I want to start a discussion dedicated to the Planetary Fortress and its role in TvP and TvZ.
This is certainly not a QQ thread. I am not a game developer or balance designer, nor do I claim to be. I have some feelings about the PF that I want to share and gauge against the feelings and experience of the TL community.
It seems to me that the mass scv-repaired planetary fortress is a pretty big deal and (possibly) may be influencing the dynamics of TvX midgames more than it should.
Why you ask? It is very important to deny or take out expansions to maintain an eco advantage once the game moves beyond the 2 base (main + natural) play. At this point most T's quite sensibly opt for a PF at their third and/or beyond. Now a small force of marauders catching the P or Z out of position can very very quickly stim and snipe a nexus/hatch, while T is simply not punished for being out of position since almost no amount of units can do damage fast enough to take out a repairing PF before reinforcements come lumbering in.
This makes it too easy, IMO, for T to gain a big advantage through sniping an expo while P and Z can't counterhit to even things up.
Maybe I'm way off base here, I'm only ~1400 D but it seems intuitively wrong for T to have both the ability to snipe key structures very fast and sneakliy with medivac + stim rauders, *AND* to prevent any such snipe on his key expansion(s).
Of course it is reasonable that each race has specific strengths and weaknesses. Zerg has mobility and flexibility for tech switches with larva. Protoss has warpgate tech and generally very beefy units + chrono... But its not like T *needs* the advantage bestowed by the option to make PFs and mass repai them with SCVs. Terran already has MULEs, scan, the greatest diversity in safe opening builds, is the best at stopping cheese, and has near immunity to base trading since T buildings can float away.
Perhaps the PF mechanism was put in to counteract an expected weakness in Terran mid-late game - immobility. Honestly however I'm just thinking that Blizz thought of too many 'cool ideas' for T during campaign development and couldn't properly commit to removing all of the necessary ones for multiplayer play. We could do without the PF altogether. I think SC2 would be a better game without it.
So, TL masses, experts, and pros... What say you about this thought process? Am I a QQing noob or does this make some sense to you?
this has been discussed to death, and you answered your own question. ITs there to compensate for lack of T mobility in late game. If you go all bio, you die.
ultras still > pfs, even after nerf.
collosi and broods outrage.
they arent invincible. also. just go kill his natrual if he makes a PF and 6 turrets at his third.
I think that once the maps start to become much more large and terran's lack of mobility becomes more apparent, the PF will become more of a necessity than it is right now.
PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
I amm just a low diamond zerg player, but i completely agree with you. I have played many games where, even though i was up 4 or 5 bases to 3 i simply could not kill him. It seems you have to prevent the terran from getting a planetary fortress up on the third expo or they become very difficult to beat. And because they dont fear getting there expo sniped they feel free to do stimmed marauder drops all over the place, sniping even defended hatcheries in like 5 seconds. I dont think i have won a game where the terran has gotten a planetary at the gold expo.
On October 06 2010 06:43 Klive5ive wrote: PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
To me it just seems nooby and pointless.
Turrets I can kind of understand as you usually get them anyway, but bunkers are silly, Since it means you have to leave units back there, which could be with your main force and could cost you a battle, those four marines could make all the difference, and that's four marines per bunker.
On October 06 2010 06:44 ShadowReaver wrote: I think your right, PFs was an idea from single player campaign that was carried over into multiplayer.
???
arent ALL untis ideas from the single player campaign, and are then carried over into multiplayer?
What he means is... That it was a unit/structure such as the Diamondback or the Goliath (yes i know was in SC1) that were made for only campaign... but PF *slipped* by..
On October 06 2010 06:36 danson wrote: QQing noob, if I have to choose one.
this has been discussed to death, and you answered your own question. ITs there to compensate for lack of T mobility in late game. If you go all bio, you die.
ultras still > pfs, even after nerf.
collosi and broods outrage.
they arent invincible. also. just go kill his natrual if he makes a PF and 6 turrets at his third.
Of course it's not invincible, but it's almost damn near invincible if it comes to the late game and you're winning and trying to kill off Terran's last mining gold base with 26 roaches and fail because scvs are reparing it.
Personally, I think the maps are too small now, so Terran immobility doesn't really count for a lot.
Personally, I think the maps are too small now, so Terran immobility doesn't really count for a lot.
Ya. When people say stuff about "Oh, terran is moving with his immobile army.." It just doesn't seem "immobile" when it took 10 seconds to move across map. Ofc they're not speedlings or mutas... but compared to the rest of a terran army (combined with map size) it's not really THAT immobile
On October 06 2010 06:43 Klive5ive wrote: PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
To me it just seems nooby and pointless.
Turrets I can kind of understand as you usually get them anyway, but bunkers are silly, Since it means you have to leave units back there, which could be with your main force and could cost you a battle, those four marines could make all the difference, and that's four marines per bunker.
You'll always have reinforcements that won't yet be with your army.
You're probably right though bunkers aren't that great either. That's sort of the point really. An OC instead of a PF would pay for 1 bunker by the time the first Mule is done. Then every other Mule after that is 270 extra minerals or 3 bunkers. If you used the income from the OC for defence... you could make more defence. That's the point I'm making really, the PF isn't cost efficient unless your opponent is impatient. No zerg attacks these days until they are maxed with broodlords and ultras, at which point the PF is irrelevant anyway.
I don't really hate PF I just think it's silly that Terran gets something so "useful" for lower level players when Protoss and Zerg don't. They already have easy macro, units that you can make without even scouting etc...
PF's are a bitch to deal with as X. I do believe it's in there b/c of the mobility thing though. They do feel BS in some games, while fine in others. To deal with them, I go about it in this way.
As Protoss:
Option 1. Stand behind minerals and snipe workers with stalkers. Map dependent.
Option 2. Have several immortals to tank the hits and do fast DPS to buildings. Spread your guys out to avoid splash. Depends on if you can afford to make many immortals.
Option 3. Use colossi or high templars to kill repairing SCVs. This is my favorite way of taking them down.
Option 4. Voidrays. Can be nullified by a couple of turrets.
As Zerg:
Option 1. Mutas before turret defense. Obvious, but usually not practical.
Option 2. Ultras/BLs.
Option 3. Army plus fungal growth to freeze SCVs before they can repair.
Its not the planetary fortress really. A sizeable force can snipe it, and Pforts mean less mules. Its the fact that zerglings prefer to run around the scvs repairing it instead of attacking the SCVs. Shift killing all the SCVs can be a pain if your going for a quick snipe, as you dont have time for that stuff. If they fixed the repair priorities (also a problem with thors too), and maybe slowed the repair rate a bit, Pforts would be fine.
As a terran player, heres how I use Pforts. I put it on exposed expansions (such as a vulnerable gold). I then put my army near my natural/main. This means that my army is defending my main, and if they attack my expo, i have time to get into position and kill his army. Its just such a pain, because you have to all these neat micro tricks to kill the Pfort and all i have to do is select my scvs and right click on the Pfort.
On October 06 2010 07:00 noD wrote: You know that PF doesn´t attack air, right ?
ofc they can't ... we're not saying they can. We are saying in combination with turrets, scvs, and possibly a thor/marines nearby... the only "effective" way to kill a PF is either by fungaling the SCVs.. a ton of Broods or Banelings
Not really a good idea to do anything else anymore (Ultras are 'ineffective' now since the scvs don't die to cleave)
I forgot to mention this in the OP but I have seem a couple of 'high level' games where an island expo is taken with a PF and several turrets, rendering it virtually unbreakable unless an considerably large fleet of void rays/carriers/mutas are used. Broodlords would own such a position however (although not if T is aware that Z is making Broodlords and makes some vikings, says "lol" and takes out the broodlords.
If you want a quick snipe, hit it with 20+ banelings. 19 banelings are required to take it down, but some will always be killed as they move in. 24+ banelings and you can take out most, if not all, of the SCVs as well.
PF are too cost effective when compared to the other races defenses. They are 150/150, which would arguably be equivalent to 5 spine crawlers / 4 cannons. That doesn't sound like something 8 marauders couldn't take out, unless they're all bunched up in which case there are holes in the expo's defense.
On October 06 2010 07:01 Fizbin wrote: ultras, brood lords, banelings, immortals colossi! or hit natural or main with a drop.
Yes and people can just whip these units out of the void when ever they need them. It's not like the terran will take his gold base, upgrade the CC into a PF and then kindly type in chat: "Ok, i'll give you 10 minutes to build the proper units to counter this."
hey toadstool if u lost 26 roachs to a PF without tanks or marauders backing it up thats pretty fail... lol target fire the scv's
Yeah, maybe if you split the roaches into ~4+ hotkeys and 1-right-click,2-right-click,3-right-click,4-right-click, repeat on each of the scvs while praying that the pathfinding doesn't implode, otherwise your roaches will die to the PF. Having all 26 roaches fire at 1 SCV at a time takes too long if the base is at decent saturation (i.e. there are a lot of SCVs there repairing). By the time you take down the SCVs you have to have enough roaches left to take down a full health PF. "lol target fire the scv's" doesn't seem very useful.
26 roachs in itself is huge fail anyways. get some unit composition
Like before, you can't just magic unit composition. Terran goes hellions, zerg responds with roaches. Zerg ends up with almost a pure roach composition. Watch the first match of TLO vs LosirA from GSL.
----
PF makes terran easier to play. You don't have to manage your army to be able to defend your expansions and harrass/push at the same time. You just make a PF and a few turrets around it-- the SCVs do the rest. It's quite dull.
edit: it can also severely limit zerg's counter attack options, which apparently is supposed to be one of zerg's strengths.
On October 06 2010 06:40 kxr1der wrote: I think that once the maps start to become much more large and terran's lack of mobility becomes more apparent, the PF will become more of a necessity than it is right now.
Yeah, I definitely agree. The maps are really bad right now, and so close, that terrans aren't really bothered with immobility as a few tanks can cover like 3-4 expansions like on Steppes of War, LT, Scrap Station, and more. But yeah, it is pretty annoying when I have 20 roaches and I attack PF, and the scvs repair and I can't take it down before the terran army comes
after getting my nexus nearly sniped earlier on Xel naga when our two armies went around each other, I have to agree. PF's are far to hard to take out compared to hatcheries and nexi. Would love if it was something that couldn't be repaired or something.
On October 06 2010 07:10 chadissilent wrote: If you want a quick snipe, hit it with 20+ banelings. 19 banelings are required to take it down, but some will always be killed as they move in. 24+ banelings and you can take out most, if not all, of the SCVs as well.
Umm banelings cost 50/25 (25 per ling, 25/25 to morph). For 24 banelings that means you gotta sacrifice 1200/600 and 12 supply to take it out.
Also PFs one-shot banelings (and have splash damage) so you *will* lose several during the roll-in.
In some scenarios this is may be a worthwhile tradeoff but that is a very steep price. Keep in mind this is assuming T has literally no units protecting the expo. I usually see a tank or two sieged up nearby as well.. this would further increase the number of banelings you'd need to get.
Also keep in mind if you fall just one baneling short of taking it out, it will be back to full health within a matter of seconds and you would have just wasted so many resources out the window trying to take it out that you have pretty much just auto-lost the game (unless you are at a huge advantage)
On October 06 2010 06:27 Reason.SC2 wrote: Of course it is reasonable that each race has specific strengths and weaknesses. Zerg has mobility and flexibility for tech switches with larva.
On October 06 2010 07:10 chadissilent wrote: If you want a quick snipe, hit it with 20+ banelings. 19 banelings are required to take it down, but some will always be killed as they move in. 24+ banelings and you can take out most, if not all, of the SCVs as well.
Umm banelings cost 50/25 (25 per ling, 25/25 to morph). For 24 banelings that means you gotta sacrifice 1200/600 and 12 supply to take it out.
Also PFs one-shot banelings (and have splash damage) so you *will* lose several during the roll-in.
In some scenarios this is may be a worthwhile tradeoff but that is a very steep price. Keep in mind this is assuming T has literally no units protecting the expo. I usually see a tank or two sieged up nearby as well.. this would further increase the number of banelings you'd need to get.
Also keep in mind if you fall just one baneling short of taking it out, it will be back to full health within a matter of seconds and you would have just wasted so many resources out the window trying to take it out that you have pretty much just auto-lost the game (unless you are at a huge advantage)
It costs 550/100 to replace the PFort + all the mining time and the SCVs killed during the bust. This is obviously a mid-late game strategy as that amount of banelings isn't really economically feasible at the early stages.
It is also beneficial to scout the PF before you roll in. You don't just blindly commit 24 banelings to a PF without knowing exactly what you're dealing with. If you're 1-base up on the T (as you should be) and you take out the PF you're now 2 bases up on him and should be able to replace those lost units fairly quickly.
I have done this in the past and 24 banelings will take out a PF and many SCVs. The PF shoots extremely slow so it only has a chance to get off 1, MAYBE 2, shots before the banelings take it out.
If you asked a month ago I would've agreed, but now when I see a PF I just think "what a noob" OC's are sooo much better and most people just make PF's out of laziness I think. I play toss and when I see a pf i just make some voids,dt's, immortals, or collosus. Or I just storm drop all the workers and head for his natural or main. So make all the PF's you want, it makes me smile.
Against zerg however it is pretty nuts, because mutas are the only way they can really deal with it and the hi sec range upgrade applies to both PF's and turrets, the +2 building armor combined with this can make a few turrets and pf with repairing scvs seem pretty invincible in that matchup.
