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On April 01 2012 03:16 crocodile wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2012 01:40 Huggerz wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 24 2012 03:02 HeyJude wrote:
I just watched one of your replay packs.
game 1 - The toss gets a fairly early Twilight then instead of going blink/obs(which would have wrecked you, and is the logical counter to banshees) he techs DTs. You didn't win that game because mech/banshee is amazing. You won because your opponent was retarded.
game 2 - The toss does a 2gate/robo expand. He could have harassed the crap out of you when were trying to move out and expand but he did nothing. Then he all-ins you with a stalker/immortal/collosi force, in a battle where your PDDs werent even placed right and were worthless. His army comp was horrendous and he knew exactly what was coming. 15 zealots would have gone a long way in this fight.
game 3 - You kill a bunch of his probes with one cloaked banshee. For some unknown reason he decides to get one stalker then warp in 5 sentries. lol? Once again your toss opponent doesn't even poke with his stalker(s), which is incredibly stupid. I don't know what level opponents you're playing but I really don't think they're as high as you claim to be. I'm low masters and I'm a lot better than the 3 toss players I've seen you face already.
game 4 - Your opponent has no detection when your cloaked banshee hits at 9 minutes. Srs? I don't know why any toss wouldn't open 2gate-robo, especially after seeing the expand by you.
game 5 - I feel like I'm beating a dead horse but your opponent was terrible. You opened with 2 rax vs 15 nexus. He throws away his probes, doesn't make a single sentry, etc. Tbh I don't know if 15 nexus can even hold your proxy rax without taking heavy losses, but he made one zealot then 4 stalkers, stupid response.
I'm not saying mech/banshee isn't a viable strat but I think you're playing toss players at a much lower level than you so it wouldn't have mattered what your army comp was. Any time I see a FE I go 2gate/robo blink and pressure his main to keep him honest. I didn't see that in any of your games, and in all the games your opponent had decent scouting so he knew you were FE.
And your opponents seemed rather clueless about army comp. One game you had mostly thors and blue flame hellions. Your opponent masses zealots that game. There was another game the toss knew exactly what you had and countered with the worst comp possible. Iirc you had tanks/thors/marines and he went stalker/collosi/immortal but his army was 30 supply lower than yours anyway. Any time I see a Terran make a thor or tank I immediately shift my comp to include more zealots.
Maybe protoss players are too willing to go mid-late game and just macro up but as I already mentioned, most terran FE's are very vulnerable to good blink/obs harass.
*One last edit lol...I think one reason your build works well for you is the banshees give you great scouting and as long as you don't encounter early blink you'll never lose a banshee so they're extremely cost-efficient. I am afraid I couldn't agree more with this. Your opponents were god-awful The amount of flawed logic in this post is staggering. Nobody takes this guy seriously. And honestly, if you think Zealots are the way to 'counter' mech you are sorely mistaken. Turns out BFH are pretty good.
Yeah they're good if they get into a ball and it's only zealots. The thing you're not realising is that protoss can engage, trade all his zealots for your helions, fall back and warp in a new round before you're able to replenish a critical mass of helions. then your tank line is in trouble.
also did anyone watch the AHGL game 5 between palantir and google? i think it displays pretty well the problems with immobility in the late game. even a robo heavy protoss army moves faster than thors.
http://blip.tv/day9tv/ahgl-palantir-vs-google-game-5-season-2-round-of-16-starcraft-2-6040028
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And he'll warp 25/30 zealots,and as soon as you realize he's getting low stalker count, you just force engagement with banshees BC and raven. And will still have to deal with thors, tanks,wall,etc. And if he's waiting for a 2nd zealot wave your hellions will be here
watching the game,will edit after
First of all, tal'darim Altar. The worst map ever for lategame TvP, regardless of the terran's style.
The terran open 111 expo vs a super fast 1 gate FE. hmm . . tal'darim is one of the few maps where you can try a risky super FE.
Terran get attacks uppgrades, bad idea
15 min, no sensor towers, no xel'naga for the terran, no hellion or banshees on the map. Ofc the toss can abuse his mobility in that case.
The terran is getting vikings, so he can't use his air as a mobile force.
No PF at 3rd, LOL.
