although marauder and stalker has .7 speed different(more than a zealot charge) it always seems like marauder can barely keep up with the stalkers. But that bring up to the problem. Tank is not true 2.25 speed, and THORS is not true 1.88 speed lolz.
Pretty sure you're wrong about that.... the marauders are keeping up because they have concussive grenades.... Tanks go step for step with infantry, because they're all 2.25. Thors are slower and fall behind while moving. If I had to guess, I'd say they're slower by somewhere in the region of 0.37 ish, maybe, I don't know.
On March 24 2011 11:24 spbelky wrote: As some previous posters said, Phoenix or Muta can give a Protoss or Zerg complete air + map control, meaning things such as banshees/medivacs for transportation are completely out of the question. Also previously mentioned, Terran units are SLOW, unbelievably slow. Aside from the Reaper or Hellion, every Terran ground unit is 2.25 speed or slower. (I hope everyone that doesn't play Terran understands how slow 2.25 actually is)
So what about the Reaper or Hellion? Well, they both succeed at killing two things, workers, and light units. Sooo. workers, and Zerglings/Zealots. Luckily for us though, Zerglings on creep rape hellions, and Zealots are always accompanied by stalkers or sentries. So we have mobile units that are good at harassing workers, but suck at pretty much everything else.
This brings us back to the original problem, Terran doesn't have any mobile forces that are actually good in combat, so to deal with long travel distances on larger maps, Terran pretty much just has to deal with being slow, there is no real alternative. [Excerpted]
I'm going to have to disagree with your first point. As the size inbetween two bases increases the area surrounding a base increases as the square of the walking distance. That means that if the opponent has lots of air wandering around on your side of the map (if they're on their own side of the map they aren't exercising map control) they have MORE area to patrol. Alternatively the amount of area you have to defend is going to stay roughly the same because you're going to keep your defenses local to your base.
For this reason I believe it will be easier to sneak a drop in on large maps. The amount of area they have to defend will remain constant (just as the amount of defended area you have to deal with remains constant) so they should have roughly the same amount of defenses regardless of map size.
As for the point about large maps I (terran) got owned vs a zerg the other day on Taldarim but I think it was mostly because I didn't play the map correctly. I believe it will be an adjustment but I don't think larger maps will completely kill terran, I think we just need to adjust. Mobile units (hellions and drops) will become more valuable. PF's and sensor towers will also become more powerful. Good scouting will be essential as you've got lots more room to sneak a hidden expansion in.
On March 25 2011 00:46 Alpina wrote:Thing is you have no proof that odds are against terran. Terrans are winning in straight up macro games vs. zerg, why do you thing zerg has advantage here? Is it just from your own experience?
It's my own experience - and that of practically every terran player i know. Go around and ask terran players if their win rate is higher in short or long matches and you'll see.
It's nothing new nor it is any kind of imbalance. It's just the reason why terrans tend to try to end things quickly. Because the longer you drag it out, the less you chances of winning are. A terran winning a 60 minute macro fest against a zerg does not disprove this.
Terran players do not have much experience on large maps, because whole year everyone was playing on small maps, that's why it is harder for them to play and win on large maps. But that absolutelly does not mean that odds of winning are against terran. Maybe odds winning on steppes for terran is 60%, and on Tal darim altar it is 50% - you may never know.
It is just much easier for terran to win on small maps but that does not mean they are at disadvantage on large maps.
Zerg and Protoss players do not have experience playing larger maps either...
On March 25 2011 03:29 tehemperorer wrote: Being able to reinforce with only gateway units isn't that much of a bonus, since they are tier 1 and KA has been removed...
Are you mentally disturbed or just joking?
Zlots are one of the best tanks ingame, and 3/3 chargelots screws anything super hard. 150hp super strong unit at 100 minerals and 5sec warp time is riducilous.
Blink stalkers are good, and sentrys provides FF that own pretty much any ground Z unit.....
It fees the problem vs protoss is having units warped in behind you (especially DT's). Vs zerg it's more a matter of you;re slow, even if you scan the other guy you dont time to siege (even if you do you will have the worst positioning ever usually) and then they have abilites like nydus (that zeros distances in practise) creep AND drops. I honestly dont reckon faster medevacs would fix this. Nevertheless its not so bad on terminus re but tal'darim altar is a nightmare.
Everyone says "terran has to pressure". Well you cant. Not on large maps. Since I was master league before this patch (without 2rax or cheesing) and now I'm losing to diamonds the answer I suppose is to start learning protoss.
Guys im currently watching White-Ra stream against QXC and i cant help to get annoyed.
Lategame. 4v4base and qxc harassing one of the aside expos, and the only thing White-Ra needs to do is to just warp in 10 stalkers in 4 sec hAhahaha. Lategame nullifies every TvP harass it seems.
On March 25 2011 06:18 Veasel wrote: Guys im currently watching White-Ra stream against QXC and i cant help to get annoyed.
Lategame. 4v4base and qxc harassing one of the aside expos, and the only thing White-Ra needs to do is to just warp in 10 stalkers in 4 sec hAhahaha. Lategame nullifies every TvP harass it seems.
Well Terran is supposed to drop multiple locations at once to circumvent that. You drop one location, bait protoss to warp in a lot of units there, then do a massive drop on his gateways or something like that. Of course, smart Ps will overmake warp gates so that this effect is minimized.
Really, the only way to beat protoss in mid/late game is to out-multitask them and set up well timed drops.
On March 25 2011 06:18 Veasel wrote: Guys im currently watching White-Ra stream against QXC and i cant help to get annoyed.
Lategame. 4v4base and qxc harassing one of the aside expos, and the only thing White-Ra needs to do is to just warp in 10 stalkers in 4 sec hAhahaha. Lategame nullifies every TvP harass it seems.
Well Terran is supposed to drop multiple locations at once to circumvent that. You drop one location, bait protoss to warp in a lot of units there, then do a massive drop on his gateways or something like that. Of course, smart Ps will overmake warp gates so that this effect is minimized.
Really, the only way to beat protoss in mid/late game is to out-multitask them and set up well timed drops.
And to out macro a protoss you need to do super quick expands, and if protoss decides to attack then you dead. :D
If you have 2 medics with 8 helions and drop 2 min lines when protoss pushing out, well then maybe you can get a decent harass atleast.
Toss defiantly seem very strong right now on all maps. However I do think Terran has the ability to adapt. They have so many units / abilities --> options that are underused right now.
Muta Harass is tough, but what about a Raven and PDD over the turrets? With the time upgrade a PDD lasts equal to the time it takes for a raven to gather 100 energy so it can be maintained indefinitely. At only 2 supply even one raven per base would only be a 6-8 supply cost and would shut down muta harass pretty hard.
Big maps extend the game. Terran has so many upgrades, they need to start exploiting this in the longer games.
On March 25 2011 06:40 Xirroh wrote: Toss defiantly seem very strong right now on all maps. However I do think Terran has the ability to adapt. They have so many units / abilities --> options that are underused right now.
Muta Harass is tough, but what about a Raven and PDD over the turrets? With the time upgrade a PDD lasts equal to the time it takes for a raven to gather 100 energy so it can be maintained indefinitely. At only 2 supply even one raven per base would only be a 6-8 supply cost and would shut down muta harass pretty hard.
Big maps extend the game. Terran has so many upgrades, they need to start exploiting this in the longer games.
PDD only stops 20 muta shots or something. It really doesn't make a difference vs 15-30 mutas since they can ignore turrets after a certain point. If anything, seeker missile is scarier for zerg.
On March 25 2011 06:18 Veasel wrote: Guys im currently watching White-Ra stream against QXC and i cant help to get annoyed.
Lategame. 4v4base and qxc harassing one of the aside expos, and the only thing White-Ra needs to do is to just warp in 10 stalkers in 4 sec hAhahaha. Lategame nullifies every TvP harass it seems.
Well Terran is supposed to drop multiple locations at once to circumvent that. You drop one location, bait protoss to warp in a lot of units there, then do a massive drop on his gateways or something like that. Of course, smart Ps will overmake warp gates so that this effect is minimized.