I wonder if zerg could take about 3 lings and just shift move them in circles around the pf to get it to chase them with its slow turning turret while the rest of zerg's army moves in for the kill.
I don't think PF is crazily out of balance. The damage+splash is scary, but that basically means bringing tougher units or air. What's broken is repair. Not only with 30 SCVs bring the PF from the brink of death to full HP in just a few seconds, but it costs something like 1/4 the cost of a PF to get 100% additional mileage out of a PF. No other "thing" in the entire game can tank 3000-4000 damage while killing 50 psi of upgraded tier 2-2.5 units for a measly ~350/100. As a defensive structure, that is out of line with other defensive options by a factor of 5-8x.
I'm terran user and if there is really ONE thing OP... It's the PF. I liked on BW the gling harass in TvZ. Now your expo are totally safe and if the zerg want to destroy the expand he must send his whole army.
On October 06 2010 08:04 Mania[K]al wrote: Planetary Fort should be removed. Along with Broodlords shooting broodlings and zerg bases exploding into them.
+ Sentries making forcefields and marines having guns.
Yes we all know it's very powerful, but posting every single way you've managed or failed to kill one doesn't mean it's imbalanced. This thread isn't, and won't be, going anywhere.
The PF definitely is a little lopsided in how it's effective. Zerg's primary harassers, zerglings, are completely buttraped by the PF. Protoss has no real way to kill one without dragging an entire army over to it. Yes, immortals can kill it easily but with repair it'll take forever or more likely you'll just fail. T has to use tanks or a monster marauder ball, which isn't really an issue since those are the 2 things you have in TvT.
I think perhaps adjusting simple things like the repair coefficient and reducing or removing splash damage would make a massive difference. I like the PF. I think it's a good dynamic to decide between OCs and PFs. I do, however, think it makes T too mindless on expo defense, and too strong vs harass.
you have to understand when t gets a pf, it is a pretty big economic drawback. Since zerg usually has +20-30 drones, a pf is safe but at the same time already behind (unless its on a gold).
Same vs P, since p has such a ridiculous production output and has more workers, going a pf is still economically disadvantageous, but it is safe.
And dealing with repaired pf is all about targeting the scvs, (speed banelings, storm, siege tanks, ultralisks, infestors, cloaked harassment, or just drops in general which ignore the pf). By doing this you have punished the terran for making a pf, because it has given him no benefit whatsoever.
Why don't they just make it so that the more SCVs repairing the PF, the slower it shoots. That way it is still defended from light harass without army support, but if the opponent is really determined the T has to make an effort to get his army over to help.
On October 06 2010 06:44 ShadowReaver wrote: I think your right, PFs was an idea from single player campaign that was carried over into multiplayer.
arent ALL untis ideas from the single player campaign, and are then carried over into multiplayer?
Uggh, have you even played the single player campaign? Shrike Turret, Perdition Turret, Automated Refinery, Hive mind emulator, list goes on and on...
to clarify. Obviously not all units from the single player >>> muytli player, but ALL MUTLIPLAYER UNITS are from the single player campaign, so making a post that disses the PF just because it showed up in single is completely retarded.
thors were in SP, mauraders were in SP, there were also marines and roaches and banelings.
I'm 1.3 ks zerg so my opinion may not be very valid, but for every1 saying "go for the natural" there's no way to take out the natural because is there where T has his main army so there's no case in which you can go and kill the natural unless you are like 4 bases and T is 2, because 7-8 tanks can pretty much destroy our zerggy ground army so it's not viable at all. Zerg needs eco advantage so thats why I need to denie the 3rd-4th expo. If you make a PF that do splash damage outrange everything but hydras and can be repaired with a retarded ammount of scvs, theres no way to kill it with ground forces, so you need mutas, but T is high on minerals pretty much always, so he makes like 6 to any-number-he-wants turrets and just left us with BL and ultras. ultras are great but for me it doesnt make sense that i need a T3 unit to be able to kill a PF, and i don't want to talk about the size of ultras and how they stuck in the turrets and other buildings, and BL, its just so expensive that you wont have it when T goes for the 3rd, plus its very easy to kill with vikings.
Sorry for a bit of QQ, but in my opinion, PF is very very strong, and T don't need yet another way to defend from everything >_< P.S: I've played against a guy that just made PF in all his expos so I'm a bit mad about them
On October 06 2010 06:36 danson wrote: QQing noob, if I have to choose one.
this has been discussed to death, and you answered your own question. ITs there to compensate for lack of T mobility in late game. If you go all bio, you die.
ultras still > pfs, even after nerf.
collosi and broods outrage.
they arent invincible. also. just go kill his natrual if he makes a PF and 6 turrets at his third.
The amount of ultras needed to take a massively repaired PF is not really worth it unless you are already in a winning position, considering they more than likely have a Oribital CC sitting around doing nothing they can replace it with
The only real issue with the planetary fortress is the repairing worker target priority is very low, meaning you have to micro against every single individual scv.
Terran and Toss have plenty of ways to deal with it, but early game zerg can't do anything about it because of their very short range until T2.
Their best early counter is banelings, but they are expensive and are useless against the mech units that the scvs are repairing.
Same goes for repairing mech units actually. The scvs get in the way of the zerg units, who won't attack them unless manually told to attack each one. It makes for a very obnoxious all in push against zerg...
A PF takes a bit of finesse to take out. It's generally a pretty bad idea to just 1a into it and hope for the best. It reminds me of the Tank Line debate from not-so-very-long-ago. People think it's impregnable, but really it just takes some poking and prodding till you find an opening.
I always like trying to look at things from a different angle, and the angle that sticks out in this case is: It's not the PF that you want to take out, it's the opponent's income that the PF is helping to protect. Sure, taking out the base entirely is preferable, but if it's gonna cost you half of your army, then it's obviously not worth it.
When I think of nullifying a PF as a Zerg, the idea that comes to mind is a few Roaches and ~4 Banelings. Roaches tank the PF for a few hits while the Banes go in and take out the workers. It's not a huge commitment, and it may very well even pay for itself even in the event that you lose all of it. If you can force the T to start mass repairing (bring more than a few Roaches), then that just clumps the SCVs up for the Banelings to be super effective. Once the damage is done, you pull back. If you managed to hit it while the opponent's army is out position (good scouting), then you should come out ahead in the exchange.
Infesters can be utilized for similar/superior results.
As a Protoss, I'm thinking Sentries. Force Field around the back half of the PF so the SCVs can't reach it (similar to what we saw a couple players do to Bunkers in GSL), and use a decent number of Stalkers to take it down. I don't think anyone is complaining about the PF without the mass repair, so if you disable that part of the combo, it should be ok right?
Alternately, of course, is the High Templar, which should go without saying.
These are just my opinions, of course. I realize that the situation doesn't always allow for these sorts of tactics, but I'm just trying to point out the fundamental goal of assaulting a base, PF or not. Consider also that the T isn't likely to stop sending SCVs to a PF base, so it could serve as a continuous harass target, almost like bait.
PFs as static defense might be a different issue altogether, but then, if they aren't at a mineral line already, then that means the T is either not intending to repair it, should it come under attack, or is going to have to commit SCVs away from mining, which IMO nullifies the advantages.
On October 06 2010 06:44 ShadowReaver wrote: I think your right, PFs was an idea from single player campaign that was carried over into multiplayer.
arent ALL untis ideas from the single player campaign, and are then carried over into multiplayer?
Uggh, have you even played the single player campaign? Shrike Turret, Perdition Turret, Automated Refinery, Hive mind emulator, list goes on and on...
to clarify. Obviously not all units from the single player >>> muytli player, but ALL MUTLIPLAYER UNITS are from the single player campaign, so making a post that disses the PF just because it showed up in single is completely retarded.
thors were in SP, mauraders were in SP, there were also marines and roaches and banelings.
...
You're either retarted or just not trying very hard to comprehend the message.
The post is not "PF is in campaign therefore PF shouldn't be in multiplayer"
The post is opening a debate about the role of the PF by explaining an opinion: that a racial advantage given to Terran by the PF, in light of other existing racial advantages they enjoy, is unwarranted.
That it seems like a unit or idea that slipped into the multiplayer from the single player "lets think up of cool shit to put in the game session" with 'coolness factor' taking priority over balance is a complete conjecture and tangential to the main point of this thread.
The only thing that makes PF's acceptable IMO is the fact that an even more overpowered mechanic (MULEs) is preempted by them.
EDIT: to be more clear...the PF takes zero supply, mules take zero supply, but for a zerg/protoss opponent to be on the same foot economically their armies have to be 20+ supply smaller due to worker count. And...without a doubt, Terran units are the most supply-effective (repair)
I agree, I don't think it's really fair for the Terrans to get a choice between a huge econ boost (mules) or extra defense, whereas Z and P don't get any choice at all.
As many people have already said, I don't think the PF is the issue, it's the attacking unit priority. If units were killing SCV's instead of targeting the PF, things would be a lot different. The difference in "skill" it takes to auto repair or select all SCV's to repair a PF compared to targeting each SCV individually is pretty huge, especially if attacking the PF isn't your only priority.
They can be quite obnoxious, you have to have a plan to deal with it, and killing it will probably be somewhat costly. That's not necessarily a problem, though, as that statement can be applied to many things: banshees, mutas, reapers, DTs, void rays, thors, colossi, all-in pushes, etc.
As zerg, I haven't found myself to be thoroughly frustrated by one yet. If you really really want it dead and their army is out of position as you say, you can do it the super-strait-forward way and spend the 1500 resources to just bane the dumb thing (and potentially some SCVs and other stuff in the process). If it's an important mining location, it's worth that much and if it's not, there won't be a ton of SCVs there to repair it and/or maybe it's not worth killing.
It's a good bit tougher if they are in position to defend it since their army can fight from behind it while it tanks your army.
As for toss, I don't really know but I'd imagine forcefield is quite effective.
edit: Oh yeah, a birdie told me that because terran is lacking in siege units, there will be an upgrade that allows them to fly (and shoot) in the first expansion
The only thing that's really bugging me is that my stupid units completely and utterly ignore the gigantic massiv terran ball that shoots at them and instead go for the PF like a mosquito drawn by light. And i see no reason whatsoever why Blizzard still hasnt changed that.
The priority system is utter shit anyway. If i want to snipe something, i'll make shure to snipe it myself. I won't be surprised if that PF ever opens it's windows and i see the trollface in there.
On October 06 2010 09:14 MK4512 wrote: I agree, I don't think it's really fair for the Terrans to get a choice between a huge econ boost (mules) or extra defense, whereas Z and P don't get any choice at all.
Queens are a macro boost and defense at the same time. Chrono Boost can be used on Army or Probes or Upgrades. This isn't even counting larva mechanics and Warp Gates.
I've said it a million times, and I'll say it a million more: you can't compare these things in a vacuum. You either look at the whole picture, or nothing at all.
On October 06 2010 06:36 danson wrote: QQing noob, if I have to choose one.
this has been discussed to death, and you answered your own question. ITs there to compensate for lack of T mobility in late game. If you go all bio, you die.
ultras still > pfs, even after nerf.
collosi and broods outrage.
they arent invincible. also. just go kill his natrual if he makes a PF and 6 turrets at his third.
Unprotected colossi or broods at a super far third die to vikings. I can't afford to take 2-3 colossi plus a support units to a third, if I do my main army is weak as shit.
Also... his natural probably has his.. uh... army sitting outside of it.
"If you got all bio..." should never be an argument, learn to make more than 3 units.
On October 06 2010 07:10 chadissilent wrote: If you want a quick snipe, hit it with 20+ banelings. 19 banelings are required to take it down, but some will always be killed as they move in. 24+ banelings and you can take out most, if not all, of the SCVs as well.
That is the equivalent of 15-20 Marauders worth of resources -__-
On October 06 2010 07:01 Fizbin wrote: ultras, brood lords, banelings, immortals colossi! or hit natural or main with a drop. "a" move is fail fail fail
hey toadstool if u lost 26 roachs to a PF without tanks or marauders backing it up thats pretty fail... lol target fire the scv's
26 roachs in itself is huge fail anyways. get some unit composition
I did. He went mass thor and hellion, I went mass roaches and zerglings. I smashed his army in the attack. All the zerglings died in the attack, I had 25 roaches left. It could not take down a PF being repaired by scvs.
Targetting the SCV's is difficult as well.
And who said I lost the 26 roaches? I lost half of them before i realised i wasn't gonna take down the PF and retreated.
Ultras, broodlords, collossi and even immortals all rolfstomp PF. mix in just 1 high tempar or some banelings and ALL of the repairing scvs die in 2 seconds.
On October 06 2010 10:54 divertiti wrote: Ultras, broodlords, collossi and even immortals all rolfstomp PF. mix in just 1 high tempar or some banelings and ALL of the repairing scvs die in 2 seconds.
Whats defending the base from the terran army when all your T3 units are working on one fortress?
On October 06 2010 07:01 Fizbin wrote: ultras, brood lords, banelings, immortals colossi! or hit natural or main with a drop. "a" move is fail fail fail
hey toadstool if u lost 26 roachs to a PF without tanks or marauders backing it up thats pretty fail... lol target fire the scv's
26 roachs in itself is huge fail anyways. get some unit composition
I did. He went mass thor and hellion, I went mass roaches and zerglings. I smashed his army in the attack. All the zerglings died in the attack, I had 25 roaches left. It could not take down a PF being repaired by scvs.
Targetting the SCV's is difficult as well.
