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Hi, I am a low master player who got inspired by Day9 Daily#320 to go mech in TvT. For the record, I never do full mech in any match up (mech sucks in TvP anyway). Although making this thread seems selfish and noobish since I might be able to figure it out through hours of replay analysis, I want this thread to be a good meching resource for everyone (there's not that much terran resources to begin with  With an introduction out of the way, let the question listing begins !!
- What is a breed'n butter opening for mech ?
I've seen some sort of quick marine blueflame medvac push do wonder, or a quick banshee for some pressure. Both look good since beside those build, mech can't do any early pressure. Also, from Day9 Daily#320, a quick raven looks pretty good because it allows you to skip making engineer bay and turrets and use that saved mineral to get a faster expansion. Which one should I go for though, and, of course, please give me a build order or a replay 
- How many unit producing structures should I aim for ?
Can 2 bases support 2 tech fac, reactor fac, reactor port, and upgrade? What can 3 bases support? How many structure should I get more per base?
- When to take a third base ?
Should I take it as fast as possible ? or should I wait for a good position (tanks siege defending it, or enough unit producing structure?
- Who frequently plays mech ?
I've heard that Goody is like the panzer general (not seeing good performance from him lately though, no offense) Sterlock mechs with some success. Day9 said sjow plays mech; who else ?
Feel free to answer any question you want.
thanks in advance. also, this is my first thread woot woot!! :3
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You can get replays of Goody at dreamhack, but imo you've to look at the decision making only.
A lot of korean terrans go mech in tvt nowadays, like Nada vs Keen in the GSTL today.
Strelok does/did an interesting opening, 1rax FE into 1/1/1 bfh, and keeping the other T on his toes, but that seems hard to pull off, and there is a timing in which you are basically naked.
Imo if you want to start, you can use bfh drops, it'll don't put you behind if you don't lose your drop for nothing cause your hellions are gonna be useful in mid game.
I'm not sure, but I think that you can't sustain your reactor port + everything else, maybe with slower upgrades.
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Don't worry too much about reactors for hellions, as you can make them from Tech Labs (duh).
But usually, get at least 1 reactor for every 3 tech labs.
Also, haven't seen #320 yet but yay! he covers mech woohoo
Don't worry about things like when to take a third base... just play like a normal TvT, except you have more mobile ground (hellions) and usually stronger positioning (more tanks).
Rainbow and Yoda from GSL play mech.
Both SC and MVP used mech in their GSL a couple or so days back (tal'darim).
Get mostly hellions and tanks, and mix in some Thors later against Viking/air so they can't get free vision.
The mech opening I use right now is Rainbow's Thor Poke / Blue Flame Drop
You can see him doing this against Clide a couple seasons ago, on xel'naga, then Dual site, and i forget the last match.
Here's the build order:
12 rax
13 gas
15 OC
Make continuous marines here on out
Factory when you have 100 gas
2nd gas right after factory
Tech lab on Factory and Armory
2 hellions and BF
Thor + Starport
2 more hellions and a medivac
push with thor + marines, and drop 4 hellions into his base (rainbow usually drops first then pokes in with thor/marine)
You make a CC before you move out (or whenever you have enough minerals).
During all of this, you should also have enough to research Siege Mode, +1 attack Vehicle, and get a tech lab on your Starport for a Raven (if you choose not to stay in base to defend banshees, you can just let scvs die until your raven comes out and your thor returns home or wait for viking or etc. or even make a ebay/turret).
Make a 2nd factory and start churning out tanks from both factories, to be ready if your poke/drop fails and he is coming with his own tanks.
You can also pull some scvs out of gas during this (you can cut or delay upgrades like +1 attack) in order to get a faster OC, which will help you against banshees (scan) instead of waiting for your raven.
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Hi Boon. I'm a 1800 Terran player who enjoys meching in all matchups. I also specialize in TvT and TvP.
- What is a breed'n butter opening for mech ?
For TvT, I personally like a reaper expand into 4 fact/1port mech. It is VERY flexible, but prone to early allins (3 Rax Geiko). Generally, get a bunker up and feign defense with a tank, a bunker, and 3-4 marines. Also, I like 1-1-1 expand if it is close air position for banshee/raven opening or blue flame hellion harass. I have a replay that I just played that shows the power of mech against bio, even if you're at a disadvantage.
