On August 27 2012 01:01 Nightmarjoo wrote: I already explained the process that lead to choosing this as my standard build. I don't find that my economy is weak, and I'm not sure why you perceive it as such. I'm not sure what you want me to be able to do that I'm not with my opening, as when I play I can do everything I need.
You can't 1rax cc into mech unless you absolutely know your opponent is going 1gate nex or nex first because there are all-ins you can't scout in time to adapt to stop. You can't 1rax cc into 3 or 4rax then into mech (to be safe vs those all-ins) because you don't have enough gas/time to get an adequate force to stop a 12 minute immortal all-in. If you mass marines/bunkers to hold it you've effectively nullified whatever advantage you garnered from fast expanding instead of doing a tech build. Thus you need to open with gas. Reactor expand is ok, but has no great means to scout, and is still sensitive to aggression. Cloaked banshee expand is good because you can get a hellion out to scout well, and the banshee allows you to clean up their aggression attempts and/or harass them, forcing them to make stalkers and extra obs, and/or cannons. The problem is that your cc is very late with this build, and it's still not super great vs aggression. Double expanding is not always possible, and just making a fast 3rd oc in-base heavily delays your gas. Thor expand gets the fact up early, and thus gets a fast hellion out to scout everything. If Protoss is being aggressive the thor holds everything except a fast 4gate, which is easy to scout, and you just get a tank before hellion vs saved chronos instead. If protoss expands you make cc before thor, and your thor lets you defend any fast aggression after nexus. This build is the best general build for tvp mech imo. It's the safest build, and allows a faster cc than most tech openings. It lacks aggression-potential, but that's irrelevant since your goal with tvp mech is to stay alive.
Why would you mass tanks and get armour upgrades? If you open 1rax cc and don't die you can hold anything later in game. Your only problem is if you try tank/hellion and he goes carrier. But you need attack upgrades, not armour. Armour doesn't do shit, especially for tanks.
Thor/tank/banshee/ghost is viable, but as you can see from my recent reps I've been shying away from port units until later in game. Templar shouldn't be a threat if you have tank/banshee/ghost, as all 3 units can easily snipe ht. Even if you don't make tanks you should be fine. If you're losing to big attacks by omitting tanks and ghost (why you would do that is beyond me) then you're not using your hellion/banshee well. I believe that composition is viable, but I don't recommend it.
You can support the constant production of 2tank (or 2thor), 1banshee, 1ghost on 3base. If you want 2port production you can afford this by cutting 1 thor or 1 tank from your production cycle. On 3fact that means you could have 1 techlab 2 reactors, and be very aggressive with your hellion/banshee while slowly building up your thor or tank and ghost count.
Obviously though I recommend my composition, which is tank/thor/ghost with light hellion into air.
I really haven't experimented much with making only thors (no tanks). I suspect it's viable though. I think that if you want to try it you should do the heavy banshee/hellion composition I just mentioned to keep protoss busy. If they sit and mass archon/immortal you could be in trouble without tanks. Strike cannons can only do so much. Obviously you need ghosts though, you can't skip them.
Your inability to hold attacks when relying on tanks suggests greater problems with your play than just composition though.
with a thor expand you only can afford 3 Fac compared to maybe TvZ where you can support 5 Fac+Starport mineralwise. Do you 1 Rax Expand followed by a fast siege tank? Until now i don't face any attack which i can not hold easily.
No the way i loose with 5 Fac tanks was against max 200 Attack i also at 200 Supply and hold it off. But then he warps in Mass Zealot+Archon and crush me.
Maybe 4Fac Tanks and 2 Rax Ghosts after the Expand? What do you think about "pure" Tank+Ghost and attack upgrades for mech? I tried a few games today and it seems solid to me. Did someone ever try this?
I can upload some replays if you want them.
I can mass factories if I want, I deliberately don't. I think tank/hellion is bad. Tank/ghost is worse than that even. I'm not sure what part of my style you don't understand: I've been pretty explicitly clear in my posts, especially the long one that was a recap of a game. I don't want a ton of useless units, I want to make the minimum number of mediocre units that keep me alive so that I can spend all of my money into economy, infrastructure, defense, and good units.
