Thread: Terran Guide (Beta)
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30-04-2010, 00:10 #1Member
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Terran Guide (Beta)
Hieronder is een vroege guide over alle Terran units, Build order's & tactics. Voor alle terrans die beginnen met SCII (en de rest
) is het zeer sterk aangeraden dit verschillende keren te lezen.
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SC2 Macro Power, The Orbital Command:
Starcraft 2 is all about macro- and Terran’s have there fair share of macro mechanics to be aware of. The Orbital Command (or OC), is the primary macro facility for Ts and, if used properly, is the most useful item in the terran arsenal. It allows them to mine faster, scout instantly, reveal cloaked units instantly, and get you out of a supply block at a key moment. Effective use of the OCs energy (and constant use of its energy) will correlate directly with your win/loss rate. Quick tips for your OCs are:
- First, and foremost, ALWAYS have it hot keyed. Intermittently (when you have a free action), click your OCs hotkey and check for available energy often.
- Don’t let energy store up past 100 EVER, and only let it go past 50 if you think you may need a scan for tactical purposes (seeing up a cliff, or spotting Dark Templar, Banshees, Ghosts, or other cloaked/burrowed units).
- Always drop mules at the highest qty resource available- what I mean is don’t drop a mule on a mineral that has only 400 mineral points remaining if there is one available to you with 1000 mineral points remaining. This will keep your workers harvesting efficiently and not unnecessarily reduce the number of mineral patches available to harvest from.
- Always upgrade any expansion to an OC (if your not going to turn it into a planetary fortress) either before you send it over to the expansion, or if built at location before you start SCV production. The amount of income provided by mules (~250- 270 over the course of its life) and the amount of utility provided by another orbital command should not be underestimated.
- Some neat tricks with mule drops:
o If you see banelings coming to blow up a wall on your base (or going at a group of marines) drop a mule infront of them to soak up some of the damage. Technichally this is costly, (~250 minerals that would be mined by the mule), but often keeping your army (or your base) alive is more important than the minerals mined from the mule. This can be a game winning play if you drop it at just the right moment.
o The same trick can be used to take the opening shot of a siege tank so you can move your army in safely to kill it.
The Planetary Fortress-
The Pfort is the biggest, baddest, defensive structure in the game, and only requires and engineering bay to build. With its SCVs repairing it, it can handle a small to medium sized ground force from any race with relative ease. You should always have a few missile turrets to back up a pfort investment. This would be built in the place of an orbital command, so it should only be used if absolutely necessary; as it effectively costs you all the extra minerals and scans you would get from an orbital command.
- This can be used as a way to early expand on maps with a natural expo ( steppes of war, lost temple, kulas revine etc) against protoss and zerg. Be careful when doing this strategy because it leaves you open for drops, but it is also a highly effective way to get an early resource advantage on your opponents. I recommend not getting pfort against terrans since siege tanks can out range the pfort.
- Always get the range upgrade for turrets if you build a planetary fortress. The same goes for the armor upgrade, but it isn’t a top priority.
- Amazing for island expansions. Flying a command center unupgraded to the island on Scrap Station and then turning it into a pfort allows it to nearly hit the whole island, making it nearly invincible to a drop harass, or an incoming nydus worm (especially with good turret placement)
- While I am not a big fan of this idea- you can attack protoss and terran bases with planetary fortresses, and use them to contain enemies in their bases. (I would highly recommend practicing this many times with friends before attempting it on the ladder). The method is simple, build a few command centers, fly them to a location, land them all, and upgrade them all into pforts. Meanwhile, send over SCVS (optimally in a medivac) to repair the buildings while they upgrade --- Thanks Krowser for:
A small pointer for flying over a CC and attacking someone with a PF. You can load up to 5 SCVs in a CC. So you wont actualy need a medivac to carry them.
Missile Turrets:
Your main static defense as a terran, hits air and colossi only. Mostly good for being a detector and protecting yourself from drops / harass
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- Turrets are better in groups, but also they need to cover all of your harvesters (if you fear air harass).
- If you are building them as your primary form of detection, always make 2 instaed of 1. Dark templar kill them in just a few hits, so it dosen’t hurt to have extra. (plus, they are cheap!)
- Rarely, but it will happen, you will find yourself without a single unit that attacks air. Its never a bad idea to build a few turrets just incase your opponent hides his starport/stargate/spire. Don’t go overboard but don’t leave yourself undefended, either.
Sensor Towers
Sensor towers hover under a lot of controversy- they are expensive (almost as much as a siege tank), and easy to locate and destroy. That being said, they can be invaluable if used to stop incoming drops, or spot enemy troop movement early to allow you to setup your defenses before being attacked. Here are my rules of thumb for sensor towers:
- Don’t build sensor towers if you are on the offense most of the game. Use your resources for combat units.
- Build sensor towers anytime you find yourself unsure of what your opponent is doing. It will provide a certain sense of security which will allow you to progress down the tech tree and expand without worrying about unseen attacks to the back of your base.
- Any time you can cover both your main and an expansion with a sensor tower, it is probably a good investment. The amount of time you get to move your army into position can be the difference between winning and losing a tight game.
Marine:
The Terran’s lowest tech unit, the marine is a versatile unit that can and should be used all game, every game as one of your primary army units. The marine’s strength is in numbers, and cost to dps ratio is quite high. They are the only tier 1.0 unit that can attack air, and get awesome upgrades with combat shield, and stim pack. However, the marines are squishy, and fall quickly to any concentrated fire or fire from units with splash damage (hellions, siege tanks, and colossi all ravage marines easily). The marine, while strong on its own, needs to be supporting your other army units in order to be the most effective it can be. Points for marines:
- Don’t leave them in the front: Marines are best suited to be positioned behind your higher tech, more HP units. Don’t put them in the front where they will die before they can do their damage.
- Getting combat shield is important- +10 hp is an additional 22% hp for your marines. However, it is important to ration your early game gas— See the section on “early game gas” for notes on how to spend your gas resources.
