I'm surprised there are actually people left on the ladder who play Terran. It's in as bad of a position as vanilla zerg was (and that's being generous, I could be much more critical but I'll leave it there).
I don't think the problem with zerg is their macro mechanics.
Hive tech zerg is just too cost effective, especially BL/infestor. Its pretty much the strongest army composition in the game right now, and especially terran does not have anything that can trade with it cost effectively unless the zerg makes a big mistake. You cannot give one race an automatic economic advantage, map control, fastest unit production and the strongest army as well. It doesn't make a shred of sense.
Nerf hive tech zerg (or rather the core of the problem, the infestor) and you'll see things balance themselves out much better.
On July 10 2012 12:24 fenrysk wrote: let me try and do this according to the templates from the first page:
Metagame observation: a lot of the recent pro matches i've seen with Terran in non-mirror matchup, Terran make too late of a heavy starport transition. I mean, after they get their one reactor starport for medivacs. In TvZ, they'll wait for after scouting the greater spire or when it's already too late to drop the extra starports, and sometimes they will have already sac'd their factory from scouting so that they'd need to rebuild that before being able to throw down extra starports. Likewise in TvP where Colossus comes out and sometimes before Terran has the ideal medivac cloud, they are forced to stop medivac production for vikings.
proposed Metagame evolution: what if once Terran secures his third, he throws down two extra starports (or just builds two to begin with, or on 2base and throws down a 3rd or 4th) even if not to directly produce out of, but to have the infrastructure ready to produce in case a switch vikings or other air unit is needed? one reactor starport for early-midgame medivacs, and then add techlabs to other starports once Terran feels he has the economy and game stability to transition to something like lategame BCs or other tech units such as lategame raven play. This type of infrastructure preempt would be analogous to Zerg stockpiling larva and having tech structures ready, not to always produce with right away but when the situation calls for (either army is maxed or you're waiting for tech to transition). Having the infrastructure ready for Terran means that Terran too can be ready to switch sooner than before, as the game flow dictates.
1) immediate resource cost: 150m 100gas x 3 (or 4) and then [50m/50gas + 50m/25gas (x2 or x3)] for add-ons can be redistributed so many different ways through existing production facilities for Terran, and sometimes depending on the flow of battle (especially aggressive style terran) the resources are needed to replenish an army right away.
2) space in the base: was your sim-city good enough to have space left for these buildings and their add-ons?
3)resource cost over time: starport units are pretty gas heavy, so this is self-explanatory. i think it is ideal on 3base minimum, but depending on how well you're trading your fighting force, gas and (to a relatively lesser extent) mineral starvation can be a problem. make sure to keep on expanding. also, if you need to be pumping out those vikings as priority over other units, i think cutting production elsewhere is an option.
these are all that i can think of right away, please feel free to add more in the discussions, but i think number 1 is the greatest disadvantage. maybe those resources could be the difference between ending the game after a significant engagement or dragging the game on 5-25 minutes longer
1. infrastructure is ready to produce soon as enemy army/tech is scouted. scout a greater spire morphing with your scan from your macro orbital? start pumping the vikings and take command of the skies! they switch back to ultras? well if you got the techlabs i prescribed, you can just make some BCs or Banshees to add extra dps against the ground units. same principle applies in TvP for colossus techswaps
2. sets up for later transitions into BCs/Ravens depending on the flow the game. this is pretty much the same as advantage #1, but for ultra lategame. If you planned on doing BCs before the start of the game or by the mid-game, you can preempt the transition further with getting air upgrades from your armory, or with Ravens, you can plan ahead with taking the building armor and hi-sec auto-tracking upgrades from the engineering bays (usually though it'd probably better to do that after your 3/3 infantry is done unless you meched/sky-terran'd to begin with)
3. you can get Caduceus Reactors. i'm half joking and half serious, and this could be it's own metagame evolution i suppose: a lot of lategame TvP and TvZ end up with lots of medivacs running out of energy at some point from healing storm/stim/fungal damage, so why not get this once you're on 4 or more bases? the only risk is when high templar try to feedback, but that means they aren't storming you (yet), and with 4 starports you can remake your medivac cloud without killing your viking production if you expect a colossus/voidray/carrier transition.
4. opponent overreacts and does something he wouldn't have done, sometimes to your advantage. maybe he sees this and thinks "okay time to kill him" but runs in to your well fortified siege line. maybe he dumps a ton of resources into cannons because he thinks you will banshee his expos (which you might want to do at some point)
last words: the whole "throw down more starports" hinges on the idea that you don't need to be constantly producing from these structures, but by having the infrastructure ready, you can save yourself critical time when you need the production to respond to what the enemy is doing. there was an old joke about making one of every unit, but i always thought that at some point there is a modicum of truth in it. getting earlier infrastructure for sky terran will help you stay prepared for anything
The main problem with this is that terran infrastructure are so much more expensive. For zerg, they make 1 extra tech building and save up larvae (which can be used for other units). 2-3 starports with add ons is a much bigger investment. Zergs scouts this and just goes Ultras/bane (unless the map is horrible for Ultras). I feel that add-ons gives terrans a lot of flexibility early/mid game but actually hampers them in the late game. And since Blizzard seems to want to move games to late game more (Queen buff nullifies most early/mid game pushes), the terran disadvantage becomes more apparent.
your points i've already accounted for in my disadvantages and advantages sections. 2-3 starports with addons is a much bigger investment indeed, but i feel the investment is worth it going into the lategame (and probably would've made a lot of the pro-matches i've seen go a lot differently in favor of Terran). them going ultra-bane means you can turtle harder (thicker building walloffs, forward PFs) and make all their attacks against you very inefficient (ultra/bling is pretty gas heavy, no?), and/or you can make use of the starports and crank enough banshees to wipe his ultras and then snipe an expansion or two (enough to kill sporecrawlers and queens at that!).
i'm not as worried about my structures being more expensive when i can mule hammer all day long (as long as i'm taking expansions and building macro orbitals) and mine more than the zerg can with less SCVs than he has drones, than i am of being caught off guard by a tech transition that i scout too late.