And who said I lost the 26 roaches? I lost half of them before i realised i wasn't gonna take down the PF and retreated.
If you know you're not skilled enough to target the scvs first, you shouldn't be engaging in the first place. You can't blame the game for you making bad decisions.
On October 06 2010 10:54 divertiti wrote: Ultras, broodlords, collossi and even immortals all rolfstomp PF. mix in just 1 high tempar or some banelings and ALL of the repairing scvs die in 2 seconds.
Whats defending the base from the terran army when all your T3 units are working on one fortress?
Terran's not Zerg, Terrans expand TOWARDS their enemies because of their immobility. If you're taking his third, then your army should be standing in between his bases and yours typically. You'll have your T1 and T2 units. Even if he gets by, by the time he unsieged all his tanks, moved his slow ass thors and tanks across the map to your base, you would've been able kill off the PF and flank his army by then. And if he goes for a mobile bio army, baneling and storm, he's dead.
As far as killing a PF with banelings goes- this is how I manage to do it-
When yo morph in your blings, leave in 1/2 regular speedlings. Speedlings are still faster than blings with centrifugal hooks, so when you amove you're hotkey group the faster slings absorb the first PF shot. Think of it like in BW where you run 1 ling into a wall of tanks, have all of them overkill, then run the rest of you're army in- banelings will be able to close the distance sooner. Also, if they don't have any missile turrets, then move an OL right above the PF (it can't shoot air), then have it spew creep for a while- this creep will give you a significant speed advantage.
Just be clever people
Also note that you should try and get a "surround" with those banelings as much as possible. All's this means that if you are able to position near the SCV's then you will deal splash damage to BOTH the repairing workers and the PF. In terms of cost effectiveness- do a bling suicide once, then get ahead economically. I've seen gamers where people deny expansions multiple times with sacrificial blings- this is cool and all, but doing it just once should soften up their economy a bunch anyways.
On October 06 2010 08:50 Sylvr wrote: When I think of nullifying a PF as a Zerg, the idea that comes to mind is a few Roaches and ~4 Banelings. Roaches tank the PF for a few hits while the Banes go in and take out the workers. It's not a huge commitment, and it may very well even pay for itself even in the event that you lose all of it. If you can force the T to start mass repairing (bring more than a few Roaches), then that just clumps the SCVs up for the Banelings to be super effective. Once the damage is done, you pull back. If you managed to hit it while the opponent's army is out position (good scouting), then you should come out ahead in the exchange.
An equivalent strike force against a Nexus/Hatchery protected by a few towers would be able to completely destroy the expansion and possibly its workers if they do not run away. That's the problem with fortresses.
On October 06 2010 11:05 Wr3k wrote: PF is fine, PF+SCV's + retarded unit priority = broken mechanic.
I agree with this.
Whenever I want to bitch at PF I remember that the only other static D terran has is fricken' bunkers which require pop to use. So, I kind of like that terran gets a big fricken' turret.
lol If terran is going MMM how exactly is that immobile? Even if he's going mech or whatever, you're going to lose a good amount of units for taking on a PF; that is probably enforced with a sensor tower, turrets or tanks. The argument that oh Terran is immobile so the PF is justifiable is stupid. Every race needs to have a weakness, so far it seems Terran is basically covered all around.
Terran is efficient early, mid and late game. You also have the option of simply building defensive PFs since mules give you so much minerals. The PF is a noob structure.
Honestly, the only thing you people can say about the PF is that it's too cheap. maybe 250/150 or something? bang for buck, it's probably the best defensive structure in SC2.. even though it costs 550/150. If blizzard ever feels like making proper 'war sized' maps, immobility like has been said pretty much 340,000 times before, will become more apparent.
I'd like to also point out that the PF is the only (of 2) defensive structures that doesn't require army for its defensive abilities. which Zerg and Protoss both possess.
For all the QQing zergs, Blizzard just didn't spend the same love on you as they did Terrans.. i'm sure Zerg will be 'OP' when the exp comes out..
The battle is at 19:30. Both players are 1100-1400 diamond, and the T went random on ladder. When the battle started, the army sizes were: zerg : 4500 min,, 2600 gas 149 supply (muta, roach ling infestor) terran, 1000 min, 225 gas 61 supply (infantry)
And I couldn't take down the PF. Yes my positioning wasn't very good, and i should have had the roaches moved over to the top side and my muta control wasn't great. Keep in mind most of my attention was to get the infantry fungaled. On the other hand, if my guys were able to attack priority the repairing SCVs, it would have been different. I don't care how bad my micro is, with an army discrepancy of that magnitude, I honestly think I should have been able to A-move to win that, especially with me getting the fungal off. Muta/Roach/ling/infestor isn't a wacky composition that should have so much trouble taking down an expansion with a small MM army defending.
Imo, the main problem is that its shoring up a weakness. The game is fun and balanced when each race has strengths, and weaknesses.
Terran having a strong army, but bad mobility, thats strength and weakness, sounds fine. But the problem comes when the design tries to shore up the weaknesses instead of emphasizing the strength. Then, you either end up with one race being more powerful, or with all races being bland, and playing in pretty much the same way, since they have no specific strength or weakness anymore.
Its bad design imo. Strength and weakness >>> no weakness. Its not just with SC though, its mostly every game. They have been doing it in WoW too, where instead of each class having unique purpose, and design, you can pretty much take any and have the same result. They call it "bring the player, not the class". I call it bland and uninteresting when it doesnt matter which race you pick.
personally i hate planetary fortresses! the ability to have it repaired is absoultely retarded. however i do not see them being removed, because blizzard thinks they have the same health as an orbital command, and cannot be lifted so that is somehow balanced.
so my advice to you is kill all the surrounding units first and make sure your colossus are not targeting them. to do this you may want to avoid getting near one in the first place, although most terran will back up to them anyways. blah i hate them to death and think they break the game just a little, but w/e. glad you brought the issue up but again, dont see a change coming any time soon
On October 06 2010 11:05 Wr3k wrote: PF is fine, PF+SCV's + retarded unit priority = broken mechanic.
Also, missile turrets raping the shit out of anything that flies for 125 minerals is also pretty ridiculous.
They only cost 100 minerals? It's ridiculous how even if you have 30 mutas you WILL lose at least 1 if you're attacking into a group of 3 turrets because of their ridiculous dps.
On October 06 2010 06:43 Klive5ive wrote: PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
To me it just seems nooby and pointless.
Because nothing is more useless than a massive cannon that allows you to handle groups of units just by repairing it and gives you absurd defenders advantage in case of a full out attack.
The problem with bunkers is that they waste population. When you consider the cost of the units inside, as well as the fact that those units are more or less idle, meaning your army is much smaller, bunkers really aren't that great except for temporary defense. Plus the nature of the Terran army is to grow much quicker in strength as numbers increase, which makes it all the worse that you have 4 marauders or 8 just doing nothing. You don't really have a super mobile unit like zergs have mutas and lings, so defending expansions without sacrificing army becomes a big pain. Hence why I absolutely adore my planetary fortresses and will always build one at my gold
yeah when i see a terran getting his pf i either get mutas to kill off the scvs, or i get banelings possibly with drops to kill off the scvs. pf with no scvs = win for z
This thread strongly resembles the blue flame hellion thread from a day or two ago. I am curious in finding out what will tomorrow's "this isn't really a bitch thread about 'X' terran related object" be.
Fact is, there are ways around it. The planetary fortress works no differently than any other piece of static defense. It can be outranged, it can be outmaneuvered and it is a heavy investment made by the player who built it.
On October 06 2010 14:14 Asshat wrote: This thread strongly resembles the blue flame hellion thread from a day or two ago. I am curious in finding out what will tomorrow's "this isn't really a bitch thread about 'X' terran related object" be.
Terran having the most and best options for pretty much everything is not a new development. Really, you should be used to it by now, if you've been paying attention at all.
On October 06 2010 14:14 Asshat wrote: Fact is, there are ways around it. The planetary fortress works no differently than any other piece of static defense. It can be outranged, it can be outmaneuvered and it is a heavy investment made by the player who built it.
"The planetary fortress isn't different from any other static defense once we discount the ways in which it is different from other static defenses."
On October 06 2010 07:01 Fizbin wrote: ultras, brood lords, banelings, immortals colossi! or hit natural or main with a drop.
Yes and people can just whip these units out of the void when ever they need them. It's not like the terran will take his gold base, upgrade the CC into a PF and then kindly type in chat: "Ok, i'll give you 10 minutes to build the proper units to counter this."
hey toadstool if u lost 26 roachs to a PF without tanks or marauders backing it up thats pretty fail... lol target fire the scv's
Yeah, maybe if you split the roaches into ~4+ hotkeys and 1-right-click,2-right-click,3-right-click,4-right-click, repeat on each of the scvs while praying that the pathfinding doesn't implode, otherwise your roaches will die to the PF. Having all 26 roaches fire at 1 SCV at a time takes too long if the base is at decent saturation (i.e. there are a lot of SCVs there repairing). By the time you take down the SCVs you have to have enough roaches left to take down a full health PF. "lol target fire the scv's" doesn't seem very useful.
26 roachs in itself is huge fail anyways. get some unit composition
Like before, you can't just magic unit composition. Terran goes hellions, zerg responds with roaches. Zerg ends up with almost a pure roach composition. Watch the first match of TLO vs LosirA from GSL.
----
PF makes terran easier to play. You don't have to manage your army to be able to defend your expansions and harrass/push at the same time. You just make a PF and a few turrets around it-- the SCVs do the rest. It's quite dull.
edit: it can also severely limit zerg's counter attack options, which apparently is supposed to be one of zerg's strengths.
umm drag select a few roach's then right click an scv, hold shift, right click click another scv rinse repeat.
not very freaking hard.
magic unit composition? i hardly ever build ANY roachs EVER vs terran... muta baneling is so much better its almost silly not to go. and i do fine. my best matchup is zerg vs terran
if u let a terran go 3rd without harass or dropping his main or deserve to lose.
if ur going to argue with me about stuff like this go post on the blizzard forums.
also i agree there are things wrong with the matchup. PF is so minor when it comes to things that are actually important it sickens me to see this QQ. if ur gunna call imba on something at least point out something that matters. Example: hydra speed off creep, tier1 anti air..
umm drag select a couple roach's and right lick and scv then hold shift right click ect ect
not very freaking hard. learn to play
Are you kidding me? I'd seriously like to see anyone do this in a timely manner, half the time you have to use your Mouse wheel to change the pane to shift click all the SVC's at the back, by the time your managed to get all of them your units are attacking the PF since you can't click the SVC's fast enough and God forbid you click the PF while shift clicking..
On October 06 2010 06:43 Klive5ive wrote: PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
To me it just seems nooby and pointless.
Exactly, even 1 mule would give more than 1 turret and 1 bunker would cost (i know it doesnt work 100% like that but the games are so short in sc2 being mined out is not often the case)
On October 06 2010 06:58 eloist wrote: Terran macro is easier than Protoss macro?
I would say so. Keeping your production cycles tight on warpgates definitely requires more attention than being able to queue units (at the very last moment, mind you) just before they finish. Otherwise, you waste seconds that add up.
Of course, that's probably one reason why the cooldown on warp-ins is less than the normal build time. Even so, is not optimal if you aren't building exactly when you're able to. Also, there's little decision making in MULEs, whereas Chrono requires more, unless you opt to Chrono your Nexus repeatedly. So yes, Terran macro is easier than Protoss macro.
As for the OP, I don't find a Planetary Fortress to be anything more than a nuisance as a Protoss player. The cost of a Planetary Fortress is n times the number of MULEs you would have received from an Orbital Command, plus the normal cost (minus the 150 minerals a OC would have cost if you'd like to get nit-picky).
Collosus outrange them, Immortals drop them fast despite reps and they can't shoot up. Also, low-tech like a Nexus and can't lift off.
The inability to lift-off makes me think Terran blatantly stole the idea of a Planetary Fortress from the Protoss.
The inability to lift-off makes me think Terran blatantly stole the idea of a Planetary Fortress from the Protoss.
If you played the campaign, you gain it from Zerg Research
As for the OP, I don't find a Planetary Fortress to be anything more than a nuisance as a Protoss player. The cost of a Planetary Fortress is n times the number of MULEs you would have received from an Orbital Command, plus the normal cost (minus the 150 minerals a OC would have cost if you'd like to get nit-picky)
It is a loss in income, not minerals. Minerals still stay on the patches. But the PF pretty much becomes immune to counter attacks or Run-bys, it's difficult to put the gains/losses of a PF up like that, but overall, because people get it over an OC, it is a preserved gain.
On October 06 2010 06:36 danson wrote: QQing noob, if I have to choose one.
this has been discussed to death, and you answered your own question. ITs there to compensate for lack of T mobility in late game. If you go all bio, you die.
ultras still > pfs, even after nerf.
collosi and broods outrage.
they arent invincible. also. just go kill his natrual if he makes a PF and 6 turrets at his third.
Unprotected colossi or broods at a super far third die to vikings. I can't afford to take 2-3 colossi plus a support units to a third, if I do my main army is weak as shit.
Also... his natural probably has his.. uh... army sitting outside of it.
"If you got all bio..." should never be an argument, learn to make more than 3 units.
Yo, reading composition. He's saying that it's bad for the Terran to go all bio. Aka, he is saying "learn to make more than 2(3) units".
i think its time to bring back this little guy (happened to me during beta):
also as to a PF vs a mule: i think the reason terrans get a PF on their third is that their main is mined out by the time their third is up so they just send those SCV's to the third, they dont need to mule at it while building up the SCVs necessary to saturate.