20 min, stil no sensor towers, no map control. Still on vikings/hellions/thors/ghost, and always use his whole army to counter harass
Terran still wins the first big engagement
Ok guy, this is ridiculous. I say that i abuse the power of sensor towers and banshee countain to avoid mobility's issue, as well as PF at expansions, using hellions/air to defend harassment while still being able to prevent backstab with these sensors towers. And to argue that a protoss can abuse mech mobility,you link a replay of a T with basically 0 map control (0 sensor, 0 xel control, 0 use of hellions of banshees), who goes vikings (so he cant use his air to defend) and who uses his WHOLE ARMY to defend little harassment, that all on the worst TvP map (even with bio). Ahem .. . . It's like saying storm is OP and proving it with a replay of a terran who goes pure marine and never try to split/dodge.
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On April 01 2012 03:59 Lyyna wrote:
And he'll warp 25/30 zealots,and as soon as you realize he's getting low stalker count, you just force engagement with banshees BC and raven. And will still have to deal with thors, tanks,wall,etc. And if he's waiting for a 2nd zealot wave your hellions will be here
watching the game,will edit after
First of all, tal'darim Altar. The worst map ever for lategame TvP, regardless of the terran's style.
The terran open 111 expo vs a super fast 1 gate FE. hmm . . tal'darim is one of the few maps where you can try a risky super FE.
Terran get attacks uppgrades, bad idea
15 min, no sensor towers, no xel'naga for the terran, no hellion or banshees on the map. Ofc the toss can abuse his mobility in that case.
The terran is getting vikings, so he can't use his air as a mobile force.
No PF at 3rd, LOL.
20 min, stil no sensor towers, no map control. Still on vikings/hellions/thors/ghost, and always use his whole army to counter harass
Terran still wins the first big engagement
Ok guy, this is ridiculous. I say that i abuse the power of sensor towers and banshee countain to avoid mobility's issue, as well as PF at expansions, using hellions/air to defend harassment while still being able to prevent backstab with these sensors towers. And to argue that a protoss can abuse mech mobility,you link a replay of a T with basically 0 map control (0 sensor, 0 xel control, 0 use of hellions of banshees), who goes vikings (so he cant use his air to defend) and who uses his WHOLE ARMY to defend little harassment, that all on the worst TvP map (even with bio). Ahem .. . . It's like saying storm is OP and proving it with a replay of a terran who goes pure marine and never try to split/dodge.
i didn't really mean late game when you have mounds of bcs. obviously no one is going to warp in a bunch of zealots against bcs. I'm talking more of mid game timings where you have thors/tanks/helions.
as for the game, you're ignoring the core concept i was trying to get at. for example, the zealot poke/main army attack at the 16 minute mark. he's able to shut down the natural because the army is forced out of position. this is something he's able to abuse even more later on. since your helions are your reactionary force to harassment, it's easy to pull them out of position and then attack the main army with no buffer.
please stop getting so defensive about your style, everyone here's just trying to learn something
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Don't forget that you also have banshees and ghosts at that point to. And he'll not have enough gates midgame to really be threathening, or if he's getting mass gates and pure zealot,just enjoy the power of thor/hellion with like 3 reactored fact, or go earlier BC. Add earlier middle PF and wall too
well, the zealot poke is successful because
1) no xel'naga (he don't see the main army coming)
2) no sensor tower at natural (same thing, and this is a key positon)
3) no PF at third
And if you read what i said, one of my ways to resolve mobilitys issues are these PF. As i also said, he does use ALL his army to react to every harass . . .
I'm not getting defensive. Just tired of people reacting to my style by pointing flaws which are basically the ones i worked hard to try and solve.
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Lyyna: Ok so I realized I had too many tanks in that (not enough thors). I think around 10 tanks is a decent number late game (?) Though I have seen games where you have less. Can you give me some comments on what factors influences your tank count?
Anyway so I lost a lot of games doing this, and I kinda feel like its similar to bio in the matter that if you have a bad position you lose + you need to hit some really good emps.
At last I just won a game against an IMO really bad player who IMO played absolutely retarded as he could easily have killed some of my expos, but turned out he was stupid (lucikly for me).
The problem I have with this game is that we army traded when he engaged me, which obv. is not good for me. I think while my positioning wasn't perfect it wasn't awfull either (but maybe i am wrong). Anyway maybe I got BC's out to late (as I forgot to build fusion core and hence had 4 starports idle for 1-2 mins). It probably could have helped to get them out earlier, but on the other hand I feel like I lack a lot of gas, and I feel like i can't really start BC produciton before I get satruated on 4 bases.
Of other mistakes I made was that I forgot to sack scvs. But if i had sacked like 20-30 scvs I would probably just have replaced them with 10 hellions more and perhaps another OC. IM not sure if that really would have changed the outcome of the first battle that much. And I still think that this would be a situation where you would have crushed his army.