- Use stim pack sparingly- Try to use stim packs only when actively engaging your opponents- Marines low overall hp should force you to be stingy with your stimpacks until you have a few medivacs hovering overhead.
- Mid game, spread a few marines throughout your bases in order to have a “first response team” for incoming drops or air raids.
- Marines make excellent backup for every other terran unit, and they should be used nearly every game in quantity.
- Due to their low damage, +atk upgrades are a must for later in the game, because high armor units will just ignore the marines otherwise (a fully upgraded ultralisk would take 1 damage a shot from an un-upgraded marine)
Marauder:
The primary terran 1.5 tier unit, this is your heavy shock troop. High HP, good damage with bonus damage to armored, and upgrades to increase their damage output, speed, and slow ability all make this a powerful unit that often will show up in your army compositions. This unit falls into the “tank” category of units, so often it makes sense to move these to the front lines of battle and let them soak up damage. Some pointers for marauders:
- Stim pack at will- the high hp of marauders makes them be able to perma-stim basically. Don’t be afraid to stim pack for every fight with marauders, as it improves their combat effectiveness by a great deal, and allows you to outmaneuver your opponents, even before you get the concussion missile upgrade.
- Concussion missile is a great upgrade if you are attempting to get map control, however if you are playing defensive it is less of a priority to upgrade. EDIT: since the patch lowering the cost and time to build, if u have 1 marauder this upgrade is worth getting.
- “stim kiting” involves using marines + marauders (with stimpack + concussion missle upgrades) to slow enemy units and continually move, then attack, then move, then attack (etc) to keep your units out of range of theirs while still killing all of their units. The term kiting comes from you moving so their units look like they are on a string following your units at a distance that is just outside their firing range (optimally). Zealots and roaches are primary kiting targets, as well as secondarily stalkers and sentries.
- Marauders do excellent damage to armored targets, always focus fire on armored targets first (immortals, siege tanks, stalkers, roaches, ultralisks, thors, etc
The Reaper:
O how I love the reaper. Definitely my favorite unit from all 3 races to come out in SC2. Its fast, has paper thin armor, is super maneuverable, and does ridiculous damage to light units and buildings. I have won the game with a single reaper before, but have also lost games from overproducing them. Their absurdly high gas cost (50/50) prevents you from teching AT ALL if building this unit in any kind of numbers, but that shouldn’t deter you from using them. They make excellent scouts all game, and if micro’d properly are basically unkillable, save for running into a Stalker with blink. All that being said, however, they do not hold their own in a standup fight, and because of this are basically useless on certain maps (Steppes of War, and to a lesser degree, Scrap Station), where access to the back of your opponents base is limited, (even with cliff jumping). Here are a few ways to use the reaper properly (Please note that the following bullets apply only if you want to use reapers in that game… I know its obvious but some people are thick ):
- Set your build order so that you can get the reapers as soon as possible, as the earlier they get out the more effective they are. The most common (and efficient) build order for fast reapers is : 10 Rax 10 Gas 11 Supply 12 Tech Lab 12 Orbital Command. This build does not cut production by very much and allows reapers in your opponent’s base well before the 4 minute mark. The reapers getting to their base early will also alert you of any fast teching being done, and will give you time to prepare for any style of attack your opponent could mount.
- Try to micro each reaper independently. They are much more effective solo than in groups, especially until you get their speed upgrade. On Desert Oasis, you can be bouncing up and down the cliff behind their mineral line with impunity against zerg and protoss, as long as you have each reaper going up and down at different areas, forcing their units to chase you (probably with little success).
- Zerg’s who fast expo (15 hatch, or 14 pool 14 hatch) will lose every game to a fast reaper build when micro’d properly. From all my experience (even against higher platinum ranked players when I’m only a gold ranked player), there only options for defending the FE from reapers early is to pull their queen from their main, and stop drone production in favor of zerglings. If you force this behavior, you are already at an economic advantage. In addition, they pull their defenses to their expo, you can easily begin running from expo to main and back to harass the harvester line, which will force them to make some static defenses, further damaging their economy.
- The hardest part about using reapers is maintaining macro while microing the reapers. Make shore your barracks and at least 1 scv for building are hotkeyed, so you can maintain production while harassing your opponents. This is EXTREAMLY important, as failing to build while destroying your opponent’s harvesting nets you no advantage whatsoever.
- Players catch on quickly to reaper harasses and set up defenses accordingly, so as soon as you feel that your reapers aren’t going to be able to do cost effective damage, pull any living ones you have left to the xel’naga towers on the maps, and use them as scouts for the duration of their lives. If you have 3+ reapers still alive at that point, make sure to keep them busy scouting, and use them to back door your opponent and punish them if they attack you, or as either a diversionary attack at an expo when your main army wants to push on their main. They are extremely useful for this purpose alone, but probably not worth the investment if you weren’t harassing with them early.
8 Rax Proxy Reaper Breakdown:
(NOTE: ik zelf het op silver nog nooit tegen een terran verloren met deze BO op voorwaarde dat zij zelf dit niet deden
)
SCVS 1-5 Minerals
SCV 6 Scout -> Proxy
7 SCV
8 SCV
8 Rax
8 Gas
9 SCV
9 Tech Lab
10 Reaper
10 Orbital Command
11 Reaper
11 Supply
12 SCV
Pump SCVs + Reapers until you feel they have lost effectiveness, get 2nd gas around 17-18 supply count.
move your rax back to home base.
VS ZERG: Put up 2-3 more raxes at your home base + pump MnMs
Vs Terran: Tech to banshees or tanks + vikings, depending on how badly you screwed them with the reapers.
Vs Toss: Tech to banshees.
