On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
As you get into the lategame you actually want to add more marines in as opposed to marauders. The marauders just do not have enough dps to deal with large numbers of zealots and archons. They will actually just never make it through the buffer units. Its that fact that leads towards the problem i was talking about at the start of the OP, where the matchup feels like you have to play almost perfect to stand a chance late game. If you go marauder heavy you just cannot kill the protoss army, so you are forced to go marine heavy, which is not forgiving at all. You have to dodge or emp every storm, and kill any collosus very quickly or your army just melts.
On the other hand though, if you go battle cruisers late game, your opponent is forced to make more stalkers than zealots, This allows you to got more marauder heavy, though you still need some marines. Because of the lower number of zealots you can still kill them off, and once its just stalkers the marauders have decent dps. So not only do the BCs tank more damage but your bio force is more durable and a little more forgiving of mistakes.
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
Thats how i used to play, but Marauders only do 10 damage to zealots, 20 to armored units, so it takes what, 15 marauder shots to kill a zealot or something? assuming even upgrades of course. it just takes WAYYY to long to kill mass zealot with marauders, hence why i preety much something like 60-70% marines and 30-40% marauder mix, rauders will tank more and die less to storms, but zealots alone will kill you without the marines, its crazyness i say. Maybe im wrong, but the games ive played have felt alot better since ive been making more reactors rather than tech labs, dps is needed to kill zealots. im frankly thinking about just going mass marines the whole time, and just getting out earlier/more ghosts/vikings, but i assume storms and colossus will pwn that preety good, but marauders to me are useless unless hitting stalkers and colossus. god i need to go to bed and stop rambling rofls!
On April 06 2012 17:28 FYRE wrote: As a zerg, i LOLed at terran needing to play reactionary as a problem. =)
The difference is that the zerg race is designed to be flexible enough to be played reactionary, where as the terran race is not. Because all of zergs units are created from the same larva they have the ability to do large composition changes very fast. As zerg you can for example get your spire up as your lair finishes, when you scout collosus you can just produce like 8 corruptors. As terran if you all of a sudden realize protoss has made a collosus switch and you need some more vikings you have to make extra starports, build reactors for them or take reactors from your other buildings which limits your production, and then you still can only build vikings 2 at a time per starport.
So yes where as playing reactionary as a zerg seems obvious trying to play terran like a zerg just does not work.
Thanks for this thread, but just so you know, you're saying nothing new. BC's have always been the only viable option to consistently win engagements in lategame TvP. It's also beneficial getting ghosts/nukes in the mid-game, and distracting the toss with nuke-harass, and also using Nukes+mass PF's to keep them from pushing you while you BC up. Once you reached the limit of 200/200, you can always throw some marines or SCV's away for more BC's. After you got 8 BC's, you can just push with them at one front, and with your Bio on another - especially if you got 2 nukes, use them to threaten large clasters of his building while you push his 2nd main with BC's (if he has all his buildings in one base, spreading the remaining non-bc army through all his expansions, plus getting a few ghosts to his main and covering the nuke drops with BC's will work wonders).
On April 06 2012 18:29 MaxSteel wrote: Thanks for this thread, but just so you know, you're saying nothing new. BC's have always been the only viable option to consistently win engagements in lategame TvP. It's also beneficial getting ghosts/nukes in the mid-game, and distracting the toss with nuke-harass, and also using Nukes+mass PF's to keep them from pushing you while you BC up. Once you reached the limit of 200/200, you can always throw some marines or SCV's away for more BC's. After you got 8 BC's, you can just push with them at one front, and with your Bio on another - especially if you got 2 nukes, use them to threaten large clasters of his building while you push his 2nd main with BC's (if he has all his buildings in one base, spreading the remaining non-bc army through all his expansions, plus getting a few ghosts to his main and covering the nuke drops with BC's will work wonders).
I say right in the OP that im not the first person to suggest or try this. I wanted to make this thread to try to explain why they are a good option. And hopefully to generate some discussion on better ways to transition into them, how to use them better etc. I haven't tried nukes or defensive PFs in conjunction with the BCs so I'll give that a shot. If you have any replays of that style I'd love it if you posted them in this thread.
That goes for anyone else who has experience using battlecruisers in TvP, i feel like I have a good grasp on why they are a good idea, but I am relatively new to the execution of the theory. If you have ideas or replays on the subject please post them.