Really, the only way to beat protoss in mid/late game is to out-multitask them and set up well timed drops.
I disagree on your wording, but agree with the underlying theme. "Out-multitask" makes it seem like your mechanics just have to better than the protoss. What's really happening is your forcing them to make a decision, as MMM in small numbers > gateway units in small numbers (Until they get charge). So if i drop in the back towards his mineral line with 2 medivacs, but keep a 4 medivac MMM ball (maybe a couple vikings) towards his front.... he has to choose whether or not he wants to risk exposing his front to my large army to deal with the damage in the back.
General rule of thumb: Always drop with the appropriation of pressure. Do not drop if theres no pressure. Wait til he sees your front army before those medivacs go in.
If they split their forces (especially if a colossus is in one of those groups, snipe it) attack with both and judge which side is losing and retreat, but for the most part you'll come out ahead. If they don't simply pull your guys back into the medivacs and push the front...when those forces go back to the front, pull the front back and medivac drop again. Its so simple, but the protoss is afraid of splitting and losing the "deathball" that they have.
On March 25 2011 06:18 Veasel wrote: Guys im currently watching White-Ra stream against QXC and i cant help to get annoyed.
Lategame. 4v4base and qxc harassing one of the aside expos, and the only thing White-Ra needs to do is to just warp in 10 stalkers in 4 sec hAhahaha. Lategame nullifies every TvP harass it seems.
Well Terran is supposed to drop multiple locations at once to circumvent that. You drop one location, bait protoss to warp in a lot of units there, then do a massive drop on his gateways or something like that. Of course, smart Ps will overmake warp gates so that this effect is minimized.
Really, the only way to beat protoss in mid/late game is to out-multitask them and set up well timed drops.
I disagree on your wording, but agree with the underlying theme. "Out-multitask" makes it seem like your mechanics just have to better than the protoss. What's really happening is your forcing them to make a decision, as MMM in small numbers > gateway units in small numbers (Until they get charge). So if i drop in the back towards his mineral line with 2 medivacs, but keep a 4 medivac MMM ball (maybe a couple vikings) towards his front.... he has to choose whether or not he wants to risk exposing his front to my large army to deal with the damage in the back.
General rule of thumb: Always drop with the appropriation of pressure. Do not drop if theres no pressure. Wait til he sees your front army before those medivacs go in.
If they split their forces (especially if a colossus is in one of those groups, snipe it) attack with both and judge which side is losing and retreat, but for the most part you'll come out ahead. If they don't simply pull your guys back into the medivacs and push the front...when those forces go back to the front, pull the front back and medivac drop again. Its so simple, but the protoss is afraid of splitting and losing the "deathball" that they have.
Medivac drops inherently given advantage to the attacker but if you want to win TvPs, you have to take a large advantage from that drop. Once P has set up comfortably in his 3 bases with twilight council & dt tech, T is at a pretty big disadvantage.
So basically what I'm reading in the last two pages is that late game TvP is winnable, you just have to be significantly better than your opponent. Sounds balanced.
On March 25 2011 08:29 spbelky wrote: So basically what I'm reading in the last two pages is that late game TvP is winnable, you just have to be significantly better than your opponent. Sounds balanced.
Please read my post again =D
Quite the opposite. Don't rely on out-microing. Rely on forcing decisions. There's a difference there.
I think we will see more map splitting, and non-expansion Planetary Fortresses at vital areas.
PF with Tanks behind it, with air control would be incredibly hard to break as any race.
I also think turrets everywhere will start to becomet he new norm against zerg. If you ever watch old BW there are literally carpets of turrets around, and I think that may be what Terran needs on these new big maps.
Schamus, I don't see how you can say that drops are not a multitasking battle. You're controlling at least 2 groups of units at the same time while trying to macro perfectly and so is the protoss. There are ways for protoss to buy time or win ridiculous fights with good ff micro.
I also don't see why you think you're forcing protoss to make a decision. If you drop a P's main with P's main army in his nat, he's going to HAVE to defend his main.. it's not much of a decision.
On March 25 2011 08:53 lorkac wrote: Can't Terran start building/lifting their barracks slowly closer to the enemy as the game progresses?
You lose all of the add-ons if you do that. Furthermore, the problem is that the Terran army isn't as mobile as the other races, so putting the barracks in a different spot doesn't help.
On March 25 2011 08:52 infinity21 wrote: Schamus, I don't see how you can say that drops are not a multitasking battle. You're controlling at least 2 groups of units at the same time while trying to macro perfectly and so is the protoss. There are ways for protoss to buy time or win ridiculous fights with good ff micro.
I also don't see why you think you're forcing protoss to make a decision. If you drop a P's main with P's main army in his nat, he's going to HAVE to defend his main.. it's not much of a decision.
I didn't say it's not a multitasking battle. Someone said it was relying on out-microing the protoss. That's not true. Yes, you have to multitask insanely...
And once again, you're only agreeing with my point. You force the protoss to defend the main mineral line, or tech structures, etc... while you have an army sit at the front. When he pulls back you push in... both battles should not be "end all battles" just poke in on both sides, do a little damage here and there to give you the edge.
Maybe i need to better word my original post, but in no way is it not multitasking...
On March 24 2011 23:36 Deltablazy wrote: The answer is obvious. More reaper/hellion based play and hope you can win before mid-end of mid-game. Or just veto all the large maps. This is going to be a painful season for Terran.
Are you serious? Better watch how really good terrans play, times changes, 1 base allins no longer wins you are game.
1 base allins are/were so popular because the longer a game lasts, the less chances the terran has. Our lategame yet remains to be fixed. I'm not saying that terran can't win lategame or on large maps, but terrans certainly don't have near 50% win rate in 20min+ games.
Give me a fighting chance in real lategame macro scenarios and i will gladly give it a try. I play about 50:50 of my games with early aggression/allin style and macro lategame style. And while i got about 70% win rate with the former, i only got about 40% with the latter.
Maybe that's because it's easier to win with all-ins since it takes very little skill, where as macro takes much more skill and is more demanding of the player. I don't think you should make baseless statements like this, maybe you need to check out the power of the 3/3 Mech army before you decide that Terran late game is IMBA/UP, sure it's hard to win late game when your using tier 1/1.5 units as the core of your army, break out the T2 (tanks/hellions) and T3 (thors) with max upgrades and it's a completely other story.
How are sub 2k diamond players acting as if they are amazing, stating supposed "facts" about the game, and balance etc? I'm a 3.4k diamond terran and I'd consider myself nowhere even close to good enough to be stating facts or telling others flatly that their opinion is wrong. It really takes the shine away from the TL community, it's sad to see.
Stating opinions from even bronze level players on the forums is fine, great even. But posting your opinions as facts is simply wrong in my opinion.
On topic (to keep this from just a rant), based on what I've seen of SC2 thus far, the game changes dramatically without any game-changing patches even being applied. I think before any conclusions can be made we have to give large maps more time, and let people change their play to adapt, rather than expecting the game to adapt to their play straight away.
On March 24 2011 23:36 Deltablazy wrote: The answer is obvious. More reaper/hellion based play and hope you can win before mid-end of mid-game. Or just veto all the large maps. This is going to be a painful season for Terran.
Are you serious? Better watch how really good terrans play, times changes, 1 base allins no longer wins you are game.
1 base allins are/were so popular because the longer a game lasts, the less chances the terran has. Our lategame yet remains to be fixed. I'm not saying that terran can't win lategame or on large maps, but terrans certainly don't have near 50% win rate in 20min+ games.
Give me a fighting chance in real lategame macro scenarios and i will gladly give it a try. I play about 50:50 of my games with early aggression/allin style and macro lategame style. And while i got about 70% win rate with the former, i only got about 40% with the latter.
