EPTSections
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Terminology
Build Orders
Building Usage
Buildings & When You Need More
Building Placement, and the Shift Button
Checking Your Saturation Level
Actual Building Costs
When Do I Take My Gases?!
Expanding
Scouting Information [Early]
Scouting Information [Mid]
Dropping
Basic Micro Decision Making Situations
Micro Decision Making Situations
Basic Unit Composition Guidelines
Control Group Setup
One Final Note...
Build Orders
Building Usage
Buildings & When You Need More
Building Placement, and the Shift Button
Checking Your Saturation Level
Actual Building Costs
When Do I Take My Gases?!
Expanding
Scouting Information [Early]
Scouting Information [Mid]
Dropping
Basic Micro Decision Making Situations
Micro Decision Making Situations
Basic Unit Composition Guidelines
Control Group Setup
One Final Note...
Terminology
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Main - Main base where you start off.
Natural - The closest expansion point for your location.
Orbital Command - Upgraded Command Center.
"...when your macro is sorted out..." - Not supply blocked, SCVs queued up (if necessary), all necessary buildings are producing units. You'll see me mention this because often players will spend so much time microing that it ends up hurting their macro.
MMMGV - Marine Marauder Medivac Ghost Viking
Marine - M
Marauder - M
Medivac - M
Tank - T
Viking - V
Ghost - G
MU - Matchup
FE - Fast Expand (expanding at around 18-20 Supply)
Natural - The closest expansion point for your location.
Orbital Command - Upgraded Command Center.
"...when your macro is sorted out..." - Not supply blocked, SCVs queued up (if necessary), all necessary buildings are producing units. You'll see me mention this because often players will spend so much time microing that it ends up hurting their macro.
MMMGV - Marine Marauder Medivac Ghost Viking
Marine - M
Marauder - M
Medivac - M
Tank - T
Viking - V
Ghost - G
MU - Matchup
FE - Fast Expand (expanding at around 18-20 Supply)
Build Orders [Updated 04 Jan 12]
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Before you get into a game, you need to have a build order in mind. Going into a game with a plan helps establish confidence and this confidence will allow you to be aggressive.
Past 15 supply, none of these builds will have supply build times, as you have to learn to use your judgement vice memorizing supply counts.
Here are some examples of build orders.
1001 - 1Rax Gasless FE
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1002 - Reaper FE
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1003 - 2Rax FE
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1004 - The TvP 1-1-1
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1005 - TvT 1-1-1
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1007 - FE -> Reactor Hellion (4) -> Marine Tank
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Past 15 supply, none of these builds will have supply build times, as you have to learn to use your judgement vice memorizing supply counts.
Here are some examples of build orders.
1001 - 1Rax Gasless FE
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10 Depot
12 Rax
15 OC
16 Marine + 2nd Marine -> Bunker @ Natural (prevents Stalker pokes)
@400 Command Center
@100 Supply Depot
Continue SCV Production
1Rax Gasless FE Followups
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*Constant SCV, Marine production. With this build, you cut Marauders for quicker tech and upgrades.
+3 Barracks
+2 Refineries (After 2nd OC Upgrade)
@25 Gas - +1 Tech Lab + Stim Pack, Combat Shield, Concussive Shells. (You can opt for Combat Shield first, it's up to you. But if you forget to start Stim, it's more gamebreaking than forgetting to start Combat Shield).
@100 Gas - +2 Engineering Bays (If you drop 2 Eng Bays @100 gas, you will have 200 Gas by the time they're complete for +1 +1).
@7-8 Minutes - Drop Factory -> Starport -> 3rd Refinery. (Reactor on Factory, upon completion, swap the Starport onto the Reactor for double Medivac production).
#When you begin Medivac production, begin Marauder production, add Tech Labs / Reactors (with 4 Rax, I'd have 2 Tech Labs and 4 Reactors).
#Drop 3rd CC. Add 4th Gas, drop Armoury for +2 +2. Drop 2 More Barracks, add 2 Tech Labs if they favour Colossi, 1 Tech Lab 1 Reactor if they favour chargelot archon.
+Ghost Academy.
#Always make Orbital Commands in this matchup. When your 3rd is up and running, you can easily support up to 10-12 Barracks (depending on what you're producing of course - producing Ghosts will be more of a Mineral sink than Marauders). I would also immediately drop a 4th CC as with 3 MULEs running, you'll have more than enough Minerals. Take both of the Gases at your 3rd as soon as you transfer SCVs.
This is an extremely, extremely strong build if executed well. It's important to keep your marines alive for this build so your army is incredibly strong when it's supplemented with Marauders, Upgrades, and Medivacs. Marines, as we all know, are extremely weak when they lack Combat Shield, Stim, Medivacs, and Weapon/Armour upgrades, so keep them alive - consider them an early game investment. What many players like to do around the 6 minute mark if they've scouted a fast expand build from the Protoss is to poke with their marines and try to force some units to delay probe production. Whether or not you do this is completely up to you - but this can go horribly wrong if they warp in enough stalkers. As for aggressive timings, your army is extremely strong when those two medivacs pop, so you should get map control, scout their natural, then poke and do double medivac drops.
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*Constant SCV, Unit production. With this build, you take an earlier 3rd gas (in comparison to the above build) and have more of a Marauder force to help defend any early aggression, as well as quicker basic Infantry upgrades.
+2 Barracks
+2 Refineries
@100 Gas - +2 Tech Labs + Combat Shield+Concussive, Stim Pack. You'll also want a Reactor on your 3rd Barracks for more Marines.
@7-8 Minutes - Drop Factory + Engineering Bay (+1 Weapons) -> 3rd Refinery -> Starport. (Reactor on Factory, upon completion, swap the Starport onto the Reactor for double Medivac production)
#When you begin Medivac production, you'll want to drop your 3rd. As your Medivacs pop, your upgrades will be complete (+1 shortly after Medivacs pop). Start +1 Armour, get your 4th Gas and a Ghost Academy. You'll want to go up to 5-6 Barracks with add-ons as soon as you can after you've dropped your 3rd. If they're going Colossi, you can hold off on the 6th Rax as Vikings are damn expensive.
+Ghost Academy.
#When +1 Armour is half way to finishing, drop an Armoury and a 2nd Engineering Bay for +2 +2.
#Always make Orbital Commands in this matchup. When your 3rd is up and running, you can easily support up to 10-12 Barracks (depending on what you're producing of course - producing Ghosts will be more of a Mineral sink than Marauders). I would also immediately drop a 4th CC as with 3 MULEs running, you'll have more than enough Minerals. Take both of the Gases at your 3rd as soon as you transfer SCVs.
This is another solid follow up that's a little more gas heavy as you're producing Marauders earlier so if you don't feel comfortable only making Marines early on, then this build is for you.
12 Rax
15 OC
16 Marine + 2nd Marine -> Bunker @ Natural (prevents Stalker pokes)
@400 Command Center
@100 Supply Depot
Continue SCV Production
1Rax Gasless FE Followups
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*Constant SCV, Marine production. With this build, you cut Marauders for quicker tech and upgrades.
+3 Barracks
+2 Refineries (After 2nd OC Upgrade)
@25 Gas - +1 Tech Lab + Stim Pack, Combat Shield, Concussive Shells. (You can opt for Combat Shield first, it's up to you. But if you forget to start Stim, it's more gamebreaking than forgetting to start Combat Shield).
@100 Gas - +2 Engineering Bays (If you drop 2 Eng Bays @100 gas, you will have 200 Gas by the time they're complete for +1 +1).
@7-8 Minutes - Drop Factory -> Starport -> 3rd Refinery. (Reactor on Factory, upon completion, swap the Starport onto the Reactor for double Medivac production).
#When you begin Medivac production, begin Marauder production, add Tech Labs / Reactors (with 4 Rax, I'd have 2 Tech Labs and 4 Reactors).
#Drop 3rd CC. Add 4th Gas, drop Armoury for +2 +2. Drop 2 More Barracks, add 2 Tech Labs if they favour Colossi, 1 Tech Lab 1 Reactor if they favour chargelot archon.
+Ghost Academy.
#Always make Orbital Commands in this matchup. When your 3rd is up and running, you can easily support up to 10-12 Barracks (depending on what you're producing of course - producing Ghosts will be more of a Mineral sink than Marauders). I would also immediately drop a 4th CC as with 3 MULEs running, you'll have more than enough Minerals. Take both of the Gases at your 3rd as soon as you transfer SCVs.
This is an extremely, extremely strong build if executed well. It's important to keep your marines alive for this build so your army is incredibly strong when it's supplemented with Marauders, Upgrades, and Medivacs. Marines, as we all know, are extremely weak when they lack Combat Shield, Stim, Medivacs, and Weapon/Armour upgrades, so keep them alive - consider them an early game investment. What many players like to do around the 6 minute mark if they've scouted a fast expand build from the Protoss is to poke with their marines and try to force some units to delay probe production. Whether or not you do this is completely up to you - but this can go horribly wrong if they warp in enough stalkers. As for aggressive timings, your army is extremely strong when those two medivacs pop, so you should get map control, scout their natural, then poke and do double medivac drops.
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*Constant SCV, Unit production. With this build, you take an earlier 3rd gas (in comparison to the above build) and have more of a Marauder force to help defend any early aggression, as well as quicker basic Infantry upgrades.
+2 Barracks
+2 Refineries
@100 Gas - +2 Tech Labs + Combat Shield+Concussive, Stim Pack. You'll also want a Reactor on your 3rd Barracks for more Marines.
@7-8 Minutes - Drop Factory + Engineering Bay (+1 Weapons) -> 3rd Refinery -> Starport. (Reactor on Factory, upon completion, swap the Starport onto the Reactor for double Medivac production)
#When you begin Medivac production, you'll want to drop your 3rd. As your Medivacs pop, your upgrades will be complete (+1 shortly after Medivacs pop). Start +1 Armour, get your 4th Gas and a Ghost Academy. You'll want to go up to 5-6 Barracks with add-ons as soon as you can after you've dropped your 3rd. If they're going Colossi, you can hold off on the 6th Rax as Vikings are damn expensive.
+Ghost Academy.
#When +1 Armour is half way to finishing, drop an Armoury and a 2nd Engineering Bay for +2 +2.
#Always make Orbital Commands in this matchup. When your 3rd is up and running, you can easily support up to 10-12 Barracks (depending on what you're producing of course - producing Ghosts will be more of a Mineral sink than Marauders). I would also immediately drop a 4th CC as with 3 MULEs running, you'll have more than enough Minerals. Take both of the Gases at your 3rd as soon as you transfer SCVs.
This is another solid follow up that's a little more gas heavy as you're producing Marauders earlier so if you don't feel comfortable only making Marines early on, then this build is for you.
1002 - Reaper FE
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10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine -> Tech Lab
Reaper
CC
Followup: 2 Rax, Factory, Starport when you can afford it. Don't build add-ons right away as your economy can't support 3 Rax with add-ons yet..
The idea behind this build is you're really weak to early aggression as you're fast expanding, but you trade a reaper for a good scout of your opponent's base. By knowing what your opponent is doing, you have the advantage since if you can counter whatever 1 base shenanigans they throw at you, you'll be ahead economically. This build is a little less economical than 1Rax Gasless FE, but like I said above, getting a scout of your opponent's base is really important.
With the extra gas in this build, you can delay your 2nd gas, get Stim, Combat Shield, and +1 Weapons quite early (just be careful not to get all of it at once), and still macro up like you would as if you were doing a 1Rax Gasless FE. You also have the option of pulling SCVs off Gas if you want to go up to 4 Rax so you can get a lot of Marines (while Stim or Combat Shield upgrades).
The followup is similar to that of the 1Rax Gasless FE except in TvT for example, you'll have to spend some minerals countering what they throw at you. I'll be honest, any FE builds are risky (especially in a mirror match), but you'll learn a lot more with this build than you will being a 1 base hero every game. If you scout Cloaked Banshee, you'll want Missile Turrets (2 at each Mineral Line is 100% safe). If you scout a early Marine Tank push (which you will since you should always have control of the watch towers in TvT) then you may need to pull SCVs to crush it as you'll only be on 3/4 Rax at that point.
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine -> Tech Lab
Reaper
CC
Followup: 2 Rax, Factory, Starport when you can afford it. Don't build add-ons right away as your economy can't support 3 Rax with add-ons yet..
The idea behind this build is you're really weak to early aggression as you're fast expanding, but you trade a reaper for a good scout of your opponent's base. By knowing what your opponent is doing, you have the advantage since if you can counter whatever 1 base shenanigans they throw at you, you'll be ahead economically. This build is a little less economical than 1Rax Gasless FE, but like I said above, getting a scout of your opponent's base is really important.
With the extra gas in this build, you can delay your 2nd gas, get Stim, Combat Shield, and +1 Weapons quite early (just be careful not to get all of it at once), and still macro up like you would as if you were doing a 1Rax Gasless FE. You also have the option of pulling SCVs off Gas if you want to go up to 4 Rax so you can get a lot of Marines (while Stim or Combat Shield upgrades).
The followup is similar to that of the 1Rax Gasless FE except in TvT for example, you'll have to spend some minerals countering what they throw at you. I'll be honest, any FE builds are risky (especially in a mirror match), but you'll learn a lot more with this build than you will being a 1 base hero every game. If you scout Cloaked Banshee, you'll want Missile Turrets (2 at each Mineral Line is 100% safe). If you scout a early Marine Tank push (which you will since you should always have control of the watch towers in TvT) then you may need to pull SCVs to crush it as you'll only be on 3/4 Rax at that point.