I don't think you play terran...You seem to be underestimating the costs of orbitals. Are you aware that considering build time, an orbital costs 400 + 150 + 100 minerals mining time lost (moving SCV in position, 2 minutes build time). So an orbital costs roughly 650 minerals.
Now consider that the terran army is very heavy on the mineral cost(needs a strong backbone of either marines or hellions, and bunkers if you start turtlling) and you see that mass orbitals will mean that the army backbone will be severely weakened. So it is not like a terran can just build 8 orbitals and expect to survive, and I am glad for it because this would make the game incredibly boring like the zerg MU is now .
On July 10 2012 17:08 Bagi wrote: I don't think the problem with zerg is their macro mechanics.
Hive tech zerg is just too cost effective, especially BL/infestor. Its pretty much the strongest army composition in the game right now, and especially terran does not have anything that can trade with it cost effectively unless the zerg makes a big mistake. You cannot give one race an automatic economic advantage, map control, fastest unit production and the strongest army as well. It doesn't make a shred of sense.
Nerf hive tech zerg (or rather the core of the problem, the infestor) and you'll see things balance themselves out much better.
I agree. Before 13 minute mark, Terran can in fact keep and even surpass zerg in supply. The reason is the zerg army strength is OP. The reason that Terran has to do economic damage to win is the best indication of it.
And remember, 90% of things that Zerg got in HOTS are Hive tech. Swarm host is tier 2 but ultra burrow charge, hydra speed upgrade, the powerful viper, and the new Nydus network are all Hive tech !!! All new and powerful things Zerg will get are Hive tech !!! So, if there isn't a complete rework of Zerg in HOTS, Zerg will continue to dominate the late-game in HOTS.
This HOTS design is as good as Diablo 3's game design.
On July 10 2012 16:54 BlindKill wrote: Remember maps with destructible rocks on the third? doesnt look that bad now does it ( for TvZ balance)
Until Zerg start taking their third base at a far away location ... and learn to produce their Drones there and fighting units in the main/natural. Then you are back at square 1.
With the Mothership Core in HotS - which can teleport between Nexus - a secret Protoss base anywhere on a large map will be a viable thing since you can hop over and recall your army in case of an attack. Thus rocks arent that great as a balancing tool.
On July 10 2012 17:04 cozzE wrote: I'm surprised there are actually people left on the ladder who play Terran. It's in as bad of a position as vanilla zerg was (and that's being generous, I could be much more critical but I'll leave it there).
I haven't played anything but random monobattles in a week.
On July 10 2012 17:30 larse wrote: This HOTS design is as good as Diablo 3's game design.
With the only advantage for HotS being that it will be tested in the beta in its entirety, unlike with D3 where they somehow thought testing the endgame was unnecessary.
On July 10 2012 17:08 Bagi wrote: I don't think the problem with zerg is their macro mechanics.
Hive tech zerg is just too cost effective, especially BL/infestor. Its pretty much the strongest army composition in the game right now, and especially terran does not have anything that can trade with it cost effectively unless the zerg makes a big mistake. You cannot give one race an automatic economic advantage, map control, fastest unit production and the strongest army as well. It doesn't make a shred of sense.
Nerf hive tech zerg (or rather the core of the problem, the infestor) and you'll see things balance themselves out much better.
I agree. Before 13 minute mark, Terran can in fact keep and even surpass zerg in supply. The reason is the zerg army strength is OP. The reason that Terran has to do economic damage to win is the best indication of it.
And remember, 90% of things that Zerg got in HOTS are Hive tech. Swarm host is tier 2 but ultra burrow charge, hydra speed upgrade, the powerful viper, and the new Nydus network are all Hive tech !!! All new and powerful things Zerg will get are Hive tech !!! So, if there isn't a complete rework of Zerg in HOTS, Zerg will continue to dominate the late-game in HOTS.
This HOTS design is as good as Diablo 3's game design.
no Terran cant right now. They cannot keep up or surpass Zerg supply right now in the midgame. The only reason why they are even close to Zergs supply right now is, that at 13min every Zerg is already spending his money on mass infestor (which costs 50/75 per supply and is among the most expensive units in the game), banelings (100/50 per supply - the most expensive unit in the game among others) and meanwhile bunkering money to get Broodlords or Ultras (among the most expensive units in the game) up, while the Terran is building mostly marines and marauders (50 and 50/12.5, two of the cheapes units in the game) and only sprinkling in some expensive medivacs and tanks (50/50 and 75/62.5).
So no, right now Terrans can't keep up at all and therefore get rolled by amounts of units that they can't deal with, even though their composition is fine.
On July 10 2012 12:24 fenrysk wrote: let me try and do this according to the templates from the first page:
Metagame observation: a lot of the recent pro matches i've seen with Terran in non-mirror matchup, Terran make too late of a heavy starport transition. I mean, after they get their one reactor starport for medivacs. In TvZ, they'll wait for after scouting the greater spire or when it's already too late to drop the extra starports, and sometimes they will have already sac'd their factory from scouting so that they'd need to rebuild that before being able to throw down extra starports. Likewise in TvP where Colossus comes out and sometimes before Terran has the ideal medivac cloud, they are forced to stop medivac production for vikings.
proposed Metagame evolution: what if once Terran secures his third, he throws down two extra starports (or just builds two to begin with, or on 2base and throws down a 3rd or 4th) even if not to directly produce out of, but to have the infrastructure ready to produce in case a switch vikings or other air unit is needed? one reactor starport for early-midgame medivacs, and then add techlabs to other starports once Terran feels he has the economy and game stability to transition to something like lategame BCs or other tech units such as lategame raven play. This type of infrastructure preempt would be analogous to Zerg stockpiling larva and having tech structures ready, not to always produce with right away but when the situation calls for (either army is maxed or you're waiting for tech to transition). Having the infrastructure ready for Terran means that Terran too can be ready to switch sooner than before, as the game flow dictates.
1) immediate resource cost: 150m 100gas x 3 (or 4) and then [50m/50gas + 50m/25gas (x2 or x3)] for add-ons can be redistributed so many different ways through existing production facilities for Terran, and sometimes depending on the flow of battle (especially aggressive style terran) the resources are needed to replenish an army right away.