You should proxy close to their base, and directly OFF the path to your own base from their base (to limit the chances of them spotting the proxy). Note that if they spot the proxy as terran or zerg there really is not much they can do to go kill it, so all it means is that you have to micro a bit better with your reapers because they will know they are coming. If you REALLY want to win off this rush, send the SCV that build the barracks into their base and start up a bunker as soon as the first reaper arrives. Follow up with "LOL" when they start cursing you out.
Ghosts:
Ghosts are meant to be support casters for your army. They do this job AMAZINGLY WELL. While they don’t fare too well in combat, EMP and Snipe are 2 of the best abilities in the whole game imo, and both do their jobs nicely. EMP does 100 shield damage to any unit/ building with shields, and drains all energy from the target. This works on buildings as well, so a cloaked ghost can EMP an Orbital Command to prevent it from scanning the ghost. This one ability makes the ghost worth building against protoss every game, and against any terrans that use Ravens (or their own ghosts), but is mostly useless against zerg (although it is funny to EMP queens). Quick notes for Ghosts:
- Emp everything that protoss has, if possible. Hit anything with energy first, and high templar should be your #1 priority for EMPs.
- Snipe is amazing at picking off an EMP’d high templar. Tough to micro but worth it if you can click fast enough.
- Snipe is the only reason to build Ghosts vs Zerg (unless your nuking). Snipe kills drones in a single shot (but regular attacks kill them in 2 or 3 depending on attack and armor upgrades), so its best used to kill hydralisks, roaches, and mutalisks. Spamming snipe with 3-4 ghosts will kill a zerg army ridiculously fast. Also can EMP infestors which can be situationally amazing.
- Snipe works good against terran armies as well, but probably not worth the cost of the ghost.
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- If you can EMP a group of medivacs in a MnMnM mirror fight, you win, no questions asked.
NUKES:
Ahh nukes. Theres something about them that just makes you smile when you land one on someone. Quick note about nuke mechanics: (check this link! Tactical Nuke - Liquipedia Starcraft 2 Wiki
Nukes have a 20 second drop time- but because the game timer is FASTER than actual speed, 20 seconds turns into about 15 seconds (if anyone knows the exact gametime to actual time ratio, please please let me know).
Since you can click on the “Nuclear Launch Detected” popup to center on the nuke, it is much, much harder to nuke effectively in SC2- even though the overall power (and ease of getting) the nuke is increase. Still, nukes can be powerful both on offense and on defense:
Offensive Nuking: Nukes are going to be mainly used in the lategame, when you have a few extra resources to spend on extra ghost labs, and you will need cloak for your ghosts as well (while not a necessity, defiantly the way to go). Good targets for nukes are harvester lines, groups of supply depots / pylons, and retreat points for enemy units. To be the most effective, you should place multiple nukes at once (Personally, I find 3 is the magic #). Every time you launch an offensive nuke at your opponent, you should be simultaneously moving whatever army you have to an attack position. What’s the good of the confusion caused by nuking if your not going to take advantage of it? It is a TACTICAL nuke, after all.
Defensive Nukes: Nukes can be used at choke points to prevent pushes on your bases. A well placed nuke will either force a retreat, or, simply destroy your enemies ENTIRE ARMY!!! This has only occurred for me a few times, but when it does, oh it is glorious. The amount of time granted to you by a single nuke can be enough for those next 2 thors to pop out, or for that critical upgrade to be done (stimpack, +1, whatever it may be). In addition, it will force your opponent to really think about your ghosts when attacking the next time, and you can almost defiantly squeeze some kind of advantage out of that (the advantage will depend on the matchup, and the unit composition being used against you). 100 minerals / 100 gas is a pretty low cost if you are already going to get ghosts for the matchup, but the 150/150 for each ghost and the 200/200 for the upgrade AND the 150/50 for the ghost lab makes getting nukes just for defense too costly.
Hellions:
Hellions, are fast, slow attacking, units that do extreamly well vs. light armored units and workers and have a line damage splash. They are best used as flanking units against zerg armies, terran bio balls, and protoss armies with lots of high templar and zelots, or as harassing units to attack mineral lines. They blow up pretty easily, however, and are useless against static defenses, so only use them for harassing if you think you can get some free attacks against harvesters without running into any cannons or crawlers. They are excellent for fast drop strategies on mineral lines, and for keeping your opponent busy in their base while you macro. Quick notes for Hellions:
- Infernal pre-igniter is a must if you are going to use this unit. Nearly doubles the damage done to light units.
- Always try to line them up on the sides of enemy armies for maximum DPS.
- Don’t put them in the same control group as other army units, as they are much, much faster than all other terran ground units.
Siege Tanks (non-siege mode)-
Un-sieged siege tanks fire faster than their counterparts did in SC1, so even though the damage output seems low (15+2 per attack upgrade), the DPS is higher than it seems. Unsieged tanks could be used in somewhat of a SCBW FD push, since they outrange most early-game units and can kite pretty easily.
In addition- Recently i have found that unsieged tanks do superbly against most protoss armies, as they have + damage to armored units and attack quickly. This makes them ideal for killing Immortals (I personally didnt see that one coming), and stalkers.
Siege Tanks (siege mode)-
Extreamly Long range, has splash damage that can kill your own units if your not careful, and high damage. Amazing vs every ground unit in the game except Immortals- and good against those too if you hit one with an EMP first. Always support your siege tanks with marines and marauders, or thors and marauders (etc, basically just support them).
-Sensor towers can spot for your siege tanks, even without vision if you have a red blip on your map your siege tank can shoot.
-I find siege tanks are best used with support of Vikings, to give them vision of their maximum range, and support against opposing air units (this is especially important in TvT but, more on that later). Using Vikings in combination with siege tanks in TvT is almost standard play at this point, and is often the primary point of contention in those games.
- Siege tanks in groups melt hydralisks and roaches, and are amazing at defending zerg attacks at your main door.
