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So I want to start off by saying that if there was a thread created about this in the past then someone feel free to shut it down. I searched and didn't find anything though.
Anyway let me get down to the point, so I've been thinking lately that theoretically in a very macro oriented TvT that got to a mid-extended mid game a marine siege tank medivac composition would be more deadly than a pure bio or mech force.
Why do you ask? Quite simply because of the DPS output combined from both of the units, and I feel that marines complement siege tanks better than hellions because they perform better in certain engagements (i.e. against pretty much everything in the terran arsenal except scvs and other marines)
But I also feel that there is a huge disconnect with this composition because of the maneuverability between siege tanks, and marine/medivac especially when the opposition goes bio because I always feel like I'm spread way too thin. I find it the most difficult thing to get myself into position against this composition because a smart person will always abuse the fact that my siege tanks have no maneuverability and drop me somewhere where I don’t have anything.
You might be asking yourself well that’s cool willzyx why don’t you put some missile turrets or leave a few marines at your base? Well you're absolutely right I can do that, but what about if I need another expansion and I want to secure it? I need to bring more forces over there to protect it right? yeah but in doing that I'm spreading myself more and more thin and the more expansions I take the more susceptible I'm to getting f***ed by an attack. (Not to mention the bio player usually has an upgrade advantage because my gas output is being put into tanks medivacs and tank upgrades, plus I’m trying to upgrade my marines as well).
So I guess by now you’re saying yeah but isn't this the same exact dilemma that mech users have to go through? Right but I feel as if, if the mech user gets frustrated enough and just goes for a strong attack they would find more success than a marine tank medivac player because of hellions being able to dispose of marines quickly, and the siege tanks quickly mopping up the marauders. (Basically I think mech is better against bio than marine tank medivac because of the power of hellions and thors)
So let me evaluate how I feel about the comp vs. comp battle tvt
• Bio vs. mech; I feel the mech player has an advantage
• Mech vs. marine tank medivac; I feel like the marine tank medivac player has the advantage
• Marine tank medivac vs. bio; the bio player has the advantage of course
So I didn’t explain exactly why I felt that marine tank medivac had an advantage to mech but I guess it just comes from experience (master terran player).
So now I will conclude my rambling for now, and ask if you fellow team liquiders agree with me on this subject or not. Is there something in my thought process that is off? Are there ways to counteract my siege tank medivac vs. bio sorrows? Do you agree with the statements I made about composition vs. composition TvT? I would have loved to supply you guys with a replay but I actually just deleted all of them not too long ago T.T. Also I’m a big fan of this composition and I wanted to ask this because I want to make it work against all of the unit compositions TvT.
Off topic
+ Show Spoiler +If you need a decent practice partner and you're a cool mother fucker feel free to add me. My sn is dubxmonster and my # is 647 I play on NA. I'm mostly playing random nowadays because I think it's a really good idea to learn the matchups first hand and to learn the timings of each race. I'm still a Terran player at heart though. But I would like if you had some protoss or zerg expertise that you could talk to me about, and I could do the same as Terran
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There was another thread concerning the same topic, but the title was pretty different so it's understandable you didn't find it. The thread is here.
From what I got of your thread, it's kind of just state your own opinion and justify it, so I'll shoot with mine. I'd disagree with everything you said 
1) Marine-tank vs mech - hellions mop the floor with marines. Your medivacs all get sniped by vikings and your marines are even more sad. You skip medivacs, stim twice, and now all your marines are one shot by tanks The core of your army, tanks, won't be as upgraded or as numerous as your opponents tanks. Your drops, marines, can be cleaned up by hellions. Hellions run around making you sad and then you lose. You have no maruders to break tank lines.
2) Marine-tank vs bio - your medivacs don't die. Pure marine beats MM and your bio can be as upgraded as theirs. They drop you and you have tons of marines to clean it up. You finally push out and you have tons of marines and tanks in the back doing splash. If they try to snipe tanks, your marines DPS down their army.
3) Bio vs mech - EDIT:coinflip/toss-up, not coinflip. As a mech player, being frustrated and amoving is terrible decision mostly. Seige tanks don't quickly mop up maruders T_T you get flanked unseiged and bye mech army. Better to paitently get near max and then start moving out. They drop maruders until your turrent ring is up and your hellions only tickle them. You leave an expo undefended, even as a plantetary, and 3/3 maruders take it down. Then when you finally have stabilzed you see they expanded twice more then you with bio and now switched to mech and have more factories then you do T_T.
Just my thoughts though. I'm sure if you're comfortable with any style you'll have decent success.
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Rock is pretty good against paper if you don't let them wrap around you.
My honest thoughts: competence, game sense scans and watch towers make mobility pointless in TvT the longer the game goes on and more area zoning tanks are introduced in the field (bio players have to get tanks eventually).