A great tactic for taking out Planetary Fortresses as zerg is using banelings. A lot of times planetary fortresses will be left relatively undefended because of a little overconfidence of how good they are. Just send in a sacrificial ling or two ahead, followed by the proper amount of banes, and they can be instantly sniped fairly easily before SCVs even know what happened.
Ultras work okay, but nothing is quite as effective as banelings if u can pull it off.
On October 06 2010 16:11 Malminos wrote: A great tactic for taking out Planetary Fortresses as zerg is using banelings. A lot of times planetary fortresses will be left relatively undefended because of a little overconfidence of how good they are. Just send in a sacrificial ling or two ahead, followed by the proper amount of banes, and they can be instantly sniped fairly easily before SCVs even know what happened.
Ultras work okay, but nothing is quite as effective as banelings if u can pull it off.
Banelings cost 50/25 each and do 80 building damage. PF's have 3(?) armor, so it takes 1500/77 rounded up banelings to kill a PF. thats 20 banelings. 1000/500. Sadly thats probably more cost-efficient than any other non-terran race really can brag about.
On October 06 2010 14:11 oxxo wrote: Planetary fortress = gas + lost mules/scans/supply + no lift. It's a much bigger sacrifice than you people are making it out to be.
what you arnt taking into account is that PF lets a terran take a gold that he normally would not be able to. so you are actually comparing lost mules/supply from 1 base to boosted mules off of 2 OC's plus the added income of the scvs mining from the high yield. if after all of that PF is STILL a big net negative in the econ game then its not a problem, but from my quick calcs on hand 2 Mules from a gold is not a huge loss compared to 3 mules from normal patches, not to mention max scv saturation at gold compared to normal.
also as to a PF vs a mule: i think the reason terrans get a PF on their third is that their main is mined out by the time their third is up so they just send those SCV's to the third, they dont need to mule at it while building up the SCVs necessary to saturate.
QUICK QUESTION... if u think u can take on the terrans army AND his PF why didnt u attack his main?
SECOND QUESTION... if ur gunna storm stimmed marauders when there are 20 scv's all bunched up are u doing something right?
THIRD QUESTION.... is this a good idea: lets stop targeting the PF and run the zealots into the scv line so more scv's can repair and the zealots bug out... or hey maybe we should have kept most the zealots on the PF and then target fired some of the scv's (prolly would have still lost your whole army anyways because of positioning when marauders hit, but at least you would have done something use full)
FORTH QUESTION.... if your going to tech all the way to storm why are u pushing when u only have one templar... thats like saying as a zerg player im going to push with zergling roach but when i tech all the way to ultra im only gunna build one before i push
if u dont know the answer to these questions please PM me and i will explain
another note:
terran has PF and turrets as non supply defense (PF even cuts into mule production) protoss has cannons zerg has spine and spore crawls
As for the OP, I don't find a Planetary Fortress to be anything more than a nuisance as a Protoss player. The cost of a Planetary Fortress is n times the number of MULEs you would have received from an Orbital Command, plus the normal cost (minus the 150 minerals a OC would have cost if you'd like to get nit-picky)
It is a loss in income, not minerals. Minerals still stay on the patches. But the PF pretty much becomes immune to counter attacks or Run-bys, it's difficult to put the gains/losses of a PF up like that, but overall, because people get it over an OC, it is a preserved gain.
Sshhh, I was making a joke.
And I agree that the gains/losses of a PF are difficult to quantify like that, but I was just trying to point out that it's not so invincible as the OP made it seem. Even so, I still think it's a great option for a player's third, depending on how risky it is (some maps like Metalopolis don't have terribly risky expansions under certain conditions), as it'll really help secure the advantage you gain at that point.
Planetary Fortresses were definitely a "throw cool shit at Terran" idea that should have been cut in early beta. Terran already has the best defensive units in the game, and the best harassment, they shouldn't be able to hold expansions without even scouting the enemy coming...
Basically if you have let them build a PF with loads of turrets arround it and fully saturated, then that is your own fault really. Better scouting is required. And yeah really a few void rays charged on close by destructable rocks or a proxy pylon will destroy the few turrets around it, then they can just destroy the PF easily. Terran dont have anything that is able to attack ground like spine crawlers or photon cannons, except bunkers which when filled up with marines cost 300 minerals that could be used elsewhere. Now, if you give us some permenant turrets that ravens drop, then I would probably opt to get an orbital command instead of a PF.
Normal ZvP: Protoss moves out. Lings sneak into his Expansion and kick every Probe and the Nexus.
Normal ZvT: Terran moves out. Lings sneak into the Expansion and die whiteout doing a single thing.
Normal ZvP: Protoss moves out. He's getting mauled and at least his nearest expansion falls.
Normal ZvT: Terran moves out. He's getting mauled and his nearest expansion is still save because the left over army of the Zerg is not consisting of the right units to actually kill a PF.
It's just a retarded mechanic.
btw: In SC/BW Terran also had no static defense except Bunkers... And guess what? They actually defended their expansions with their army! Mindboggling, isn't it?
also as to a PF vs a mule: i think the reason terrans get a PF on their third is that their main is mined out by the time their third is up so they just send those SCV's to the third, they dont need to mule at it while building up the SCVs necessary to saturate.
QUICK QUESTION... if u think u can take on the terrans army AND his PF why didnt u attack his main?
SECOND QUESTION... if ur gunna storm stimmed marauders when there are 20 scv's all bunched up are u doing something right?
THIRD QUESTION.... is this a good idea: lets stop targeting the PF and run the zealots into the scv line so more scv's can repair and the zealots bug out... or hey maybe we should have kept most the zealots on the PF and then target fired some of the scv's (prolly would have lost your whole army anyways because of positioning when marauders hit)
FORTH QUESTION.... if your going to tech all the way to storm why are u pushing when u only have one templar... thats like saying as a zerg player im going to push with zergling roach but when i tech all the way to ultra im only gunna build one before i push
if u dont know the answer to these questions please PM me and i will explain
i can answer questions 1 and 3 together by saying that its been a few months since that game but i'm pretty sure i just decided that i wanted to kill all of the SCV's at the expo, which is why i ran the chargelots into the mineral line, without anticipating that the scvs would all just put themselves on hold position or repair the PF while the PF attacked the zealots who were trying to get to the PF due to PF's being at the top of the food chain. i come from broodwar so this is exactly what i would have done to a completely unguarded command center back then. if the unit AI had functioned as i intended, the scvs would have mostly died and i could have run the zealots back through my stalker army to engage the bio army with the stalkers supporting. also i didn't attack his main because he had a wall-in and it's hard as hell to break a wall-in that has a concave of marauders and marines above a ramp, and i would lose a ton of shit trying to do so. either way, by the time my zealots got into the mineral line they were literally stuck and my army was doomed at that point.
2: i didn't want to storm all of my zealots that i had run in there to get some SCV kills, that would be beyond retarded
4: actually it's nothing like that and i didn't even need the HT to beat his whole army most likely.
On October 06 2010 11:05 Wr3k wrote: PF is fine, PF+SCV's + retarded unit priority = broken mechanic.
I agree with this.
Whenever I want to bitch at PF I remember that the only other static D terran has is fricken' bunkers which require pop to use. So, I kind of like that terran gets a big fricken' turret.
Just the unit priority stuff is ridiculous.
Remember SC:BW???
Terran didn't have static ground defense either, and Zerg static ground defense was stronger back then.
On October 06 2010 06:43 Klive5ive wrote: PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
To me it just seems nooby and pointless.
Because nothing is more useless than a massive cannon that allows you to handle groups of units just by repairing it and gives you absurd defenders advantage in case of a full out attack.
The problem with bunkers is that they waste population. When you consider the cost of the units inside, as well as the fact that those units are more or less idle, meaning your army is much smaller, bunkers really aren't that great except for temporary defense. Plus the nature of the Terran army is to grow much quicker in strength as numbers increase, which makes it all the worse that you have 4 marauders or 8 just doing nothing. You don't really have a super mobile unit like zergs have mutas and lings, so defending expansions without sacrificing army becomes a big pain. Hence why I absolutely adore my planetary fortresses and will always build one at my gold
The problem with bunkers using population is not as severe as people make it out to be. Afterall, Zerg macromechanic via Queen --> uses 2 supply per queen.
As for PF... it wouldn't be so frustrating for most players if Terran also did not have a quick and easy way to snipe Z/P hatch/nexus.
On October 06 2010 12:48 SubtleArt wrote: ... so defending expansions without sacrificing army becomes a big pain. Hence why I absolutely adore my planetary fortresses and will always build one at my gold
Tell me about it. I don't play Terran, and it's always such a pain to have to sacrifice nearly every unit I have, including workers, to try to protect my expansions.
On October 06 2010 08:58 jinorazi wrote: correct me if i'm wrong but i kinda see it as a balance.
protoss is able to warp in units if there are couple of pylons to defend it. zerg has its mobility and well, terran has nothing. stim mm i guess?
What you said is nonsense.. Protoss warpin helps to defend agains 10 lings, but not vs. whole army..
Zerg mobility? It's no more BW, in sc2 terran mobility > zerg mobility.
It's just stupid how many good options T has. They got sensor towers so no drops / mutas, the can lift their OC so it's safe, and then they have PF which requires army to kill, not to mention you can repair that thing.
If the targeting priority would be any different, a ling run in can kill all SCVs while the PF gets maybe 3 shots off.
If repair wasn't as effective, the PF would go down so quickly that it would get maybe 5 shots off before it goes down when focused.
Both of these would make the PF investment absolutely ineffective for cost.
As is, the PF prevents the expansion from going down to drops or ling run-ins which I think is fine. You always have the option to go do something elsewhere with your units, use air units, target SCVs individually or use AoE. I mean, we don't complain about zerglings being useless against a colossus on a cliff either.
Targeting priority is the problem, not the PF. If you have a fight -by- a Planetary fortress, your units will ignore theirs and go for the PF, given the chance. This is okay for Colossi since you're targeting with those anyways, but losing Stalker, Immortal or Zealot DPS is not fair. PF shouldn't have more impact on a fight than its cannon. Apart from the fact that the PF lies at the top of the priority food chain, the SCV repair priorities also make it virtually impossible to kill one without either a massive army, or colossi/templar. (Even then, I don't want to spend 30 actions targeting SCVs to take out an undefended expo.)
This usually doesn't matter, but on distance positions on a map like Metalopolis (in fact, this map is literally the worst for it), if they PF the gold it's going to be a very, very long game.
On October 06 2010 07:00 noD wrote: You know that PF doesn´t attack air, right ?
ofc they can't ... we're not saying they can. We are saying in combination with turrets, scvs, and possibly a thor/marines nearby... the only "effective" way to kill a PF is either by fungaling the SCVs.. a ton of Broods or Banelings
Not really a good idea to do anything else anymore (Ultras are 'ineffective' now since the scvs don't die to cleave)
Ever heard of a timing window??! As in the expansion is vulnerable until it gets set up then you missed your chance for an easy snipe.
On October 06 2010 21:30 trevf wrote:Ever heard of a timing window??! As in the expansion is vulnerable until it gets set up then you missed your chance for an easy snipe.
Last time I checked, making an expansion invulnerable to conventional attacks cost much more than 150/150 for Protoss and Zerg. And walls of static defenses are actually blown away by nukes if it ever comes to that.
For the previous poster saying that this is like the Hellion thread we previously saw, which basically complained about how upgraded hellions could vaporize any light ground unit, I'd answer that making the PF more expensive or change the way the priority works does not make it unusable, unlike the hellion that would be just another reaper without its upgrade.
Tbh, noone who understood high level RTS play (or even played semi competitively) would have thought that the PF was a good idea. Here you have something that makes map control less important, gives extremely cost effective defense and that never diminishes in strength as the game progresses (unlike cannons and spine crawlers).
I don't necessarily think they're broken, but its just so stupid that Terran can move their whole army army around and not even have to think about people harassing their third or fourth bases. In BW that was a serious problem, and something that high level players could take advantage of, and made positional play much more important. In SC2 theres none of that, you actually have to build a pretty large, high tech army in order to attack the PF, which is ridiculous.
If I could change one thing about the game I would remove the PF and repatch Terran around that.
On October 06 2010 16:27 brain_ wrote: Planetary Fortresses were definitely a "throw cool shit at Terran" idea that should have been cut in early beta. Terran already has the best defensive units in the game, and the best harassment, they shouldn't be able to hold expansions without even scouting the enemy coming...
On October 06 2010 20:32 eloist wrote: If the targeting priority would be any different, a ling run in can kill all SCVs while the PF gets maybe 3 shots off.
If repair wasn't as effective, the PF would go down so quickly that it would get maybe 5 shots off before it goes down when focused.
Both of these would make the PF investment absolutely ineffective for cost.
As is, the PF prevents the expansion from going down to drops or ling run-ins which I think is fine. You always have the option to go do something elsewhere with your units, use air units, target SCVs individually or use AoE. I mean, we don't complain about zerglings being useless against a colossus on a cliff either.
The whole point of this thread is the fact that no, it isnt fine if a 150-150 upgrade makes you immune to harrassment. It should be about as good as 3 or 4 cannons/spine crawlers, it shouldnt make your base immune to everything but a full on frontal attack. Just think about it a little differently. Imagine if a spine crawlers had triple their current life, and did splash damage, enough of it that it was impossible to break through 3 of them with anything else than siege tanks or air. Would feel pretty imbalanced, right?