- Walking siege tanks: (This mini-guide will focus on an early game siege tank push, as it covers the basics of a siege tank attack. Later in the game you can do the same things, it will just involve more units, more micro, and will generally be more difficult.) To actually push on someone’s base with siege tanks, requires quite a bit of micro and a lot of attention. Siege tanks are surprisingly fragile, and because of this it takes some work getting used to this push. To begin, you need a siege tank, at least 1 flying unit, and a decent support group for your siege tank (usually a few marines and marauder will do nicely).
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o Start by scouting your opponent’s choke point to see what your up against. If they have their own siege tank, you will need to drop yours into siege mode perfectly outside their sight range(or if they have a sensor tower, or vision, you will need to drop outside their range but still in range to shoot at.. well something). This will take some practice, but isn’t very difficult.
o Once you’ve scouted their choke, move your siege tank into a position where it can do some damage, drop it into siege mode, and start blasting away. Have your next siege tank that’s built move in closer than the first, and drop it into SM.
o Once there is nothing left to blow up in the range of the first siege tank, move it forward, but always leave at least 1 tank in siege mode to fend off any counter-pushes they may attempt.
o Leapfrog your way into their base, and to victory.
Thors:
Thors, while they have their weaknesses, are an awesome option for terran players to chose in the lategame. While expensive and cumbersome, they do huge damage to both air and ground targets at long range, and can be repaired to maintain their longevity. A single thor being repaired by a few SCVs can take on surprisingly large numbers of units. Also, its ability, 250mm strike cannons, stuns units, making it highly effective against low numbers of high priority targets, such as colossi, siege tanks, and even their hard counter, immortals.
- Thors have splash damage vs air, making them a great unit to use vs mutalisks. Their slow speed is compensated for by their long range, and even in small numbers can do great damage vs mutas.
- They single-shot hydralisks – which is awesome.
- While slow, they can be picked up by medivacs and dropped quickly, making them significantly more mobile.
- Don’t send out thors without SCV backup, they become significantly more effective with some SCVs to repair them.
- Thors are vulnerable to immortals, so always use your strike cannon ability on them first, to prevent them from destroying you.
- Thors are also weak to zerglings, another reason to have scvs with them is they will block the attacks of te zerglings on the thors.
Vikings-
Vikings are a multi-role unit, and are good in many situations. They are very powerful against heavy air units (carriers, warp rays, battlecruisers) in air mode, and strong against light armor units while on the ground. They make excellent spotters, and have ridiculously long air range(9). This is balanced, however, by their slow speed and general frailty.
- Vikings are generally a support unit, used to compliment a complete army. They make good escorts for medivacs as well.
- Vikings make decent scouts / harassers in small groups- 3-5 vikings can scout and expo, harass it, and be gone before the enemy army shows up.
- Vikings are not strong vs mutalisks, but can support other ground units in fighting and sniping mutalisks.
- Vikings make excellent snipers for colossi, and this requires virtually no micro at all. Add them to a MnMnM army against protoss and have them handle the colossi before they get in range of your marines.
Banshees:
Banshees are an air to ground gunship that has a decent range, powerful attack, and a reasonable amount of hit points. In addition, it can gain the cloak ability, making it difficult to peruse and great for harassing harvesters and the outskirts of bases. In addition, there are many ways to abuse the fear many players have of this powerful harassing unit:
-Cloak is very gas expensive, however, if you are going to use banshees for harassing, cloak is a must for getting them out alive.
- Banshees are a common go to rush unit in TvT matchups
- A common strategy for terran to use is fast banshees for harass. Recently, I have been using this strategy, but only with a single banshee. Many players will overreact to the sight of the banshee, and make a total anti-air composition with detection. To take advantage of this- my build order goes rax (no add on) factory (tech lab) starport (takes factory tech lab, fac builds a reactor) and then 2 more factories with tech labs and an armory. I build my first one or 2 banshees, then switch to the reactor on the starport to make a few Vikings / medivacs depending on the rest of my army composition. Then I send the banshees to harass while building thors and siege tanks from my factories. Since they over-committed to defending air, their ground defenses will be weak, and the mech strategy will be able to push through.
- Banshees are good as support for any army fighting ground units, and do excellent damage to armored targets.
- Banshees also make excellent back door units, and can be used like reapers to attack harvesters during other engagements.
- Banshees match up supebly against protoss, and can fight their armies head to head, as well as harassing them with cloak.
Ravens:
Wow, this unit is awesome. I thought it would be hard to replace a science vessel (especially without EMP) and make the unit work, but I have to admit I love this unit and its mechanics. All three of its abilities have widespread uses, and it can be used to fill a variety of holes in your army.
- Auto-Turret- Attacks both ground and air and does extra damage to light units.
o Low energy cost so can be used as utility defense and for offense against certain armies.
o Also, can be used to harass mineral lines with no chance for losses.
- Point defense drone- The most underused ability in the game imo- can act like a “defensive matrix” for your whole army. Highly effective and needs to get more use.
o If placed at the beginning of a fight, you will get a few seconds of fire on your opponent before they get to retaliate (for the most part). This is often enough to turn an even battle into a lopsided destructionfest.
- Hunter seeker missile- requires fusion lab tech and an upgrade, but is so worth it.
o Huge AOE damage, but can hurt your own units as well.
o SLOW movement- do not fire it at mutalisks unless they have nowhere to run.
o HUGE energy cost- firing one of these basically will empty out your raven for awhile, so make sure its going to hit.
o Can annihilate multiple workers at once, but may not be too energy efficient at this.
o Massacres zerg armies- especially large #s of hydralisks
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Battlecruisers:
The most expensive and highest tier unit in the terran arsenal, the battlecruiser is a small army on its own. It is more mobile than the next biggest terran unit, the thor, and is effective at lategame defense and offense over large areas of the map. Battlecruisers should be used as support for a larger army, and its Yamato Gun upgrade is extremely effective at both sniping enemy expansions and taking out medium to large enemy targets before they can do much damage to your army. Because of high tech level and cost, it isn’t practical to rush battlecruisers, however a lategame switch to bcs is a reasonable progression from midgame starport play.