I'm not sure why you think mass fact play is good if you're losing with it. It has no lategame, so you either win in a single attack or you lose.
Explain to me how you're going to hold a 1gas 4gate warp prism with 1rax cc tank. Your scv scout is going to see no 2nd gas, and no surplus of nexus energy. If you can get a 2nd scout past his stalker you'll see a lack of nexus which informs you that you've lost. Then the drop is going to hit and you're going to lose. Explain to me how you're going to hold a blink all-in. You're going to scout 2gas, pray it's dt, make an ebay, and if your second scout finds his 2nd stalker you're going to realize you've lost, and then when the stalkers blink into your main you're going to lose.
On August 27 2012 05:49 Nightmarjoo wrote: Qikz your build is bad. If you're under the impression you were using my build, you're mistaken. I don't know if that's what you're trying to do or not though. I wish you could get on NA, this conversation would be a lot easier.
If you tell me what you're trying to do I can be more helpful. Essentially almost everything I can suggest for you to improve on are just the ways that what you did was different from my build and play. If you aren't trying to do my build, explain what you're doing and why you're doing it and I can give feedback on that. If you are trying to do my build and can't see how your play differs from mine from the reps I've uploaded, I can give you a laundry list.
Sorry I keep getting you and Lynna confused as your names in game are so similar. I guess I should probably go back and check through my replays to see where I'm going wrong in the opening stages. I was going off your info of the 8tank 6thor thing before you transition into air, but the main thing I was confused with was wondering what I exactly did wrong in that battle that lost me the game. I had what I thought was the favourable position, got the EMPs I think? but he still rolled straight through my army. I'm guessing it's something to do with positioning, but I'm not sure.
Anyways after MLG I'll go back through your replays so I can see where I'm differing from what you did (I thought I was doing the right thing, either I was doing the other guys build or I was just doing it completely wrong anyways, I kind of blagged it I think).
Once I've checked both the replays I'll post again with what I thought I was going for etc. etc.
@Night : Well, Tank/ghost is good . . once you have 20 of both with max uppgrades. I usually use it as my lategame when playing biomech ^^
Well, the problem about 1 rax CC tank also exists mosts open (including fast thors one). Actually most opening not relying on a reactor'd rax or a fast tank have a huge amount of problems with a lots of cheese because of the same thing : you'll not have enough marines and your tech ready in time, for example versus a gate/prism cheese, even some 1 base tech before CC (cloakshee, thors,etc) are going to die because it'll hit before big tech units are started
My thor expand gets a reactor on rax in addition to the thor, so that if my scv or hellion scout anything coming I can make marines and a thor, else I can just expand before making units.
Qikz 8tank 6thor is correct. You vastly overmade marines though, and then sacked your rax, so you had no ghosts for the first battle (at your 3rd). You also wasted your time/money on armour ups so that you didn't have +3 by the time that fight was happening. You added factories too soon (before 3rd cc) which hurt your gas income a lot. I stopped watching the rep after that first battle because you'd already made so many mistakes relative to my build. Obviously there are more viable ways to play tvp mech than just the style I use, but since I got the impression that you were at least influenced by my style if not mimicking it that the resulting scenario differed too greatly from what should happen had you not made what were imo mistakes, that continuing seemed a waste of time. Like I said, once I know whether the differences between your play and mine are stylistic differences or outright mistakes I can be more helpful.
Lyyna I think tank/ghost is bad because it's behind on anti-air and cannot ever safely unmax (shy of suiciding scvs) to get bcs (to fight carrier). So if your opponent goes carrier you're forced to either push asap and hope you can end the game (since you'll never be able to recover that supply) or suicide off scvs. If it's early enough that you still need those scvs to maintain oc constuction then you're really hurting your income just to stay alive.
On August 27 2012 01:01 Nightmarjoo wrote: I already explained the process that lead to choosing this as my standard build. I don't find that my economy is weak, and I'm not sure why you perceive it as such. I'm not sure what you want me to be able to do that I'm not with my opening, as when I play I can do everything I need.
