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Here's a replay of a game I just played,
http://drop.sc/148049
Its not too important to watch it but, do so if you wish.
I'm a high masters player. So if you do watch the replay i'm not really asking about macro problems etc or any minor mistakes I may have had.
I'm just wondering what is the best way to set up vs multiple drops especially when your on 3-4 bases. I just finished playing on the map taldarim altar where each base is decently far apart. I just played a terran player who would be doing a three to 4 pronged attack. Dropping at my 3rd, natural and main, while pushing my front.
Playing with a zerg army consisting of ultras, lings, banes and infestors vs, 33 marines. When being dropped in 3 locations and pushed at the front with marines and tanks what should I be doing. In this particular situation i'm not too worried about army size, as I believe at the point of attack my army is larger/stroger than his. I'm just more worried about the amount of losses that i am about to take (as in tech buildings and drones/queens)
What is the best way to defend this? or is it essentially my micro that needs work? Any tips on units left at home/each hatchery in addition to mico with splitting your army. Only because i feel that as the defender my micro level needs to be much higher, as with lings infestors and ultras your army is very easily evaporated and as opposed to a terran player who can drop their units and hit "T then a + click after dropping" I need to enagage his armies properly, 4 of them being exact with lings banes and infestors. Not to mention that because of how slow infestors are all my units get to his at different times.
whats your best advice?
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On some maps there are points in/around your base that a medivac simply has to fly to over to drop you. Lately i've been experimenting with spore crawlers in these places to deter and weaken drop play. It's been really helpful - but it is really map-dependant.
Sorry for not answering your question fully but I'm pretty bad vs drops myself.
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spines and spores all they way.
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If you feel like you have very good map awareness and multi-tasking, a handful of lings 6-8 and an Infestor at each base can stop drops dead in their tracks. Otherwise a spore and a few spines at each base will suffice.
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FXOLucky's style of using spores and spines. If you have mutalisks you can choose to not make these structures as long as you are confident in scouting the drops. If you have a sufficient number of bases, or are maxed, you can just build them, they're so cheap.
If you prefer infestor ling style just place zerglings to scout common drop paths and prepare zerglings on standby at drop locations.
Once you reach hive tech terrans will be aiming to attack your peripheral expansions (sometimes aim
for the strucures but by then you should have enough map awareness.)
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If hes using multiple drops at the same time, spines and spores become much stronger. One time vs high master terran he opened up cloak banshee and transitiond into a normal game, after I had 1 spore per mineral line the spore in my main ended up getting 2 medivac kills as he was aggressive with drops. So don't be afraid to put spores in good locations.
1 fungal overtop of a spore = dead medivac too, also helps to practice spreading out units if you are just chilling as most people drop more often vs infestor zerg rather than muta zerg.
A lot of it comes down to crisis management too, if hes managing everything so are you. But yea if hes queuing up drops hes not looking at all of them so static D, minimap awareness, unit positioning and crisis management is your best bet.
Often you can think from his perspective and know where hes going to drop ^^
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i wanna say by this point of the game i should have 3 spores and 4-5 spines behind and within my mineral line
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2-5 banelings on patrol, add spines. They will at least buy time. They force T to micro, and you win the micro battle as you just put banes behind the cover of spines, and T can't drop there. Then your anti-drop group arrives. 99% of the time though, they run into the banelings on creep.
I don't really like spores as anti-drop. I just put 2-5 banes and 0-5 spines, depending on how late the game is and how spread out I am and how immobile my army is and how much pressure I'm doing to Terran and how much pressure would be relieved from T if I had to retreat to deal with a drop.
I never have problems with drops with this approach. The worst you can say about is the cost maybe? But I don't do this until 5+ bases, very lategame, when you can afford 5 banes and 2 supply to make a base that, if you lost it would cost you the game, 100% safe while your completely immobile bl/infestor army goes on. it's the stupidest thing in the world when you lose a game to a single drop because that super far off, last mining base, in a tight game, has 10 spines, but just one edge isn't covered, and your BL/Infestor has to go alll the way back to not make it in time.
