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So I've been struggling a lot lately versus a new terran mech style where they open fast cloak banshee and then get an expo with lots of factories.
In late game they have a composition with blue flame hellions, tanks, a few ghosts, vikings, banshees and a few thors. Since it's very hard to transition into mass air in time while countering aggression and blue flame hellion harasses at the same time, I'm wondering what the optimal 120 army supply composition for beating this with ground would be.
They also use a raven so they can snipe observers if I'm not carefull with their vikings, this will prevent me from seeing cloaked ghosts running into EMP me aswell as seeing all the banshees. Most of the times I can find a way to keep an obs at range though, but yeah its pretty annoying still.
So I'm basically asking about everything from perfect ground anti composition, and perfect anti opening to this  . I didn't explain entirely what the terran strat is, but most people should have seen a 3 factory terran build PvT by now . Otherwise, I'm not sure if Goody is using this exact mech style, but definatly something similar, so go watch him if you havent! 
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Large army for Protoss could look something like: Voidray, Collossus, Templar, Immortal, Archon, and a lot of gateways. The lots of gateways lets you warp in lots of gateway units, particularly zealots/dt. It's also good to have a couple warp prism around the map to warp in DT at this time as supply is freed up. Adding in a mothership and using the vortex as a stasis from BW is also great on tanks/thors.
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In my opinion, scouting is key. You have to know if tech is coming. If he walls in, use your first scouting probe to keep poking in and out occasionally to see the add-ons on his barracks and/or other tech structures. At 4:20, any more than three marines will imply that there is no techlab on the barracks and some sort of tech is on the way.
I would respond to this by keeping my normal expansion timings and getting a faster than normal robotics for observers. I quite like stalker, sentry, observer with the rest of the minerals into probes. DO NOT forget to queue up two observers as the banshees might hit when your first is in the Terran's base.
Once banshees have been confirmed, I know that the Terran can not bust up my ramp at all so I macro hard. Getting a forge (possibly double) for upgrades and a cannon or two in each mineral line is key to success. With that, you shut down the first few banshees.
However, it is important to keep those banshee numbers down. Since banshees count as a light unit, stalkers do not really do much dps to them and it requires 2 stalkers to take down 1 banshee, with 1 dead and the other very low in health. Blink might possibly be a viable option as well depending on the amount of investment the Terran has put into the Banshees.
Be aware when the Terran transitions into factory tech with your observer still poking about his base. Stalker sentry immortal with a few zealots should be more than suffice to deal with his hellions and tanks.
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I think you should include a replay, but generally the "counter" would be really gas expensive and high tech units like Cecil said. After all, the Terran is going for a deathball Mech/Air.
As with most PvT remember that the way you play it is sort of like a Zerg, where you want to have a bigger economy since you can reinforce much quicker with chrono/gateways.
Also, tbh it's not really a new style, it's a pretty basic idea, but maybe to you.
Remember that a terran getting so many units for a deathball means that you yourself also have to have a wide variety; you can't just mass 2 different units and expect to beat it. So basically, what Cecil said is great, just use any tech production you have made and make stuff from it (why let it sit anyways haha).
Carriers are also definitely possible, though a full switch to carriers would probably take too long and not be worth it. But a few mixed in, poking at the deathball and retreating to the safety of stalkers from the threat of vikings to regen energy can be very useful.
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I also have a hard time against Terran Mech, though this is probably mostly in part to a combination of 1)My PvT sucking because I rarely meet Terrans on the ladder (Unless I'm already on a losing streak ololol) and 2)Pure Mech is very rare to begin with. So all in all, I've played against Mech less than 10 times :\
I've found though, that Carriers are not that effective, as then Terran can go for a massive Thor centered turret push, and there is basically nothing that can be done. Same with void rays, they melt to a turret line or a critical mass of thors. In fact, no unit can single handidly deal with mass thor, except (maybe) immortals + feedback now that they have an energy bar. Before the patch there was literally nothing that could deal with them though :x
I don't find Collosus very useful against pure mech (Its baller vs biomech tho), as they cannot deal properly with a critical mass of tanks, and are very bad against thors (despite what some people might have you believe).
Also, hellion harass can be pretty ridiculous, as you either have to mass cannons in all your mineral lines or have 5+ stalkers in them. Either way it is a significant investment to fight something that may or may not happen.