You can't 1rax cc into mech unless you absolutely know your opponent is going 1gate nex or nex first because there are all-ins you can't scout in time to adapt to stop. You can't 1rax cc into 3 or 4rax then into mech (to be safe vs those all-ins) because you don't have enough gas/time to get an adequate force to stop a 12 minute immortal all-in. If you mass marines/bunkers to hold it you've effectively nullified whatever advantage you garnered from fast expanding instead of doing a tech build. Thus you need to open with gas. Reactor expand is ok, but has no great means to scout, and is still sensitive to aggression. Cloaked banshee expand is good because you can get a hellion out to scout well, and the banshee allows you to clean up their aggression attempts and/or harass them, forcing them to make stalkers and extra obs, and/or cannons. The problem is that your cc is very late with this build, and it's still not super great vs aggression. Double expanding is not always possible, and just making a fast 3rd oc in-base heavily delays your gas. Thor expand gets the fact up early, and thus gets a fast hellion out to scout everything. If Protoss is being aggressive the thor holds everything except a fast 4gate, which is easy to scout, and you just get a tank before hellion vs saved chronos instead. If protoss expands you make cc before thor, and your thor lets you defend any fast aggression after nexus. This build is the best general build for tvp mech imo. It's the safest build, and allows a faster cc than most tech openings. It lacks aggression-potential, but that's irrelevant since your goal with tvp mech is to stay alive.
Why would you mass tanks and get armour upgrades? If you open 1rax cc and don't die you can hold anything later in game. Your only problem is if you try tank/hellion and he goes carrier. But you need attack upgrades, not armour. Armour doesn't do shit, especially for tanks.
Thor/tank/banshee/ghost is viable, but as you can see from my recent reps I've been shying away from port units until later in game. Templar shouldn't be a threat if you have tank/banshee/ghost, as all 3 units can easily snipe ht. Even if you don't make tanks you should be fine. If you're losing to big attacks by omitting tanks and ghost (why you would do that is beyond me) then you're not using your hellion/banshee well. I believe that composition is viable, but I don't recommend it.
You can support the constant production of 2tank (or 2thor), 1banshee, 1ghost on 3base. If you want 2port production you can afford this by cutting 1 thor or 1 tank from your production cycle. On 3fact that means you could have 1 techlab 2 reactors, and be very aggressive with your hellion/banshee while slowly building up your thor or tank and ghost count.
Obviously though I recommend my composition, which is tank/thor/ghost with light hellion into air.
I really haven't experimented much with making only thors (no tanks). I suspect it's viable though. I think that if you want to try it you should do the heavy banshee/hellion composition I just mentioned to keep protoss busy. If they sit and mass archon/immortal you could be in trouble without tanks. Strike cannons can only do so much. Obviously you need ghosts though, you can't skip them.
Your inability to hold attacks when relying on tanks suggests greater problems with your play than just composition though.
with a thor expand you only can afford 3 Fac compared to maybe TvZ where you can support 5 Fac+Starport mineralwise. Do you 1 Rax Expand followed by a fast siege tank? Until now i don't face any attack which i can not hold easily.
No the way i loose with 5 Fac tanks was against max 200 Attack i also at 200 Supply and hold it off. But then he warps in Mass Zealot+Archon and crush me.
Maybe 4Fac Tanks and 2 Rax Ghosts after the Expand? What do you think about "pure" Tank+Ghost and attack upgrades for mech? I tried a few games today and it seems solid to me. Did someone ever try this?
I can upload some replays if you want them.
I can mass factories if I want, I deliberately don't. I think tank/hellion is bad. Tank/ghost is worse than that even. I'm not sure what part of my style you don't understand: I've been pretty explicitly clear in my posts, especially the long one that was a recap of a game. I don't want a ton of useless units, I want to make the minimum number of mediocre units that keep me alive so that I can spend all of my money into economy, infrastructure, defense, and good units.
I'm not sure why you think mass fact play is good if you're losing with it. It has no lategame, so you either win in a single attack or you lose.