Patrol banes. I think it's the only method that really works, and it's definitely the cheapest. Even if you aren't playing bling style, you can get a bling nest when on 3+ bases just for anti-drop. It really works wonders. Even the best terran has to stop the drop if there are 3 banes, especially with spines. Buys crucial time, though 99% of the time just kills the drop. T micros drop, then you pressure his front, he has to deal with that, then run back the banes into his drop if he didn't pick up.
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On March 30 2012 17:11 Belial88 wrote:
2-5 banelings on patrol, add spines.
In what area would you patrol the banes?
Vertically between the front of your hatchery and behind your mineral line?
Or horizontally behind or within your mineral line?
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^ Behind mineral line to where they close to where they land the drop. What you say is kind of the same thing, just a line behind mineral line then opposite side of hatch, but yea. That works. Add spines, up to 5 banes, as necessary.
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Spores are very annoying when you want to drop.
Try putting enough defensive structure so that there isn't any safe spot to drop near the hatchery. You'd be surprise how many time you can kill the medivac with spores in good position.
It obvviously lose a lot of efficiency if Terran start doing double medivac 16 marines drops, as they will tear throught spines.
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And where would you put the spines? The banes patrolling are nice if the opponent doesn't micro the drop and just queue it, but, especially with double medivac drops, can't he just drop marines one by one on the banes to greatly weaken this kind of defense? And what if it's a marauder drop instead, aimed at taking down the hatchery rather than the workers?
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On March 30 2012 18:00 Malhavoc wrote:
And where would you put the spines? The banes patrolling are nice if the opponent doesn't micro the drop and just queue it, but, especially with double medivac drops, can't he just drop marines one by one on the banes to greatly weaken this kind of defense? And what if it's a marauder drop instead, aimed at taking down the hatchery rather than the workers?
Don't forget that in the end, specially as time goes on and upgrades start maxing, defensive structures are here to get time for your army ( mostly your zergling ) to get there and help clean up.
No defensive structure setup can hold a 16 marines drop alone.
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In a recent Day9 daily covering Zenio's ZvT, he is strongly encouraging placing some spores at certain positions, and it seems to be helping a lot.
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400 points this season and diamond last season is high master? spores and spines at key locations. if you're doing infestor play and you're on 3-4 bases you can afford to leave an infestor at every base and with your lings you should be able to jump from base to base easily while fungal roots the terran. have good overlord spread and you should see all drops coming and be able to react pre-emptively.
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I always feel that when playing ling infestor, you should leave 1 infestor at each base.
The thing is, what determines the winner more often than not, is whether or not you manage to kill the medivacs, not whether or not they do too much damage to you.
If he is left alone and the medivac numbers get out of control, he starts to eventually basically stop losing units, and then you die.
So my advice is to make sure when he drops, that he loses the units and the medivac. That should be a priority.
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On March 30 2012 18:27 torm wrote:
400 points this season and diamond last season is high master? spores and spines at key locations. if you're doing infestor play and you're on 3-4 bases you can afford to leave an infestor at every base and with your lings you should be able to jump from base to base easily while fungal roots the terran. have good overlord spread and you should see all drops coming and be able to react pre-emptively.
Exactly what I was thinking. 300 games 400pts is now high masters. Odd.
What stops my drops as a high masters terran lol, is spines placed around, and just lings + queens. Target the medics with queens, and pull back when I stim and try to target. 6+ speed lings are plenty fast enough to cover a lot of area. Spores in certain spots do work, but really only if we don't look and move into them before we drop. Now like a spore behind the mineral line, coupled with a queen targeting it can drop a medic FAST.
Obviously spread mutas out, and patrol lings in spare bases because if I know no base is there, I don't take such an oblong route, I go right over the bases to your base. Watch good zergs, they put 1-2 lings EVERY fucking where. OLs + lings + creep = perfect map vision.
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Drops are the main reason why as zerg you want to get at least some mutas. Muts defend drops, give air mapcontrol, apply pressure, force turrets, complement mass ling bane army well by adding damage and staying behind so they dont get auto-targeted by AI. And your primary hive tech is broodlords not ultras so you need spire anyway. Muts are not imba but mapcontrol is, that is why in expansion blizzard adds anti-muta options for T and P. Also having muts allows to get good ovi spread around the map to spot drops while having no muts allows for 1 viking to force all ovies back home. You can see that some points can be accomplished by very few mutas, like 4-5 (air mapcontrol, killing a dropship, making muta threat to force turrets but only for a short time).
