Quote:
Originally Posted by Karak
every mid-masters terran has awful macro. it's amazing to watch the replays and see. if their 2 base timing or 3 base max doesnt win, they are clueless.
i havent run into many competent 4-5 base terrans. when i do, i lose a lot more often.
i feel the need to comment here.
Playing beyond 2-3 bases as T is difficult. Here is the issue imo: Defense.
Defending a main and a nat is easy, you just bounce your army between the two. On most maps, defending your third isn't too much more difficult as its still relatively close to your nat. Once you get to your 4th and 5th base. The difficulty gets exponentially harder. Most likely your main, and possibly your nat are mined out. However you still need to protect your main as this is where all your production is. So you have to protect your main, 3rd, and 4th/5th. This is a ton of ground to cover. Now obviously this is true for all races, however, in this kind of situation, terran is by far the least mobile.
Assuming a standard ling/bling/muta army vs marine/tank/medivac/couple thor army.
on offense mutas can jump from main to 4th/5th very fast, while I have to run my army all the way around either stimming and damaging marines or what for my slow ass thors. In the time I'm rushing between bases to stop your mutas, i'm easily engaged by ling/bling since my tanks are not going to be able to siege move unsiege in time to prevent it. Also, when i move out to attack, your mutas can swoop in, gut my bases, and still be back in time for the main fight. It is substantially easier to stay on 2-3 base, where I can defend much easier, build for a massive push, and hope that kills you. One thing I haven't addressed is missile turrets. These are great against muta balls of 6-8. but anything beyond that, I either need 6-8 turrets in each min line. or 4-5 with a thor. If i have to defend a main, 3rd, and 4th/5th, thats 1.5-2k min on turrets, 1.2k min .8k gas 16 supply on thors.
If I go to 4-5 bases i spend so much time and resources defending, it just gets pointless. If you look at most the big tvz macro games i can remember, they are on maps that are easy to split in half, with tanks locking down the middle, few attack paths, where i can divert resources to defense, and also can force you to keep your units in a specific area or i can easily push.
I think this issue isn't as bad for protoss for a couple reasons. obvious one is warp ins. by the time you are on 4-5 bases, you probably have 8+ gateways, meaning at any base, you can warp in 8 stalks to defend. Also, if you are moving between bases, your primary units, stalks and colossus can do so much more quickly than T units can do to blink and colossus cliff walk.