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Zerg versus Terran: Base Design
Introduction
Terran players have made comebacks with marine drops since the dawn of Starcraft 2, even if the Zerg player was far ahead. These comebacks have become more and more common with Mutalisks phasing out and Infestors becoming the go-to midgame unit. It is time to step up and start planning your placement of buildings and defenses so you can keep that advantage.
This post is some of my own research on defending drops, if you defend drops differently or you don't agree with some part in the guide, please join the discussion! I and all the other zergs that read the strategy section can only get better understanding from a legit discussion around this topic 
I also posted this on my blog, so if you want to view this in a different layout, check out: http://raa-media.nl/blog/starcraft2/zvt-base-design
Minerals, your biggest friend and greatest foe
As a Zerg player, you have got to love a nice high drone count. The income they generate when they are evenly spread across three or more bases is amazing. The only caveat though, is that the mineral line might be one of the most hostile enviroments for them to be. Littered with chokes, giving dropped units a nice barrier to shoot from to destroy your economy you have worked so hard for.
Even with a decent Zergling force, a single Marine that is parked between two mineral patches with a Medivac healing him will tank so much damage that his friends will be far more cost efficient than they ought to be. Add in an unfortunately placed Spawning Pool and Spire and a large push and you're in for a frustrating comeback where the Terran levels out your economy and will overwhelm you with a later push.
While this problem is fairly obvious, most haven't really gone in depth with their base design. Of course a design is variable based on the map and the expansion, but there is no excuse to just randomly plant buildings around and later on find yourself in a terrible position.
Planning tech buildings
In the early stages of the game, it hardly matters where you place your Spawning pool. The placement gets a lot more important after Medivacs come into play. It has been getting quite popular in the lategame for the Terran to drop in the Zergs main and hunt for that Spawning pool. Thus, you should build your Spawning pool away from the easiest or closest place to drop. While this doesn't ensure that the pool will never go down, it gives you a lot more time to respond.
You should never want to make chokes or hard to reach places in your base since pretty much all of the Terran units that are used in drops ( Marines and Marauders with Medivac support, Hellions ) get extremely cost efficient the more you funnel your Zerglings and drones. So don't place your Evolution chambers, or frankly any 3x3 building behind your mineral line since it limits the movement of your Zerglings and drones.
The biggest nono is putting your 3x3 buildings between your Extractor and hatchery. This limits your drones fleeing options and makes it easier to snipe them. It is generally not advised to place any buildings ( aside from maybe spines and spores ) on the bottom side of the hatchery. This forces larvae away and you might create pockets between buildings where larvae collect. Building units from them will tie up your supply while the eggs might never spawn. Or in the worst case, spawn an Ultralisk that can only twist around like the saddest ballerina-zoo animal ever built.
Knowing is half the battle
Of course the easiest way of fending off drops is having your army in the base that is being dropped. The only way to respond quickly to a drop is having overlords spread around the perimeters of your bases and keep bases and xel naga towers scouted with Zerglings.
There is no reason to have your overlords lazily bunched together in some remote corner behind your base. They don't serve any other role there. Fanning them around the edges of your bases will give you minimap vision of drops flying around and even warn you if they unload Marines away from your mineral line in your base rather than being surprised when the Marines are already murdering your drones.
Doing this gives you more than enough time to relocate your army in a calmer game. Not having defenses in place in a really hectic game will result in your army being pulled around like a pingpong ball though, which will keep you in your bases and will make you miss timings. This is the number one reasons drops are so good, because against an unprepared Zerg it will not only do damage economically, but keep the Terran save by having the Zerg army in a non-threatening position long enough to relocate tank lines or retake Xel naga towers. If we want to maintain the ability to attack the Terran, we need defenses in our bases beforehead.
Why not Sporecrawler?