TvT Mech v Bio Replay
- How many unit producing structures should I aim for ?
Get 2 bases asap, mech doesn't work well with 1 base. With 2 bases, you can support 2 Facts with Techlabs, 1 Factory with Reactor, and 1 Starport. You can also support 1 Armory pumping upgrades. At 3,4,5 bases, you can support 1-2 Factories more, depending on how often you use scan vs MULE. You should have 2 armories at this point.
- When to take a third base ?
Generally, you should have enough minerals stored at this point to take a third around 10-11 minutes. If they are turtling hard or you have contained them, you can expand or double expand and begin to make turrets everywhere. Turrets are GOOD at denying drops. You will want to expand towards them, making bio play weaker because they have to attack towards your tank line, and making your defense stronger because you are defending your bases and you can supplement your army with PFs.
- Who frequently plays mech ?
Not too sure about this one... Goody, Strelock and Sjow are all I know  Me? ^_^ If you ever want to practice, then add me ingame.
First Post, so I hope its up to TL standards :/
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If you are looking at a way to do a build (in this case we're talking about mech), you have to design your unit composition based on minerals / gas.
In a traditional mech build you have your mineral dump (Blue flame hellions) and your gas dump (Thors and Tanks)
These units need to be built in a way to counter what units your enemy is making.
In TvZ (where mech is very strong) You build BF hellions to counter lings/blings and to counter attack into drone lines. You then build thors to counter mutas and some roaches, but you build more tanks to counter more roaches.
in TvP you would build BF hellions to counter zealots and to do counter attacks and spend gas on tanks/thors again. This match up does not work as well because of how resilient protoss units which leads to bio/mech style to use marines as your mineral dump and to use ghosts to emp those units which allow your tanks to deal a lot more damage.
in TvT, mech can work very well against tank/marine player. BF hellions murder marine lines when you get armor upgrades on them and thors can really soak up tank fire so you can get your tanks up to position.
If you really consider how you build your unit composition as mineral units and gas units you break things down so that you can build a good unit mixture.
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You mentioned the Daily from yesterday and I have to say that after trying.... Whosit's gas first build, the one where he goes banshee, raven, viking into mech play... I LOVE it. A couple things to note about it that I've noticed so far in my attempts to steal it, you do NOT want to lose the banshee. Fly in, pick off an add-on or a few scvs and a marine then gtfo. That banshee is the only thing that's going to save you if he hits you with early tanks, so you can't lose it. Second is, if you're on a close air positions map, you probably want to get the viking before the raven or you risk losing a lot of scvs to a counter banshee. The good news is that if you force a couple of missile turrets with the banshee, you're ahead because you didn't have to build them yourself. You can use the extra minerals to expand. And lastly, never never ever do this build if you're in some kind of close position map. Just don't. You can't hold a fast marine scv all in and you actually don't have the minerals to get a bunker up to defend it.
In the late mech phase of the game, this takes a lot of gas, so expand a lot, secure the gysers and use the spare minerals to get expendable hellions. You don't want to throw your hellions away outright, but it's worth it to lose a few to get good scouting info on the enemy position so that you can have siege tanks already seiged and waiting for him. Contain him to 2 bases and you win around 30 minutes. It's glorious.
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On July 08 2011 02:43 boon2537 wrote:Hi, I am a low master player who got inspired by Day9 Daily#320 to go mech in TvT. For the record, I never do full mech in any match up (mech sucks in TvP anyway). Although making this thread seems selfish and noobish since I might be able to figure it out through hours of replay analysis, I want this thread to be a good meching resource for everyone (there's not that much terran resources to begin with With an introduction out of the way, let the question listing begins !!
Glad you are taking the strategy forum as strategy and at the same time helping yourself with what you find difficult (if that makes sense).
