StarCraft® II

Seeing that huge amount of marines so early I haste to produce units.

Guardian shield up.
Forcefields preventing escape.
All of my units attacking.
Army relatively the same in terms of costs and supply.
It's not like I just a-moved 6 stalkers to him, but fine!

He slams my expansion like a boulder but I manage to save non-zealot units.

Then happens the funny situation in which I forcefield my ramp for 5 minutes, unable to really attack from upper ground because of the bullcrap scans.


When P or Z all-ins me like this, I can normally defend the first wave and then watch how my opponent is far behind in either tech, production facilities or income; which lets me counter-attack accordingly.

But this guy...
Crapload of units, 3Rax, starport tech, expansion after the all-in while I could barely afford to tech at all! Is it really balanced to be able to afford everything?


http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=download&&id=251941

27/01/2012 23:48Posted by Pleurodesed

Army relatively the same in terms of costs and supply

Terran army was larger. FF split didn't really work well imo - majority of his army were fighting after that. Maybe getting probes to main and FF ramp would work.
Building robo and pylons in main is also more safe - ya can pull all probes and army back, mass units from 4 gate and push - all you lose is 400 mineral Nexus but still have more probes i believe and can do decent dmg while defending ramp.

He massed one units off one base and brought a tonne of workers, whereas you were building probes and didn't fight with your workers. Of course he won.

I suggest getting an early robo for an observer so you can tell if Terran has built an expansion yet. If he hasn't you need to be chronoboosting your gateways non-stop to get maximum units, and not build too many probes.

Right the first thing to note here is that you were cutting probes to get your expo up faster and you were basicly even on econ (or behind) for most of the early game. You however, had already invested money into an expo, a robo and 2 extra gasses at that expo. The result was about a 10 army supply advantige for your opponant, when he attacked.

On his way to your base he also killed 3 of your units for absolutely free. This was HUGE, as you were already low on units. Either use just 1 stalker to scout or a probe. If he has concussive shells just use a probe.

He also used SCVs to tank zealot damage while you didn't use any probes to tank damage.
The forcefields were good enough and so was the guardian shield, but you can't expect that to be enough against a army that is not only bigger, but also has about 500 additional repairable HP in the form of SCVs.

After you were forced back into your base you lost sooo many zealots for absolutely no reason at all. If you are going to use forcefield to block him out, just use stalkers to shoot at him and fall back 1 range with them if he scans (only marauders are able to hit the range 6 stalkers when he scans). Only build a lot of zealots if you are planning to have his whole army march up your ramp and forcefield trap them in; otherwise they are just a waste, especially if you let the opponant shoot at them for free.

Also a good way to break a contain is to drop, zo instead of going for 7 gates and a crap ton of sentries (you only need 4 to perma-forcefield a ramp, every sentry more is a waste of precious gas; this is why you could not tech), just stick to the 4 gates and build a robo for drops.

Crapload of units, 3Rax, starport tech, expansion after the all-in while I could barely afford to tech at all! Is it really balanced to be able to afford everything?

The terrans expo and tech were very late (starport at what, 15:00?) and he was cutting units to be able to build it. Yeah, it was balanced.

Aerohank - Great info thx.

I guess Aerohank's reply nailed it.

I'll give so additional info on how to respond to getting contained like that, as it's pritty hard to break.

First of all, it's better to build the robo inside of your main base as already mentioned. Also the second gass should be in the main base before starting gass at expos.

What you should be going for army-wise is no more than 4 sentries (or 5 if you want to be safe) and spend the rest on stalkers (of 3 or 4 gates).

These should be used as I described in my previous post; the sentries block the ramp while the stalkers shoot. It's better to pull the sentries back slightly and not have them firing at all then it is to use them to fire and losing 1 or 2 if he scans (sentries only have range 5 so marines can fire back at them if he scans, and marauders can hit/stun them up until range 6!). The stalkers should be getting free shots and move back if a scan goes off.

With the robo you should get an obs and a warp prism. The obs is there to check if he is pulling back his army when he is getting dropped (do not keep the obs directly over his army, as it will get sniped if he scans your ramp). After the warp prism finishes you should start immortal production (with chrono!).

When you are doing your drop, warp in the zealots outside of his base, load them into the WP and then drop then in the mineral line and transform the WP to warp in more zealots (if he has already expanded, you should drop the zealots here and then transform you WP in his main, this will stop all his mining).

He now has no other option than to fall back (check if he is doing this with your obs; if he does not fall back when you drop him, just warp in more stuff into his base), use your next warp-in to get some zealots into your main base and charge out with your army, let the zealots tank damage while you get down the ramp (don't stay stuck on the ramp, you need all your units to fire), use guardianshield and focus-fire bunkers with your immortal(s) (you should be able to chrono out 2 of them). If he falls back with his whole army in response to the drop, you can skip the last warp-in of zealots and get your expo back up immediatly instead.

Remember that you are safe inside of your base once you have 4 sentries, so you don't need to get a lot of stalkers before you start with the robo unit production. It's oke to have some idle time on your gates if it means that you can get those immortals faster.

I hope these tips might be of some use in the future.