i used the search with swarmhosts and mech, not much here?
I am asking for general advice
so I don't want to claim anywhere they are too strong (I would never dare on my level anyways),
just wondering how I am supposed to handle:
- Swarm Hosts in general.. - when they use a Nydus worm anywhere nearby me on the map that I can't forsee, spawning them locusts, all I can get of value is killing a Nydus and not losing too much. - them destroying widow mines by using an overseer (unexpected)
So how can I handle them on an even level? With few apm and evening the costs (that I lose vs their spend money on swarm hosts but not losing anything in the attack).
Looking forward for your strategies.
P.S. I am only a mediocre player, so all I am looking for is ways to even the battlefield with the same skill as my enemy and no pro strategies nor tactics that require 4x apm.
if you're playing with tanks you need mass blue flame hellbat on top of the tanks to protect them or you will lose
if you're playing battle mech (cyclone hellion) just run away from locusts and then be aggressive after locusts die, clearing creep and chasing army. repair planetaries and lift orbitals if they are attacked
you can also do thor medivac drops on top of swarm hosts. battlecruisers and banshees should attack swarm hosts and nydus worms when possible, and if you are playing with vikings you can sometimes shoot the locusts out of the air
and just make sure to kill nydus worms and chase away the overlords that spot for them whenever you can
but generally some of everything ground mech. So the mobile units as well as the more defensive ones.
you can also do thor medivac drops on top of swarm hosts. battlecruisers and banshees should attack swarm hosts and nydus worms when possible, and if you are playing with vikings you can sometimes shoot the locusts out of the air
well the good strategy of Zergs is to spawn locusts and leave into the nydus immediatelly, so you can*t kill them unless you seek the Zergs heart.
For the rest I will certainly try to incorpoorate it
p.s. Im sseeing vikings used , but I don*t get it too much, they have noch that much damage, only a bonus vs armored and in assault mode the anti mech doesn*t help neither. I am guessing its only good if you have alot of extra apm to make use of their versatility - such as TY does it.
PPS: Did I miss anything, TL is not that much going on? where is the main community at?
Vikings are just an extra help to lower the locust count in the air before they land. You also want a bunch of missile turrets protecting your expansions from the locusts. Then ideally they land on blue flame hellbats and do nothing.
TL is not very active anymore unfortunately, but you could still find some people in the Help Me Threads for each race and Simple Questions Simple Answers. Otherwise the reddits AllThingsTerran / AllThingsProtoss / AllThingsZerg are probably better.
Vikings are just an extra help to lower the locust count in the air before they land.
oh I understand
You also want a bunch of missile turrets protecting your expansions from the locusts. Then ideally they land on blue flame hellbats and do nothing.
[/wiki2] oh I got that
TL is not very active anymore unfortunately, but you could still find some people in the Help Me Threads for each race and Simple Questions Simple Answers. Otherwise the reddits AllThingsTerran / AllThingsProtoss / AllThingsZerg are probably better.
I used to have problems with Swarm Hosts and Swarm Hosts/Nydus but now it is almost like a free win. I can't even remember the last time I lost against someone going Swarm Hosts.
The solution consists of 2 parts:
1) Open BC
Always open 1-1-1 two base BC in TvZ. Apart from the harass abilities having 3-4 BC as a compliment to your ground army is awesome. It makes it so that you can teleport on top of Nydus and killing Nydus before they can spawn and before your ground army is in place. You can also teleport on top of Swarm Hosts or counter attack with the BCs when tries to attack you. Basically having BCs often is enough to discourage him from going Swarm Hots.
2) Mass widow mines instead of hellbats
If the BCs are not enough then go mass widow mines, They work much better than blueflame hellbats to protect against Swarm Hosts. The reason is that the mines can kill the locus while they are flying and hellbats can only kill them when they land meaning you lose lots of tanks in the process. You can also use the mines to zone out his armies while you kill his expansions.
I can not even remember the last time I lost to Swarm Hosts since I started to open BC and go widow mines against Swarm Hosts. As long as the Zerg player does not outplay me by a large margin I love it when the go Swarm Host. It is almost free ladder points.
