#like idk i am thinking specifically about a lot of the stuff surrounding how scott starts living w charles

[wellnoe]

tbh i think in looking at xavier’s relationship w scott some people find it very easy to swing into caricature. despite charles being a whole and coherent character.

[raymondchougaming]

Unit Comps: Terran; Marine-Tank-Medivac (vs Zerg, Ling-Bane-Muta specifically)

Remember: This is my journal, so some things may be wrong. I write things down, and I will add edits as I test them out on the ladder. But these are based off pretty good observations, and concrete facts.

The good old Wings of Liberty classic, and a style that I am very used to. And also a style that I absolutely suck at microing, at least against Zerg, which will be the first part of the post (I’ll write the TvT and the TvP parts later). 

So the first question - why Marine-Tank-Medivac? Everything we do has to be for a reason. If there is no reason to go MTM, then we shouldn’t...”standard” (not so much anymore, but back then it was) is no reason. I think MTM is still quite viable, though Bio-mine does slightly better.

Well, tanks are TERRIFYING on the ground if they can get set up. They lock down an entire area, and pretty much label it off limits, and if you set up correctly, the position is very, very hard to break. If you push your tank line up far enough, you force the opponent to act (you may be sieging an expansion or something), and usually the act of doing so means you’re in a favorable position, so you already have an advantage over the opponent in that engagement.

The drawback to tanks however, is that they’re very immobile, and that they can’t shoot up. Also they can’t shoot stuff right in front of them. So that’s why we get marines and medivacs. Medivacs allow us to be mobile (kind of, at least with drops...), and with enough, we can even doom drop. They also heal our marines, so that’s chill. Marines are just generally good against everything, and do a shit ton of DPS with 3/3. They also give us high ground sighting.

ADVANTAGES OF MARINE/TANK: 

-DPS DPS DPS DPS DPS against just about everything. Marine/tank kills stuff SO fast that it’s ridiculous. -Depending on the map, can lock down certain areas (if we advance up to them), and can split opponents in half -When you’re set up, the clock is in your hands (you put a timer on the opponent to attack) -Very, very, very, very cost efficient - allows you to pool gas for late game units, such as Ravens, BCs, Ghosts, etc. -Scales exponentially with position -Easy to set up (build wise)

DISADVANTAGES OF MARINE/TANK:

-Not terribly mobile -Somewhat micro-intensive -DEAD if unsieged vs banelings -Marines die to banelings -If your marines aren’t in the right place, BAM DEADED -Mutas will fly in and murder your tanks -Most of your army needs to stay together - you can split some of it off, but it’s an I-need-most-of-my-army-for-the-big-fight type army -Infestors will FUCK up marines (like Scott did me on Palodino) -Splash damage is hard to deal with -Weak in the late game vs things like ultras, Brood Lords, and infestors

Now let’s get matchup specific!

VS LING/BANE/MUTA [referred to LBM thereafter] (with accessory units)

The canonical TvZ in Wings of Liberty...I figured I’d elaborate on it since I do like to go Marine/Tank still.

Let’s also talk about what Marine-Tank-Medivac is really, really good at (with maybe liberators, and/or widow mines, but that will depend on economy...and is kind of redundant, I’d rather have more tanks, but the liberators for sure). 

So the best part in MTM vs LBM is that the primary DPS for Zerg, the banelings/lings, are melee units, and that we have ranged units. Therefore, in order to reduce damage to oneself, Zergs will necessarily have to make one large charge in, otherwise they are being inefficient. Mutas also have to get kind of up close and personal in order to kill anything (at a whopping 3 range). Marines have 5 range! (In Brood War, we had a +1 range upgrade too LOL).

So Mutalisks necessarily take damage whenever they want to attack marines. Now they also regenerate health, but yeah...first of all, everyone knows to focus down mutalisks, but I’ll just restate it for the sake of being thorough.

So from the obvious observation that Zerg’s units are melee (or short ranged), and that our units are longer ranged, we can then conclude that we can split the battle into two phases: when we are shooting them (and they are not shooting us), and when they have successfully engaged us. 

The first obvious deduction is that we must prolong the ranged phase as much as possible. Any terrain, technique, or strategy we can do that aids in this will significantly help our fight. I’m going to list a few things that help tremendously:

A cliff of any sort where the ramps leading up to it are on the side

“Holes” in the map where the lings have to run around, but our tanks can shoot the whole time

Any terrain where the travel distance is longer than the straight-line shooting distance

Stutter stepping marines backward - the Zerglings have to run for a few frames to catch up to the Marines, while stationary marines can continue shooting

Any position where we can shoot them and they cannot run up to us/it’s hard to run up to us

Defensively, buildings to force banelings to break the wall, or for lings to have to break it down or something idk

Splitting up our marines into tiny chunks that travel backwards (but not too spread out linearly - kind of like a soda can is the ideal shape I think), since the ones in the back can protect the ones in the front, and this “elongates the distance” to the marines in the rear

The same can be done with our tank line

So we want to engage Zerg in positions where they have to take any sort of curve, that will optimize our engagement.

Now let’s talk about the second phase of the engagement: when they’re all up on our grill, and we’re trying not to die. Let’s talk about why things suck when they’re all up on our grill:

We’re taking actual damage from lings

Banelings are no fun vs marines if they’re clumped up...or in general.

Tanks are useless when shit gets up close

Splash damage is no fun when tanks are shooting lings near Marines

Mutas do a shit ton of damage, especially to our tankusss

So the idea is that we want as many marines to be shooting at any given moment, and for our guys to “be as far away from the ling-bane” as possible. We want as few of our units to be under attack by Zerg units.