2) space in the base: was your sim-city good enough to have space left for these buildings and their add-ons?
3)resource cost over time: starport units are pretty gas heavy, so this is self-explanatory. i think it is ideal on 3base minimum, but depending on how well you're trading your fighting force, gas and (to a relatively lesser extent) mineral starvation can be a problem. make sure to keep on expanding. also, if you need to be pumping out those vikings as priority over other units, i think cutting production elsewhere is an option.
these are all that i can think of right away, please feel free to add more in the discussions, but i think number 1 is the greatest disadvantage. maybe those resources could be the difference between ending the game after a significant engagement or dragging the game on 5-25 minutes longer
1. infrastructure is ready to produce soon as enemy army/tech is scouted. scout a greater spire morphing with your scan from your macro orbital? start pumping the vikings and take command of the skies! they switch back to ultras? well if you got the techlabs i prescribed, you can just make some BCs or Banshees to add extra dps against the ground units. same principle applies in TvP for colossus techswaps
2. sets up for later transitions into BCs/Ravens depending on the flow the game. this is pretty much the same as advantage #1, but for ultra lategame. If you planned on doing BCs before the start of the game or by the mid-game, you can preempt the transition further with getting air upgrades from your armory, or with Ravens, you can plan ahead with taking the building armor and hi-sec auto-tracking upgrades from the engineering bays (usually though it'd probably better to do that after your 3/3 infantry is done unless you meched/sky-terran'd to begin with)
3. you can get Caduceus Reactors. i'm half joking and half serious, and this could be it's own metagame evolution i suppose: a lot of lategame TvP and TvZ end up with lots of medivacs running out of energy at some point from healing storm/stim/fungal damage, so why not get this once you're on 4 or more bases? the only risk is when high templar try to feedback, but that means they aren't storming you (yet), and with 4 starports you can remake your medivac cloud without killing your viking production if you expect a colossus/voidray/carrier transition.
4. opponent overreacts and does something he wouldn't have done, sometimes to your advantage. maybe he sees this and thinks "okay time to kill him" but runs in to your well fortified siege line. maybe he dumps a ton of resources into cannons because he thinks you will banshee his expos (which you might want to do at some point)
last words: the whole "throw down more starports" hinges on the idea that you don't need to be constantly producing from these structures, but by having the infrastructure ready, you can save yourself critical time when you need the production to respond to what the enemy is doing. there was an old joke about making one of every unit, but i always thought that at some point there is a modicum of truth in it. getting earlier infrastructure for sky terran will help you stay prepared for anything
The main problem with this is that terran infrastructure are so much more expensive. For zerg, they make 1 extra tech building and save up larvae (which can be used for other units). 2-3 starports with add ons is a much bigger investment. Zergs scouts this and just goes Ultras/bane (unless the map is horrible for Ultras). I feel that add-ons gives terrans a lot of flexibility early/mid game but actually hampers them in the late game. And since Blizzard seems to want to move games to late game more (Queen buff nullifies most early/mid game pushes), the terran disadvantage becomes more apparent.
your points i've already accounted for in my disadvantages and advantages sections. 2-3 starports with addons is a much bigger investment indeed, but i feel the investment is worth it going into the lategame (and probably would've made a lot of the pro-matches i've seen go a lot differently in favor of Terran). them going ultra-bane means you can turtle harder (thicker building walloffs, forward PFs) and make all their attacks against you very inefficient (ultra/bling is pretty gas heavy, no?), and/or you can make use of the starports and crank enough banshees to wipe his ultras and then snipe an expansion or two (enough to kill sporecrawlers and queens at that!).
i'm not as worried about my structures being more expensive when i can mule hammer all day long (as long as i'm taking expansions and building macro orbitals) and mine more than the zerg can with less SCVs than he has drones, than i am of being caught off guard by a tech transition that i scout too late.
I don't think you play terran...You seem to be underestimating the costs of orbitals. Are you aware that considering build time, an orbital costs 400 + 150 + 100 minerals mining time lost (moving SCV in position, 2 minutes build time). So an orbital costs roughly 650 minerals.
Now consider that the terran army is very heavy on the mineral cost(needs a strong backbone of either marines or hellions, and bunkers if you start turtlling) and you see that mass orbitals will mean that the army backbone will be severely weakened. So it is not like a terran can just build 8 orbitals and expect to survive, and I am glad for it because this would make the game incredibly boring like the zerg MU is now .
i checked the replays of my last handful of TvZs and the solution i used was to simply cut workers early on (or in one case of TvZ, lose 40 workers to banelings, but i still came back to win that game because of the MULE hammer, and quad/quint scv production off of all my orbitals, including the 2 macro orbitals). currently most terran and toss will go up to ~70-80 workers and then sac em once they hit 200/200 to get more army supply. if you cut at around 45-50, and spend the extra minerals you would spend on workers on orbitals, you can at least get one or two extra OCs. (20 scvs is 1000 minerals, so if you cut that, and then cut a cycle of marines, you can afford 2 orbitals).
8 orbitals would be overkill for sure, at least when you're not in a commanding lead, but 1-2 macro orbitals when you're on 3 base works, and maybe you'd add one more for every expansion thereafter. yes, the army will be weaker a bit, but it's risk vs reward. i'll risk having a few less marines and a lot less scvs for some more long term advantage.
having extra mules and scans, and even supply drops really comes in handy. "but supply drops are for noobs you say", yet even artosis confirmed that in long games, supply drops mean you mine out slower. but you're muling so you're still mining pretty fast. but it's more minerals devoted to army and tech and less to supply. energy for supply? what other race can do that? the concept as a whole is underused by terran, yet it is one of terran's unique advantages. most don't use it because they'd rather spend the energy for mules and scans, but having extra orbitals allows you to supply drop comfortably without sacrificing mules and scans.
On July 10 2012 17:08 Bagi wrote: I don't think the problem with zerg is their macro mechanics.
Hive tech zerg is just too cost effective, especially BL/infestor. Its pretty much the strongest army composition in the game right now, and especially terran does not have anything that can trade with it cost effectively unless the zerg makes a big mistake. You cannot give one race an automatic economic advantage, map control, fastest unit production and the strongest army as well. It doesn't make a shred of sense.
