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Poll: Bunker or MarinesBunker (63) 88% Marines (9) 13% 72 total votes Your vote: Bunker or Marines (Vote): Marines
(Vote): Bunker
Hellow,
you have the following scenario:
You play for example in a TvP and you want to push up the Terran's ramp which is protected by 1 Bunker and a couple of marines. You got a zealot, stalker, sentry army.
Do you focus first on the Bunker or do you kill of the marines and kill the Bunker at last?
The bunker is filled with 4 marines. And the terran has no other units around the bunker than marines.
I often, or most of the time, see people and pro player focus first the bunker.
But isn't it more efficient to kill the marines and then the bunker?
Targeting the bunker means you spend 400 damage (+1 armor) and you do not decreases the enemie's army and therefor you dont lower the damage. If you kill instead 8 marines your enemy has a lot less damage. And then you take down the bunker after all other units are down.
One reason, I imagine, is that you want to have the bunker down before any SCVs arrive to repair it. But if we say you can block the SCVs with Forcefields or we leave this aspect entirely out.
Focus on the Bunker or focus the marines?
I talked about this with some friends and most of them said, they would focus the bunker first instead of the marines, but they could not really give me an adequate reason.
In my oppionen you simply lose 400 damage accomplishing nothing but destroying 100 minerals. Compared to 8 marines not realy worth it.
But lots of pro players aim for the bunker.
Can someone give me a good reason why it is so?
And what do you guys do? Focus marines or bunker?
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Well, I'm definitely not a pro (just masters) and this might belong in strategy rather than general. An important part of focusing the bunker is that typically you're attacking with a large portion of your army as zealots. The bunkers tend to mess with zealot AI in that they focus the bunker anyway. If you wanted to target individual marines, you would have to only do it with stalkers because zealots would run around being useless and end up back on the bunker anyway. Long story short they focus the bunker so they don't have half their army hitting a repairing bunker and half shooting marines.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
You target the bunker because you want to kill it before the scvs get in position to repair.
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Of course it is more efficient to kill the marines in the open, but the reason is exactly the one you chose to omit - that by targeting the marines SCVs will have time to come off the line, also, the bunker is a part of the simcity usually, meaning that your zealots can't get surface area on the marines who are standing in the open before it has been destroyed.
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I've actually thought about the same thing and I usually target the units outside the bunker if it's possible, because like you said I start killing units and taking away from the opponents dps right away. The only exception is if I'm actually so all-in I know I have to kill my opponent right then and there I focus the bunkers down before they can pull scvs to repair, because i have to kill them anyway. If I'm only poking to do some damage I focus units and pull out early enough so I've killed more units than I've lost.
EDIT: And of course if the units outside the bunker are well defended behind the bunker or it's otherwise too difficult to target them down then of course target the bunker.
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Im a protoss player and the only reason why i would be troubled with marines is the fact that they can sit their asses in their bunkers. So without the bunkers the marines are especially weak when there are zealots in their faces and they would die off very fast. They have to kite instead of just standing there and shoot.
Another point is, marines not in the bunkers hide behind them so when zealots try to squeeze in between 2 bunkers they would have less surface area to attack those marines. So by killing the bunkers first you get a larger surface area to deal with the marines. In addition to this point if the zealots try to move to the back of the bunkers to kill the marines not in the bunkers, they can move backwards while the bunkers continuously deal damage to my army.
Another thing about killing bunkers is you can always kill the bunkers then retreat temporarily and regather a larger army, let zealot shields regen a little and push up again.
All in all killing the terran army becomes much more efficient once the bunkers are down, which mostly takes around 5 seconds to do so. But in the case where the bunkers do not go down because of scvs repairing them it becomes very disadvantageous to the protoss player, so thats where force fields come into play, where you block off those scvs.
Hope my explanation was somewhat accurate and helped you.
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Like you said, you want to rush down the bunker first not because it's technically more cost-efficient, but because you want to kill it before the scv's can get there to help repair it, which in itself would reduce your cost-effiency even further than the simple fact that you're targeting the bunker first. Force Fields are merely the failsafe.
