On July 27 2011 22:39 EmilA wrote: Gimmicky and fun. Impossible to rely on in a real game. You invest in ravens and hope to do small drone damage with an insane suicide Drop 3 BF hellions instead and you'll do much more damage while not investing in a unit that sucks ass.
So, losing 3 BF hellions is somehow more cost efficient than losing a reaper? Then you had to buy the BF upgrade for a unit you probably are not going to be using in your main army unless you are doing like hellion thor.
Then you make the ridiculous statement that ravens suck ass? There is absolutely nothing wrong with the raven. HSM may suck, sure, but that doesn't make the whole unit suck. PDD is freeking amazing in itself.
I'm not saying this strat is a valid one. Then again, who knows? you hafta remember that the missile gets moving at a pretty decent speed once it's accelerated. So if this thing comes flying out of the fog of war suddenly chasing a cloaked unit it might be a lot harder to react in time than you think. Unlike storm, there is no chance to move after it connects to avoid most of the damage. If it connects, it's way too late.
Seems gimmicky and tough to pull off consistently though.
I had similar thoughts too. I'm not saying it's a valid strategy but I often had the feeling that the costs were only considered when arguing against an idea... but for the way that oneself likes to go for suddenly it's surely "worth it".
I saw replays where players went cloaked banshees that get picked of after just some kills and there they have invested a lot of money and gas too and later on in the game they didn't even use them at all.
Some say, turrent harrassment with ravens is way better than HSM suicide units into the drone line but I ask myself.... if you lay 8 turrets but the opponent quickliy reacts and pulls drones and then kills the turrets...you have used 400 energy too. [Similar to this point, I have made a thread where I suggested that you can do turret harassment more effective, by walling to probes in into the mineral line and preventing them from escaping. It got closed out of reasons I don't understand, but then there the people said, well just dropping and loosing the drop force is more worth it or that they just turret harass to stop mining time and let the player dedicate some units to his base or expansion. Suddenly the raven energy is not that costly any more??
I mean...why is it so clear that in all those "vialble strategys...it is really worth it". It's hard to say that that easily and often something is just stated as "worth it" because it worked.
And I completely agree, this HSM attacks sure would be hard to pull off. But what really is true is, that its hard to dodge. You are right, the missile gets pretty fast (and is hard to see) and when the unit stops at its destination it will take only one or two seconds untill it has locked on and then covers the remaining distance in a split second. Costly, gimmicky, high risk...yes. But that it would be easy to dogdge...that is not true I think. It really hits by surprise and fast.
- a pro is always aware of his army and reacts in seconds - ravens are way too gas intensive and easy to lose - HSM and 2 suicide units would never be worth killing drones (even if you can kill like 20 in one attempt)
You may take a look at this recent replay from HDs channel. Tgun vs Major.
There are no Ravens in it but: - Both players lose their armies (first major his tanks, then tgun his infestors) rather carelessly. - The terran risks his tanks for some early contain and loses them all. I mean if you always say how gas intensive Ravens are...what about just loosing 7 tanks for nothing? (and still be in the game). - look at the amount of medivacs and marines he looses, harrassing expos. Sometimes with success but sometimes he just looses a full medivac without doing anything. - look at the huge amount of gas he has stockpiled most of the game.
Seeing that game I just asked myself...wouldn't ravens have been great there? Obviously they are not mineral heavy, it's after all the gas. I know pro players are very good, but to say that they are always aware of anything thats going on the map is not true. Seeing such a game I really wonder if cooperation ravens into such a terran build wouldn't be a good idea and if HSM-Drone line attacks really aren't worth it.
On July 29 2011 11:25 FabledIntegral wrote: Question - say you do it on a hellion, but if the enemy kills the hellion, doesn't it insta defuse?
No, it doesn't. This question is answered in the OP as well as several other times. if the unit gets killed, the missile hits the spot where that happened.
While reading this thread I though of what to me would be the ultimate (-ly entertaining?) way to pull this off. Picture this: Raven, Viking, Medivac. Viking gets targeted, and flies into the drone line and lands. Medivac swoops in, picks up the viking and leaves. BOOM!
Then I tested it. Well, it IS possible, but the set up is a little tenuous. Basically, the ideal way to do this is to have a medivac near the mineral line you want to destroy; it needs to be close enough to beat the missle to the spot. Ideally you want it to come from a different direction from the viking because it will almost need to beat the viking there since the viking is just slightly faster than the missle (and the medivac is the same speed as far as I can tell). Anyway, you right click your viking to the spot you want to blow up and Shift-D to have it land (so the medivac can pick it up). You will want to line up your Raven so it is between the viking and the bomb site near the maximum distance to the missle range. As the viking gets to the edge of the spell range, send out the missle. The reason you want to send the viking first is to maximize the distance between the missle and the viking so that neither the viking or medivac get killed by the blast (assuming a nearby queen).