- What is a breed'n butter opening for mech ? I've seen some sort of quick marine blueflame medvac push do wonder, or a quick banshee for some pressure. Both look good since beside those build, mech can't do any early pressure. Also, from Day9 Daily#320, a quick raven looks pretty good because it allows you to skip making engineer bay and turrets and use that saved mineral to get a faster expansion. Which one should I go for though, and, of course, please give me a build order or a replay
The banshee is a much better opinion in my Idea. TvT is heavily focused on map control, and getting an early banshee, with proper micro, allows you to get early map control and later on secure a good tank position, assuming you can keep the banshee alive until you can get that good position. The early raven/viking also stop your opponent from going banshee, and I believe that banshee expand is a solid way to open up in TvT for any unit composition, especially mech, since it gives you the starport and the factory.
I talked about the banshee giving you the ability to move forward with your tanks in the early game, but the raven gives you this advantage as well. Rain, in that game, used the raven's auto turrets to force the marines/hellions of his opponent away from his tanks, so that his tanks could secure a nice position and deny an expo for SjoW.
- How many unit producing structures should I aim for ?
Can 2 bases support 2 tech fac, reactor fac, reactor port, and upgrade? What can 3 bases support? How many structure should I get more per base?
2 bases (4 gas) give 500 gas per minute. A factory w/ tech lab making siege tanks is 170 or so gas per minute. Two is therefore 340, maybe a bit less (I don't remember the exact numbers). A reactor port (assuming you're producing vikings) is 215 gas per minute. If you're building medivacs for hellion drops, you are cutting into tank production by a huge amount. You can't actually support 2 fact/w TL and 1 port w/reac, but you can switch between making some tanks and a lot of vikings and some vikings and a lot of tanks depending on the situation.
In terms of minerals, assuming optimal mineral saturation (16 per base on minerals, between 16 to 24 is ~20 minerals per minute instead of 40, after 24 it's 0) you get 1280 minerals per minute. A factory w/reactor is 400 minerals per minute, a factory w/ tech lab is 200 minerals per minute (therefore 2 is 400), constant scv production is 350 minerals per minute, and 1 starport with reactor making vikings is 430 minerals per minute. Now, you may be thinking "400+400+430+350 is almost 1600 minerals per minute, and that's not even counting supply depot production!" (which if you're wondering is another 400 minerals per minute, but you're going to lose units so that lowers the amount of supply depots you have to make), but the one thing I didn't mention is MULEs. MULEs mine 180 minerals per minute. Two is therefore 360 minerals per minute, allowing you to just barely support all of that. The thing is, with supply depots in between, and trying to sneak a CC somewhere in there, you can't support it. Produce hellions only when you have spare minerals and you need them, as 4 hellions is the price of a command center.
- When to take a third base ?
Should I take it as fast as possible ? or should I wait for a good position (tanks siege defending it, or enough unit producing structure?
Wait until you have a decent position on the map. If you don't have a decent deployment, your opponent will be able to deny your expo with very little effort. Once you have at least an OK position with your tanks, get a CC. You'll want that third as quickly as possible, but you won't be able to get it without a solid tank line.
- Who frequently plays mech ?
I've heard that Goody is like the panzer general (not seeing good performance from him lately though, no offense) Sterlock mechs with some success. Day9 said sjow plays mech; who else ?
Feel free to answer any question you want.
thanks in advance. also, this is my first thread woot woot!! :3
I'm not sure of any who frequently plays mech, Goody invented/popularized the style but doesn't do all too well lately, SjoW is pretty good, strelok does some cool mech play, but you said all of those guys and I don't know of anyone else, sorry.
And grats on first thread, looks like a solid one.
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On July 08 2011 11:28 SheffiTB wrote:
The banshee is a much better opinion in my Idea.
hurr durr. I can't believe I didn't notice this when proofreading my comment before posting. You know what, I'm going to leave that up for the lolz.
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Just my 2 cents.
- What is a breed'n butter opening for mech ?
A common form for mech in TvT are
1/1/1 variants
Siege Expand
Blue flame hellion drop
Cloak Banshee
1 rax FE to 2 factory can be done but I'm not so clear on this since its primarily a TvZ build
Its also possible to do it from a 2 factory 2 port. When I mech with this variant, i get 2 facs 1 port instead and follow the style.
- How many unit producing structures should I aim for ?
From 2 bases, 4 factories, 3 tech 1 reactor. Approximately 2 tanks, 1 thor 2 hellions can be produced at a time.
- When to take a third base ?