- Due to the fact that they take 6 shots when they fire, +attack upgrades are a high priority if you are going to build bcs in any numbers.
- Battlecruisers are unbelievealby good against big units like thors, carriers, warp rays, motherships, ultralisks and broodlords. Using yamato gun on any of those targets is recommended.
- Because they have high hp / armor, it isn’t hard to run them from battle and get them to safety. Always repair damaged battlecruisers, they build too slowly and are to expensive to allow them to needlessly die.
- Always bring a few scvs for repairs when using battlecruisers in combat. Increasing their longevity IN BATTLE should not be undervalued.no votes
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30-04-2010, 00:11 #2Member
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Army Composition:
Note: No army is ever complete if it dosen’t have a raven with it, these units can and should be used alongside anything else u can build.
The Bio Army: (good vs toss/ terran/ zerg) (early game-midgame)
Also known as MnMnMs, or The Ball, this is one of the primary (and early) strategies available to a terran player. For those of you that do not know already, the Ball consists of Marines and Marauders, and later, Medivacs. Good ratios for this army vary, but a good starting point is 2/1/.25 (in other words for every 8 marines you would have 4 marauders and 1 medivac). It will combat most combinations of units well, especially in the early game. Later in the game, it will need to be supported by Vikings and ghosts against protoss, and probably should not be used for direct assault against terran (no reason to walk a bunch of relatively low HP units into a wall of siege tank fire). The ball is powerful against zerg for the entire game usually, and hellions are excellent as a supporting unit for fighting most zerg armies. Once the 3rd M (medivacs) is added, this army gains surprising survivability. Important things to note for the ball:
- Upgrades are essential. + attack and armor, shields for marines, concussion missles for marauders, and most importantly, stimpack for increasing attack and movement speed at critical moments.
- These units are vulnerable to AoE attacks, such as those from colossi, siege tanks, fungal growth from infestors, and psy storm from high templar. Always focus fire the most dangerous threats first, (and emp high templar / infestors first).
- Make sure you have the ability to get either the marines or the marauders from a single hotkey, and be able to move them accordingly. A lot of battles come down to having the marauders in front to take the hits, while the marines, behind them, do the serious DPS.
- Dropping this army from medivacs in the back of an opponents base can work great, but often, against good players, they can catch you coming in and cause significant losses before you get your units on the ground.
- This army is most effective for timing pushes. Right when you get +1 and stimpack is often a good time to push on most protoss and zerg bases with this army.
THMM- Thors/Hellions/Marauders/Marines (midgame-lategame) (good vs zerg)
This army is the bane of the zerg existence. This is more of a mid-lategame army than the MnMnM ball, but is hugely effective against the zerg. Remember to bring SCVs with this army to repair. A good ratio for this army is 1/4/2/2 (for every 1 thor have 4 hellions and 2 marines and marauders), however this will vary WIDELY based on your enemy’s army composition. Any unit composition zerg can throw at you can be shredded by this composition, just make sure to have some base defenses incase of speedlings and or mutalisks. The only thing they can do against this, really, is mass hydralisks, and if they do that a few hunter seeker missiles will take care of them nicely. Some notes on this army-
- Hellions, again, are faster than the rest of your army, so make sure they don’t run ahead.
- Marauders should be in front.
- Thors should use strike cannons only on ultralisks.
- This army is mainly an anti-zerg force, and the composition should vary based on what units your opponent is making:
o Hydra heavy = more marines + hellions
o Roach heavy = more thors + marauders
o Zergling heavy= more hellions
o Muta heavy = more thors and marines
REPLAY: MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service
courtesy of panzerbat
Important things to know about SC2 in general:
In large fights- the player with the most units firing first will win an even battle (given similar quantity of units and reasonable compositions of units). To achive this, get a wide arc on your opponent. To do this, when your moving a large army they will work themselves out into a straight line, take the units in front, give them a move command to the left (arbitrarily picking a direction works too), move the ones in the middle to the right, and let the ones in the back flood to the middle. This will give your units a large area to shoot at your enemies, and will make them more effective in combat.
Scouting wins games. Never be afraid to send out an scv with rally points on all the possible expansions your opponent could be taking. I personally do this every 2-3 minutes during the game to make sure I’m not getting screwed by a hidden expansion. Hellions (and reapers that survived early harass attempts) are excellent for this purpose also.
While it’s possible to use the same strategies every game with success, I suggest varying your strategies regularly and trying new things to keep your opponents guessing. While it’s unlikely you will do something they have never seen before, you may even catch experienced players off guard with an unconventional strategy. (Good examples of this would be the 2 thor push, hellion drops, PF fast expands, midgame reaper harasses, etc). However, always test any wild ideas you have with friends before putting them on the ladder.
Early Game Gas:
Just a section I thought would be important for some newer players, managing your vespene gas early game really defines how your game will play out. If you spend a lot of gas early on reapers or upgrades for your barracks units, your tech will be lacking, and if you spend all of your gas early on tech (factory, starport etc), you wont have any upgrades for your early units.. Here are some guidelines i use to decide what to get in my games:
- Any game where I use reapers early I am more likely to get barracks units than tech. Therefore I am going to spend my early game gas on stimpack, combat shield, concussion missiles, and +1 upgrades for my marines and marauders. These are the games where im going to go for the kill early, and I usually wont get a factory in these games until after my first aggressive push with my bio army. This often results in an all-in style push, so be wary of this strategy against a heavily defended opponent.
- Scouting will tell you when to do what. If they: Mass units = you upgrade and build units. Mass defense = you tech and expand. Expand =you build units and upgrades and push.
- Any game where I am going to be playing defense, I will often spend my gas early on getting tech structures. Against zerg I will ration 100 gas for factory tech early so I can get some hellions to help with any zergling/speedling aggression and harass their harvester lines.
- Against protoss I spend my early gas getting ghosts (often I will build 2 rax and 2 tech labs and 2-3 reapers before I get my ghost lab). EMP is too powerful to ignore and will be useful any game you play against a protoss.