So there has been a depressingly low amount of Sporecrawlers against Terran, which seems rather weird to me. Sporecrawlers hold a couple of advantages over Spinecrawlers, namely:
- They have more HP than Spinecrawlers
- They zone out and kill unmicroed Medivacs, trapping the Marines for your units to kill
- They are cheaper
- They relocate faster, so you can have a fluid drop defense that constantly changes
- They detect cloaked units
The first listed advantage is a clear advantage against unmicroed drops, because the Marines will take a longer time killing off the Sporecrawler compared to a single Spinecrawler. Buying you more time to move your army, or part of it, over to deal with the drop.
The second advantage is the most important one in the list. Because of their great range, Sporecrawlers can make sure Marines aren't dropped right between the minerals or behind your mineral line. Not only does this prevent the Terran from getting the sweetspot between the minerals to have maximum costefficiency, but it will keep the Medivac away from the Marines if they decide to attack the mineral line anyway. This makes the Marines a lot easier to kill.
The best part is unmicroed drops, which consist of a large percentage of the drops Terran does during a large push. It takes a single Sporecrawler about 10 shots to kill a Medivac, roughly 8 ingame seconds. With a Queen helping out, this gets reduced to about 5 ingame seconds. If the Terran shift-drops the Marines in range of a Sporecrawler, he will have very little time to respond, often resulting in a Medivac kill and some stranded Marines. Medivacs are the real prize here, Marines aren't worth jack to the Terran. Reducing the Medivac count will force the Terran later in the game to choose between refilling the count or make vikings to fight Broodlords, either choice could change the outcome of the game drastically.
The next two advantages are neglible, since saving a couple of minerals isn't all that important later in the game ( 100 minerals saved if you make 4 spores instead of 4 spines ). Changing defense layout is much faster and easier with Sporecrawlers considering they burrow much faster. This can be used effectively against Terrans that change up their drop paths. Since most of the ones that have a gameplan change it around if a Medivac got sniped at a certain position. They might still do unmicroed drops, but while dropping in a different, crawlerless location. Naturally if you change the Sporecrawler placements around between drops, you can punish a Terran that doesn't pay much attention during the drops.
And lastly, the detection range of a Sporecrawler is another obvious benefit, and makes it much easier to deal with Banshee tech switches or cloaked Ghosts nuking your bases. While this might not occur often, knowing for sure that you can take out a Ghost before a nuke lands because you already have detection on the spot is a huge stress relief.
Spinecrawlers and units
Now after that overglorification of the Sporecrawler ( Let's face it, it has nothing on Turrets or cannons, but atleast it can uproot and run to a corner to sob contemplating where did he go wrong in life. ), we can talk about Spinecrawlers and a good standing army to keep in your bases.
Spinecrawlers aren't as great versus drops as you may think. A single Spinecrawler can hardly take down a Marine when it is being healed by a Medivac, let alone tank long enough for to kill a Marine when the whole squad is attacking it at the same time. If a Marauder is dropped first, it might not even kill anything. Spinecrawlers are most effective if two of them can attack the same unit at the same time, but that drastically reduces the area in which the Spinecrawlers are costefficient compared to a Sporecrawler.
However, having Spinecrawlers in certain locations can be more effective than placing Sporecrawlers there, especially in the case of frontal defense. Keeping a couple of Spinecrawlers in the front will delay Siegetank pushes and will prevent a small squad of Marines to sprint forward and try to snipe a few Infestors. Sporecrawlers won't have the same delaying effect against a frontal attack since they would only effect air units.
The unit composition that we are looking for in a drop defense is either something that can move between bases quickly, something that is costeffective and doesn't hold up a lot of supply. Zerglings have the least supply of the entire Zerg race and are the fastest to respond to a drop. Banelings don't have a lot of supply held up either, and can deal a lot of damage to the overall Marine group, but they can't respond quickly if they aren't in the base already. Infestors can hit both air and ground but aren't very mobile. Ultralisks don't have a lot of supply ( at only 6 ) and are relatively fast, but they aren't that great against the regular old Marine drop. Instead, these are one of the only units that are good against Auto-Turret spam because of their high armour, while Zerglings would fall quickly.