1003 - 2Rax FE
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There's three variations of this build - one that involves Reactor -> Tech Lab, or Tech Lab -> Reactor, or Tech Lab + No Add-on. I personally prefer the Reactor first, as it's more marine heavy and therefore it's quite easy to crush the 3gate Stargate. With this build and depending on how early you drop your expansion, you will want to be careful when you poke around their natural. Against an obvious 1 base play, you have to be extremely careful with your units. If you constantly produce SCVs, Marines, and Marauders, you'll have enough money for an expansion at around 7 minutes. You can cut units for an earlier expansion if required.
10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
OC
Marine
Reactor
Barracks -> Depot (Alternatively, you can cut an early OC for an early 2nd Barracks which makes your push much, much stronger)
Depot needs to go down as soon as possible after the Barracks, I cannot stress this enough. Getting supply blocked is really, really as ALL your production stops for the duration of the block. Tech Lab when 2nd Barracks is complete. Research Concussive -> Stim Pack. With the additional gas, you can get an early Engineering Bay for +1 Infantry Weapons or tech to Medivacs.
The idea is to push out when the first or second marauder pops (be wary of 1 base all-ins). If that probe tries to scout, you need to position your marine accordingly to deny all scouting attempts (micro it as necessary, you want your opponent to be playing in the dark as much as possible). As you push out, the idea is not to kill the Protoss (NEVER ramp run a Protoss unless they don't have a sentry), but to ensure you've expanded before they have and apply some pressure. If my scouting SCV lives and sees that they're fast expanding, I strongly expanding right away yourself, or macroing up and going for a more risky all-in.
If they're expanding and cutting corners by not scouting around their nexus (as Protoss/Zerg buildings have a low range of vision while they're being built), drop 2 bunkers in range of the nexus to force a cancel. In addition, this build is weaker on maps that favour fast expanding (Shakuras for example).
10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
OC
Marine
Reactor
Barracks -> Depot (Alternatively, you can cut an early OC for an early 2nd Barracks which makes your push much, much stronger)
Depot needs to go down as soon as possible after the Barracks, I cannot stress this enough. Getting supply blocked is really, really as ALL your production stops for the duration of the block. Tech Lab when 2nd Barracks is complete. Research Concussive -> Stim Pack. With the additional gas, you can get an early Engineering Bay for +1 Infantry Weapons or tech to Medivacs.
The idea is to push out when the first or second marauder pops (be wary of 1 base all-ins). If that probe tries to scout, you need to position your marine accordingly to deny all scouting attempts (micro it as necessary, you want your opponent to be playing in the dark as much as possible). As you push out, the idea is not to kill the Protoss (NEVER ramp run a Protoss unless they don't have a sentry), but to ensure you've expanded before they have and apply some pressure. If my scouting SCV lives and sees that they're fast expanding, I strongly expanding right away yourself, or macroing up and going for a more risky all-in.
If they're expanding and cutting corners by not scouting around their nexus (as Protoss/Zerg buildings have a low range of vision while they're being built), drop 2 bunkers in range of the nexus to force a cancel. In addition, this build is weaker on maps that favour fast expanding (Shakuras for example).
1004 - The TvP 1-1-1
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Ah yes, everyone's favourite build.
10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine + OC (Drop a Reactor after you begin your Factory). I would also drop a Bunker while your Reactor is being made.
Factory@150 Min & 100 Gas
2nd Refinery (Remember: 95% of the time, you'll want your 2nd gas when you drop a Factory)
Tech Lab on Factory & Starport
Swap the Tech Lab onto the Starport
Tech Lab on Factory
From here on out, you'll constant marine, tank, and banshee production (don't forget siege mode). With Banshees, the general idea is to poke around with them...do NOT lose any banshees, this is very important. When you push out, bring about 10-15 SCVs and save scans from this point on. You want to A-move with your marines and banshees, and focus fire colossi/stalkers/sentries with your tanks. Leave SCVs on autorepair or just A-move with them as well.
The only problem with this build is you really don't learn much from it, but it's fun just incase you got all-ined last game and you want to vent. Why is this build solid (or overpowered)? Well, for one, you're constantly using 3 production buildings the ENTIRE time, so this makes them extremely efficient. Another, is that the strength of the protoss army is a critical mass of units with sentry support + heavy gas unit support which causes the army to be incredibly cost effective (HT/Colossi) and this build hits long before that can happen. And three, because you're spending ALL of your money. Any gas is spent on Tanks and Banshees, with Marines as the mineral sink. ONE OF the counters to this build is a protoss that FE'd, and didn't overproduce probes in preparation for your all-in and instead started producing from 5-6 gateways and most importantly, engaged in the middle of the map and not at their natural expansion.
Some notes...DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT get Cloak, and DO NOT get a Raven. Cloak relies on your opponent being unprepared in order to be effective, and a Raven is a huge investment. Granted, PDD is extremely strong, and a Turret could be useful in blocking Zealots, having an additional Siege Tank and Banshee in my opinion is far more useful. You may say "well, if they don't build an Observer, I win!" but any Protoss who scouts 13gas, and a bunker full of marines is going to get an Observer.
10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine + OC (Drop a Reactor after you begin your Factory). I would also drop a Bunker while your Reactor is being made.
Factory@150 Min & 100 Gas
2nd Refinery (Remember: 95% of the time, you'll want your 2nd gas when you drop a Factory)
Tech Lab on Factory & Starport
Swap the Tech Lab onto the Starport
Tech Lab on Factory
From here on out, you'll constant marine, tank, and banshee production (don't forget siege mode). With Banshees, the general idea is to poke around with them...do NOT lose any banshees, this is very important. When you push out, bring about 10-15 SCVs and save scans from this point on. You want to A-move with your marines and banshees, and focus fire colossi/stalkers/sentries with your tanks. Leave SCVs on autorepair or just A-move with them as well.
The only problem with this build is you really don't learn much from it, but it's fun just incase you got all-ined last game and you want to vent. Why is this build solid (or overpowered)? Well, for one, you're constantly using 3 production buildings the ENTIRE time, so this makes them extremely efficient. Another, is that the strength of the protoss army is a critical mass of units with sentry support + heavy gas unit support which causes the army to be incredibly cost effective (HT/Colossi) and this build hits long before that can happen. And three, because you're spending ALL of your money. Any gas is spent on Tanks and Banshees, with Marines as the mineral sink. ONE OF the counters to this build is a protoss that FE'd, and didn't overproduce probes in preparation for your all-in and instead started producing from 5-6 gateways and most importantly, engaged in the middle of the map and not at their natural expansion.
Some notes...DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT get Cloak, and DO NOT get a Raven. Cloak relies on your opponent being unprepared in order to be effective, and a Raven is a huge investment. Granted, PDD is extremely strong, and a Turret could be useful in blocking Zealots, having an additional Siege Tank and Banshee in my opinion is far more useful. You may say "well, if they don't build an Observer, I win!" but any Protoss who scouts 13gas, and a bunker full of marines is going to get an Observer.
1005 - TvT 1-1-1
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10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine + OC
Factory @100 Gas
2nd Refinery
Starport
From here on out, you can do a few things. Can go for some marine tank aggression (2 gas), a cloaked banshee rush (2gas), a blueflame hellion drop (2 gas), reaper hellion drop (2 gas), marine hellion drop (1 gas)...you get the idea. As you put on some aggression, you should expand, as you will not have the minerals to FE with this build. This is possibly the most versatile build, but your marine count will be quite low, so be wary of builds that "look" like a 1rax FE (but actually ends up being a marine scv all-in). If you ever scout no gas on a Terran and you're 1-1-1ing, I strongly suggest favouring hellions over marines.
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine + OC
Factory @100 Gas
2nd Refinery
Starport
From here on out, you can do a few things. Can go for some marine tank aggression (2 gas), a cloaked banshee rush (2gas), a blueflame hellion drop (2 gas), reaper hellion drop (2 gas), marine hellion drop (1 gas)...you get the idea. As you put on some aggression, you should expand, as you will not have the minerals to FE with this build. This is possibly the most versatile build, but your marine count will be quite low, so be wary of builds that "look" like a 1rax FE (but actually ends up being a marine scv all-in). If you ever scout no gas on a Terran and you're 1-1-1ing, I strongly suggest favouring hellions over marines.
1007 - FE -> Reactor Hellion (4) -> Marine Tank
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10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine + OC
Depot
Factory @100 Gas
DO NOT take your 2nd Refinery
Reactor on Rax @50 Gas
CC@400 Min
2 Hellions -> Drop a Depot RIGHT AWAY, VERY important.
2 Hellions -> Drop another Depot RIGHT AWAY, VERY important.
Poke around the Zerg's base, but do not over commit. If they send 5 roaches straight for your base, drop a bunker (two if there's more roaches). As soon as you've done that, start sniping drones with the Hellions as it's extremely unlikely they'll have enough minerals for roaches and zerglings (plus, roaches move extremely slow until they're upgraded with Roach Speed) so you want to do as much economic damage as possible to try to delay those roaches from getting to your base.
Swap Buildings (Rax+Reactor, Factory+Tech Lab)
Constant Marine, Tank production, get Siege Mode as well.
3-1-1 Followup
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NOW get your 2nd Refinery.
Drop 2 Rax when you can afford it. You'll want a Tech Lab on one, and a Reactor on the 2nd. Additionally, you'll want a 2nd Factory and a Reactored Starport sometime after that when you can afford it. Once you're dropping double MULEs, feel free to drop a 3rd Reactor so you now have 1 Tech Lab and 2 Reactors. You'll be going Marine Tank for the midgame, with Medivacs sprinkled in for drops/marine support. Try to be strict with your gas - you almost never want to pump double Medivacs as that will cut into your Tank count. It's different from TvP because if you lose units in this match up, it will be so quick that the Medivacs don't really get enough time to use their energy to heal your marines due to the heavy burst damage of ling bling muta.
The aggressive followup to the initial 4 hellions is you push out with 3-4 Tanks and all your Marines and provided you keep your 4 Hellions alive, you can do some serious damage if they don't catch you in the middle of the map with Zerglings (which they couldn't cost efffectively do now that you have 4 Hellions and a Marine+Tank army). With this push, you can bring two SCVs and start Bunkering up. Just be wary of counter attacks, and Mutalisks. Make sure you actually consider the fact that you're leaving your natural pretty open to zerglings and your main is vulnerable to mutalisks - so if you don't feel comfortable rallying units with your push, simply rally them to your natural and that'll prevent any kind of economic damage they can do.
Quick Drop Followup
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This is a more of a risky transition, but it can be quite effective, especially against a passive opponent. Instead of getting Tanks and Siege Mode straight away, lift off your Factory and build two Barracks (one where the Reactor is, and one somewhere else). Begin researching Stim Pack, and drop a Starport. So here what you want to do is save those 4 Hellions and just pick off Creep Tumours and any Zerglings that try to run by - so when you drop 8 Marines in a Medivac with Stim Pack, you'll force them to pull all of their Zerglings to their main. As that happens, you should simultaneously send those 4 Hellions in. The goal here is to kill as many Drones as possible. After this, you can transition into Marine Tank and I would keep poking around with the Medivac + 8 Marines as much as possible.
2 Port Banshee All-in
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Another transition involves instead of dropping a CC, you take your 2nd Gas after your Factory; continue playing out as per usual (denying scouting with the hellions, picking off creep tumours, etc), but instead of expanding you'll drop two Starports at the exact same time in your base - preferably a spot that won't get scouted as if they scout this all-in, they'll easily counter it with Queens, Spores, and Transfuse. With this build, you don't need Cloak, you just want as many Banshees as possible. If they scout it, push out with the first 2 Banshees that pop. But if they don't, wait until you get 4 so you can absolutely melt queens and drones. If you manage to find the spire that's building, bonus, snipe that and you're in an even better position. If you want to confuse them even more, plop down a bunker away from your natural so they'll have even more trouble scouting that in the event that a zergling does get by your hellions. Note, as an alternative, you can go for cloaked banshees off of one starport with a delayed expansion.
The strength of this build is that there's so many powerful transitions, it's difficult for a Zerg to metagame and blindcounter your army composition, which is why many of the pros favour this build in TvZ.
12 Rax
13 Refinery
Marine + OC
Depot
Factory @100 Gas
DO NOT take your 2nd Refinery
Reactor on Rax @50 Gas
CC@400 Min
2 Hellions -> Drop a Depot RIGHT AWAY, VERY important.
2 Hellions -> Drop another Depot RIGHT AWAY, VERY important.
Poke around the Zerg's base, but do not over commit. If they send 5 roaches straight for your base, drop a bunker (two if there's more roaches). As soon as you've done that, start sniping drones with the Hellions as it's extremely unlikely they'll have enough minerals for roaches and zerglings (plus, roaches move extremely slow until they're upgraded with Roach Speed) so you want to do as much economic damage as possible to try to delay those roaches from getting to your base.
Swap Buildings (Rax+Reactor, Factory+Tech Lab)
Constant Marine, Tank production, get Siege Mode as well.
3-1-1 Followup
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NOW get your 2nd Refinery.
