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Note: I do not think this is common knowledge as I haven't ever seen it used and I could not find a thread about it. If it is common knowledge or has been posted elsewhere, I apologize.
As the title suggests, this trick I figured out can be used to drop units, attack a particularly important building and kill it, then load up and retreat with only a few commands.
Why is this useful?
Normally drops are most successful when there is lots going on in the game and even as a master's player, I lack the incredible multitasking of the pros. This trick would be helpful when you want to do multiple drops and can't micro all of them or if you are in lower levels, to have effective drops while you are back at your base macroing.
This could be used to pick off sensor towers, robo bays, spires, and basically any important structure while you drop somewhere else or micro your units in a big battle.
How it works.
Basically you drop off a medivac and units - in this example - marines. You identify a particular structure you want to destroy - ghost academy in this example. It is a good idea to then hotkey your marines and medivac into a single control group for quick access to them if needed but is not required.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/UqMnW.jpg)
You then stim, a+left click or right click the building and then shift+right click the medivac (with both the marines and medivac still selected) and while continuing to hold shift, you right click where you want your medivac to return to after the drop. When the building is destroyed, the final commands of lifting up and retreating will automatically be executed.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/VRXNp.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/9yD59.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/7BBz0.jpg)
Another Example (thanks Hoban!)
Assuming you are doing a 2-pronged drop, one at the 3rd or your zerg opponent, and one at the main to snipe the spire. It takes ~10 seconds for 8s stimmed marines (0/0) to down a spire. 850 hp / (56dps*1.5). If you get your 2 medivacs in place, queue up the main drop, queue up the drop at the third, queue up the stim, kill, load up, move away, then move back to your drop on the 3rd to micro for drone kills, you really put your opponent in a pickle. They have a few more than 10 in-game seconds (maybe more like 20) to respond to both drops. On one case, they catch your spire snipe and react immediately, you get an extra few seconds to melt some drones. On the other case they catch your third drop, you quickly load up and retreat knowing you just sniped their spire. In the third case where they respond to both drops asap and split their army, You have a few seconds of drone killing and you potentially loose your second drop.
The first two cases are obviously a win in your situation, while the third case may not seem like a win. Assuming the third case, your opponent must be very quick to react and have very good army splitting skills and be able to effectively micro the split in record time. This could potentially give you a positional advantage for your main army, letting you cut off the third ect.
All-in-all I find this may not be preferable for single drop attacks but for multi-drop's this type of technique could force your opponent to make some decisions they don't want to. Thank you for introducing me to this micro technique!
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I'm pretty sure this is common knowledge... I don't even play terran but I know this. Thanks for sharing anyways! I'm sure some people might find this useful..
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On April 05 2011 13:09 justindab0mb wrote:
I'm pretty sure this is common knowledge... I don't even play terran but I know this. Thanks for sharing anyways! I'm sure some people might find this useful..
It's so funny cause I have played hundreds of games as Terran and watched hundreds of hours of games/replays and never seen or heard anyone mention it. I know I can't be the only one who didn't know this and I spend more time with the game than a lot of people! 
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Really good to know actually... I'll be sure to start using this, and I'd love to see more "execution tricks" on these forums, mostly its just some random garbage about using unit x in matchup y. Thanks a lot Charger!
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Good find.
At first I thought you were gonna propose that Blizzard add a button that can give your drop to the AI to control....lol
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this is bad news for every other races, drops were already hard to deal with, this just makes it even more brain numbinly easy for terran
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On April 05 2011 13:33 Slago wrote:
this is bad news for every other races, drops were already hard to deal with, this just makes it even more brain numbinly easy for terran
1. This is very situational and even more risky than a normal drop precisely because I am not watching it AND my units are only set to attack a structure so if he comes to defend, the opponent can quite easily clean it up because my units won't be attacking his units and they won't be leaving until/if the structure dies.
2. You know other races can drop as well right? I am quite certain this exact same tactic would work just as well using overlords or warp prisms.
