EPTmakes wraiths even better if it was in sc2 to harass zerg in a large map
The Problem with Marines - Page 16
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nalgene
Canada2153 Posts
makes wraiths even better if it was in sc2 to harass zerg in a large map | ||
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ZomgTossRush
United States1041 Posts
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pwadoc
271 Posts
I noticed this first while I was experimenting with units matchups a few weeks back, in an attempt to prove that lings were cost effective vs. marines in the TvZ Marine/Raven thread. What I found was that, until late game (3/3, all upgrades), lings actually beat marines on a cost basis. I thought that if I could develop a build that incorporated mass lings with two bases and three hatches (for larva) against marine pressure, I could negate the advantage of the terran build. In practice, however, this didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Good terran players still managed to put pressure on me, even though I was winning all of the battles with lings to spare. I found myself on the losing end economically, and after a bit of thinking I believe I've figured out why. The original Marine/Raven strategy I was trying to counter attempted to bleed the zerg opponent of gas by using pressure with cheap, mineral cost units. I thought I could counter this by using only cheap, mineral cost units myself, but I've realized that, given the MULE mechanic, even if I win cost v cost with lings, I'm still losing, because the terran gathers minerals faster than I do. Of course, if I can mange to take and secure a third and prevent the terran from taking his, I can usually win the game, but the marine pressure is specifically designed to deny me my third base. As the game proceeds to the later stages and multiple bases, zerg starts building hive-tech, gas heavy units. The cheap mineral cost marine armies are not remotely cost effective against these units, and terran is forced to build gas-heavy units to counter. Once the terran begins relying on gas, the economic advantage provided by mules is less of a factor, and the huge production capacity of the queen mechanic becomes much more of a factor. Thus the early game strength, and late game weakness. Perhaps a possible solution is a mild-moderate nerf to marine damage or hitpoints, and an across the board rebalancing of late-game terran unit cost? Make marines slightly less cost effective, but reduce the gas cost of all late-game terran units to increase the effectiveness of the mule mechanic in the late game? I know this is sort of drastic, and not a change Blizzard is likely to make, but hopefully it will get people thinking about the problem in a different way. | ||
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Anzat
United States90 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + It's just ridiculous that Rain could go into his match with Nestea without practicing much for it, and say, "oh, I didn't practice much, so I just used this strat instead," and WIN. That should not be even remotely possible. Also, marines are more than powerful enough late-game against zerg. We don't have anything that works well against a big ball of stimmed upgraded marines with heavy medivac support. Everything that goes near them just melts, and banelings have a hell of a time getting in range. Fungal can work, but infestors are so slow and expensive it's hard to have them around everywhere the terrans can strike... because those balls of MM are so mobile, too. If marines have a late game problem, it's against toss with colossi and terrans with tanks... so, welcome to how zerg feels every single game. | ||
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Disastorm
United States922 Posts
Rain | ||
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dcberkeley
Canada844 Posts
On December 09 2010 12:01 Anzat wrote: This is a problem Blizzard really needs to address. Mass marines are ruining a lot of my games as zerg. And mass marine strats ruined half the latest GSL. Terrans aren't turning to marine+SCV all-ins because their race can't win any other way; they're doing it because it's imbalanced and it's a better way to win than the ones they were balanced around. + Show Spoiler + It's just ridiculous that Rain could go into his match with Nestea without practicing much for it, and say, "oh, I didn't practice much, so I just used this strat instead," and WIN. That should not be even remotely possible. Also, marines are more than powerful enough late-game against zerg. We don't have anything that works well against a big ball of stimmed upgraded marines with heavy medivac support. Everything that goes near them just melts, and banelings have a hell of a time getting in range. Fungal can work, but infestors are so slow and expensive it's hard to have them around everywhere the terrans can strike... because those balls of MM are so mobile, too. If marines have a late game problem, it's against toss with colossi and terrans with tanks... so, welcome to how zerg feels every single game. What makes you think that a Terran can win a proper macro game against a zerg? Sorry, but at least tell us you're in diamond with a decent W/L and say something besides your inability to defeat marines with banelings. All the lategame games in the GSLs and between pros have shown that Terran can't win in a long macro game against a zerg. I can say something along the lines of, zerg can win games aside from 14 hatch they just don't do it because they can get a free econ cheese win but then we'd be going back and forth without anything to back us up. | ||