Explain to me how you're going to hold a 1gas 4gate warp prism with 1rax cc tank. Your scv scout is going to see no 2nd gas, and no surplus of nexus energy. If you can get a 2nd scout past his stalker you'll see a lack of nexus which informs you that you've lost. Then the drop is going to hit and you're going to lose. Explain to me how you're going to hold a blink all-in. You're going to scout 2gas, pray it's dt, make an ebay, and if your second scout finds his 2nd stalker you're going to realize you've lost, and then when the stalkers blink into your main you're going to lose.
night maybe i have to say that i dont want to critique you or something else. I always watch your stream, vods etc. I just want to understand what exactly i should do because i try so many different styles and i get mostly crushed. I don't think that the reason for my losses are my mechanics because i beat Zerg and Terran pretty easy with mech. (dia-low/mid master) but i have huge problems against Protoss.
My overall goal against Protoss is the Raven/BC/Ghost composition. I think i will upload some replays maybe i do something totally wrong.
and thx for your help and really appreciate it maybe that what not so clear in my posts before because i'am really depressed with my TvP at the moment.
On August 27 2012 07:00 Nightmarjoo wrote: My thor expand gets a reactor on rax in addition to the thor, so that if my scv or hellion scout anything coming I can make marines and a thor, else I can just expand before making units.
Qikz 8tank 6thor is correct. You vastly overmade marines though, and then sacked your rax, so you had no ghosts for the first battle (at your 3rd). You also wasted your time/money on armour ups so that you didn't have +3 by the time that fight was happening. You added factories too soon (before 3rd cc) which hurt your gas income a lot. I stopped watching the rep after that first battle because you'd already made so many mistakes relative to my build. Obviously there are more viable ways to play tvp mech than just the style I use, but since I got the impression that you were at least influenced by my style if not mimicking it that the resulting scenario differed too greatly from what should happen had you not made what were imo mistakes, that continuing seemed a waste of time. Like I said, once I know whether the differences between your play and mine are stylistic differences or outright mistakes I can be more helpful.
Lyyna I think tank/ghost is bad because it's behind on anti-air and cannot ever safely unmax (shy of suiciding scvs) to get bcs (to fight carrier). So if your opponent goes carrier you're forced to either push asap and hope you can end the game (since you'll never be able to recover that supply) or suicide off scvs. If it's early enough that you still need those scvs to maintain oc constuction then you're really hurting your income just to stay alive.
Fair enough, I'm glad you pointed out that my build is totally wrong since maybe that's why I'm having so much trouble. I'm going to try and cater my mech build more to my style of tank/hellion/ghost while going up to BCs again since I seemed to win a lot more than I have done since switching into this odd build that I thought was right (but is clearly wrong) :p
Hopefully when I get some more games in after MLG if it doesn't end too late, or tommorow night I'll be able to upload a replay of me trying something else, then hopefully I'll be doing a better style for me. I'm not sure why I have such a big problem with thors, I just really hate them as a unit outside fighting clumped up vikings in TvT and mutas. They just seem so big and they die so fast, especially with feedback. I understand why they're used, but outside of the mistakes I already made I'm not really sure how they benefit my mech army all that much compared to more tanks/more hellions/more factories.
Either way I'll check out your style some more in replays and then try mine and see how they differ (my tank/hellion/ghost style which works pretty well for me) and hopefully we'll be able to see if we can get both styles to work, it'll be kind of nice if we can get various styles of mech to work in TvP ^^
Thanks for all your help in this thread by the way, same goes to everyone else. I wouldn't be able to mech at all in TvP (even if I'm losing) if it wasn't for you guys. ^^
Lyyna I think tank/ghost is bad because it's behind on anti-air and cannot ever safely unmax (shy of suiciding scvs) to get bcs (to fight carrier). So if your opponent goes carrier you're forced to either push asap and hope you can end the game (since you'll never be able to recover that supply) or suicide off scvs. If it's early enough that you still need those scvs to maintain oc constuction then you're really hurting your income just to stay alive.
Actually i use this as a follow-up to a biomech midgame, and a protoss is usually not trying to get carriers that early (compared to vs mech) versus a MMMGV/Tank army transitionning into a ghost/tank army (and you can also "just" add vikings and a few marines support and be fine). Of course i prefer my "standard" Mech air play, but biomech into ghostTank is kinda funny =)
about openings . . Well , the problem i have with yours is the same i had with my 111 expo before : it's safe. Too stupidly safe versus some things because of early reactor, but still unsafe versus some others, but you're basically sacrificing any hope to get a good economy, slowing you a lot when you're trying to get all your stuff ready (more fact, starports, starting uppgrades,etc) and it really hurts versus some things, especially versus really good players who are able to trick you into thinking they're allining or smth like that, making you play even more defensive. Thats personnally why i usually prefer to do a Tank/CC opening these days, better "combination" of safety and economy.
