Support NeoGAF

[mescalineeyes]

How many towers does it take to protect 2-3 mineral lines, plus your buildings in your main? How many marines does it take for back up in all those places? plus enough marines to defend your army? maybe at the 10 minute mark it isn't that bad but later on it becomes a huge investment. The problem is Terran can't chase mutalisks, so you have to put up static defences everywhere thats important to you. Thats expensive. Thats a lot of resources (and supply) sitting still for preventative measures.

For the record, I think siege tanks are pretty OP'ed too compared to what Zerg has to counter, so it sort of evens out. Its just after so much time, no amount of tanks is going to make up for mass mutalisks poking holes in your defences and wiping out expansions.

if he has time to make that many mutas you are not applying enough pressure.

and 1-2 turrets per mineral line should be enough. you can't just let him get to an amount of mutas where he is strong enough to destroy rocket turrets.

 

[TheRagnCajun]

if he has time to make that many mutas you are not applying enough pressure.

and 1-2 turrets per mineral line should be enough. you can't just let him get to an amount of mutas where he is strong enough to destroy rocket turrets.

I understand the princicple behind that, but that kind of serves my point about the time limit. As Terrran, if you aren't 'winning' the fight in terms of map control and putting Zerg on the defensive, by 10-12 minutes in, you can expect mass muta harrass shortly thereafter.

1 missle turret is a joke of a defence. It takes more like 2-3 turrets to effectively shut down mineral line harrass, more like 3 if you account for defending the CC itself, which is necessary once they are in mass.

 

[Pandaman]

I understand the princicple behind that, but that kind of serves my point about the time limit. As Terrran, if you aren't 'winning' the fight in terms of map control and putting Zerg on the defensive, by 10-12 minutes in, you can expect mass muta harrass shortly thereafter.

1 missle turret is a joke of a defence. It takes more like 2-3 turrets to effectively shut down mineral line harrass, more like 3 if you account for defending the CC itself, which is necessary once they are in mass.

just build a sensor tower and have 10 marines handy. 10 stimmed marines is enough to scare off even large muta flocks just because they do so much damage for so little cost to the terran.

with sensor towers, the element of surprise is gone and you get time to position your forces.
meanwhile you can can just do standard tank/marine under the range of a thor. remmeber, mutas only have range 3, so you can advance your tanks 6 spaces forward and still have them covered by a very safe and snug rear thor. the marines are just there to keep muta/ling honest.

practice slow creep and watch the jys vs nestea games. JYS is one of the most impressive terrans i've ever seen.

but yeah, long story short you'll have to invest a good bit of resources to defend, but zerg has to invest a ton of resources for a relatively flimsy unit.

-

also you guys can bitch about scrap when temple and steppes is removed. you want to talk about favoured maps? look to thee own house. >_>

as an aside: spent the night in the build tester trying to untheory my theorycrafting. man its nice being protoss and having options.

 

[mescalineeyes]

watch the jys vs nestea games. JYS is one of the most impressive terrans i've ever seen.

this times a billion.

 

[TheRagnCajun]

just build a sensor tower and have 10 marines handy. 10 stimmed marines is enough to scare off even large muta flocks just because they do so much damage for so little cost to the terran.

with sensor towers, the element of surprise is gone and you get time to position your forces.
meanwhile you can can just do standard tank/marine under the range of a thor. remmeber, mutas only have range 3, so you can advance your tanks 6 spaces forward and still have them covered by a very safe and snug rear thor. the marines are just there to keep muta/ling honest.

practice slow creep and watch the jys vs nestea games. JYS is one of the most impressive terrans i've ever seen.

but yeah, long story short you'll have to invest a good bit of resources to defend, but zerg has to invest a ton of resources for a relatively flimsy unit.

-

also you guys can bitch about scrap when temple and steppes is removed. you want to talk about favoured maps? look to thee own house. >_>

as an aside: spent the night in the build tester trying to untheory my theorycrafting. man its nice being protoss and having options.