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ZomgTossRush
United States1041 Posts
On December 09 2010 11:51 pwadoc wrote: This is a really great thread, thanks for making it. You've taken a lot of abuse for bringing up this issue, but I think you're absolutely correct. The marine makes terran armies very strong in the early to mid game, and very weak in the late game. I have a possible theory for why that may be the case, though no great solution. I think most of the early game strength of the marine results in the synergy between the MULE and the marine. I noticed this first while I was experimenting with units matchups a few weeks back, in an attempt to prove that lings were cost effective vs. marines in the TvZ Marine/Raven thread. What I found was that, until late game (3/3, all upgrades), lings actually beat marines on a cost basis. I thought that if I could develop a build that incorporated mass lings with two bases and three hatches (for larva) against marine pressure, I could negate the advantage of the terran build. In practice, however, this didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Good terran players still managed to put pressure on me, even though I was winning all of the battles with lings to spare. I found myself on the losing end economically, and after a bit of thinking I believe I've figured out why. The original Marine/Raven strategy I was trying to counter attempted to bleed the zerg opponent of gas by using pressure with cheap, mineral cost units. I thought I could counter this by using only cheap, mineral cost units myself, but I've realized that, given the MULE mechanic, even if I win cost v cost with lings, I'm still losing, because the terran gathers minerals faster than I do. Of course, if I can mange to take and secure a third and prevent the terran from taking his, I can usually win the game, but the marine pressure is specifically designed to deny me my third base. As the game proceeds to the later stages and multiple bases, zerg starts building hive-tech, gas heavy units. The cheap mineral cost marine armies are not remotely cost effective against these units, and terran is forced to build gas-heavy units to counter. Once the terran begins relying on gas, the economic advantage provided by mules is less of a factor, and the huge production capacity of the queen mechanic becomes much more of a factor. Thus the early game strength, and late game weakness. Perhaps a possible solution is a mild-moderate nerf to marine damage or hitpoints, and an across the board rebalancing of late-game terran unit cost? Make marines slightly less cost effective, but reduce the gas cost of all late-game terran units to increase the effectiveness of the mule mechanic in the late game? I know this is sort of drastic, and not a change Blizzard is likely to make, but hopefully it will get people thinking about the problem in a different way. Perhaps a possible solution is if players spent more time with the tools given to them, rather than trying to change the tools. How often do you hear a carpenter complain how a saw doesn't hammer in a nail? Honestly, I could write a post just like this distinguishing the differences between a unit and every other unit in the game accented the points of how a change needs to be made in order to make it "fair" or similar to X aspect/unit. Simply put, every race/unit has a specific role and/or function. How we choose to utilize the roles to achieve victory is the best part of this game and is why we play the game. Pointing out internal differences is important for understanding how to UTLIZE an aspect of the game. But stating differences as leverage for blizzard to "take action" is simply a cheap way to learn how to play rts's. | ||
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dcberkeley
Canada844 Posts
On December 09 2010 12:08 Disastorm wrote: If + Show Spoiler + Rain What would him winning have to do with anything? He's facing protoss or terrans from here on out and he even said he'd play macro games and didn't do so because he was unprepared. So does nerfing help the matchup? If you can't stop 14 hatch with cheese, you're basically saying you're not supposed to stop 14 hatch. In other words, zerg can go up 1 base within the first 14 drones. Is that okay with you? Is 2base v 1base for the first 8-10 minutes fair for the other races? If so, tell me how they can overcome the economic disadvantage. My answer would be proper timing rushes could possibly cripple a zerg. But then we're back to where we draw the line with cheese. Maybe every game will be a timing rush against a zerg with 2rax not working and people are calling for that to be nerfed because they want long macro games. | ||
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pwadoc
271 Posts