Maybe that's because it's easier to win with all-ins since it takes very little skill, where as macro takes much more skill and is more demanding of the player. I don't think you should make baseless statements like this, maybe you need to check out the power of the 3/3 Mech army before you decide that Terran late game is IMBA/UP, sure it's hard to win late game when your using tier 1/1.5 units as the core of your army, break out the T2 (tanks/hellions) and T3 (thors) with max upgrades and it's a completely other story.
So now your interpreting all kinds of statements into my post that aren't in there ... I never said i was trying to win lategame with low tech units. I never said terran lategame was underpowered, just that my (personal) win rate and also that of practically every terran i know in lategame battles is way below 50%. How exactly did you conclude i never "checked out" the power of 3/3 mech ? Also, it's not a "baseless statement" i made, but rather facts of my personal statistics.
Also, saying that allin requires little skill is not entirely correct - otherwise every noob bronze player could win with. It just requires different skills (good micro and perfect timing) than long macro games (which are more about decision making, multitasking and well macro). This is exactly, why i play in both ways - to practice my micro as well as macro skills.
I don't know the exact reason why i lose lategame. All i can tell you is that it's NOT because i macro badly. I often lose despite having the bigger and more expensive army, having better upgrades and also higher tech units.
The bigger maps, along with the stim nerf, together make TvP a lot more difficult in this new patch. If Terran wants to do a 1 rax expand, which imo is really the only viable non-cheese build againt protoss in the current state of the game, they must be prepared to deal with a 4 gate. You can scout this by seeing only 1 gas but no expansion. However, on a big map you have no way to scout that the expansion hasn't been taken without losing key early units. Worse, 4 gate is as powerful as ever because of the warp in mechanic. Now take into account the stim nerf. Before, stim would finish a few seconds before a typical 4 gate hit, but now it finishes after the units are attacking. These factors combined make terran really, really nerfed in TvP imo.
On March 25 2011 06:18 Veasel wrote: Guys im currently watching White-Ra stream against QXC and i cant help to get annoyed.
Lategame. 4v4base and qxc harassing one of the aside expos, and the only thing White-Ra needs to do is to just warp in 10 stalkers in 4 sec hAhahaha. Lategame nullifies every TvP harass it seems.
Well Terran is supposed to drop multiple locations at once to circumvent that. You drop one location, bait protoss to warp in a lot of units there, then do a massive drop on his gateways or something like that. Of course, smart Ps will overmake warp gates so that this effect is minimized.
Really, the only way to beat protoss in mid/late game is to out-multitask them and set up well timed drops.
I disagree on your wording, but agree with the underlying theme. "Out-multitask" makes it seem like your mechanics just have to better than the protoss. What's really happening is your forcing them to make a decision, as MMM in small numbers > gateway units in small numbers (Until they get charge). So if i drop in the back towards his mineral line with 2 medivacs, but keep a 4 medivac MMM ball (maybe a couple vikings) towards his front.... he has to choose whether or not he wants to risk exposing his front to my large army to deal with the damage in the back.
General rule of thumb: Always drop with the appropriation of pressure. Do not drop if theres no pressure. Wait til he sees your front army before those medivacs go in.
If they split their forces (especially if a colossus is in one of those groups, snipe it) attack with both and judge which side is losing and retreat, but for the most part you'll come out ahead. If they don't simply pull your guys back into the medivacs and push the front...when those forces go back to the front, pull the front back and medivac drop again. Its so simple, but the protoss is afraid of splitting and losing the "deathball" that they have.
Medivac drops inherently given advantage to the attacker but if you want to win TvPs, you have to take a large advantage from that drop. Once P has set up comfortably in his 3 bases with twilight council & dt tech, T is at a pretty big disadvantage.
I also want to quote this exchange because it is the crux of the current TvP matchup, assuming protoss hasn't exercised their array of disgusting strategies in the early/earlymid game (such as 4 gate, 3 gate stargate, DT rush, 6 gate). Terran simply cannot win in head to head battles unless protoss is severely outmacroed. But, if the battle is occurring in several places at once, then terran can judge which battle is going in their favor and win that one (which protoss can't really retreat from without taking heavy losses because of stim) and stim away from the one they are losing. As soon as I understood this dynamic my TvP winrate shot up from about 25% to 60% or so.
I think that a Terran would just have to play a little different on a larger map. If you want to maintain harrassment over long distances then you'd need Banshees or more Medivacs to transport your army.
Also with the Terran's strong abilities to hold territory I don't see why there's not many proxy production facilities being built on the other side of a choke that's defended with a tank.
Stim can also provide good mobility at the sacrifice of being vulnerable to an attack for a bioball.
tl;dr- You need to adjust your strategy to the map.
I think you need to get combat shield first vs 4 gate instead of stim if you are FEing now. Stim kills the durability of your army anyways so it's not as effective until medivacs come in play. I suppose the biggest downside of that is dealing with VR which is a lot easier with stim.
On March 25 2011 21:39 infinity21 wrote: I think you need to get combat shield first vs 4 gate instead of stim if you are FEing now. Stim kills the durability of your army anyways so it's not as effective until medivacs come in play. I suppose the biggest downside of that is dealing with VR which is a lot easier with stim.
If you have 3-4 bunkers (which are absolutely needed to hold off 4 gate) don't you think stim is by far the better choice?
On March 25 2011 21:39 infinity21 wrote: I think you need to get combat shield first vs 4 gate instead of stim if you are FEing now. Stim kills the durability of your army anyways so it's not as effective until medivacs come in play. I suppose the biggest downside of that is dealing with VR which is a lot easier with stim.
If you have 3-4 bunkers (which are absolutely needed to hold off 4 gate) don't you think stim is by far the better choice?
If it's a stalker heavy 4gate, mass bunkering is not gonna help you much. Stalkers have the same range as marines in bunkers so he can focus fire your bunkers one by one while avoiding the rest.
On March 24 2011 03:18 iloveroo wrote: Q: You won the GSL January 2011. But you were eliminated from Code S by losing two fast games to Julyzerg. What do you think about the current state of Code S? Are you confident you will be able to do well in future GSLs?
With longer starting distances on the new GSL maps, it has become very bad for Terran, I think it’s pretty obvious when all the Terrans were eliminated from GSL. If Terran gets nerfed again, I think it will be hard to produce good results. I’ve even considered changing races for the next tournament, but I’m not sure about what I’ll do yet
replace the terrans in bold with zerg and its all been hear'd before
On March 24 2011 03:24 NATO wrote: the less opportunity they have to be aggressive, so they have to expand. However, the other races can do either
How do are the zerg shoes treatin ya? A zerg won GSL 1 when this exact thing was said about zerg. Terrans will have to adapt
Veto the long maps, then. They only added one (two if you include SP, which terrans did perfectly fine on).
Or figure out a new way to play, terran is very robust and alot of units/abilities haven't seen much use as of yet. You guys have only used half of your tools, start experimenting with the other half!
I think that hellions need to be used more extensively by every Terran player to keep constantly aggression and scouting versus all races. They might not always be facing light units, but that splash damage can be pretty potent regardless of the units it's being used on (with, I'd say, the exception of immortals and roaches). So long as you are careful with your positioning, don't get into sticky situations or over-commit, then I think people will find it to be a strong way to get tech/expand advantages.
On March 25 2011 21:39 infinity21 wrote: I think you need to get combat shield first vs 4 gate instead of stim if you are FEing now. Stim kills the durability of your army anyways so it's not as effective until medivacs come in play. I suppose the biggest downside of that is dealing with VR which is a lot easier with stim.
If you have 3-4 bunkers (which are absolutely needed to hold off 4 gate) don't you think stim is by far the better choice?
If it's a stalker heavy 4gate, mass bunkering is not gonna help you much. Stalkers have the same range as marines in bunkers so he can focus fire your bunkers one by one while avoiding the rest.
Well if you don't make bunkers you have no chance of surviving off 1 rax FE, so I don't get your point.
On March 25 2011 21:39 infinity21 wrote: I think you need to get combat shield first vs 4 gate instead of stim if you are FEing now. Stim kills the durability of your army anyways so it's not as effective until medivacs come in play. I suppose the biggest downside of that is dealing with VR which is a lot easier with stim.