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On July 12 2011 03:08 Geovu wrote:
I've found though, that Carriers are not that effective, as then Terran can go for a massive Thor centered turret push, and there is basically nothing that can be done. Same with void rays, they melt to a turret line or a critical mass of thors. In fact, no unit can single handidly deal with mass thor, except (maybe) immortals + feedback now that they have an energy bar. Before the patch there was literally nothing that could deal with them though :x
Thors are terrible against carriers. Spread carriers a bit before engaging so the thors don't splash, research air armor, and have a decent number of carriers before engaging, if possible. Thors do 8 DPS to carrier shields assuming zero upgrades from either side; they do roughly 5 DPS to carrier's hulls. Carriers, on the other hand, do roughly 21 DPS to Thors, and cost 50 more minerals/gas.
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On July 12 2011 04:15 Demonhunter04 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 03:08 Geovu wrote:
I've found though, that Carriers are not that effective, as then Terran can go for a massive Thor centered turret push, and there is basically nothing that can be done. Same with void rays, they melt to a turret line or a critical mass of thors. In fact, no unit can single handidly deal with mass thor, except (maybe) immortals + feedback now that they have an energy bar. Before the patch there was literally nothing that could deal with them though :x
Thors are terrible against carriers. Spread carriers a bit before engaging so the thors don't splash, research air armor, and have a decent number of carriers before engaging, if possible. Thors do 8 DPS to carrier shields assuming zero upgrades from either side; they do roughly 5 DPS to carrier's hulls. Carriers, on the other hand, do roughly 21 DPS to Thors, and cost 50 more minerals/gas.
I'm pretty sure he's refering to that the interceptors die fast from turrets and thors and then the vikings can clear out the carriers.
I'd like to see a high level replay where the toss beats heavy terran mech of this composition if anyone knows any?
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On July 12 2011 04:29 Chamie wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 04:15 Demonhunter04 wrote:On July 12 2011 03:08 Geovu wrote:
I've found though, that Carriers are not that effective, as then Terran can go for a massive Thor centered turret push, and there is basically nothing that can be done. Same with void rays, they melt to a turret line or a critical mass of thors. In fact, no unit can single handidly deal with mass thor, except (maybe) immortals + feedback now that they have an energy bar. Before the patch there was literally nothing that could deal with them though :x
Thors are terrible against carriers. Spread carriers a bit before engaging so the thors don't splash, research air armor, and have a decent number of carriers before engaging, if possible. Thors do 8 DPS to carrier shields assuming zero upgrades from either side; they do roughly 5 DPS to carrier's hulls. Carriers, on the other hand, do roughly 21 DPS to Thors, and cost 50 more minerals/gas. I'm pretty sure he's refering to that the interceptors die fast from turrets and thors and then the vikings can clear out the carriers. I'd like to see a high level replay where the toss beats heavy terran mech of this composition if anyone knows any?
I've seen quite a few games but I don't remember any specific ones right now sorry >.>. Protoss air is very effective against mech, even if they add vikings in. Phoenixes to harass mineral lines when thors are absent, void and carriers combined to deal with thors/turrets, and a mothership, as someone suggested earlier, to top it off.
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Found a couple of  GoOdy vs  SaSe replays, it seems that Sases idea of beating it was to attack early before the strat could do anything.
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Mech's weakness isnt in the compostion, I have actully found that mech is pretty damn good vs most P ground compositions. Tanks/BFH are amazing at taking on ground compositions.
The reason mech is no where near as good as MMM/G/V is because of the mobility. If the P abuses the mobilty it becomes extremely hard for T to do anything about it because their deathball is so immobile.
To sum it up
Blink/Collsi
DT/warp prism
Continual expo sniping
Random late air tech switches
Early game immortal busts
Are all very effective at dealing with mech.
I did mech for a month straight on master 1v1, and basically all my games came down to was winning with BFH or the guy got to aggresive and attacked my tank line. Good simcity/cannons plus using the compostions I listed above put mech down pretty hard.
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i got roflstomped when setting up ghost mech by mass zealot drops... like 3 at the same time... one in natural, one in main and one on top of tanks while i was taking care of the others with my hellions!!!
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On July 12 2011 07:17 Adrenaline Seed wrote:Take a look at Warren's TvP build http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=232753It sounds like your are describing it to the T, no pun intended. It might help give you an idea on weaknesses, HTs in army and DT harass work very well against me when I go mech.
Actually that's not the same deathball, this thread seems to be more about the pure ghostmech (Warden includes quite some bio that is not ghosts aswell).