On December 09 2010 12:11 ZomgTossRush wrote: Perhaps a possible solution is if players spent more time with the tools given to them, rather than trying to change the tools. How often do you hear a carpenter complain how a saw doesn't hammer in a nail? Honestly, I could write a post just like this distinguishing the differences between a unit and every other unit in the game accented the points of how a change needs to be made in order to make it "fair" or similar to X aspect/unit. Simply put, every race/unit has a specific role and/or function. How we choose to utilize the roles to achieve victory is the best part of this game and is why we play the game. Pointing out internal differences is important for understanding how to UTLIZE an aspect of the game. But stating differences as leverage for blizzard to "take action" is simply a cheap way to learn how to play rts's. Every RTS I've ever played has been afflicted by issues like this one. Analysis and discussion of the issue makes the game better, and increases our understanding of the game. | ||
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dcberkeley
Canada844 Posts
On December 09 2010 12:11 ZomgTossRush wrote: Perhaps a possible solution is if players spent more time with the tools given to them, rather than trying to change the tools. How often do you hear a carpenter complain how a saw doesn't hammer in a nail? Honestly, I could write a post just like this distinguishing the differences between a unit and every other unit in the game accented the points of how a change needs to be made in order to make it "fair" or similar to X aspect/unit. Simply put, every race/unit has a specific role and/or function. How we choose to utilize the roles to achieve victory is the best part of this game and is why we play the game. Pointing out internal differences is important for understanding how to UTLIZE an aspect of the game. But stating differences as leverage for blizzard to "take action" is simply a cheap way to learn how to play rts's. I have to agree with this. It's so infuriating that people are so damn impatient and can't wait for changes amongst the players and want Blizzard to change everything so that they can play the way they would want to instead of adapting. I'm not saying that the game is perfectly balanced but how does anybody have the foresight to know how the match up plays out? Did you predict something as simple as marine splits before watching foxer do it? Just wait, be patient and stop crying imbalance about everything because it's not fair in your eyes. Sorry, but I'm willing to bet that if things don't change, someone who would rather take action than complain will have solved the problem themselves. | ||
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dcberkeley
Canada844 Posts
On December 09 2010 12:16 pwadoc wrote: Every RTS I've ever played has been afflicted by issues like this one. Analysis and discussion of the issue makes the game better, and increases our understanding of the game. Sorry, but you're totally misunderstanding him. He's not against analysis and discussion of the issue, but using it to leverage for changes is dumb. Which I completely agree with. Improving our understanding is okay but people crying for changes all the time isn't. | ||
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pwadoc
271 Posts
On December 09 2010 12:18 dcberkeley wrote: Sorry, but you're totally misunderstanding him. He's not against analysis and discussion of the issue, but using it to leverage for changes is dumb. Which I completely agree with. Improving our understanding is okay but people crying for changes all the time isn't. No, look at his earlier comments. He basically doesn't want anyone discussing this. And unless you assume the game is already perfectly balanced as it is, then discussion and analysis is going to lead to proposed changes. | ||
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kineSiS-
Korea (South)1068 Posts
Idiotic allegation. Overpowered means that a unit is easily produced (low on tech tree) and is highly efficient at its task and plays multiple roles. No unit that is overpowered means that it can't be beaten. Every unit does and should have myriad counters, but how effective are they? Invulnerable, impasse, insuperable would be terms describing something that is uncounterable ( did not use thesaurus. ) | ||
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terranghost
United States980 Posts
Keep in mind with this build you have the potential to play it for the early game however it also allows you to play late game which you said is one of the problems with the marine. You say that the marine has alot of power in the early game. and that it decreases as you move into. You also say that the marine has 3 crucial roles: dps, anti air, and anti mass. I will add one more role (assuming you are building medivacs which you should be) which is harassment. In the link above you will see a build that was created during the beta so it is likely the replays do not work anymore. At anyrate the relies on few marines for survival early game (where you said marines are good) then at a point to stop making them using the rax to make the addons for you other production facilities as they come up and an early raven to help you live due to a low army count. Eventually you will start making ghosts as mid to late game is reached. Your composition becomes largely hellion, tank, viking based hellions serve as a mineral dump (just like marines, zealots, zerglings, and roaches can be). Hellions in combination with tanks serve the anti mass. tanks pummel armored units with mass hellion used as meatshields. (hellions are also more durable than marines and can survive more splash damage) Against light armored units hellions are fast and do very well. The starport you built early on can start producing banshees or viking. Which one you start to make depends solely on what you scout. If you see a heavy zealot or immortal count than banshees are ideal if you see robo support bay than vikings are probably ideal. You can even produce 1-2 medivacs to help with the map control the hellions give you.