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This topic has somewhat been discussed in a previous thread, but didn't really answer my questions regarding the subject.
So today I did a test and found out that having medivacs in the same control group as your marines and marauders is actually really ineffective. The reason for this is that when you apply the stutter step technique, which you often do in TvP, you interrupt the healing wave from your medivacs every time you "stutter", which reduces the healing/time and thus the effectiveness of your medivacs. This occurs regardless of which stutter step technique you use: 1) Move+A, 2) Move+Stop and 3) Move+Hold position. (let me know if there are other ways).
Possible solutions:
1. Medivacs on a seperate hotkey: Personally I don't think this is viable for most people. Stutter stepping and controlling vikings in a TvP engagement is quite micro intensive. Having to move your medivacs in tact with your bio as they move... I don't know.
2. Not having medivacs on a hotkey and using "A" (attack) or "M" (move) + shift click to follow your bio: If you select a medivac and right click on a marine it will pick up the marine. Now, as I'm sure a lot of you guys know, if you A click or M click one of your own units, the medivac will follow that unit around until it dies. If you A or M + shift click a bunch of your own units, then all of those units will have to die for your medivacs to stop following.
With this technique you get a lot better healing effectiveness while stutter stepping since your medivacs aren't in the same control group as your bio. The cons, imo, are: 1) Every time you get a new medivac you have to shift click your bio., 2) It is quite likely that the units that you shift clicked will die at some point, resulting in your medivacs not following your bio. and 3) When your medivacs are on "follow" or "attack", they move a lot more bunched up and are a lot more vulnerable to storms, fungal, thors ... any kind of AoE. A small benefit is that it is more difficult for your enemy to assess your medivac count and possibly more difficult to feedback - but I haven't tested this.
Now, forgive me if all this is very obvious and I'm the only terran player who hasn't figured this out. I'm interested to hear how other terrans, especially pro players, have solved this. And before you go "this isn't actually a big deal", I kind of disagree.
I did a lot of testing and the difference in healing effectiveness while stutter stepping + having your medivacs in the same ctrl group as you bio VS not having them in the same control group is quite substantial.
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This was a topic that bugged me for a while and I had completely decided on having medvacs on a separate hotkey and using A-move on my bio to have them follow. However, once I got higher up in masters I had the problem of my medvacs lagging behind my bio if I wanted to retreat and started having them get picked off by stalkers. I'm sure that problem could be mitigated by better control but then you are losing some of the healing anyway. I finally decided to go back to having bio and medvacs on the same hotkey for 2 reasons. The first is the one above that I mentioned. The other is that the majority of the time in large battles it is more advantageous to be kiting back certain parts of your army rather than the entire army at once. Thus you will be selecting the bio manually and the healing wont be a problem. This is the conclusion that I have come to but I am really interested to hear the opinions of professional terrans.
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On February 24 2012 03:56 smaug81243 wrote:
The other is that the majority of the time in large battles it is more advantageous to be kiting back certain parts of your army rather than the entire army at once.
I definetely agree on that. That is the reason why I don't consider this an issue in TvZ with marines vs banelings, because it is in most cases better to move small portions of your marine army manually rather than moving all of your marines at the same time.
As for TvP. I would say moving small portions of your bio manually is something you do when you want to make a trade or actually are able to overpower the Protoss army. In my opinion, this scenario only occurs when you're ahead. In an equal fight, Terran has to kite and move back in a "retreat" mode.
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Hmm, I havn't played Terran since Beta properly and I always remember having this problem. Was actually a big reason I never kept playing Terran.
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On February 24 2012 04:13 Verrano wrote:
As for TvP. I would say moving small portions of your bio manually is something you do when you want to make a trade or actually are able to overpower the Protoss army. In my opinion, this scenario only occurs when you're ahead. In an equal fight, Terran has to kite and move back in a "retreat" mode.
I wish I had a recent replay to post that shows the advantages of doing this in tvp. It really helps in avoiding storms and in developing a concave in the sense that you aren't clumping your units into 1 giant ball when doing this. But yes, there certainly are times when it is better to kite with all of it (lots of chargelots and/or lots of colossi).
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On February 24 2012 04:13 Verrano wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2012 03:56 smaug81243 wrote:
The other is that the majority of the time in large battles it is more advantageous to be kiting back certain parts of your army rather than the entire army at once. I definetely agree on that. That is the reason why I don't consider this an issue in TvZ with marines vs banelings, because it is in most cases better to move small portions of your marine army manually rather than moving all of your marines at the same time. As for TvP. I would say moving small portions of your bio manually is something you do when you want to make a trade or actually are able to overpower the Protoss army. In my opinion, this scenario only occurs when you're ahead. In an equal fight, Terran has to kite and move back in a "retreat" mode.
The reason for kiting with part of your army is so that the rest of your army is for sure doing maximum dps.