On October 06 2010 08:50 Sylvr wrote: A PF takes a bit of finesse to take out. It's generally a pretty bad idea to just 1a into it and hope for the best. It reminds me of the Tank Line debate from not-so-very-long-ago. People think it's impregnable, but really it just takes some poking and prodding till you find an opening.
I always like trying to look at things from a different angle, and the angle that sticks out in this case is: It's not the PF that you want to take out, it's the opponent's income that the PF is helping to protect. Sure, taking out the base entirely is preferable, but if it's gonna cost you half of your army, then it's obviously not worth it.
When I think of nullifying a PF as a Zerg, the idea that comes to mind is a few Roaches and ~4 Banelings. Roaches tank the PF for a few hits while the Banes go in and take out the workers. It's not a huge commitment, and it may very well even pay for itself even in the event that you lose all of it. If you can force the T to start mass repairing (bring more than a few Roaches), then that just clumps the SCVs up for the Banelings to be super effective. Once the damage is done, you pull back. If you managed to hit it while the opponent's army is out position (good scouting), then you should come out ahead in the exchange.
Infesters can be utilized for similar/superior results.
As a Protoss, I'm thinking Sentries. Force Field around the back half of the PF so the SCVs can't reach it (similar to what we saw a couple players do to Bunkers in GSL), and use a decent number of Stalkers to take it down. I don't think anyone is complaining about the PF without the mass repair, so if you disable that part of the combo, it should be ok right?
Alternately, of course, is the High Templar, which should go without saying.
These are just my opinions, of course. I realize that the situation doesn't always allow for these sorts of tactics, but I'm just trying to point out the fundamental goal of assaulting a base, PF or not. Consider also that the T isn't likely to stop sending SCVs to a PF base, so it could serve as a continuous harass target, almost like bait.
PFs as static defense might be a different issue altogether, but then, if they aren't at a mineral line already, then that means the T is either not intending to repair it, should it come under attack, or is going to have to commit SCVs away from mining, which IMO nullifies the advantages.
Yeah everyone have thought of those stuff. Roaches+Banelings etc. etc. HT, Sentries, and other stuff. However Some Marauders just 1A+T on ur nexus and gone in seconds. Economy + Base gone. The amount of complications the other race needs to do to achieve the same goal compare to the simplicity of a 1 unit composition and "lesser" supply is rather broken.
Why do people insist on looking at everything in a vacuum? If you're looking at the structures and units of differing races, ofcourse you're going to find differences ... hence the "differing races". If you're going to look at a mechanic you have to take the entire race into account. A planetary Fortress isn't just a better protected CC, it's a dead weight that is completely useless when not attacked by something it can shoot at. It's a hit to the Terrans economy since it produces no mules (which in contrary to popular belief is a mechanic to keep up with the other races' economy since they can boost their workers) It can't be used to scan or do supply drops and when the natural is mined out it can't fly off either.
The only way for a Planetary Fortress to be cost-effective is when the opponent suicides enough units into it. So don't do that, realise that attacking a PF is exactly what it's supposed to counter. Expand some more, attack it with mutalisks/ void rays, attack the Orbital Command instead.
I think the solution to the PF problem is easy: Give the Ibex turret a seperate amount of HP, rather like an add-on. Then, just impose a limit on the number of scv's that can be repairing the structure at once.
On October 06 2010 06:43 Klive5ive wrote: PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
To me it just seems nooby and pointless.
Because nothing is more useless than a massive cannon that allows you to handle groups of units just by repairing it and gives you absurd defenders advantage in case of a full out attack.
The problem with bunkers is that they waste population. When you consider the cost of the units inside, as well as the fact that those units are more or less idle, meaning your army is much smaller, bunkers really aren't that great except for temporary defense. Plus the nature of the Terran army is to grow much quicker in strength as numbers increase, which makes it all the worse that you have 4 marauders or 8 just doing nothing. You don't really have a super mobile unit like zergs have mutas and lings, so defending expansions without sacrificing army becomes a big pain. Hence why I absolutely adore my planetary fortresses and will always build one at my gold
The problem with bunkers using population is not as severe as people make it out to be. Afterall, Zerg macromechanic via Queen --> uses 2 supply per queen.
As for PF... it wouldn't be so frustrating for most players if Terran also did not have a quick and easy way to snipe Z/P hatch/nexus.
Well the problem with your problem is that the queen doesn't really hinder your army production, and isn't a part of it. It's the opposite, your queen gives you better macro potential to make more units. As Terran (and really any race) the whole point is to streamline everything into give you a ton of units at one point. With bunkers, you make these units, and essentially remove some of them, making your army smaller than it should be. with queens you get more larva, and you build it straight out of a hatchery instead of larva, so it doesn't hinder your army at all.
I think the PF itself is weak, but when combined with the ability to repair it with infinite scvs it becomes insane and overpowered. Not because it does lots of damage, but because it cannot be killed by anything less than a full-size army.
What I would like to see is repair being fixed so only a limited number of scv's can repair any given unit. Maybe 5-10 for a unit as large as a planetary fortress. This would also fix shenanigans about repairing thors, bunkers, and what have you. And I would (shockingly) like to see the PF buffed so it is a competitive option with the orbital command. Increasing its hp or armor seems to be the best way to do it, as adding a new ability or something could really throw the game for a loop. The gun is not the reason you get the PF and probably should remain as it is.
i think PF's are in game to make up for the lack of mobility but imo marines and maruaders with medivacs are probaly the most mobile army in the game terran can SO easily snipe expo's and quickly get the rest of their army over to theit 3/4 base to defend it before z/p can kill the scv's and the PF..
On October 06 2010 23:54 Saechiis wrote: Why do people insist on looking at everything in a vacuum? If you're looking at the structures and units of differing races, ofcourse you're going to find differences ... hence the "differing races". If you're going to look at a mechanic you have to take the entire race into account. A planetary Fortress isn't just a better protected CC, it's a dead weight that is completely useless when not attacked by something it can shoot at. It's a hit to the Terrans economy since it produces no mules (which in contrary to popular belief is a mechanic to keep up with the other races' economy since they can boost their workers) It can't be used to scan or do supply drops and when the natural is mined out it can't fly off either.
The only way for a Planetary Fortress to be cost-effective is when the opponent suicides enough units into it. So don't do that, realise that attacking a PF is exactly what it's supposed to counter. Expand some more, attack it with mutalisks/ void rays, attack the Orbital Command instead.
Read the thread more thoroughly next time. As previously stated, a PF makes up for not having mules by allowing you to take a gold expansion you would otherwise have difficulty defending.
All static defenses are dead weight in the sense that you define it. How does that justify Terran having better static defenses than everyone else?
The rest of your post boils down to telling people to l2play. Funny how quick Terran players are to tell others they're not playing Protoss or Zerg the 'right' way if they're having any problems with Terran whatsoever.
I feel that the PF's ability to nullify small counter-attacks at a marginal cost decreases the importance of geography by making fewer locations pertinent to a Terran's analysis of valuable army positions. I'd like geography to matter more.
On October 06 2010 07:18 Alou wrote: after getting my nexus nearly sniped earlier on Xel naga when our two armies went around each other, I have to agree. PF's are far to hard to take out compared to hatcheries and nexi. Would love if it was something that couldn't be repaired or something.
If anyone watched WCG Jaedong vs Flash they would know why PFs shouldn't be in the game. The issue with PFs is that they require high tier units do take them out. These units aren't designed for harassment. So basically PFs make your mobile harassment units meaningless which negates Ts weakness. This is terrible design. Each race has strengths and weaknesses, this is how they balance.
PF forces the opposition to use pieces of their army to take them out because the mobile harassment units don't work anymore against it. Thus it's a massive gamble for the opposition while it isn't that big a gamble for the Terran user. Choices and weaknesses.
I see a lot of zerg players just suicide roaches and hydras at a PF which is about the worst thing you can do. You have to treat them with some respect - use ultras or air units. Zergling surrounds are also useful in stopping SCV's from getting a chance to repair, but they wont last long against the PF gun.
i find it funny how T players actually think getting a PT hinders your economy. with 2 orbitals, you already have a huge eco advantage. throw a PT at the gold and mass MULEs and that advantage is ridiculous.
also, as said before, queens + chronoboosting lots of probes take food. MULEs don't.
On October 06 2010 06:36 danson wrote: QQing noob, if I have to choose one.
this has been discussed to death, and you answered your own question. ITs there to compensate for lack of T mobility in late game. If you go all bio, you die.
ultras still > pfs, even after nerf.
collosi and broods outrage.
they arent invincible. also. just go kill his natrual if he makes a PF and 6 turrets at his third.
The amount of ultras needed to take a massively repaired PF is not really worth it unless you are already in a winning position, considering they more than likely have a Oribital CC sitting around doing nothing they can replace it with
To be fair, it WAS cost efficient when ultra splash hit the repairing SCVs.
On October 07 2010 00:30 Karkadinn wrote: All static defenses are dead weight in the sense that you define it. How does that justify Terran having better static defenses than everyone else?
The purpose of static defense is to delay opponents attacking those bases long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Terran is the least capable of reinforcing distant expansions (Protoss has warp-in, Zerg has faster movespeed on creep and nydus worms, etc.), so it makes sense that their static defense should be able to last longer.
The PF probably overdoes this, but the theory of T having strong static defense is at least somewhat sound.
If you guys watched BW games, a common tactic is for players to harass or engage the other player's main army with their main army while sending a small strike force to take out expansions. You can't do that with PFs because you need your main army to take out a PF that is being repaired. Not to mention that taking out said PF also consumes a lot of APM, so it's harder to harass your opponent's main army.
On October 07 2010 01:21 andrewlt wrote: If you guys watched BW games, a common tactic is for players to harass or engage the other player's main army with their main army while sending a small strike force to take out expansions. You can't do that with PFs because you need your main army to take out a PF that is being repaired. Not to mention that taking out said PF also consumes a lot of APM, so it's harder to harass your opponent's main army.
You can, just not with a bunch of zerglings.
When I see a PF in TVT, I invest that cash into researching hunter seeker missle and go ka-boom! on the SCVs
On October 07 2010 01:21 andrewlt wrote: If you guys watched BW games, a common tactic is for players to harass or engage the other player's main army with their main army while sending a small strike force to take out expansions. You can't do that with PFs because you need your main army to take out a PF that is being repaired. Not to mention that taking out said PF also consumes a lot of APM, so it's harder to harass your opponent's main army.
You can, just not with a bunch of zerglings.
When I see a PF in TVT, I invest that cash into researching hunter seeker missle and go ka-boom! on the SCVs
Well, it was mostly done with roughly a control group of units like marines, vultures, zerglings, hydras, zealots and dragoons in BW. The counters people are bringing up here are factory, starport, robo bay, stargate and hive tech units. Either that, or the equivalent of 2 BW control groups of banelings to suicide them in.
To have minimal casualties: For Protoss you need to take it out with ranged collosus, or high templars (maybe void rays if they don't go turrets). For Terran you need siege tanks or stim marauders. For Zerg you need ultralisk or broodlords.
Ironically the best race at taking out PF is the one that makes them.
On October 06 2010 06:36 danson wrote: QQing noob, if I have to choose one.
this has been discussed to death, and you answered your own question. ITs there to compensate for lack of T mobility in late game. If you go all bio, you die.
ultras still > pfs, even after nerf.
collosi and broods outrage.
they arent invincible. also. just go kill his natrual if he makes a PF and 6 turrets at his third.
The amount of ultras needed to take a massively repaired PF is not really worth it unless you are already in a winning position, considering they more than likely have a Oribital CC sitting around doing nothing they can replace it with
To be fair, it WAS cost efficient when ultra splash hit the repairing SCVs.
On October 07 2010 00:30 Karkadinn wrote: All static defenses are dead weight in the sense that you define it. How does that justify Terran having better static defenses than everyone else?
The purpose of static defense is to delay opponents attacking those bases long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Terran is the least capable of reinforcing distant expansions (Protoss has warp-in, Zerg has faster movespeed on creep and nydus worms, etc.), so it makes sense that their static defense should be able to last longer.
The PF probably overdoes this, but the theory of T having strong static defense is at least somewhat sound.
The only problem with this explanation is that it relies on the 'Terran are immobile' weakness, which in the current environment appears to be more theoretical than actual.
On October 07 2010 01:21 andrewlt wrote: If you guys watched BW games, a common tactic is for players to harass or engage the other player's main army with their main army while sending a small strike force to take out expansions. You can't do that with PFs because you need your main army to take out a PF that is being repaired. Not to mention that taking out said PF also consumes a lot of APM, so it's harder to harass your opponent's main army.
i love how all the terran are defending using these like oh yeah these are fine even though lings cant harass the worker line. only takes a few void rays to kill one. oh sorry put up like 3 turrets!? my badd. i lol every time i see like 10 zealots and 15 stalkers wailing away at these and still lose.
On October 07 2010 01:47 KillerPlague wrote: i love how all the terran are defending using these like oh yeah these are fine even though lings cant harass the worker line. only takes a few void rays to kill one. oh sorry put up like 3 turrets!? my badd. i lol every time i see like 10 zealots and 15 stalkers wailing away at these and still lose.