(until your natural comes online it is unlikely that you can keep pumping out ravens) The toss player in most cases will be hesitant to move out as the moment he moves the majority of his army out his probes are toast. Hellions are fast enough to assault probes and still run back in time for the battle. Also with 1-2 medivacs you can continuously poke the front of the natural while dropping the back for harassment. Assuming you scouted your opponent going for a low count of air units than your vikings you are making work just fine. If you see a larger count than either a make thors instead of tanks. You should be already on your natural at this point by the time they have a significant airforce. Don't forget you built marines to stay alive early on so even if they rush for double stargates you should be fine early on with your raven marines and a few vikings. The toss has 4 air units at their disposal. The phoenix is not going to be able to attack the majority of your army so it will be there primarily as support but when it is supporting it is a sitting duck for thors. Voidrays can be ripped apart by vikings plus thor splash. The mothership and carrier are very late in the tech tree and vikings work very well against them. In short you have hellions/tanks/raven as your anti mass. Tanks (thors against mass air) as your dps. Viking/thor as your anti air. You can do all of these without marines late game game (yet it is not bad to still add them in) and without having to add useless production facilities. Hellion/medivac/banshee combos work as your harass/map control. 2 factories (1 with reactor) 1 port on one base. 4 factories (2 with reactors) 1port or 3 factories (2 with reactors) 2 ports on 2 base. | ||
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imBLIND
United States2626 Posts
On December 09 2010 02:25 Kyandid wrote: OP, I'm not sure if you're going to read this or not, but I agree with you, and am sorry that every fucking person in this thread is illiterate. I read every single comment that people post in my threads. Illiterate people annoy me too lol, but that's their problem not mine. The main thing people posted in the last 3 or 4 pages mainly revolved around Design vs Balance, Mech, Builds, and the Mule. Regarding Builds: On December 09 2010 08:12 morimacil wrote: Marines are good in the early and mid-game, and get worse in the later game, when the aoe gas units are out. That doesnt mean that terran lategame sucks though. What it means is that a terran that goes into the lategame without transitioning to depend less on marines will suck when faced with the dedicated counters. That is plain wrong, the correct way to say it would be "terrans build around the marine too much". You CAN use vikings and ghosts to defend against air perfectly fine. And often, building marauders or hellions instead of marines is much better against ground. Marines are a good unit to have, because of how versatile they are, if you have marines, its hard to get caught off guard by a techswitch. But really, if you go something like marine tank, and your opponent is going for zealot-templar, for example, then yeah, that is going to be pretty good against you. It doesnt mean that you cant fight in the lategame though, it just means that you have to adapt. Scout it early enough, and then switch your buildings around to go hellion ghost instead of marine tank, and with the exact same buildings, you will have much better results. On December 09 2010 05:17 CanadianStarcraft wrote: Terran is the strongest race in the early game by far, players who recognize this choose the race for this reason. Both Protoss and Zerg play defensively in their opens with noteable exceptions, but solid builds require defensive opens. Solid Terran builds often revolve around a good timing and a key unit mixture or number. We saw Idra dismantled by something like this in the GSL 3. My reaction to this, Zerg and Protoss players simply need to structure concrete opens that stop these specific timings and unit mixtures and the all in players will either stop their all ins or stop playing. I agree with the idea that builds should be structured less around the marine. But as other people have noted... On December 09 2010 04:28 babyToSS wrote: The OP makes a very good point. Marines are an absolute must unit in the terran army and without this one unit, any terran army composition has a huge glaring and easily exploitable weakness. I realized this sometime back when I tried experimenting with non-bio play in TvP. Against good players (2000+diamond) one of the two things would always happen - 1) I make some unit composition without marines and it would get owned because of bad anti-air, anti-t1 horde etc. 2) I lose marines to AOE units like psi-storm or colossus and then the rest of the army gets rolled over. ...its really difficult to make an army that isn't reliant on the marine for a single role. Ideally, units should be able to fill in for each other's spot whenever one is quickly eliminated. Right now, it's