Sensor towers won't do shit. If you place it at your perimeter they'll be the first thing to get sniped. If you place it at your mineral line where your rockets are you don't get good coverage.

And you can't start playing the chasing game with marines vs mutas. Trying to cover 2 mineral lines with one pack of marines is futile, the muta pack will just keep alternating between your main and your natural, all the while you keep stimming your marines to death trying to catch up and get some shots in.

 

[The Lamonster]

You mean those headphones with the lights that change color depending on AMP? :lol

Pretty ridiculous peripheral. Now if they had headphones where the light changes depending on worker count... I might get a pair ;-)

I was talking about the mouse and keyboard. I don't really need new headphones.

But yes, you can customize the lights to basically whatever you want. The software for it looks pretty cool.

http://www2.razerzone.com/sc2/

 

[mescalineeyes]

Sensor towers won't do shit. If you place it at your perimeter they'll be the first thing to get sniped. If you place it at your mineral line where your rockets are you don't get good coverage.

And you can't start playing the chasing game with marines vs mutas. Trying to cover 2 mineral lines with one pack of marines is futile, the muta pack will just keep alternating between your main and your natural, all the while you keep stimming your marines to death trying to catch up and get some shots in.

I think you should stop dismissing advice from seasoned players. Everything we said is correct and yet you are trying to find holes in the advice you have been given. I think you need to step your game up.

If you are overwhelmed by mass mutas, you are doing it wrong. 2 Thors can hold off a ridiculous amounts of mutalisks.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

How many towers does it take to protect 2-3 mineral lines, plus your buildings in your main? How many marines does it take for back up in all those places? plus enough marines to defend your army? maybe at the 10 minute mark it isn't that bad but later on it becomes a huge investment. The problem is Terran can't chase mutalisks, so you have to put up static defences everywhere thats important to you. Thats expensive. Thats a lot of resources (and supply) sitting still for preventative measures.

For the record, I think siege tanks are pretty OP'ed too compared to what Zerg has to counter, so it sort of evens out. Its just after so much time, no amount of tanks is going to make up for mass mutalisks poking holes in your defences and wiping out expansions.

Dude, mutalisks are 100min/100gas. A marine is 50min. If you spend half as much on econ-line marines as he did on mutalisks, you'll have enough to defend, with your other half of your mineral amount being enough to make an army to push into his base. If they're going all in on mutalisks, they do not have the money to have an additional army to defend.

Also, if they have that many mutalisks in the first place, you're failing, but you already know that.

 

[Pandaman]

Sensor towers won't do shit. If you place it at your perimeter they'll be the first thing to get sniped. If you place it at your mineral line where your rockets are you don't get good coverage.

I see.

And you can't start playing the chasing game with marines vs mutas. Trying to cover 2 mineral lines with one pack of marines is futile, the muta pack will just keep alternating between your main and your natural, all the while you keep stimming your marines to death trying to catch up and get some shots in.

that certainly sounds difficult to deal with.

so what do you normally spend that 1,500 gas on, as a curiosity?

 

[mescalineeyes]

Also, TheRagnCajun, don't get (us?) me wrong, I am happy about each and every new SC2 player, but at some point you just have to stop being stubborn and trust us (especially Pandaman though, I'm bit of a scrub).

 

[Pandaman]

Also, TheRagnCajun, don't get (us?) me wrong, I am happy about each and every new SC2 player, but at some point you just have to stop being stubborn and trust us (especially Pandaman though, I'm bit of a scrub).

considering my whine to advice ratio, even i'm a bit leery of telling people to trust me. :lol

but in this case, yes trust me.

here:
i made these when testing my protoss builds, i wanted a bunch of zerg builds to compare timings against:
zerg muta:
http://www.mediafire.com/?pvatla5k5nvkmka
zerg ground:
http://www.mediafire.com/?1b28i4mh1rtqhy4
they're a tad sloppy, but they should help you have a feel for what a zerg should have with some builds. obviously a live game will be very different, but idealized situations like this will help show you upper limits. [it also shows the economic weakness of fast muta builds]