Is lings harassing a worker line despite measures taken to prevent exactly that some sort of right?
in my opinion what makes the PF bad balance-wise is how easily you can stop every zerg harass compared to the effort it takes to construct and hold onto one. regardless of how good the zerg plays and how active he tries to be about harassing the terran, every noob can just place a PF at his 3rd and be completely safe of any harass, may it be banelings, lings, burrowed roaches, etc. (of course air harass is clearly not a choice due to the ridiculous turret damage) i think it would add a nice and FUN dynamic to the tvz matchup if z had more possibilities to throw a t off guard, which would certainly happen if he couldnt just rely on his defences so easily, he would have to think more about where he positions his army. surely this does not affect the pro level that much, because they're better off with OCs anyways, but it's not as the "lower" terrans needed such a device as the PF to have a fair matchup. i would even say that it would help the esthetics of the matchup because the terran would have to split up his apm more and hence wouldnt be able to do all the drop/helion harass shenanigans that are going on those times... i'm a diamond zerg player if you wonder, not as high on the ladder as i would be if i had more practice, more following the game from replays and commentaries. those were just my spontaneous thoughts and as you can see from my postcount i'm a long time forum lurker. i hope i can integrate myself more into the tl community, if you think what i wrote was to unreflected just pm me and i'll revise it!
I think it would be pretty neat if overseers could infest the PF when it hit red hp. However instead of producing infested terrans like in bw, zerg could use it as a mining base (no larva) with the gun still working.
On October 07 2010 00:13 Velr wrote: I gladly trade Spinecrawlers and fighting Queens for Bunkers/PF...
Next thing you say is probably that Turrets suck...
So what's keeping you from switching to Terran? You'd do us all a big favor.
Checked ladder populations lately? That's what plenty of people are doing.
As this thread clearly shows players are extremely susceptible to pro opinion and will merrily hop on the bandwagon whenever they get the chance. Result is that every time a Zerg loses he will come to Teamliquid and make a thread about how he lost because of unit X and structure Y being imbalanced. Even though we all know the reason of loss in 99% of cases will be that he was the worse player and that he has huge flaws in his game. Most of the whine thread are in fact made by bronze, silver and gold zergs who'd rather blame the game than their own play for their losses.
Pro Zerg opinions are already beginning to shift towards ZvP is even harder then ZvT ... I wonder how long it will take for the forum to be flooded with imba-threads about everything Toss has.
Pro Zerg opinions are already beginning to shift towards ZvP is even harder then ZvT ... I wonder how long it will take for the forum to be flooded with imba-threads about everything Toss has.
While I don't disagree with what you said. Pro Zerg opinion has been ZvP is harder than ZvT even during the ZvT flame wars, at least in Korea. People just chose to bandwagon ZvT
On October 07 2010 00:13 Velr wrote: I gladly trade Spinecrawlers and fighting Queens for Bunkers/PF...
Next thing you say is probably that Turrets suck...
So what's keeping you from switching to Terran? You'd do us all a big favor.
Checked ladder populations lately? That's what plenty of people are doing.
As this thread clearly shows players are extremely susceptible to pro opinion and will merrily hop on the bandwagon whenever they get the chance. Result is that every time a Zerg loses he will come to Teamliquid and make a thread about how he lost because of unit X and structure Y being imbalanced. Even though we all know the reason of loss in 99% of cases will be that he was the worse player and that he has huge flaws in his game. Most of the whine thread are in fact made by bronze, silver and gold zergs who'd rather blame the game than their own play for their losses.
And Terran and Protoss just happen to attract better, less whiny players, right? Right. I don't even know why you bothered to post this hate mongering drivel.
On October 07 2010 02:09 DrivenBatty wrote: I think it would be pretty neat if overseers could infest the PF when it hit red hp. However instead of producing infested terrans like in bw, zerg could use it as a mining base (no larva) with the gun still working.
then terran players will complain about how hard it is to take down an infested planetory fortress with 10-15 drones "healing" it!
I'm perfectly fine with PF being as strong as they are, however the AI of my units attacking it before scvs makes it ridiculous.
If I had the option to reduce the "threat" of a PF to that of any other non-attack building I would do it in a heartbeat. If I wanted to specifically target the PF over anything else in my armies range, I would select my army and right click the biggest freaking object in my view.
Ive lost plenty of games because I could not take out expansions in a time effective manner because the AI does things I strongly disagree with.
On October 06 2010 14:14 Asshat wrote: This thread strongly resembles the blue flame hellion thread from a day or two ago. I am curious in finding out what will tomorrow's "this isn't really a bitch thread about 'X' terran related object" be.
Terran having the most and best options for pretty much everything is not a new development. Really, you should be used to it by now, if you've been paying attention at all.
On October 06 2010 14:14 Asshat wrote: Fact is, there are ways around it. The planetary fortress works no differently than any other piece of static defense. It can be outranged, it can be outmaneuvered and it is a heavy investment made by the player who built it.
"The planetary fortress isn't different from any other static defense once we discount the ways in which it is different from other static defenses."
On October 07 2010 00:13 Velr wrote: I gladly trade Spinecrawlers and fighting Queens for Bunkers/PF...
Next thing you say is probably that Turrets suck...
So what's keeping you from switching to Terran? You'd do us all a big favor.
Checked ladder populations lately? That's what plenty of people are doing.
As this thread clearly shows players are extremely susceptible to pro opinion and will merrily hop on the bandwagon whenever they get the chance. Result is that every time a Zerg loses he will come to Teamliquid and make a thread about how he lost because of unit X and structure Y being imbalanced. Even though we all know the reason of loss in 99% of cases will be that he was the worse player and that he has huge flaws in his game. Most of the whine thread are in fact made by bronze, silver and gold zergs who'd rather blame the game than their own play for their losses.
And Terran and Protoss just happen to attract better, less whiny players, right? Right. I don't even know why you bothered to post this hate mongering drivel.
Lol, have you seen your post history? How do you expect me to tell you that you aren't whiny? It's exactly these immature responses to thought out posts that makes no-one care about your (biased) opinion.
Don't like how people use the word "cost effective" (it's running rampant through this thread). Some people will see a bunch of banelings take out a thor or a PF and say, "durr, not cost effective, so noob."
"Cost effectiveness" isn't always sufficient to determine what the best decision is at a given time. Lets take this to an extreme. Imagine if you needed to take down one supply depot and if you took down this supply depot, for what ever reason, it effectively allowed you to win the gane. However, it will cost you 10 ultras to take down this supply depot. Obviously the ultras cost A LOT MORE than the supply depot but the strategic benefit still makes it a good trade. Units, tech, defenses etc. aren't just worth the single sum of minerals/gas you spent on them when they were first made, they are worth that PLUS the strategic benefit they afford you at any given time. If your whole game plan revolves around harrassing with storm drops then those dropships with templar in them are worth a lot more than x minerals and y gas, because if they die without doing damage then you lose. Sometimes it's better to trade an army with a target that is worth less because it gives you some sort of strategic advantage. If your opponent has a small army and a PF to defend and you have a lot more than him it might be worth it to take out the PF with a bunch of banelings so you can destroy his army and do significant damage to him before he can rebuild his defense (zerg can reinforce faster than terran).
On October 07 2010 02:44 Karkadinn wrote: And Terran and Protoss just happen to attract better, less whiny players, right? Right. I don't even know why you bothered to post this hate mongering drivel.
You're not exactly helping your point by being way more combative than the posts you're responding to.
Looks interesting on paper, I'll check how it does with PFs on the editor.
EDIT : Turns out it fails miserably. Zerglings are too far from the targets when you hit Hold Position, and won't attack anything. Others will attack the fortress. Also, the damage dealt by zerglings is insufficient for all the SCVs to be actually required; they'll just auto-repair themselves because there isn't enough pressure on the fortress. I also tested it with SCVs surrounding the fortress on hold position, the results were equally bad : Not a single SCV was killed. This was tested with 33 zerglings, a planetary fortress and 21 SCVs. Nothing else.
I also tested simply running the zerglings into a mineral line and hitting hold position. Damage was dealt, but the lack of range of the zerglings made it so that they couldn't focus SCVs. A few SCVs were killed, and a large portion of the survivors were heavily damaged.
And, just for fun, I tried outrunning the turret's rotation with my speedlings. Turns out it works ! However, the AI is smart and will turn the other way if it's shorter, so you'd better be very good at micro if you want any use out of that.
On October 06 2010 07:21 niteReloaded wrote: I'm T and I think they're a pretty great tool for the Terran, perhaps slightly too strong. I abuse them whenever I can.
the building has its uses on certain maps where holding specific chokepoints are key. Combined with tanks they can make a fine block-off. But as a general building, at the pro level, OC is going to be favored most of the time.
I'm posting this from my desktop PC, because the number of people in this thread still saying that a PF incurs an opportunity cost of mules+scan made me bite through my laptop.
Just build another fricken OC. It costs you 550m, but gives you a depot-and-a-half of supply, saving you 150m. How many mules does it take to pay the rest off? Two? More like one if it's at a gold expansion. Or look at it the other way around: you're building the OC you wanted to anyway, nice and safe behind your front lines, and paying 550/150 for a repairable armoured supply depot that can collect the minerals on behalf of the OC and blow the enemy's fucking face off if he comes sniffing around.
I'm not sure why 'constantly build workers, constantly build supply' hasn't been joined by 'constantly build OCs' in the mantra of good macro. Even if you just maintain the same economy as you would have normally, each OC effectively gives you 4 supply extra for army when you hit 200/200 (1 MULE instead of 4 SCVs).
On October 07 2010 06:31 Umpteen wrote: I'm posting this from my desktop PC, because the number of people in this thread still saying that a PF incurs an opportunity cost of mules+scan made me bite through my laptop.
Just build another fricken OC. It costs you 550m, but gives you a depot-and-a-half of supply, saving you 150m. How many mules does it take to pay the rest off? Two? More like one if it's at a gold expansion. Or look at it the other way around: you're building the OC you wanted to anyway, nice and safe behind your front lines, and paying 550/150 for a repairable armoured supply depot that can collect the minerals on behalf of the OC and blow the enemy's fucking face off if he comes sniffing around.
I'm not sure why 'constantly build workers, constantly build supply' hasn't been joined by 'constantly build OCs' in the mantra of good macro. Even if you just maintain the same economy as you would have normally, each OC effectively gives you 4 supply extra for army when you hit 200/200 (1 MULE instead of 4 SCVs).
Because while the OC eventually pays for itself, time is a crucial resource. In the time it takes for you to build an OC and repay its cost, a Protoss or Zerg could take a real base and pay for it as well. And an actual base is still worth more than an OC that has no safe base to float to.
Interesting idea, actually. In-base orbital commands might actually be viable. I should go test this.
However I strongly suspect that they will not be viable. Yes, you are paying 550 minerals, which is paid off in two MULEs. However you sunk 400 of those minerals at the start of the command center's build time, and you are not going to pay off the cost of that orbital command until you've finished two mules, which is about a minute after the completion of the orbital command. The command center takes 100 game seconds to make, the orbital command takes 35 game seconds to morph, and you're going to need about 180 game seconds for the orbital command to pay for itself (each MULE lasts 90, the next one is ready pretty much exactly when its predecessor dies). This is a total game time investment of 295 game seconds, although for 180 seconds of that you can be producing SCV's out of your new in-base orbital command. And bear in mind, this is the time it takes just to BREAK EVEN on this orbital command. The Orbital Command is amazingly economical at your first base because you get a free command center there. It's also economical at your natural, and maybe your third, but only when you were going to build a command center anyway since you want the base.
I just think that PF in general is a very, very, very bad idea. Or at least executed extremely poorly. It takes a lot of fun out of playing the game.
I don't care if it's balanced right now or not. It's just so boring to play against. And I imagine it's boring building one as well. And as has been pointed out dozens of times, targetting scvs gets old rather quick.
I really don't get what they were thinking when they thought of this. It just goes against starcraft gameplay. In sc1, command centers were still pretty damn hard to take out as terrans could repair them while you were shooting and a moment later his army came and you had to redirect your fire.
Now, terrans just take the gold with a PF and if it's an even game you have to work around it. I don't know what to say, it's just such a boring addition to the game. It's awful.
I agree with the posts saying it's more of a problem with repair than with PF.
I will say that as zerg it is very scary to deal with PF. We don't have any units that are particularly good at killing it aside from ultralisk (and I guess BLs). And you really should assume that PFs have turrets around them otherwise just burrow-roach/muta can take it.
Maybe if we had a anti-armor flyer or the lurker or something it would be easier, but as it stands, zerg cannot realistically/economically deny a PF until T3.
On October 06 2010 06:43 Klive5ive wrote: PF just all around sucks. I don't see professional Terran players of the future ever making one. Mules are just too dam powerful, once the macro of the game is "solved" to an extent players as good as Flash is now in BW are not going to waste the chance to Mule. If they want defence.... bunkers + turrets.
To me it just seems nooby and pointless.
TvP in BW the terran players would leave tanks as defence for bases so it would deter from counter attacks because it wouldn't be cost effecient for the toss having to break through the wall taking shots the whole time and by the time they do the main army is almost there.
On October 06 2010 07:00 Fa1nT wrote: Planetary fortress is fine.
AI attacking it instead of repairing SCV is not.
^ This sums up my opinion perfectly.[/QUOTE]
do you guys want the computer to do EVERYTHING for you? personally i'd rather micro on my own.
On October 07 2010 06:34 TheYango wrote:Because while the OC eventually pays for itself, time is a crucial resource. In the time it takes for you to build an OC and repay its cost, a Protoss or Zerg could take a real base and pay for it as well. And an actual base is still worth more than an OC that has no safe base to float to.