Link to rep:
http://sc2rep.com/replays/(T)Hideortoss_vs_(P)GamaniaKiN/19012
Obv. the opening was my own, as I kinda felt like it isn't that relevant to hurt his eco (by banshee harass). What I think matters most is my ability to take a 3rd quickly, and get more gas fasters. So this is what I tried to do this game. But im not really interested in analysing the specific bo yet. What I am more more interessted in trying to figure out is the exact unit composition/army movement/positioning. I hope you can give me some advice.
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I dont really have any specific rules for making siege tanks lategame. Basically i'll aim to get around 10, but will not hesitate to get more IF i feel i do have enough gas to get my air force and ghosts at the same time
Watching rep, editing after
Opening is a personal choice,seems ok. Very greedy fast 3rd
Little thing : at 20 minutes, you put your army in front of your 4th pf. Bad idea, put it on the side of the PF so it'll take some damage instead of your army
he isn't agressive at all. You should have got the whole left side on the map with PF and sensors, to make him feel in a bad shape. You have a lots of mineral so you can just spam expo !
22 min fight : your ghosts and some thors are behind your tanks. You have no hellions to take damage. And as i said, you're in front of your PF
This fight and the few next minutes are basically why i choose to get banshees with cloak (and at least a raven) in my army : he can't kill your army like that and get away with a lots of units surviving. Also it forces him to get obs out of his robo instead of immortals/colossus, meaning he can't do a fast 2nd big push with robo tech units
Too much workers too. You need to abuse the huge mineral bank you have to get a lots of orbitals and sacrifice your workers.
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On April 01 2012 05:05 Lyyna wrote:
I dont really have any specific rules for making siege tanks lategame. Basically i'll aim to get around 10, but will not hesitate to get more IF i feel i do have enough gas to get my air force and ghosts at the same time
Watching rep, editing after
Ok. But I am myself not sure what kind of units to prioritze. Like when do I need to prioritze BC's over thors. Tank over thors. Ravens?
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Basically, You do not really "prioritiz" stuff. You try to progressively add stuff to your main army. You add marines first, then thor and banshee, then you get hellions, then ghosts and tanks instead of thors and marines, then BC and ravens instead of banshees
Basically, mid game you prioritize tanks and ghosts over everything else.
Lategame you prioritize what you're missing the most. If you have like 15 tanks and 20 hellions, but no air, just send 10 hellions into him and get 20 supply of air. Your core army should be like 4-8 ghosts, ~~10 tanks, 2-4 thors, ~~6 BC, 4 ravens, then add stuff depending of what he's getting
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On April 01 2012 05:23 Lyyna wrote:
Basically, You do not really "prioritiz" stuff. You try to progressively add stuff to your main army. You add marines first, then thor and banshee, then you get hellions, then ghosts and tanks instead of thors and marines, then BC and ravens instead of banshees
Basically, mid game you prioritize tanks and ghosts over everything else.
Lategame you prioritize what you're missing the most. If you have like 15 tanks and 20 hellions, but no air, just send 10 hellions into him and get 20 supply of air. Your core army should be like 4-8 ghosts, ~~10 tanks, 2-4 thors, ~~6 BC, 4 ravens, then add stuff depending of what he's getting
So you try to get that unit composition no matter what he does?
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Yes, and then i'll add other stuff to adapt. But having a bit of everything is needed due to . . well, the warp mechanic : having these 10 tanks is priceless if you overmake BC and he respond with mass stalkers for example :D
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Can you specifiy what you mean by "other stuff" to adapt? (when do you adapt?)
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Raven and BC if he's getting mass air or mass zealots, tanks versus stalkers, more ghosts if mass archon,etc
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Lyyna I tried your build.
I have some difficulty again 20min protoss army. Its around the time I do my transition into BC.
How do you stay alive ?
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Abuse of cloakshee :D
It's a bit tricky though. I would suggest that, if you realize your opponent is preparing a big late push, get earlier BC. Cut tanks/thor for like 2 minutes and get these BC out. Also use your minerals to get PF/walls
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On April 01 2012 05:05 Lyyna wrote:
I dont really have any specific rules for making siege tanks lategame. Basically i'll aim to get around 10, but will not hesitate to get more IF i feel i do have enough gas to get my air force and ghosts at the same time
Watching rep, editing after
Opening is a personal choice,seems ok. Very greedy fast 3rd
Little thing : at 20 minutes, you put your army in front of your 4th pf. Bad idea, put it on the side of the PF so it'll take some damage instead of your army
he isn't agressive at all. You should have got the whole left side on the map with PF and sensors, to make him feel in a bad shape. You have a lots of mineral so you can just spam expo !