Zerglings
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Zerglings are pretty much the go-to unit for defending Marine drops. Keeping aroung 10 back in your base will scare off drops and given a good surround will kill off a few Marines, enough to get the punch out of a drop. Zerglings require decent upgrades to be effective against drops however, so keeping up on upgrades with the Terran is a given. Adrenal glands is the ultimate drop-killer for Zerglings, because the upgrade allows Zerglings to out-damage the healing of a Medivac easily. Get this upgrade in the lategame, there really is no reason to not get it in this match up once it goes past Hive tech.
Zerglings are obviously lackluster when funneled through a small crack, so plugging some of the cracks between the minerals with Zerglings will prevent the Marines from easily walking into those sweetspots. Following the Medivac around with them is also great if you want an instant surround or otherwise scare off the drop from even touching the ground, make sure to do an attack move if the Terran does decide to drop though.
Banelings
+ Show Spoiler +In the event of an unmicroed drop, Banelings are your biggest friend. With their instant splash damage they can dismantle a whole Marine squad easily. Banelings, other than Zerglings, are best kept away from a drop until it has fully unloaded. Keeping them away from your mineral line or the easiest drop path is a must if you don't want them all tanked by single Marines dropping on top of them. When the Marines stim in, charging over the creep or into your mineral line, you can send in your Banelings. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HQvoG.png) This forces the Terran to either micro his drop, leaving less time for him to micro a frontal attack, macro or other drops, or to easily all the Marines. The most effective amount of Banelings against single Marine drops are about 4, since even unmicroed drops will take out one before they have closed in. The Banelings won't hit all of the Marines in most circumstances either. It doesn't hurt to keep a few more if the Terran ever feels bold enough to do a double drop, but I'd say 4 is the minimum.
Infestors
+ Show Spoiler +Aside from the easiest drop defense, Mutalisks, Infestors can be considered the best way of dealing with drops effectively. While they lack the mobility of Zerglings and Mutalisks, they make up for it with freezing splash damage for only an energy cost. They do need back up however, although a few Zerglings will often suffice for that. Fungal growth has two distinct uses here. One of them is the obvious fungal on top of the fully unloaded Marines to deal damage across the squad. Two fungals will always kill all but one of the Marines if the fungals hit home. A Medivac healing make sure one of the Marines live, but a few Zerglings or even a Queen would deal with that effectively. The other use is to pin a Medivac, preventing its escape. Full energy Infestors can dish out two fungals and two Infested Terrans each, so you must plan these abilities out if you want to dish out the maximum amount of damage. If there is no other anti-air around, you should lob the Infested Terrans in front of the Medivac before fungalling. This gives the Infested Terrans time to spawn and dish out damage. If there is anti air around, like the Medivac has flown into Sporecrawler range, you can just fungal. The rapid rate of fire of a Sporecrawler is more than enough to kill a Medivac that is fungalled twice. If you time it well, and the Medivac has flown through one or two Sporecrawler volleys before you fungal it, you only need a single fungal to take it down.
Ultralisks
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Granted, these are a bit of a niche, but a single fully upgraded Ultralisk is the best line of defense against auto-turret spam by Raven flocks in the late-late game. The high armour will reduce the damage output of the Turrets to two damage per shot. With a transfuse or two this will clear out an Auto-Turret field without the loss of a hatchery if no target firing is in place.
Ultralisks are also atleast decent against other types of drops. But you would obviously prefer them in your army over keeping them in your bases. You're better off keeping other units in your base unless you meet heavy Raven play.
Queens
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These are actually much more valuable in the lategame considering they allow expensive units to be healed for only 50 energy. Since they are also needed for larvae production, these should generally only be used as support. Unless you find the Medivac just skirting out in the open air where your Queen can take potshots at it, you're better off just transfusing targetted hatcheries or tech structures to buy time for the rest of the army to arrive. Never engage a drop that is fully unloaded with a Queen, you'll only lose production and hardly damage the Medivac.
Hellion harass defense
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Mech is one of the toughest styles to play against because of the Hellions. A Meching player often relies on a strong 2 or 3 base timing attack to hit before Hive tech and Broodlords are out. The killing of drones by Hellion runby's is the hinge that makes Mech work.