-

actually, if a toss has alot of free time, these were some of the builds i attempted re some of my more recent pvz theorycrafting:
http://www.mediafire.com/?vwuivl98uz6vntr
http://www.mediafire.com/?gvu14clcbd1ymq6
the goal is: fast expo, third around 10-12minutes, gateway/stargate tech, transtiion through voids to carriers as an endgame. the stargate stuff is just a mishmash of units as i havent even begun to think about army compositions yet.
Still i haven't played toss since beta, so id love it if someone could give me some pointers to clean up sloppy play.

 

[TheRagnCajun]

so what do you normally spend that 1,500 gas on, as a curiosity?

Are you asking how I could spend 1,500 gas to counter mutas? I suppose that would be by making 7.5 thors. Lets call it 8 thors, can I split that between 2 mineral lines to fend off 15 magic-boxing mutas? doesn't seem like it.

And look, I know I'm new. I also know what its like to be a pro and have to explain things to noobs. But I'm bored and I feel like discussing SCII. If you don't want to have to explain your advice further, then don't.

 

[mescalineeyes]

Are you asking how I could spend 1,500 gas to counter mutas? I suppose that would be by making 7.5 thors. Lets call it 8 thors, can I split that between 2 mineral lines to fend off 15 magic-boxing mutas? doesn't seem like it.

And look, I know I'm new. I also know what its like to be a pro and have to explain things to noobs. But I'm bored and I feel like discussing SCII. If you don't want to have to explain your advice further, then don't.

see, in theory, you are absolutely correct, magic-boxing mutas will kill thors (8 seems a bit much though?) but the point we are making is: Don't let the zerg get 15 mutas. but by the time he has that many, you should have an overabundance of thors and marines and just "go fucking kill him"

 

[Tntnnbltn]

Had an incredible 4v4 game just then. Game was awesome fun, regardless of the outcome.

Team One:

• Crumpler (Protoss | Silver)
• Wysiwyg (Protoss | Diamond)
• kozY (Protoss | Diamond)
• ILoveCoffee (Terran | Gold in 4v4, Diamond in everything else)

Team Two:

• TNT (Protoss | Silver)
• ZiTH (Terran | Gold)
• Yongy (Terran | Platinum)
• Dstyler (Zerg | Diamond)

Link to replay

 

[Pandaman]

Are you asking how I could spend 1,500 gas to counter mutas? I suppose that would be by making 7.5 thors. Lets call it 8 thors, can I split that between 2 mineral lines to fend off 15 magic-boxing mutas? doesn't seem like it.

yes you could. probably with no thor losses since your scv's are right there beside your thors anyway.

And look, I know I'm new. I also know what its like to be a pro and have to explain things to noobs. But I'm bored and I feel like discussing SCII. If you don't want to have to explain your advice further, then don't.

i cant give you advice if i dont know what you're doing.
you're describing a situation where zerg managed to stockpile alot of gas to build a large muta force, to counter appropriately, i need to know what you did with your resources to make the fight so hard on you.

@mescalineeyes: i assume he means to split the thors into groups of 4, as 8 thors will kill 15 mutas with no losses. even as groups of 4 he's one-shotting mutas with change to spare.

 

[mescalineeyes]

@mescalineeyes: i assume he means to split the thors into groups of 4, as 8 thors will kill 15 mutas with no losses. even as groups of 4 he's one-shotting mutas with change to spare.

I know. I am confused.
Plus, by the time you have 8 thors, those puppies should have 1/1 upgrades if not 2/1.

I mean I've been playing Zerg since August and I would not in a billion years attack 4 thors with 15 mutas

 

[Pandaman]

I know. I am confused.
Plus, by the time you have 8 thors, those puppies should have 1/1 upgrades if not 2/1.

and then there can only be tears.