I also disagree that they are the only consistent way of winning lategame TvP, i believe they give you a more resistent army that is a little more forgiving than your standard composition. However I also believe that if your good enough you can use the mobility advantage of a standard bio army with ghosts and vikings to control the engagements and consistently win. I think it is harder but no less rewarding. I mean there are pros with ridiculous TvP win rates who have never made a BC in the matchup. So i don't see the point in arguing that a normal composition doesn't work. What i have been trying to get across is that for those of us who are less than perfect this composition has its own advantages which we can more realistically use properly.
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
Thats how i used to play, but Marauders only do 10 damage to zealots, 20 to armored units, so it takes what, 15 marauder shots to kill a zealot or something? assuming even upgrades of course. it just takes WAYYY to long to kill mass zealot with marauders, hence why i preety much something like 60-70% marines and 30-40% marauder mix, rauders will tank more and die less to storms, but zealots alone will kill you without the marines, its crazyness i say. Maybe im wrong, but the games ive played have felt alot better since ive been making more reactors rather than tech labs, dps is needed to kill zealots. im frankly thinking about just going mass marines the whole time, and just getting out earlier/more ghosts/vikings, but i assume storms and colossus will pwn that preety good, but marauders to me are useless unless hitting stalkers and colossus. god i need to go to bed and stop rambling rofls!
Just to expand on Sianos's theorycrafting, what about mass marauders/ghosts/blue-flame hellions? That should solve the zealot problem a bit better, right? Hellions are cheap (& a decent mineral sink if you're not making marines), have decent HP (enough to survive a storm at least), can be built quickly (especially out of reactored factories), can kite fairly well with your stimmed marauders cause of their speed, & even un-upgraded are fairly good simply because of the splash damage.
(I'm only platinum, so please forgive me if my theorycrafting is way off base...)
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
Thats how i used to play, but Marauders only do 10 damage to zealots, 20 to armored units, so it takes what, 15 marauder shots to kill a zealot or something? assuming even upgrades of course. it just takes WAYYY to long to kill mass zealot with marauders, hence why i preety much something like 60-70% marines and 30-40% marauder mix, rauders will tank more and die less to storms, but zealots alone will kill you without the marines, its crazyness i say. Maybe im wrong, but the games ive played have felt alot better since ive been making more reactors rather than tech labs, dps is needed to kill zealots. im frankly thinking about just going mass marines the whole time, and just getting out earlier/more ghosts/vikings, but i assume storms and colossus will pwn that preety good, but marauders to me are useless unless hitting stalkers and colossus. god i need to go to bed and stop rambling rofls!
Just to expand on Sianos's theorycrafting, what about mass marauders/ghosts/blue-flame hellions? That should solve the zealot problem a bit better, right? Hellions are cheap (& a decent mineral sink if you're not making marines), have decent HP (enough to survive a storm at least), can be built quickly (especially out of reactored factories), can kite fairly well with your stimmed marauders cause of their speed, & even un-upgraded are fairly good simply because of the splash damage.
(I'm only platinum, so please forgive me if my theorycrafting is way off base...)
In my experience blue flame hellions vs zealots are one of those weird things that sounds good on paper, but in reality it just doesn't quite work out very well. They are actually less HP than their same supply and cost in marines, and you would need to get separate upgrades for them to scale with the rest of your army. But the worst part is that they have to be in the front of your army due to their short range, then even though they are fast they get stuck in front the rest of the army when you try to kite backwards so their speed actually ends up not mattering at all and they just die quickly. Especially because the medivacs cant heal them. So if it was pure hellion vs pure zealot it would be a ezpz, but when you stick it with the rest of your army it just doesn't gel well.
Ive seen Thorzain play Marauder Ghost.. Or was it Ghost Marauder? XD He plays so Ghost heavy, and they dont suck against Zlots like Marauders do, they are expensive to lose though.
I also thought about this and I was hoping that korean TvP would evolve into late BCs.
However, the current way that koreans are handling TvP is to engage right at 200/200 (or slightly earlier at maybe 180/200) and start trading constantly. The reasoning is that a 200/200 vs 200/200 fight where both players have a bank is protoss favoured because of the WG mechanic.
In most TvP games, the terran would have the initiative in the midgame and they are able to use this.
On April 06 2012 17:26 FabledIntegral wrote: I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I messed around a bunch with banshee transitions a few seasons ago, I ended up moving away from them because I found them too flimsy, Their dps is higher but they die very, very quick to storms. I also found that as i got better and better, and of course the opponents i was playing on the ladder got better and better that they were just too good at keeping observers alive and backups ready. The wins i was getting seemed to be more because my opponent made a mistake as opposed to me playing well.