really hard to fill in for the marine when they're eliminated first. Sure, there are alternatives, but how easy is it to get to viking/ghost/hellion/thor/marauder safely? Three production buildings, most units require gas, all units are at least twice as expensive as a marine, and you'd definately need more than 3 bases to support this kind of army. There's also no guarantee that this army will win a battle of attrition, so the build-times for all the units is also a huge downfall. This then ties in to the numerous posts about mech and it's BW comparison. This is another argument for another day, but I'd like to point out that the durability and effectiveness in of the mech in BW came from the abuse of the spider mine and how it can come out on top of most battles with at least 1/2 1/3 of the original size. The fact that there is no real "wall" between the in front of the mech army and how difficult it is to keep mech units alive makes bio a more appealing choice. So then is that our fault for not using it or is that Blizzards fault for not balancing the prices/build times? Is that a design flaw or balance flaw? There's a very fine line between balance and design flaws, but the main difference is that balance is controlled only by blizzard -- design is controlled by the player base. The player base cannot demand balance/unit stat changes, and Blizzard cannot demand design/gameplay changes. The failure of mech is a combination of both, and currently, the burden of the blame is on Blizzard for balancing mech with bio instead of mech with the other armies. Right now, the game is balanced around design, which I absolutely hate. What I mean by this is that Blizzard put units in the game with the mindset of giving us options of what they thought would be cool battles. Examples of this would be HTs vs Ghosts and the marauder/roach/immortal triangle. They didn't think about how well units from the same race worked with each other, only how imbalanced it would be vs P and Z, which is a huge problem why marines usurped multiple roles from other Terran units. Design vs Balance tweaking is a difficult process, and personally, Blizzard did not do a very good job with that. Balance should be about how units work well with other units from the same race (i.e how well would reapers work with a mid game Terran army), not about how well those units would fare vs protoss or zerg. This then allows the design team (the player base) to utilize each race to it's full potential. There's a difference between "dude marines are OP, so go nerf the shields, nerf atk animation, nerf the atk speed, nerf the other races" <--nerfs and buffs and "Marines are too good in the early game and not good enough in the late game because the crucial roles of the terran army are all put solely on the marine. If we want to fix this, we need to make other units viable and we need a unit that can protect or keep away damaging units from the terran army, much like how the spider mine functioned in BW." <--roles of a unit Lemme use the MULE as an example The mule provides a huge early game benefit by essentially providing an extra 5 workers for every 50 energy. Knowing that the drone and probe are easier to mass compared to the SCV, the MULE has become a requirement for the Terran to survive past the early game. Result: the mule provides too many minerals for it's cost in the early game, and the advantages of the MULE slowly die out as the game progresses. MULEs have usurped the role of the SCV in some aspects, basically making marine/scv all-ins less risky and easier to mass because they're both mineral only units. The MULE needs a new role, not an overlapping role. Maybe if we gave MULEs a faster repair rate or maybe allowed the MULE to harvest gas while lowering the mineral intake, the gameplay would revolve less around marine/scv all-ins without completely killing the possibility of cheese. | ||
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imBLIND
United States2626 Posts
On December 09 2010 13:26 terranghost wrote: ghost mech Keep in mind with this build you have the potential to play it for the early game however it also allows you to play late game which you said is one of the problems with the marine. You say that the marine has alot of power in the early game. and that it decreases as you move into. You also say that the marine has 3 crucial roles: dps, anti air, and anti mass. I will add one more role (assuming you are building medivacs which you should be) which is harassment. In the link above you will see a build that was created during the beta so it is likely the replays do not work anymore. At anyrate the relies on few marines for survival early game (where you said marines are good) then at a point to stop making them using the rax to make the addons for you other production facilities as they come up and an early raven to help you live due to a low army count. Eventually you will start making ghosts as mid to late game is reached. Your composition becomes largely hellion, tank, viking based hellions serve as a mineral dump (just like marines, zealots, zerglings, and roaches can be). Hellions in combination with tanks serve the anti mass. tanks pummel armored units with mass hellion used as meatshields. (hellions are also more durable than marines and can survive more splash damage) Against light armored units hellions are fast and do very well. The starport you built early on can start producing banshees or viking. Which one you start to make depends solely on what you scout. If you see a heavy zealot or immortal count than banshees are ideal if you see robo support bay than vikings are probably ideal. You can even produce 1-2 medivacs to help with the map control the hellions give you.