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Hi everyone, hope I am following forum lines accordingly. I apologize if not, I'm a bit of a newb here.
Basically I've recently started laddering pretty hardcore recently. I'm currently a 950 points diamond player.
Before this I wasn't always sure if what I did was right when I've won games and such, but after playing on a regular basis I've become a Zerg-crusher, I'm doing really well in TvT as well, but I'm having big difficulties finding the big flaws in my TvP. I feel like protoss basically just attack move over me in every single engagement. I can EMP all the HTs except for one and then I'll blame the one storm he throws on me for being what I lose to etc., because I don't know what else it can be.
I hear PainUser saying you need more marines against protoss, then I hear TSL.Terran saying marauders only in TvP - in the same day. So yea I'm at a bit of a loss. I'm always even in upgrades because I play a very macro oriented style. I never go anything but MMM against protoss. I do my best to scan for HTs and colossus tech to find out which counter unit I'll need(i.e. ghosts/vikings). When I watch replays we're mostly even in supply or I'm a little bit behind or ahead depending on how well my drops go(I've realized by now that dropping against blink stalkers is pretty much impossible unless you do it when they're moved out and hit a timing without warpins).
I basically feel like I do everything I should do, but still lose.
So yeah how do you find out how your MMM ratio should be? How many medivacs do you usually have, am I missing out something on the role of marauders or marines in the army composition. How many vikings should I get for each colossus? I know I'm not giving a lot to go on I haven't been laddering recently and against few protoss. The last few games I've lost due to bad macro, but I hope you still can help me out here, because if I know how to set up my army composition at least I'll have a keypoint to keep developing and see my other flaws in my TvP from.
Thank you very much if you take your time to give advice.
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I agree more with PainUser. Marauders are support units: marines deal damage much more cost effectively than marauders, but you need marauders there to soak up damage, reduce clumping, and slow zealots with concussive shells so they don't surround your units during an engagement. If there's a style that can effectively use only marauders, then I've never seen it. Marauders eat up gas, and they don't give you nearly enough DPS to be on equal footing with a toss army.
When it comes to medivacs, get just enough to heal your army without gaining excess energy or going dry. That's usually ~8 during the late game. For vikings, a general rule of thumb should be ~4 per colossus. Be careful not to overmake vikings, especially if you haven't scouted in a while, because a tech switch out of colossi can be deadly.
edit: upon further consideration 8 seems a bit high for tvp. I'd revise that to 5 at most for most situations.
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Thank you a lot, pyaar. I've usually gonna with 4 medivacs late game, I'll try your advice with 8 then at least. And yea basically what you say about marines and marauders is what I've thought always, so I assume the fact that I've had too few medivacs made a huge difference. Appreciate the advice, thanks. 
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It depends if your sticking to MMM all game and when in the game it is. I'd say mid game you want about 4-6 medivacs, 4 vikings (always have about 3 or more per colossus, stalkers LOVE vikings =P ) and the marine to marauder comp depends on one simple thing.... how many stalkers does he have? The higher the stalker count the higher the marauder count.
Once you hit late game, make very sure if your sticking MMM to have your upgrades, as well a couple of ghosts in there. Also, try to stay even if not ahead in expos and with your mobile army you should be able to hold him down on starting his own expos. Stay on top of scouting, its your best friend.
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As a Protoss player I personally love it when I see more marauders than marines. My standard comp is chargelot stalker colossi + tech such as templar or air and a few sentries. Marines are really the danger because they shred chargelots sooo fast. But what everyone has said previous to me does apply. You need to make snap calls on how much of each unit to make based on the opposing army composition.
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I totally agree with you on expanding. That's is a big flaw I know I have, but I figured it wasn't due to my lack of expanding that I fail in combat hehe.
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I've always thought that it depends on his composition. As in, more stalkers and colossus means you need more marauders and more Zealots and immortals means you need more marines.
Is that right?
Also, what about templar - do you want more marauders to live through storm or do you want to just avoid that altogether?
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for me, the more zealots i see the more marines i get.
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The better you are the fewer marauders you need. Simply put, Marines are the cheaper and more plentiful DPS... it's just that they're about as fragile as sugar panes.... So, if you're good enough to out micro your opponent and destroy/nullify their AoE... then marines are out and out the better choice. Watch the NASL season 1 finals for reference...
It is ALWAYS better to just out micro your opponent... but when you know that you simply can't... that's when you go for more theoretically inefficient unit compositions. Until you can consistently EMP 75% of the enemy's high templar or snipe colossus with perfect accuracy (alternatively split marines vs Protoss... which is crazy) play around with what works.
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The farther you get into a game, the less affective stalkers are. They scale terribly with upgrades, they can't use blink micro once there are a critical number of enemy marauders to 1 shot them, and they suck up a ton of gas that the protoss wants to be using for colossi and templar. Generally, the toss will try to replace them with archons
So to make a good comp, you want to start the mid game with 2 techlabs on your raxes, so that you can get your stim+combat shield quickly and get up a good force of marauders with some marines. Once you are ready to start making ghosts, you want you largely cut marauders and get maybe 1 more tech lab, and the rest of your rax with reactors. Of course the other option is to make more rax than you really need with no addons, and then choose later what the best comp would be.
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All the way to late game 50/50 ratio or leaning a little towards marine heavy is good, but when it's late game and both players have 3/3 upgrades and the protoss has storms + colossi, marines melt way too fast and the +3 armor completely negates their dps, especially on charge lots.
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On October 02 2011 09:21 Tehs Tehklz wrote:
I've always thought that it depends on his composition. As in, more stalkers and colossus means you need more marauders and more Zealots and immortals means you need more marines.