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Won't work if the opponent sees it coming. The best play isn't the cutesy stuff like this, its the stuff that you can see coming and still have trouble stopping.
However, it is a useful micro trick and very good in midgame/lategame scenarios when there are big battles going around the map and you can't possibly keep track of everything.
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On April 05 2011 13:45 Zombo Joe wrote:
Won't work if the opponent sees it coming.
Kind of like with everything in Starcraft you mean...?
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That's really cool! Good find man.
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i thought this was common knowledge as well lol, i ususally do it with blink stalkers where i would que blink 5-7 stalkers into their main and snipe a spire or something during a battle.
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Seems like it'll just degenerate into bad habits. i.e not paying attention to your drops.
I guess it's decent in certain situations.
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On April 05 2011 13:39 Charger wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 05 2011 13:33 Slago wrote:
this is bad news for every other races, drops were already hard to deal with, this just makes it even more brain numbinly easy for terran 1. This is very situational and even more risky than a normal drop precisely because I am not watching it AND my units are only set to attack a structure so if he comes to defend, the opponent can quite easily clean it up because my units won't be attacking his units and they won't be leaving until/if the structure dies.
What Charger wrote. You basically want to be sure that the cost of your units including the medivac are less than the benefit you get from taking out the building. If the opponent manages to spot your drop, not only are you not focused on it, but your units have a series of actions already setup making it more difficult to control. It is a cool idea but just be careful you don't setup a drop and forget about it.
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before i read this, i already guessed how does it works lol
User was warned for this post
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On April 05 2011 13:39 Charger wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2011 13:33 Slago wrote:
this is bad news for every other races, drops were already hard to deal with, this just makes it even more brain numbinly easy for terran 1. This is very situational and even more risky than a normal drop precisely because I am not watching it AND my units are only set to attack a structure so if he comes to defend, the opponent can quite easily clean it up because my units won't be attacking his units and they won't be leaving until/if the structure dies. 2. You know other races can drop as well right? I am quite certain this exact same tactic would work just as well using overlords or warp prisms.
yep, this might be useful when doing multiple drops though, like for your 2nd or 3rd drop at the same time you can do this and not have to worry about microing it
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I don't know, I feel like the only reason to do this would be because you plan on NOT multitasking your drop, and want to queue up a few commands and forget about it... which is pretty much never a good idea. It all depends on the response time of your enemy.
If he responds fast, because you issued such specific commands and aren't paying attention, you will lose 600resources of units to deal some damage to a tech structure (ie. do nothing).
If he responds slow, you're free to continue killing shit until he does arrive.
I mean there are three main reasons I can think of dropping a person as Terran,
1) Snipe tech
2) Eco harass
3) Multi-prong attack
Obviously this technique refers to #1) in particular, but the only instance where the only thing you want to do is snipe a tech structure and NOT follow up with eco harass or multiprong attack is if they place their tech somewhere stupid like in the screenshot... =\
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Thanks for the tip! Will make sniping tech buildings much easier while a battle is going on. Screw the haters in this thread because I know this will help a lot of people.
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Oh shit! I was 3600 masters and I didnt think about doing this. Thanks dude! Will keep it in mind.
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United States7483 Posts
This is good for taking out a single building, but it has one significant downside:
Often times, when you do a drop late game, you are doing it as harassment, and you want to pull the units back at the last possible moment. Doing this will cause one of two issues:
The units will show up to defend, and you'll have to micro anyway or lose the drop, no advantage gained, possibly a disadvantage because you'll be paying less attention.
You snipe the building, load up, and get out before your drop is in danger. You did free damage, yay! But you probably could have done MORE damage, and to save micro effort you got out early.
I suppose it'll work if you simply don't have the necessary multitasking to attempt to handle it, but if you can at all do it, or want to improve your multitasking, I can only forsee this causing problems vs. actually multitasking.
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as a long-time SC player with low APM, I say thank you sir =]
Any way to issue all the commands starting before loading the dship?
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EPT