Nerf hive tech zerg (or rather the core of the problem, the infestor) and you'll see things balance themselves out much better.
I agree. Before 13 minute mark, Terran can in fact keep and even surpass zerg in supply. The reason is the zerg army strength is OP. The reason that Terran has to do economic damage to win is the best indication of it.
And remember, 90% of things that Zerg got in HOTS are Hive tech. Swarm host is tier 2 but ultra burrow charge, hydra speed upgrade, the powerful viper, and the new Nydus network are all Hive tech !!! All new and powerful things Zerg will get are Hive tech !!! So, if there isn't a complete rework of Zerg in HOTS, Zerg will continue to dominate the late-game in HOTS.
This HOTS design is as good as Diablo 3's game design.
no Terran cant right now. They cannot keep up or surpass Zerg supply right now in the midgame. The only reason why they are even close to Zergs supply right now is, that at 13min every Zerg is already spending his money on mass infestor (which costs 50/75 per supply and is among the most expensive units in the game), banelings (100/50 per supply - the most expensive unit in the game among others) and meanwhile bunkering money to get Broodlords or Ultras (among the most expensive units in the game) up, while the Terran is building mostly marines and marauders (50 and 50/12.5, two of the cheapes units in the game) and only sprinkling in some expensive medivacs and tanks (50/50 and 75/62.5).
So no, right now Terrans can't keep up at all and therefore get rolled by amounts of units that they can't deal with, even though their composition is fine.
Nitpick: Siege Tanks cost 3 supply.
The idea of terrans cheaper units is that they can be very agressive, to force Zerg to use his money instead of banking and getting expensive stuff.
The 6 queen metagame however, makes that nigh impossible. The patch has no big influence, 6 3range wueens are annoying too. The metagame changed and Terran has to develop some new style to kill it.
On July 10 2012 17:08 Bagi wrote: I don't think the problem with zerg is their macro mechanics.
Hive tech zerg is just too cost effective, especially BL/infestor. Its pretty much the strongest army composition in the game right now, and especially terran does not have anything that can trade with it cost effectively unless the zerg makes a big mistake. You cannot give one race an automatic economic advantage, map control, fastest unit production and the strongest army as well. It doesn't make a shred of sense.
Nerf hive tech zerg (or rather the core of the problem, the infestor) and you'll see things balance themselves out much better.
I agree. Before 13 minute mark, Terran can in fact keep and even surpass zerg in supply. The reason is the zerg army strength is OP. The reason that Terran has to do economic damage to win is the best indication of it.
And remember, 90% of things that Zerg got in HOTS are Hive tech. Swarm host is tier 2 but ultra burrow charge, hydra speed upgrade, the powerful viper, and the new Nydus network are all Hive tech !!! All new and powerful things Zerg will get are Hive tech !!! So, if there isn't a complete rework of Zerg in HOTS, Zerg will continue to dominate the late-game in HOTS.
This HOTS design is as good as Diablo 3's game design.
no Terran cant right now. They cannot keep up or surpass Zerg supply right now in the midgame. The only reason why they are even close to Zergs supply right now is, that at 13min every Zerg is already spending his money on mass infestor (which costs 50/75 per supply and is among the most expensive units in the game), banelings (100/50 per supply - the most expensive unit in the game among others) and meanwhile bunkering money to get Broodlords or Ultras (among the most expensive units in the game) up, while the Terran is building mostly marines and marauders (50 and 50/12.5, two of the cheapes units in the game) and only sprinkling in some expensive medivacs and tanks (50/50 and 75/62.5).
So no, right now Terrans can't keep up at all and therefore get rolled by amounts of units that they can't deal with, even though their composition is fine.
Nitpick: Siege Tanks cost 3 supply.
The idea of terrans cheaper units is that they can be very agressive, to force Zerg to use his money instead of banking and getting expensive stuff.
The 6 queen metagame however, makes that nigh impossible. The patch has no big influence, 6 3range wueens are annoying too. The metagame changed and Terran has to develop some new style to kill it.
But at least you can kite 3 range Queens with nearly all your units. I agree, it still doesn't make a HUGE difference, but it allows good hellion micro to make more difference early.
On July 10 2012 17:08 Bagi wrote: I don't think the problem with zerg is their macro mechanics.
Hive tech zerg is just too cost effective, especially BL/infestor. Its pretty much the strongest army composition in the game right now, and especially terran does not have anything that can trade with it cost effectively unless the zerg makes a big mistake. You cannot give one race an automatic economic advantage, map control, fastest unit production and the strongest army as well. It doesn't make a shred of sense.
Nerf hive tech zerg (or rather the core of the problem, the infestor) and you'll see things balance themselves out much better.
I agree. Before 13 minute mark, Terran can in fact keep and even surpass zerg in supply. The reason is the zerg army strength is OP. The reason that Terran has to do economic damage to win is the best indication of it.
And remember, 90% of things that Zerg got in HOTS are Hive tech. Swarm host is tier 2 but ultra burrow charge, hydra speed upgrade, the powerful viper, and the new Nydus network are all Hive tech !!! All new and powerful things Zerg will get are Hive tech !!! So, if there isn't a complete rework of Zerg in HOTS, Zerg will continue to dominate the late-game in HOTS.
This HOTS design is as good as Diablo 3's game design.
no Terran cant right now. They cannot keep up or surpass Zerg supply right now in the midgame. The only reason why they are even close to Zergs supply right now is, that at 13min every Zerg is already spending his money on mass infestor (which costs 50/75 per supply and is among the most expensive units in the game), banelings (100/50 per supply - the most expensive unit in the game among others) and meanwhile bunkering money to get Broodlords or Ultras (among the most expensive units in the game) up, while the Terran is building mostly marines and marauders (50 and 50/12.5, two of the cheapes units in the game) and only sprinkling in some expensive medivacs and tanks (50/50 and 75/62.5).
So no, right now Terrans can't keep up at all and therefore get rolled by amounts of units that they can't deal with, even though their composition is fine.
Nitpick: Siege Tanks cost 3 supply.