I would also argue in your example of loosing the BCs that in the same situation having banshees instead would not have fared any better. It would guess it was more of an economy or positioning loss as opposed to a composition one.
They don't die quick to storms whatsoever... unless they're all clumped up? It's not like it's hard to split banshees, the entire purpose of banshees is to split them up and not have more than like 5 at a time. Harass everywhere, deny all expansions, etc. Then you scan his main army, take out his two observers with vikings or whatnot even if it sacrifices them, and send your next rally of 5 banshees to target his colo. Only decent if you have at least +2 air attack.
On April 06 2012 17:26 FabledIntegral wrote: I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I messed around a bunch with banshee transitions a few seasons ago, I ended up moving away from them because I found them too flimsy, Their dps is higher but they die very, very quick to storms. I also found that as i got better and better, and of course the opponents i was playing on the ladder got better and better that they were just too good at keeping observers alive and backups ready. The wins i was getting seemed to be more because my opponent made a mistake as opposed to me playing well.
I would also argue in your example of loosing the BCs that in the same situation having banshees instead would not have fared any better. It would guess it was more of an economy or positioning loss as opposed to a composition one.
They don't die quick to storms whatsoever... unless they're all clumped up? It's not like it's hard to split banshees, the entire purpose of banshees is to split them up and not have more than like 5 at a time. Harass everywhere, deny all expansions, etc. Then you scan his main army, take out his two observers with vikings or whatnot even if it sacrifices them, and send your next rally of 5 banshees to target his colo. Only decent if you have at least +2 air attack.
At the point when you will be able to transition into banshees, you probably won't be looking to deny expansions because the map will have already been fairly well split. And late game it is not hard or expensive to replace workers unless you are loosing huge portions at a time. Its also fairly easy for a protoss to just start throwing down cannons once they are maxed which pretty much kills off banshee harass. Even picking off observers can be very hard, if a good protoss scouts the banshee transition they will most likely not have 2 obs with their army but closer to five. You need to scan and then target fire each one separately as your vikings will auto target collosus instead. And you have to keep scanning and looking for them in case they have a few trailing behind their army. Banshees are so fragile that if you make a mistake and miss an observer they will die very quickly. Also good protoss will start putting cannons down in the middle of the map, so that even if the observers die they can fall back to detection.
I feel that banshees rely too much on the cloak ability and too little on their actual effectiveness. I'm not saying it cant or won't work, but it seems to me that in most cases for them to do real damage requires the opponent making a mistake, not having enough observers, not having cannons, not scouting the transition. I've never really been comfortable with builds like that because as you get better and better and as the game evolves and people get better and better in general they will become less and less effective.
As a general rule you should ask yourself, if my opponent responds perfectly, is this still a good move? You might have a great double pronged drop planned, but if he has his forces split perfectly to deal with it can you use your army to keep him pinned in his base and take an expand instead? In this case, if he has enough observers and cannons to neutralize cloak, do you think you can still make enough use out of the banshees for them to be worth the high cost and long build time? Maybe the answer is yes, maybe you can use them alot better than me, but if the answer is no i suggest that you practice something else, because one day you will start to meet people that will just shut it down and unless you want to accept that you just will not win these games you will need to try and figure something else out anyways.
On April 06 2012 16:17 Micromancer wrote: Hi, I'm Micromancer, a top 25, occasionally top 8 in my division masters player on the NA server, any discussion, suggestions or criticisms are welcome. http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/2188016/Micromancer
At the highest levels of play the matchup seems very balanced at the moment, however there is a sense even at high masters that the late game favours the protoss. The general consensus seems to be that as a terran player you either need to do damage in the mid game with drops, or you have to play the lategame perfectly. It can be done, but even one slip up or moment of distraction and you can loose your fragile bio army to the mass splash damage that high tier protoss can field.
The problems with the standard play in the matchup are as follows:
Terran must play reactionary to the protoss unit composition.
Tech switches from collosus to storm/archon, will result in a loss very quickly if it goes unscouted and is not met with the appropriate number of vikings or ghosts respectively. On the same note, if terran over reacts and produces too many of one or the other, it can also result in a loss.
Upgrades allow smooth transitions for protoss well limiting terran to a mainly tier 1 composition.