If you have 3-4 bunkers (which are absolutely needed to hold off 4 gate) don't you think stim is by far the better choice?
If it's a stalker heavy 4gate, mass bunkering is not gonna help you much. Stalkers have the same range as marines in bunkers so he can focus fire your bunkers one by one while avoiding the rest.
Well if you don't make bunkers you have no chance of surviving off 1 rax FE, so I don't get your point.
My point was the while you need 1-2 bunkers, you can't rely entirely on them - you'll need "free" marines too - which benefit greatly from combat shields.
On March 25 2011 06:40 Xirroh wrote: Toss defiantly seem very strong right now on all maps. However I do think Terran has the ability to adapt. They have so many units / abilities --> options that are underused right now.
Muta Harass is tough, but what about a Raven and PDD over the turrets? With the time upgrade a PDD lasts equal to the time it takes for a raven to gather 100 energy so it can be maintained indefinitely. At only 2 supply even one raven per base would only be a 6-8 supply cost and would shut down muta harass pretty hard.
Big maps extend the game. Terran has so many upgrades, they need to start exploiting this in the longer games.
PDD only stops 20 muta shots or something. It really doesn't make a difference vs 15-30 mutas since they can ignore turrets after a certain point. If anything, seeker missile is scarier for zerg.
imagine it the other way around 20 mutas vs 18 mutes and a raven with a pdd
who wins
just because ravens arent free wins doesnt mean pdd isnt absurdly strong.
i think the adjust to bigger distances to push for terran will just have to leave a few thors at home, and either wait for the zerg to fuck up, or take scvs on the push and build turrets as you siege crawl. either that or agressively expand forwards in the early game after taking map control with helions, and build your production half way up the map
On March 25 2011 06:40 Xirroh wrote: Toss defiantly seem very strong right now on all maps. However I do think Terran has the ability to adapt. They have so many units / abilities --> options that are underused right now.
Muta Harass is tough, but what about a Raven and PDD over the turrets? With the time upgrade a PDD lasts equal to the time it takes for a raven to gather 100 energy so it can be maintained indefinitely. At only 2 supply even one raven per base would only be a 6-8 supply cost and would shut down muta harass pretty hard.
Big maps extend the game. Terran has so many upgrades, they need to start exploiting this in the longer games.
PDD only stops 20 muta shots or something. It really doesn't make a difference vs 15-30 mutas since they can ignore turrets after a certain point. If anything, seeker missile is scarier for zerg.
imagine it the other way around 20 mutas vs 18 mutes and a raven with a pdd
who wins
just because ravens arent free wins doesnt mean pdd isnt absurdly strong.
i think the adjust to bigger distances to push for terran will just have to leave a few thors at home, and either wait for the zerg to fuck up, or take scvs on the push and build turrets as you siege crawl. either that or agressively expand forwards in the early game after taking map control with helions, and build your production half way up the map
Open with ebay into planetary in your opponents natural!
Now that's agressively expanding.
But yeah, forcing the zerg to expand away from you while you seige/turret push towards him, taking expansions along the way, has alot of potential, I think, especially given the strength of the PF.
Terran has slow units but the speed the other races have is not a given fact and maybe terran can combat it to make it even on long maps Zerg units are not incredibly fast by themselves, they need creep wich is alot of work to spread and wich can be killed by the terran player Toss units depend on pylons for their mobility and pylons can be scouted and killed, taking away alot of the mobility toss has Another thing terran units have to make up for their slower speed is their bigger range this mostly goes for anti air like viking and thor, maybe tanks So uh ya, larger maps are not in terrans favour it seems though i dont think its that bad
Stimming your way across the map as someone said jokingly in a post earlier is not such a terrible bad idea btw lol stimming while out of combat just to get to the action faster (or get away from it) is actually viable i think though its annoying that the medics fall behind
On March 25 2011 06:40 Xirroh wrote: Toss defiantly seem very strong right now on all maps. However I do think Terran has the ability to adapt. They have so many units / abilities --> options that are underused right now.
Muta Harass is tough, but what about a Raven and PDD over the turrets? With the time upgrade a PDD lasts equal to the time it takes for a raven to gather 100 energy so it can be maintained indefinitely. At only 2 supply even one raven per base would only be a 6-8 supply cost and would shut down muta harass pretty hard.
Big maps extend the game. Terran has so many upgrades, they need to start exploiting this in the longer games.
PDD only stops 20 muta shots or something. It really doesn't make a difference vs 15-30 mutas since they can ignore turrets after a certain point. If anything, seeker missile is scarier for zerg.
imagine it the other way around 20 mutas vs 18 mutes and a raven with a pdd
who wins
just because ravens arent free wins doesnt mean pdd isnt absurdly strong.
i think the adjust to bigger distances to push for terran will just have to leave a few thors at home, and either wait for the zerg to fuck up, or take scvs on the push and build turrets as you siege crawl. either that or agressively expand forwards in the early game after taking map control with helions, and build your production half way up the map
so the mutas fly away and harrass somewhere without a pdd. i don't really get the point.
On March 25 2011 21:39 infinity21 wrote: I think you need to get combat shield first vs 4 gate instead of stim if you are FEing now. Stim kills the durability of your army anyways so it's not as effective until medivacs come in play. I suppose the biggest downside of that is dealing with VR which is a lot easier with stim.
If you have 3-4 bunkers (which are absolutely needed to hold off 4 gate) don't you think stim is by far the better choice?
If it's a stalker heavy 4gate, mass bunkering is not gonna help you much. Stalkers have the same range as marines in bunkers so he can focus fire your bunkers one by one while avoiding the rest.
Well if you don't make bunkers you have no chance of surviving off 1 rax FE, so I don't get your point.
I prefer stim too but combat shield comes 30 seconds faster so... I think it depends on P's unit composition too. If it's a 1 gas 4 gate (zeal/stalker) then I think stim is def. better but if it's 2 gas 4 gate (more sentries) then P will be picking off a few bunkers so I think combat shield is a little more useful (relatively speaking compared to 1 gas; idk if it's better than stim but at least i'll have shield when they attack for sure lol)
On March 25 2011 22:50 turdburgler wrote:imagine it the other way around 20 mutas vs 18 mutes and a raven with a pdd
who wins
just because ravens arent free wins doesnt mean pdd isnt absurdly strong.
i think the adjust to bigger distances to push for terran will just have to leave a few thors at home, and either wait for the zerg to fuck up, or take scvs on the push and build turrets as you siege crawl. either that or agressively expand forwards in the early game after taking map control with helions, and build your production half way up the map
Even if a terran could build mutas, i'd bet my money on the 20 mutas winning vs a pdd and 18 mutas. The pdd absorbs less damage than the 2 additional mutas have hitpoints.
And to the second part: You can't just leave 2-3 thors at every expansion and still expect to have any army left to push the zerg.
On March 25 2011 06:40 Xirroh wrote: Toss defiantly seem very strong right now on all maps. However I do think Terran has the ability to adapt. They have so many units / abilities --> options that are underused right now.
Muta Harass is tough, but what about a Raven and PDD over the turrets? With the time upgrade a PDD lasts equal to the time it takes for a raven to gather 100 energy so it can be maintained indefinitely. At only 2 supply even one raven per base would only be a 6-8 supply cost and would shut down muta harass pretty hard.
Big maps extend the game. Terran has so many upgrades, they need to start exploiting this in the longer games.
PDD only stops 20 muta shots or something. It really doesn't make a difference vs 15-30 mutas since they can ignore turrets after a certain point. If anything, seeker missile is scarier for zerg.
imagine it the other way around 20 mutas vs 18 mutes and a raven with a pdd
who wins
just because ravens arent free wins doesnt mean pdd isnt absurdly strong.
i think the adjust to bigger distances to push for terran will just have to leave a few thors at home, and either wait for the zerg to fuck up, or take scvs on the push and build turrets as you siege crawl. either that or agressively expand forwards in the early game after taking map control with helions, and build your production half way up the map
Except Terran won't have 18 mutas ready to fight back. The whole point of PDD is to turn the tide of a close battle into your favour. If there's 20 mutas somewhere in my base and my turrets are spread out, then having to spread out hundreds of gas to stop 1 volley from the mutas isn't going to make that big of a difference.
