EPTThis is my first post here. I have to say in advance that I am not a very skilled player, playing just in silver league, but I may have come up with a potentially new way to use Ravens.
I've found it interesting how people, with time, figured out to use units in Starcraft2 differently than they were intended to originally. For example spine crawlers for offensive pushes, workers to „block“ the mining of a mineral patch in the opponents base etc. So, playing terran I asked myself: How could one use terran units differently and ended up thinking about the raven and his seeker missile in the process.
I have rarely seen Raven in pro replays. I suppose it’s because they are so gas intensive, yet fragile. And the seeker missile is so slow, that a lot of units can simply outrun it. In addition the raven has to get rather close to fire the missile, which often results in losing the plane in the process, which makes a seeker missile even more costly. Not to mention that the damage has been nerfed several times (it now lies by 100dmg till 0.5 range; 50 dmg at 1.0 range; 25dmg till 2.0) AND the missile costs a lot of energy (125).
Now enough of the introduction. Out of all those things speaking against the seeker missile, I figured that at least the slowness of the missile doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Seeing for example mutalisks evade the missile to infinity, I had the idea that one could turn this into an advantage.
What if you would seeker missile one of your own fast units and then lead it to the enemy? Like that you could fire the missile from a far distance and a safe place, without the risk of loosing your costly ravens and if the targeted unit is fast, the enemy can‘t evade it so easily and after all won’t expect this kind of attack.
First of all: in principle it works. You can target a lot of your own terran units: marines, marauders, reapers, vikings, medivacs, hellions, banshees. This way the missile can be launched from quite far away, as it can travel 15 (to 20, with the durable materials upgrade) in game seconds. It will explode at the last spot, the targeted unit has been seen alive on (if it reaches that spot). So it doesn‘t matter if your missile guiding unit gets killed, once it reaches the enemy.
What can this be used for?
1. Drone line attack.
+ Show Spoiler +
Seeker missiles are normally not suited to kill drones because their damage radius isn’t that large and the drones are constantly moving. So if the missile happens to hit the drone when it reaches the nexus/hatchery/command centre, the bomb does very little damage considering the energy and gas costs. BUT: You can for example get 3 ravens and send in 2 „suicide“ units into the opponents drone line from outside his base, with 3 seeker missiles on their back. Remember, you just have to reach the drone line. Reapers will often do the job, jumping up cliffs and being that fast. If your two units have reached the drone line spread them out a bit and just press hold position. The rockets will hit shortly afterward and this will pretty much destroy his probe line. Plus, he won’t see it coming and won’t be fast enough to pull the workers away. Even some base defences or units won’t be able to deny the attack, if the units manage to stay alive just the seconds they need to get into the drone line. Now you can retreat with your ravens to your base or leave them somewhere safe until they regained their energy and start another „long range bombing“.
I have uploaded a replay showing two such attacks on my opponents probe line- both killing a considerable amount of workers. The attacks begin at 12 min and 23 min at his main and his third respectively. If you want to check it out. (Yes, I know the game is terrible apart from that, but I was so focused on trying this and getting the ravens out).
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-223304.jpg)
I have uploaded a replay showing two such attacks on my opponents probe line- both killing a considerable amount of workers. The attacks begin at 12 min and 23 min at his main and his third respectively. If you want to check it out. (Yes, I know the game is terrible apart from that, but I was so focused on trying this and getting the ravens out).
2. Pre-emptive Strike.
+ Show Spoiler +
If you have enough map awareness, I was thinking that this would be a way to hit the enemy by surprise. For example (some ideas):
-You see a pack of mutalisks hanging around? Launch two or three seeker missiles on a marauder of yours, stim and run him under the mutas. The time he is death he will probably have reached the spot underneath them and boom go the mutas.
-The sensor tower shows a lot of void ray heading to your base and you lack anti air? If you happen to have cloaked banshees you could seeker missile it, cloak it and move command it towards the leader of the void ray fleet. I’m pretty sure the opponents wouldn’t see that coming.
- if there is lack of detection you can run in a cloaked ghost with seeker missiles following him once you reach the army let him quickly lay down an emp as a last effort. With shields down the seeker missiles can do a lot of damage to the protoss ground army and they won’t have the time to retreat.
-You see a pack of mutalisks hanging around? Launch two or three seeker missiles on a marauder of yours, stim and run him under the mutas. The time he is death he will probably have reached the spot underneath them and boom go the mutas.
-The sensor tower shows a lot of void ray heading to your base and you lack anti air? If you happen to have cloaked banshees you could seeker missile it, cloak it and move command it towards the leader of the void ray fleet. I’m pretty sure the opponents wouldn’t see that coming.
- if there is lack of detection you can run in a cloaked ghost with seeker missiles following him once you reach the army let him quickly lay down an emp as a last effort. With shields down the seeker missiles can do a lot of damage to the protoss ground army and they won’t have the time to retreat.
3. Point 1) and 2) in 2vs2 or in games with even more allies.
+ Show Spoiler +
Here I think the potential could be (even) bigger, considering all the fast or cloacked units zerg and protoss have that you could use to guide the missiles in (or are the games to short, to get ravens in the first place?) Liquipedia mentions the possibility to target hallucinations. Actually I haven’t tought of that first, but it seems a very good suicide unit. Or: Observers with speed (if they have so much firepower that you may not reach their army with your suicide unit. Or Dts, or Phoenix, or a single muta, or a cheap zergling etc. I haven’t tried this out because I had no partner to give it a try.