The idea of terrans cheaper units is that they can be very agressive, to force Zerg to use his money instead of banking and getting expensive stuff.
The 6 queen metagame however, makes that nigh impossible. The patch has no big influence, 6 3range wueens are annoying too. The metagame changed and Terran has to develop some new style to kill it.
But at least you can kite 3 range Queens with nearly all your units. I agree, it still doesn't make a HUGE difference, but it allows good hellion micro to make more difference early.
Do you mean that hellions can kite queens? That's false. They both have 5 range..
On July 10 2012 12:24 fenrysk wrote: let me try and do this according to the templates from the first page:
Metagame observation: a lot of the recent pro matches i've seen with Terran in non-mirror matchup, Terran make too late of a heavy starport transition. I mean, after they get their one reactor starport for medivacs. In TvZ, they'll wait for after scouting the greater spire or when it's already too late to drop the extra starports, and sometimes they will have already sac'd their factory from scouting so that they'd need to rebuild that before being able to throw down extra starports. Likewise in TvP where Colossus comes out and sometimes before Terran has the ideal medivac cloud, they are forced to stop medivac production for vikings.
proposed Metagame evolution: what if once Terran secures his third, he throws down two extra starports (or just builds two to begin with, or on 2base and throws down a 3rd or 4th) even if not to directly produce out of, but to have the infrastructure ready to produce in case a switch vikings or other air unit is needed? one reactor starport for early-midgame medivacs, and then add techlabs to other starports once Terran feels he has the economy and game stability to transition to something like lategame BCs or other tech units such as lategame raven play. This type of infrastructure preempt would be analogous to Zerg stockpiling larva and having tech structures ready, not to always produce with right away but when the situation calls for (either army is maxed or you're waiting for tech to transition). Having the infrastructure ready for Terran means that Terran too can be ready to switch sooner than before, as the game flow dictates.
1) immediate resource cost: 150m 100gas x 3 (or 4) and then [50m/50gas + 50m/25gas (x2 or x3)] for add-ons can be redistributed so many different ways through existing production facilities for Terran, and sometimes depending on the flow of battle (especially aggressive style terran) the resources are needed to replenish an army right away.
2) space in the base: was your sim-city good enough to have space left for these buildings and their add-ons?
3)resource cost over time: starport units are pretty gas heavy, so this is self-explanatory. i think it is ideal on 3base minimum, but depending on how well you're trading your fighting force, gas and (to a relatively lesser extent) mineral starvation can be a problem. make sure to keep on expanding. also, if you need to be pumping out those vikings as priority over other units, i think cutting production elsewhere is an option.
these are all that i can think of right away, please feel free to add more in the discussions, but i think number 1 is the greatest disadvantage. maybe those resources could be the difference between ending the game after a significant engagement or dragging the game on 5-25 minutes longer
1. infrastructure is ready to produce soon as enemy army/tech is scouted. scout a greater spire morphing with your scan from your macro orbital? start pumping the vikings and take command of the skies! they switch back to ultras? well if you got the techlabs i prescribed, you can just make some BCs or Banshees to add extra dps against the ground units. same principle applies in TvP for colossus techswaps
2. sets up for later transitions into BCs/Ravens depending on the flow the game. this is pretty much the same as advantage #1, but for ultra lategame. If you planned on doing BCs before the start of the game or by the mid-game, you can preempt the transition further with getting air upgrades from your armory, or with Ravens, you can plan ahead with taking the building armor and hi-sec auto-tracking upgrades from the engineering bays (usually though it'd probably better to do that after your 3/3 infantry is done unless you meched/sky-terran'd to begin with)
3. you can get Caduceus Reactors. i'm half joking and half serious, and this could be it's own metagame evolution i suppose: a lot of lategame TvP and TvZ end up with lots of medivacs running out of energy at some point from healing storm/stim/fungal damage, so why not get this once you're on 4 or more bases? the only risk is when high templar try to feedback, but that means they aren't storming you (yet), and with 4 starports you can remake your medivac cloud without killing your viking production if you expect a colossus/voidray/carrier transition.
4. opponent overreacts and does something he wouldn't have done, sometimes to your advantage. maybe he sees this and thinks "okay time to kill him" but runs in to your well fortified siege line. maybe he dumps a ton of resources into cannons because he thinks you will banshee his expos (which you might want to do at some point)
last words: the whole "throw down more starports" hinges on the idea that you don't need to be constantly producing from these structures, but by having the infrastructure ready, you can save yourself critical time when you need the production to respond to what the enemy is doing. there was an old joke about making one of every unit, but i always thought that at some point there is a modicum of truth in it. getting earlier infrastructure for sky terran will help you stay prepared for anything
The main problem with this is that terran infrastructure are so much more expensive. For zerg, they make 1 extra tech building and save up larvae (which can be used for other units). 2-3 starports with add ons is a much bigger investment. Zergs scouts this and just goes Ultras/bane (unless the map is horrible for Ultras). I feel that add-ons gives terrans a lot of flexibility early/mid game but actually hampers them in the late game. And since Blizzard seems to want to move games to late game more (Queen buff nullifies most early/mid game pushes), the terran disadvantage becomes more apparent.
your points i've already accounted for in my disadvantages and advantages sections. 2-3 starports with addons is a much bigger investment indeed, but i feel the investment is worth it going into the lategame (and probably would've made a lot of the pro-matches i've seen go a lot differently in favor of Terran). them going ultra-bane means you can turtle harder (thicker building walloffs, forward PFs) and make all their attacks against you very inefficient (ultra/bling is pretty gas heavy, no?), and/or you can make use of the starports and crank enough banshees to wipe his ultras and then snipe an expansion or two (enough to kill sporecrawlers and queens at that!).
i'm not as worried about my structures being more expensive when i can mule hammer all day long (as long as i'm taking expansions and building macro orbitals) and mine more than the zerg can with less SCVs than he has drones, than i am of being caught off guard by a tech transition that i scout too late.
I don't think you play terran...You seem to be underestimating the costs of orbitals. Are you aware that considering build time, an orbital costs 400 + 150 + 100 minerals mining time lost (moving SCV in position, 2 minutes build time). So an orbital costs roughly 650 minerals.