Edit: some contribution also.
I haven't actually played ghostmech, but from what I've heard it's very strong, and it's 100% built for the one time doom push. So possibly playing a reverse PvT from when the terrans play bio is possible (ie abusing mobility). Especially in the latter parts of the game where many mech players stop producing heavy helions due to the higher gas per mineral income (higher percentage of gas), and helions being really the only thing that is good to deal with multipronged attacks/harass.
Another weakness that can be abused is to try to hit when the player transitions into mech, because I have a hard time seeing the terran surviving a heavy push at the right time if he's trying to go mech.
The third choice would be as some have suggested, trying to outdeathball the ghostmech by using a composition of nearly only lategame units, such as mothership, carriers, collossi.
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A surprise voidray/carrier transition will take an unprepared terran completely off guard. Carriers en-masse are also cost efficient vs. virtually everything a mech player can make, except maybe battlecruisers with yamato cannon, or vikings accompanied by EMP.
Shying away from the air route, colossi are good vs thors, immortals and archons are good vs tanks, zealots are good for tanking damage if you need a mineral dump. I don't know what the /OPTIMAL/ composition is, but usually opponents I use mech against at the mid-master level will defeat me by using a reasonable mix of any of these good anti-mech units (immortal/archon/colossus + zealot) and engaging in a good position. I feel like virtually any protoss army engaging mech at a good angle will take it out, but obviously part of playing mech is learning how to position very strongly, so make sure you're not only relying on out-positioning your opponent.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
I haven't played against ghostmech in some time, but my general rule for fighting mech based builds is build one robotics for every factory! Yeah it sounds really dumb and you will feel dumb for doing it, but there just is no substitute for 8 or so immortals and 4 colossus + gateway units (arguably more robo units depending on timing). Both immortals and colossus are essential for robo centric play (i.e. you can't just build pure 4 robo colossus or 4 robo immortal). Spread your immortals well and you won't have to worry much about EMP - but yeah, as someone already said engaging the mech ball right is a large part to doing well. Make sure you keep a healthy economy as well
Jinro told me that VRs are the best counter to mech based play. This was quite some time ago and I agree with him to some extent. You need to play with a harass oriented mindset (i.e. be active with your VRs) and make sure you're not clumping them vs thors.
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Expand a lot, and do it quickly. Don't do silly things like getting 1 or 2 stargates on 2 or bases. Just go straight up chargelot/blink stalker/immortal/collo optional, depends on how you want to play it out. If you give Terran a reason to make vikings any stargate switch later on will be a lot less powerful than it could be if you just stuck with a good hearty ground army.
Like plexa said, playing with a harass style in mind, use the 200 mineral arbiter (warp prism) send groups a blink stalkers around. But be careful about how you do this, don't send in the warp prism(s) when the terran is just sitting on his 2 or 3 bases, wait til he is moving out like half way across the map, force him to make a decision, how much shit do i need to send back? etc.
Lets get this cleared up, if the mech is positioned well, you will not win a straight up fight. There is no stasis (vortex? but you get at most 2 of them and its from the same giagantic empable unit) storm is a lot less effective against mech. You don't win by going full retard on a sieged up mech force. Play like zerg, abuse immobilty but be careful it is very easy to over do it, like QXC or Select you see them way ahead sometimes and they just overcommit and suddenly its an even game or they're even behind.
http://sc2rep.com/replays/(P)mouzMaNa_vs_(T)ESCGoOdy__sc2rep_com_20110801/11942
thats an example of what not to do, basically Mana just sits on his ass the whole game and doesn't respect the mech. respect the mech!
EDIT- I am a high masters Terran who plays exclusively mech always.
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I love getting 10 blink stalkers. They really suck in a fight but the mech army can only be in one place at once so you just harass where he isn't. You also need something to deal with blueflame helion harass.
My plan is that if either terran stays on 2 base, then i probably cant harass so much. On 3 base i can harass more and he cant cover 4 bases, so he should not get a 4:th.
Get a good mix of unit. Try see what he has to counter it, immortals are good if they don't get stuck, voidrays are good esp. vs thor if he doesn't have vikings. chargelots are good, and arcon can help take a bit of the damage from bfh. storm and feedback are good vs banshee thor clumped tanks
Scout when he moves out. Suround at the most open space in the rout to your base. Have a lot of production facillities to rebuild your army.
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EPT