22 min fight : your ghosts and some thors are behind your tanks. You have no hellions to take damage. And as i said, you're in front of your PF
This fight and the few next minutes are basically why i choose to get banshees with cloak (and at least a raven) in my army : he can't kill your army like that and get away with a lots of units surviving. Also it forces him to get obs out of his robo instead of immortals/colossus, meaning he can't do a fast 2nd big push with robo tech units
Too much workers too. You need to abuse the huge mineral bank you have to get a lots of orbitals and sacrifice your workers.
Well it just seems kinda gimmicky to rely on cloacked banshees to survive. I mean what if he has 2-4 observers, and has at least one of them behind his army.
So in the fight you might you kill one of the observers. Then he will warp in 10-15 stalkers and bring his other observer, and I guess I can't always be lucky and have a planetary to rely on.
I feel like the cloacked banshee thing is something that will often work, but mostly againsts opponents who aren't prepared for it. I would rather focus on working on being more solid on the fundementals than abusing the fact that opponents are not prepared for it.
Your definitely correct that I had 2 thors a behind my army, though ghosts were prett close to the action (like in second line) I think. Regarding staying behind the planetary, I throught I may could slowpush and attack his 3rd, and still crush him in a straight up battle. I definitely think I could have done it had I had around 50 scvs. (10-15 hellions more I guess) to tank a bit (though he really had no chargelots) + the 2 thors in front.
Regarding taking more expansions earlier, I think that would be abusing the fact that he played extremely stupid. Any sane player would deny me those extra expansions. Again I rather try to learn the fundementals instead of absuing extreme mistakes.
I did end up taking the 5th or 6th but even that was kinda abusive. A sane player could probably warp in a few blink stalkers and make my life miserable (how would you deal with that btw).
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Well, it's not gimmick. It's a bit like saying it seems gimmicky that a HT/Zealot protoss rely on storm to survive : your army can still handle a direct fight in most cases. I usually "only" have 4/5 banshees, and cloak is mainly an added benefit: but overall banshee are really good with mech due to their insane dps
In this scenario, np, you just retreat your banshees, and wait for your reprod to come. And during this,he's making more obs out of his robo, so you know he's not going to do a big 2nd push with mass robo tech. And that's assuming everything but your banshees died, which usually isn't the case , but the problem here is your lack of hellions and bad positionning leading to most of your tanks dying quickly
I also want to play solid and as i said, cloak is mainly an added benefit to the banshee , which is already really good by itself.
well; slowpushing is imo a relatively bad idea, because it makes you vulnerable to these mobility issue : he can just push in your natural for example, forcing unsiege, ripping a lots of buildings in main + destroying your slow push's buildings
Well, the expansion thing is simple : you have 4/5k minerals in a lot of situations. Why not using it to get CC to land it on an unused expansion? If you spam mules on it, it'll take only seconds to pay for itself, and you don't really care if he attacks it : just take a little amounts of banshees/hellions,deflect harass,destroy his pylon, and go back mining . Or just build another CC and do it again. How can a "sane player" deny it? by sending his whole army to destroy expansions at the other side of the map while your own is at his frontdoor?
Well, usually just by bringing a few cloakshee to destroy the stalkers and the pylon. If he's really insisting on that, i just put a tank for each expo
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On April 01 2012 06:54 Lyyna wrote:
Well, it's not gimmick. It's a bit like saying it seems gimmicky that a HT/Zealot protoss rely on storm to survive : your army can still handle a direct fight in most cases. I usually "only" have 4/5 banshees, and cloak is mainly an added benefit: but overall banshee are really good with mech due to their insane dps
In this scenario, np, you just retreat your banshees, and wait for your reprod to come. And during this,he's making more obs out of his robo, so you know he's not going to do a big 2nd push with mass robo tech. And that's assuming everything but your banshees died, which usually isn't the case , but the problem here is your lack of hellions and bad positionning leading to most of your tanks dying quickly
I also want to play solid and as i said, cloak is mainly an added benefit to the banshee , which is already really good by itself.
well; slowpushing is imo a relatively bad idea, because it makes you vulnerable to these mobility issue : he can just push in your natural for example, forcing unsiege, ripping a lots of buildings in main + destroying your slow push's buildings
Well, the expansion thing is simple : you have 4/5k minerals in a lot of situations. Why not using it to get CC to land it on an unused expansion? If you spam mules on it, it'll take only seconds to pay for itself, and you don't really care if he attacks it : just take a little amounts of banshees/hellions,deflect harass,destroy his pylon, and go back mining . Or just build another CC and do it again. How can a "sane player" deny it? by sending his whole army to destroy expansions at the other side of the map while your own is at his frontdoor?