Now consider that the terran army is very heavy on the mineral cost(needs a strong backbone of either marines or hellions, and bunkers if you start turtlling) and you see that mass orbitals will mean that the army backbone will be severely weakened. So it is not like a terran can just build 8 orbitals and expect to survive, and I am glad for it because this would make the game incredibly boring like the zerg MU is now .
i checked the replays of my last handful of TvZs and the solution i used was to simply cut workers early on (or in one case of TvZ, lose 40 workers to banelings, but i still came back to win that game because of the MULE hammer, and quad/quint scv production off of all my orbitals, including the 2 macro orbitals). currently most terran and toss will go up to ~70-80 workers and then sac em once they hit 200/200 to get more army supply. if you cut at around 45-50, and spend the extra minerals you would spend on workers on orbitals, you can at least get one or two extra OCs. (20 scvs is 1000 minerals, so if you cut that, and then cut a cycle of marines, you can afford 2 orbitals).
8 orbitals would be overkill for sure, at least when you're not in a commanding lead, but 1-2 macro orbitals when you're on 3 base works, and maybe you'd add one more for every expansion thereafter. yes, the army will be weaker a bit, but it's risk vs reward. i'll risk having a few less marines and a lot less scvs for some more long term advantage.
having extra mules and scans, and even supply drops really comes in handy. "but supply drops are for noobs you say", yet even artosis confirmed that in long games, supply drops mean you mine out slower. but you're muling so you're still mining pretty fast. but it's more minerals devoted to army and tech and less to supply. energy for supply? what other race can do that? the concept as a whole is underused by terran, yet it is one of terran's unique advantages. most don't use it because they'd rather spend the energy for mules and scans, but having extra orbitals allows you to supply drop comfortably without sacrificing mules and scans.
So you sacrifice 20 SCVs and a marine cycle to get 9 SCVs and call that an advantage?
No matter how you turn it, the MULE is the mining equivalent to 4.5 SCVs for the time it's in existance. Every orbital can support a single MULE constantly without an energy left for anything else. So the reason why most terrans are NOT cutting SCVs for MULEs is that it gives them less money - by a large margin. Thus most of the time macro orbitals are only constructed when the terran is maxed and is banking large amounts of minerals, AFTER already banking some energy for MULEs and constructing additional production facilities.
On July 10 2012 17:08 Bagi wrote: I don't think the problem with zerg is their macro mechanics.
Hive tech zerg is just too cost effective, especially BL/infestor. Its pretty much the strongest army composition in the game right now, and especially terran does not have anything that can trade with it cost effectively unless the zerg makes a big mistake. You cannot give one race an automatic economic advantage, map control, fastest unit production and the strongest army as well. It doesn't make a shred of sense.
Nerf hive tech zerg (or rather the core of the problem, the infestor) and you'll see things balance themselves out much better.
I agree. Before 13 minute mark, Terran can in fact keep and even surpass zerg in supply. The reason is the zerg army strength is OP. The reason that Terran has to do economic damage to win is the best indication of it.
And remember, 90% of things that Zerg got in HOTS are Hive tech. Swarm host is tier 2 but ultra burrow charge, hydra speed upgrade, the powerful viper, and the new Nydus network are all Hive tech !!! All new and powerful things Zerg will get are Hive tech !!! So, if there isn't a complete rework of Zerg in HOTS, Zerg will continue to dominate the late-game in HOTS.
This HOTS design is as good as Diablo 3's game design.
no Terran cant right now. They cannot keep up or surpass Zerg supply right now in the midgame. The only reason why they are even close to Zergs supply right now is, that at 13min every Zerg is already spending his money on mass infestor (which costs 50/75 per supply and is among the most expensive units in the game), banelings (100/50 per supply - the most expensive unit in the game among others) and meanwhile bunkering money to get Broodlords or Ultras (among the most expensive units in the game) up, while the Terran is building mostly marines and marauders (50 and 50/12.5, two of the cheapes units in the game) and only sprinkling in some expensive medivacs and tanks (50/50 and 75/62.5).
So no, right now Terrans can't keep up at all and therefore get rolled by amounts of units that they can't deal with, even though their composition is fine.
Nitpick: Siege Tanks cost 3 supply.
The idea of terrans cheaper units is that they can be very agressive, to force Zerg to use his money instead of banking and getting expensive stuff.
The 6 queen metagame however, makes that nigh impossible. The patch has no big influence, 6 3range wueens are annoying too. The metagame changed and Terran has to develop some new style to kill it.
But at least you can kite 3 range Queens with nearly all your units. I agree, it still doesn't make a HUGE difference, but it allows good hellion micro to make more difference early.
Do you mean that hellions can kite queens? That's false. They both have 5 range..
I guess that's why he wrote "3 range Queens" instead of just "Queens". He was clearly referring to prepatch queens.
The whole macro-economics and reproduction mechanics are like this:
Each of them has a distinct advantage and the whole thing looks fun, but it all depends on the outside settings of the race track / length. You could also make a simple "motorcycle vs bike with a lead" race, where the motorcycle will clearly win with a longer race track.
The differences / difficulties really lie in the macro-economics and the production because the units have been balanced on their performance in fights, but "super-reproduction capability" never enters into that. Thus scrapping all of them seems like a good idea ...
On July 10 2012 17:40 Willzzz wrote: If zerg takes a far away base then it dies, simple.
And you get a run-by which annihilates your main base. Look at some of the pro games, no one ever scouts the really far away bases and looking for them takes TIME.