Your suggestions are also absurd. Leaving a "few" thors at home means leaving behind 18-24 supply worth of units at your expansions which is ridiculous. I'd rather build mass turrets and if you want to be super safe then have 1 raven with seeker missile patrolling your bases. Building your production in the middle of the map means you auto-lose once you lose a single battle. I'd rather not put myself in a situation where 1 small mistake can lose me the game instantly. Expanding aggressively is extremely risky because of mutas and you're leaving yourself to chance.
On March 25 2011 23:10 Axeinst wrote: In this game fast expanding is not really useful anyway, like it was in Brood war.
I don't even know what to say to this... ._. I vehemently disagree with this opinion. In my experience, if I do early aggression and the fast expanding player defends my push, I will lose within the next 10 minutes.
I think it would be real exciting if Blizz made an upgrade for the medivac/to the starport/or just anyway to get this bad boy into the lategame:
I Don't know if it would really directly solve Terran immobility issues, but more robust dropships might keep Z and P from freely leaving their base to counterattack. The constant threat of hard to stop drops might help T with some map control or map presence. Also, and this is my brightest idea for the day: safely transporting units to the frontlines in influencial numbers a bit faster and a bit safer.
The biggest problem is mech. Terrans went mech in both TvT and TvP. The lack of spider mines reduces terran's map control options in SC2 and reduces the protection they have for siege tanks. You can't warp in everywhere with mines all over the map. The other problem is siege tanks. They have smartfire, yes, but they cost 3 supply instead of 2 and cost 25 more gas.
On March 25 2011 18:25 AcrossFiveJulys wrote: Terran wants to do a 1 rax expand, which imo is really the only viable non-cheese build againt'
Any proof?
There is no reason to believe that 2rax expand isnt as viable, i would say 1rax expand is more dangerous actually.
In this game fast expanding is not really useful anyway, like it was in Brood war.
well in my experience 2 rax expand puts you behind economically while not having a chance to do damage against a good protoss. E.g., if you 2 rax expo protoss can easily 1 gate FE without taking damage from pressure.
On March 24 2011 11:24 spbelky wrote: As some previous posters said, Phoenix or Muta can give a Protoss or Zerg complete air + map control, meaning things such as banshees/medivacs for transportation are completely out of the question. Also previously mentioned, Terran units are SLOW, unbelievably slow. Aside from the Reaper or Hellion, every Terran ground unit is 2.25 speed or slower. (I hope everyone that doesn't play Terran understands how slow 2.25 actually is)
So what about the Reaper or Hellion? Well, they both succeed at killing two things, workers, and light units. Sooo. workers, and Zerglings/Zealots. Luckily for us though, Zerglings on creep rape hellions, and Zealots are always accompanied by stalkers or sentries. So we have mobile units that are good at harassing workers, but suck at pretty much everything else.
This brings us back to the original problem, Terran doesn't have any mobile forces that are actually good in combat, so to deal with long travel distances on larger maps, Terran pretty much just has to deal with being slow, there is no real alternative.
To compare, Zerg typical ground units OFF CREEP / ON CREEP (assuming full upgrades) Zergling - 4.7 / 6.1 Roach - 3.0 / 3.9 (often times I hear zerg complain about how ungodly slow roaches are without speed upgrade. Well, an unupgraded roach is 2.25, which is exactly what marine/marauder/tanks are... think about that one) Hydra - 2.25 / 3.375 (again I often hear complaints about how slow Hydras are off creep. They are the SAME speed as marine/marauder/tanks) Infestor - 2.5 Ultralisk - 2.95 / 3.835 Baneling - 2.95 / 3.835
Every single zerg unit is faster than any Terran ground unit (excluding reaper/hellion), and the "omg slow" zerg units (unupgraded roach/hydra/infestor) are still just as fast if not faster than every Terran unit. Luckily when we do actually engage, we have stim to compensate, but we can't exactly stim our way across the map when we need to travel. Remember, these speeds are not relative to how they impact actual engagements, but how the impact travel time (because I would argue Zerg units NEED to be this fast in order to engage properly).
Now for the Protoss, Protoss is closer to Terran than Zerg, but there are still quite a few units that are both good in combat AND fast. Zealot - 2.75* Stalker - 2.95* Sentry - 2.25 High Templar - 1.88 (sadface) Dark Templar - 2.81* Archon - 2.81* Immortal - 2.25 Colossus - 2.25
So 4 of the 8 Protoss ground units are faster than the typical Terran ground unit, and now just for good measure I'll list all the Terran ground units because I can Hellion - 4.25 Reaper - 3.83
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Now that we've clearly established that Terran units on average are slower than both Protoss and Zerg (remember, we're still talking about speed in terms of transportation), let's talk about other means of transportation. As previously mentioned in this post and others, on larger maps both Protoss and Zerg tend to favor getting units like Muta and Phoenix to negate medivacs AND maintain air control, so we'll take medivacs mobility out of the picture (for now). What other modes of transportation does each race have if they don't want to hoof it on ground?
Zerg - Their units are already blazing fast, especially on creep, but when they need an alternative, there is always the underused NYDUS worm! The Nydus Worm (or worms) can transport an entire army across the map in seconds.
Protoss - Warp Gate units can be warped in anywhere the Protoss can supply a power field with a pylon OR Warp Prism. Also, the very underused Mothership Recall. Often an underused ability because the Mothership itself is so slow, and Protoss love keep their mothership with their army, but if separated the Mothership can warp in the Protoss army to its location from anywhere on the map.
Terran - ... umm... uhhh... ...
OK then.
So now let's bring up the medivac, because I know a lot of you want to argue that it is viable despite the mutas and phoenix on the map. If the Terran loads up units in to a medivac(s) (whether it be 8 marines, or 16 medivacs with his entire army) he risks losing every single unit if intercepted by phoenix / mutas in the wrong place.
Similarly, it's not like Zergs don't have overlord upgrades or Protoss don't have Warp Prisms. I'm not going to argue that Overlords or Warp Prisms compare to medivacs as UNITS, because the medivac is clearly the winner (imo), but in terms of TRANSPORTATION only, which is what this thread is about (i think?), I think the "dropship" option is about even across the three races, right? I hate to do this, but not exactly... Speeds - Remember this is all about transportation speed. Warp Prism - 2.5 (3.375 upgraded) Medivac - 2.5 Overlord - 1.88 (poor ovies)
I'm running out of steam to keep writing, and I actually wrote this hours ago but forgot to submit, damnit.
...you do realize that generally, Terran units are far more efficient? If they were as fast as Zerg units, it wouldn't even be fair. Not to mention there's stim + concussive shell which negates a lot of the speed advantage that Protoss and Zerg have. Zerg units aren't even that fast compared to BW. Lings, hydras, even lurkers were all pretty fast on the ground moving around (don't even need creep). While it gave Zerg an obvious mobility advantage, it certainly doesn't mean Terran can't compete. In fact, before I watched less and less BW Proleague, Flash was rolling Zergs left and right.
Pretty sure every Terran on earth is going to be a little worse as the map pool gets bigger. That being said, some of the guys who were already in the lowest tier of professional Terrans are going to drop out as the map pool gets bigger (think bitbybitprime). While MVP is obviously not one of the lower tier Terrans, he's probably not going to do as well as he did before either. When you look at the number of Terrans that have been hanging around, it's pretty obvious something needed to be done to weed some out.
i've just got to say that terran should have no problem defending the far expansions. the metagame terran is playing tactics that are tuned to tiny maps and abusing the powerful timings on those maps. i'm suprised at MVP for having a moan about it tbh.
why do you think that repair, planetary fortress with armour upgrade and missile turrets are so powerful? you need to use them.
once you hit 200/200 you should have pleeeeeeeenty of money to go crazy with turrets. they stop almost any kind of air threat or at least slows it down enough for you to retaliate.
if the enemy gets his colossus deathball army to your base then you have no excuse... they're as immobile as terran mech. against zerg, make sure you keep pushing back the creep.
making late game hellions will keep the opponent busy, because when he's defending multiple bases your hellions can do far more damage than a dropship and they're almost impossible to catch (even mutas are too slow to catch them).