Mmm. Ok, look at it this way:
If you could upgrade an OC to an OCPF, which combined both functions, provided an additional 11 supply and allowed two SCVs to be queued simultaneously for 550/150, would you do it? What if, after tanking 1500 damage, only the PF part was destroyed and the remaining OC would instantly teleport to somewhere safe inside your main?
Bear in mind that to achieve something similar, Zerg would have to upgrade an expo hatch to a lair (for the hitpoints), build an overlord (100m) and some spinecrawlers (150 a pop).
Yes, you are paying 550 minerals, which is paid off in two MULEs. However you sunk 400 of those minerals at the start of the command center's build time, and you are not going to pay off the cost of that orbital command until you've finished two mules, which is about a minute after the completion of the orbital command.
It's actually not all that much worse than building and paying for 2 depots and 4 SCVs (yes, an OC only gives 1.5 depots' supply, but dropping MULEs rather than SCVs saves you 4 supply).
And don't forget, this is something you can do as well as building SCVs normally. It enables you to overcome the command-centre bottleneck on worker production, both in the short term (by building an OC and calling down MULEs in parallel with SCV production) and in the long term (by having lots of OCs).
EDIT: Not to mention the benefit of having OCs ready and waiting to float out over the map when the opportunity arises or an expo is lost and retaken. And the impossibility of losing a base-trade.
On October 06 2010 14:14 Asshat wrote: This thread strongly resembles the blue flame hellion thread from a day or two ago. I am curious in finding out what will tomorrow's "this isn't really a bitch thread about 'X' terran related object" be.
Terran having the most and best options for pretty much everything is not a new development. Really, you should be used to it by now, if you've been paying attention at all.
On October 06 2010 14:14 Asshat wrote: Fact is, there are ways around it. The planetary fortress works no differently than any other piece of static defense. It can be outranged, it can be outmaneuvered and it is a heavy investment made by the player who built it.
"The planetary fortress isn't different from any other static defense once we discount the ways in which it is different from other static defenses."
On October 07 2010 00:13 Velr wrote: I gladly trade Spinecrawlers and fighting Queens for Bunkers/PF...
Next thing you say is probably that Turrets suck...
So what's keeping you from switching to Terran? You'd do us all a big favor.
Checked ladder populations lately? That's what plenty of people are doing.
As this thread clearly shows players are extremely susceptible to pro opinion and will merrily hop on the bandwagon whenever they get the chance. Result is that every time a Zerg loses he will come to Teamliquid and make a thread about how he lost because of unit X and structure Y being imbalanced. Even though we all know the reason of loss in 99% of cases will be that he was the worse player and that he has huge flaws in his game. Most of the whine thread are in fact made by bronze, silver and gold zergs who'd rather blame the game than their own play for their losses.
And Terran and Protoss just happen to attract better, less whiny players, right? Right. I don't even know why you bothered to post this hate mongering drivel.
Lol, have you seen your post history? How do you expect me to tell you that you aren't whiny? It's exactly these immature responses to thought out posts that makes no-one care about your (biased) opinion.
I don't see how you out of anyone have the right to call other peoples' posts biased. Did you see some of the stuff you just posted on this thread? Of course not, you clearly can't see your own bias. No reason to argue with you
On October 06 2010 07:01 Fizbin wrote: ultras, brood lords, banelings, immortals colossi! or hit natural or main with a drop. "a" move is fail fail fail
hey toadstool if u lost 26 roachs to a PF without tanks or marauders backing it up thats pretty fail... lol target fire the scv's
26 roachs in itself is huge fail anyways. get some unit composition
I did. He went mass thor and hellion, I went mass roaches and zerglings. I smashed his army in the attack. All the zerglings died in the attack, I had 25 roaches left. It could not take down a PF being repaired by scvs.
Targetting the SCV's is difficult as well.
And who said I lost the 26 roaches? I lost half of them before i realised i wasn't gonna take down the PF and retreated.
If you know you're not skilled enough to target the scvs first, you shouldn't be engaging in the first place. You can't blame the game for you making bad decisions.
So the solution for bronze players is to never attack Planetary Fortresses?
Same as the nerf for zealot build times. Pre-nerf, the solution to avoiding early 2 gate pressure is don't get yourself into that situation and never fast expand as Zerg right?
We're talking about balance here. It's hard to kill Planetary Fortresses, and it's hard to click on SCVs.
Oh wait, your solution is to not attack them in the first place, right?
i don't see how it's hard shift-clicking atleast most of the SCVs...you don't have to kill them all...it might be hard to see the ones that are hiding behind the PF...but is it really that hard to shife-click the little guyz beside the PF?
but ofcourse it should be fairly obvious that 6 zerglings won't be able to take down a planetary fortress, if that were the case then the planetary fortress would be useless
There are 2 fundamental assumptions that players use to justify the planetary fortress. The first one, is that terran is immobile. Im not sure if that is really true, because terran has some of the most mobile units around, with stimmed bioballs, hellions, reapers, banshees, medivacs, and so on. The only unit that isnt very good at moving around is the siege tank, and you dont really see tons of those anymore. Its not like if you had 15 siegetankes and were leapfrogging them around to get somewhere really slowly, its more like you have 1-2 siege tanks with your army, and just siege them when you arrive, if you have them at all. So I would argue that terran isnt really more immobile than other races.
The second assumption is the more important one though. The second assumption is that being immobile is terran's weakness, and that planetary fortresses are there to counter that. In essence, the idea here is that there should not be any weakness. At all. Which is kind of ridiculous
dunno whats the problem with PF. a terran usually makes his 3rd a PF on some maps and at that time a P or Z should have units that deal splash or have higher range. P colossus or HTs or voids and Z infestors or ultras or mutas even 2-3 banelings are enough to kill the repairing scvs. sure if you just a move 10 zealots/lings and all scvs are repairing the PF the AI will fuck up and the melee units will just run around and die without doing anything, but this is stupidity not imbalance or anything else!
I don't understand what the complaint is about banelings and supply cost-
There SUICIDAL units, the way they work is that they WILL leave a gaping whole in this magical number people think needs to be perfectly even to be balanced. Ignore the actual resources required to get 20 banelings and 1 PF- the thing is that 20 units (especially for zerg) can be remade A LOT faster than an expansion, plus the PF morph. The moment you snipe out the expansion thats a HUGE hit to economy-
Sure, it may even cost you 1000 minerals and gas, but thats resources well spent! Killing an expansion means there is one less base he is mining off of, so the sheer amount of time where SCV's have no place to saturate can be well equal, if not greater, to the minerals and gas you just spent, mean while giving you the time to secure an expo of you're own.
Note that banelings can snipe an OC as well- grab an overseer and plant a contaminate on it to keep it from lifting off. I've seen games where even though there were scv's starting to repair PF/OC's the damage of the 20+blings was too much too fast.
Just don't allow more than one scv at a time to repair something. It would fix both PFs and thors, both of which are pretty strong without repairing too.
I don't see why terran needs to be able to mass repair their walls either, they should be forced to make some marines to defend it instead.
On October 08 2010 05:19 Zvendetta wrote: I don't understand what the complaint is about banelings and supply cost-
There SUICIDAL units, the way they work is that they WILL leave a gaping whole in this magical number people think needs to be perfectly even to be balanced. Ignore the actual resources required to get 20 banelings and 1 PF- the thing is that 20 units (especially for zerg) can be remade A LOT faster than an expansion, plus the PF morph. The moment you snipe out the expansion thats a HUGE hit to economy-
Sure, it may even cost you 1000 minerals and gas, but thats resources well spent! Killing an expansion means there is one less base he is mining off of, so the sheer amount of time where SCV's have no place to saturate can be well equal, if not greater, to the minerals and gas you just spent, mean while giving you the time to secure an expo of you're own.
Note that banelings can snipe an OC as well- grab an overseer and plant a contaminate on it to keep it from lifting off. I've seen games where even though there were scv's starting to repair PF/OC's the damage of the 20+blings was too much too fast.
Well there is also the fact that zerg defenses are pretty weak in their own right. Getting the 30+ banelings required to take out a planetary fortress guarded by a single tank isnt that hard.
But then the terran can still just attack you, so you need to have an army big enough to stop the terran push, as well as 30 banelings, and also enough bases and drones to actually be ahead on economy after blowing up the planetary fortress to be ahead at all after doing something like that.
If you can afford to have an army big enough to take on the full terran army, and at the same time have 1500 more minerals, and 750 more gas to spare, along with being on at least the same number of bases and workers as the terran, then yeah, you can baneling his planetary fortress, and be ahead. If you are greatly ahead, then a planetary fortress isnt an issue. If the game is kind of even, and the terran decides to planetary at the gold with a siege tank and a couple of turrets, you are screwed.
PF's are obnoxious. Its so hard to destroy a Terrans natural w tanks+wall. The prob is when they get their 3rd they 2 OC's which is plenty of energy for mules and scans while getting an unkillable 3rd unless I sac half of my army for it. I killed a T's army 4 times today but everytime I went to the PF hed just mass repair and hold it off with his reenforcements. It is so hard to starve a Terran.
lol how can ppl complain about scvs repairing when they have 40 hp and everyone agrees on PF being a bitch on the second expansion. By that time both zerg and protoss should have either banelings/muta or colo/storm. If you can agree on that there shouldnt be any problem killing the repairing scvs without losing too much, and if that's too hard I believe SC2 wont make it in the long run...
On October 08 2010 09:49 DaZe wrote: lol how can ppl complain about scvs repairing when they have 40 hp and everyone agrees on PF being a bitch on the second expansion. By that time both zerg and protoss should have either banelings/muta or colo/storm. If you can agree on that there shouldnt be any problem killing the repairing scvs without losing too much, and if that's too hard I believe SC2 wont make it in the long run...
You are suggesting I should make units to counter workers.
Basically I have to make splash units to compensate for bad AI. Something is wrong. Do you really think that's the way it should work?
Well, if a terran player gets to have 3 expos, tanks and a huge ass army, zerg gets to have hive tech. BL's would lay waste, or ultras will just roflstomp on the PF. I mean, the time to bling attack the PF is when his army is way out of position, not as he places his entire army on it. When he does that, zerg needs end game tech at that point to defeat it.
I agree that the problem is the "combined" advantage
concerning TvP: neither PF itself nor marauder-drop itself would be problematic; but one race having BOTH makes many matches seem really retarded; 2 dropships full of marauders --> gg nexus; fullblown counter-attack on a PF-expo --> epic fail for protoss
then again this "would" be ok, if it "would" even out any other disadvantage terran "had" in the field; but that again isn't the case, terran does just fine on the open field; I don't want this to be seen as a QQ, but just thinking about this I don't see the logic behind it - why you would give one race the best drop-sniping ability AND the best defending-ability
Addressing a couple of other people so far in this thread.
Firstly, banelings are bad against buildings like the Planetary Fortress. Don't do it. You'll lose a clutch of them running up to it since it does splash, and it takes 20 banelings to take it down. The fortress cost 550/150 and 20 banelings will run you 1500 minerals and 500 gas. BAD trade. The power of banelings against buildings is that they deal their damage very quickly, which means you can break down a depot and then run in with your zerglings, and that initial inefficiency at killing the depot is justified by how incredibly efficient zerglings are in close quarters.
The best way to kill fortresses are to besiege them, and not assault them directly. Although if you really must assault them then using ultras or mutalisks is best. For Protoss the choices are obvious- the Void Ray is already a siege unit, and if for some reason that won't work then immortals, or even zealots and stalkers do alright. Still, besiege first. Stake out the area around them, pick off their workers. Without any workers to repair that PF is not really that strong. Without towers to defend it a single air unit will take it down.
I agree that the AI is dumb. It should probably auto-target SCV's over planetary fortresses. But still, the intent of the PF is to make it ineffective to just charge in and assault it. It takes longer to bring down a PF than an undefended base.
I am by no means a top player but if you want to deny expos it îs much easier to use aoe on scvs.. Like fungal or storm.. If you just use a warp prism to drop a stalker (to draw fire) and 2 templars to storm the scvs it îs pretty efficient. And if there are turrets around just a+ move 2 stalkers and then storm.. pf dosen't do terrible terrible damage so even if you just atack it, use aoe on the repairing scvs and done.
Personally, I think the maps are too small now, so Terran immobility doesn't really count for a lot.
Ya. When people say stuff about "Oh, terran is moving with his immobile army.." It just doesn't seem "immobile" when it took 10 seconds to move across map. Ofc they're not speedlings or mutas... but compared to the rest of a terran army (combined with map size) it's not really THAT immobile
Bio is not immobile... Tanks/Thors are. Especially since you can fake the Terran player out every 2 seconds, making him leap frog the entire map.. siege, unsiege, siege, unsiege. And lets not get started with Thors.
All you need to do is send some ranged units behind the minerals to stop mining. Also when you have a decent army, right click as close to the PF as possible without engaging it. Once you army is close to it, Right click on the PF, and its going down in about 5 seconds. Wah lah.
On October 08 2010 09:49 DaZe wrote: lol how can ppl complain about scvs repairing when they have 40 hp and everyone agrees on PF being a bitch on the second expansion. By that time both zerg and protoss should have either banelings/muta or colo/storm. If you can agree on that there shouldnt be any problem killing the repairing scvs without losing too much, and if that's too hard I believe SC2 wont make it in the long run...