Drop 2 Rax when you can afford it. You'll want a Tech Lab on one, and a Reactor on the 2nd. Additionally, you'll want a 2nd Factory and a Reactored Starport sometime after that when you can afford it. Once you're dropping double MULEs, feel free to drop a 3rd Reactor so you now have 1 Tech Lab and 2 Reactors. You'll be going Marine Tank for the midgame, with Medivacs sprinkled in for drops/marine support. Try to be strict with your gas - you almost never want to pump double Medivacs as that will cut into your Tank count. It's different from TvP because if you lose units in this match up, it will be so quick that the Medivacs don't really get enough time to use their energy to heal your marines due to the heavy burst damage of ling bling muta.
The aggressive followup to the initial 4 hellions is you push out with 3-4 Tanks and all your Marines and provided you keep your 4 Hellions alive, you can do some serious damage if they don't catch you in the middle of the map with Zerglings (which they couldn't cost efffectively do now that you have 4 Hellions and a Marine+Tank army). With this push, you can bring two SCVs and start Bunkering up. Just be wary of counter attacks, and Mutalisks. Make sure you actually consider the fact that you're leaving your natural pretty open to zerglings and your main is vulnerable to mutalisks - so if you don't feel comfortable rallying units with your push, simply rally them to your natural and that'll prevent any kind of economic damage they can do.
Quick Drop Followup
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This is a more of a risky transition, but it can be quite effective, especially against a passive opponent. Instead of getting Tanks and Siege Mode straight away, lift off your Factory and build two Barracks (one where the Reactor is, and one somewhere else). Begin researching Stim Pack, and drop a Starport. So here what you want to do is save those 4 Hellions and just pick off Creep Tumours and any Zerglings that try to run by - so when you drop 8 Marines in a Medivac with Stim Pack, you'll force them to pull all of their Zerglings to their main. As that happens, you should simultaneously send those 4 Hellions in. The goal here is to kill as many Drones as possible. After this, you can transition into Marine Tank and I would keep poking around with the Medivac + 8 Marines as much as possible.
2 Port Banshee All-in
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Another transition involves instead of dropping a CC, you take your 2nd Gas after your Factory; continue playing out as per usual (denying scouting with the hellions, picking off creep tumours, etc), but instead of expanding you'll drop two Starports at the exact same time in your base - preferably a spot that won't get scouted as if they scout this all-in, they'll easily counter it with Queens, Spores, and Transfuse. With this build, you don't need Cloak, you just want as many Banshees as possible. If they scout it, push out with the first 2 Banshees that pop. But if they don't, wait until you get 4 so you can absolutely melt queens and drones. If you manage to find the spire that's building, bonus, snipe that and you're in an even better position. If you want to confuse them even more, plop down a bunker away from your natural so they'll have even more trouble scouting that in the event that a zergling does get by your hellions. Note, as an alternative, you can go for cloaked banshees off of one starport with a delayed expansion.
The strength of this build is that there's so many powerful transitions, it's difficult for a Zerg to metagame and blindcounter your army composition, which is why many of the pros favour this build in TvZ.
Building Usage
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One of the awesome abilities Terran buildings have is the ability to lift off. So a few tips:
Supply Depots - Use these sparingly to provide vision of your entire base. You also want to build one at each expansion where the enemy may run their army up and try to snipe an expo. For example, in Shattered Temple, you'll take your 3rd in the corner of the map and build your supply depot by the destructible rocks. If the rocks are destroyed, build it at the bottom of that ramp, as well as 1-2 up the ramp to provide vision for possible drops in other matchups. This Supply Depot will serve as an early warning system for zealot runbys, or some stimmed MM. A Sensor Tower works much better, but costs an additional 100 Vespene Gas.
In TvZ, you'll use supply depots to wall off your ramp. They're also useful to wall bunkers off, as if the zerg baneling busts you or goes for a ling bling muta counter attack, you'll want to make that counterattack as cost ineffective as possible through the use of smart walling.
Factory - Ah yes, the factory. In TvP, it's a good idea to leave this infront of your army to spot any protoss units. It's also good to make a hellion from this to scout all the expansions on the map to ensure they aren't being sneaky (hello Tal`darim Altar). It can be used to spot for warp prism drops, or help wall off your natural vs a chargelot all-in to make their army less cost effective. It's also useful if you need to scout a Protoss base.
Proxy Rax TvZ - If you proxied a Barracks and they held off the aggression, float it around their base to scout for any baneling bust or roach followups.
Supply Depots - Use these sparingly to provide vision of your entire base. You also want to build one at each expansion where the enemy may run their army up and try to snipe an expo. For example, in Shattered Temple, you'll take your 3rd in the corner of the map and build your supply depot by the destructible rocks. If the rocks are destroyed, build it at the bottom of that ramp, as well as 1-2 up the ramp to provide vision for possible drops in other matchups. This Supply Depot will serve as an early warning system for zealot runbys, or some stimmed MM. A Sensor Tower works much better, but costs an additional 100 Vespene Gas.
In TvZ, you'll use supply depots to wall off your ramp. They're also useful to wall bunkers off, as if the zerg baneling busts you or goes for a ling bling muta counter attack, you'll want to make that counterattack as cost ineffective as possible through the use of smart walling.
Factory - Ah yes, the factory. In TvP, it's a good idea to leave this infront of your army to spot any protoss units. It's also good to make a hellion from this to scout all the expansions on the map to ensure they aren't being sneaky (hello Tal`darim Altar). It can be used to spot for warp prism drops, or help wall off your natural vs a chargelot all-in to make their army less cost effective. It's also useful if you need to scout a Protoss base.
Proxy Rax TvZ - If you proxied a Barracks and they held off the aggression, float it around their base to scout for any baneling bust or roach followups.
Buildings & When You Need More
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In order to determine how many Production Buildings you need for optimal use you need solid macro HOWEVER it's always a better idea to slightly overproduce buildings and ensure all your money is spent instead of not having enough Buildings and floating 500 or more minerals in the early/mid game. I think everyone agrees it's better to have 6 Barracks and float 0 minerals than have 2 Barracks and float 800.
Regardless, here's a general guide. The buildings listed are what you can constantly produce from. This is assuming you're building SCVs and Supply Depots.
Rememeber: this is a GENERAL guideline. Obviously if you cut SCVs hard and you throw away units (so you don't need to build supply depots), you'll be able to produce off of more structures. That's why it's better to slightly overproduce production structures rather than underproduce.
1 Base-M/MM/MM/MMG
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1 Barracks No Add-On (20 Supply FE)
2 Barracks Tech Lab Reactor (W/ relatively early FE) Cut a few units for an earlier FE.
3 Barracks Tech Lab x2 Reactor (All-In). Cut units to FE.
3 Barracks Tech Lab x3 (All-in). Cut units to FE.
1 Base-Marine Tank
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1 Barracks (Reactor), 1 Factory (Tech Lab). Cut Marines to FE earlier.
1 Base-Marine Tank Viking
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1 Barracks (Reactor), 1 Factory (Tech Lab), 1 Starport (No Add-On, Starport use cuts into Tank production). Cut Marines to FE.
1 Base-Banshee Viking
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2 Starports (Tech Lab + Reactor). Cut units to FE.
2 Base-MMM/MMM/MMMGV
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2-3 Barracks (Tech Lab x2 Reactor // Tech Lab Reactor x2), Factory, Starport (Reactor). Off 3 gas, when you're partially saturated.
5 Barracks (Tech Lab x3 Reactor x2), Factory, Starport (Reactor). Fully saturated, you can support this off of 2 base. I generally drop my CC for my 3rd before I go up to 5-6 Rax though.
4 Barracks (Tech Lab x2/3 Reactor x2/1), Factory, Starport (Reactor). Fully saturated, including Viking production (and Ghosts if you aren't scrambling for Gas), you can barely support this off of 2 base due to Viking production.
2 Base-Marine Tank Medivac
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2-3 Barracks (Tech Lab Reactor) Factory (Tech Lab), Starport (Reactor). Partially saturated. DO NOT SPAM MEDIVACS, make them as required.
3-5 Barracks (Tech Lab Reactor x2) 2 Factories (Tech Lab x2), Starport (Reactor). Fully saturated. DO NOT SPAM MEDIVACS, make them as required.
3 Base-MMMGV
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8-10 Barracks, Factory, Starport (Reactor). Reactor heavy vs T/Z, Tech Lab heavy vs P. Reason being: lots of Marines vs T/Z, more Tech Labs for Ghosts vs P.
3 Base-Marine Tank Medivac
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5-7 Barracks, (Reactor Heavy), 3 Factories (Tech Lab x3), Starport (Reactor).
200/200-MMMGV/MTMV
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Regardless of if you're going Marine Tank Medivac or MMM/MMMGV, when you hit maxed you should have another 1-2 CCs building to expand and at this point I'd ensure you have at least 15 Barracks. After an engagement, it's no longer about maximizing building use, but more about who can remax quicker after you trade armies.
If you want full efficiency of your buildings, force smaller engagements so you get better use out of them. But if you're stuck at 200/200, you NEED more Production buildings to remax as quickly as possible.
Regardless, here's a general guide. The buildings listed are what you can constantly produce from. This is assuming you're building SCVs and Supply Depots.
Rememeber: this is a GENERAL guideline. Obviously if you cut SCVs hard and you throw away units (so you don't need to build supply depots), you'll be able to produce off of more structures. That's why it's better to slightly overproduce production structures rather than underproduce.
1 Base-M/MM/MM/MMG
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1 Barracks No Add-On (20 Supply FE)
2 Barracks Tech Lab Reactor (W/ relatively early FE) Cut a few units for an earlier FE.
3 Barracks Tech Lab x2 Reactor (All-In). Cut units to FE.
3 Barracks Tech Lab x3 (All-in). Cut units to FE.
1 Base-Marine Tank
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1 Barracks (Reactor), 1 Factory (Tech Lab). Cut Marines to FE earlier.
1 Base-Marine Tank Viking
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1 Barracks (Reactor), 1 Factory (Tech Lab), 1 Starport (No Add-On, Starport use cuts into Tank production). Cut Marines to FE.
1 Base-Banshee Viking
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2 Starports (Tech Lab + Reactor). Cut units to FE.
2 Base-MMM/MMM/MMMGV
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2-3 Barracks (Tech Lab x2 Reactor // Tech Lab Reactor x2), Factory, Starport (Reactor). Off 3 gas, when you're partially saturated.
5 Barracks (Tech Lab x3 Reactor x2), Factory, Starport (Reactor). Fully saturated, you can support this off of 2 base. I generally drop my CC for my 3rd before I go up to 5-6 Rax though.
4 Barracks (Tech Lab x2/3 Reactor x2/1), Factory, Starport (Reactor). Fully saturated, including Viking production (and Ghosts if you aren't scrambling for Gas), you can barely support this off of 2 base due to Viking production.
2 Base-Marine Tank Medivac
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2-3 Barracks (Tech Lab Reactor) Factory (Tech Lab), Starport (Reactor). Partially saturated. DO NOT SPAM MEDIVACS, make them as required.
3-5 Barracks (Tech Lab Reactor x2) 2 Factories (Tech Lab x2), Starport (Reactor). Fully saturated. DO NOT SPAM MEDIVACS, make them as required.
3 Base-MMMGV
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8-10 Barracks, Factory, Starport (Reactor). Reactor heavy vs T/Z, Tech Lab heavy vs P. Reason being: lots of Marines vs T/Z, more Tech Labs for Ghosts vs P.
3 Base-Marine Tank Medivac
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5-7 Barracks, (Reactor Heavy), 3 Factories (Tech Lab x3), Starport (Reactor).
200/200-MMMGV/MTMV
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Regardless of if you're going Marine Tank Medivac or MMM/MMMGV, when you hit maxed you should have another 1-2 CCs building to expand and at this point I'd ensure you have at least 15 Barracks. After an engagement, it's no longer about maximizing building use, but more about who can remax quicker after you trade armies.
If you want full efficiency of your buildings, force smaller engagements so you get better use out of them. But if you're stuck at 200/200, you NEED more Production buildings to remax as quickly as possible.
Building Placement, and the Shift Button
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This is another one of those things where you have to think ahead in the long term and not "oh crap, I need buildings NOW!" Something that ALL Terran players should keep in mind when building something is this: "How much mining time will my SCV lose when travelling from Point A (the mineral line) to point B (the building)?" and "Will this building placement trap units, or prevent me from utilizing the space in my main base to its fullest potential?" The main thing that I would have someone focus on is keeping in mind how far away their buildings are. If you watch progamers, you'll notice they tend to build buildings as CLOSE to the Mineral Line as possible. This is to MAXIMIZE Mineral income, because until you have 24 SCVs on Minerals (which is pretty oversaturated in my opinion) you need to build the buildings as close to the mineral line as possible to maximize mineral income. Pro Protosses realized this as well and started building their first Pylon and Gateway as close to the Nexus as possible in the TvT/TvP MUs. As a Terran player, you want to be especially aware of this.
Since SCVs take so long to create and are required to spend time building barracks, you want to maximize mining time.