The biggest problem with Hellion runby's is that even if you barricade your bases up with Spinecrawlers, a large enough pack can still drive in and focus on your drones. Your primary objective is to keep your drones alive so you don't have to replendish it with precious larvae. The best way of going about doing this is planting Spinecrawlers behind your mineral line and infront of your hatchery. This won't deflect the hellions, but will atleast keep them relatively at bay so they won't drive in freely.
Burrow only serves to delay a Terran by making them waste a scan. By far the best way of saving drones in this case is researching Overlord Drops. Since you already should want to abuse the immobility of the Mech army, this might have been on your to-do list. Loading up drones so the Hellions can't even attack them is another major benefit. This works so well against Mech because of the lack of Marines to kill off the Overlords.
Overlords keep your drones safe regardless of Hellion driveby's or drops, and can even allow you to safely transfer your drones to and from bases without risking losing them to stray Hellions. Every drone that you save in this way is larvae and minerals saved that will make the Mech push much easier to deal with. So even if you plan on not dropping the Terran, please research the drop upgrade if only to save your drones from barbeque hell.
Conclusion
While this guide might not be as thorough or vast as the others I have made, I hope Zergs will atleast think about where to place their buildings and decide to actively improve their play versus dropping Terrans. Go out there and try out your own baselayouts and share them with others so that we might eventually get optimal base layouts that proves to be much more effective than others. As always, thanks for reading and good luck.
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Try more then 2 spines, they work.
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The 3x3 buildings positions at extractor and mineral line is to prevent and help disable hellion runbyes n_n!
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In the late game i usually have 3 spores and 1-2 spines in my bases that are "furthest out"(my main & my 4th-5th). This usually shuts down the drops completely even if the terran drops with more than one medivac.
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I agree. So many games lost by drops dealing unreasonably heavy damage.
Some spores at the edges could help, but wouldn't mutalisk or corruptor patrols be more eficient?
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I dont agree with placing the spawning pool behind the mineral line. Doing this, if drops reach it, you basically created another choke point for marines. It's not always possible to intercept the drop before it reached ur mineral line. I place my pool right in the middle of the base. After all, it's the less likely place to be dropped since drops will come from either the back or the side of your base. And if marines wants to kill you pool, they need to expose themself in a wide open space where lings will take them down.
About spines and spores, i've seen stephano recently making spore rings around his bases. If you choose to do that, the terran can still decide to lose his medivac and drop. If you dont have units there, he's free to kill spores for the next drop to come. What i do personnally is that I place some spines into my mineral line and around my hatchery (like 3-4) + one well placed spore so that if the marines engage the spines, the spore will kill the medivac and thus the spores can kill the marines (or most of them). That way, most of the time, when my units arrive, the drop "only" killed 2-3 spines and i never lose drones (except for the new spines ofc.)
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Hi! nice guide, I pretty much like it. I definitely agree about the sporecrawler part; It is quite efficient to shut down drops. It is a bit situational, in the sense that it depends on the location of the mineral line. I would basically make a distinction between bases where the drop has to be done on the mineral line itself, and the others: in the first case, access to the mineral line is denied by only one spore (for instance, on metalopolis, your natural and symetrical (fourth). in those cases, I really believe it's imperative to get spores, as these are often also positions where the terran may play on low ground /high ground positions to improve his drop.
When the area to cover is larger, it's a bit harder to cover the surface. Yet, if you have creep, it's much cheaper and efficient to plant down 3 or 4 spores to make a wall to protect the whole base area (like in main base on metalopolis), than having to plant down like 6 or 7 spines around the hatch, and find out that there is still a hole somewhere, or that only two spines will actually hit marines, as the others are on the other side of the hatch.
I would disagree, on the contrary, about your building placement. Not that I want to spawning pool to be back at the mineral line. This is definitely not a good idea, especially as run bys don't really happen so much.