All of the protoss units normally used in a PvT match share the same upgrades, which are cheaper, and can be produced quicker than the terran's. Gateway units, archons and collosus are all benefited by the forge upgrades, and not only that but the high tier collosus and archon splash scales much better with the upgrades than the tier 1 marine marauder that you rely on for most of your damage as terran.
At the same time, because the upgrades for terren mech are produced separately, it makes transitions to higher tier mech units later in the game very ineffective, as you will have needed bio upgrades earlier on in the game, as well as viking upgrades later in the game to deal with collosus. The cost of adding mech upgrades is prohibitive unless you are meching from the start, which is not what I am talking about here. Adding in 0 0 thors or tanks into your mix, is next to useless against 3 3, possibly 3 3 3 protoss units.
Both of these factors, contribute to forcing a terran unit composition that feels very fragile, and prone to being destroyed very quickly with single slip up.
This problem has been bugging me for a long time, and i have given it alot of thought, I know I am not the first person to suggest this, but I do believe that I can make a very good argument for why it is effective. I believe that late game transitions into battle cruisers should become standard play for most terrans. Here is how this addresses the problems listed above.
It forces protoss to be very careful about their unit composition, much as terran has traditionally been forced to react.
A traditional lategame protoss army, is composed of mostly charglots, around 8 stalkers, some sentries, and then a fluctuating amount of tech units, any combination of templar, collosus and archons. The zealots act as the tanking units, the tech is relied upon to deal most of the damage with splash and the stalkers are really only there to kill vikings, as they can't absorb as much damage as the zealots and don't do significant damage to MMM. The battle cruisers force anti air units in much higher numbers, the tech units that are normally relied on to do the heavy damage, either can not shoot up (collosus) or do minimal damage (storm, feedback (I found it is important to use yamato often, on your own buildings if necessary, to keep energy low)). These tech units still must be present however to deal with your bio force. So what the protoss is forced to manage is his stalker/zealot ratio. Not enough stalkers, the battle cruisers are left over to kill everything, not enough zealots and the bio force eats through the soft stalkers in a very cost efficient way.
Terran is often getting air attack upgrades anyways for his vikings, this transitions well into battle cruisers, as you will not be using 0 0 against 3 3.
On the protoss side of things, I think this is the same reason why void rays don't seem to be a viable counter, as i have never seen a protoss getting air upgrades in a PvT, 0 0 void rays will die extremely quickly to upgraded bio, and will not even fair that well against upgraded BCs.
It also changes how the battles play out micro wise as far as unit aggro and movement goes. Increasing the amount of micro a protoss needs to use to engage properly.
I noticed that because the stalkers give priority to the battle cruisers, even a small number of vikings can, uncontested, take down any collosus present, the battle cruisers may not kill all the stalkers but they are hardy and act as great tanks. The protoss army will either have a much smaller amount of zealots than usual, due to filling up supply with stalkers, or they will just die to battle cruisers. As a result I find that in an engagement, as the bio kites back, they eat through the small zealot count relatively quickly, The stalkers get left behind as they fight the Bcs, however the collosus, trying to reach the infantry, get pulled out in front of the stalkers. This makes them vulnerable to the bio as soon as they get through the relatively small amount of tanking zealots. In the end once the tech units are delt with, stalkers just are not cost efficient at all against bio.
Here is a replay, it is not a polished build order, I completely wing it, it was my first time playing the map, the begining is a boring macro fest, mistakes are made on both sides, however There are a lot of late game maxed engagements, where you can see how the armies trade, and observe the different unit aggro and pathing that occurs as a result of the composition. I just started incorporating this lategame transition and I believe it can be used much better than in this game, however from what I have seen so far, it makes the late game seem much more survivable for terran.
more and better replays to come as I play around and become more comfortable with this transition
***Edit, i just realized i forgot to add the [D] tag to the title, Is there a way for me to change it? if not can a mod add it? Sorry and thanks.
Transitioning into Battlecruisers is good and all but only thing really hinders it's effectiveness and its the warp-in mechanic. You might say its all fine suggesting that the zealot count will be lower but what stops the protoss from massing a huge amount of gateways and warping in a couple of HTs and a mass amount of zealots and/or stalkers. HTs can then feedback the gathered energy during the fight even if feedbacked, and the warped in zealots become a second wave against the depleted terran army. This build also becomes significantly weaker if the toss goes for a heavy archon/zealot/HT mix instead of collosus as the absence of Collosus means that there will be more bio killing non-air targetable units. Another limiting factor is the build time needed as most terran players will have reactored starports (probably not more than 2) that churn out the medivacs and vikings rather than banshees, ravens or BCs and the need for the fusion core and yamato cannon upgrade as well. BCs also do a ridiculously small amount of air to ground damage since their nerfing patch and move slower than hydras off creep.
