another TvT, this time I think I improved a tiny bit macro wise (tho still suck). I think I could have won the game earlier if I had pushed harder and not lost all my units on my drop, but meh.

let me know any input, I am a high bronze/low silver player who is looking to improve.

2 marines equal 1 marauder spot in a medivac.

if my #s are right (w/o stim)
2 marines do 2 * 10.455 dmg per 1.5 sec or 20.91dmg/1.5sec
1 marauder does 20dmg/1.5sec

but it's often easier for 4 marauders to all hit a target simulateously, b/c of longer range (6 vs 5), and i assume it's quicker to ambush from and escape into the medivac. there's other factors i'd consider like do i need marines for anti-air elsewhere or marauders to defend against roaches, etc. that stuff might easily outweigh the dmg difference, and it's generally what i think about in game.

Another thing to consider is that if the structure you're shooting at is armoured, the damage marines do will take a bigger hit than the marauders.

wot

i assumed all buildings were armored with my #s. i didn't know there were unarmored buidings.

no, he means buildings have 1 armor and will block a higher portion of Marine DPS than marauder DPS.

in that case

every 2 marines do 17.426 dmg / 1.5sec
each marauder does 19 / 1.5sec

so use marauders whenever possible.

using rough math,
8 non-upgraded unstimmed marines drop a 1500hp building (w/ 1armor) in 32.3s.
4 similar marauders drop it in 29.61s.

also, seems like all buildings have 1 armor, except turrets which have 0, planetary fortresses which have 3, and spine/spore crawlers which have 2. of course terran can get +2 armor to buildings (zomg imba!)

I have solid strats for TvT and TvP and usually win those matchups but I still am pretty clueless in TvZ. What are your guys standard strats for TvZ?

3 rax 50 food push vs zerg

Get an ebay up pretty quickly after because I'm prob about to be muta'd.

You need to be going much sooner than 50 food since most Zerg FE. I'm generally moving out when my first unit pops from my 3rd Rax. I sometimes sacrifice a couple Rauders (subbing in Marines instead) to make sure Stim pops right away on shorter maps. On longer maps stim should pop just on time.

I really don't like 3rax play vs. Zerg, though. I think banshee harass is much more useful to exploit Zerg's lack of easy early detection. The key, obviously, is to keep them from scouting the banshees. Although some 1100-1200 Zergs have simply been correctly guessing I have cloaked banshees coming based on the composition of the front of my base. I need to work some more deception in.

However, even with detection they are often in trouble if they don't have at least 2-3 queens microing transmute properly or a ton of hydras. Plus zerg players for some reason only ever make one overseer and then go crazy when I'm at 2 bases at once. Often literally 1 viking in the mix can ruin their day as the AI for hyrdas/queens always focuses the banshees and the overseer goes poof pretty quickly.

1) Is there a reason your rally point for SCVs is not on your minerals early? This is extra micro work for you and is likely costing you minerals over the long run, albeit a very small amount.

2) Why 11 rax? Do it at 12. It's Desert Oasis no one is getting to your base anytime soon, especially a terran.

3) Took you quite a long time to get your refinery up. Practice your build order cold in a custom game vs. AI IMO.

4) As soon as your rax is up, stop SCV production and get your orbital. I'm watching right now and at 17 supply with 225 minerals you still don't have an orbital building.

5) Scout. You need to know if he's doing something like early banshees or whatever. I haven't peeked down at his base yet, so I'm not sure what you are facing either.

I'm gunna stop using numbers and just type as I watch. Soooooo many minerals not being used. Get them on something.

Get the tank before you get siege tech, especially on a map like this. Now sitting at 700 minerals with nothing going on...

Ok I just sped through the rest of the game.

Thoughts:

-Your biggest issue is build order. Get a solid build order down. It seemed like you were just randomly building things. Have a plan! Practice practice practice. Don't waste minerals or spread yourself too thin.

-If you are going to go tank viking, get vikings out earlier. You got some medvacs out when you had like 3-4 marines. Thankfully villain was terribad. Winning the viking war won you this game.

-Siege mode. If you are going to mass tanks and research it, then use it! I think you sieged up like once during the game and it was to attack an undefended command center. On his one main marine/marauder push you would have decimated him before he even got to your tanks if you were sieged.

-Map control. Control those towers in the middle. Neither of you tried. Siege your tanks up in the middle, keep your army in a central location and control the map.

-Stop landing vikings. I mean it's fine if you are alone on the island but don't keep them on the ground too long. Landing vikings is a good way to fall behind the viking war real fast and lose TvT.

-Missile turrets. Both you and villain seemed to have an early missile turret obsession. Why? What did you need them for? I lol'd so hard when villain built like 19 on his island.

-Expand quicker.

-DOn't lose your army. You had half your army chilling on that island where they got owned pretty hard not paying attention.

-As soon as you destroyed his entire army, counter instantly. Unsure if you woulda won there, but you would have crippled him.

-Build order build order build order and macro. That's your biggest issue right now.

-Once you get an expansion up, transfer SCVs right away. You were oversatured for a while at your main (including 4 SCVs on a gas) with 1 SCV at your expansion. And get that gas right away. Gas is very important in TvT.

I actually really liked villain's adaptation of going BCs. He was way behind in the tank war and tried to make up for it with that. His problem was he stopped making vikings. If he had kept producing vikings out of one reactored starport while making BCs at the same time, he would have rolled you I think. Although his macro sucked. Expanding to the island early was pretty bad, esp with vikings scooting around.