If you really hate mutas but plan to get blords you can make some corruptors and place them in key locations to intercept drops. It is up to you to proceed with blords or to play mind games and scip those since if the corruptors are revealed the t will switch to vikings (so basicly you go like: a) no drops used and your corruptors werent spotted > get blords, b) corruptors spotted but too late > get blords, c) corruptors spotted, enough time to switch > dont get blords).
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Dropplay is so common by Terrans, are there undiscovered ways to deal with this?
Personally I've been wondering if a squad of 4-5 hydras can be used for drop defense. The idea is to position the hydras around the natural so they can react quickly to an incoming drop. If fast enough they may take down a medivac before it unloads. Else the dps will greatly help vs the marines. You still need speedlings to support and tank, but your chances of shooting down the medivac will increase greatly.
Alternatively you can burrow the hydras in the flight path of the medivac so you can unburrow and instantly shoot down the medivac.
Unsure about the viability of this, it may just be crazy enough to work. It hasn't been explored yet though.
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It depends on what you are going. If you are going baneling/ling/muta move your lings and mutas constantly. If lings are on the right side, mutas on the left. vice versa. If you are going infestor, spread your overlords everywhere, get ovie speed. You don't want to leave too many infestors behind so leave just 1 infestor with a few lings at one base that is nearest to your opponents drop route and a few lings while leaving a handful of lings ( more then the one with the infestor) at the other side. Its important to have map awareness, this you got to train yourself. It gets pretty easy to see on the minimap after awhile, the most important thing is decision making and not sending too many stuff back or you are letting the terran move to a better spot to siege you.
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jus general spines/ling muta running about. the thing i want to share is that some terrans are good at using drops to pull ur army away so that they can just walk right up to ur creep and siege up and u dont want that to happen. try to jus grab a small group of unit to clean up the drops and be prepared to engage with ur main army. if you manage to catch him unsieged you gonna be in a great position
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Single medivac drops can be handled with 5-6 spines at a base. Yeah, I know that's a lot of spines...but...it shuts down 8 marines and a medivac pretty hard.
Double medivac drops...you'll actually have to pull back some of your army. Split it, though...don't be dumb like me and pull your whole army.
I've also experimented with having a contingent of lings (about 20-30) specifically for chasing after drops. It seems to work quite well in addition to spines.
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Basically, either you have to set up spores and spines or you have to have lings + an infestor ready. Similar to how Protoss leave HTs and cannons, except you can't warp in zealots, so you can have lings ready.
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Spines give you a feeling of security. What if it's a double medic drop, 4 marauders and 8 marines. 3/3 mara/marine will just piss all over those spines, and you can be way out of position.
Static defense is nice, but don't make it a crutch. You must have units respond at all times, unless it's obvious going to fail
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Once I get 3 bases, I throw down a single spine on the outside bases, or all 3 if they are all accessible.
I play a heavy ling style, so I have a separate control group with about 20 lings on it that is in or around my main.
Watch that mini-map and catch those drops with your army, or the defensive lings. Which ever is closer.
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I generally start off with 2 spines and a spore, then leave an infestor behind when they come out. Personally, I think spores are a pretty underused method of drop defense, from what I see. You don't even need it to kill the medivac (though that's obviously a huge boon if it does). It's main job for me is to zone out the medivac from coming along the most common (and generally that also means easiest for Terran) route. If he wants to drop me, he's going to have to spend valuable time maneuvering that medivac to a safe location to unload. That's usually enough time for me to get some lings over there and either force him to instantly pick up or lose his units. And even if I don't get over there quite quick enough, the spines will also buy time because he also has to move away from those.
This also helps when they try to drop multiple locations, because they can't babysit all of their drops like that, so they end up just completely losing one and having the one they did babysit nullified.
It does take a little experimenting to find the best spore placements, though. Sometimes the placement is obviously (like your 3rd on Antiga pretty much has only one real place drops are coming in), but it's not always the case. When you can't cover the entire base with one spore like that, it's definitely prudent to leave a group of lings (and/or banes, though personally I hardly use banes, so I don't).