Battlemech with speed banshees and sensors towers is also good. You just send the banshees around the map and if locusts ever appear on the sensor towers go in their direction to find the nydus, if you're quick enough maybe you snipe some swarmhosts and if you use the banshees well and actively you'll find the nydus's as they are building.
Honestly the easiest counters to swarm host is to open with 2 banshees or a battle cruiser off reaper expand and to never let the banshees or BCs die to save them for the swarm host harrass. You can also create a viking to kill the overloards to prevent nydus spam. If he goes muta this is a different story, however most zergs don't combine muta and swarm hosts because its very vunerable early game. If this is the case i would try and kill the zerg before he gets to the point of abusing muta + swarmhost.
nice suggestions actually, but thats pre emptive counters (like phoenix harrass preventing mutas, or Corsairs in sc:bw). If you like going fast air early, then those are great indeed already countering sh. I played those for a while - and never/rarely faced SH of course (but other Nydus attacks with ground assaulting me early or with aa for instance). Now im experimenting with more ground based mech and since my skill is not too high, i don*t want to combine both (air + ground both with mobile forces) too much.
I was asking for generel mech play, ground with mobile forces.
OF COURSE I'm aware that you have the whole race and are ought to be open minded to use every unit in order to play effectively. So those comments are perfectly fine.
I like the widow mines too. But can be outplayed with detection in the right moment the enemy will have make worth their units. On the other hand with good skill you can micro and maneuver your widow mines back and forth too.
No, you can*t kill SH (but a few, sometimes) unless they don*t play too well, or you hit them in their base, because going out of nydus and back in is really fast, spawning locusts is an instant spell. Also seen in one of those games below. BTW: I'm not claiming to be an expert here or understanding players steps too well, again. (serral ty, z v t)
eh... some of these suggestions are a bit silly. widow mines are a bad idea. don't even bother trying to kill locusts with widow mines. a good zerg will drag the mines and friendly splash your own army
OP is right. a good zerg will just retreat his swarm hosts into the nydus if you try to chase them down on T's side of the map. the only way to stop Z from using his swarm hosts the way he wants to use them is to take the fight to Z's corner. that means you need a comp with relatively high mobility (by mech standards) and that can fire while moving.
blue-flame, mag-field, 4 medivacs, non-stop hellion production, 6 cyclones, 4 thors, and any marines or vikings (in ground mode) that you managed to keep alive from the early game. that's your basic cookie-cutter composition vs swarm hosts, no matter what other units the zerg is making. while you move across the map, try to bait the locusts into landing near your hellbats using thor / medivac pick-ups. keep your cyclones on a dedicated hotkey so that you can pull them out of harm's way. you need to keep those cyclones alive in order to chase away the roach / ravager hit-squad that tries to delay your movement and block your path with corrosive biles. prioritize vehicle armor over weapons.
your reinforcements need to come in hellion mode, so they can zip across the map as fast as possible. this is where transformation servos comes in useful: reinforce with fast, speedy units, then they can immediately transform in time for the next locust wave.
once you have forced the swarm hosts into a more defensive posture, you can start floating command centers and building planetaries behind your push. it doesn't matter if you don't kill the zerg right there and then - just try to keep the push going as long as possible. if the fight is heading south, pick up your thors and drop them at different bases to buy yourself time. make sure your most vulnerable expansions are fully saturated with SCVs, so that you have more men to repair. this is also when building armor becomes a good investment.
if you didn't keep your BCs or banshees alive from earlier, it's not worth trying to transition into them later. your best bet is to focus on getting 4 medivacs, and then start thinking about liberators. locusts just melt away if you fight under liberation zones with blue-flame and medivacs, always paying attention to pick up the expensive units (thors, cyclones, tanks) with your medivacs when the locust wave swoops in.
and remember, Z's max will be so much weaker than your max while the swarm hosts are on cool-down. so, you want to get maxed, stay maxed, and force him to use his locusts defensively
On September 03 2019 17:12 SHODAN wrote: eh... some of these suggestions are a bit silly. widow mines are a bad idea. don't even bother trying to kill locusts with widow mines. a good zerg will drag the mines and friendly splash your own army
OP is right. a good zerg will just retreat his swarm hosts into the nydus if you try to chase them down on T's side of the map. the only way to stop Z from using his swarm hosts the way he wants to use them is to take the fight to Z's corner. that means you need a comp with relatively high mobility (by mech standards) and that can fire while moving.