If you want to build a Barracks, this is your hotkey sequence:
1. Left Click an SCV on Minerals (selecting the SCV)
2. Tap B, tap R, Left Click (you've now done part 1 - the barracks will be built in 65 seconds)
3. Hold Shift then Right Click on the Mineral Patch (note, you can just right click back to the mineral patch, but you have to wait until the SCV starts building to that. With this method, there's no waiting so it actually saves you time). (this is part 2 and also what distinguishes players with good mechanics from players with bad mechanics. And yes, not all progamers have a perfect habit
of doing this - which I won't get in to, as they should know better).
What this does is it sends a SCV to build a Barracks, and the second that Barracks is complete, that SCV will run over to the Mineral Patch you right clicked on and continue mining.
So why not just select the SCV when it's done building and then send it over? Well, odds are, you'll be preoccupied with something more important, like not getting supply blocked. Next thing you know it, your SCV has sat there for 1 game minute and you're down 40-60 minerals because of it. Already you're putting yourself at a disadvantage within the first few minutes of the game, which while may be a little disadvantage, little disadvantages add up quickly so you want to minimize them.
In TvZ:
You don't want important buildings close to the outside of your base as it is susceptible to Mutalisk harass. You also should completely wall off any expansion so a zergling run by will never deal economic damage (note, this cannot be done "as soon as" you expand, you have to slowly wall off).
In TvP:
Always build supply depots at your ramp to help wall off, or around your base to provide vision. Warp Prism play is common - as is building a Pylon below the cliff and warping units up into your base. If they're doing a 1 base play, be ESPECIALLY mindful of 3gate Stargate, where they generally use the Void Ray to provide vision for the Pylon, then they warp units into your main to put on more pressure (which is smart if you've expanded and your forces are at your natural's chokepoint -- they may send 1 or 2 zealots to your mineral line while they distract you).
In TvT:
You have to use your judgement as you don't want to build the important buildings where it can be easily sieged from the low ground.
Since SCVs take so long to create and are required to spend time building barracks, you want to maximize mining time.
If you want to build a Barracks, this is your hotkey sequence:
1. Left Click an SCV on Minerals (selecting the SCV)
2. Tap B, tap R, Left Click (you've now done part 1 - the barracks will be built in 65 seconds)
3. Hold Shift then Right Click on the Mineral Patch (note, you can just right click back to the mineral patch, but you have to wait until the SCV starts building to that. With this method, there's no waiting so it actually saves you time). (this is part 2 and also what distinguishes players with good mechanics from players with bad mechanics. And yes, not all progamers have a perfect habit
of doing this - which I won't get in to, as they should know better).
What this does is it sends a SCV to build a Barracks, and the second that Barracks is complete, that SCV will run over to the Mineral Patch you right clicked on and continue mining.
So why not just select the SCV when it's done building and then send it over? Well, odds are, you'll be preoccupied with something more important, like not getting supply blocked. Next thing you know it, your SCV has sat there for 1 game minute and you're down 40-60 minerals because of it. Already you're putting yourself at a disadvantage within the first few minutes of the game, which while may be a little disadvantage, little disadvantages add up quickly so you want to minimize them.
In TvZ:
You don't want important buildings close to the outside of your base as it is susceptible to Mutalisk harass. You also should completely wall off any expansion so a zergling run by will never deal economic damage (note, this cannot be done "as soon as" you expand, you have to slowly wall off).
In TvP:
Always build supply depots at your ramp to help wall off, or around your base to provide vision. Warp Prism play is common - as is building a Pylon below the cliff and warping units up into your base. If they're doing a 1 base play, be ESPECIALLY mindful of 3gate Stargate, where they generally use the Void Ray to provide vision for the Pylon, then they warp units into your main to put on more pressure (which is smart if you've expanded and your forces are at your natural's chokepoint -- they may send 1 or 2 zealots to your mineral line while they distract you).
In TvT:
You have to use your judgement as you don't want to build the important buildings where it can be easily sieged from the low ground.
Checking Your Saturation Level
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Zergs produce Drones when no immediate threat is present in order to have at least 22 per base (16 Minerals on + 6 Vespene Gas on for optimal mining).
Protosses produce Probes in order to have at least 22 per base (16 on Minerals + 6 on Vespene Gas for optimal mining). Terrans MUST constantly produce SCVs up until 60-65. You can say "well, I have my 22 SCVs for one base, why more?" and the answer is simply: SCVs are required for the construction of Terran buildings, to repair buildings, and you'll want to maximize your economy as you'll be expanding in 99% of your games. In addition to this, Terrans have the slowest worker production of all 3 races but that is rectified through the use of Mules - but Mules are no excuse for sloppy worker Production.
If you really want to maximize your income, you need to learn how to check your saturation levels on your bases. When you have time when and your macro is sorted out, check your Vespene Geysers to ensure there's 3 Workers on each.
When checking Mineral Saturation, you only need to check it when you're on more than one base. When your expansion is up, you want at least 18-20 SCVs on Minerals in your Main before you rally your Main Orbital Command to your Natural Orbital Command. If you have more than 18 then simply group the required number of SCVs (22 - 18 = 4 selected. 28 - 18 = 10 selected) then do the following:after the SCVs are selected, Right Click your Natural OC, then Shift - Right Click a Mineral Patch. This ensures any Minerals they're carrying before hand are returned before they try to mine more minerals. Transferring small number of SCVs to your natural is fine, but just be careful you don't overdo it and end up losing a good amount of mining time due to the travel distance between the two bases.
Why is it important to check your saturation levels? Well, let's talk about Person A and Person B. Person A has 40 SCVs mining minerals - 30 in their Main and 10 in their Natural. Person B also has 40 Minerals but knows how to check his saturation level and as such, has 20 in their Main and 20 in their Natural. Person B has a solid economic advantage in this situation in two ways: one, he is simply mining more minerals, and two, his main base won't be mined out as quickly as Person A's.
Protosses produce Probes in order to have at least 22 per base (16 on Minerals + 6 on Vespene Gas for optimal mining). Terrans MUST constantly produce SCVs up until 60-65. You can say "well, I have my 22 SCVs for one base, why more?" and the answer is simply: SCVs are required for the construction of Terran buildings, to repair buildings, and you'll want to maximize your economy as you'll be expanding in 99% of your games. In addition to this, Terrans have the slowest worker production of all 3 races but that is rectified through the use of Mules - but Mules are no excuse for sloppy worker Production.
If you really want to maximize your income, you need to learn how to check your saturation levels on your bases. When you have time when and your macro is sorted out, check your Vespene Geysers to ensure there's 3 Workers on each.
When checking Mineral Saturation, you only need to check it when you're on more than one base. When your expansion is up, you want at least 18-20 SCVs on Minerals in your Main before you rally your Main Orbital Command to your Natural Orbital Command. If you have more than 18 then simply group the required number of SCVs (22 - 18 = 4 selected. 28 - 18 = 10 selected) then do the following:after the SCVs are selected, Right Click your Natural OC, then Shift - Right Click a Mineral Patch. This ensures any Minerals they're carrying before hand are returned before they try to mine more minerals. Transferring small number of SCVs to your natural is fine, but just be careful you don't overdo it and end up losing a good amount of mining time due to the travel distance between the two bases.
Why is it important to check your saturation levels? Well, let's talk about Person A and Person B. Person A has 40 SCVs mining minerals - 30 in their Main and 10 in their Natural. Person B also has 40 Minerals but knows how to check his saturation level and as such, has 20 in their Main and 20 in their Natural. Person B has a solid economic advantage in this situation in two ways: one, he is simply mining more minerals, and two, his main base won't be mined out as quickly as Person A's.
Actual Building Costs
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**Read section "Checking Your Saturation Level" before reading this section.
The first 16 workers (regardless of race) mine about 40-60 minerals per minute per worker per base. So how can we apply this knowledge to being more efficient with our money? Well...
The cost of Terran buildings is not only reflected in its Mineral and Vespene Cost, but also its build time. Barracks are displayed as costing 150 Minerals, but it's closer to approximately 210 in the early game. Why is this? Well, when you take into account both the Travel Time (usually about 5-15 seconds) and the Build Time (60 seconds for Barracks, 30 seconds for Supply Depot, etc), you'll actually step back and realize that Terran buildings cost a lot more than you initially think (in the early game - and the reason I specify early game is because you won't have more than 16 SCVs on Minerals
on both your bases after you expand, so each SCV that isn't mining costs you 40-60 minerals a minute. In the late game, you have more than enough workers on minerals that building more structures doesn't extensively cut into your mining time).
So how do we apply this into improving as a player? Simply put, you need to practice 1 and 2 base macro to the point where you're constantly producing from all your structures ALL the time and using up ALL of your resources. This is important as if you don't macro as well, you'll need to build more structures, so there's two factors that's causing your army size to be smaller: weak macro, and having more production facilities that aren't 100% efficient (which soaks up more minerals that could used to build more of everyone's favourite unit, the Marine).
Earlygame Costs*** (all approximate - you don't need to know these values, but this general idea of building stuff close to your mineral lines in mind, it's very important)
Supply Depot - Close To Mineral Line: ~140 Further Away: ~150+
Barracks - Close to CC: ~210 Further Away: 215+
Bunker - ~40 to ~70 (depending on travel time, 75% salvage is included)
CC + OC Upgrade - ~650 to ~700
***This is early game where you don't have optimal saturation, so building 5 production buildings at once for example is worse than gradually building them overtime.
Hopefully this will make you realize how important MULEs really are in terms of keeping up with the economy of the other races, and that using Scans hurt you quite a bit.
The first 16 workers (regardless of race) mine about 40-60 minerals per minute per worker per base. So how can we apply this knowledge to being more efficient with our money? Well...
The cost of Terran buildings is not only reflected in its Mineral and Vespene Cost, but also its build time. Barracks are displayed as costing 150 Minerals, but it's closer to approximately 210 in the early game. Why is this? Well, when you take into account both the Travel Time (usually about 5-15 seconds) and the Build Time (60 seconds for Barracks, 30 seconds for Supply Depot, etc), you'll actually step back and realize that Terran buildings cost a lot more than you initially think (in the early game - and the reason I specify early game is because you won't have more than 16 SCVs on Minerals
on both your bases after you expand, so each SCV that isn't mining costs you 40-60 minerals a minute. In the late game, you have more than enough workers on minerals that building more structures doesn't extensively cut into your mining time).
So how do we apply this into improving as a player? Simply put, you need to practice 1 and 2 base macro to the point where you're constantly producing from all your structures ALL the time and using up ALL of your resources. This is important as if you don't macro as well, you'll need to build more structures, so there's two factors that's causing your army size to be smaller: weak macro, and having more production facilities that aren't 100% efficient (which soaks up more minerals that could used to build more of everyone's favourite unit, the Marine).
Earlygame Costs*** (all approximate - you don't need to know these values, but this general idea of building stuff close to your mineral lines in mind, it's very important)
Supply Depot - Close To Mineral Line: ~140 Further Away: ~150+
Barracks - Close to CC: ~210 Further Away: 215+
Bunker - ~40 to ~70 (depending on travel time, 75% salvage is included)
CC + OC Upgrade - ~650 to ~700
***This is early game where you don't have optimal saturation, so building 5 production buildings at once for example is worse than gradually building them overtime.
Hopefully this will make you realize how important MULEs really are in terms of keeping up with the economy of the other races, and that using Scans hurt you quite a bit.
When Do I Take My Gases?!
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I see many people expand to their natural and take their 3rd and 4th gas immediately with no plan as to what they're going to do with it. In order to answer the question "When Do I Take My Gases?!"
we first have to look at why you would take your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gas.
1st Gas: There's a few things you can do with 1 Gas. A few examples are Reaper FE TvX, MM opening TvP, or say Marine Hellion Medivac TvT/TvP. There's "more" funky builds you can do but I won't get into that.
The general idea behind this is that you plan to go for a Mineral heavy build. So when do you take your Gas for these builds? Easy: 10 Depot 12 Rax 13 Refinery.
2nd Gas: 95% of the time when you drop a Factory, you'll want your 2nd Gas. After doing a 1Rax Gasless FE, you'll want your 1st and 2nd Refineries immediately after you drop your 2nd and 3rd Rax (4th Rax if you're going marine heavy).
The idea behind this is that you've spent a bunch of Minerals on CC and Production Buildings, so if you don't take your Gas you'll end up having excess minerals and be unable to spend it (you'll know what I'm talking about if you see a Zerg fast expand and take 0 gases). In the case of Reaper FE, you've already mined quite a bit of Gas so until you drop your Factory to tech to Medivacs you won't need a 2nd one. But as a general guide, with 2 Gas (off 1 base) you're likely to be teching to Factory and Starport tech sooner rather than later.
3rd Gas: Here's where it gets a bit tricky and there's more factors at balancing Minerals and Vespene when on 2 base but I'll do my best to explain it. Solid army compositions consist of Vespene Heavy units supported by Mineral sinks. For Terran, this could be Marine+Marauder (Mineral Sinks) plus Medivacs (Vespene Sinks), or Marines (Mineral Sinks) plus Siege Tanks (Vespene Sinks). If you take too much Gas too early, then your Marine count will suffer. If you take it too late, your Tech or Siege Tank count will suffer.
Same idea with Marine Marauders and Medivacs. MM is okay on its own, but it's a hundred times stronger with Medivacs. So when do you take your 3rd gas? I could tell you "Take your 3rd Gas when you have X number of SCVs,"
but then you wouldn't learn anything. You have to pay attention to your mineral and vespene count and think ahead as to what you're doing. If you're going MMM, you'll want a 3rd Gas when you drop your Factory since Marauders and Upgrades require Vespene Gas.