Don’t get stuck in a situation where you have overcommitted to your bio units and can’t transition into factory / starport units. In other words, upgrade as you need to, but don’t forego tech for upgrades if it looks like the game is going to progress into a longer, more macro oriented game.
MATCHUP BREAKDOWNS:
As a quick preface: all these strategies assume you are going to do a supply / rax wall in.
The available strategies to you are slightly different if you do not wall in. Also, all build orders listed are approximate, if you lose a scv here or there these will change accordingly.
TvT:
Ahh, the mirror match. Terran on terran is such a dynamic, mix it up matchup, and because of that it’s totally based on scouting. ALSO, TvT for the most part is ONE BASE PLAY, at least until both players have teched up to siege tanks + air- I know in this thread I must mention scouting 10000000x, but that is because it IS the most important thing you can be doing to win games. I am going to break down the possible offensive strategies your opponent could be using by when they happen in the game, so the next few bullets will be in chronological game order. If your opponent is playing defensively, you should pick and choose your own offensive strategy to use based on his defense. Here are the things you should be looking for when scouting:
First Scout- your first SCV should scout around the 9-10 supply mark- and he should be looking for signs of fast reaper. If your opponent goes fast reaper (and you are not going fast reaper) a pair of marauders is what you are going to need to effectively defend your mineral line. Marines can do the job, but they get rocked by reapers (one reaper can kill 2 marines, especially with good micro).
Build order would be:
10 supply 12 rax 12 gas (14-15) orbital command (14-15) techlab 2x marauder.
If your first SCV doesn’t see the signs of fast reaper (early gas early tech lab late supply), it is likely that your opponent will have made a wall off. IF that is the case, you are no longer going to be able to send in SCVs as your scouts, you will then have to rely on command center scanning, or using reapers as scouts. (I recommend only using reapers that you built early game for harass for this purpose, and not building them solely for this, because of how much their gas cost will affect your build order.) The next possible attack would come from an early marauder (or marine/marauder) push. This strategy has fallen out of fashion in favor of higher tech builds, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. To scout this, you would see multiple barracks with tech labs. To counter this push, quickly tech to factory + put a tech lab on it. Make sure you are building marines out of your first barracks constantly. Make a siege tank and get siege mode, and the upgrade should finish before they push with the marauders. If you are too slow, you will probably lose, but the marauder push is a semi-all in, and a successful defense will set you up for a siege tank push.
Build order would be:
10 supply 12 rax 12 gas (14-15) orbital command+ 2nd gas (16-18) factory, siege tank + siege mode.
The next possible threat would be a siege tank push. This is countered by siege tanks of your own, and banshees. Use the build order above, and once you get your first siege tank + siege mode get a starport. I will always build 1 Viking before slapping a tech lab on there to help spot for your siege tank, and scout their incoming push. You then are going to get a 2nd starport, again with tech lab, upgrade cloak after you get one banshee started, and start producing banshees. Typically you will be building your 2nd and 3rd banshees as their push comes in, and cloak should finish (if your gas timings are on) about the same time as the 2nd and 3rd banshee. Snipe out their tanks with your banshees, and if they have good AA, cloak and run when they scan, then come back after 10 or so seconds. A good opponent will have their own Vikings at this point, so cloak is super-important for sniping out their siege tanks. At this point, the game should be slightly in your favor, and you might be able to get a decent harass on with your banshees. This is the point in the game where you would look to expand and get an economic advantage, while holding a decent contain on your opponent. You will need Vikings and Banshees (and maybe a raven) to keep your opponent stuck on one base while you take the map.
At the same timing window as the siege tank push would be a hellion or infantry drop on your mineral line. This type of attack is beaten simply by spotting it and moving whatever units you have to defend accordingly.
The last section of this is going to be about defending early banshee harassing / pushes. When you scan to check for a factory push (for the record: I always go mule, mule, scan, mule, scan, mule scan etc with my first OC to keep a nice balance between scouting and resources if I’m not able to scout by other means), you will see one of two things. You will either see a factory with a tech lab building siege tanks, or you will see a factory with a starport building next to it. It’s very important to check asap wether that starport is getting an add on or not. If it’s getting a tech lab, almost without a doubt there will be banshees coming your way soon. If you scanned at the perfect time, AND you see a starport with a tech lab building, AND you are teching normally, you will be set up for a siege tank + Viking push as explained in both the siege tank siege mode section and in the defending marauder pushes section of the TvT match up. This is slightly different in that you will need to save your orbital command energy for scans and you will need to build turrets on your push as well. This can be very difficult to pull off, but when you get it right it is a true thing of beauty. It’s great when their first banshee pops out and you have 2 vikings there to blow it up before it can get at your tanks.
Of course, if you make it to the top of the tech tree without an engagement, its up to you to macro well and scout appropriately to stay ahead of your opponent. This matchup can be unbelievable frustrating to learn, and is defiantly the most skill based of all three matchups because you are both on exactly even grounds. As a final note on the matchup, in the late game, thors, siege tanks, and Vikings, should make up your primary units for your army, backed up by smaller #s of infantry, medivacs, and ravens. This will take out a heavy air composition without a problem, and is just as effective against a ground army. Battlecruisers don’t fare very well against this mix, and if you have SCVs to repair your mech units, you should be able to maintain a push for a long period of time (often a requirement against a dug in terran), and slow push your way into their base for the win.
Good luck! – any high level plat players with good replays are encouraged to message me and I will post their replays in this thread – also I will be scouring the internets for pro quality TvT replays and posting them as I find them.