While healing while stutter stepping is nice, I don't feel like it would win me games I would need to see some evidence, nothing says that medivacs would even target the units that are being attacked after you blow a stim anyways
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On February 24 2012 04:58 OriginalBeast wrote:
The reason for kiting with part of your army is so that the rest of your army is for sure doing maximum dps.
While healing while stutter stepping is nice, I don't feel like it would win me games I would need to see some evidence, nothing says that medivacs would even target the units that are being attacked after you blow a stim anyways
Yes, I know why you sometimes kite with part of your army. Let's not get into a discussion about when this is most advantageous as it doesn't really matter in respect to the problem with medivacs I describe in the original post.
Let's just say that sometimes it is in fact better to kite with your whole army.
You can easily test it yourself on a custom map like Unit Test Map. Create a standard TvP army, stim your MM and kite. Compare the healing when the medivacs are in the same group as your bio vs. when they are not.
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Medvacs still have a chance to not be targeting units that are under attack because your whole army is damaged from stim, other than that I definately agree with you
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On February 24 2012 05:29 OriginalBeast wrote:
Medvacs still have a chance to not be targeting units that are under attack because your whole army is damaged from stim, other than that I definately agree with you
I'm not saying that you can somehow make your medivacs heal the units that are targeted and being attacked.
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Select actually has his Medivacs on a separate hotkey. It's actually a lot better since you don't stop healing when you're stutter stepping. Takes up some apm to move (1a2a as opposed to 1a) but shouldn't be too hard.
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On February 24 2012 05:45 K3Nyy wrote:
Select actually has his Medivacs on a separate hotkey. It's actually a lot better since you don't stop healing when you're stutter stepping. Takes up some apm to move (1a2a as opposed to 1a) but shouldn't be too hard.
Except you also need to have vikings and ghosts in sepperate groups so it's 1a2a3a4a if you even have the keybinds.
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If you A or M + shift click a bunch of your own units, then all of those units will have to die for your medivacs to stop following.
The last dozen times I tested this after people made claims on TL and Reddit, it wasn't true. If you shift-A-click several bio units, the medivac will move through the whole queue, follow only the last unit, and stop following once that single unit dies. Thus shift-queuing medivacs to multiple bio is at best no better than A-clicking to follow a single unit, and at worst a colossal waste of micro.
I would love to know if it's been patched, but I doubt it. : / I searched in vain for a better medivac solution like 6 months ago, and ended up just putting my medivacs in the group with my army, like everybody else.
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i got some trouble with it as well... since you haven't found a solution for this problem, i'd like to hear some master player or pro insights to this issue. i personal feel much stronger when i let the medivacs follow my army cuz the ball won't be that clumped and splitting seems to be easier. but do you have to attack move every single medivac to let them follow your army...? isn't there a more comfortable way?
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On May 02 2012 21:25 aXel92 wrote:
i got some trouble with it as well... since you haven't found a solution for this problem, i'd like to hear some master player or pro insights to this issue. i personal feel much stronger when i let the medivacs follow my army cuz the ball won't be that clumped and splitting seems to be easier. but do you have to attack move every single medivac to let them follow your army...? isn't there a more comfortable way?
AveSharia is right in the least that you can't queue your medivacs onto your bio units to have them follow you, you just have to attack move them onto one unit and make sure to keep them on a target if the unit dies/gets picked up by medivac.
Personally I just have them in the same group, but the OP is right, if you can have them in a seperate group, the healing is a lot better(whilst the medivacs get even easier picked off while kiting).
In any case, splitting shouldn't be at all harder/easier one way or the other, it's just all about the healing efficiency, which is awesome addition if you can afford the micro. For someone below masters, I'm pretty sure it's just easiest to have it in the same group with the MMM.
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It's not just healing efficiency, but also the ability to keep medivacs behind your army rather than have them fly ahead, making them last longer before they start lagging behind if you're kiting with just your units. And of course they don't actually have to lag behind if you have the APM to move them back in time.
Of course, if pros consider the above too difficult to execute in matches, then obviously it's too much for me as well, and I'll just stick with having them on the same hotkey as my army...
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back to my question: do you really have to attack move every single medivac on your army?
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On February 24 2012 03:41 Verrano wrote:
If you A or M + shift click a bunch of your own units, then all of those units will have to die for your medivacs to stop following.
People keep saying this, but as far as I can tell, it just isn't true.
Try it out. The medivac goes to each one until it reaches the end of the queue, then follows that one unit.
Edit: Meh, ninja'd.
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On May 02 2012 21:55 aXel92 wrote:
back to my question: do you really have to attack move every single medivac on your army?
If you want them to follow your army rather than just heal anything in closest vicinity, then yes.
And answering the guy just after my pervious reply: Before the fight you can reposition them, but in middle of the fight repositioning them will loose the healing efficiency making it basically just as good to have them with your army.
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i probably go back to putting them in my bio control group... attack moving every new medivac on you army requires quite a lot multitasking if you're dropping, upgrading etc at the same time... :/
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EPT