If you're going Marine Tank, then that's a Gas heavy composition so you'll want your 3rd Gas much earlier than if you were going a Mineral heavy composition like MM. But in the end, IF YOU NOTICE YOU NEED MORE GAS, TAKE IT. Don't blindly take it without an idea of how you plan on using it. If you also notice you can spend ALL your Vespene Gas but you have 200-300 minerals remaining, TAKE another Gas.
4th Gas: When you need more gas Siege Tanks and Medivacs, take your 4th Gas. When you begin Viking or Ghost production in TvP, take your 4th Gas. When you have a Reactored Starport and you want +2 +2 Infantry Upgrades, take
your 4th gas. BUT I STRONGLY SUGGEST EXPANDING BEFORE TAKING YOUR 4TH GAS AS IT GENERALLY FITS A SOLID TIMING TO DROP YOUR 3RD so you don't forget. Again, there is no "take your 4th gas at 9minutes and 32 seconds or *GASP* you won't have enough."
Learn to use your judgement for gas timings and it'll give you a much better understanding of the game than if you just randomly take your gases.
Late Expansions: In this case where your expansion was really late (lifting off and moving over at 8-9 minutes or later) then often it's a good idea to take all 4 Gases right away as you're already seriously behind.
5th / 6th Gas: Take these right away when you expand to your 3rd (unless going for the Marine + Medivac TvZ style). In most of your games, you'll notice you can easily spend your Minerals and Vespene Gas quite easily. But something happens in the lategame. Slowly, your Vespene Gas climbs until you have little to no minerals, and an excess of 900 Vespene Gas. So where the heck did this come from? And the answer is, it's not where it came from, it's what happened to your mules.
As the game progresses into your 3rd and 4th base, many people tend to over-scan. This is a common problem from silver all the way up to masters. It's not that your Vespene Gas income suddenly skyrocketed, it's that you end up scanning to the point where you'll "sometimes" have one MULE on the field. Keep this in mind in ALL matchups, because having an excess of 500 vespene gas isn't good (unless you're 200/200 of course).
One More Note: If you notice you're stuck on 2 base but have more than optimal saturation (for example, you have at least 16 SCVs on mineral patches at your main and natural) then you should take another gas if possible as SCVs become less efficient on minerals once there's more than 16 and you're almost guaranteed to use the Vespene Gas at some point in the game.
we first have to look at why you would take your 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gas.
1st Gas: There's a few things you can do with 1 Gas. A few examples are Reaper FE TvX, MM opening TvP, or say Marine Hellion Medivac TvT/TvP. There's "more" funky builds you can do but I won't get into that.
The general idea behind this is that you plan to go for a Mineral heavy build. So when do you take your Gas for these builds? Easy: 10 Depot 12 Rax 13 Refinery.
2nd Gas: 95% of the time when you drop a Factory, you'll want your 2nd Gas. After doing a 1Rax Gasless FE, you'll want your 1st and 2nd Refineries immediately after you drop your 2nd and 3rd Rax (4th Rax if you're going marine heavy).
The idea behind this is that you've spent a bunch of Minerals on CC and Production Buildings, so if you don't take your Gas you'll end up having excess minerals and be unable to spend it (you'll know what I'm talking about if you see a Zerg fast expand and take 0 gases). In the case of Reaper FE, you've already mined quite a bit of Gas so until you drop your Factory to tech to Medivacs you won't need a 2nd one. But as a general guide, with 2 Gas (off 1 base) you're likely to be teching to Factory and Starport tech sooner rather than later.
3rd Gas: Here's where it gets a bit tricky and there's more factors at balancing Minerals and Vespene when on 2 base but I'll do my best to explain it. Solid army compositions consist of Vespene Heavy units supported by Mineral sinks. For Terran, this could be Marine+Marauder (Mineral Sinks) plus Medivacs (Vespene Sinks), or Marines (Mineral Sinks) plus Siege Tanks (Vespene Sinks). If you take too much Gas too early, then your Marine count will suffer. If you take it too late, your Tech or Siege Tank count will suffer.
Same idea with Marine Marauders and Medivacs. MM is okay on its own, but it's a hundred times stronger with Medivacs. So when do you take your 3rd gas? I could tell you "Take your 3rd Gas when you have X number of SCVs,"
but then you wouldn't learn anything. You have to pay attention to your mineral and vespene count and think ahead as to what you're doing. If you're going MMM, you'll want a 3rd Gas when you drop your Factory since Marauders and Upgrades require Vespene Gas.
If you're going Marine Tank, then that's a Gas heavy composition so you'll want your 3rd Gas much earlier than if you were going a Mineral heavy composition like MM. But in the end, IF YOU NOTICE YOU NEED MORE GAS, TAKE IT. Don't blindly take it without an idea of how you plan on using it. If you also notice you can spend ALL your Vespene Gas but you have 200-300 minerals remaining, TAKE another Gas.
4th Gas: When you need more gas Siege Tanks and Medivacs, take your 4th Gas. When you begin Viking or Ghost production in TvP, take your 4th Gas. When you have a Reactored Starport and you want +2 +2 Infantry Upgrades, take
your 4th gas. BUT I STRONGLY SUGGEST EXPANDING BEFORE TAKING YOUR 4TH GAS AS IT GENERALLY FITS A SOLID TIMING TO DROP YOUR 3RD so you don't forget. Again, there is no "take your 4th gas at 9minutes and 32 seconds or *GASP* you won't have enough."
Learn to use your judgement for gas timings and it'll give you a much better understanding of the game than if you just randomly take your gases.
Late Expansions: In this case where your expansion was really late (lifting off and moving over at 8-9 minutes or later) then often it's a good idea to take all 4 Gases right away as you're already seriously behind.
5th / 6th Gas: Take these right away when you expand to your 3rd (unless going for the Marine + Medivac TvZ style). In most of your games, you'll notice you can easily spend your Minerals and Vespene Gas quite easily. But something happens in the lategame. Slowly, your Vespene Gas climbs until you have little to no minerals, and an excess of 900 Vespene Gas. So where the heck did this come from? And the answer is, it's not where it came from, it's what happened to your mules.
As the game progresses into your 3rd and 4th base, many people tend to over-scan. This is a common problem from silver all the way up to masters. It's not that your Vespene Gas income suddenly skyrocketed, it's that you end up scanning to the point where you'll "sometimes" have one MULE on the field. Keep this in mind in ALL matchups, because having an excess of 500 vespene gas isn't good (unless you're 200/200 of course).
One More Note: If you notice you're stuck on 2 base but have more than optimal saturation (for example, you have at least 16 SCVs on mineral patches at your main and natural) then you should take another gas if possible as SCVs become less efficient on minerals once there's more than 16 and you're almost guaranteed to use the Vespene Gas at some point in the game.
Expanding
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Expanding is a little bit of a touchy topic. Many think you should expand as early as possible, others think it isn't necessary...from my experience, I believe that while other races taper off, Terrans generally get even more of an advantage as you take more bases with Orbital Commands. With the amount of Mules, there's almost no way another race can directly compete with Terran economy (without overproducing on workers) once you get 3 OCs up and running with optimal saturation without doing some sort of economic damage. (Warp Prism drops // Mutalisks // Drops). In addition to this, Orbital Commands have a way of paying themself off so the earlier you make one, the more useful it becomes. This is why 1Rax FE is such a strong build.
In TvP, the 1 Rax Gasless FE is extremely economical. Expanding off of 1 Rax does leave you vulnerable to early pressure in this matchup, but while although you're vulnerable, so is the Protoss regardless of what build they do - as they need to wait for Warp Gate tech before they can put on any realistic pressure.
In TvZ, fast expanding into 4 Hellions then Marine Tank allows you to accomplish a few things: scouting, poking, and expanding. These 4 hellions serve as a scouting mechanism for any aggressive response they may have to your build. Despite the fact that building any amount of hellions while you expand leaves you vulnerable to roach pressure, with this build, you immediately swap your buildings and begin marine tank production - something that's cost effective against roaches (even in small numbers).
If they make quite a few roaches and A-move them to your base, I'd suggest investing in 1-2 bunkers and trying to do some economic damage as their mineral lines will have little to no protection.
In TvT, it's a completely different story. 1 base plays are extremely common, and while they may expand later than you, if microed correctly, they can end up doing enough damage (whether it's economic damage or it simply keeps you on the defensive side). This matchup simply requires a significant amount of experience, and depending on the metagame, you'll learn to adjust your expansion timings accordingly. But until then, either you expand early (1 Rax Gasless FE // Reaper FE) or tech up to 1-1-1 and put on some early pressure and expand when you have the minerals at around the 6-8 minute mark.
In TvP, the 1 Rax Gasless FE is extremely economical. Expanding off of 1 Rax does leave you vulnerable to early pressure in this matchup, but while although you're vulnerable, so is the Protoss regardless of what build they do - as they need to wait for Warp Gate tech before they can put on any realistic pressure.
In TvZ, fast expanding into 4 Hellions then Marine Tank allows you to accomplish a few things: scouting, poking, and expanding. These 4 hellions serve as a scouting mechanism for any aggressive response they may have to your build. Despite the fact that building any amount of hellions while you expand leaves you vulnerable to roach pressure, with this build, you immediately swap your buildings and begin marine tank production - something that's cost effective against roaches (even in small numbers).
If they make quite a few roaches and A-move them to your base, I'd suggest investing in 1-2 bunkers and trying to do some economic damage as their mineral lines will have little to no protection.
In TvT, it's a completely different story. 1 base plays are extremely common, and while they may expand later than you, if microed correctly, they can end up doing enough damage (whether it's economic damage or it simply keeps you on the defensive side). This matchup simply requires a significant amount of experience, and depending on the metagame, you'll learn to adjust your expansion timings accordingly. But until then, either you expand early (1 Rax Gasless FE // Reaper FE) or tech up to 1-1-1 and put on some early pressure and expand when you have the minerals at around the 6-8 minute mark.
Scouting Information [Early] [Last Updated 12 Dec 11]
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vs Terran
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vs Protoss
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Gasless & Absolutely nothing - For this, it could be a few things: one, you could be getting cannon rushed, two, you could be getting proxy 2 gated, or three, they just built their buildings somewhere else to scare you. The simple response to this is to wall off with two depots and a bunker at your ramp. After that, you'll want to scout your entire base as well as the outside edges of it for a cannon rush, then scout for where the proxy gates may be. If it's cannons at your ramp, you'll want to get a Marauder in the Bunker as soon as possible to prevent the range 7 cannon from breaking your wall. But the first step is to deny any vision in your main base - that's why you wall off, even if it's a cannon rush.
One Pylon - Either you scouted way too early or they're doing a Nexus first build. If you're doing a 1Rax FE, you can drop a 3rd CC for extra MULEs and quicker SCV production, if you're doing an aggressive opener - the sooner you attack, the better.
1 Gas 1 Gate, high Chronoboost (50+) - If they're saving a lot of Chronoboost early game it means they aren't spending it on probes which is not economical at all. This basically means the Protoss is sacrificing economy for a quicker attacking force. If there still isn't an expansion dropped by 5:30-6:00 gametime, it's worth it to scan their main to see what they're doing and react accordingly.
1 Gas 1 Gate, low Chronoboost (50 or lower) - This is a pretty standard Protoss opening - they've spent some Chronoboost, but are saving generally two Chronoboosts - one for Warp Gate, and one for the first Stalker. If they don't have a 2nd Gas by the time the Stalker is out, check to see if they're expanding (as they likely are).
1 Gas 2 Gate, high chronoboost (50+) - This opening can work in two different ways. It's an opening that involves Stalker heavy aggression that can either transition into a 4gate, or they can expand behind it while poking around. If you're gasless expanding, you'd definitely want to bunkers instead of one. If you expanded with a few marines/marauders, you can get away with only having one bunker as long as you know they're expanding behind it.
2 Gas 1 Gate - This is another standard Protoss opening that can transition into quite a few things. 3 Gate Sentry heavy, 3 Gate Stargate (all-in), 2 Gate Stargate (semi all-in), 1 Gate Stargate (expand build), Dark Templar Rush, 5 Gate Zealot Sentry, 3 Gate Robo (all-in).
Counting Units - This is something that's really important when you're wondering how to scout a DT rush that was hidden in some dark corner of the map. Every minute, you get approximately 100 Vespene Gas from one Geyser. Knowing this, if you scout two Vespene Geysers and you poked up their ramp at 6 minutes and saw 2 Zealots and a Stalker, you can definitely expect DTs or some other tech. It takes practice, but if you compare a normal Protoss gateway army (who isn't rushing DT) vs someone who is, you'll notice that when they invest heavily into Tech their army size is extremely small (especially on one base). This is why you'll often see players A-Move their MM force with their SCVs when they see a DT pop into their mineral line at 7:15 (which is the standard timing for DTs).
Counting Pylons - When you get to their base, you should see a 2nd Pylon long before you see a Stalker, so if you can't find it, there's a higher chance they're going to be aggressive off of 1 base.
Nexus being warped in - Just because you see a Nexus being warped in doesn't mean you can go kill it straight away - be careful of this. Protosses can cut Probes to warp in more units to clean up your earlygame push, and then get an economic advantage since their expansion is up and yours isn't. Simply revealing your earlygame force and poking will force units instead of probes, so that's the best thing you can do while you expand and keep macroing.