For anyone seriously considering battlecruisers, just make Banshees instead. If what you meant in all that nonsense is you don't have any units that are changin depending on your opponent's composition, mass Bio will just roll a Protoss army without AoE, I seriously cannot find a unit composition that does this better than Marine Marauder Viking, even without Ghost. Hence Battle Hellions and Warhounds in HoTS.
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
As you get into the lategame you actually want to add more marines in as opposed to marauders. The marauders just do not have enough dps to deal with large numbers of zealots and archons. They will actually just never make it through the buffer units. Its that fact that leads towards the problem i was talking about at the start of the OP, where the matchup feels like you have to play almost perfect to stand a chance late game. If you go marauder heavy you just cannot kill the protoss army, so you are forced to go marine heavy, which is not forgiving at all. You have to dodge or emp every storm, and kill any collosus very quickly or your army just melts.
On the other hand though, if you go battle cruisers late game, your opponent is forced to make more stalkers than zealots, This allows you to got more marauder heavy, though you still need some marines. Because of the lower number of zealots you can still kill them off, and once its just stalkers the marauders have decent dps. So not only do the BCs tank more damage but your bio force is more durable and a little more forgiving of mistakes.
Ghost heavy marine/marauder is the best way to play a non-tempo based bio-based macro TvP. Thorzain uses a mild version of this concept, but Happy and Major really take it to the extreme. If you've tried maraurder/ghost late game and failed with it, perhaps you were too marauder heavy and ghost/marine light. Of course, there are many problems with non tempo based TvP, but I'm just suggesting this as an alternative to BCs and a viable way to play a more turtlish macro TvP. Look for any of Happy's games for an example of this. Here's one:
I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
On April 09 2012 02:41 dohgg wrote: I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
I don't know if you fully read the OP but I dont feel like BCs relies on an element of suprise, or makes your compasition an A move and win. Even if like you say a good protoss will cut out robotic units upon scouting the transition i would say that that alone is worth it. The hardest thing to deal with lategame is the templar/collosus switchs that a protoss can do. You aren't cutting vikings our ghosts out of your army, but replacing some of your viking count with BCs. I think they do make an engagement harder for protoss. Even with the composition you are talking about they still have alot of HP as long as you keep thier energy low, either by using yamato before battles or EMping them. A blink archon templar army is VERY vulnerable to EMP without the colossus to back them up so as long as you don't overcommit on the BCs i feel that being able to force your opponents composition is a strength that you can take advantage of as T. Like honestly the A move composition comment kind of bothers me, like even with 3 or 4 BCs added in I don't see how it changes how you need to micro the rest of your army, well it does change how the protoss needs to control theirs.
Also blink archon templar isn't actuallly supper mobile, because it relies on the templar for the splash to deal with your bio, and templar are very slow, as toss you can't get too seperated by them because without them the terren bio can just eat up the rest of the army BCs or no.
On April 09 2012 02:41 dohgg wrote: I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
I don't know if you fully read the OP but I dont feel like BCs relies on an element of suprise, or makes your compasition an A move and win. Even if like you say a good protoss will cut out robotic units upon scouting the transition i would say that that alone is worth it. The hardest thing to deal with lategame is the templar/collosus switchs that a protoss can do. You aren't cutting vikings our ghosts out of your army, but replacing some of your viking count with BCs. I think they do make an engagement harder for protoss. Even with the composition you are talking about they still have alot of HP as long as you keep thier energy low, either by using yamato before battles or EMping them. A blink archon templar army is VERY vulnerable to EMP without the colossus to back them up so as long as you don't overcommit on the BCs i feel that being able to force your opponents composition is a strength that you can take advantage of as T. Like honestly the A move composition comment kind of bothers me, like even with 3 or 4 BCs added in I don't see how it changes how you need to micro the rest of your army, well it does change how the protoss needs to control theirs.
Also blink archon templar isn't actuallly supper mobile, because it relies on the templar for the splash to deal with your bio, and templar are very slow, as toss you can't get too seperated by them because without them the terren bio can just eat up the rest of the army BCs or no.
When i said it relies on the element of suprise i meant by the fact that toss player arent used to play vs it, and they might react wrong.