Is that right?
Also, what about templar - do you want more marauders to live through storm or do you want to just avoid that altogether?
It does depend on his composition heavily. Marauders loose vs chargelots and archons, Marines get decimated by storms and colossi. I suggest that you keep most of your Barracks add-on free until you scout which tech path he is going.
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to be honest, it really doesn't mean anything to say something is a support unit; starcraft is not such a game
when the unit composition of either player shifts, suddenly the marine may be the support unit, or maybe it is the medivac, etc.
Anyways, it depends on your build for early game; however, you ideally want to go pure marine in early game (though usually you make some marauders cus marines can be kited infinitely by stalkers), and later in the game when he gets colossi/HT you add more and more marauders. Almost all of your barracks should have tech labs. It's also hard to say what the perfect ratio is, as it depends on the map, the situation, your opponent's composition, the situation of the game, whether you want to play risky or safe to make a comeback, etc.
If he just goes gateway units for a long time (getting twilight and forge upgrades and such) then you can still be making marines, since AOE is not a problem, but you still need marauders for the slow (unless you're going mass marine style, that's an exception). I'd say the ratio vs gateway units would be like 50% marine 40% marauder 10% medivac. You could go even heavier on the marines, but the reasoning for this is that you can transition into mass marauder easier whenever his colossi/HT is ready.
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Marines are more reliant upon support from ghosts to neutralize hts/sentries, and viking to drop collosi.
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Usually you want to be heavier on mauaraders imo because they are larger and can soak up way more aoe dmg which is the big issue in late game. You prob are not microing back into a good concave if i had to guess. watch some pro streams for how to do this
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You need more marauders most of the time, as they basically are the replacement unit for tanks. If you go too marine heavy good protoss is just going to abuse you with mass collosus/storm, even mass 3/0/3 zealots with guardian shield (or without) will hurt you.
You still have to have marines though...i think most people and most pros will do either 4 rax - 3 tech/1 reactor; 5 rax - 3 tech/2 reactor, or 6 rax - 4tech/2 reactor off of two bases with 1 reactored starport and a second reactored starport as third is going up or as needed.
Marauders are beefy and can survive some hits so you need more of them as your core army lategame.
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Thank you everyone getting some good insight here from you guys. Still seems like some people have different reasonings on which units should be used for what(marauders for soaking up damage/for slowing etc. for example). It just seems silly to me that the protoss can gain which ever army composition he likes right? Like if I go very marauders heavy against a zealot heavy army I should still be able to use them on his stalkers instead of that it's all bottlenecked by which army composition the protoss has. =)
I'm gonna hit the ladder now, and will try spending a ton of scans on scouting P army compositions, and will try to adjust accordingly with the new knowledge acquired. Hope for more input I'm reading everything posted in this thread. ^^ Even pros like Avilo posting. Guess I could just go nuke the buggers instead would be so much easier, eh? :D
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Blizzard only made medivacs because they wanted a unit to heal reapers aswell, which is kinda stupid considering nobody ever uses reapers with medivacs. I want medics back D:
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It depends on what I scout. If I see a fast twilight council I go more marine heavy to deal with the possible chargelot/archon composition, same goes with a fast starport (2-1 marine-marauder). If I see a fast robo and suspect colossi I go for a more even ratio which will die less quickly to 3+ colossi (1-1 marine-marauder). Once I get a starport I make medivacs until I see colossi, at which point I pump out vikings until I get 12 or they transition into templar tech; then I start making medivacs again.
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1:1:1
(Has that joke been made already?)
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In my view, there are 2 'scales' which should affect your marine/marauder composition, aside from the toss' composition (felt like I should make this bold in case of confusion)
a) Micro ability: Low; More marauders, High; More Marines
b) Game time: Early; More marauders, Late; More Marines
a) Marines will provide greater DPS/better engagements than marauders in a lot of situations. If you can split, kite, and flank well with them, they will be better than marauders. You will also be saving gas which can be put into more ghosts and/or vikings, which again with good micro will benefit you more
b) Early on when you're vs mainly gateway units, marauders /w conc shells are vital. As the game progresses, his zealots will have charge, his stalkers will have blink, and factoring in the gas as mentioned before, marines become a better option overall
But unless there are exceptional circumstances never go 100% marines or 100% marauders. Even if you have 'perfect' micro, marauders mixed in or leading the front will of course tank some key damage, or allow you to take advantage of the mistakes of the toss and snipe a colossi extremely quickly or pick off retreating units etc
EDIT: Masters toss btw
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you make it sound like its hard for you to emp a AI clump of high templars.. lol 1 emp = no energy left for storm + ai clumping.
just dont miss your emps cus its a total ck block for us protoss when our HTs get emped. i mean.. we can try fb but... its one at a time compared to aoe terran has. anyways, marines + ghosts (5 is a deadly number) and 4 vikings even though its blind catch. protoss loves to switch from HT to collosus because they show the temp tech then some (like me) dont evne make hts or maybe one or two and swithc to double robo collosus and befroe terrans realize it, they are caught with their pants down zapped to death.
anyways its not hard being a terran with taht MMMGV composition haha good luck
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Marauders count stalkers and collosi and serve to prevent chargelot surrounds. Marines deal effectively with zealots and should form the bulk of your army and most of your drops. If a protoss goes for only stalkers, then you can build only marauders, but you need to be reactive ultimately. Medivacs should accumulate over the course of the game, the bigger the cloud the better, just save them during engagements when you trade armies, eventually the count will get high enough to make your army absurdly cost effective.
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EPT