Anywho, it is quite attention intensive even if only requiring a little bit of micro, most of it is in getting used to the timing. Not very feasible for a real game, but if Boxer could work this in... :D
Baas, i agree with everything you have been saying in this thread, but 8 auto-turrets would still devastate infrastructure and tech.
The way i look at it,this trick is another thing that you can do with the Raven, so IF you have Ravens out in play or the tech up for it, i don't think adding in some Ravens for AT/HSR harass could possible do you harm in a macro game. I dont understand why everyone is turning this into a "build" or a "strategy" that isnt viable, when really it is a harassment option late game.Once on 3 bases in a macro game a starport is up, so about 600-800 gas would be a few ravens with some upgrades, which i think you would gain in 1.5 game time minutes.So to say that the "heavy investment" of doing this can cost you a game i think is utter non-sense, you should not be 1basing rushing to do this.Just my .02$ though.
A thought for team play :: can you use a seeker missle on a cloaked unit like dark templar? I don't play T and have no idea, but that could solve a few problems
On July 27 2011 22:09 RedTerror wrote: I was using seeker missile today in games. It was soo bad first off that 125 mana is huge even with the mana upgrade and the range is so short this is what usually happens:
-See big clump of banelings/zerglings/mutalisks -Fire off a couple shots into the sprawling mess -Slow acceleration ravens head off towards zerg -Ravens basically ontop of zerg army -Delay for the seeker missile -1 missile goes into mutalisks and damages 3 of them -1 missile follows zergling into my marines, kills them all and damages ravens
Then it follows logically to not use it against the fastest race in the game The problem with that of course being PDD is useful vs T and P
On July 30 2011 14:23 RealDeal wrote: Baas, i agree with everything you have been saying in this thread, but 8 auto-turrets would still devastate infrastructure and tech.
The way i look at it,this trick is another thing that you can do with the Raven, so IF you have Ravens out in play or the tech up for it, i don't think adding in some Ravens for AT/HSR harass could possible do you harm in a macro game. I dont understand why everyone is turning this into a "build" or a "strategy" that isnt viable, when really it is a harassment option late game.Once on 3 bases in a macro game a starport is up, so about 600-800 gas would be a few ravens with some upgrades, which i think you would gain in 1.5 game time minutes.So to say that the "heavy investment" of doing this can cost you a game i think is utter non-sense, you should not be 1basing rushing to do this.Just my .02$ though.
Besides that nice find!
Edit: This post was an edit.
I agree with what you have said . I never wanted to say "rush to ravens" and do this. But that you could do it and that I don't think it's THAT clearly NOT worth it. I did it in the replay because I wanted to try it out as fast as possible. Turrets would surely be better to demolish infrastructure but may kill only a few workers. But maybe thats better than going for the worker kill.
On July 30 2011 14:58 blacktar wrote: A thought for team play :: can you use a seeker missle on a cloaked unit like dark templar? I don't play T and have no idea, but that could solve a few problems
I'd say the best unit to put it on is an scv, if u send a single scv into an opponents mineral line at one of his expos hes not gonna pull drones, hes gonna think its a scout and probably ignore it or maybe send some lings/stalkers/marines after it. if u try do so it with a marine or hellion or reaper a good player will run his drones away so you will probably miss the kill.
On July 30 2011 21:09 Disquiet wrote: I'd say the best unit to put it on is an scv, if u send a single scv into an opponents mineral line at one of his expos hes not gonna pull drones, hes gonna think its a scout and probably ignore it or maybe send some lings/stalkers/marines after it. if u try do so it with a marine or hellion or reaper a good player will run his drones away so you will probably miss the kill.
That's a good idea. I haven't thought about using an scv. You're right. If you can get into the natural with an scv that would be the best option. Using a reaper or a flying unit like medivacs or vikings has the advantage that it makes it hard to protect the drone line from it.
Because the missiles cost a lot of energy it is indeed very misfortunate if he runs his probes away. But he really has to do it very fast. The units you lead in, you don't send to attack probes. They may attack (if they can at all) once the are in the drone line, but then, the missile hits almost immediately afterwards. So the time the player has to react is not to be compared with a drop, where you can still pull suvs after the attack has started.
I can see this working. Set 3 or 4 vikings, marines or whatever to a control group. Grab your ravens, use HSM on them all in rapid succesion, then run them at your opponent's base, 2 in the natural and 2 in the main. He probably won't be able to micro his workers out on both bases. You could also just suicide a few marauders into the front line with HSM, dealing a few hundred all around, then charge in.