But I think that the right place to put them is on the path between main and natural (for early buildings) and on the path between 2nd and 3rd bases (for later buildings). This makes two things:
1. it diminishes the whole area to cover for defense, as these spaces have to be under control anyway, whereas the lower part of your base doesn't necessarily have to be. Think about it, if you circle the whole area to cover, one objective of simcity would probably to make it as small as possible.
2. it shortens the way when you have to bring your units back for defense. maybe by one or two seconds only, but it can help to save the buildings.
I think these two things apply to drops, but also for air harass, be it voids or banshees.
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On June 03 2012 18:33 Facultyadjutant wrote:
The 3x3 buildings positions at extractor and mineral line is to prevent and help disable hellion runbyes n_n!
While they do tend to work if the hellions just run in, if they are dropped and your drones retreat, they all line up. I don't need to tell you what happens next. In my natural I do try to wall off against hellion runby's, but otherwise a single queen hold positioned in the middle of the ramp prevents hellion runby's just fine in my opinion .
On June 03 2012 18:49 FireOfDarklight wrote:
I agree. So many games lost by drops dealing unreasonably heavy damage.
Some spores at the edges could help, but wouldn't mutalisk or corruptor patrols be more eficient?
Sporecrawlers don't cost any gas or supply. This means your standing army can be much stronger compared to when you devoted precious gas and supply to defend your bases with patrolling units. 3 Mutalisks patrolling ( which is the least I would devout to a drop defense, less than that will have the Medivac flying into bases and dropping marines before it gets sniped, giving the drop free Mutalisks as a bonus ) is enough supply for an extra Ultralisk in your army.
Sporecrawlers also allow you to be bold with counter attacks when the terran decides to drop multiple bases because his standing army is smaller than yours, since his supply is tied up in drops. Which is why Ultralisks work so well in a drop heavy lategame, their speed is great for a quick run to a terran base to do some damage as well. Whereas Broodlords can only really be used to bang in the army head on since they are so sluggish.
On June 03 2012 18:51 Natalya wrote:
I dont agree with placing the spawning pool behind the mineral line. Doing this, if drops reach it, you basically created another choke point for marines. It's not always possible to intercept the drop before it reached ur mineral line. I place my pool right in the middle of the base. After all, it's the less likely place to be dropped since drops will come from either the back or the side of your base. And if marines wants to kill you pool, they need to expose themself in a wide open space where lings will take them down.
Yeah I didn't see that when I first made the picture >.> It is a pretty stupid error to make on my part. Just saying I agree with you
On June 03 2012 18:51 Natalya wrote:
About spines and spores, i've seen stephano recently making spore rings around his bases. If you choose to do that, the terran can still decide to lose his medivac and drop. If you dont have units there, he's free to kill spores for the next drop to come. What i do personnally is that I place some spines into my mineral line and around my hatchery (like 3-4) + one well placed spore so that if the marines engage the spines, the spore will kill the medivac and thus the spores can kill the marines (or most of them). That way, most of the time, when my units arrive, the drop "only" killed 2-3 spines and i never lose drones (except for the new spines ofc.)
I tend to keep units around in my base, if only a few, to clean up the marines that try to clean up the spores. It's cheaper than building Spines in my opinion since you don't have to rebuild them if there are units around to clean up the stranded marines.
On June 03 2012 18:55 Macpo wrote:I would disagree, on the contrary, about your building placement. Not that I want to spawning pool to be back at the mineral line. This is definitely not a good idea, especially as run bys don't really happen so much. But I think that the right place to put them is on the path between main and natural (for early buildings) and on the path between 2nd and 3rd bases (for later buildings). This makes two things: 1. it diminishes the whole area to cover for defense, as these spaces have to be under control anyway, whereas the lower part of your base doesn't necessarily have to be. Think about it, if you circle the whole area to cover, one objective of simcity would probably to make it as small as possible. 2. it shortens the way when you have to bring your units back for defense. maybe by one or two seconds only, but it can help to save the buildings . I think these two things apply to drops, but also for air harass, be it voids or banshees.