#Unless you've scouted their Nexus up (or being built), your Protoss opponent is all-ining you.
vs Zerg
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1 Base All-ins
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Before I get into how to actually defend all-ins, there's something I want to talk about first. As everyone knows, Zerg fast expands vs Terran every game. Newer players ask "why would you expand if they're going to all-in you off of 1 base? Why not just stay on 1 base?" And the answer to that is in order to defend these all-ins, you need some sort of advantage, whether it's through tech or economy (or simply having a better unit composition that deals with what they're doing - coupled with the fact that your units are there to reinforce your army quicker than theirs).
In SC2, the safer way to defend an all-in is through an economic advantage. If a Protoss player 4gates a Zerg on one base, if they trade one for one, in the end, no one is ahead and no one is behind. If the Zerg is on two bases with a slight but noticable economic advantage and they continue trading one for one, eventually the Zerg player will crush the all-in and win the game. This applies to any matchup really, if you're up a base and you defend an all-in cost effectively you will win - it's simple as that.
So with that, the best way to crush a 1 base all-in is to expand early enough so that economic advantage I was talking about kicks in, so when you do crush their force, you've won the game from there on out. This is another reason why 1Rax Gasless FE is so strong. If a Protoss doesn't do significant damage vs a Terran who 1rax FE'd, they simply lose due to the massive economic advantage of the Terran being one base up. All of these "defense strategies" is assumed you've expanded and you're trying to hold your natural (except in the case of mirror matches, of course).
As for what an all-in is, it's an extremely strong timing attack that sacrifices any notion of expanding in the near future in order to do severe economic and/or army damage, or straight out win the game. When a Player ceases to expand, any attack from there on out is considered all-in, and must do significant damage for it to be worth it.
Protoss
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4 Gate - If you've ever had to deal with this all-in before, you'll know that it's probably one of the weaker PvT all-ins due to the fact that the strength of the Protoss army is the Sentry and with this build, there will be very few. In a perfect game, you'd want to get three bunkers up with 4-5 SCVs on autorepair. You also want to ensure that they can't run by your bunkers into your main as Zealot Stalker can kill alot of units (SCVs included, which you'll be forced to pull). This all-in hits as early as 5:45 game time with 5 Stalkers and a Zealot, with an additional 4 units every 30 seconds.
3 Gate Stargate - This is probably the most difficult TvP all-in to deal with, as it requires exceptional macro and decision making. In order to minimize the effectiveness of this all-in, first you have to have the outside edges of your base scouted. The last thing you want after you've expanded is to get caught with a Void Ray and 3 Zealots in your main base. Any time you scout two gas and no expansion by 6:00 (at the absolute latest), that's when you should be scouting the outside edges of your base for the proxy pylon to warp in on your high ground. Part 2 of holding this off requires a solid marine count, as the Protoss will poke your main with his Void Rays and attack your natural with his Gateway army to divide your army up. Since you'll be on 3-4 Rax at this point, I would continue making marine marauder but drop an additional 2-3 barracks when I could afford it. Since there'll be continued aggression till the end of the game, you don't have time to build Reactors - you want maximum unit production. Since they'll be splitting your army up, you'll want 3 bunkers at your front with at least 4 SCVs on autorepair. You lose alot of mining time but it ensures you won't be caught off guard when they pull their void rays out of your main and try to break down your natural for the quick win. It sounds easy to deal with on paper, but it's actually quite difficult and you'll likely lose to it a few times before you hold it off. Often it's hard to differentiate this build from a DT rush, but if you poke up their ramp with a SCV at 6 minutes and don't see a Sentry OR an expansion, you should be scouting for that proxy pylon. This hits around 6:00 with a Void Ray and Zealot/Stalker.
3 Gate Robo - [Will add information at a later date]
DT Rush - There's a few ways to help set yourself up to fend off a DT rush. You scout no expansion, two gas, and you basically have no idea what the hell they're doing. Any time you take your expansion, you should scout around to ensure there isn't a Pylon or a place he can warp in from. On maps like Shattered, they can actually build the Pylon on the other side by the rocks at the gold base and warp in past your bunkers, so keep this in mind when you're scouting for possibly super aggressive proxies. Another way to help set yourself up for success is to completely wall off your natural like you would against a Zerg. The worst thing that could happen is they get a DT past your Bunkers without you noticing, and then waits until you use a MULE before ravaging your mineral lines. By walling off, you ensure this doesn't happen. In order to be extremely safe, simply drop a Missile Turret at your natural so you can kill the DTs as they walk to your mineral lines. This all-in can hit as early as 7:15 with 3 DTs (less if they made more Stalkers or a Sentry). In the event that you have no scans and nothing to deal with the DTs, your best option is to take all your SCVs and units and go attack the Protoss right away. Lift up all of your Barracks and OCs, and save energy for when they attack you with DTs. Generally they'll try to expand behind this, so kill their Nexus and if they don't have a Sentry (send one unit up to check), then walk up the ramp and kill them. If they do have a Sentry, you've killed their natural so you aren't in an unwinnable position. Your best bet after that is to go back to your base, continue mining, save scans to snipe DTs, and get Turrets up or a Raven when you can. The point is in this scenario is you made the best of a really bad situation (and not to mention it's good practice for your crisis management).
Warp Prism 4 Gate - [Will add information at a later date as this is a less common all-in]
Zerg
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Roach Rush - Depending on how early you see the roaches, you'll react differently. As most people prefer FE -> 4 Hellion -> Marine Tank build, the counter to a Roach rush is immediately dropping a Bunker and making a Marauder (or just continue tank production if the roaches are late). Once you've done that all attention should go to your hellions - they need to delay the Roaches from getting to your base as much as possible - so go straight for their mineral lines.
Ling Bling - Rarely will a Zerg blindly Ling Bling all-in you, but it's important to know why they would decide to, and how to reduce the cost effectiveness of their banelings. You'll generally see this as a counter response to a successful 2 rax. Often you'll do enough economic damage that the Zerg feels the need to go all-in and since they know you only have Marines, it's their proper response in order to try to get back in the game since they're behind economically.
Terran
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Marine SCV - How you properly defend an early marine SCV all-in all depends on what you're doing. The first step is to build a bunker, and the second step if you're teching is to get hellions or siege tanks out (don't go for both - go for one or the other). If you're going for cloaked banshees, simply make hellions instead of marines.
3 Rax Reaper Marauder Ghost - This is an extremely difficult all-in to deal with. It looks like a reaper FE except there's 5 reapers in your base quite early. This build transitions from mass reaper into marauder ghost, which counters just about everything except mass combat shield marine or sieged up tanks with bunker support. If you're rushing cloaked banshee against this build you've already lost. In order to properly crush this in the midgame, you just need marine tank medivac - and watch for Nukes.
1-1-1 Marine Tank Banshee - Really, to hold this off, you need bunkers, marines, tanks, vikings, a medivac (if possible), and lots of scans (or a raven).
Hellion Banshee - This isn't as popular anymore with the BFH nerf, but it's still viable. You just need to continue making mech (hellion, tank, viking), or marine tank viking.
The 6 Rax Marine SCV - This build is pretty annoying. It looks like a 1rax FE...until they drop 5 Barracks at the exact same time and start cranking marines. Your best defense? Hellions or Tanks and Bunkers. If you don't see it coming, you can blindly make hellions (which is perfectly fine vs a gasless Terran build) and still survive.
In lower leagues: you won't see refined build orders. But the important thing is really just to try and guess what they're doing, then watch the replay. The idea is to develop a better understanding of the game and to develop better game sense. If you're never sure about what they're doing, just macro, and spend all of your money - you can't go wrong doing that.
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Gasless & Absolutely nothing - There's a few things that come to mind when I see this. One, is they're being cute by hiding their Barracks in some corner of their base to try to scare me and force me to over react; or two, they're proxying Barracks for some 1 base aggression/all-in. Regardless, ensure you scout their entire base to see what they're doing, and then drop a bunker. If you're going for Cloaked Banshees, you should cut Marines and make as many Hellions as possible instead so in the event that they do Marine SCV All-in you, you'll come out ahead (and by coming out ahead, I mean surviving with minimal economic damage done).
Gasless + 1 Rax - The problem with reacting this is that it could be a 1 Rax FE or some type of Marine SCV All-in. Often players will see no gas and think they can cut corners when they tech and then 8 Marines are at their doorstep when their Banshee just started (and then they lose the game). The best way to react to any gasless Terran build when you're teching is to either rush for Siege Tanks or if you're going Banshee, just constantly produce Hellions and you should have little trouble holding it off with the Bunker at your ramp. And if they don't go for a Marine SCV All-in, you'll have map control for a very long time with those Hellions you've been making.
12 Rax 13 Refinery + SCV dies to the marine - This is (argubly) the most difficult build order to read. They can transition into Barracks play, a Marine Tank 1-1 (2 gas), a Marine Hellion Medivac 1-1-1 (1 gas), a Marine Tank Medivac/Banshee/Viking 1-1-1 (2 gas), a Marine Hellion Banshee 1-1-1 (1 gas), and so on (you get the idea). The best way to find out what they're doing is to use a Banshee/Reaper to poke around, to scan, or to attack them, and then react accordingly from there. There are a few things you can look for to help you read your opponent. If there's very few marines, and maybe a hellion, it's likely they're doing some Banshee play. The more obvious thing is if there's 4 Marines in a Bunker (and even better - it's walled off), it's likely they're going for Cloaked Banshees. If you really don't know what they're doing, just keep macroing and save a scan just incase of cloaked banshees. The alternative is to scan their base, so if you feel like that would help, go for it. If not, the only thing you can do is to macro well and make smart decisions.
#Unless you've scouted a 2nd CC/OC, your Terran opponent is all/semi-all-ining you.
Gasless + 1 Rax - The problem with reacting this is that it could be a 1 Rax FE or some type of Marine SCV All-in. Often players will see no gas and think they can cut corners when they tech and then 8 Marines are at their doorstep when their Banshee just started (and then they lose the game). The best way to react to any gasless Terran build when you're teching is to either rush for Siege Tanks or if you're going Banshee, just constantly produce Hellions and you should have little trouble holding it off with the Bunker at your ramp. And if they don't go for a Marine SCV All-in, you'll have map control for a very long time with those Hellions you've been making.
12 Rax 13 Refinery + SCV dies to the marine - This is (argubly) the most difficult build order to read. They can transition into Barracks play, a Marine Tank 1-1 (2 gas), a Marine Hellion Medivac 1-1-1 (1 gas), a Marine Tank Medivac/Banshee/Viking 1-1-1 (2 gas), a Marine Hellion Banshee 1-1-1 (1 gas), and so on (you get the idea). The best way to find out what they're doing is to use a Banshee/Reaper to poke around, to scan, or to attack them, and then react accordingly from there. There are a few things you can look for to help you read your opponent. If there's very few marines, and maybe a hellion, it's likely they're doing some Banshee play. The more obvious thing is if there's 4 Marines in a Bunker (and even better - it's walled off), it's likely they're going for Cloaked Banshees. If you really don't know what they're doing, just keep macroing and save a scan just incase of cloaked banshees. The alternative is to scan their base, so if you feel like that would help, go for it. If not, the only thing you can do is to macro well and make smart decisions.
#Unless you've scouted a 2nd CC/OC, your Terran opponent is all/semi-all-ining you.
vs Protoss
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Gasless & Absolutely nothing - For this, it could be a few things: one, you could be getting cannon rushed, two, you could be getting proxy 2 gated, or three, they just built their buildings somewhere else to scare you. The simple response to this is to wall off with two depots and a bunker at your ramp. After that, you'll want to scout your entire base as well as the outside edges of it for a cannon rush, then scout for where the proxy gates may be. If it's cannons at your ramp, you'll want to get a Marauder in the Bunker as soon as possible to prevent the range 7 cannon from breaking your wall. But the first step is to deny any vision in your main base - that's why you wall off, even if it's a cannon rush.
One Pylon - Either you scouted way too early or they're doing a Nexus first build. If you're doing a 1Rax FE, you can drop a 3rd CC for extra MULEs and quicker SCV production, if you're doing an aggressive opener - the sooner you attack, the better.
1 Gas 1 Gate, high Chronoboost (50+) - If they're saving a lot of Chronoboost early game it means they aren't spending it on probes which is not economical at all. This basically means the Protoss is sacrificing economy for a quicker attacking force. If there still isn't an expansion dropped by 5:30-6:00 gametime, it's worth it to scan their main to see what they're doing and react accordingly.
1 Gas 1 Gate, low Chronoboost (50 or lower) - This is a pretty standard Protoss opening - they've spent some Chronoboost, but are saving generally two Chronoboosts - one for Warp Gate, and one for the first Stalker. If they don't have a 2nd Gas by the time the Stalker is out, check to see if they're expanding (as they likely are).
1 Gas 2 Gate, high chronoboost (50+) - This opening can work in two different ways. It's an opening that involves Stalker heavy aggression that can either transition into a 4gate, or they can expand behind it while poking around. If you're gasless expanding, you'd definitely want to bunkers instead of one. If you expanded with a few marines/marauders, you can get away with only having one bunker as long as you know they're expanding behind it.