It's a terrible inconvenience to have to focus down the scvs one by one. Fine, if you have storm or colossi or baneling then you can take it down pretty easily if you have a huge army advantage.
However, if the game is fairly even you simply can't attack. A lot of your units (e.g. units in back) will target the PF while his PF and his army tears apart your army.
It just promotes turtling and it's a bad addition to the game. It's just a horrible idea. Game design wise. And the execution (given the annoyance regarding targetting scvs mentioned above) is perhaps even worse.
On October 08 2010 09:49 DaZe wrote: lol how can ppl complain about scvs repairing when they have 40 hp and everyone agrees on PF being a bitch on the second expansion. By that time both zerg and protoss should have either banelings/muta or colo/storm. If you can agree on that there shouldnt be any problem killing the repairing scvs without losing too much, and if that's too hard I believe SC2 wont make it in the long run...
It's a terrible inconvenience to have to focus down the scvs one by one. Fine, if you have storm or colossi or baneling then you can take it down pretty easily if you have a huge army advantage.
However, if the game is fairly even you simply can't attack. A lot of your units (e.g. units in back) will target the PF while his PF and his army tears apart your army.
It just promotes turtling and it's a bad addition to the game. It's just a horrible idea. Game design wise. And the execution (given the annoyance regarding targetting scvs mentioned above) is perhaps even worse.
Since SC1, turtling has been a Terran strategy. You on the other hand can take advantage of this by picking up additional expansions. You can also attack the bases that have the orbital command. All the PF does is give Terran some mobility because the army so damn immobile (not talking about MMM). Terran doesn't have spine crawlers/canons, and putting up 2/3 bunkers is just using up supply that will be needed in a fight. I would trade the PF for stationary ground defense any day.
On October 06 2010 08:10 travis wrote: it's the repairing that is the problem this is obvious
u can just repair them too quickly and the scvs are too hard to target sometimes (which is the really stupid part)
THIS
It's been talked about a lot in this thread. There are perhaps many issues with the Planetary Fortress, but I am going to hone in on one of them. The attack priority on SCVs repairing a PF is at the bottom of the list. Complicate this by having:
1) workers hard to target 2) shift-right-clicking 20 workers is very difficult and also makes for inefficient melee attack move patterns (while the PF blasts away at everything)
Judging from this thread, it's one of the biggest issues with the Planetary Fortress, and in my opinion the BIGGEST issue.
A great fix is to just have the attack priority on a SCV repairing a Planetary Fortress automatically go above that of the PF itself. (But not higher than other army units, obviously, since then a Terran could micro SCVs to "kite" the attacking army.)
With this change, an attack-moving army would actually be able to deal with a PF. Now I know how bad that sounds: there's nothing intrinsically good about "removing" micro from the game. But it's definitely better than the ridiculous SCV targeting situations that go on right now.
As far as I'm concerned, this is one of those changes that you are surprised is not already in the game by default, as it feels like that should be the default behavior.
Poll: Do u think SCVs repairing a PF should be targeted first automatically?
Yes (26)
90%
No (3)
10%
29 total votes
Your vote: Do u think SCVs repairing a PF should be targeted first automatically?
On October 06 2010 08:10 travis wrote: it's the repairing that is the problem this is obvious
u can just repair them too quickly and the scvs are too hard to target sometimes (which is the really stupid part)
THIS
It's been talked about a lot in this thread. The attack priority on SCVs repairing a PF is at the bottom of the list. Complicate this by having:
1) workers are hard to target 2) shift-right-clicking 20 workers is very difficult and also makes for inefficient melee attack move patterns (while the PF blasts away at everything)
Judging from this thread, it's one of the biggest issues with the Planetary Fortress, and in my opinion the BIGGEST issue.
A great fix is to just have the attack priority on a SCV repairing a Planetary Fortress automatically go above that of the PF itself. (But not higher than other army units, obviously, since then a Terran could micro SCVs to "kite" the attacking army.)
With this change, an attack-moving army would actually be able to deal with a PF. Now I know how bad that sounds: there's nothing intrinsically good about "removing" micro from the game. But it's definitely better than the ridiculous SCV targeting situations that go on right now.
Poll: Do u think SCVs repairing a PF should be targeted first automatically?
Yes (26)
90%
No (3)
10%
29 total votes
Your vote: Do u think SCVs repairing a PF should be targeted first automatically?
The problem you described is indeed messed up, but upgrading attack priority for repairing SCVs won't solve the issue, it would just bring a new type of microing option for the terran. "Now I'm repairing, now I'm not repairing, now I'm repairing again, oooh now I'm not repairing anymore" while microing a couple of workers on the other side of the PF. Or doing that to some workers which are enveloped by non-repairing workers, making the melee units go crazy still.
Or actually it would help a little I guess. At least would reduce the repairing speed.
basicly it comes down to terran having an easier time - I think we all agree here that it's possible to defend vs drops AND that it's possible to kill a PF when you focus on SCVs
nevertheless just look at the two situations: a) terran goes for drops; all he has to do is to drop 2 medivacs full of marauders, stim and kill a nexus within seconds; if he doesn't drop basicly on top of the protoss the nexus WILL go down within seconds; terran doesn't need to do any specific micro at all b) protoss goes for PF-kill: protoss is forced to have colossi; no colossi = PF is basicly invincible anyways; no other unit can touch the PF; this being said, the protoss player should send in individual units like zealots to soak up hits while colossi hit the repairing SCVs; this is HIGHLY micro-intensive
it's indeed both problems combined which screws things up - the PF-repair on the one hand would be fine if there were no insta-nexus-snipes; the nexus-snipes would be fine if protoss could at least kill expos with superior forces easily as well; both added together means the protoss has to invest more APM to stay even, which basicly means he has to be higher skilled to come out on top
I think, originally the PF was intended to even out the terran mobility-disadvantage (I think this was mentioned in one post); nevertheless - at least in PvT - terran HAS NO mobility-disadvantage; in fact they are MORE mobile than protoss; if MMM didn't work so well in lategame, this thread possibly wouldn't exist
The problem you described is indeed messed up, but upgrading attack priority for repairing SCVs won't solve the issue, it would just bring a new type of microing option for the terran. "Now I'm repairing, now I'm not repairing, now I'm repairing again, oooh now I'm not repairing anymore" while microing a couple of workers on the other side of the PF.
In theory yes... But what units would this be effective against?
Any Terran unit - Once in the midst of battle with the PF+repairers, they will be able to target any SCV repairing without moving around the PF too much (if at all). Hydra - Same goes for Hydra. Stalker/Sentry - Same goes for Stalker/Sentry. Zerglings - With zergling speed they will be able to zip around a PF very quickly so I don't think that kiting would be effective. Roach - Since the roach has a small range, this would be a cool trick to do against a bunch of roaches attacking your PF. But they are upgrading Roach range... Zealots - Would be effective against Zealots. However, you have to take into account that they will have a bunch of Stalker+Sentry with them 95% of the time Any large army - Completely uneffective, as there will be too many range units.
i dont feel like my colossi are much faster then most terran units in mid game. to kill a PF i have to move everything to stand a chance leaving the rest of my bases completly naked. so yeah terrans lack of mobility but they dont need their hole army to kill a protoss/zerg base.
i just fail to see the point of a PF. thinking about a nexus with a huge fucking cannon is kind of funny.
Personally, I think the maps are too small now, so Terran immobility doesn't really count for a lot.
Ya. When people say stuff about "Oh, terran is moving with his immobile army.." It just doesn't seem "immobile" when it took 10 seconds to move across map. Ofc they're not speedlings or mutas... but compared to the rest of a terran army (combined with map size) it's not really THAT immobile
Bio is not immobile... Tanks/Thors are. Especially since you can fake the Terran player out every 2 seconds, making him leap frog the entire map.. siege, unsiege, siege, unsiege. And lets not get started with Thors.
Tank-thors isnt really that much more immobile than say broodlord-hydra. Yet somehow, even though zerg also has a super slow siege unit, its still considered more mobile than terran, who also has a super slow siege unit. Why? Mostly because that was the case in brrodwar, where you didnt get free dropships, did a lot of immobile sieged up play on large maps, leapfrogging, and zerg didnt need to have creep to the able to move at the same speed as a bioball.
Sorry for bringing this back to life, but I searched threads and found this topic. Instead of creating a new post, I am just posting my 2 cents, now (2200 d) I consider it to have a valid logic to it.
I win a lot of games - masterOFbate #155. I average about 70-90 apm, but mostly play on a couch (mattress as my mousepad). 2200 D
Over the months I have QQ about imba all over the place since the start of beta. However, today, I see 4 "problems" (not necessarily op/up) with gameplay and the PF/Thor/Tank/BC makes one of those 4. other 3: - upgrades on stalker (should be 11+5a u=1/+1a) - makes a huge difference - rework FF - it's broken - either or skill - Cooldown on marauder concussive - self-explanatory: charge lots have it.
The problem I have with terran repair-ables is they can generally require a tech change to take out. This is just ridiculous. I will not reiterate, although I would love to, what others have written. I think it is the most over powered ability in the game.
The solution follows 3 adjustments to repair: Repair speed SIGNIFICANTLY reduced Formula: SCV=X Additional SCV= x/4+x/4 --> 4scvs will result in a 100% increase in base repair speed. However, there needs to be Diminishing returns taken into account, specific to unit costs.
Tank = $150 minerals .'. repair with max scvs (3) = 75% repair increase Thor = $300 minerals .'. max repair = 6, with an optimal repair speed increase of 150% (1+2/4) PF = $550 = max repair = 11, optimal repair speed increase of 375%
Cost to repair Cost = forumula: base * %down/to repair.
1500 pf = 550/150 every % of health repair cost =0.01*550m + 0.01*150g This is then ^ damage intake.
I'm not a math major (accountant), but these numbers work and follow current logic. As it stands, terran remain unaffected by repairing it.
Only so many repairs that something can be repaired. Formula: Unit a almost died. Unit a was repaired 100%. Unit a nolonger has ANY parts used for its initial construction. unit A is now known as unit a^2, as it has no similar parts that are related (on paper) to its original construct.
Maybe after 1 repair, if someone is then injured, it cannot be repaired? ...maybe not the best idea, but it's something.
My food for thought. The math works and I think this post deserves recognition.
I don't understand the issues people have with the PF. Just target the SCV's. Terran worker production is fixed and linear/the number of CC's/PF's/OC's where as P and Z both have ways to accelerate their worker production. So really, just kill the workers if it's THAT much of an issue (which I don't particularly think it is.)
the answer to pfs is to ignore them and kill the worker with banes or phoenix. about 6 banes kill all minig scvs if the pf shoots the banes you just have to be near scvs. phoenix kill scvs even when there are turrets because they are so damn fast.
im a 1900 random diamond player and it usualy works for me. ppl have to understand that loosing your worker is 10x worse for terran than loosing the expo itself.
when im z, i usualy just send 3 lings + 4-6 banes, lings take the first hits and the enemy usualy wont notice until its to late.
for protoss its pretty much selfexplainig how you harras with your phoenix. new patch will make this strat even better and it leaves you prepared for vikings and medivacs .
oh i forgot to add that droping banelings into pf mineralline is even more effective and easy to execute. just queqe up some drop points between the scvs and watch them go boom
On December 25 2010 22:24 goodvibes wrote: Sorry for bringing this back to life, but I searched threads and found this topic. Instead of creating a new post, I am just posting my 2 cents, now (2200 d) I consider it to have a valid logic to it.
I win a lot of games - masterOFbate #155. I average about 70-90 apm, but mostly play on a couch (mattress as my mousepad). 2200 D
Over the months I have QQ about imba all over the place since the start of beta. However, today, I see 4 "problems" (not necessarily op/up) with gameplay and the PF/Thor/Tank/BC makes one of those 4. other 3: - upgrades on stalker (should be 11+5a u=1/+1a) - makes a huge difference - rework FF - it's broken - either or skill - Cooldown on marauder concussive - self-explanatory: charge lots have it.
The problem I have with terran repair-ables is they can generally require a tech change to take out. This is just ridiculous. I will not reiterate, although I would love to, what others have written. I think it is the most over powered ability in the game.
The solution follows 3 adjustments to repair: Repair speed SIGNIFICANTLY reduced Formula: SCV=X Additional SCV= x/4+x/4 --> 4scvs will result in a 100% increase in base repair speed. However, there needs to be Diminishing returns taken into account, specific to unit costs.
Tank = $150 minerals .'. repair with max scvs (3) = 75% repair increase Thor = $300 minerals .'. max repair = 6, with an optimal repair speed increase of 150% (1+2/4) PF = $550 = max repair = 11, optimal repair speed increase of 375%
Cost to repair Cost = forumula: base * %down/to repair.
1500 pf = 550/150 every % of health repair cost =0.01*550m + 0.01*150g This is then ^ damage intake.
I'm not a math major (accountant), but these numbers work and follow current logic. As it stands, terran remain unaffected by repairing it.
Only so many repairs that something can be repaired. Formula: Unit a almost died. Unit a was repaired 100%. Unit a nolonger has ANY parts used for its initial construction. unit A is now known as unit a^2, as it has no similar parts that are related (on paper) to its original construct.
Maybe after 1 repair, if someone is then injured, it cannot be repaired? ...maybe not the best idea, but it's something.
My food for thought. The math works and I think this post deserves recognition.
User was warned for this post
If you lose to BC/PF/Thor/Tank as Toss and try to counter those with stalkers you got more serious problems than balance.
EPT