ZOMG REPLAYS:
ME vs Swe (rank 2 plat div 19 ~ 1600 rating)- Zoltan Vs Swehttp://www.megaupload.com/?d=9RYA0MRR
TvP
Preface: TvP has been my favorite matchup for a long time, but with the most recent patches I’m having trouble finding strategies that will work consistently against them. Everything I do against protoss these days seems to result in even exchanges, making whoever controls the map / has the best macro win the game. Realize that while there is nothing wrong with that, it has been making writing a TvP guide, for me, difficult, as I really cannot just say, “Well its gonna be pretty even so just macro good, scout well, and you’ll win.” But that seems to be the case. Still; I’m going to break down the matchup and go through all the possible timing pushes available for both players, and the right unit compositions to fight with.
Protoss units and their potential counters:
Zelots: Countered By- Reapers, Marauders, Hellions
Stalkers: Siege tanks, Marauders, Thors
Sentries: Ghosts
High Templar: Ghosts
Dark Templar: Any Detector
Immortals: Marines, Banshees, Ghosts
Colossi: Vikings, Banshees, Siege Tanks, Thors, Ghosts
Phoenix: Battlecruisers, Marines, Thors,
Warp Rays: Vikings
Carriers: Battlecruisers
Mothership: Ghost, Battlecruisers
Early Game breakdown:
Offensive: The first possible attack on a protoss base happens EARLY. Its good for a few probe kills every time, and a lot more if you catch your opponent off guard (aka he didn’t scout). The build is 8 rax 8 gas 9SCV 10 Reaper 10 Orbital Command 11 reaper + 11 supply. You can get another rax up at 12 or 13 as well. You send the first reaper to their mineral line. If they countered perfect, their first stalker will come off the line (if chronoboosted) no earlier than 10 seconds AFTER you started attacking probes. This is assuming you did not proxy and did your build perfect as well. Doing this build with a proxy rax (building your barracks outside their base) is risky, and will often only net you 10-15 more seconds of killing without them having a unit that can really fend you off. This rush has become pretty standard, and as such, many protoss players are building their gateway earlier and rushing a stalker to fend off the reapers. I don’t recommend ever sending more than one reaper for this reason. Recently (As of 4/19/2010), when I 10rax reaper, I usually only have time for 1-2 probe kills before there is a stalker chasing me away. There is a strategy involving abuse of bunkers in the reaper harass, which works nicely, but is nearly an all-in strat and I tend to shy away from those. There are at least 2 threads on TL about this, so please check those threads out (there are links on this page to them) if you want to really pressure a toss early. This is no longer true. The reaper harass with bunkers is so unbelievable broken as of this re-write (4/27/2010) that I personally am 13-1 with it in my last 14 games vs Terran OR Toss.
Defensive: The protoss player usually will have 2 options for an early push. One with immortals and one without immortals. Either way, the units you want to have to defend this push are the same. Marines, Marauders, and Ghosts will be your primary tools against their ground armies. EMP is your friend, and is necessary for evening the playing field against sentries and immortals. Immortals should always be you first emp targets, and sentries your second. (note: this is only talking about early game, later in the game high templar need to be your first priority). A-moving is not acceptable micro vs. protoss armies. You must focus fire!
Summary of earlygame and my personal conclusuions: Because of the lack of early game options for pushing on protoss (2 rax marauders / ghosts isn’t cutting it anymore it seems), I like to 1 rax FE against them with a planetary fortress. (replay will go up under TvP later tonight / tomorrow 4.19.2010). This build seems fairly safe on Lost temple, Metalopolis, and Steppes of War, is sketchy on Kulas Ravine, Scrap Station and Blistering sands, and is impossible on Desert Oasis. The build is 10 supply 11 rax (pump marines) 14ish OC, 17ish CC, then 2x gas and engineering bay, build 2x bunkers by ur ramp and fill them with marines, right next to your shiny new Pfort FE! With decent repairs, it will take more than they can muster early to break that defense, so I find it to be a pretty safe build. If you try it on Blistering Sands, your going to get back door’d (however this dosen’t necessarily force a loss… replay inc), and you wont have enough army to fight off immortals + gateway units without the help of your Pfort.
Midgame: Get Banshees. Harass and contain. If you try this off of one base, it can be pretty effective, but I find it’s actually more risky to do than with a 2 base pfort expansion (as xplained above). To do this on one base; make sure you get 2-3 starports, and have ground defense in the form of marauders, marines, ghosts for EMP, and siege tanks. On 2 bases; get 5 starports. Make sure you have cloak, and start to harass as soon as you get one banshee, and then keep adding them on as you build them. Banshees tear through pretty much everything on the ground that protoss can build (and, depending on upgrades, can nearly take a stalker 1v1). My standard army composition for the midgame is Banshees, and I add in vikings if the toss gets a starport for phoenixes (Note: Most protoss players simply will not do this. Why, idk, but it is so rare for them to techswitch to air. Personally, I think this will change soon, when toss players realize how many losses it’s causing them). In addition, I often have a lot of extra minerals when only making banshees from 5 starports, so ill have 2 raxes pumping marines to spend my extra minerals. If the protoss counters your banshees with ground, its going to be mass stalkers. Without blink, you are still safe from the stalkers and can fight them on your terms, but once they have blink you will need your marines to back up the banshees. If they have high templar, you will need to EMP them with your ghosts otherwise your marine army is just an expensive meatpile, and your banshees are vulnerable to feedback. During your harassment, you should have map control, and can take multiple bases at this point.
On the defense: Make sure to have detection, getting rushed by Dt’s and losing is embarrassing. Also, keep an eye out for warp prisims, as immortal harass is pretty good, and high templar drops can kill SO many scvs. (Sensor towers take care of this nicely). I always set up a few siege tanks at key locations to allow my banshees enough time to get back to base if they manage to sneak an army out while you are harassing them. If you manage to contain them with your banshees, winning will come naturally as you take more bases than they do.