blue-flame, mag-field, 4 medivacs, non-stop hellion production, 6 cyclones, 4 thors, and any marines or vikings (in ground mode) that you managed to keep alive from the early game. that's your basic cookie-cutter composition vs swarm hosts, no matter what other units the zerg is making. while you move across the map, try to bait the locusts into landing near your hellbats using thor / medivac pick-ups. keep your cyclones on a dedicated hotkey so that you can pull them out of harm's way. you need to keep those cyclones alive in order to chase away the roach / ravager hit-squad that tries to delay your movement and block your path with corrosive biles. prioritize vehicle armor over weapons.
your reinforcements need to come in hellion mode, so they can zip across the map as fast as possible. this is where transformation servos comes in useful: reinforce with fast, speedy units, then they can immediately transform in time for the next locust wave.
once you have forced the swarm hosts into a more defensive posture, you can start floating command centers and building planetaries behind your push. it doesn't matter if you don't kill the zerg right there and then - just try to keep the push going as long as possible. if the fight is heading south, pick up your thors and drop them at different bases to buy yourself time. make sure your most vulnerable expansions are fully saturated with SCVs, so that you have more men to repair. this is also when building armor becomes a good investment.
if you didn't keep your BCs or banshees alive from earlier, it's not worth trying to transition into them later. your best bet is to focus on getting 4 medivacs, and then start thinking about liberators. locusts just melt away if you fight under liberation zones with blue-flame and medivacs, always paying attention to pick up the expensive units (thors, cyclones, tanks) with your medivacs when the locust wave swoops in.
and remember, Z's max will be so much weaker than your max while the swarm hosts are on cool-down. so, you want to get maxed, stay maxed, and force him to use his locusts defensively
Yeah, this sounds more reasonable tbh, mines can be super fickle. You might think you need tanks to play mech v Z, but cyclone hellion can trade against roach/ravager or roach/hydra centered armies better than you'd expect. You'll need to kite, so pull back cyclones when they're attacking at you, but nothing super fancy like splitting etc. You'll find that most better players will go into infestor against cyclone hellion mech, instead of swarm hosts, Usually at this point, you switch into tanks/libs. It's very hard to build both swarm hosts and infestors, so battle mech into slower mech should be a more playable style that punishes SH play better
Battle mech takes a bit of getting used to at first, but is really fun once you get it down. Good luck!
heavy cyclone + hellion + banshee/BC ---> heavy Thor + support (even Thor + BC if you can get them to snowball enough).
If your hellion/hellbat harass is good enough you can get away with heavy tank compositions and setup for a massive tank push, but you're playing a dangerous game since Zerg has the best anti-tank options in the game (swarm host /viper/BL and even ravagers).
Transitions into Thor centered comps are far better. Thors are insanely powerful vs Zerg.
One way or the other you have to be threatening his bases too. SH only really work if Terran is being passive/turtling (assuming two players are roughly equal skill).
Honestly though battle mech (the modern one with banshee/BC support) is generally the way to go. Air support is vital unless you really know how to get fancy with hellions and hellbats and even then those styles bank on starports producing medivacs and/or liberators (for harass)
One way or another your apm will be taxed, whether it's through banshee micro, multipronged harass, roaming the map with hellion cyclone, etc.
Turtling with tons of tanks and waiting for that critical mass is a pipe dream against a competent zerg. It would be too easy.
@BerserkSword no one talked about pure turtling terran, just stated that my apm is not the best to get efficiency of hit and run air units while doing other stuff. I stated already using stuff like mobile mech (cyclone hellion) but don't want to just get those 2 - to conclude mech, a bit like broodwar, some tanks/thor/turrets (defensive) and some mobile (cyclone hellion/bat widow mine), of course reading fromt his thread some changes. @shodan tyty medivac thor is cool alone, but on top of alot of other things.. i try.
The reason widow mines are so good vs Swarm Hosts is that the Zerg will try to protect swarm hosts with corruptors against your BC.
Mines are excellent both for killing off locust before they can get to your tanks and thors and for killing and zoning out corruptors that will try to focus down your BC.