In general:
I have tried out 1) and 2) to a certain extent. 2) with some exceptions mainly in self made maps however (I ran two cloaked ghosts into his protoss ball with seeker missiles following but kind of messed up with the emps). And I can’t say whether this way of worker harass or pre-emptive strike is really worth it. As I said, I am not that of a skilful player and above all 2) needs a lot of map awareness and quick reaction time. Not to mention the amount of gas you need to afford Ravens. Actually I just wanted to get this idea out and ask you what you think of it and whether you think that could be effective ways to use the raven. I surely would find it a lot of fun, if a good player picks this up und I end up seeing ravens used like this in a pro match but... well, I have no idea if it could be effective. So what do you guys think? (After trying out this „raven idea“, I noticed that liquipedia mentions the possibility of targeting your own missile turrets or own units but I haven’t seen or read of the idea to use the raven as proposed above, yet. I haven’t searched the whole net, neither, so if that’s already „common ground“, sorry…I wasn’t aware of that).
Additional remarks:
+ Show Spoiler +
-If you send in suicide units like depicted in 1) to kill workers, make sure you keep them moving. If you’ve happened to click on a drone and they stop and attack before reaching the drone line, there remains a little bit of time to get them to move again. Just watch your units that are guiding the missiles. Same is true if you want to attack the army of an opponent with a unit that can attack them. Best is to right click a point behind the enemy army and press H when your unit(s) reaches its destination (or M for move command if that lets your unit follow also an enemy unit. I actually don’t know if that works).
- The most effective way to deal damage is to send in a flying unit for a ground army and vice versa because it doesn’t matter whether the missile explodes in the air or at ground level and like this your own unit doesn’t use some of the tight space where the damage of the explosion is max. (You actually can land vikings into the drone line and the missile will follow them downwards, which looks kind of cool but will potentially reduce the damage done. If you use vikings you could land them afterwards, if they survived the explosion to quickly pick up remaining weakened workers).
- To make sure your long range bombing attempt doesn’t end up disasterous right at the beginning, put your suicide units on a hotkey. Then select the ravens, hold shift and move them slightly away to one point, then quickly press R on the suicide units and as many times as you want missiles following them. This way the ravens will launch their projectiles more or less simultaneously. With your hotkey you then can quickly switch to your suicide units and lead them to their destination.
-To 1): I haven’t really tested if leading 2 units with 3 seeker missiles in is the optimal choice. I just noticed that like this a lot of workers can be killed because you have a decent spread of damage and only two missiles often don’t kill a lot because probes can end up just being in the range of 25 dmg and survive. On the other hand: the more units you send in, the more expensive it will get and maybe the bigger the chance that the player immediately pulls away all drones if he sees the units (which is a very bad thing because then mostly use the missiles as well as the suicide units). Leading in just 1 units would be great if the opponent would then decide to attack you with the probes, because that would just draw them all into the missile.
-To 1): Reaper speed. The upside is that your reapers will be more likely to reach the worker line, even if there are some cannons or units. The downside is, that if you are too far ahead of the missile and your enemy happens to react fast, he may pull the drones away and they are fast enough to outrun the missile. You could let the missiles approach a bit, before heading into the drone line but if you let them too close (range 2) the missile can no longer be evaded and boom go your reapers.
- The most effective way to deal damage is to send in a flying unit for a ground army and vice versa because it doesn’t matter whether the missile explodes in the air or at ground level and like this your own unit doesn’t use some of the tight space where the damage of the explosion is max. (You actually can land vikings into the drone line and the missile will follow them downwards, which looks kind of cool but will potentially reduce the damage done. If you use vikings you could land them afterwards, if they survived the explosion to quickly pick up remaining weakened workers).
- To make sure your long range bombing attempt doesn’t end up disasterous right at the beginning, put your suicide units on a hotkey. Then select the ravens, hold shift and move them slightly away to one point, then quickly press R on the suicide units and as many times as you want missiles following them. This way the ravens will launch their projectiles more or less simultaneously. With your hotkey you then can quickly switch to your suicide units and lead them to their destination.
-To 1): I haven’t really tested if leading 2 units with 3 seeker missiles in is the optimal choice. I just noticed that like this a lot of workers can be killed because you have a decent spread of damage and only two missiles often don’t kill a lot because probes can end up just being in the range of 25 dmg and survive. On the other hand: the more units you send in, the more expensive it will get and maybe the bigger the chance that the player immediately pulls away all drones if he sees the units (which is a very bad thing because then mostly use the missiles as well as the suicide units). Leading in just 1 units would be great if the opponent would then decide to attack you with the probes, because that would just draw them all into the missile.
-To 1): Reaper speed. The upside is that your reapers will be more likely to reach the worker line, even if there are some cannons or units. The downside is, that if you are too far ahead of the missile and your enemy happens to react fast, he may pull the drones away and they are fast enough to outrun the missile. You could let the missiles approach a bit, before heading into the drone line but if you let them too close (range 2) the missile can no longer be evaded and boom go your reapers.
. 
