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This is nothing new for Zerg players, but I haven't seen a thread dedicated to this issue in PvT.
The situation: I was playing a Terran player for the fourth time in the row who liked to go for a thor push w/ scvs to surround and repair the thor. I knew from the start of this game that he was going to go for it again. I had tried several compositions to deal with the push (more stalkers to better focus fire the thor, more sentries to block of the marines, etc), but nothing had worked. I simply couldn't kill the thor in time when it was surrounded by repairing scvs. In this game, I designed my composition to have extra zealots figuring that they would kill the marines and immortals to finish the thor.
As you'll see in the replay, I had a much larger army by the time the push hit. The attack priority AI caused my zealots to try to attack the thor, but since it had no surface area exposed, they wandered aimlessly. Even with an economic advantage and added time to prepare with the thor walking its slow ass across the map giving me a MUCH larger army, I did essentially no damage in the confrontation. The repairing workers standing in the way just crushed me.
The same problem happens with the battlecruiser rush that's going around. In both cases, focus firing 10 scvs as the start of the fight isn't a realistic option. It's just too slow and you will lose half your army before you can think about fighting theirs.
Here's the replay:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-149935.jpg)
I'm sure there are ways that I could have won this game. The point of this thread isn't to analyze my play and see what I screwed up. The issue is that I had a much larger army and a reasonable composition, and I did virtually no damage to his composition.
Edit:
I took the time to add up the units and costs. At the start of the fight, it was:
11 zealots, 7 stalkers, 1 immortal and 1 sentry (2275/550) against 25 marines and 1 thor (1550/300). There were 11 scvs on auto-repair boosting the Terran total to 2100/300. 3 probes were also sent into the fray, so if you want to count those, the P army was 2425/550. The P army also reinforced much more sending in ~20 probes, an extra immortal, and a few more warpgate units.
I'm not sure what the ideal way to micro the battle would have been from the Protoss side. (Let the AI have your stalkers and immortal shoot at the thor? Move-click your zealots near the marines and then A-click so that they might hit marines instead? Focus fire workers/marines with stalkers and immortals?) Tactical decisions aside, I think any sort of micro would have produced the same result: a lopsided victory for the significantly smaller Terran force due to this powerful exploit of the targeting priority of repairing workers.
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since you mention ff, have you tried ff the thor in a circle so there's no surface area to repair?
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On September 19 2010 00:39 Count9 wrote:
since you mention ff, have you tried ff the thor in a circle so there's no surface area to repair?
Massive units destroy forcefields.
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On September 19 2010 00:42 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2010 00:39 Count9 wrote:
since you mention ff, have you tried ff the thor in a circle so there's no surface area to repair? Massive units destroy forcefields.
i dont think thors are massive (corruptors dont hit them)
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It is a problem and I'm sure that blizzard will fix it.
However the workaround is using hold position on your zealots/lings. This will force them to attack the scvs. Provided everything is fully surrounded this will thin out the numbers of scvs enough to let you kill the thor. It won't be cost effective, but nothing ever is against terran death balls.
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On September 19 2010 00:43 tacrats wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2010 00:42 kcdc wrote:On September 19 2010 00:39 Count9 wrote:
since you mention ff, have you tried ff the thor in a circle so there's no surface area to repair? Massive units destroy forcefields. i dont think thors are massive (corruptors dont hit them)
.. because corrupters can't shoot ground units.
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On September 19 2010 00:43 tacrats wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2010 00:42 kcdc wrote:On September 19 2010 00:39 Count9 wrote:
since you mention ff, have you tried ff the thor in a circle so there's no surface area to repair? Massive units destroy forcefields. i dont think thors are massive (corruptors dont hit them)
Thors are massive. Ultras are massive. Corruptors only hit Colossi because that's a feature of the Colossi (it gets hit by air attacks).
Side note - BCs and Carriers are massive too, I think.
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On September 19 2010 00:44 ocdscale wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2010 00:43 tacrats wrote:On September 19 2010 00:42 kcdc wrote:On September 19 2010 00:39 Count9 wrote:
since you mention ff, have you tried ff the thor in a circle so there's no surface area to repair? Massive units destroy forcefields. i dont think thors are massive (corruptors dont hit them) .. because corrupters can't shoot ground units.
i thought 'massive' meant can get hit by air. my bad.
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Hope there will be some changes for the target priority too.
