[G] TvP The Art of Mech

Core Units:
0. SCV
1. Blue Flame Hellion
2. Siege Tank
3. Thor
4. Ghost

Situational Units:
1. Vikings
2. Medivacs
3. Battlecruisers

Core Upgrades:
1. +1 Range Hi-Sec Auto Tracking
2. +2 Building Armor
3. +3/+3 Vehicle Upgrades
4. Ghost Cloak

Situational Upgrades:
1. Air Upgrades
2. Ghost Energy

Core Buildings:
1. Planetary Fortress
2. Missile Turret

Problem: Because there are no vulture mines like BW, it is extremely important that Terran find a way to be able to defend both his third and his natural. On some maps like Shattered Temple, often it is all too easy for the toss to just simply "walk around" your main army.

Solution: You deal with this by using Planetary Fortresses to seal off alternative routes and to gain positional advantages. It is best to think of PFs not as an uber expensive building, but rather as a very cost-effective siege tank. As opposed to dumping your excess minerals into marines that get melted in 2 shots by colossi, why not instead dump them into a 1500HP, 5 Armor Behemoth that is the PF. Seriously 550/150 really isn't all that expensive. Remember, the +2 Armor is very important. 5 Armor PFs take a zealot 250 hits to knockdown. 3 Armor PFs take 187.5 hits, roughly translating to a +30% HP increase in all your structures. Furthermore, PFs have the same attack priority as other units, meaning that if they simply a-move into your PF-fortified base, chances are that the bulk of their units will focus on the closest unit (usually the PF) as opposed to your tanks.

Think back to BW, how did Terran deal with their relative immobility? How did Terran deal with mass recall? A: by planting spider mines everywhere to hinder protoss movement.

PFs in SC2 serve essentially the same purpose, but better: they are almost impossible to take down without protoss suffering from serious damage.



The above image should illustrate how to place PFs on Shattered Temple. Note that I am Blue, and I want to secure my 3rd at 4'oclock. But I am afraid of a protoss attack into my 5' oclock natural expansion, so I make a PF right in front of my 5 clock base with some siege tank support to deter him from attack it. This way I can re-position the bulk of my forces at my 3rd.



Note how wide the middle area is, so I place more PFs in the middle to prevent run bys from the side.





Another set of progressions showing how to force Protoss to always be engaging near your PFs or Turrets while you slowly push your way into his base

Problem: In BW, Siege tanks did 70 base damage to protoss shields. In SC2, it can be as low as 35 damage. Compound that with the issues of Hardened Shields on immortals that absolutely wreck Armored Mech, tanks suddenly seem a lot less attractive.

Solution: Always have 4+ ghosts. Believe it or not, Siege Tanks actually do more damage than their BW counterparts. BW Tanks have a fire rate of 4.5 seconds, SC2 tanks have a fire rate of 3 seconds. There is reason why ghost academy is only 150/50. It is an extremely accessible unit, make 2 ghosts early (11 minutes or so) so you can start storing their energy. Getting one ghost at 10:00 game time is equal to getting two ghosts at 12:13 game time. You NEED your ghosts with your army all the time, always keep your ghosts on their own control group for easy access.

Problem: How the fuck do you deal with Carriers/Void-Rays? You may at first think this is a joke, but I've heard this said so many times over that its lost its comic value. The reason you don't see Carriers in Bio TvP is because you will never give protoss a chance to macro up to 13 carriers. However, with the expansion focused and greedy mech play, Carriers are a considerable threat. Compound that by the fact Carriers have double the DPS of their BW counter parts, you have yourself a real problem.

Solution: Missile Turrets, Thors, BCs, Vikings, oh and more Missile Turrets. You want units with massive amounts of armor and HP. SC2 Missile Turrets are far superior to their BW counterparts (despite its slight increase in cost) because of the +1 Range, +2 Armor Upgrades, and increased DPS. Trying to go pure vikings is not the properly solution, as vikings essentially become paper air planes against carriers. Note that you CANNOT kite carriers, contrary to popular belief, because once a carrier engages a viking, interceptors will auto attack up to range 14. This is why you need Battlecruisers ,as they become flying ultralisks when fully upgraded. Think of BC/Viking as the air equivalent of Thor/Tank. You want your BCs and Thors to be at the front tanking the bulk of the damage. It should be noted that because there is no interceptor auto-repair like in BW (meaning that interceptors die really fast). So your goal is to kill Carriers by surviving long enough to kill the bulk of the interceptors.

Void-Rays aren't so much a problem because you can kite void-rays using vikings. Phoenixes may seem like a nuisance, but just think of it as a weaker muta harass. You deal with by making missile turrets (pre-emptively). Oh, remember those 3-4 ghosts you have? Use the EMP on protoss air, it does wonders for you.