I mean I've been playing Zerg since August and I would not in a billion years attack 4 thors with 15 mutas

i would if i could find 4 thors in the middle of the map. on creep. and the terran manner depots himself.

as is, even when its a fight you can win, it takes so long to kill even 1 thor that the marines just walk in and you have to retreat with half your mutalisks and maybe 1 thor kill.

 

[mescalineeyes]

In other news, I am so giddy to finally go home and play some fucking StarCraft tonight. YEAH!

In other other news, I am getting the Collector's Edition for myself this christmas. Should've gotten it in the first place. I'm stupid.

In other other other news, I just bought a Team Liquid shirt. So nice.

Here's to three random StarCraft related facts that are still mostly about me.

 

[Pandaman]

In other news, I am so giddy to finally go home and play some fucking StarCraft tonight. YEAH!

In other other news, I am getting the Collector's Edition for myself this christmas. Should've gotten it in the first place. I'm stupid.

In other other other news, I just bought a Team Liquid shirt. So nice.

Here's to three random StarCraft related facts that are still mostly about me.

that collectors edition is coming from a different region, right?
so you can get some use out of it along with the goodies.

 

[Boken]

I love mutalisks too.

 

[(._.)]

I am on an absolute TEAR through gold right now. I've won 21 out of my last 28 ladder matches, and on a seven game win streak. My last glorious victory was against a well-executed 6-pool on Scrap Station (wide ramp), which used to cause me so much grief in Bronze and Silver I wanted to shoot myself. Oh sweet glory.

I'm regularly beating Platinums on this winning streak. I can TASTE my promotion.

How do you prevent/counter Zerg rushes? Do you just scout their base early and see how many workers they have? I usually scout at 9 food. How do I counter these rushes?

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

How do you prevent/counter Zerg rushes? Do you just scout their base early and see how many workers they have? I usually scout at 9 food. How do I counter these rushes?

What kind of rush? 6-pool zergling rush can be beaten by your workers. A full-on 2 hatchery speedling rush at like 7 minutes in or so can be pretty rough unless you've walled off properly.

 

[mescalineeyes]

that collectors edition is coming from a different region, right?
so you can get some use out of it along with the goodies.

actually, no, I am giving the code for the game to my sister

 

[mescalineeyes]

How do you prevent/counter Zerg rushes? Do you just scout their base early and see how many workers they have? I usually scout at 9 food. How do I counter these rushes?

basically, you have to do what you would do if you were to play a 2 rax all in, pull of all your workers and make sure your damage dealing units are behind them. most rushes are really gimmicky and once you figure out how to scout them won't work that well anymore.

 

[V_Arnold]

TheRagnCajun, you just gotta understand that Zerg, when having 10-20 mutalisks, have already put 200/200+1000-2000/1000-2000 resource into a very strong, yet fragile army of his.

You gotta consider spending that amount on defending that. Most terrans actually choose this (and they do it well):
1) Turrets. Not spread out so much that they can oneshot them one by one, but rather placing them in packs, in crucial points
2) THORS! You can shout magic box but in reality, it wont be just thors vs mutas, so magic box becomes increasingly inefficient. Not one thor, but think in terms of 4-5. That is still 1200/800. Not 2000/2000! And ONE micro misstep, and you just autowon the game.
3) VIKINGS. Not for going out and kill, but positioned in a way that when mutas decide to pick off turrets, they come into your 6-10 Viking's range. Still not a hard sacrifice.
4) Marines. Needless to stay. Stimmed marines + Thors: Who you gonna magic box? Not this.

Also, once you have a critical mass with this army composition, you just go and fucking kill him. Zergs, when realizing opponent actually counters their muta army, should instantly switch to bling/roach/zling/infestor type of armies or bail to tier 3. You now can add siege tanks (not too much, mind ya) and start taking expansions, build up map control points for your own with bunkers/turrets/stati tanks/thors.

