|
|
|
On a number of maps the Pylon powering the cannons is very vulnerable to any early Z attack. At the very least Z should have to kill 1 building before attacking the critical pylon.
|
On May 11 2011 15:05 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2011 14:12 CecilSunkure wrote:
I might be just being over critical, but a lot of those don't have cannons covering the whole probe line, and are ganna be pretty bad setups. No, I agree with you. The pics are a bit deceiving since you should be making cannons on the other side of the nexus on maps like shattered/xel naga/metal as well. But the general formation for pylon/gate/forge/nexus wall is pretty awesome. Job well done 
Completely disagree with this. I found it easiest to defend as long as the cannons cover the buildings that form your wall while also covering eachother and are protected by buildings. There is no need to really cover the complete mineral line or have the nexus completely safe from roaches imo. You don't need to maynard alot of probes when your FE finishes and you put those few on the patches that are safe and soon after you'll have sentries/stalkers if needed.
Having exposed cannons or cannons that don't cover your wall or eachother correctly is terrible against roaches and you have to chose between that or covering your entire mineral line.
The only thing I question about the setups is why you don't prefer a full lock in when it's possible, it makes the build so much safer imo allowing you to cut cannons which pays for having to kill your own cyber eventually.
|
On May 11 2011 15:49 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2011 15:05 Anihc wrote:On May 11 2011 14:12 CecilSunkure wrote:
I might be just being over critical, but a lot of those don't have cannons covering the whole probe line, and are ganna be pretty bad setups. No, I agree with you. The pics are a bit deceiving since you should be making cannons on the other side of the nexus on maps like shattered/xel naga/metal as well. But the general formation for pylon/gate/forge/nexus wall is pretty awesome. Job well done Completely disagree with this. I found it easiest to defend as long as the cannons cover the buildings that form your wall while also covering eachother and are protected by buildings. There is no need to really cover the complete mineral line or have the nexus completely safe from roaches imo. You don't need to maynard alot of probes when your FE finishes and you put those few on the patches that are safe and soon after you'll have sentries/stalkers if needed. Having exposed cannons or cannons that don't cover your wall or eachother correctly is terrible against roaches and you have to chose between that or covering your entire mineral line. The only thing I question about the setups is why you don't prefer a full lock in when it's possible, it makes the build so much safer imo allowing you to cut cannons which pays for having to kill your own cyber eventually.
You only need 2 cannons on most of these maps to be safe and then add cannons as needed based on good scouting.
The cannon that covers your mineral line isn't for roaches but rather for early ling harass on your natural's workers and to cover the first cannon to prevent 8 lings from making it to the cannon sniping it after speed finishes at ~5:10 or the first larva inject worth of speed lings gets to your base at ~5:30.
|
While I commend your efforts into compiling this as well as all the work put into making pretty neat wall-offs, I'm not sure I get the point of this.
I mean, in general you do not want to rely on wall-offs based on one pylon. Obviously you can just add pylons to these and be more secure, but most of them are pretty tight and don't offer a lot of room to work with. Maybe it's just me though, I can't say I'm any expert.
All in all the Pylon change feels fine to me, only had a few hours to mess with it today though. Doesn't particularly feel like there's much difference in terms of space to build in, which was exactly the point wasn't it? The change was geared towards the warp-in on high ground options which was proving too powerful in some rushes.
Again though, nice work on this.
|
On May 11 2011 16:03 Jaeger wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2011 15:49 Markwerf wrote:On May 11 2011 15:05 Anihc wrote:On May 11 2011 14:12 CecilSunkure wrote:
I might be just being over critical, but a lot of those don't have cannons covering the whole probe line, and are ganna be pretty bad setups. No, I agree with you. The pics are a bit deceiving since you should be making cannons on the other side of the nexus on maps like shattered/xel naga/metal as well. But the general formation for pylon/gate/forge/nexus wall is pretty awesome. Job well done Completely disagree with this. I found it easiest to defend as long as the cannons cover the buildings that form your wall while also covering eachother and are protected by buildings. There is no need to really cover the complete mineral line or have the nexus completely safe from roaches imo. You don't need to maynard alot of probes when your FE finishes and you put those few on the patches that are safe and soon after you'll have sentries/stalkers if needed. Having exposed cannons or cannons that don't cover your wall or eachother correctly is terrible against roaches and you have to chose between that or covering your entire mineral line. The only thing I question about the setups is why you don't prefer a full lock in when it's possible, it makes the build so much safer imo allowing you to cut cannons which pays for having to kill your own cyber eventually. You only need 2 cannons on most of these maps to be safe and then add cannons as needed based on good scouting. The cannon that covers your mineral line isn't for roaches but rather for early ling harass on your natural's workers and to cover the first cannon to prevent 8 lings from making it to the cannon sniping it after speed finishes at ~5:10 or the first larva inject worth of speed lings gets to your base at ~5:30.
Well I generally FE with just 1 cannon making only more if i see pressure. On maps like xel naga and metalopolis you might need more against lings but personally i think those are atrocious maps to FFE on anyway. A good roach/ling attack simply can't be held on xel naga and close metalopolis spawns.
|
On May 11 2011 15:44 Kraelog wrote:
On a number of maps the Pylon powering the cannons is very vulnerable to any early Z attack. At the very least Z should have to kill 1 building before attacking the critical pylon.
Which ones are you talking about?
The ones with shown exposed pylons I saw are meta left and shattered right and bottom all of which are easily coverable by placing the core there.