On July 10 2012 12:24 fenrysk wrote: let me try and do this according to the templates from the first page:
Metagame observation: a lot of the recent pro matches i've seen with Terran in non-mirror matchup, Terran make too late of a heavy starport transition. I mean, after they get their one reactor starport for medivacs. In TvZ, they'll wait for after scouting the greater spire or when it's already too late to drop the extra starports, and sometimes they will have already sac'd their factory from scouting so that they'd need to rebuild that before being able to throw down extra starports. Likewise in TvP where Colossus comes out and sometimes before Terran has the ideal medivac cloud, they are forced to stop medivac production for vikings.
proposed Metagame evolution: what if once Terran secures his third, he throws down two extra starports (or just builds two to begin with, or on 2base and throws down a 3rd or 4th) even if not to directly produce out of, but to have the infrastructure ready to produce in case a switch vikings or other air unit is needed? one reactor starport for early-midgame medivacs, and then add techlabs to other starports once Terran feels he has the economy and game stability to transition to something like lategame BCs or other tech units such as lategame raven play. This type of infrastructure preempt would be analogous to Zerg stockpiling larva and having tech structures ready, not to always produce with right away but when the situation calls for (either army is maxed or you're waiting for tech to transition). Having the infrastructure ready for Terran means that Terran too can be ready to switch sooner than before, as the game flow dictates.
1) immediate resource cost: 150m 100gas x 3 (or 4) and then [50m/50gas + 50m/25gas (x2 or x3)] for add-ons can be redistributed so many different ways through existing production facilities for Terran, and sometimes depending on the flow of battle (especially aggressive style terran) the resources are needed to replenish an army right away.
2) space in the base: was your sim-city good enough to have space left for these buildings and their add-ons?
3)resource cost over time: starport units are pretty gas heavy, so this is self-explanatory. i think it is ideal on 3base minimum, but depending on how well you're trading your fighting force, gas and (to a relatively lesser extent) mineral starvation can be a problem. make sure to keep on expanding. also, if you need to be pumping out those vikings as priority over other units, i think cutting production elsewhere is an option.
these are all that i can think of right away, please feel free to add more in the discussions, but i think number 1 is the greatest disadvantage. maybe those resources could be the difference between ending the game after a significant engagement or dragging the game on 5-25 minutes longer
1. infrastructure is ready to produce soon as enemy army/tech is scouted. scout a greater spire morphing with your scan from your macro orbital? start pumping the vikings and take command of the skies! they switch back to ultras? well if you got the techlabs i prescribed, you can just make some BCs or Banshees to add extra dps against the ground units. same principle applies in TvP for colossus techswaps
2. sets up for later transitions into BCs/Ravens depending on the flow the game. this is pretty much the same as advantage #1, but for ultra lategame. If you planned on doing BCs before the start of the game or by the mid-game, you can preempt the transition further with getting air upgrades from your armory, or with Ravens, you can plan ahead with taking the building armor and hi-sec auto-tracking upgrades from the engineering bays (usually though it'd probably better to do that after your 3/3 infantry is done unless you meched/sky-terran'd to begin with)
3. you can get Caduceus Reactors. i'm half joking and half serious, and this could be it's own metagame evolution i suppose: a lot of lategame TvP and TvZ end up with lots of medivacs running out of energy at some point from healing storm/stim/fungal damage, so why not get this once you're on 4 or more bases? the only risk is when high templar try to feedback, but that means they aren't storming you (yet), and with 4 starports you can remake your medivac cloud without killing your viking production if you expect a colossus/voidray/carrier transition.
4. opponent overreacts and does something he wouldn't have done, sometimes to your advantage. maybe he sees this and thinks "okay time to kill him" but runs in to your well fortified siege line. maybe he dumps a ton of resources into cannons because he thinks you will banshee his expos (which you might want to do at some point)
last words: the whole "throw down more starports" hinges on the idea that you don't need to be constantly producing from these structures, but by having the infrastructure ready, you can save yourself critical time when you need the production to respond to what the enemy is doing. there was an old joke about making one of every unit, but i always thought that at some point there is a modicum of truth in it. getting earlier infrastructure for sky terran will help you stay prepared for anything
The main problem with this is that terran infrastructure are so much more expensive. For zerg, they make 1 extra tech building and save up larvae (which can be used for other units). 2-3 starports with add ons is a much bigger investment. Zergs scouts this and just goes Ultras/bane (unless the map is horrible for Ultras). I feel that add-ons gives terrans a lot of flexibility early/mid game but actually hampers them in the late game. And since Blizzard seems to want to move games to late game more (Queen buff nullifies most early/mid game pushes), the terran disadvantage becomes more apparent.
your points i've already accounted for in my disadvantages and advantages sections. 2-3 starports with addons is a much bigger investment indeed, but i feel the investment is worth it going into the lategame (and probably would've made a lot of the pro-matches i've seen go a lot differently in favor of Terran). them going ultra-bane means you can turtle harder (thicker building walloffs, forward PFs) and make all their attacks against you very inefficient (ultra/bling is pretty gas heavy, no?), and/or you can make use of the starports and crank enough banshees to wipe his ultras and then snipe an expansion or two (enough to kill sporecrawlers and queens at that!).
i'm not as worried about my structures being more expensive when i can mule hammer all day long (as long as i'm taking expansions and building macro orbitals) and mine more than the zerg can with less SCVs than he has drones, than i am of being caught off guard by a tech transition that i scout too late.
I don't think you play terran...You seem to be underestimating the costs of orbitals. Are you aware that considering build time, an orbital costs 400 + 150 + 100 minerals mining time lost (moving SCV in position, 2 minutes build time). So an orbital costs roughly 650 minerals.
Now consider that the terran army is very heavy on the mineral cost(needs a strong backbone of either marines or hellions, and bunkers if you start turtlling) and you see that mass orbitals will mean that the army backbone will be severely weakened. So it is not like a terran can just build 8 orbitals and expect to survive, and I am glad for it because this would make the game incredibly boring like the zerg MU is now .
i checked the replays of my last handful of TvZs and the solution i used was to simply cut workers early on (or in one case of TvZ, lose 40 workers to banelings, but i still came back to win that game because of the MULE hammer, and quad/quint scv production off of all my orbitals, including the 2 macro orbitals). currently most terran and toss will go up to ~70-80 workers and then sac em once they hit 200/200 to get more army supply. if you cut at around 45-50, and spend the extra minerals you would spend on workers on orbitals, you can at least get one or two extra OCs. (20 scvs is 1000 minerals, so if you cut that, and then cut a cycle of marines, you can afford 2 orbitals).