The Lategame:
So you’ve been battling out with this protoss for 20 minutes now, your both out of minerals at your main, and both have taken your 3rd and 4th bases. Your efforts to contain have been met with well placed static defenses, and extremely mobile stalker army with blink, and backed up by phoenixes and high templar. What do you do now?? The answer isn’t crystal clear. I personally begin by adding a battlecruiser contingent to my army, and will start building more infantry. Marauders Marines and Ghosts do quite well against protoss lategame when backed up by a good number of Medivacs, Battlecruisers, and Banshees. Micro is key here; if you fail to EMP their high templar your bio army is going to get stormed to death before they can do enough damage. To assure this, you need cloak on your ghosts. Cloaking the ghosts and sending them in to EMP before your pushes is what protoss players have nightmares about, because with no storm they know they can’t beat the bio ball under all of those capital ships. Yamato gun should be used on big toss targets (colossi especially).
A final note on this guide: This breakdown is doing something very, very stupid; assuming the protoss player went for a gateway / robotics based army. If they went air, you can basically throw this guide out the window, and go with a Mech / Air mix with Thors, Vikings, and Battlecruisers. You will probably still need ghosts, and luckily for you Battlecruisers > Carriers thanks to yamato gun.
This matchup can be frustrating, but most of my losses come from an early-ish immortal push on maps where I can’t PF FE because of the location of the expo / or the rocks allowing a backdoor on my main. I find it’s very tough to combat this push, and it requires good use of ghost’s EMP and Marauders stimpack / concussive missle, and good use of the high ground.
Other notes on playing against protoss:
Always get a few missile turrets to spot and destroy observers. A blind protoss is a scared protoss.
Always wall in- any early zealot/stalker aggression will be punished by a wall with a few SCVs to repair.
Stalkers blink ability allows them to circumvent your main defenses on many maps, so when scouting, if you see a twilight council when they have many stalkers, be prepared for them to come in the sides of your base. NOTE: ON SCRAP STATION: STALKERS CAN BLINK TO THE ISLAND AND THEN TO THE BACK OF YOUR BASE- BE AWARE OF THIS!
TvZ:
This is my favorite matchup. Beating zerg comes down to good timing and good defense. If you don’t just outright lose in the first 10 minutes of the game, thors + siege tanks + hellions + mnms can handle pretty much any # of zerg ground forces + mutalisks. If I think im going to run into some broodlords- I just get a few Vikings to back that up. With this matchup- I often fast expo (with an orbital command and bunkers, backed up by siege tanks and turrets near key structures and mineral liens to prevent muta harass. Then I just mass up 5-6 siege tanks and 5-6 thors, have them escorted by the marines you built early and hellions you build when you don’t have enough gas, and push. It’s sad that this, right now, seems fairly unbeatable with just a little bit of micro. For the record, my push goes out usually when I see the zerg throwing up their 3rd base, because it’s when I’m at the least economic disadvantage, and instead of chasing their expos I just go crush their main base and their natural. KEY to this is getting your siege tanks down in an arc and have your thors stand infront and the rest of your units right behind. I’m not saying this strategy is unbeatable- because none are, but it defiantly VERY strong right now.
The biggest threat zergs have atm is the “baneling bust.” To beat this, I often get a thick wall (rax and factory making up my walls), and then when I expo, I build my expo in my base, and wont move it to my nat until I have a few siege tanks and bunkers ready to defend it. It is REALLY hard for a zerg to attack 2 bunkers filld with marines and siege tanks infront of them. I mean REALLY hard. Most zerg players, when confronted by this, get a large force consisting of roaches and hydras to make a push. By the time they have a force that size ready, your siege tank count should be up to 6 or so, and you will already be making thors. Being able to repair everything they attack makes this even easier to defend. Make sure you have detectors incase of burrowed moving roaches too.
The only other credible zerg threat through the midgame is a nydus canal in the back of your base. A prudent terran should spread his/her supply depots out across the span of his base (ESPECIALLY BEHIND SMOKEY VENTS / GRASS) to prevent this.
Midgame-lategame the zerg can get ultralisks and broodlords- and honestly neither should be terribly frightening. Thor;s 250mm cannons handle ultras, and they have decent range to attack the broodlords with. If you rmember to repair your thors and have marines supporting them, AND you micro to attack the BLs instead of the broodlings, you shouldn’t have a problem with this.
Lastly- if you still have trouble with zerg, get ravens with HSM. HSM absoulutely ruins hydralisks, and they are the only true problem unit from zerg (and not even a huge problem at that). A stupid trick to note is you can HSM your own thor (that’s about to be surrounded by mass zerglings, and wind up killing all the zerglings while keeping your thor alive. Its pretty silly, but hey, it works.
This guide is defiantly not definitive, and should be used to give you a good idea on how to take on the zerg in a longer game. There is plenty of cheeze available to use versus zerg, too, so I’ll get some threads linked here (eventually) that show some sweet cheeze against zerg.
__________________________________________________ __
Hopelijk heeft iedereen veel geleerd ^^no votes
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30-04-2010, 00:27 #3
Tactics in a nut shell
TvP ghosts + marauders, win in 2 klikkenwww.loopy.be Awesome GoPro Actionno votes
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30-04-2010, 00:54 #4Member
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30-04-2010, 11:32 #5no votes
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30-04-2010, 11:35 #6Member
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nice read, zijn er al voor zerg/protoss?
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30-04-2010, 11:52 #7
Now giev Protoss!
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30-04-2010, 12:00 #8Member
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mischien ook eens de source vermelden of wie dat die origineel gemaakt heeft.
(want alsk correct ben komt die van iemand op TL)
Als gij die hebt gemaakt, negeer dees post dan maar.#9lives.Scno votes
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30-04-2010, 12:53 #9Approved 9liver
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no votes
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30-04-2010, 13:35 #10Approved 9-lifer
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no votes
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30-04-2010, 14:53 #11Member
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30-04-2010, 15:56 #12Member
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Inderdaad, was een link posten in de tactics & build order-thread niet genoeg?
Scrubs
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30-04-2010, 22:03 #13Member
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tis gemakkelijk en leuk voor mensen om hier op het forum deze dingen te lezen?
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Look at my horse 