On March 24 2011 11:24 spbelky wrote: As some previous posters said, Phoenix or Muta can give a Protoss or Zerg complete air + map control, meaning things such as banshees/medivacs for transportation are completely out of the question. Also previously mentioned, Terran units are SLOW, unbelievably slow. Aside from the Reaper or Hellion, every Terran ground unit is 2.25 speed or slower. (I hope everyone that doesn't play Terran understands how slow 2.25 actually is)
So what about the Reaper or Hellion? Well, they both succeed at killing two things, workers, and light units. Sooo. workers, and Zerglings/Zealots. Luckily for us though, Zerglings on creep rape hellions, and Zealots are always accompanied by stalkers or sentries. So we have mobile units that are good at harassing workers, but suck at pretty much everything else.
This brings us back to the original problem, Terran doesn't have any mobile forces that are actually good in combat, so to deal with long travel distances on larger maps, Terran pretty much just has to deal with being slow, there is no real alternative.
To compare, Zerg typical ground units OFF CREEP / ON CREEP (assuming full upgrades) Zergling - 4.7 / 6.1 Roach - 3.0 / 3.9 (often times I hear zerg complain about how ungodly slow roaches are without speed upgrade. Well, an unupgraded roach is 2.25, which is exactly what marine/marauder/tanks are... think about that one) Hydra - 2.25 / 3.375 (again I often hear complaints about how slow Hydras are off creep. They are the SAME speed as marine/marauder/tanks) Infestor - 2.5 Ultralisk - 2.95 / 3.835 Baneling - 2.95 / 3.835
Every single zerg unit is faster than any Terran ground unit (excluding reaper/hellion), and the "omg slow" zerg units (unupgraded roach/hydra/infestor) are still just as fast if not faster than every Terran unit. Luckily when we do actually engage, we have stim to compensate, but we can't exactly stim our way across the map when we need to travel. Remember, these speeds are not relative to how they impact actual engagements, but how the impact travel time (because I would argue Zerg units NEED to be this fast in order to engage properly).
Now for the Protoss, Protoss is closer to Terran than Zerg, but there are still quite a few units that are both good in combat AND fast. Zealot - 2.75* Stalker - 2.95* Sentry - 2.25 High Templar - 1.88 (sadface) Dark Templar - 2.81* Archon - 2.81* Immortal - 2.25 Colossus - 2.25
So 4 of the 8 Protoss ground units are faster than the typical Terran ground unit, and now just for good measure I'll list all the Terran ground units because I can Hellion - 4.25 Reaper - 3.83
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Now that we've clearly established that Terran units on average are slower than both Protoss and Zerg (remember, we're still talking about speed in terms of transportation), let's talk about other means of transportation. As previously mentioned in this post and others, on larger maps both Protoss and Zerg tend to favor getting units like Muta and Phoenix to negate medivacs AND maintain air control, so we'll take medivacs mobility out of the picture (for now). What other modes of transportation does each race have if they don't want to hoof it on ground?
Zerg - Their units are already blazing fast, especially on creep, but when they need an alternative, there is always the underused NYDUS worm! The Nydus Worm (or worms) can transport an entire army across the map in seconds.
Protoss - Warp Gate units can be warped in anywhere the Protoss can supply a power field with a pylon OR Warp Prism. Also, the very underused Mothership Recall. Often an underused ability because the Mothership itself is so slow, and Protoss love keep their mothership with their army, but if separated the Mothership can warp in the Protoss army to its location from anywhere on the map.
Terran - ... umm... uhhh... ...
OK then.
So now let's bring up the medivac, because I know a lot of you want to argue that it is viable despite the mutas and phoenix on the map. If the Terran loads up units in to a medivac(s) (whether it be 8 marines, or 16 medivacs with his entire army) he risks losing every single unit if intercepted by phoenix / mutas in the wrong place.
Similarly, it's not like Zergs don't have overlord upgrades or Protoss don't have Warp Prisms. I'm not going to argue that Overlords or Warp Prisms compare to medivacs as UNITS, because the medivac is clearly the winner (imo), but in terms of TRANSPORTATION only, which is what this thread is about (i think?), I think the "dropship" option is about even across the three races, right? I hate to do this, but not exactly... Speeds - Remember this is all about transportation speed. Warp Prism - 2.5 (3.375 upgraded) Medivac - 2.5 Overlord - 1.88 (poor ovies)
I'm running out of steam to keep writing, and I actually wrote this hours ago but forgot to submit, damnit.
...you do realize that generally, Terran units are far more efficient? If they were as fast as Zerg units, it wouldn't even be fair. Not to mention there's stim + concussive shell which negates a lot of the speed advantage that Protoss and Zerg have. Zerg units aren't even that fast compared to BW. Lings, hydras, even lurkers were all pretty fast on the ground moving around (don't even need creep). While it gave Zerg an obvious mobility advantage, it certainly doesn't mean Terran can't compete. In fact, before I watched less and less BW Proleague, Flash was rolling Zergs left and right.
I wouldn't try to make the BW argument. TvP is completely different in sc2; the standard terran composition is marine marauder viking medivac, which is NOT more cost efficient than colossus stalker zealot. Bigger maps hurt terran's ability to apply pressure in the early/mid game but do not hurt protoss's ability to do the same due to the warp in mechanic.
On March 26 2011 03:19 cHaNg-sTa wrote:...you do realize that generally, Terran units are far more efficient? If they were as fast as Zerg units, it wouldn't even be fair. Not to mention there's stim + concussive shell which negates a lot of the speed advantage that Protoss and Zerg have. Zerg units aren't even that fast compared to BW. Lings, hydras, even lurkers were all pretty fast on the ground moving around (don't even need creep). While it gave Zerg an obvious mobility advantage, it certainly doesn't mean Terran can't compete. In fact, before I watched less and less BW Proleague, Flash was rolling Zergs left and right.
You misunderstood the entire topic. It's about how long it takes to move your army from your base to the enemy's. It's not about how fast units are in the battle.
On March 24 2011 05:46 PredY wrote: i don't think the issue is too big i mean we could see a few small changes in the future (faster medivacs - yes, they nerfed their speed before because of small maps, faster siege mode, perhaps even some kind of raven buff - i'd love to see seeker missile buff, faster projectile or less mana) but i think it's ok. Just practise and find new ways, like hellions usuage during the mid and lategame since they are superfast etc.
I've been expecting some minor changes to seeker missle for a long time but I'm starting to doubt it will ever happen. I wonder if they would consider adding range to it, since it was nerfed a long time ago. I'm still unsure why except that it was because of 2v2.
Completely agree that that map size is not a big issue, lots more games need to be played.
On March 26 2011 04:17 Morphs wrote: 1 Lift off buildings 2 Land halfway across the map 3 Produce & attack 4 Profit
Time to get creative Terran people, you have loads of options, try 'em out!
You want them to put their production facilities out in the open? Away from all of their techlabs/favourable terrain?
As much as I like to bash on terrans and protoss, this isn't the time nor the thread. Your suggestion is dangerous and outright insane.
I dunno, I don't think it'd be legit to outright shit all over what he's suggesting. Lets say you're in a mid game position after opening up a primarily rax army, like the one suggested in the day9 daily where he keeps on constant mid-sized marine aggression... finding link... http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=200525 Now your attacks are starting to become not as effective as he got colossi/HT's. Obviously you aren't going to float them so his base is blocked off or something, but you can choose your addon's carefully so that you could throw down factories or starports and effectively transition into some late game plans while being able to keep a lot of pressure on with that in-your-face marine production... It doesn't seem like you should just label this as "outright insane" so easily. Have you ever seen anyone even TRY this, let alone do it and it fail as miserably as you suggest? I only just recently started posting on TL, and this overbearing theme of negativity towards trying new things in a strategy forum is as discouraging as it is sad.