For now i'll try to use more fungal against those SCV, didn't have time to try it for now. Maybe you can use one or two storm ( and feedback the thor as a bonus ).
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When I clicked this thread I wondered if it would be SebestianCox. I played him a few times in a row and he did the same push against me.
I agree that its very annoying that the AI priority will cause your units to just do nothing if the thor is surrounded by SCVs.
I think its pretty obvious that something should be changed, but, that aside, what do you think the strongest protoss response is to this? Assuming you were able to actually attack the thor, would alot of chargezealots be good? I tried getting immortals one game, but by the time I saw the thors, I was only able to get 1-2 immortals out when his push came and they melted pretty fast to stimmed marines. (I admit I might just be bad, feel free to tell me if you think having any amount of immortals should counter this)
Edit: After watching the replay your game was pretty similar to mine. I guess even 1-2 immortals isn't enough when your zealots aren't doing anything.
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Psi storm should do great against SCV's repairing a thor.
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On September 19 2010 00:55 Super_bricklayer wrote:
Hope there will be some changes for the target priority too.
For now i'll try to use more fungal against those SCV, didn't have time to try it for now. Maybe you can use one or two storm ( and feedback the thor as a bonus ).
Don't think he could get that kind of tech in time for that push..
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just so we are all clear. battlecruisers, thors, ultralisks, brood lords, carriers, colossi, and motherships are all massive units. corruptors only hit air. they can hit colossi because colossi are designed to be hit by air. just because a corruptor cannot hit it does not mean that it is not massive. it just means that it is not an air unit/colossus.
come on, guys. before we start trying to discuss the game in depth we should at least have a good understanding of it on the surface.
i don't think workers should be given priority targeting, but i think units should have backup priorities. "if i cannot attack my priority target, i will attack the next highest priority" which would be the scvs.
the reason i don't think workers should be the priority target is because that would lead to allin pushes in which the player sends his workers ahead of his army to occupy the enemy units while he deals damage. then the roles would just switch. people would whine about how they can only attack scvs and how manually focusing down the army is not a realistic option.
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target the SCVs manually, best would be using storms or phoenixes
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Worker priority is already high if the workers are attacking (try it some time), but the key is that despite the fact that Blizz was able to make repairing workers top priority on brutal mode in the campaign, they don't get this treatment online. I think it's pretty reasonable to set a repairing SCV to the same priority, or higher, of an attacking one.
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I would adjust the robo timing a bit more. I dont see a reason to go immortal heavy when the gathered scouting knowledge is nothing more but "1rax-addon, lots of marines". At this point he could pretty much do anything.
My thought process would be:
Robo before 3rd gate, 1 zealot at his door in case he's expanding, fast obs into collosus tec -> cancel as soon as i see the thor-tec, 1 round sentries and run up to his ramp -> forcefield before or after the thor. Even if he stomps it either the marines are in front or in the back. Even if you had won that somehow, if you only see it coming when it's already at your door, you've done something wrong.
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At the very very least, if the unit physically cannot attack the Thor because the SCVs have a perfect surround, it should target the SCVs.
I saw a game recently where Select stopped a 4 gate push by bringing 4-5 SCVs to his ramp and hold positioning them there, which completely broke the Zealot AI.
If the Thor is behind a wall of supply depots, the Zealot will change target and attack the depots. So if he's behind a wall of hold positioned or repairing SCVs, why doesn't he change target to the SCVs?
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I played that guy like two days ago on Xel'Naga caverns. o_O
DLing rep
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Even though some people have tried to explain it I feel the left the main part out.
'i dont think thors are massive (corruptors dont hit them)'
Corruptors can hit any air unit (even if they arn't massive). They just deal bonus damage to massive units.
E.G. a corruptor can attack a mutalisk even though it's classified as light, or a viking with the classification of armoured.
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[QUOTE]On September 19 2010 01:07 universalwill wrote:
just so we are all clear. battlecruisers, thors, ultralisks, brood lords, carriers, colossi, and motherships are all massive units. corruptors only hit air. /QUOTE]
Brood lords don t seem like a MASIVE unit ... after all they're made from a corruptor - so kinda same size ... he s not getting MASSIVE amounts of proteins and vitamins to get as big as a floating city (mothership) ... or like a flying super-mega elephant ...... or as big a ship traveeling between stars ....
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EPT