2 Gas 1 Gate - This is another standard Protoss opening that can transition into quite a few things. 3 Gate Sentry heavy, 3 Gate Stargate (all-in), 2 Gate Stargate (semi all-in), 1 Gate Stargate (expand build), Dark Templar Rush, 5 Gate Zealot Sentry, 3 Gate Robo (all-in).
Counting Units - This is something that's really important when you're wondering how to scout a DT rush that was hidden in some dark corner of the map. Every minute, you get approximately 100 Vespene Gas from one Geyser. Knowing this, if you scout two Vespene Geysers and you poked up their ramp at 6 minutes and saw 2 Zealots and a Stalker, you can definitely expect DTs or some other tech. It takes practice, but if you compare a normal Protoss gateway army (who isn't rushing DT) vs someone who is, you'll notice that when they invest heavily into Tech their army size is extremely small (especially on one base). This is why you'll often see players A-Move their MM force with their SCVs when they see a DT pop into their mineral line at 7:15 (which is the standard timing for DTs).
Counting Pylons - When you get to their base, you should see a 2nd Pylon long before you see a Stalker, so if you can't find it, there's a higher chance they're going to be aggressive off of 1 base.
Nexus being warped in - Just because you see a Nexus being warped in doesn't mean you can go kill it straight away - be careful of this. Protosses can cut Probes to warp in more units to clean up your earlygame push, and then get an economic advantage since their expansion is up and yours isn't. Simply revealing your earlygame force and poking will force units instead of probes, so that's the best thing you can do while you expand and keep macroing.
#Unless you've scouted their Nexus up (or being built), your Protoss opponent is all-ining you.
vs Zerg
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Expansion Pool No Gas - This is a common build you'll see on maps that favours taking a quick third (Shakuras is the prime example). Since the Zerg player is only mining minerals, it allows them to get three bases up (and the drones required to support those bases) extremely quickly for an economic advantage over you as you'll be likely to take a fast expansion yourself. It isn't necessary to go for some crazy all-in, but knowing that there won't be quick mutalisks is very important. After scouting their third going up, you can drop your 3rd CC right away and be relatively safe.
Expansion Pool 100 Gas Mined - This is a common opening you'd see on a map like Xel'naga Caverns with more of an open natural that spines can't defend as easily. The idea behind this is they're only mining 100 Vespene Gas for the Speedling upgrade, and they drone up hard after that.
Expansion Pool >100 Gas Mined - If you notice that the Zerg is continuing to mine Vespene Gas after getting the required 100 for Speedlings, then it's very likely you'll be defending a Ling Bling bust or a Roach bust this game. Assuming they took an expansion, there's no reason for them to be mining Vespene Gas earlygame unless they're going to use it on something as previously mentioned - most likely some type of bust.
Pool 100 Gas Mined No Expo - This is generally the standard 13g 15p opening where the Zerg player gets early Ling Speed, a Queen, and lastly an expansion around 20 Supply. This is one of the more dangerous openings you have to watch out for as at any second, they can flick the switch on and start making Ling Bling to bust down your base.
Pool >100 Gas Mined No Expo - This is 100% an all-in. With no expansion they're all-in from this point forward.
Creep Spread/Spine Crawler - This is a helpful tip for scouting a Baneling Bust. If you noticed that for whatever reason, there's little to no creep spread by 6-7 minutes and there isn't one spine Crawler in sight, then there's a much higher chance they're all-ining you. This is where it gets difficult because there's no way to actually tell how many units they have without attacking them. Often you'll just have to set yourself up so that in the event that they do bust you that it's incredibly cost ineffective.
Expansion Pool 100 Gas Mined - This is a common opening you'd see on a map like Xel'naga Caverns with more of an open natural that spines can't defend as easily. The idea behind this is they're only mining 100 Vespene Gas for the Speedling upgrade, and they drone up hard after that.
Expansion Pool >100 Gas Mined - If you notice that the Zerg is continuing to mine Vespene Gas after getting the required 100 for Speedlings, then it's very likely you'll be defending a Ling Bling bust or a Roach bust this game. Assuming they took an expansion, there's no reason for them to be mining Vespene Gas earlygame unless they're going to use it on something as previously mentioned - most likely some type of bust.
Pool 100 Gas Mined No Expo - This is generally the standard 13g 15p opening where the Zerg player gets early Ling Speed, a Queen, and lastly an expansion around 20 Supply. This is one of the more dangerous openings you have to watch out for as at any second, they can flick the switch on and start making Ling Bling to bust down your base.
Pool >100 Gas Mined No Expo - This is 100% an all-in. With no expansion they're all-in from this point forward.
Creep Spread/Spine Crawler - This is a helpful tip for scouting a Baneling Bust. If you noticed that for whatever reason, there's little to no creep spread by 6-7 minutes and there isn't one spine Crawler in sight, then there's a much higher chance they're all-ining you. This is where it gets difficult because there's no way to actually tell how many units they have without attacking them. Often you'll just have to set yourself up so that in the event that they do bust you that it's incredibly cost ineffective.
1 Base All-ins
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Before I get into how to actually defend all-ins, there's something I want to talk about first. As everyone knows, Zerg fast expands vs Terran every game. Newer players ask "why would you expand if they're going to all-in you off of 1 base? Why not just stay on 1 base?" And the answer to that is in order to defend these all-ins, you need some sort of advantage, whether it's through tech or economy (or simply having a better unit composition that deals with what they're doing - coupled with the fact that your units are there to reinforce your army quicker than theirs).
In SC2, the safer way to defend an all-in is through an economic advantage. If a Protoss player 4gates a Zerg on one base, if they trade one for one, in the end, no one is ahead and no one is behind. If the Zerg is on two bases with a slight but noticable economic advantage and they continue trading one for one, eventually the Zerg player will crush the all-in and win the game. This applies to any matchup really, if you're up a base and you defend an all-in cost effectively you will win - it's simple as that.
So with that, the best way to crush a 1 base all-in is to expand early enough so that economic advantage I was talking about kicks in, so when you do crush their force, you've won the game from there on out. This is another reason why 1Rax Gasless FE is so strong. If a Protoss doesn't do significant damage vs a Terran who 1rax FE'd, they simply lose due to the massive economic advantage of the Terran being one base up. All of these "defense strategies" is assumed you've expanded and you're trying to hold your natural (except in the case of mirror matches, of course).
As for what an all-in is, it's an extremely strong timing attack that sacrifices any notion of expanding in the near future in order to do severe economic and/or army damage, or straight out win the game. When a Player ceases to expand, any attack from there on out is considered all-in, and must do significant damage for it to be worth it.
Protoss
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4 Gate - If you've ever had to deal with this all-in before, you'll know that it's probably one of the weaker PvT all-ins due to the fact that the strength of the Protoss army is the Sentry and with this build, there will be very few. In a perfect game, you'd want to get three bunkers up with 4-5 SCVs on autorepair. You also want to ensure that they can't run by your bunkers into your main as Zealot Stalker can kill alot of units (SCVs included, which you'll be forced to pull). This all-in hits as early as 5:45 game time with 5 Stalkers and a Zealot, with an additional 4 units every 30 seconds.
3 Gate Stargate - This is probably the most difficult TvP all-in to deal with, as it requires exceptional macro and decision making. In order to minimize the effectiveness of this all-in, first you have to have the outside edges of your base scouted. The last thing you want after you've expanded is to get caught with a Void Ray and 3 Zealots in your main base. Any time you scout two gas and no expansion by 6:00 (at the absolute latest), that's when you should be scouting the outside edges of your base for the proxy pylon to warp in on your high ground. Part 2 of holding this off requires a solid marine count, as the Protoss will poke your main with his Void Rays and attack your natural with his Gateway army to divide your army up. Since you'll be on 3-4 Rax at this point, I would continue making marine marauder but drop an additional 2-3 barracks when I could afford it. Since there'll be continued aggression till the end of the game, you don't have time to build Reactors - you want maximum unit production. Since they'll be splitting your army up, you'll want 3 bunkers at your front with at least 4 SCVs on autorepair. You lose alot of mining time but it ensures you won't be caught off guard when they pull their void rays out of your main and try to break down your natural for the quick win. It sounds easy to deal with on paper, but it's actually quite difficult and you'll likely lose to it a few times before you hold it off. Often it's hard to differentiate this build from a DT rush, but if you poke up their ramp with a SCV at 6 minutes and don't see a Sentry OR an expansion, you should be scouting for that proxy pylon. This hits around 6:00 with a Void Ray and Zealot/Stalker.
3 Gate Robo - [Will add information at a later date]
DT Rush - There's a few ways to help set yourself up to fend off a DT rush. You scout no expansion, two gas, and you basically have no idea what the hell they're doing. Any time you take your expansion, you should scout around to ensure there isn't a Pylon or a place he can warp in from. On maps like Shattered, they can actually build the Pylon on the other side by the rocks at the gold base and warp in past your bunkers, so keep this in mind when you're scouting for possibly super aggressive proxies. Another way to help set yourself up for success is to completely wall off your natural like you would against a Zerg. The worst thing that could happen is they get a DT past your Bunkers without you noticing, and then waits until you use a MULE before ravaging your mineral lines. By walling off, you ensure this doesn't happen. In order to be extremely safe, simply drop a Missile Turret at your natural so you can kill the DTs as they walk to your mineral lines. This all-in can hit as early as 7:15 with 3 DTs (less if they made more Stalkers or a Sentry). In the event that you have no scans and nothing to deal with the DTs, your best option is to take all your SCVs and units and go attack the Protoss right away. Lift up all of your Barracks and OCs, and save energy for when they attack you with DTs. Generally they'll try to expand behind this, so kill their Nexus and if they don't have a Sentry (send one unit up to check), then walk up the ramp and kill them. If they do have a Sentry, you've killed their natural so you aren't in an unwinnable position. Your best bet after that is to go back to your base, continue mining, save scans to snipe DTs, and get Turrets up or a Raven when you can. The point is in this scenario is you made the best of a really bad situation (and not to mention it's good practice for your crisis management).
Warp Prism 4 Gate - [Will add information at a later date as this is a less common all-in]
Zerg
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Roach Rush - Depending on how early you see the roaches, you'll react differently. As most people prefer FE -> 4 Hellion -> Marine Tank build, the counter to a Roach rush is immediately dropping a Bunker and making a Marauder (or just continue tank production if the roaches are late). Once you've done that all attention should go to your hellions - they need to delay the Roaches from getting to your base as much as possible - so go straight for their mineral lines.
Ling Bling - Rarely will a Zerg blindly Ling Bling all-in you, but it's important to know why they would decide to, and how to reduce the cost effectiveness of their banelings. You'll generally see this as a counter response to a successful 2 rax. Often you'll do enough economic damage that the Zerg feels the need to go all-in and since they know you only have Marines, it's their proper response in order to try to get back in the game since they're behind economically.
Terran
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Marine SCV - How you properly defend an early marine SCV all-in all depends on what you're doing. The first step is to build a bunker, and the second step if you're teching is to get hellions or siege tanks out (don't go for both - go for one or the other). If you're going for cloaked banshees, simply make hellions instead of marines.
3 Rax Reaper Marauder Ghost - This is an extremely difficult all-in to deal with. It looks like a reaper FE except there's 5 reapers in your base quite early. This build transitions from mass reaper into marauder ghost, which counters just about everything except mass combat shield marine or sieged up tanks with bunker support. If you're rushing cloaked banshee against this build you've already lost. In order to properly crush this in the midgame, you just need marine tank medivac - and watch for Nukes.
1-1-1 Marine Tank Banshee - Really, to hold this off, you need bunkers, marines, tanks, vikings, a medivac (if possible), and lots of scans (or a raven).
Hellion Banshee - This isn't as popular anymore with the BFH nerf, but it's still viable. You just need to continue making mech (hellion, tank, viking), or marine tank viking.
The 6 Rax Marine SCV - This build is pretty annoying. It looks like a 1rax FE...until they drop 5 Barracks at the exact same time and start cranking marines. Your best defense? Hellions or Tanks and Bunkers. If you don't see it coming, you can blindly make hellions (which is perfectly fine vs a gasless Terran build) and still survive.
In lower leagues: you won't see refined build orders. But the important thing is really just to try and guess what they're doing, then watch the replay. The idea is to develop a better understanding of the game and to develop better game sense. If you're never sure about what they're doing, just macro, and spend all of your money - you can't go wrong doing that.
Scouting Information [Mid] [Updated 04 Jan 12]
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vs All Races
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In every matchup, on every map, regardless of positions, you need to know how many bases they're on. This is simply so important that I cannot stress it enough. If you can't keep track of how many expansions they have, there's no way you can properly counter their unit composition when they'll just crush you through their superior economy.
vs Terran
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In this matchup, you need to know what army composition they're going for. Mech, Bio, or Marine Tank. If you're unsure if their army composition, simply scan their natural or send a suicide marine up to see. If you think they're going Bio, simply check their Tank count and Medivac count as their Tank count will be very low or non-existant, and their Medivac count will be unusually high so their Bio is far more effective than yours. Mech, you'll most definitely see Hellions, Tanks, and Vikings for air superiority.
vs Protoss
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In this matchup, it's very important to develop a sense of what they're doing so when you scan their army anywhere from 7-10 minutes into the game, you should know exactly what they're doing - whether it's chargelot archon, colossi, or something else like warp prism DT. How do you do this? Well, the only way to develop this is through experience with the matchup. But for the time being, a general guide to this is: if their gateway army is extremely weak, they're teching hard. If their gateway is quite scary, they're going for chargelot archon. If their gateway army is extremely, extremely weak, then they're doing something fishy as hell. I realize this is quite a "grey area" but as you play more games, you'll get the hang of it.
vs Zerg
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95% of the time, your Zerg opponent will go Ling Bling Muta as that composition is cost effective against anything a Terran player can throw at it. But as for other builds, often you'll see Ling Infestor into quicker Hive tech (Broodlord/Ultra). How do you scout these builds? Scan their main, or just do more drops and you'll be able to figure it out quite quickly as they cannot truly clean up a drop without Mutalisks or Infestors.