I think it would be awesome if they just made Medivacs have their old speed and make the Siege Tank slightly cheaper or slightly more powerful to increase their cost effectiveness. If Terran can be very cost effective with their Mech units then being immobile wouldn't be a problem.
Regardless I think the key to Terran being even on larger maps lies in the Tank and the Medivac. I think the fact that Terran has no warp-in/ mass larva type things to boost them is what makes them awesome and unique from the other races in that Terrans strength comes from their ability to accumulate more resources faster (M.U.L.E.S.) and getting up a powerful Mech/Biomech force that can roll through the enemy with a 2:1 or more cost ratio like BW I mean tanks in BW.....70 damage you watch a friggin BW Tank vs ANYTHING and they friggin destroy stuff so fast. Basically think of the Thor damage with splash.
An HSM buff would be amazing too I mean I used to go mass Marine/Raven when I was low Diamond but the higher I got Zergs have such fast reaction time that a HSM can't really hit ANY unit they have. Also Banelings are a lot more potent against Marine/Raven then Lukers were against SK Terran. With SK Terran you can just avoid the Lurkers.....you can't just avoid Banelings especially if he's got Infestors and with the recent Infestor buffs Marine/Raven is even less useful.
I don't play terran, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt, but it seems like players are jumping to conclusions in this thread without really looking at possibilities. MVP might have a point, but so far it looks like terran players have been doing fine at the top level tournaments and they are ridiculously overrepresented at the top of the ladder. This season is of course going to be different, which is the point of the thread. But when the top tech of terran (BCs) gets buffed and the top tech of protoss get nerfed (templar) and terran players are complaining about TvP late game like 3 days into the patch...it's just frustrating to listen to.
Build your new production buildings closer to your heavily defended forward expansions and experiment with the new terran late game more before you come complaining that terran is too immobile, Its a bit ridiculous at this point in time.
On March 26 2011 04:17 Morphs wrote: 1 Lift off buildings 2 Land halfway across the map 3 Produce & attack 4 Profit
Time to get creative Terran people, you have loads of options, try 'em out!
You want them to put their production facilities out in the open? Away from all of their techlabs/favourable terrain?
As much as I like to bash on terrans and protoss, this isn't the time nor the thread. Your suggestion is dangerous and outright insane.
That does sound like a risky idea, but he's right to say, get creative. Maybe more PF usage? Terrans strenght lies in part in its defensive structures! Why not hard contain with a planet fortress?
Id find the QQ of "imbalanced map" is pretty lame. It's just another way of playing, and I think the main thing is that 1 base timing attacks are so much more difficult to execute, this T's winrate going down (because that's what most terran's have been doing).
Get over it, practice more on these maps, and find new things to do.
P.S: i remember offensive sensor tower usage in a game, that's a fucking game breaker.
Edit; even spamming them for total map coverage could be a thing to do end game.
once you hit 200/200 you should have pleeeeeeeenty of money to go crazy with turrets. they stop almost any kind of air threat or at least slows it down enough for you to retaliate.
Im not sure if you were being serious there or not. In my experience the later the game goes (200/200) the worse Turrets become. Mutas/Voidrays render them useless when upgraded. You cannot defend a far expansion with just Turrets and they do not give you anywhere near enough time to ship your units over there to help out.
Prime example being the new Shattered Temple, the 3rd expansion, i usually "try" to defend it with Turrets and if im mid map trying to take the gold and Z/P run theyre Voids/Mutas to the 3rd, the 3rd will be gone or extremely devestated before i even get there.
One of two things i would like to see, either Terran gets a comparable air unit, Banshee would be good if they could shoot air-air, do what they did to the BC ground damage, reduce theyre dmg air-air to make them not OP and make them restricted to ground fire when cloaked (is that even possible?)
Or buff turrets to make them worth it, yes they are "free" units late game, but theyre not enough of a detterent to an air army.
Hellions are fast and on a map like Tal Darim, the natural third is wide open, just asking to be harassed.
So much of this thread seems to be about the capacity of Terran to defend muta harass on big maps. While it might sound a bit insane, I find that just attacking the Zerg is one of the best defenses to muta harass-pull your workers to a safe place, then attack right when they move into your base. If they are heavy on mutas, their ground forces will be thinner. Pull them back to defend their base. If they are harassing your mineral lines, makes sure you are taking a well-timed third at one of the other mains on a big map, and just move your scvs there.
It's not easy, but having played Terran for 6 months and now moved on to playing random, I think mass muta is a dangerous strategy for Zerg so long as the Terran moves out with enough marines and thors to accompany the tanks. Mutas are paper and the heavier their investment in mutas, the easier their base will drop.
once you hit 200/200 you should have pleeeeeeeenty of money to go crazy with turrets. they stop almost any kind of air threat or at least slows it down enough for you to retaliate.
Im not sure if you were being serious there or not. In my experience the later the game goes (200/200) the worse Turrets become. Mutas/Voidrays render them useless when upgraded. You cannot defend a far expansion with just Turrets and they do not give you anywhere near enough time to ship your units over there to help out.
Prime example being the new Shattered Temple, the 3rd expansion, i usually "try" to defend it with Turrets and if im mid map trying to take the gold and Z/P run theyre Voids/Mutas to the 3rd, the 3rd will be gone or extremely devestated before i even get there.
One of two things i would like to see, either Terran gets a comparable air unit, Banshee would be good if they could shoot air-air, do what they did to the BC ground damage, reduce theyre dmg air-air to make them not OP and make them restricted to ground fire when cloaked (is that even possible?)
Or buff turrets to make them worth it, yes they are "free" units late game, but theyre not enough of a detterent to an air army.
One thor in each mineral line will discourage any muta ball! add a few turrets and I cant imagine any void's trying to break you.
once you hit 200/200 you should have pleeeeeeeenty of money to go crazy with turrets. they stop almost any kind of air threat or at least slows it down enough for you to retaliate.
Im not sure if you were being serious there or not. In my experience the later the game goes (200/200) the worse Turrets become. Mutas/Voidrays render them useless when upgraded. You cannot defend a far expansion with just Turrets and they do not give you anywhere near enough time to ship your units over there to help out.
Prime example being the new Shattered Temple, the 3rd expansion, i usually "try" to defend it with Turrets and if im mid map trying to take the gold and Z/P run theyre Voids/Mutas to the 3rd, the 3rd will be gone or extremely devestated before i even get there.
One of two things i would like to see, either Terran gets a comparable air unit, Banshee would be good if they could shoot air-air, do what they did to the BC ground damage, reduce theyre dmg air-air to make them not OP and make them restricted to ground fire when cloaked (is that even possible?)
Or buff turrets to make them worth it, yes they are "free" units late game, but theyre not enough of a detterent to an air army.
One thor in each mineral line will discourage any muta ball! add a few turrets and I cant imagine any void's trying to break you.
I know that works but that means that you will be behind for each Thor defending. There is a reason why in an upfront fight, static defense is always super cost effective.
Send 1 Ultra at a lone Planetary Fortess, which one do you think will win and by how much?
once you hit 200/200 you should have pleeeeeeeenty of money to go crazy with turrets. they stop almost any kind of air threat or at least slows it down enough for you to retaliate.
Im not sure if you were being serious there or not. In my experience the later the game goes (200/200) the worse Turrets become. Mutas/Voidrays render them useless when upgraded. You cannot defend a far expansion with just Turrets and they do not give you anywhere near enough time to ship your units over there to help out.
Prime example being the new Shattered Temple, the 3rd expansion, i usually "try" to defend it with Turrets and if im mid map trying to take the gold and Z/P run theyre Voids/Mutas to the 3rd, the 3rd will be gone or extremely devestated before i even get there.
One of two things i would like to see, either Terran gets a comparable air unit, Banshee would be good if they could shoot air-air, do what they did to the BC ground damage, reduce theyre dmg air-air to make them not OP and make them restricted to ground fire when cloaked (is that even possible?)