-Build more production facilities as you expand. You were on what, 4 base by the end? Only had 3 rax, 2 SP and a factory if I remember correctly. You can nearly (but not entirely) sustain that on 1 base and easily on 2.

Any questions?

Good job building SCVs though (seriously). Most bronze/silver players struggle cause they don't build SCVs. You did pretty well through the whole game in making them.

thanks karak! reading all your comments now

Also down-vote Desert Oasis

I've had it voted down for a while now, but I think with my banshee harass strat getting pretty solid I should likely reincorporate DO.

Banshees are a pretty bad open in TvT in higher level play without some metagame. No idea what Artosis is constantly talking about. Standard play rapes banshee opens, viking will own the banshee and raven follows to counter cloak.

The timings on everything are way against you. If you go in with 1 banshee, viking alone rapes it. On certain maps the timing is that the viking scouts your base as the banshee pops, which is horrific if your marines are at your ramp like they are supposed to be. If you wait for 2 + cloak, the viking has already scouted your main throughly.

Standard play now gets to skip Siege tank/Siege Tech/Bunkers and plop down a super early expand. It's a rape in the sense that you don't waste alot of gas, get an expo far before your opponent, but the game still drags on 25 more mins with standard play holding all the watch towers, always 1 or several bases ahead, and firmly in control the whole way, you know the Terran v Terran raping.

Obv should work on middle tier diamond n00bs.

you often see guys go with a first banshee and then switch the tech lab

If I'm opening v TvT and I see him 111 I'm typically cutting my banshees off at 1. I only continue if he's 3raxing or something weird that doesn't involve vikings.

This sounds pretty reasonable. I'm just saying if you go 2 banshee + cloak blindly against higher Ts that do some variant of the viking first and scout hard, your investment is not going to be worthwhile.

I'm ambivalent how banshee fairs against earlier timing pushes and all-ins - 3 rax, mass marine, quick thor, etc. Don't have much experience there. I know that Ps tech options (Immo push, precharged VR, DTs, 4 gate) kick in right before banshees do making them tough if you don't delay them/turtle before you pop out the banshee, but I don't think Ts timing pushes are as strong. Thoughts?

Yeah scouting is pretty essential to the build. Knowing if you have BEEN scouted is also pretty crucial. Honestly sometimes if a scan drops on my starport + tech lab just as my banshee is building, I'll wait for the scan to fade away then I'll quick swap the port and factory or I'll cancel the banshee and cloak and just switch to a viking or sometimes a raven.

What karak said about switching fact/port is crucial if they scout your fast banshee building. Just switch the fact/port back after they finish scout and then the enemy wastes 500+ min on turrets plus builds units to deal with banshee, meanwhile you are massing tanks and vikings.

Having good banshee micro and being able to anticipate a scan on your early banshee is also important. If the enemy only has 1 viking up and a couple marines then that is not enough to insta kill your banshee if you anticipate the scan going down and get it moving out of the scan radius before it goes down. Obviously if they have a nice mass of units then your banshee is going to die instantly no matter how fast you try to get it out of the scan radius.

Yeah, a lot of guys really spew when they are about to scan. They run marines over (they wouldn't be running them over if a scan wasn't about to drop) and/or a stim pops on marines sitting idle far away. Obviously a viking coming over isn't a tell, but it means a scan is imminent.

Timing "feel" is everything with banshee harass. Example: I was harassing a protoss player with 3 banshees the other day. He had FE'd, so I started at his expansion. When his stalkers came down I ran back up to his main. Now I had no vision, but I just sort of "felt" the timing of how long it would take stalkers to get back up there and backed my banshees out before they could even get one shot off. And I was back at his expansion again. He then, smartly, split his stalker force in 2, but at that point 2 other banshees were destroying production buildings on a 3rd part of his base I was attacking. He overreacted and pulled all his stalkers over there, and I crushed his economy with the 3 still waiting in the corner of the map. It's just so difficult to deal with this stuff if you aren't prepared and practiced for it.

At the same time all this was happening, an MM (no medvacs at that point cause I was still mass producing banshees) ball was sitting outside his base getting ready to stim in. TBH he could have been able to handle it, but I sac'd all my banshees focusing down his stalkers and ALL he had were stalkers which my marauders just rolled.

Mech build vs Zerg is pretty much gg,

only having problems with Toss right now, need to use my Factory more as a scout I think/hellion drop

Can you expand on that? I'm having lots of problems with zerg with my bio build, usually because of muta harass. I'll manage to take out their natural with my first push but then 2 minutes later they have 8 mutas in my base regardless and it's gg. Should I just start building turrets preemtively?

i generally build the turret diamond because it prevents muta harass on you mineral line or it forces them to go mass muta. in one scenario theyre ****ed bc you can just go bioball w/ thors and kill them easily, in the other scenario youll be ahead of them because hell have wasted around 1k-1.4k minerals and .5k-.7k on gass and youll have only spent ~500minerals to hold it off.

i also add a barracks with reactor after my factory gets down and it helps with early muta pushes.



i have a question vs. protoss. im starting to play platinum/gold players and a common build im seeing is 4gate w/ early twilight and charge zealots. usually i see the twilight and auto respond with engineering bay and turret for DTs and it slows me down because if i dont its gg. vs. chargelots i have a ton of trouble kiting, and maybe my micro is just terrible but blah. any help here? if i know hes going chargelots, what should my tech/macro response be?