Zerg maximizes their attack by surrounding our units. The reason being that they have more surface area. The more spread out our units are, the more surface area Zerglings have to kill us - but the more clumped our units are, the stronger Baneling hits are.

The answer to this is the classic stutter step that Terrans do backwards - this is good (and I have to elaborate why, so we can perhaps come up with other methods to optimize MTM vs LBM). I think splitting our guys into moderately sized clumps, and stutter stepping them back (preferably into a concave) is a good idea. ONLY STUTTER STEP UNITS THAT ARE BEING HIT BY ZERGLINGS.

AVOID THE SURROUND AT ALL COSTS. Some Zergs will split their armies up and attack from 2 angles, that is very smart of them - so we should deter this by choosing map positions that are not favorable for this, or seeing that they’re spread out and using their out-of-positionness to gain favorable position (more on this later).

Ideally, we’re slightly in front of our tanks (with a few marines behind to protect the tanks), and split into a few clumps - and we stutter step back the ones being hit. The tanks should target down the banelings, or anything that’s not the front line. We occasionally split as needed (depending on how close the banelings get) We’ll just tank muta hits until the ling/bane is mostly dead.

Things that help:

NOT being on creep - this gives our guys “more time not being hit” by lings, since they run slower and stimmed marines are pretty fast

Having space to micro - beginning the engagement from a thin ramp and having it expand

Positions where it is very difficult for Zerg to get a surround (for example, if there was a very long corridor, and you’re sieging a third, it wouldn’t make sense for the Zerg to run all the way to the other side just to engage you - though they might, and you just push a lot more aggressively knowing that half of their army is out of position, and leave a few dudes in the back)

Blocking potential ling paths for surrounds with dudes that also stutter step back

Focus firing banelings because we don’t like those things

High mouse speed/accuracy

A THOR because that just makes it so hard for the mutas to engage

Hotkeying units so that you can rapidly switch between stutter stepping/focus firing

I’ll go into map specific examples, I’m going to sleep, but a few positions where MTM is particularly strong vs LBM:

Newkirk Precinct, outside of the low ground third 3rd next to the main (with the high ground platform next to it). Why this is good: If you siege a few tanks somewhat near the edge, and then a few more along the ridge towards your base, and you have most of your marines near the ramp/at the bottom, this is good. Why?

Tanks can shoot the third

Because the tanks are somewhat on the ledge and not near the ramp, it’s a longer travel distance

Narrow path to wide path (choke that is the ramp)

If Zerg goes for a surround, it’s quite a long path to get around - and the tanks in the back can shoot everything, same with the marines on the high ground

If Zerg does actually bust up the ramp, you can split backwards, since you have a lot of space behind you, and it’s unlikely the Zerg will have units there

Sure, mutas might ruin our day by sniping tanks - just keep a thor/marines near. 

Defending from your own high ground platform is really good too...

Bel’shir Vestige, oh god, where to begin? So many good spots.

Will talk more later. I’m tired.

Today: Accessory plays, army movement/positioning, possible unit additions, late/end game transitions, weaknesses to account for, execution concerns

=================================

ACCESSORY PLAYS WITH MARINE/TANK/MEDIVAC VS LING/BANE/MUTA

So now, onto maximizing effectiveness with the Marine/Tank/Medivac - everything I’ve talked about so far has been just about the direct engagement; we will now talk about uses of the units in ways that aren’t just the direct engagement, as well as other cute uses for the features of our core composition.

So the first big thing is drops. Why do we drop? Once again, there has to be a reason for us to do something, otherwise there’s no reason for us to do it. Drops are useful because they allow units to get to a position they otherwise would be unable to, but not so much that, drops shorten the distance we have to travel from point to point in comparison to what our opponents have to travel. 

A good instance of this is the third outside the main on Newkirk Precinct. (LOL I love that map so much simply because of that spot is just so strong) Many maps in the current pool actually have that very easily abusable cliff between the third and the main.

What a drop needs to work is a safe path to its destination, as well as the rest of the army being somewhere else. This can happen a few ways; you 1) see that mutas are nowhere near the drop, so you go for it, 2) you see them mutas somewhere else, 3) your drop beings near your army, 4) you see their entire army somewhere else, etc. AS LONG AS YOU HAVE THOSE TWO THINGS. The drop doesn’t even have to work - you can use it to bait their army elsewhere.

Another thing that the load/unload function is really useful for on the medivacs are to pick up Marines that maybe look like they’re about to be outrun, picking them up, boosting back, and then dropping them off. The only disadvantage is that you can only drop one unit at a time, so this will sacrifice DPS slightly, but is something to experiment with, especially if we’ve gotten surrounded.

Medivacs on cliffs are super annoying too - siege some tanks under a cliff, drop some marines above it (leave some marines on the low ground too to protect the tanks from mutas), and dart forward, fire some shots, stutter step back, and then load everything up. You get SO much free damage this way, which can usually bait out a bad engage from Zerg. This was a very popular tactic back on the old WoL map Metalopolis, particularly in close-by-air spawn.

A good use for this would be say would be the natural mineral line on abyssal reef...drop some tanks far away and just have some marines poke at the hatch. It looks like it would be the most freaking obnoxious thing ever.

Doom drops are indeed an option...but I always feel really iffy about doom drops with MTM vs LBM, since you might as well just hit the front. Since MTM is so much about positional control, and since doom drops are usually at a location where many central tech structures are located (aka off of the usual push path), then I don’t really see a point for it. It contradicts the point of MTM. (The situation is different, however, in TvT when both players have tanks, and I’ll discuss that in a later post) In short, I don’t see why you’d doom drop as opposed to just going hamburgers and pushing someone to their front.