That is actually a very interesting approach. So what you are suggesting is putting the tech buildings on one big clump in the middle of your main so you can more easily defend them all without spreading spinecrawler and sporecrawlers around the base? Since your main is mined out pretty fast, this does seem like a pretty well thought out approach! I'll try that next time Thanks for your comment
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sorry double post
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On June 03 2012 19:05 Chaosvuistje wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2012 18:55 Macpo wrote:I would disagree, on the contrary, about your building placement. Not that I want to spawning pool to be back at the mineral line. This is definitely not a good idea, especially as run bys don't really happen so much. But I think that the right place to put them is on the path between main and natural (for early buildings) and on the path between 2nd and 3rd bases (for later buildings). This makes two things: 1. it diminishes the whole area to cover for defense, as these spaces have to be under control anyway, whereas the lower part of your base doesn't necessarily have to be. Think about it, if you circle the whole area to cover, one objective of simcity would probably to make it as small as possible. 2. it shortens the way when you have to bring your units back for defense. maybe by one or two seconds only, but it can help to save the buildings . I think these two things apply to drops, but also for air harass, be it voids or banshees. That is actually a very interesting approach. So what you are suggesting is putting the tech buildings on one big clump in the middle of your main so you can more easily defend them all without spreading spinecrawler and sporecrawlers around the base? Since your main is mined out pretty fast, this does seem like a pretty well thought out approach! I'll try that next time Thanks for your comment
Yes, this is what I usually do, but I'll try to make a picture of this later today, as it makes things easier to understand. The only thing is that you don't want your buildings to be actually completely on the way of your main to your natural, as when buildings add up, it may delay a bit your units going to your nat. So you can just put them slighlty on the side. And yeah, I pretty much make a big clump of buildings, very tight together to make sure that there is no narrow space between them that terran may exploit.
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On June 03 2012 19:05 Chaosvuistje wrote:
I tend to keep units around in my base, if only a few, to clean up the marines that try to clean up the spores. It's cheaper than building Spines in my opinion since you don't have to rebuild them if there are units around to clean up the stranded marines.
Well, it's situational i'd say. In midgame, it's pretty easy to see every drop and attack coming. That means i'll never have a single spore or spines as long as i'm on 3 bases. I'll have two different groups of lings and roaches (I always get a few roaches vs helions for a fast third), one in my main, one in my third. I prefer to do this because those lings can help clean up a push in the middle of the map while spines and spores cant. I only make spines and spores in the late game, when i want lings to support broods or do runby's and when i cant afford to have supply used to def my bases. You're talking about 10 lings a base? That's 5 supply a base. In a max out situation, I rather spend more minerals on spines/spores than use supply to def my bases.
That's why i dont like the stephano spore ring. It leaves marines in ur base, and with 3-3 they'll kill infinite amount of drones, even if medivac was killed. I rather spend money on 3-4 spines + 1 spores that will completely stop the drop (well, sometimes 1-2 marines are left), than spend money on 3-4 spores + 1-2 spines that will not get the same job done. My problem with 1-2 spines is that 6 3-3 marines will kill a single spine no problem and can kill your hatchery after, being out of range of the second spine (if you put one spine into your mineral line and one in front of the hatch) Or well, like someone else said, you can still go for 3-4 spores + 3-4 spines, but that's kinda expensive :s
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I've thought someone should have done this type of thing long ago - thanks Chaosvuistje! I have this practice partner who just drops obsessively and after losing to his drops one too many times I went and studied them to figure out a good defense and came up with many of the same concepts - if not quite as fleshed out. I also practiced it quite a bit and now I'm at a point where I actually want the Terran to try drops. 99% of the time I get to pick of free units and I get under his skin - it's quite demoralizing as a Terran player when the drop that had you licking your lips just seconds ago is scouted out and routed before it can do anything.
I also favour not putting anything behind the mineral line except maybe spores - I usually try to place the buildings so that they extend the protective concave of my mineral line toward my natural a little (giving my drones a safer passage toward the natural in the event of a drop and making it harder for the drop to intercept them.