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Isnt it because you need a large ammount of firepower to be able to kill the bunker. If you attack it last, a lot of your units will be dead and it will be difficult to destroy the bunker.
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On March 19 2012 21:12 T.O.P. wrote:
You target the bunker because you want to kill it before the scvs get in position to repair.
Basically this. Although I suppose if you play toss you can always forcefield around it to 1). Prevent repair and 2). Stop the marines from kiting once the bunker goes down
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On March 19 2012 21:38 FlaminGinjaNinja wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2012 21:12 T.O.P. wrote:
You target the bunker because you want to kill it before the scvs get in position to repair. Basically this. Although I suppose if you play toss you can always forcefield around it to 1). Prevent repair and 2). Stop the marines from kiting once the bunker goes down
Often your zealots (which are your primary both tanks and damage dealers) will either be kited, prevented from progressing because of walls on top of this. Once you get down the bunker marines (without stim) are pretty weak against a gateway mix.
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Just my 2 cents, but doesnt it depend on the position of them? Im just a gold level player (and on a losing streak might i add) but if the bunker is up front and the marines are either beside or behind it, then you forcefeild them back and concentrate the bunker, giving you the advantage. then you can back up and reattack after sheild are back up. or if the marines are in front of the bunker (ive seen it done lol) then you forcefeild them forward, then concentrate them down without the bunker in the way. then back up and re attack the bunker, and forcefeild the scvs away. Maybe im over estimating the number of sentries here.
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On March 19 2012 21:12 T.O.P. wrote:
You target the bunker because you want to kill it before the scvs get in position to repair.
This + the fact that you have most units in the start of your fight = bunker goes down faster then it would after you've killed off 8 marines.
Your thoughtprocess is good though, just apply it more towards unit-only based scenarios.
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Another reason is the fact that at the beginning of your attack you have more firepower to kill the bunker. That means you are more efficient because you spend less time on killing something that isn't units. If you were to focus the bunker after killing marines you might have lost some units and hence have less firepower. That means you spend more time trying to get the bunker down and will take more damage from it which will increase the efficiency of the bunker.
This is just one aspect though. The other ones mentioned like surface area and the fact that marines can micro back and you will have to funnel through a bunker to follow and kill them, repairing SCV's, etc. are all factors in that decision as well.
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Zealot attacks will be wasted on bunker if not focused becuase SCVs will come and repair them, in the end it is actually less efficient to attack the marines at the back.
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If you did attack the marines first the enemy could simply micro them back which would then lead to you having to focus the bunker down anyways.
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You kill the bunker first because the Terran forces you to.
Your logic is solid, and that is the very reason why spare marines are being positioned behind (or in some cases next to) the bunker. With a bunker in front and marines behind, the T will force the P to start with the bunker, thus "wasting" 400 damage. If a T would prefer you to kill his marines first, he'd place the marines in front of the bunker to have the marines "protecting" it. But obviously thats not a good idea.
The P simply has to follow suit, since the T has the power to position his units/bunkers as he wish. If the P really wants to break through, hes gonna have to live with doing the bunker first and doing the fight on the Ts terms.
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First, without the bunker you'd usually be able to roll over the army... So, you eliminate the bunker and warp in reinforcements to make up for the units you lost in the fight (maybe pull back to regen shields) and are now able roll the defending army without bunkers.
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It depends, if you are not trying to win/do a ton of damage right then and there, I'd say go for the marines, as it is ensured damage and removes enemy resources from the game permanently right then and there. However, if you want to break the defensive position of the Terran, you must ignore the few marines and go for the bunker. If you are wanting to push, you must break the bunker fast before the SCVs can come to repair it, making it more cost-efficient for you. However, if you are 100% confident there are no SCVs around, and you still want to push, it is better going for the marines first, by eliminating these units, you immediately eliminate enemy DPS being dealt against you, making your time spent killing the bunker less painful for your units.
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Marines also get range in a bunker if I'm not mistaken, so Bunker is definitely the target to go for.
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EPT