Note the core shown in meta left is completely haphazardly placed and severs almost no purpose in that location, it just constricts a bit of space heading up towards the ramp. It's better placed covering that pylon.
|
Russian Federation676 Posts
great thread! I will train some forge expos more now
|
aha reminds me of the bw forge fe thread! can't wait to see what people post in here.
btw spoilers are useful things
|
On May 11 2011 16:14 Jaeger wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2011 15:44 Kraelog wrote:
On a number of maps the Pylon powering the cannons is very vulnerable to any early Z attack. At the very least Z should have to kill 1 building before attacking the critical pylon.
Which ones are you talking about? The ones with shown exposed pylons I saw are meta left and shattered right and bottom all of which are easily coverable by placing the core there. Note the core shown in meta left is completely haphazardly placed and severs almost no purpose in that location, it just constricts a bit of space heading up towards the ramp. It's better placed covering that pylon.
Well those are the ones i mean :D. You can walloff with the Core but i'm pretty sure that would mean it can be sniped by roaches.
But basically trying to make a walloff with only one pylon really doesn't cut it in my opinion. As a Zerg I can't really think of any better target for an early game rush. Perhaps it's better to design a FE walloff around 2-3 pylons?
|
This is an amazing post.
Regarding positioning cannons to defend against roaches...
this is a bit of a moot point. Cannons should only be PART of your defense against attempted roach busts, you need some stalkers and sentries as well, if you're trying to rely solely on cannons its only going to end in tears.
|
What? You aren't going to have stalkers and sentries out in time for early roach busts...
|
On May 11 2011 17:42 Amarkov wrote:
What? You aren't going to have stalkers and sentries out in time for early roach busts...
If they're roach rushing that is a different story and you really shouldn't be caught totally by surprise.
|
Again, what? Roach all-ins as a response to forge FE aren't the most uncommon thing in the world, and you won't be able to scout one until the roaches pop.
|
On May 11 2011 17:49 Amarkov wrote:
Again, what? Roach all-ins as a response to forge FE aren't the most uncommon thing in the world, and you won't be able to scout one until the roaches pop.
And again, I'm saying if you're relying solely on cannons to defend, you're going to have a hard time. You can construct your wall so that it is strong, but no wall is impregnable vs a roach attack regardless of positioning, eventually they will find a spot where they can hit your buildings, and you need a couple of stalkers. Even one stalker is often enough to discourage them from committing to breaking you.
Cannons just never seem to work very well for me against attempted roach breaks, so I try to get some gas units (sentries and stalkers) as quickly as possible, and keep my scouting probe alive as long as possible to check for expansions.
it is entirely possible, however, that I'm doing something fundamentally wrong with my own cannon placement that causes me to not have as much success with pure cannon defense.
|
Against certain timings, you need to have a pure cannon defense because stalkers just don't come out fast enough. Remember, you only need to hold until stalkers do pop; if you have 2 cannons covering most of the attackable area, you should do fine.
|
On May 11 2011 17:59 Amarkov wrote:
Against certain timings, you need to have a pure cannon defense because stalkers just don't come out fast enough. Remember, you only need to hold until stalkers do pop; if you have 2 cannons covering most of the attackable area, you should do fine.
It's difficult to tell you exactly how to counter roach attacks without a specific zerg build. The general principle is if they are on one hatch you can make infinity cannons.
If for instance a zerg does a 1base roach speedling play after say 14gas/14pool on xel naga they can get ~6 roaches right about 5:10 right as speed is finishing, just before your core should be finishing. Since he doesn't have speed yet you can easily scout his natural and see no expansion and pop right up into his main ramp and see roaches at the front. You should be even more suspicious as you scouted no expansion right as your gateway was finishing up. After confirming roaches you have around a 50 second rush time for the roaches to get to your natural plenty of time to throw up several more cannons and chrono boost out a sentry or a stalker. You can fully cut workers during this phase as you're going to be ahead something like 6ish already and have a second nexus to produce more very quickly after your don't die. His first big batch of speedling reinforcements will arrive at around 6:20. By then you'll have all of your additional cannons and 1-2 gateway units out.
You can basically prevent them from doing any serious damage or running into your main with cannons/forcefields/and probes if necessary and you end up way ahead.
If he does something like a fake hatchery into 1base speedling roach its going to delay the roach timing about 30-40 seconds.
|
Assuming the Z isn't terribad, that scenario will go quite differently
Shattered Temple
14g/14p opening: 6 Zerglings hatch, chase away probe from main & natural and follow it back to P base (assuming they don't kill it). Lings on main ramp so you don't get inside with a probe & lings at xel'naga, natural, P ramp. Assuming 7RR there is a very small window before ling speed completes where a probe can scout the expo before getting killed. Nevertheless the Protoss suspects something is up and makes two more cannons (three in total). Roaches attack and the P can't scout this since slings deny any probe scouting. The attack arrives usually when there is 1 zealot 1 sentry and WP is 75%. Anything less than 3 cannons/2pylons will die 100% to the rush. You simply can't defend with gateway units since you don't have enough gateways and warpgate is not done.
A Roach rush will break a FFE very easily without very good building placement and a sufficient (4+) number of cannons.
P.S. You can also do the 7rr off 2hatch no queen, which also works fine.
|
A very interesting thread. I was always wondering why they decreased the pylon power radius. I thought it was to make it so you can't warp in over ledges like on Delta.
|
On May 11 2011 20:52 ODKStevez wrote:
A very interesting thread. I was always wondering why they decreased the pylon power radius. I thought it was to make it so you can't warp in over ledges like on Delta.
Before you could put a pylon below the ramp in PvP and warp in units on the top. You can still do tht but now at least your stalkers can hit the pylon.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/05rqN.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KYVAq.jpg)