So the mines are basically a tool for killing locust waves, zoning out and killing swarm hosts and corruptors while you get your BC count higher and higher. When your BC count is high enough you have won the game - as long as you scan constantly for infestors.
The key to all this is to be aggressive. Do not try to defend but force the Swarm Hosts to defend multiple locations.
On September 06 2019 00:45 ffFiend wrote: @BerserkSword no one talked about pure turtling terran, just stated that my apm is not the best to get efficiency of hit and run air units while doing other stuff. I stated already using stuff like mobile mech (cyclone hellion) but don't want to just get those 2 - to conclude mech, a bit like broodwar, some tanks/thor/turrets (defensive) and some mobile (cyclone hellion/bat widow mine), of course reading fromt his thread some changes.
Well here is what I’m saying.
Your “a little bit of everything” mech won’t win
Cyclone hellion needs to have a critical mass to fight Zerg armies and do significant damage to Zerg bases. If you’re splitting your resources evenly between tanks and turrets (turtling) AND hellion/cyclone you will likely be at a disadvantage
You have to focus on mainly one composition until you can transition to late game
Another thing you don’t realize is that all Terran mech builds vs Zerg require significant air support. There’s no two ways around it. Zerg has been given the tools to crush tank based mech especially (but all mech units ).
Whether you’re going traditional turtle mech or battle mech banshee/BC is a virtually a must. Unless you’re a god at harassing with hellbats mines and/or liberators all of which will require more APM than banshee control and BC control
If you don’t have the APM to use then APM-light ground factory units while doing other things then you won’t successful playing mech. All styles require APM mech included. Pure ground mech doesn’t work against Protoss and Zerg because it would be unfair in terms of APM load. Significant air support is almost always a must (or crazy harassing but again that is APM burden too)
You’re trying to fight the way the game was designed by playing pure ground mech vs swarm host builds
Also don’t think of BW mech. That form of mech does not exist in SC2. Terran does not have access to the absurdly powerful BW siege tank and vulture. Immortals, swarm hosts, Ravager, chargelots, Vipers, disruptors, etc do not exist in BW either
On September 06 2019 02:00 MockHamill wrote: The reason widow mines are so good vs Swarm Hosts is that the Zerg will try to protect swarm hosts with corruptors against your BC.
Mines are excellent both for killing off locust before they can get to your tanks and thors and for killing and zoning out corruptors that will try to focus down your BC.
So the mines are basically a tool for killing locust waves, zoning out and killing swarm hosts and corruptors while you get your BC count higher and higher. When your BC count is high enough you have won the game - as long as you scan constantly for infestors.
The key to all this is to be aggressive. Do not try to defend but force the Swarm Hosts to defend multiple locations.
I can see why you might have some success making a few widow mines instead of hellbats, specifically as a response to the first wave of corruptors which follow a BC opening. but this idea that widow mines can be used as a core unit vs swarm hosts simply doesn't work against good zergs.
first, Z does not have to use the corruptors to protect the swarm hosts. a single nydus worm provides all the protection and an easy retreat for swarm hosts engaged in locust harass
next, you talk about using mines as a defensive tool against locust waves. what exactly are you zoning out? free units?? there is no such thing as "zoning out" free units. Z will just send the locusts anyway and be happy that you made 20 supply worth of units that can't attack his buildings. and where does Z always send the locusts? that's right, your mining bases, where all your SCVs are. usually widow mines are made to kill your opponent's workers, not your own!
no, a high BC count does not guarantee a win vs Z, even if you scan constantly. neural and yamato both have the same cast range, but neural has a shorter cast time. if you go for mass BC lategame, you need to either be so far ahead in tech that you can just power through the neurals and the fungals (again, this doesn't work vs good zergs) or you need to fight where his infestors are not (fly around the edges of the map, using the safety of dead air space). in any direct engagement, you need ranged liberators to zone out the infestors.
On September 06 2019 02:00 MockHamill wrote: The reason widow mines are so good vs Swarm Hosts is that the Zerg will try to protect swarm hosts with corruptors against your BC.
Mines are excellent both for killing off locust before they can get to your tanks and thors and for killing and zoning out corruptors that will try to focus down your BC.