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On June 03 2012 19:38 Natalya wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2012 19:05 Chaosvuistje wrote:
I tend to keep units around in my base, if only a few, to clean up the marines that try to clean up the spores. It's cheaper than building Spines in my opinion since you don't have to rebuild them if there are units around to clean up the stranded marines.
Well, it's situational i'd say. In midgame, it's pretty easy to see every drop and attack coming. That means i'll never have a single spore or spines as long as i'm on 3 bases. I'll have two different groups of lings and roaches (I always get a few roaches vs helions for a fast third), one in my main, one in my third. I prefer to do this because those lings can help clean up a push in the middle of the map while spines and spores cant. I only make spines and spores in the late game, when i want lings to support broods or do runby's and when i cant afford to have supply used to def my bases. You're talking about 10 lings a base? That's 5 supply a base. In a max out situation, I rather spend more minerals on spines/spores than use supply to def my bases. That's why i dont like the stephano spore ring. It leaves marines in ur base, and with 3-3 they'll kill infinite amount of drones, even if medivac was killed. I rather spend money on 3-4 spines + 1 spores that will completely stop the drop (well, sometimes 1-2 marines are left), than spend money on 3-4 spores + 1-2 spines that will not get the same job done. My problem with 1-2 spines is that 6 3-3 marines will kill a single spine no problem and can kill your hatchery after, being out of range of the second spine (if you put one spine into your mineral line and one in front of the hatch) Or well, like someone else said, you can still go for 3-4 spores + 3-4 spines, but that's kinda expensive :s
I'm not neccesarily meaning 10 lings at EVERY base. There's usually bases that are more on the outside, whereas some are more tucked away between bases that don't need as much defenses. And on your second paragraph, would you rather have the Medivac pick up the 2 marines that are left after they did damage rather than just killing everything in the drop? 6 3-3 marines without medivac support die FAST against equally upgraded cracklings that can travel between bases quickly, and you can pull drones away in advance if you know the drop will unload enough that the marines can do damage to your economy.
10 Zerglings extra won't really do much in a fight, only after the brunt of a push has been destroyed will they matter. It's better to spread your Zerglings out during fights to make sure they tank as much tank shots as possible rather than keeping extra Zerglings in your army in my opinion.
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Thanks for the insight on sporecrawlers. I usually only use them for banshee detection, but after reading this, it does make sense to use them against drops as well. Awesome guide!
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Mech is one of the toughest styles to play against because of the Hellions. A Meching player often relies on a strong 2 or 3 base timing attack to hit before Hive tech and Broodlords are out. The killing of drones by Hellion runby's is the hinge that makes Mech work.
The biggest problem with Hellion runby's is that even if you barricade your bases up with Spinecrawlers, a large enough pack can still drive in and focus on your drones. Your primary objective is to keep your drones alive so you don't have to replendish it with precious larvae. The best way of going about doing this is planting Spinecrawlers behind your mineral line and infront of your hatchery. This won't deflect the hellions, but will atleast keep them relatively at bay so they won't drive in freely.
Burrow only serves to delay a Terran by making them waste a scan. By far the best way of saving drones in this case is researching Overlord Drops. Since you already should want to abuse the immobility of the Mech army, this might have been on your to-do list. Loading up drones so the Hellions can't even attack them is another major benefit. This works so well against Mech because of the lack of Marines to kill off the Overlords.
Overlords keep your drones safe regardless of Hellion driveby's or drops, and can even allow you to safely transfer your drones to and from bases without risking losing them to stray Hellions. Every drone that you save in this way is larvae and minerals saved that will make the Mech push much easier to deal with. So even if you plan on not dropping the Terran, please research the drop upgrade if only to save your drones from barbeque hell.
what about roaches? if you're dealing with mech then roaches would more than likely be made anyway, so why not use them for some defense against hellions?
if you have a few roaches defending a base against hellion drop/run bys along with a few spines and u burrow all of ur drones this will force the terran to micro alot if he wants to kill off any drones, and if he commits to that then he will lose quite a bit of hellions unless there is like 10+ hellions going into 1 base for w/e reason.... and if thats the case i doubt u will react fast enough to load drones into an overlord.