It depends on your style of mech. For me, I'm very heavy on hellions, harassing and poking around. I expand for the 3rd quite quick. A defensive big ball style should expand as you push out in a SC BW TvP Style.
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Thanks for all responses guys
@Yoshi Kirishima - that build looks sexy. I'll have to try that out
@ChaoxTech - that's a solid first post, man. Anyway, how do you mech efficiently against protoss ? Protoss has WAY better production capability thanks to their warpgates. Unless you contain the protoss hard, I see no way of winning a long macro game with mech.
@DevanT - You are not really answering my questions. When you go mech, using hellions as mineral dump and spending gas on everything else are assumed. Thanks for your thought anyway
@Unwardil - I used to open banshee all the time. If all else fails, I can return back to that
@SheffiTB - your resources number crunching looks pretty nice. Also, banshee is always good
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Mech doesn't suck vP. It's just a totally different style of play. Rather than relying on the mobility and aggression MMMV offers, Mech play is oriented around positioning and forcing your opponent to make mistakes.
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On July 08 2011 03:00 ChaoxTech wrote:Hi Boon. I'm a 1800 Terran player who enjoys meching in all matchups. I also specialize in TvT and TvP. - What is a breed'n butter opening for mech ? For TvT, I personally like a reaper expand into 4 fact/1port mech. It is VERY flexible, but prone to early allins (3 Rax Geiko). Generally, get a bunker up and feign defense with a tank, a bunker, and 3-4 marines. Also, I like 1-1-1 expand if it is close air position for banshee/raven opening or blue flame hellion harass. I have a replay that I just played that shows the power of mech against bio, even if you're at a disadvantage. TvT Mech v Bio Replay- How many unit producing structures should I aim for ? Get 2 bases asap, mech doesn't work well with 1 base. With 2 bases, you can support 2 Facts with Techlabs, 1 Factory with Reactor, and 1 Starport. You can also support 1 Armory pumping upgrades. At 3,4,5 bases, you can support 1-2 Factories more, depending on how often you use scan vs MULE. You should have 2 armories at this point. - When to take a third base ? Generally, you should have enough minerals stored at this point to take a third around 10-11 minutes. If they are turtling hard or you have contained them, you can expand or double expand and begin to make turrets everywhere. Turrets are GOOD at denying drops. You will want to expand towards them, making bio play weaker because they have to attack towards your tank line, and making your defense stronger because you are defending your bases and you can supplement your army with PFs. - Who frequently plays mech ? Not too sure about this one... Goody, Strelock and Sjow are all I know Me? ^_^ If you ever want to practice, then add me ingame. First Post, so I hope its up to TL standards :/
What's your addy? I want to play
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On July 08 2011 13:46 The.Doctor wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2011 03:00 ChaoxTech wrote:Hi Boon. I'm a 1800 Terran player who enjoys meching in all matchups. I also specialize in TvT and TvP. - What is a breed'n butter opening for mech ? For TvT, I personally like a reaper expand into 4 fact/1port mech. It is VERY flexible, but prone to early allins (3 Rax Geiko). Generally, get a bunker up and feign defense with a tank, a bunker, and 3-4 marines. Also, I like 1-1-1 expand if it is close air position for banshee/raven opening or blue flame hellion harass. I have a replay that I just played that shows the power of mech against bio, even if you're at a disadvantage. TvT Mech v Bio Replay- How many unit producing structures should I aim for ? Get 2 bases asap, mech doesn't work well with 1 base. With 2 bases, you can support 2 Facts with Techlabs, 1 Factory with Reactor, and 1 Starport. You can also support 1 Armory pumping upgrades. At 3,4,5 bases, you can support 1-2 Factories more, depending on how often you use scan vs MULE. You should have 2 armories at this point. - When to take a third base ? Generally, you should have enough minerals stored at this point to take a third around 10-11 minutes. If they are turtling hard or you have contained them, you can expand or double expand and begin to make turrets everywhere. Turrets are GOOD at denying drops. You will want to expand towards them, making bio play weaker because they have to attack towards your tank line, and making your defense stronger because you are defending your bases and you can supplement your army with PFs. - Who frequently plays mech ? Not too sure about this one... Goody, Strelock and Sjow are all I know Me? ^_^ If you ever want to practice, then add me ingame. First Post, so I hope its up to TL standards :/ What's your addy? I want to play
Uh... ChaoxTech.538 and I have it on my profile I believe...