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As others have said, static defense is good
You don't even have to cover a base with them. A single spine will make all the marines auto-target it. If he wants to focus down workers or other things, he must manually micro and attack them -- meaning his multi-pronged drops all of a sudden become far less useful. And if he just A-moves, the spine will tank a lot of the damage give you a lot of extra time to react.
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And where would you put the spines? The banes patrolling are nice if the opponent doesn't micro the drop and just queue it, but, especially with double medivac drops, can't he just drop marines one by one on the banes to greatly weaken this kind of defense? And what if it's a marauder drop instead, aimed at taking down the hatchery rather than the workers?
You put them where he's likely to drop and behind/in mineral lines.
Terran dropping marines one by one on the banes is not an issue... he has to micro to do that. By that point, you should have definitely noticed the drop, and you would have pulled back the banes to make sure he doesn't do things like that. Even if he does take the time to drop 1 by 1 on the banes, he will lose half of his drop, and waste about 30 seconds doing that. That's 30 seconds he isn't doing anything else, and 30 seconds you have to respond. That should be more than enough time for your broodlord army, or ultras, or roaches, or other very slow army, to get there in time.
If it's marauder based, then it's a weaker drop, and he spent gas on marauders instead of tanks/medivacs/upgrades, which is good for you. Your mutas or lings will clean up marauders much easier, and he will still want to avoid the banes.
Dropplay is so common by Terrans, are there undiscovered ways to deal with this?
Personally I've been wondering if a squad of 4-5 hydras can be used for drop defense. The idea is to position the hydras around the natural so they can react quickly to an incoming drop. If fast enough they may take down a medivac before it unloads. Else the dps will greatly help vs the marines. You still need speedlings to support and tank, but your chances of shooting down the medivac will increase greatly.
Dropplay has been figured out.... 2-5 banes, a few spines, mutas, overlord spread, creep, changelings put everywhere in super lategame...
Hydras are a horrible idea. 8 marines + medivac will kill 5 hydras easily, and with a quarter of the cost, and ability to be useful in an actual fight later on. How can you say "how can drops not be figured out?" then recommend hydras?
I don't like patrols of just lings, they won't handle drops at all, and cost wayyyyy too much supply (at least, any number of useful lings). Ling/bane is okay, but bane+spine is best.
It's not hard. 5 banes, 6 spines, will even double 3/3 drops in super lategame (or at least buy enough time). Drops have *never* been an issue for me in my ZvT, and I've been doing this for a while (if anything, I spend too much on safety - but hey, it works 100%).
Single medivac drops can be handled with 5-6 spines at a base. Yeah, I know that's a lot of spines...but...it shuts down 8 marines and a medivac pretty hard.
Pure spine is horrible. The problem is, is first you need spines to cover your mineral line. So 3 in mineral line. Then, that doesn't cover the whole base. So you can have 9 spines on your base, but terran can drop in a way that they really only encounter 2 of the spines, and then attack the base from a certain angle, and force you to pull army.
I STRONGLY believe that if you have to pull your army to deal with a drop, it REALLY hurts. Instead of harassing with your mutas, doing economic damage, for example, you are dealing with a drop and have to go allll the way back home, and then all the way back to T's base to harass again. If you are using ling/bane, it means you can't threaten a counterattack anymore or do a runby, so terran can literally sprint to your base unsieged, because he knows your entire ling/bane army is at the drop, so he is immune to runbys.
Even worse if you have to pull back a broodlord army, and then terran can throw down 3 starports and get 6 vikings out when otherwise he wouldn't have any when you finally arrived. It may seem like zero damage, maybe even a net win by taking out the drop, but any time you have to pull army to deal with a drop instead of be active, threaten, and harass, it really hurts. It's like your entire army suddenly becomes useless if you have to pull back to deal with a drop.
Anyways, pure spine is bad. Double drops rape pure spine too. That's why you need spine+bane. If he doesn't micro perfectly, the banes kill the entire drop. If he micros, you'll see the dropship by then, and you can pull the banes back into the cover of 2-3 spines. So he can't engage the base, and has to fly away. Because if he goes forward to attack the spines, then your banes move in and kill him, or he has to takes too much damage from spines. So he just dances in range of spines and takes a ton of damage. Eventually, you'll have units come by to clean up.
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EPT