Dropping
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Dropping is a term used to describe a player loading units up into a medivac and dropping them into a spot that is most likely unprotected in an attempt to cause economic or production capability damage. When you drop, you will want to deal as much damage as possible to your opponent so you have the advantage. This includes:
1. Killing workers
2. Sniping key tech structures // Nexi/CC/Hatcheries
3. Sniping heavy gas units
4. Sniping supply structures (this hurts your opponent more than you'd think)
The concept of dropping is extremely simple, but difficult to execute. There are a few things to pay attention to. Any time you drop, you want to deal damage, and minimize the damage you take.
Most players will do a drop and throw away units needlessly, so despite doing some damage, they aren't as far ahead as they could have been. So what you have to do is maximize the damage you do,
and then pick up your units and save them. If you had lost these units, you'd lose about 600 resources worth of units. While that isn't much, it's a little advantage you'd prefer to have.
Although, sometimes you won't be able to save your units and you should be as aggressive as possible with them. Generally, verses Zerg, you won't be able to save your marines once Mutalisks are
out on the field. If a Terran player has a significant Viking count, you can expect your drop to die as well so think ahead and be aggressive with the drop, since you're going to lose those units anyway.
Now, anyone with half a brain can drop one medivac's worth of units into your enemy base, so try incorporating multi pronged attacks into your SC2 games.
In TvP, I always strongly advise players to do a double medivac drop in their main with marine marauder, and use that distraction to snipe their 3rd with your entire army. If you deal enough damage, they may go for an all-in so it's never a bad idea to have 3 bunkers at your natural that are walled off with supply depots.
In TvT, just do alot of drops and put pressure on. Nothing too fancy here, this matchup can get quite difficult.
In TvZ, your drops will want to mainly snipe drones, tech structures, and hatcheries. Dropping a Zerg while you move out with your army is a solid idea; dropping them after a huge engagement
is an even better idea, but requires solid multitasking and macro to pull this off.
1. Killing workers
2. Sniping key tech structures // Nexi/CC/Hatcheries
3. Sniping heavy gas units
4. Sniping supply structures (this hurts your opponent more than you'd think)
The concept of dropping is extremely simple, but difficult to execute. There are a few things to pay attention to. Any time you drop, you want to deal damage, and minimize the damage you take.
Most players will do a drop and throw away units needlessly, so despite doing some damage, they aren't as far ahead as they could have been. So what you have to do is maximize the damage you do,
and then pick up your units and save them. If you had lost these units, you'd lose about 600 resources worth of units. While that isn't much, it's a little advantage you'd prefer to have.
Although, sometimes you won't be able to save your units and you should be as aggressive as possible with them. Generally, verses Zerg, you won't be able to save your marines once Mutalisks are
out on the field. If a Terran player has a significant Viking count, you can expect your drop to die as well so think ahead and be aggressive with the drop, since you're going to lose those units anyway.
Now, anyone with half a brain can drop one medivac's worth of units into your enemy base, so try incorporating multi pronged attacks into your SC2 games.
In TvP, I always strongly advise players to do a double medivac drop in their main with marine marauder, and use that distraction to snipe their 3rd with your entire army. If you deal enough damage, they may go for an all-in so it's never a bad idea to have 3 bunkers at your natural that are walled off with supply depots.
In TvT, just do alot of drops and put pressure on. Nothing too fancy here, this matchup can get quite difficult.
In TvZ, your drops will want to mainly snipe drones, tech structures, and hatcheries. Dropping a Zerg while you move out with your army is a solid idea; dropping them after a huge engagement
is an even better idea, but requires solid multitasking and macro to pull this off.
Basic Micro Decision Making Situations [Updated 04 Jan 12]
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TvT
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Hellions vs Marines - When you have Marines, you should never just A-Move against Hellions. In smaller engagements, split up your Marines so when you atually get hit, you minimize the line damage from Hellions. When microing Hellions vs Marines, again, do not simply A-Move against them, you want to select Attack and click on a Marine to utilize your maximum range, and after your Hellions have attacked, you are to pull them back immediately. You're basically kiting Marines - and in a perfect game, don't lose any Hellions, send them back for repair.
TvP
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Marine Marauder (no stim) vs small numbers of gateway units - First off, you should know that Marauders and Stalkers trade one for one without stim pack. Knowing this, if you ever have 1 Marine + 2 Marauders vs a Zealot + Stalker, all you have to do is simply focus fire the Stalker down and ignore the Zealot. Once the Stalker dies, the Zealot becomes a free kill with Concussive Shells. The WORST thing you can do is focus fire the Zealot and possibly lose a Marine and a Marauder, when you shouldn't lose anything (maybe a Marine at most). You NEVER want Marauders to hit Zealots if you can help it, because that means they're doing half as much damage as they should be doing.
Also, in moderately sized engagements, you ALWAYS want to pick off the Sentry that is using Guardian Shield. Not only do you kill a 50/100 unit (which is pricy - 100 vespene gas is no joke), but you also cost him 4 free upgrades for that engagement, or he has to spend 75 energy on another Guardian Shield. Guardian Shield is like EMP, it makes your ENTIRE army more cost effective - in this case, it extends the life of the Protoss units by reducing the damage they take from EVERY source of damage by TWO - that's huge.
What do you do if you don't know what Guardian Shield looks like when it's activated compared to a normal Sentry? Use any unit tester or play vs a computer until you do.
Marines vs Zealot Stalker // Stalker poke - One common thing for a Protoss to do is to poke with their first unit or two. In order to prepare for this, when you scout your base, you need to ask yourself: ARE they making a Zealot? If they are, the chances of them doing the Zealot Stalker poke are obviously higher. If you're teching to 1-1-1 and a Stalker pokes up your ramp, you should have at least 3-4 Marines. Get NICE and cozy with the Stalker - as you stutter step + attack, you should be moving toward the Stalker to maximize damage on it (since there's no way 1 Stalker will kill 3-4 Marines without the defender's advantage of the ramp). You have to do this as soon as you see the stalker coming up your ramp and if they micro poorly, you'll be able to kill the Stalker. Now, if they do a Zealot Stalker poke, you need to kill the Zealot and since Zealots are very good against low numbers of Marines, you want to do the opposite in this situation. As you stutter step and attack, you want to back away from the Zealot as much as possible. If they begin to retreat right away with their units, then stutter step TOWARD them to maximize the damage you can do.
TvZ
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This is very similar to what I stated in the TvP section above. Any time a melee unit poses a high threat, you want to stutter step away from it. Any time units are retreating, you should be stutter stepping toward them. This is a very simple concept that takes a lot of micro practice, but it's one of those things that you do as a Terran to maximize the effectiveness of your units. A common example is the 2Rax Gasless vs Zerg. If there's too many Drones for you to handle, then you stutter step, attack, and try to micro away from them (you abuse the 5 range of your marines). If you have more than enough Marines, then you can be more aggressive and stutter step toward the drones as they retreat to maximize the number of units you kill.
Same thing against Roaches, if there's too many, you want to stay the hell away from them and utilize the range of your units, but if they're retreating, again, be aggressive and try to kill as many as possible. Every advantage is an advantage, regardless of how small or big it is.
Micro Decision Making Situations [Updated 04 Jan 12]
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TvT
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MMM vs Marine Tank Good Micro - Splitting your units before hand in a nice concave to reduce siege tank splash will make their siege tanks less effective. Always engage in open areas. You'll want to micro a few units forward as your units start engaging
to continue to reduce the siege tank splash as your units start to ball up again. Nuking their Siege Tanks to force an unsiege, cancelling the nuke, then attacking is even better.
MMM vs Marine Tank Bad Micro - A-Moving your units and hoping for the best will cause your units to run into a meat grinder.
TvP
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MMM vs X Army Good Micro - Using a separate control group for Medivacs, and then having them Move-Commanded onto a unit will cause them to heal even if you're constantly moving your MM army.
MMM vs X Army Bad Micro - Stimming your units then kiting back and forth with all of your Marines, Marauders, and Medivacs will cause the Medivacs to move around and not heal any units.
MMMV vs Gateway Colossi Good Micro - Using your Vikings to manipulate their positioning (and maybe pick off one or two colossi) is a solid idea. You want to avoid a direct engagement vs a critical mass of colossi, as in an even fight, you'll rarely win that battle (most of the time you'll either lose all of your vikings, and then your army, or vise versa).
MMMV vs Gateway Colossi Bad Micro - A-Moving with your entire army vs a critical mass of colossi will cause the colossi to shred through your infantry units, despite your vikings picking most of them off.
MMMG vs Chargelot Archon Good Micro - Picking off Archons after blanket EMPs will make their army extremely cost ineffective, as they lose 300 vespene gas per archon you snipe. You will take damage from the Chargelots, but they're much easier to deal with when there aren't any Archons supporting them. (Archons can do up to 47 damage to Biological, and their attacks splash. This is important to keep in mind because armour upgrades don't even dent Archon damage, but they reduce chargelot damage - so archons get even more powerful as the game progresses).
MMMG vs Chargelot Archon Bad Micro - A-Moving after blanket EMPs will probably allow you to kill most of their chargelots, but you want to target the archons with 150 or less shields, as they're squishier, and cost a lot more.
Snipe or EMP -- Against High Templar, you'll always want to snipe them, as EMPed High Templars can morph into Archons. Feedback range is also quite similar to EMP range, which puts your Ghosts in danger.
TvZ
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Snipe or EMP -- Against Broodlords and Ultralisks, Snipe is extremely powerful. Against Infestors, I also strongly suggest using Snipe so they're forced to rebuild those high vespene gas units. EMP simply isn't worth it unless they really bunch up their Infestors.
Basic Unit Composition Guidelines [Updated 04 Jan 12]
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Terran vs Zerg
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Marine Tank Medivac
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Until the lategame, you'll just want the maximum amount of Marines and Tanks you can get (Medivacs are quite good as well, but you'll never, never want more than 6-8 of them with a maxed army. The number of Medivacs you want depend on your marine count, the higher the marine count, the more medivacs you need. They do cut into your Tank count, so be careful). When they get to Hive tech, you'll want around 10-12 Ghosts to supplement your Marine Tank Medivac army (Vikings are a poor counter to Broodlords).
Marine Medivac
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Really nothing else with this style. Just Marines 'n' Medivacs. The more Medivacs you have, the more useless Zerglings become, but rarely will you want more than 12. When you're comfortably on 3 bases though, you CAN transition into making Siege Tanks out of 3 Factories as you'll have more than enough Minerals and Gas to support it.
Terran vs Protoss
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Marine Marauder Medivac
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If your opponent is going for Colossi, focus more on Marauders, and if they're going Chargelot Archon, favour more Marines. Generally you'll want 4-8 Medivacs, 6-8 Ghosts once HT hit the field, or in the case of Colossi, around 12-16 Vikings.
Terran vs Terran
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Marine Tank Medivac
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Quite simple, you want the maximum number of Marines and Tanks, with Medivacs to support your Marine count (usually 2-6 depending on army size is fine). Some Terran players prefer to invest in Vikings as well for air control (and to snipe drops) - this is completely up to you as they are quite expensive and WILL noticably hurt your Marine and Tank count.
Control Group Setup [Updated 04 Jan 12]
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Everyone is different so depending on your hand size and how comfortable you are with a keyboard my set up may be uncomfortable for you BUT, this is what I use and what I suggest:
1 - Micro - Marines/Marauders
2 - Micro - Siege Tanks/Ghosts
3 - Micro - Vikings (Medivacs if I don't have any Vikings)
4 - Macro - Orbital Commands and Command Centers
5 - Macro - Barracks
6 - Macro - Factories
7 - Macro - Starports
8 -
9 -
0 - Micro - Medivacs (if #3 is taken)
Early game, I'll use #1 for my Marine, and #2 for my Scouting SCV.
It's also important to note that what I have listed above there is the BARE MINIMUM you should use for control groups when playing Terran. Also, you can opt out #6 and #7 and just put all of your army production buildings on #5 and use Tab to swap from Barracks to your Factories to your Starports, and back to your Barracks again but I much prefer only hitting ONE key (5, 6, or 7) to check my production for a specific type of unit. You should NEVER NEVER NEVER have to look at your Production facilities to make units.
One Final Note...
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In this section I'm going to tell you something that's VERY important to keep in mind when you're playing games. What is it? Simply: if you lose, it was because of you, and ONLY you, that caused the loss. It isn't because of some imbalance in the game that doesn't exist, or because your opponent got "lucky," or cause their race is "op." YOU were the one that caused YOU to lose, and no one else. You can never truly master a race if you constantly make excuses for your loss instead of looking for solutions.
More sections // details to come; go easy on the feedback
this is my first guide I've ever written.