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Ur just plain wrong about marine tank beating mechanical, and Bio beating marine tank.
Marine tanks is stronger than bio in direct engagements, and mech smashes marine tank, marauder tank can be scary if you don't have ravens.
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On February 19 2012 20:19 CatNzHat wrote:
marauder tank can be scary if you don't have ravens.
Banshees?
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I'm not talking about straight up engagements, I was more talking about the meta game between a bio and siege tank centric player, where it becomes very easy for bio to set up expansions and very hard for the siege tank player to set up expansions because of the bio threat. See when I play I'm constantly thinking "how can I take another expansion and get away with it, while limiting my opponents expansions" not "how do I kill him right now."
See there is a lot of variables that you guys are not taking into consideration, and you guys need to be aware of some of the things like taking expansions, or map control. or slowly pushing tanks to your opponents base, or certain micro techniques you can utilize (i.e. dropping marines on tanks, or having good concaves and splits with marines against tanks). I feel as if some of the responses are really dumb (no offense). Like "ohhh herp derp siege tank ownsss them marines dude lol." If you didn't know there is a lot of things going on in a players mind that knows that game decently than unit comp vs unit comp
Edit: So I guess what I'm asking is if there were two super computers, and they could both play starcraft PERFECTLY, and it was a TvT would it be better to go bio or mech taking into consideration things like expansions and all that good stuff.
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On February 19 2012 20:29 zaikantos wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2012 20:19 CatNzHat wrote:
marauder tank can be scary if you don't have ravens. Banshees?
Theorycraft. It's not always so simple to just 'switch' to banshees in TvT. It takes money, and most times a 350/300 investment to get cloak as well as your banshee. That's always something that could've gone to the ground to give you some edge, or even into vikings so you have air control, and hence map control, in a sense.
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marine tank medivac is against marine tank medivac and bio is only against mech and bio players most commonly start with an opening that can easily transition to either marine tank or bio.
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Bio > Mech > Marine tank > Bio
It's an accepted cycle.
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Marine tank is good against bio and and marine tank itself. But mech will rip marine tank apart. Bio can work against mech, but I don't reccomend it unless you know what your doing because your relentless drops have to do good damage and you cannot directly engage him. Game that comes to mind is MMA in an mlg I forget now but he pulled it off and looked super deadly the entire series
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I would generalize this issue in terms of mobility.
Bio more mobile than Bio/Mech more mobile than Mech.
( All gets beaten by sky terran ;P )
If we assume that the more mobile player is always going to be able to take more bases than the immobile player, than it is your job as the immobile player to deny his bases. I would actually try to reprioritize your objectives ingame. Try to first think of denying his bases and then of taking your own, because assuming the immobile compostion is more cost effective over time it is favorable for u to stay on even bases.
The property of your army, that you describe as a "huge disconnect" is actually your tool to denying his bases. If you are immoblie think of your army as an octopus with extanding tentactles to his expansions. The main body is hard and slow while soft and fast arms are spreading everywhere keeping your opponent in check 
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On February 20 2012 02:01 bugabinga wrote:I would generalize this issue in terms of mobility. Bio more mobile than Bio/Mech more mobile than Mech. ( All gets beaten by sky terran ;P ) If we assume that the more mobile player is always going to be able to take more bases than the immobile player, than it is your job as the immobile player to deny his bases. I would actually try to reprioritize your objectives ingame. Try to first think of denying his bases and then of taking your own, because assuming the immobile compostion is more cost effective over time it is favorable for u to stay on even bases. The property of your army, that you describe as a "huge disconnect" is actually your tool to denying his bases. If you are immoblie think of your army as an octopus with extanding tentactles to his expansions. The main body is hard and slow while soft and fast arms are spreading everywhere keeping your opponent in check
Very well put bugabinga that was exactly the kind of insight I was looking for.
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Bio is much easier to play than mech is in bio vs mech. Bio players will drop and prod mech players as much as possible, one slip as a mech player and you can lose the whole game. Only players with supreme control and decision making like MVP pull it off like a bawss
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Marine tank is just about the worst you could do in TvT as a base composition. Mech absolutely destroys it in straight up fights and drops become risky since you leave expensive units exposed to the wrath of the meching player. Basetrades also become a lot less practical than if you're going pure bio since tanks take up half a medivac's worth of space and also manage to be bad at basetrades in TvT since terran buildings can fly and tanks can't shoot up.