 

[Meeru]

You also have to understand that as mutalisks..you can run around sniping things while the terran needs to bring their army to it..unecessary stims, wasting time, etc can result

 

[BigAT]

So I'm thinking of trying to get decent with Zerg, mainly for the fun of it and because I think it helps in facing other races if you have a first-hand knowledge of how they play. Plus, my roommate wants a Zerg practice partner since he struggles with that matchup. He's only silver (I'm platinum with Terran currently), so it's not like I have to be fantastic.

Does anyone have any suggestions on resources as far as build orders and basic Zerg macro theory is concerned?

 

[Elcheris]

So I'm thinking of trying to get decent with Zerg, mainly for the fun of it and because I think it helps in facing other races if you have a first-hand knowledge of how they play. Plus, my roommate wants a Zerg practice partner since he struggles with that matchup. He's only silver (I'm platinum with Terran currently), so it's not like I have to be fantastic.

Does anyone have any suggestions on resources as far as build orders and basic Zerg macro theory is concerned?

If you want to watch some Day9, episode 208, 194 (probably most important), 196 and 219 should give you a general idea of how to play zerg. If you have any specific questions you can ask me.

 

[Won]

TheRagnCajun, you just gotta understand that Zerg, when having 10-20 mutalisks, have already put 200/200+1000-2000/1000-2000 resource into a very strong, yet fragile army of his.

You gotta consider spending that amount on defending that. Most terrans actually choose this (and they do it well):
1) Turrets. Not spread out so much that they can oneshot them one by one, but rather placing them in packs, in crucial points
2) THORS! You can shout magic box but in reality, it wont be just thors vs mutas, so magic box becomes increasingly inefficient. Not one thor, but think in terms of 4-5. That is still 1200/800. Not 2000/2000! And ONE micro misstep, and you just autowon the game.
3) VIKINGS. Not for going out and kill, but positioned in a way that when mutas decide to pick off turrets, they come into your 6-10 Viking's range. Still not a hard sacrifice.
4) Marines. Needless to stay. Stimmed marines + Thors: Who you gonna magic box? Not this.

That's all exactly what you want the Terran to do to answer your Mutas.

 

[V_Arnold]

That's all exactly what you want the Terran to do to answer your Mutas.

You mean that is is bad advice?

 

[fanboi]

You mean that is is bad advice?

He says you should rename your WoW account to Moraine...

 

[Elcheris]

You mean that is is bad advice?

By doing this you are forcing the terran down a very specific tech route. If you are forcing many thors + marines, this is a free ticket to get a whole ton of banelings and roaches to hold off some pushes. Also, you really want to get to Broodlords before a large push comes out, they will munch this unit composition with some backup.

Also, by forcing him to get many turrets and immobile units the map is yours to take. Typically you'll want to grab an expo or two and drone up while he is sitting in his base, just make sure you are prepared for when he moves out.

A lot of the time though when the terran does move out I have screwed something up and just die horribly though =(

 

[TheRagnCajun]

You mean that is is bad advice?

Its not bad advice, and I never said you can't defend against mass mutas.

I only made the observation that you can only defend against mass mutas. Terran can't actually chase after them and deal with them, and this is what makes it so costly for Terran, putting up static defence units at all bases is arguably more supply and resources than the mutas themselves.

Anyways at this point in the discussion I'm just being told I need to play more. Fair enough. And yes I know the best counter to mass mutas is to not let you opponent get mass mutas. But it still happens occasionally. Just sayn'.

 

[Won]

You mean that is is bad advice?

Let's just say there is no good advice against Mutas, outside mabye "win before he has Mutas!".

But the turret one. That's just bad. You never want to do that.

 

[V_Arnold]

Let's just say there is no good advice against Mutas, outside mabye "win before he has Mutas!".

But the turret one. That's just bad. You never want to do that.

Well, the point still stands, that terran cant just expect to win against a huge pile of invested resources by simply using what he got, when half of that does not even shoot to the air. I cant think of an instance when Terran goes mass battlecruisers and any race gets a free pass to use their own, previously built army to "deal with them".