So the mines are basically a tool for killing locust waves, zoning out and killing swarm hosts and corruptors while you get your BC count higher and higher. When your BC count is high enough you have won the game - as long as you scan constantly for infestors.
The key to all this is to be aggressive. Do not try to defend but force the Swarm Hosts to defend multiple locations.
I can see why you might have some success making a few widow mines instead of hellbats, specifically as a response to the first wave of corruptors which follow a BC opening. but this idea that widow mines can be used as a core unit vs swarm hosts simply doesn't work against good zergs.
first, Z does not have to use the corruptors to protect the swarm hosts. a single nydus worm provides all the protection and an easy retreat for swarm hosts engaged in locust harass
next, you talk about using mines as a defensive tool against locust waves. what exactly are you zoning out? free units?? there is no such thing as "zoning out" free units. Z will just send the locusts anyway and be happy that you made 20 supply worth of units that can't attack his buildings. and where does Z always send the locusts? that's right, your mining bases, where all your SCVs are. usually widow mines are made to kill your opponent's workers, not your own!
no, a high BC count does not guarantee a win vs Z, even if you scan constantly. neural and yamato both have the same cast range, but neural has a shorter cast time. if you go for mass BC lategame, you need to either be so far ahead in tech that you can just power through the neurals and the fungals (again, this doesn't work vs good zergs) or you need to fight where his infestors are not (fly around the edges of the map, using the safety of dead air space). in any direct engagement, you need ranged liberators to zone out the infestors.
Granted I am only Diamond so what works really well at my level may not work on higher levels.
I use mines the same way as I use hellions, ie expandable units for killing his economy, out multitask him and and bying time getting my BC count up.
In my experience BCs do beat Infestors if you get the count up. Not always in a direct engagement but I use the BCs to snipe his bases and either teleport away and use mines for delaying any infestors/corruptors that try to intercept. I win by attrition basically since it gets hard for him to hold far off bases.
But yes ranged liberators or ghosts may be needed at higher levels, so far I have never needed them. My TvZ winrate is around 65-70% with 100 APM against my opponents 200+ APM so at least in diamond and below very few Zergs know how to fight this.
On September 06 2019 17:47 SHODAN wrote: neural and yamato both have the same cast range, but neural has a shorter cast time.
just want to point out that this is borderline irrelevant
yamato gun is not interrupted by neural. So if youre scanning you will get the jump on infestors. Yamato the infestors before they can neural. your neuraled BCs will then wipe out the infestors.
of course it's not that simple but BCs do have the advantage when used properly and very carefully.
When seeking answers to something you're struggling with, it may be worth considering that you will have to play outside your comfort zone for a while. Perhaps a unit you seldom use, or a composition that you haven't tried is generally the accepted answer.
Let's simplify the issue: What you may be doing right now isn't working as well as you'd like. Without seeing a replay, it's impossible for us to know how you play or want to play and how things start falling apart against the hosts. As the string of replies above shows, there is a certain amount of depth in a mech composition, but its complexity is generally based on necessity and not preference. For example, it is unwise to make tanks and hellions alone if you're facing say, spire tech. The simple solution to a unit that cannot shoot air units is air units. Tanks shoot farther than they see, so you want something to spot, and scans are MULEs, so using scans all the time hurts. Crossing large expanses of creep will also deplete your scans. The starport is your friend; get comfortable making units from there and using them, because many of the answers you seek are starport-based, even though your core army will be mech.
Now to complicate things: Swarmhosts are not free, but locusts are. The issue is for Zerg is they are spending an initial amount of resources on units that attack in windows, and these windows do not expose the swarmhosts to direct danger. The mech army is something of a sitting duck while you are too small to move out on the map, so you want to implement solutions that expose as little of your army to danger as possible. If you can save scans early on to accumulate more resources while still managing to find damage or restrict Zerg's growth you will find yourself struggling less with hosts. Many of the solutions above seem preemptive and preventative, and that's because preempting things before they're a problem is pretty much the point; mech is like a safety blanket that needs to be made of the right stuff. You're either guiding Zerg into a tech path they don't want or discovering their tech choice (like when a nydus shrieks in the darkness and a cloud of locusts begins floating into a base) and crushing it by having done your due-diligence and preemptively laying the foundations for a solution.