And against marine tank, the mobility thing is a lot less damaging as long as you know what to do with your army. If you have your air superiority units and the main ball of mech sitting near nat/main as a big giant sword pointed at the enemy, it's a lot easier to split off 2/3 tanks and a handful of hellions to go pining after the MTM player's third/fourth. That way, they can't just send a small group of marines to clear the tank/hellion group and they either have to leave their tanks and a small bio cluster as defense and send most of the marines to clear out, or unsiege some tanks and take a good-sized army to go clear out the harassers. Both of those options leave openings for the mech player to unsiege and close wherever the MTM player has placed his main army (and then blow it up).
MTM just doesn't have the solidity of mech, and tanks sacrifice the mobility advantage that pure bio gives. It loses the advantages of both extremes to take the middle road. And if you try to set up a contain with MTM, it's fairly easy to break if it gets to be too extended. Like, Antiga if MTM tried to cut the map in half and hold the gold, mech could just cut through one edge and break the contain fairly easily, and bio could do the same or use mass drops to force a shift of the line.
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it goes like this :D
marine tank > bio > mech > marine tank > bio > mech > marine tank > bio > mech
its the circle of life !
i like to open bio and go into marine tank UNLESS i see them going mech, then i will go bio into an air switch around 150~ supply once i have map control 
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bio beats mech??
i always go mech vs bio ==;;
anwyas good to know these things
but i go air terran almost everygame anyways
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in bio versus mech, can you utilize a group of, let's say 20, speed reapers?
reapers have insane dps versus buildings, 20 x 3/3 speed reapers will almost kill an orbital in 2 volleys. plus they can hop right into a base (faster than mutalisks), completely bypassing the turrets and ramp/choke...
it seems pretty obvious... you have the bio upgrades, you have the tech lab barracks... you have the excess gas...
the only question is whether you can afford to have -20 supply in your main bio ball. i think you force him to have at least 20 supply at home to defend, so yes it's worth it.
this is totally theoretical though... i don't play at a high enough level to execute anything other than a marine/tank/viking struggle.
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When you play Marine/tank/medivac vs mech it turns into the marine/tank player playing a very mechish style. Unless you have a huge contain or preparing for a late game situation, you should just be going pure bio. As bio, teching just slows down your cheap, fast, and easily producible army. It basically doesn't make sense to go marine/tank because bio obviously suits your style more if you choose not to go mech.
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On February 20 2012 10:21 shizna wrote:
in bio versus mech, can you utilize a group of, let's say 20, speed reapers?
reapers have insane dps versus buildings, 20 x 3/3 speed reapers will almost kill an orbital in 2 volleys. plus they can hop right into a base (faster than mutalisks), completely bypassing the turrets and ramp/choke...
it seems pretty obvious... you have the bio upgrades, you have the tech lab barracks... you have the excess gas...
the only question is whether you can afford to have -20 supply in your main bio ball. i think you force him to have at least 20 supply at home to defend, so yes it's worth it.
this is totally theoretical though... i don't play at a high enough level to execute anything other than a marine/tank/viking struggle.
I haven't seen anyone do this, and here are some reasons I think why:
reapers take a long time to build
reapers suck in a straight up fight against non-light units
reapers mean you're not making marauders from those tech lab rax
people can achieve the same goal by making 20 supply of MMM, which makes faster thanks to reactor barracks (= 2 dropships full) and dropping their opponent. If suddenly, they have to defend something, you can decide to not drop and add that 20 supply to your main army.
Advantage of reapers is that they can ignore turrets, which medivacs can't, but reapers can't fly out (unless you want to rescue them with a medivac :D), meaning a smart player can trap the reapers in the base, meaning you lose some or all of those 20 reapers.
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So many great posts in this thread! Even drewbie weighed in...hi mate!
On February 20 2012 02:01 bugabinga wrote:I would generalize this issue in terms of mobility. Bio more mobile than Bio/Mech more mobile than Mech. ( All gets beaten by sky terran ;P ) If we assume that the more mobile player is always going to be able to take more bases than the immobile player, than it is your job as the immobile player to deny his bases. I would actually try to reprioritize your objectives ingame. Try to first think of denying his bases and then of taking your own, because assuming the immobile compostion is more cost effective over time it is favorable for u to stay on even bases. The property of your army, that you describe as a "huge disconnect" is actually your tool to denying his bases. If you are immoblie think of your army as an octopus with extanding tentactles to his expansions. The main body is hard and slow while soft and fast arms are spreading everywhere keeping your opponent in check
Excellent piece of theorycraft here. I have always struggled to contend with a really mobile bio force when meching - my solution is to go heavy on the hellions and I seem to hold up OK in the engagements (hellions don't kill marauders, but marauders don't really kill hellions very fast either, and if they're in a battle instead of a drop in your back they're getting shot by tanks instead of killing workers the longer the fight goes on). However I lose the macro war due to him denying my expos OR out-expanding me.
I will try to execute this style and see if it holds up - take a late 4th and just throw nasty mech armies at his expos while I harden my bases.
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EPT