You cant deal with 2000/2000 resource without resorting to specifically build an army against it.

 

[Ikuu]

Well that was fun, think I went 2-10 tonight. Really hard to get back into things after being away for months, what's worse is that I know what I'm doing wrong but I'm not doing a thing to fix it

 

[luiztfc]

So, I'd like to improve my terran game. Do you guys recommend any youtube channel?

 

[Corran Horn]

Fuck 4v4s where all are protoss and cannon rush your team on that shared base one...My team was all zerg and I was protoss. I was only one putting pressure on the cannons to halt it but fucking gave up

 

[Tntnnbltn]

Fuck 4v4s where all are protoss and cannon rush your team on that shared base one...My team was all zerg and I was protoss. I was only one putting pressure on the cannons to halt it but fucking gave up

Got dual cannon rushed on that map last night. First one we dealt with at the back of the base. At the front, the terran ended up lifting off and moving to a new base while I rushed out a collosus + extended thermal lance to deal with it all.

 

[Corran Horn]

Got dual cannon rushed on that map last night. First one we dealt with at the back of the base. At the front, the terran ended up lifting off and moving to a new base while I rushed out a collosus + extended thermal lance to deal with it all.

I thermal lance rushed too but my teammates were mostly dead. They warped in shit to defend the canons

 

[zlatko]

Played Roach Snake today. Had a blast.

 

[Keikaku]

Oh God, I'm getting back into 1v1's tonight. I'm going to get murdered :lol :lol :lol

EDIT: 3-1 so far, not too shabby. Can someone tell me if it's just me or are all the other 'toss players out there really cheesy? I've had forge-first cannon rushes in both my PvP matchups (one of them beat me /RAGE). A random player rolled Zerg and tried to 6-pool me on Jungle Basin but only sent his lings which was . . . dumb.

The 1 Terran player I went against lost with some extremely standard MM(and, finally the other M) stuff. I had 2-3 observers out on the map and saw the drop coming, faked a landing zone in the back of my main and then blinked under his medivacs with Stalkers after he went in for the kill. Very few of his units managed to drop

 

[Yoshichan]

Spent a whole day beating hard mode and getting pretty much every achievement you can get :lol

My God, it was MUCH easier than I rememember. In fact, it's easier than normal was on release day :lol

 

[Corran Horn]

Spent a whole day beating hard mode and getting pretty much every achievement you can get :lol

My God, it was MUCH easier than I rememember. In fact, it's easier than normal was on release day :lol

Im like half way through on brutal. Much easier once you learn to basically use Medic Marine for most levels.

 

[Feep]

Quick question on Protoss wall-offs against Zerg.

Do you guys wall off leaving the diagonal between buildings open? This lets you hold with one Zealot, but doesn't allow Stalkers (before Warp-Gate or Blink) OR Immortals through. OR, do you allow a full grid square open, which requires two Zealots or a Stalker to hold?

 

[Slavik81]

I definitely never wall myself off to the extent that I have trouble leaving my base. That's a huge disadvantage.

I leave the full-square space. If I absolutely have to, I can still turn it into a complete wall-off.

 

[ProudClod]

Just got promoted to Platinum. My main race is zerg. It feels good to be a part of Plat Swarm

 

[Corran Horn]

Quick question on Protoss wall-offs against Zerg.

Do you guys wall off leaving the diagonal between buildings open? This lets you hold with one Zealot, but doesn't allow Stalkers (before Warp-Gate or Blink) OR Immortals through. OR, do you allow a full grid square open, which requires two Zealots or a Stalker to hold?

I normally do a tight choke so only 1 zealot is needed. Stalker should fit through...I think. I also choke with a pylon though. So when I need the space I just destroy it.

 

[ProudClod]

Just to gloat:

(Well, not really gloat. A lot of high diamonds here... I'm just happy about the promotion )

 

[HolyCheck]

Just got promoted to Platinum. My main race is zerg. It feels good to be a part of Plat Swarm

congrats fellow team annie member!