@Boom: Thanks, I really appreciate it. Didn't know if it was passable by TL standards
I have a weird unique style, but its going under heavy reworking and testing. Im trying to skipe marine openings altogether so I can open up with an even faster expansion, and an even faster 3rd + timing attack. But I'm having trouble with it... But so far I've been doing these things (I'll put up a thread on TvP mech in a bit, I just need some decent replays)
• Notes: So far, I open either 1-1-1 on smaller maps or non-Scrap/DQ/TDA. On larger maps or those three maps, I go for marine reactor expand. It comes out before 1gate expand and I have a good tempo lead as well.
•I go 1-3-1 in TvP and get a quick raven if they go for blink/DTs, and a fast double/triple bunker + siege setup against any 3-4 gate aggro. If they go for air, 2 thors plus continual reactored marines work well. Get ghosts fairly early, and 1-2 ravens for pdd turrets.
• 1 Rax w Tech lab for ghosts. Get reaper speed upgrade and pump out reapers after 4-5 ghosts.
• 2 Fact w Tech lab for tank/tank or thor/tank. 250mm and siege are necessary.
• 1 Fact w reactor for BFH. While you are at a sensitive position (est 8:45 to 9:45) push out4 hellions to deal damage to probe lines. Try to provoke an allin against robo You should have 1 ghost + 3 tanks with 3 filled bunkers if yiu do this right.
•1 starport for 2 dropships and 2 ravens, qfter that, abandon until you see mass air or your DS/raven dies.
•On 2 base, before you push and take a third, you shojld have (against a 3-4 gate robo player): 8 +tanks, 12 marines, 1 ghost with 2 emps, 1 raven with 2 pdds, 1 dropship with 4 hellions, 12+ other hellions for anti- zealot and 1 thor. Use tye thor as a anti stalker/colo unit.
•Engaging: Emp the stalkers and immortals. Hellions charge the zealots+stalkers, and lay down 2 pdds. Tanks focus down colo/immortal and thor aims for stalkers. You should come out with a decent number of units left. Immortal/ Colo are your targets. You do not have to follow. Just keep harassing with 3-4 BFH on all expos.
•after 3-4 expo, get 4 more facts with 2 Tl and 2 reactor. At 150 food, you should get 3 more OCs for insta min saturation, and use 16 scvs alomg with the push. Repair, set up turrets, make sensor towers. Slowww push to win. Get and emp phoenix that SHOULD come. Build PFs to hinder enemy movement. 5-6 ghosts are good. Start nuking, force army to move back, pushing out more.
•You should get +3/+3 by 18-20 minutes. The protoss will get stronger once they get upgrades. Rqvens and EMP become infinitely more powerful. Use thors to lock down colo. If you see HT, begin to emp your own thors at 100+ energy.
Thats my current strategy in a nutshell. Hope you like it!
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After looking for different openers quite a lot I've settled on a gas first variation, insipired by rainbow vs sjow and a marineking vs gumiho series (you can find it on sc2rep.com, posted 7/5).
It's basically 12 gas-13rax-16oc+factory-1marine -> TL barracks -> lift racks build port on rax -> make hellion to scout opponent (keep it alive! you need it for map control) -> 2nd gas on 1/3 port - banshee -> raven
Important is that you dont scv scout else you can't afford fact + oc at 16 supply. You need to keep your banshee alive as stated before, especially against early siege play. I only make 4-5 marines from my barracks, using them to fend off early agression like banshees.
From there on you need to use the intel from your banshee to make decisions about when to take natural. The standard production layout has been well illustrated by chaos & sheffi, and one cannot emphasize enough that you need position to establish your 3rd.
A few key elements of meching mid/lategame are:
*Get as much vision as possible, hellions are the fastest units in the matchup -> use them to control towers and poke around looking for expansions. You should ideally have hellions active constantly.
*Barracks are your friends. They are cheap, don't cost supply & give you vision. Lots and Lots of vision. Late-late game I've had as many as 10 barracks floating about, and dayum it's awesome.