(until your natural comes online it is unlikely that you can keep pumping out ravens) The toss player in most cases will be hesitant to move out as the moment he moves the majority of his army out his probes are toast. Hellions are fast enough to assault probes and still run back in time for the battle. Also with 1-2 medivacs you can continuously poke the front of the natural while dropping the back for harassment. Assuming you scouted your opponent going for a low count of air units than your vikings you are making work just fine. If you see a larger count than either a make thors instead of tanks. You should be already on your natural at this point by the time they have a significant airforce. Don't forget you built marines to stay alive early on so even if they rush for double stargates you should be fine early on with your raven marines and a few vikings. The toss has 4 air units at their disposal. The phoenix is not going to be able to attack the majority of your army so it will be there primarily as support but when it is supporting it is a sitting duck for thors. Voidrays can be ripped apart by vikings plus thor splash. The mothership and carrier are very late in the tech tree and vikings work very well against them. In short you have hellions/tanks/raven as your anti mass. Tanks (thors against mass air) as your dps. Viking/thor as your anti air. You can do all of these without marines late game game (yet it is not bad to still add them in) and without having to add useless production facilities. Hellion/medivac/banshee combos work as your harass/map control. 2 factories (1 with reactor) 1 port on one base. 4 factories (2 with reactors) 1port or 3 factories (2 with reactors) 2 ports on 2 base. I know about ghost mech, and the reason it has fallen out of favor is because of how difficult it is to expand without succumbing to massing bio. Another reason is how difficult it is to keep this army alive because of the cost and build times of the ghost, thor, and tank. This definitely works (and I believe Blizzard intended it to be this way), but it's too difficult to get there safely with a good econ. | ||
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terranghost
United States980 Posts
If you want to go for heavy on marines then you are left with 1 of two choices. MMM or MM +tech (tech could be tanks as support ravens as support ect.) Both of these rely on getting a bunch of barracks up so you can keep your money low. While as both of these allow for alot more aggression early on. (ghost mech allows for harassment and mild aggression) But the sacrifice you pay for this is as the game transitions to late game your army is going weaker and weaker. This is the nature of the mass marine killing. The reason ghost mech as used less frequently now I think is more along the lines of infantry builds allow for more aggrestion. (Meaning they are playing for the early/mid game not late game) Now that we have reached late game you have 3+ production facilities (barracks) that producing units to throw into the meat grinder (assuming your opponent is being good about keeping the anti mass marine up and running). The terran have other compositions that can use all of their resources and fulfill all of the roles the marine holds however if you open up 3-5 barracks you are gonna find yourself making marines almost no mater what. Terrans have been using all ins alot more now as it becomes alot clearer that their army mix of choice is getting less and less effective as the game moves on. They decide to give their all while their composition is at its stronger. | ||
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pwadoc
271 Posts
On December 09 2010 14:14 imBLIND wrote: Lemme use the MULE as an example The mule provides a huge early game benefit by essentially providing an extra 5 workers for every 50 energy. Knowing that the drone and probe are easier to mass compared to the SCV, the MULE has become a requirement for the Terran to survive past the early game. Result: the mule provides too many minerals for it's cost in the early game, and the advantages of the MULE slowly die out as the game progresses. MULEs have usurped the role of the SCV in some aspects, basically making marine/scv all-ins less risky and easier to mass because they're both mineral only units. The MULE needs a new role, not an overlapping role. Maybe if we gave MULEs a faster repair rate or maybe allowed the MULE to harvest gas while lowering the mineral intake, the gameplay would revolve less around marine/scv all-ins without completely killing the possibility of cheese. I like this idea as well. Maybe an upgrade that lets MULEs harvest gas as well as minerals available in a late-game structure, like the fusion core. | ||
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Radio.active
United States121 Posts
I don't think marines need to be nerfed, 1 unmicroed zergling will beat 1 unmicroed marine in a fight. | ||
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pzea469
United States1520 Posts
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