When locusts fly in, you need to quickly assess whether you can safely kill the wave, or whether you need to flee from it. Generally, you flee. Lift what you can, and if you see an opening, sandbag the progress of the locusts with repairs, but be careful that you're not losing too many workers. Most players will have orbitals at their first three bases, so the lift option is typically there (meaning you run everything). By the time you're moving down to the fourth base or any more than that, we're talking about bases that can't run; however, your army should theoretically be quite strong at those locations. Dealing with the locusts is the first step; though they aren't directly the problem, part of the solution lies in mitigating or eliminating their potential to damage you. Their biggest flaws being a lack of speed and no AA attack.
The hosts themselves will always have to be cornered or confronted at a time they are vulnerable. Against air units they are vulnerable 100% of the time, against ground, between locust waves. You can't do much but seek the openings to attack with units that can dive on the hosts (thors/tanks in medivacs work well, can bait locusts and be saved by the medivac) - speed banshees are pretty much the best host-diving units (also insanely good against ravagers and typically force units you'd rather fight). Opening BC can also give you a good look at Zerg's base early on and you're likely to spot their next tech or force a responsive tech that isn't hosts; you also have that crucial starport and are basically at your full tech tree once BC tech is finalized.
I'm not really offering a solution to the nydus itself, since your best defense is to have good vision and air control around your base and not let them deploy too close to your heart. Sometimes... many times, they are unpreventable.
On September 06 2019 17:47 SHODAN wrote: neural and yamato both have the same cast range, but neural has a shorter cast time.
just want to point out that this is borderline irrelevant
yamato gun is not interrupted by neural. So if youre scanning you will get the jump on infestors. Yamato the infestors before they can neural. your neuraled BCs will then wipe out the infestors.
of course it's not that simple but BCs do have the advantage when used properly and very carefully.
it doesn't interrupt, but you don't know which infestor is going to neural which battlecruiser until after you've cast the yamatos. this part is a guessing game. you don't even know if Z is going to cast neural at all. Z could be queueing up fungal growth, a spell which comfortably outranges yamato and prevents tactical jumps. when you measure up the hit-boxes of BCs and the radius of fungal, the effective range is more like 12 or 13. fungal, shift queue, and wait for T to waste yamatos on corruptors before casting neural. lategame BCs have the advantage on maps with lots of dead air space to play with. otherwise, that advantage goes to Z, which is why I prefer thor / mass liberator on most maps.
On September 06 2019 11:07 BerserkSword wrote: Well here is what I’m saying. Your “a little bit of everything” mech won’t win Cyclone hellion needs to have a critical mass to fight Zerg armies and do significant damage to Zerg bases. If you’re splitting your resources evenly between tanks and turrets (turtling) AND hellion/cyclone you will likely be at a disadvantage
I see, just when I go air, I have even fewer of ground mech. so same arguing was that for me.
I tried the Gumiho Style, he was one of first to incoorporate cyc/helion in pro league, he used purely ground mech (mixed) with harassing of course - to be honest though I don't follow the scene too much, and I just saw a few games some months ago too. When I went back to not only cyc/hel I could indeed see the missing critical mass. the defensive is needed though versus counter attacks or harrass of zerg (speaking of non-SH).
Generally speaking and regardless of your composition, medivacs are the answer to SH. They allow you to drop (SHs take a lot of supply meaning less defenses), heal hellbats to kill locusts, and micro your big mech units out of locusts swoops.
At some point the locusts waves are near useless if you have enough stuff (unless he went full SH : in that case counter with a mech doom drop), and you can push out and pressure before the BL transition. Of course if the BL transition is already there, play defensively : his SH supply will make his doom air army less impressive and you can kill him when he attacks if you have enough vikings.
Thinking of air units as dead supply or somehow less impactful than ground is kind of the wrong approach. You will notice nobody is suggesting you make vikings as any more than a zoning tool for overlords (no more than 1 or 2 vikings). EDIT: Mainly because vikings can't actually win you the game, or kill the hosts reliably. /EDIT Just because you have less on the ground, that doesn't mean your army is weaker.
If anything, in this context, air units are better to have. Swarmhosts can't hit air, so having an army composed entirely of air units is superior to ANY ground army when it comes to dealing with hosts.
EPT