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Been using this before post .. But nice work good of you to spread the word to those not doing. BTW I didn't go through the whole thing but exactly what time do you start this action ? As to early would dmg your econ right ?
I am assuming the earliest is to have a 2-base sat econ and you could start some spore/spine around edges while going for 3rd ?
Obviously if mech is scouted this isn't as important.
+Watching DJwheat is good entertainment GEEGEE!!! <--- Just thought I'd put that in there.
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On June 04 2012 03:05 TheRealzz wrote:
Been using this before post .. But nice work good of you to spread the word to those not doing. BTW I didn't go through the whole thing but exactly what time do you start this action ? As to early would dmg your econ right ?
I am assuming the earliest is to have a 2-base sat econ and you could start some spore/spine around edges while going for 3rd ?
Obviously if mech is scouted this isn't as important.
+Watching DJwheat is good entertainment GEEGEE!!! <--- Just thought I'd put that in there.
I think the best moment to do it is when you scout the first medivacs.
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On June 04 2012 02:55 Ballistixz wrote:Show nested quote +Mech is one of the toughest styles to play against because of the Hellions. A Meching player often relies on a strong 2 or 3 base timing attack to hit before Hive tech and Broodlords are out. The killing of drones by Hellion runby's is the hinge that makes Mech work.
The biggest problem with Hellion runby's is that even if you barricade your bases up with Spinecrawlers, a large enough pack can still drive in and focus on your drones. Your primary objective is to keep your drones alive so you don't have to replendish it with precious larvae. The best way of going about doing this is planting Spinecrawlers behind your mineral line and infront of your hatchery. This won't deflect the hellions, but will atleast keep them relatively at bay so they won't drive in freely.
Burrow only serves to delay a Terran by making them waste a scan. By far the best way of saving drones in this case is researching Overlord Drops. Since you already should want to abuse the immobility of the Mech army, this might have been on your to-do list. Loading up drones so the Hellions can't even attack them is another major benefit. This works so well against Mech because of the lack of Marines to kill off the Overlords.
Overlords keep your drones safe regardless of Hellion driveby's or drops, and can even allow you to safely transfer your drones to and from bases without risking losing them to stray Hellions. Every drone that you save in this way is larvae and minerals saved that will make the Mech push much easier to deal with. So even if you plan on not dropping the Terran, please research the drop upgrade if only to save your drones from barbeque hell. what about roaches? if you're dealing with mech then roaches would more than likely be made anyway, so why not use them for some defense against hellions? if you have a few roaches defending a base against hellion drop/run bys along with a few spines and u burrow all of ur drones this will force the terran to micro alot if he wants to kill off any drones, and if he commits to that then he will lose quite a bit of hellions unless there is like 10+ hellions going into 1 base for w/e reason.... and if thats the case i doubt u will react fast enough to load drones into an overlord.
Roaches are pretty terrible as far as defending versus hellions goes on exterior bases. They do really great for preventing hellion runby's into your natural and main in the early to mid game, but once the Terran gets the ability to just throw hellions away to trade for drones they lose their stopping power. Besides, a single Roach is 2 supply, which is a lot if you want to keep 5 or so at your bases while not being sure that the drones will survive because of them being stationed there.
The hellion drive by's or drops that I am talking about are upwards of 8. At that moment the terran is just using them to destroy your economy and delay any Roach push you want to do. If he loses all those hellions and he kills like 3 drones, sure that was tough on him. But he doesn't mind trading those hellions for half or more of the base's drone count.
Those hellions don't function any significant role in a Mech army against Roaches. What they do is delay any large push, keep the Roach army back, or keep Roaches in place so the Siege tanks can barrel down on top of them. Upgrading overlord drops gives you all the advantages of killing off that hellion push while not having to remake all of your drones, so a large Roach push won't be delayed. On top of that, you can do drop harass as well.
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