Well, usually just by bringing a few cloakshee to destroy the stalkers and the pylon. If he's really insisting on that, i just put a tank for each expo
Well I mean if you rely on cloacked banshees to survive it just seems gimmicky, as he can overcome that if he has a backup observer.
The difference between the above and HT/chargelot is that there are no easy counter to well microed HT. But if the toss plays very intelligent he can make cloacked banshees inefficient.
Since the discussion was whether to survive (you responded to the guy above) I assumed there is no realistic option of retreating. Sure I like the idea of cloacked banshees being beneficial (like they are benefical in tvt mech vs bio). But I just dislike banshees, if you only can survive against a specific timing push if your opponent doesn't have a back up observer.
Regarding landing the expansion it could definitely be efficient mineral-income wise, but minerals isn't really what we want. Its geysers that makes the difference. And I feel like a sane toss should always deny a mech player expansions that he can't defend with tanks. As we normally only have 10-15 hellions, it doesn't seem to be enough to actually counter a small group of blink stalkers. And do you really use a little group of tanks to defend against harass on the other side of the map?
But this is where the real neccesity of cloacked banshees (in a non gimmicky way) might come into hand (as you suggested). I guess 4-7 cloacked banshees + 10-15 hellions can deal with 10-15 blink stalkers pretty decently. And of course if he uses more blink stalkers his main army will be extremely vulnerable.
So I guess afterall cloacked banshee might be a solid choice.
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I don't totally rely on it, it helps. Think of it as backup banshees :p
The other difference between HT/Zealot and banshee/mech, is that if you remove banshee and HT, your mech army should still work. Especially if you play with low scv count, your army will be better than his
Retreating isn't really useful when you're at your base :D Defensive play
Hm, If it's only due to some specific timing push . .well, the point of defending a timing push is usually to scout and adapt to counter it. Banshee aren't here for that but to be used as a general back up unit.
yes, we want geysers, but you can just land your expo, get the mineral for it in like 15 sec from mules, and get insta geysers too. And the protoss can really totally deny you all mining 100% of the time.
To defend harass with tanks, it's just like one or two tanks for each expo. If he really commits to it by sending a lots of stalkers,yeah, banshees and hellions AND ravens deals with it pretty well.
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On April 01 2012 07:35 Lyyna wrote:
I don't totally rely on it, it helps. Think of it as backup banshees :p
The other difference between HT/Zealot and banshee/mech, is that if you remove banshee and HT, your mech army should still work. Especially if you play with low scv count, your army will be better than his
Retreating isn't really useful when you're at your base :D Defensive play
Hm, If it's only due to some specific timing push . .well, the point of defending a timing push is usually to scout and adapt to counter it. Banshee aren't here for that but to be used as a general back up unit.
yes, we want geysers, but you can just land your expo, get the mineral for it in like 15 sec from mules, and get insta geysers too. And the protoss can really totally deny you all mining 100% of the time.
To defend harass with tanks, it's just like one or two tanks for each expo. If he really commits to it by sending a lots of stalkers,yeah, banshees and hellions AND ravens deals with it pretty well.
Well I just understood your answer from above, as theat they were nesscary. But I guess I just misinterpreted you.
On April 01 2012 06:18 Lyyna wrote:
Abuse of cloakshee :D
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I feel like you might be missing an important point here Lyyna. Mech often relies on having a favorable terrain, especially against Protoss, to be so cost effective as to get to the late game in a great position like that. If the Protoss can't engage you because you're sieged up behind your mobile Barracks chokes and you always know where he is because of sensor towers, you can get to your doom ball of BC/Thor/Tank.
The point is that you get huge amounts of utility from using the excess mineral buildup you get with mech to build barracks/ebay/planetary walls and tons of excess orbitals to not only make your army stronger in the late game by having less SCVs, but also to make it so that the Protoss can never engage you favorably. When I finally feel safe being aggressive with my army, I take a bunch of SCVs with me to not just repair, but to build Barracks walls where I need them on the actual battlefield. It's similar to how you see some Korean (bio) Terrans landing Factories in the middle of engagements against Protoss to make the terrain more favorable.
This, for me, in addition to the use of sensor towers, is the key to Mech TvP.
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EPT