Or buff turrets to make them worth it, yes they are "free" units late game, but theyre not enough of a detterent to an air army.
One thor in each mineral line will discourage any muta ball! add a few turrets and I cant imagine any void's trying to break you.
I know that works but that means that you will be behind for each Thor defending. There is a reason why in an upfront fight, static defense is always super cost effective.
Send 1 Ultra at a lone Planetary Fortess, which one do you think will win and by how much?
the idea of turret/planetary is to slow down an assault, not completely stop it.
and 8 upgraded turrets (800 minerals) with scv's on auto-repair can stop 20 fully upgraded mutas (2000 minerals) and reduce a group of 10 fully upgraded voidrays (2500 minerals) to 3-4. but consider how long it would take to mass 10 voidrays... no reason why you haven't got vikings on the field to supplement the turrets and ezmode win.
3300 diamond terran here. The problem is in the early to mid game, its incredibly hard for terran to apply pressure/harass. If the terran player sits back and macros or tech, he'll simply lose since protoss tech and zerg macro is superior. I've tried out a few strategies and had somewhat of a moderate success opening 2 factory helions against zerg. I still have no idea how to deal with protoss. T__T I think what terrans need right now is a iloveoov or fantasy to change the way terran is played right now.
Taldarim Altar isn't actually that big. I'm not sure the rush distance is even longer than on Shakuras. So far i have won every TvZ i played on that map (5 games so far) and it didn't feel that much different. Although muta harass is an even greater pain in the ass as usual. TvP on the other hand ... i haven't had much luck with.
Could nuke harras be viable? Either you could try to nuke probes during combat, so he has a hard time to check all expansions and control his army, or you can try to pick of several pylons and gates/tech buildings.
3.5k diamond here (would have been 4k masters if my win rate vs protoss wasn't 20%).
I would like to respond to the fact that MECH is a solution for TvP. I've been experimenting with mech, but the larger the map, the less effective it is. The problem with mech is: 1. You need to keep your army together 2. You are slow 3. Rebuilding mech takes agessssss
It is easy to kill the protoss main, but in the late game, on large maps, its not so easy to prevent the protoss from just counter attacking your main.
From that point both players rely on their expos & production facilities @ their expos. Here comes the good part. Defending expo's is like so impossible if its mech against toss, because you are basically way too slow to run around the map and be everywhere at once, whereas Toss will just warp in some DT's at random places and wtfbbqroflpwnz ur SCV's in one shot kills...
I am currently experiencing with mid-late game transitioning in to air units. purely because of their mobility. Bio or Mech is useless.
On March 25 2011 06:18 Veasel wrote: Guys im currently watching White-Ra stream against QXC and i cant help to get annoyed.
Lategame. 4v4base and qxc harassing one of the aside expos, and the only thing White-Ra needs to do is to just warp in 10 stalkers in 4 sec hAhahaha. Lategame nullifies every TvP harass it seems.
Well Terran is supposed to drop multiple locations at once to circumvent that. You drop one location, bait protoss to warp in a lot of units there, then do a massive drop on his gateways or something like that. Of course, smart Ps will overmake warp gates so that this effect is minimized.
Really, the only way to beat protoss in mid/late game is to out-multitask them and set up well timed drops.
Eh, that's true, but I'm not sure terran even has the early game advantage anymore. Sentry forcefields shut down many early pokes and it doesnt take long for a 6 warpgate build to overrun any expansion of mine.
On March 26 2011 22:25 Ada wrote: Could nuke harras be viable? Either you could try to nuke probes during combat, so he has a hard time to check all expansions and control his army, or you can try to pick of several pylons and gates/tech buildings.
You can nuke open space with nothing in it and it will probably be cost effective. Lategame nuke's are underused, and it is very wise to set one off randomly before engaging in a battle.
On March 26 2011 04:17 Morphs wrote: 1 Lift off buildings 2 Land halfway across the map 3 Produce & attack 4 Profit
Time to get creative Terran people, you have loads of options, try 'em out!
You want them to put their production facilities out in the open? Away from all of their techlabs/favourable terrain?
As much as I like to bash on terrans and protoss, this isn't the time nor the thread. Your suggestion is dangerous and outright insane.
I dunno, I don't think it'd be legit to outright shit all over what he's suggesting. Lets say you're in a mid game position after opening up a primarily rax army, like the one suggested in the day9 daily where he keeps on constant mid-sized marine aggression... finding link... http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=200525 Now your attacks are starting to become not as effective as he got colossi/HT's. Obviously you aren't going to float them so his base is blocked off or something, but you can choose your addon's carefully so that you could throw down factories or starports and effectively transition into some late game plans while being able to keep a lot of pressure on with that in-your-face marine production... It doesn't seem like you should just label this as "outright insane" so easily. Have you ever seen anyone even TRY this, let alone do it and it fail as miserably as you suggest? I only just recently started posting on TL, and this overbearing theme of negativity towards trying new things in a strategy forum is as discouraging as it is sad.
I'll explain to you why I find this idea to be outright insane.
Terran's production facilities are the most fragile of all the races, followed by protoss and lastly zerg. They are the hardest to get up, they require add ons to get the most effective units out, and they don't produce units as fast as protoss or zerg.
The one thing that you do with lifting your buildings out of your base is creating a new area of attack. You're putting your most vunerable asset out in the open. You're spreading yourself out needlessly just for a little bit of less walking distance. This makes harrass a ton more effective.
Lets say your opponent kills your army. He now only has to walk less far to be INSIDE your production facilities. GG for terran. You can't recover from that.
Lets say you and your opponent are fighting a big engagement at an expansion. He sends a couple of forces towards your production facilities and tears up the add ons and can easily retreat back to the map, something that isn't that viable if the production is standing on a oneway platform such as a main base.
You're also leaving behind addons in your main.
There is simply no huge advantage to setting your buildings forward for terran except for the slightly less walking distance. After a huge engagement as terran you want to regroup anyway. If you have your production around your expansion, you defend AND regroup at the same time. If you don't, you leave your expansion more exposed.
Weighing the pros and cons with eachother, there's simply too much on the con part. I'm not needlessly going about and flaming everyones idea's. But I'm simply too shocked that people suggest putting your production out in the open for terran.
Having that said, I feel like QxC's extreme harrassment style is going to be the future of TvP on larger maps. We've seen it work on Xel naga caverns in the TSL. The way he just uses hellions, ghosts, speed reapers and drops is amazing and keeps the protoss on his toes all the time.
On March 24 2011 03:24 NATO wrote: Terran units are slow. The longer the map, the less opportunity they have to be aggressive, so they have to expand. However, the other races can do either, and zerg in particular can benefit more from no aggression, but they also can just as easily be super aggressive themselves on larger maps because their units are that much faster.
To put it simply - the slow a race's units, or production distance is (protoss can still 4gate on large maps) - the worse larger maps are for that race.
I personally think SC2's design is horrible in the regard that maps differences can significantly change game balance. I think it would be better if all the races had different ways of exploiting map features, so the map variety would encourage different styles rather than one race always winning on particular maps.
Yeah, it's not even the warp gates, protoss units are just faster and more mobile over all. How many Terran units do you know that go faster than 2.25 on the ground? Hellion, and reaper is what I can think off. Even dropships are just painfully slow.
To put it in the words of many 'It doesn't necessarily make them less powerful, it gives them less options.'
In another sense though, that map features can balance is I think quite important as it allows the community to balance itself due to maps rather than some blizzard stat changes. 5rax reaper back in the IEM Cologne days would have been a lot less scary on tal'darim altar.
I'm not sure if its THAT much of a problem if you stick with bio - see Boxer in TSL. I would imagine that its hard to mech because the map is so frigging big and mech is so frigging slow and has zero frigging map control outside of hellions.
You might be able to do a big air play like with Synystyr's 4 Port into mass BC since this is one of the few maps where you can hoard enough gas to transition into a full 4+ port BC.