BCs are an A move unit, by meaning, that once u get into the battle there isnt falling back, and theres isnt a matter of "flanking" or some kind of multi-prone attack with it, kinda simmilar of the way zerg playing when they reach broodlords, as they are both damn slow units.
Vikings has much better DPS vs colosus by meaning of money cost, they are much faster and has 9 range.
Currect if i m wrong, but BCs cost 400-300, thats really not cheap, so u'll have to cut atleast ghosts number in your compostion, or maybe even lose the biggest advantage of terran lategame, which is massing OCs.
Bottom line, -Less mobbilty. -cant repreduce easy. These are the biggest issues in Tvp Lategame, less mobilty gives u less abilty to have a good concave, and the other isuue is that after the "big battle" you'll probbaly die to the toss next warps, w/o the abilty to fall back.
On April 09 2012 02:41 dohgg wrote: I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
I don't know if you fully read the OP but I dont feel like BCs relies on an element of suprise, or makes your compasition an A move and win. Even if like you say a good protoss will cut out robotic units upon scouting the transition i would say that that alone is worth it. The hardest thing to deal with lategame is the templar/collosus switchs that a protoss can do. You aren't cutting vikings our ghosts out of your army, but replacing some of your viking count with BCs. I think they do make an engagement harder for protoss. Even with the composition you are talking about they still have alot of HP as long as you keep thier energy low, either by using yamato before battles or EMping them. A blink archon templar army is VERY vulnerable to EMP without the colossus to back them up so as long as you don't overcommit on the BCs i feel that being able to force your opponents composition is a strength that you can take advantage of as T. Like honestly the A move composition comment kind of bothers me, like even with 3 or 4 BCs added in I don't see how it changes how you need to micro the rest of your army, well it does change how the protoss needs to control theirs.
Also blink archon templar isn't actuallly supper mobile, because it relies on the templar for the splash to deal with your bio, and templar are very slow, as toss you can't get too seperated by them because without them the terren bio can just eat up the rest of the army BCs or no.
When i said it relies on the element of suprise i meant by the fact that toss player arent used to play vs it, and they might react wrong.
BCs are an A move unit, by meaning, that once u get into the battle there isnt falling back, and theres isnt a matter of "flanking" or some kind of multi-prone attack with it, kinda simmilar of the way zerg playing when they reach broodlords, as they are both damn slow units.
Vikings has much better DPS vs colosus by meaning of money cost, they are much faster and has 9 range.
Currect if i m wrong, but BCs cost 400-300, thats really not cheap, so u'll have to cut atleast ghosts number in your compostion, or maybe even lose the biggest advantage of terran lategame, which is massing OCs.
Bottom line, -Less mobbilty. -cant repreduce easy. These are the biggest issues in Tvp Lategame, less mobilty gives u less abilty to have a good concave, and the other isuue is that after the "big battle" you'll probbaly die to the toss next warps, w/o the abilty to fall back.
Its not ment to be a fast transition, its after the extra orbitals go up when you have a bank that you do the transition. The cost well expensive won't affect your ghost count hugely because you will allready be maxed and are just trying to fill out your composition with better units, not necessarily more cost efficient units.
They also absolutely do not affect your concave, they are air units, the concave of the ground fight is not affected at all.. And well vikings do have better DPS against collosus, but as soon as the collosus are dead they are next to useless were as at least the BCs still have some damage output. I have also found that because of their target priority and inability to kite, they usually do not last past the engagement, however they do absorb soo much damage that the surviving part of your army will be larger than it would otherwise. And it can be free to retreat or push forward as the situation dictates.
Once you have some extra OCs up and start to sack SCVs this is the best time to add the battle cruisers to fill out the extra supply that becomes freed up. As you will not have to fight with an army deficit during the long build time. I'm not saying it is a particularly easy transition but i feel its defiantly a valid option.
The one thing you can't do well also going BC is the lategame style of mass ghost and mass nuke. Which i think is probably the other late game transition that T can do that has a fighting chance late game. But both styles have different strengths.
Its also important to remember that you aren't even necessarily surrendering all of the mobility and terran multi prong harrass that you are used to. As long as you don't over commit to your BCs, you still have a very larg bio force, especially if you have sacked SCVs. There is nothing preventing you from hitting another location or setting up a flank with smaller parts of your bio force as you main core moves accross the map. It does have a different feel to it but Just because you have 18 supply in BCs it does not all of a sudden mean your bio force is a lot weaker or less mobile than it normally is, you just have a solid tanking unit that it is possible to fall back to.
I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-260134.jpg)