Lyyna I think tank/ghost is bad because it's behind on anti-air and cannot ever safely unmax (shy of suiciding scvs) to get bcs (to fight carrier). So if your opponent goes carrier you're forced to either push asap and hope you can end the game (since you'll never be able to recover that supply) or suicide off scvs. If it's early enough that you still need those scvs to maintain oc constuction then you're really hurting your income just to stay alive.
Actually i use this as a follow-up to a biomech midgame, and a protoss is usually not trying to get carriers that early (compared to vs mech) versus a MMMGV/Tank army transitionning into a ghost/tank army (and you can also "just" add vikings and a few marines support and be fine). Of course i prefer my "standard" Mech air play, but biomech into ghostTank is kinda funny =)
about openings . . Well , the problem i have with yours is the same i had with my 111 expo before : it's safe. Too stupidly safe versus some things because of early reactor, but still unsafe versus some others, but you're basically sacrificing any hope to get a good economy, slowing you a lot when you're trying to get all your stuff ready (more fact, starports, starting uppgrades,etc) and it really hurts versus some things, especially versus really good players who are able to trick you into thinking they're allining or smth like that, making you play even more defensive. Thats personnally why i usually prefer to do a Tank/CC opening these days, better "combination" of safety and economy.
Is your tank/cc opening basically a siege expand from Broodwar? If it is, have you got any newer replays you could upload? I've not been able to catch your stream for a while as I've been a bit busy.
Lyyna I think tank/ghost is bad because it's behind on anti-air and cannot ever safely unmax (shy of suiciding scvs) to get bcs (to fight carrier). So if your opponent goes carrier you're forced to either push asap and hope you can end the game (since you'll never be able to recover that supply) or suicide off scvs. If it's early enough that you still need those scvs to maintain oc constuction then you're really hurting your income just to stay alive.
Actually i use this as a follow-up to a biomech midgame, and a protoss is usually not trying to get carriers that early (compared to vs mech) versus a MMMGV/Tank army transitionning into a ghost/tank army (and you can also "just" add vikings and a few marines support and be fine). Of course i prefer my "standard" Mech air play, but biomech into ghostTank is kinda funny =)
about openings . . Well , the problem i have with yours is the same i had with my 111 expo before : it's safe. Too stupidly safe versus some things because of early reactor, but still unsafe versus some others, but you're basically sacrificing any hope to get a good economy, slowing you a lot when you're trying to get all your stuff ready (more fact, starports, starting uppgrades,etc) and it really hurts versus some things, especially versus really good players who are able to trick you into thinking they're allining or smth like that, making you play even more defensive. Thats personnally why i usually prefer to do a Tank/CC opening these days, better "combination" of safety and economy.
Is your tank/cc opening basically a siege expand from Broodwar? If it is, have you got any newer replays you could upload? I've not been able to catch your stream for a while as I've been a bit busy.
Actually it's the thorzain opening from the TSL3 (G5 vs MC, G1 vs Tyler). 12 rax 13 gas, get 4 marines out of rax , fact at 100 gas, get a tank, CC at 5 30
Lyyna I think tank/ghost is bad because it's behind on anti-air and cannot ever safely unmax (shy of suiciding scvs) to get bcs (to fight carrier). So if your opponent goes carrier you're forced to either push asap and hope you can end the game (since you'll never be able to recover that supply) or suicide off scvs. If it's early enough that you still need those scvs to maintain oc constuction then you're really hurting your income just to stay alive.