Updated for Patch 1.3: BCs are now the goto-solution against protoss air. BCs are cost-effective with Yamato Cannon against just about EVERY Protoss air unit (yes even void rays, though viking support never hurts).

Problem: You can't leave a protoss macro unchecked. Their chronoboost mechanics mean that they will out-worker you very easily if you don't do something about it. Especially against mech, many protoss players will mass-expand everywhere.

Solution: Multi-pronged blue-flame hellion harass and drops. You want protoss to be running around everywhere and camping colossi at every mineral line. It takes about 2 colossi or 4 photon cannons per mineral line to effectively shutdown 4 hellion harass. If protoss has 3 bases, that's already 6 colossi invested into static defense. If instead Protoss decides to sink 550 minerals worth of photon cannons at each base, you've already done your damage.



Two pronged hellion raids are extremely effective.

Problem: Protoss often rapidly accelerates his ground upgrades using chronoboost, and thereby getting a very fast 3/3. 3/3 Chargelots, Colossi, Immortals are a nightmare to deal with if you are behind on upgrades.

Solution: Double Armory build. You need to do your best to get to 3/3 Vehicle Weapons (before 20 minutes). Although upgrading does not directly kill units in less shots, splash damage makes it so surrounding units take more damage and could potentially die from less hits (even at identical level upgrades).

Problem: Chargelots literally run up to your tanks in the blink of an eye. Typically unprotected tanks will get off 1 shot before chargelots are up in their faces. Next thing you know, you are splashing your own tanks to death. General rule of thumb from BW was that siege tanks need to get off around 2 hits to be effective, in SC2, I find that tanks need to get off on average, 2.5 shots to be considered cost-effective. This means that you need roughly 7.5 seconds of staying power for your tanks. Think of staying power as a measurement of how long a unit can absorb damage.

Solution: Use thors, hellions, and PFs as meatshields to improve your staying power, not to deal damage, but rather to absorb splash damage when they are surrounded. Remember why tanks are horrid against ultralisks? Well, doing 65 damage to an ultralisk once every 3 seconds is really no damage at all. Similar principle applies but for splash. If chargelots surround a thor, who cares if you're splashing your own thor with 33 damage once every 3 seconds? It would take 13 hits from splash to kill a thor by one tank fire. It would take 50 hits from splash damage to bring down a PF. This is also why bio works horrible with mech, as marines (and even marauders) have almost no staying power in the face of storm/colossi.

Blink stalkers are rarely an issue because they get owned so quickly by tanks even if they do try to blink right on top of your tank army (and generally you always want to have your tanks spread out about 3 units apart to mitigate colossi splash damage).

Again, this is only an opening. It is very much based on BW's KTFlash Build off Siege Expand. I've tested it against 4gate, 3gate VR, 3gate robo, and other forms of all-ins. If protoss hasn't expanded by 6:00, you need to immediately put up two bunkers (earlier if you want more safety). If he has very low sentry count, that likely means either VRs or DTs, in which case you will need a fast e-bay.

10 Supply (Scout after 9 Supply on 2 player maps)
12 Rax (Scout after 12 Rax on 4 player maps)
13 Gas [1]
15 OC
16 Supply
20 Factory
22 Supply
25 Tech Lab on Factory
31 Supply (and throughout)
33 CC (build in base then float out)
38 Gas [2]
45 Gas [3]
45 Gas [4] (Yes you want your expansion gases to be going up just as your CC is finishing into an OC)
48 OC
[48 Engineering Bay] Get an early e-bay if Toss stays on one base, as there is the chance of either 3Gate VR or DT expand
48 Armory
55 Siege Tech (I get it late because Unsieged Tanks do ample DPS, however, Rush Siege Tech if you are faced with heavy aggression or all-in and they are camping outside your expansion.)
%100 Siege Tech, Research Pre-igniter

At this point, once you have secured your expansion, you can cut marine production and start focusing on mech.

Next task is to:

Factory [2]
Ghost Academy
Command Center
Starport
Armory

Unlike BW, you CANNOT make only 3 marines and be done with your barracks. Protoss has a lot more powerful cheese builds than simply 2-Gate Powergoon in StarCraft 2. You need pretty much constant marine production, with the exception of 1 gate FE, that often its not worth cutting any marines (even if to make a tech lab).

http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/146892-1v1-terran-protoss-gutterhulk (vs Far, masters Protoss, former BW player, and also good friend of mine)
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/146409-1v1-terran-protoss-gutterhulk (mass carriers)
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/146703-1v1-terran-protoss-gutterhulk (3k+ masters mass colossi immortal phoenix HT)
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/146820-1v1-terran-protoss-gutterhulk
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/146932-1v1-terran-protoss-gutterhulk

More replays are being compiled. Feel free to add in your own.