If you think you can't afford it, think of every barracks as 1 perma scan that's actually cheaper then a real scan (if you have enough expos so enough mineral patches that is ^^).
*As soon as you have position/are choking off your opponent from more expos you need to expand. Overexpand for all I care, if i can contain my opponent for 5 ish minutes I'll be up 4 or so bases.
*I really like adding a techlad starport on 3 bases, enabling raven & banshee production and quicker viking build up if required.
*I use only OC's as expos. My thought process is that the only way to fight vs mech is to go mech or to make marauders. Against both a planetary will be nigh useless (maras just insta kill it and tanks outrange it, hellions can sit behind mineral lines and still kill all your workers/stop all mining). (I'd love some more thoughts about this )
*And last, but not least, bc's are awesomesauce. They make me want to smoke a pipe!
Oh and note that you don't have to rush for siege mode, if you pump hellions with blueflame and keep your initial banshee alive you should have map control and can just fry the marines midmap & proceed to pick off tanks with your banshee protected by raven&vikings.
Hmm that's a long post, hope it helps & hope this thread leads to some stable ideas about meching! If anyone on EU is looking for mid masters 30 minute tvt's (or variable opening practice), pm me!
edit- show/sjow, whats in a name!
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@OP you're in masters and you're watching day9 instead of GSL? come on....everyone and his brother is going mech in TvT these days!
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@DanielC ... I watch Day9 and haven't watched GSL... And I'm also in masters...
Kay, enough rage from me. Adding to the discussion:
•You want to make cloaked banshees and as schwopzi said, fill the map with barracks. They are a great mineral sink late game, and can really help you. Its almost like a maphack (or obsevers) Eventually, you can just drop them and literally wall off points of the map, in which you can buy time to resiege up against their marine tank, bio, or straight mech.
Vs MT: +1 armor before atk. Marines are the major dps dealers, and in keeping up with armor, you can burn off more marines. Use their mobility against them. If they are so mobile, you want to abuse that. Lay ambushes, drop all over, place siege lines in common points. But make sure they can never get a good spread+setup on your base.
vs Bio: Upgrades on atk. Each tank shot does more splash, more dead units. Mm is fragile and you want to strategize against that fragility. THREATEN him with forced engagements. Siege up on their line and slowly creep up with turrets, hellions and banshees. Banshees are GReAT for bio, you force scans, you force stim, and you waste medi energy. Also, you can kill off unwary opponents with a few patrolled banshees along attack rOutes. Basically, you want a good spread of units. PDD affects maraduers so use them. Turret up to prevent drops.
vs Mech:
This is by far the hardest imo. You NEED. Better engagements, better harass, and better strategy. Again, use that immobility to benefit you. Wall off around proxy bases and begin to mass expand. Be defensive to have that 'defenders advantage' but try to take alot of SPACE. the more area you cover, the more attack paths you own, and the more you can starve him. MvM is a war of attriction. Use that.
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@ Chaox. To each his own, some people just like figuring out their own builds I guess. I'm just lazy and don't fancy reinventing the wheel when it has already been practiced by the top gamers of the world.
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On July 08 2011 13:25 mbr2321 wrote:
Mech doesn't suck vP. It's just a totally different style of play. Rather than relying on the mobility and aggression MMMV offers, Mech play is oriented around positioning and forcing your opponent to make mistakes.
I think mech is insanely hard TvP because
1) hellions do not counter zealots a they should; they die too quickly to collosus/chargelots/storms and whatnot
2) Your production takes FOREVER to reinforce. Even if you trade armies with toss his first warp-in chargelots will kill your leftovers/reinforcement
3) chargelots are so cost efficient vs mech
4) stargate tech
5) No mobility at all - in contrast the P colossus ball is very mobile, which makes for very fragile play.
In other matchups mech is great, although marines are kind-of a must in TvZ imho unless its close positions.
TvT it is really good and you'll see alot of players use mech in their play.
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@DanielC: i guess. But I don't like using GSL builds because everyone knows them already. It's much better to create your own build, 1 to have your own unique timings, and 2, to have some sort of advantage against your opponent when they go the standard GSL mech. They don't necessarily know what you are going, and you know what they are going. I think it's a preference of psychology v straight up macro.
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EPT