Actually i use this as a follow-up to a biomech midgame, and a protoss is usually not trying to get carriers that early (compared to vs mech) versus a MMMGV/Tank army transitionning into a ghost/tank army (and you can also "just" add vikings and a few marines support and be fine). Of course i prefer my "standard" Mech air play, but biomech into ghostTank is kinda funny =)
about openings . . Well , the problem i have with yours is the same i had with my 111 expo before : it's safe. Too stupidly safe versus some things because of early reactor, but still unsafe versus some others, but you're basically sacrificing any hope to get a good economy, slowing you a lot when you're trying to get all your stuff ready (more fact, starports, starting uppgrades,etc) and it really hurts versus some things, especially versus really good players who are able to trick you into thinking they're allining or smth like that, making you play even more defensive. Thats personnally why i usually prefer to do a Tank/CC opening these days, better "combination" of safety and economy.
yes that the point i mentioned above. A Thor Expand slows everything down a little bit in my opinion because you have like 10-15 SVC's more and 2nd mule with a No Gas FE and still be save with a asap Tank+Siege.
Lyyna in fact you think pure tank/ghost in viable after 1 rax expand? Maybe with 1-2 Thors before start to add more tanks and it helps to snipe Obs.
If you liked my style, why not spend more time with the build instead of just switching to something else?
If you guys upload reps I can check them out and point out what I think your problems are. If you like my style I strongly suggest looking at my reps and at the recap post where I explain the whys behind the what. Tvp is my best performing matchup at the moment, so I'm doing something right.
Having fewer scvs is irrelevant! I'm not massing marines, I don't need a lot of scvs! And 1rax cc gasgas is not safe! He said he likes that composition as a transition out of biomech. I recommend against trying it as a mech midgame composition.
On August 27 2012 07:31 Nightmarjoo wrote: If you liked my style, why not spend more time with the build instead of just switching to something else?
If you guys upload reps I can check them out and point out what I think your problems are. If you like my style I strongly suggest looking at my reps and at the recap post where I explain the whys behind the what. Tvp is my best performing matchup at the moment, so I'm doing something right.
i watched nearly every match on your stream i try to change it because it don't work for me and i have the same timings like you but it still doesn't work for me.
And the second aspect is that i normally don't like the mass tank style but i think i have to admit that this is the way to play. r, that's also the reason why i tried 3 Fac Reactor, Thor+Hellion+Banshee, Thor+Hellion, Tank+Hellion+Viking every possible composition in the book.
On August 27 2012 07:31 Nightmarjoo wrote: If you liked my style, why not spend more time with the build instead of just switching to something else?
If you guys upload reps I can check them out and point out what I think your problems are. If you like my style I strongly suggest looking at my reps and at the recap post where I explain the whys behind the what. Tvp is my best performing matchup at the moment, so I'm doing something right.
I was thinking about having a look at both, I'll take a look back at yours first though.
One question however, why do you actually use the thors in terms of your army composition? Do you use them for cannons or is there some other reason like their damage? It just seems really odd when I look at your replays it makes me feel that you could probably get away with using tanks and just adding more hellions.
It's your style so it just seems weird to me, but I'm not as good as you so I can understand why you probably think all my questions are odd. :p
Well if you post reps I can try to explain why it isn't working for you, and then maybe we can get it working for you. Everything I do is well-thought-out and thus easy to explain and be copied imo.
I'd describe my midgame composition as being tank/thor + hellion/ghost support, and the endgame is bc/ghost + w/e else.
Strike cannons are a bonus. I make them for their relative mobility, high hp, decent range, high dps, and most importantly anti-air capabilities. Thors are your carrier-buffer before bcs are out. Protoss can chrono carriers out at a much greater rate than you can make bcs, and you can't necessarily punish protoss when they spend all that time/money on carriers and upgrades.
after not gaming since season 2 i came back to ladder in June, ive gotten back into high masters using entirely mech builds against all races expect protoss, which i go bio mech in. Im thinking it might be best if you want to go Mech in toss to open with Bio first early Mech just seems to fragile.
So I've begun meching for the first time at a low-masters level in TVT. Having decent success with it, but how do you deal with drops? I usually lose bases to drops while my army is in an offensive position.
On August 28 2012 09:08 Indrium wrote: So I've begun meching for the first time at a low-masters level in TVT. Having decent success with it, but how do you deal with drops? I usually lose bases to drops while my army is in an offensive position.
Turret rings. Lots and lots of turrets.
Also it's usually nice to have planetaries on your bases and orbitals in your CC farms. Maybe leave one tank at each base too.
Failing that you could just use your hellions to speed back and kill drops.
EPT