8 orbitals would be overkill for sure, at least when you're not in a commanding lead, but 1-2 macro orbitals when you're on 3 base works, and maybe you'd add one more for every expansion thereafter. yes, the army will be weaker a bit, but it's risk vs reward. i'll risk having a few less marines and a lot less scvs for some more long term advantage.
having extra mules and scans, and even supply drops really comes in handy. "but supply drops are for noobs you say", yet even artosis confirmed that in long games, supply drops mean you mine out slower. but you're muling so you're still mining pretty fast. but it's more minerals devoted to army and tech and less to supply. energy for supply? what other race can do that? the concept as a whole is underused by terran, yet it is one of terran's unique advantages. most don't use it because they'd rather spend the energy for mules and scans, but having extra orbitals allows you to supply drop comfortably without sacrificing mules and scans.
A mule equals roughly 4 scvs mining, so if you stop at 50 workers + 2 orbitals you have about 58 workers of income. And you say terran should actually cut workers to get there. The macro gap with zerg will be huge, considering a zerg goes to 70 workers+, and will go uncontested because the terran army is weaker and the terran is pumping minerals into orbital production.
Considering that these are macro orbitals, the cost of the orbital is 650(see earlier post for explanation0, takes 155 seconds to get up (120 build time +35 orbital), and then a mule mines about 170/minute (160-180/minute according to liquipedia), it will take another 229 seconds before the orbital breaks even. So 155 + 229...lets say 384 seconds. So 6+ minutes before a single orbital breaks even. Only after 6 minutes the macro orbital starts making money and even then it only brings in 170minerals/minute (so about 3.5 marines).
As for the supply depot drops. You need to look at it as a mule vs a depot. A depot drop, considering build time + depot saves you about 150 minerals. A mule gives you 270 minerals. I think a depot drop only ever made sense in some very early pressure builds where you would rather save the 150 minerals now compared to getting the 270 minerals over the course of a minute.
On July 10 2012 17:04 cozzE wrote: I'm surprised there are actually people left on the ladder who play Terran. It's in as bad of a position as vanilla zerg was (and that's being generous, I could be much more critical but I'll leave it there).
No it's not. Exaggerations don't help your cause, man.
OK guys, enough is enough. Enough with I play race A, and race B&C are OP. I start a new approach to the balance discussion. NERF YOUR OWN RACE
I am a Zerg player as you can check from my post history, and I am tired of defending Zerg. Zerg OP? Fine, I’m gonna nerf them myself.
ZERG Queen:Ground attack range reduced from 5 to 4. Creep Tumor: Spawning duration of Creep Tumor increased from 15 to 25. Cooldown remains 15. Creep: Creep recedes 50% faster. Larvae: Maximum number of larvae a hatchery can hold is reduced from 19 to 11. From 19 to 15 for lair. Remains 19 for hive. Infestor: Fungal growth no longer prevents target unit movements. It now slows movement speed of target units by 75%. Stalker's blink distance is quartered while being fungal growthed. Infested Terran: Damage reduced from 8 to 6. Broodlord/Overseer/Baneling: No longer hatch always with full health. When corruptor/overlord/zergling or morphing cocoon is damaged, new hatching unit is damaged accordingly. EDIT: Broodlord: supply cost increased from 4 to 6. (+4 when morphing from corruptor instead of +2) #Optional# Hydralisk: Removed from game.
##Blizzard felt early game Zerg was too vulnerable vs some all-ins and buffed queen range by 2, which messed up everything in ZvT. Then, why not take a step back and reduce it so that queens are still better than pre May patch yet has slightly shorter range than hellion/reaper. ##Wide spread of creep is the problem today right? Then, make active tumors visible longer so that diligent denial of creep is rewarded more. Zerg has harder time to jump new tumors without defending with units. ##Creep stays on ground for too long even after killing tumors or creeping overlord at expansions. Make them recede sooner so that queens can’t just come back to replace tumors 30seconds after you kill them. ##Zerg tech switch and instant production late game is too strong? Let’s keep maximum larvae available according to hatchery/lair/hive state. It is strange that a hatchery can hold the same amount of larvae as a hive. Make 2 injects maximum for hatchery 3+4+4=11, 3 injects for lair 3+4+4+4=15, and 4 injects for hive as it is 3+4+4+4+4=19. For more larvae, Zerg needs to either make multiple additional macro hatches or morph some hatcheries to lair. ##Oh my units are fungaled, no micro whatsoever for me!! Not any more. Units can still slowly move under fungal growth to escape, spread, or attack forward. Fast units like hellion or phoenix would still move faster than off creep queen under fungal growth. ##Marine itself is OP enough that extra 2 damage for infested terran doesn’t make sense. DPS is too good for 25 energy only unit. ##Infested Terrans hatch from eggs with reduced health according to the damage taken while in eggs. Broodlord/Overseer/Baneling always hatch with full health. Keep them damaged accordingly as well. EDIT:##While 1 or 2 Broodlords don't achieve much, 15 Broodlords with infestor support is nearly unstoppable. BL deathball becomes too powerful once it reaches critical mass. Incerasing the supply cost prevents maximum BL number unless Zerg decides to sacrifice supply in other units. ##This is optional, but hey, why not. It’s not like Zerg players use hydralisk outside ZvZ anyways. Remove them for the hell of it. Then, better creep spread is rewarded more for queen/infestor mobility.
MAP Introducing new maps to replace some of the big maps today
##As I have shown in another thread Map Size Hisotry & Analysis average map size has never become smaller since release. Bigger maps reward Zerg droning and mobility more than the other 2 races. So, for the first time in SC2 history, bring new smaller maps. Also, it is good for viewership experience because no-rush-15-min macro-fest is so much harder with smaller maps.
How do those sound, huh? I tried to buff Terran/Protoss as well, but it was so much easier to come up with the ideas for the race I play. So, follow me, NERF YOUR OWN RACE guys. Nothing to nerf from your race? What an excuse… That’s what OTHER 2 races feel about their race as well. If no one else has courage to bring out ideas to nerf their own race, whatever. Then, I will keep defending Zerg or make another thread for only nerfing own race. I would like to see Terran/Protoss players bringing out some ideas on the table. After all, you know about your race the best.
EPT
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