I think this would work best on the mineral line with a faux hellion harrass. Run in with a hellion, let it die, and just as the enemy thinks he is safe, the HSM clashes. Would take great micro though, and is very situational.
On July 30 2011 21:39 HavokTheorem wrote: I can see this working. Set 3 or 4 vikings, marines or whatever to a control group. Grab your ravens, use HSM on them all in rapid succesion, then run them at your opponent's base, 2 in the natural and 2 in the main. He probably won't be able to micro his workers out on both bases. You could also just suicide a few marauders into the front line with HSM, dealing a few hundred all around, then charge in.
I think this would work best on the mineral line with a faux hellion harrass. Run in with a hellion, let it die, and just as the enemy thinks he is safe, the HSM clashes. Would take great micro though, and is very situational.
attacking two mineral lines at once could deal a lot of damage because if they are well saturated you can kill like 40 workers in one instant. And this definitely would set the player way behind. The thing is... it's hard to spam HSM because every Raven can only shoot 1. I'm not sure if you could already kill a lot of drones with 2 seeker missiles per drone line (I used to try it out with 3).
Hm now thinking about it: -With 2 HSM on the same place you have a death zone circle for drones with the radius of 2 (2x25dm will kill workers). -If you use 2 HSM on two targets the area where it would be deadly for probes would be smaller, as the 25 dmg area of one seeker missile takes the biggest part of its whole AOE and only if they overlap, they can kill workers. -If you use 3 HSM on 2 targets again you loose a lot of efficiency on the 3rd missile because it can kill workers only within a range of 1.
So it ineed would be best to only send in units with 2 missiles on their back. and if you have for example 3 ravens...to wait unitl you have another one / wait until one of the other ravens regained his energy / use this raven for sth different.
A hellion would be usefull too. especially if they are base defences like cannons, that take the hellion out, once it's in the mineral line. 1 problem of very fast units is, that they can be ahead of the missile for quite a bit and then the danger that probes are pulled of is higher.
I am normally irritated with threads from lower-leagues in this forum.
That said, the people who thoughtlessly post negatively without thinking about what is being said or, worse, even reading the OP properly at all are far, far more irritating - ie most of the entire thread.
What baas is suggesting is a very interesting trick that certainly has potential as a high-skill gimmick like stalife drops etc.
Can you imagine the damage potential of a stimmed marauder with 2 HS missiles locked onto it, running into the front of the zerg's army or a mineral line? I mean it's no irradiate-trick, but damn, that's some cute shit.
My only question is, if you lock the HS onto an air unit like a viking, will it splash ground units correctly when it connects?
On July 31 2011 00:35 DaemonX wrote: I am normally irritated with threads from lower-leagues in this forum.
That said, the people who thoughtlessly post negatively without thinking about what is being said or, worse, even reading the OP properly at all are far, far more irritating - ie most of the entire thread.
What baas is suggesting is a very interesting trick that certainly has potential as a high-skill gimmick like stalife drops etc.
Can you imagine the damage potential of a stimmed marauder with 2 HS missiles locked onto it, running into the front of the zerg's army or a mineral line? I mean it's no irradiate-trick, but damn, that's some cute shit.
My only question is, if you lock the HS onto an air unit like a viking, will it splash ground units correctly when it connects?
Thanks. I understand that threads from low league players can't say something really reliably about a strategy or tactic or even the benefit of a gimmicky trick. But executing something and thinking about something are imho two very different things. For example iechoics hellion banshee build; even a unskilled player can have the idea that this could work. But only a high level player can show that it's really working on high levels of play (although if you think about a whole game plan, surely you should have a good understanding of the game itself). As you said, I just wanted to introduce the idea and ask whether it could work. I'm also not insisting that this would be a great gimmick but I just argue against rejecting it completely out of too simple or even false reasons.
Answering your question: Yes, I tried this out. The splash damage makes no difference between air and ground. Therefore..if you use a viking against a ground target it is better not to land it because the he won't occupy space in the high damage range on ground. (If you place a viking right above a marauder and HSM the viking, the marauder will take 100dmg. If you land the viking and place it directly next to the marauder, it will only take 50 dmg).
Targeting the ravenchased enemy unit would quickly become an easy task for the multitasking high game sense players. But it would be good in stressful situations for your opponent or as economic harass when a turret is in your way.
I'd like to try this in a 2v2, when your'e in a PT team. If the opponent is without detection, u could mass bomb your toss ally's dark templar which sneaks in to the enemy group.
EPT
. I never wanted to say "rush to ravens" and do this. But that you could do it and that I don't think it's THAT clearly NOT worth it. I did it in the replay because I wanted to try it out as fast as possible. 
