[Eldrid]

Hey guys,

I posted this on b.net forums & TL.Net...

It's a quick write up of about 5-10 min, but it's something ive been thinking for a long time. I dont write too much on the MULE's part, but i feel it's equally important. Please lets have a (friendly) discussion about whether you think it's fair as it is, agree with me, or are somewhere in the middle.
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1) nukes. Nukes are cool. its always cool to see nukes in gsl and stuff. I love it. But in the game I am going to post I feel they were abused, and moving forward, they are very abusable because of how late game terran macro works (namely, mules en masse).

---> Link attached http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=749 (this is a forum community similiar to TL.Net but for SEA players where I can easily host replays...)


So, this game...

Terran turtles up, masses 3/3 bio/tank/ghost, doesnt attack at all (until later on and i clean him up nicely) and doesnt drop at all vs my infestor ling based play, generally this is a neccessity

He proceeds to nuke every expansion i have repeatedly, and eventually in our big engage at the end drops a few nukes which hit my army and i lose. Why is this bad?
He went mass ghost (like 20+?) and nuked repeatedly - if i try and fight him? Nuke, + snipe a few units...I cant really think what to do against this. Even after the incoming snipe nerf (which admittedly would help alot, i feel this will be very powerful though)

Now, eventually when i do do my deathpush of 20-30 broods & infestors he simply snipes my overseer (this is the part that that will make it easier in a few days)... But if i pull back, and wait for the nuke to land, and go again, he can continue nuking (and i will lose 1-3 brood's each time i go in and out due to snipes, no matter the damage it does due to no broodling buffer) He can do this dance forever due to his mass mules, i cannot however because i have one big army and very few drones in this situation. His units die slowly, and not all at once, so he can easily keep remaking them (they dont die all at once because whenever i go in to engage he drops nukes and i need to backout, or flip a coin and hope i kill the right ghost which is VERY difficult when i cant fungal much (EMP) and he can snipe overseers)

2) MULE's I dont agree with the fact terran can sacrifice 60 of their 80 scv's lategame, build 20 OC's and have equal or better income than me but 60 more army supply. this forces me into killing all my drones and doing a death push OR trading inefficiently until he wins (because he will have 60 more army supply than me - it's VERY hard to trade efficiently with that)

TLDR; Nuke needs to cost supply, OR cost (alot) more resources, OR take alot longer to land once casted/called down. MULE's also need a cooldown or maximum amount of mules at one time (Eg: cant have more than 4 mules in-game at once) to stop lategame terran abuse of the MULE mechanic where you sacrifice 60 of your 80 scv's (keep 20 for gas basically) & dont lose any income... this forces you to do 1 death push OR fight a 100-120 army against a 180 supply army. Obviously... not going to do well, especially if they have the same econ as you.

Comments/suggestions welcome - but please, no "your shit QQ", if you watch the replay i have a valid point.

[HuT]

you're shit QQ

Quick Comments

	FaDeBadger:
	Zealo:	lol

[Meatex]

hmmm yeah its always a pain in the butt how many things you have to keep in mind in late game zvt
I think though - by the sound of it at least - the killer was your econ got nuked
Will watch replay tomorrow if I get the chance
Fungaling will reveal the units plus if he has seige tanks you can burrow your infestors and spray where his ghosts are with a few infested terrans
That combined with mass overseer should be able to help you engage

But yeah zerg don't have much that can deal with cloaked ghosts cause nuke outranges spines so you are forced to have units guarding your bases which reduces your army for engagement TT

[mGGDrGooSe]

I think I came to the conclusion a while ago that there are points after which no zerg should ever let the game get to. I think the fact of the matter is that as a zerg you must end the game before this type of scenario eventuates. I think until something changes, once T or P gets 4 bases, unless you have 6+, you've already lost and the point in which the game was 'lost' was a while ago, not because he got nukes or a mother ship. Well thats my take anyway. I say 'lost' because it's not that we lost, but that we didnt win. Doesnt directly help with your OP Im afraid, but just voicing my different view of the late-game situation.

[faithHunter]

First of all, I haven't watched the replay, so I'm just gonna reply based on your post.

Lings are VERY good against Ghosts, and assuming that you go Infestor Ling, you would have a ton of Lings and Infestors for Fungal and Infested Terrans. Why don't you just kill the Ghosts with the lings?
(you would probably have a lot of Overseers and Spores all over the place if you knew that he was going Mass Ghosts, if the Overseers gets)
And since you probably have scouted that he was (probably) going Mass Ghosts, why go Broods? Massing more lings would've been a better choice, then either use Nydus Worms or just simply A-Move into his base, fungal, pray, make more lings, A-Move again. (not saying that Zerg is an OP race)


But yeah IMO Snipe is a bit broken vs Broods and Ultras, assuming that you are going for mass ghosts.

2) MULE's I dont agree with the fact terran can sacrifice 60 of their 80 scv's lategame, build 20 OC's and have equal or better income than me but 60 more army supply. this forces me into killing all my drones and doing a death push OR trading inefficiently until he wins (because he will have 60 more army supply than me - it's VERY hard to trade efficiently with that)

I thought Zerg units weren't meant to be cost effective? Don't sacrifice your Drones btw, they are vital to recovering your army should you lose them (and you will, trust me.). Zerg isn't Protoss or Terran Mech. There is no such thing as a "Zerg Deathball", and a 200/200 Zerg army is weaker than their Protoss/Terran counterpart. You have to constantly reinforce your army with larvae or you will lose.

Still, by no means am I a Zerg player. Just wanna weigh in the discussion and giving in my opinions.

[Peleus]

Watched the replay, going to have to respectfully disagree.

Firstly, the Terran was rarely supply capped, so your key suggestion of making nukes cost supply I don't think would necessarily prevent this situation from occurring unless you put a stupidly high supply (i.e. 6 or something) on the nuke which isn't feasible from a cost / benefit point of view.

I fully agree though that there is next to nothing more frustrating as a Zerg than a fully entrenched Terran which is almost impossible to deal with. I think your bigger problems came from the snipes however which should be addressed in the patch, not as much the nukes.

The only thing I can suggest with nukes however is either engaging in an area with dead space underneath (i.e. sides of his bases) where they can't launch nukes underneath you and take out his main production or tech to ultra's instead so you can get into melee range and negate the effectiveness of nukes and make snipe a lot less efficient vs you. Otherwise I think perhaps you could have contained him to his corner of the map a little better preventing the split map scenario, and with you effectively controlling 3/4 of the map you can starve out the Terran no matter how inefficiently.

So to sum up I agree that entrenched Terran is ridiculous to try and break, I don't think nukes themselves are super imbalanced but snipe is. Yes mules are always stupid, but again I don't see it being game breaking often enough to warrant major changes (and I get just as frustrated when you kill every SCV they have and still have even economy don't worry).

[Peleus]

With respect neozxa watch the replay, you'd see mass ling to snipe the ghosts out isn't viable at all.

[faithHunter]

With respect neozxa watch the replay, you'd see mass ling to snipe the ghosts out isn't viable at all.

Loading it up right now with X8 speed so that I can freely scroll to any point I want when the replay is finished.

EDIT: Why the **** do you have to wait for replays to load so that you can freely scroll to what part do you want to watch?

Anyway, Eldrid, just a suggestion: You might want to get your replay analyzed in the Replay Feedback Thread. There are a ton of guys there that are willing to help you out and give feedback should you did something wrong in that game or you could've done something better. No offense tho.

[Eldrid]

Meatex:
My econ didnt get nuked much, I saved my drones each time a nuke went off (which is hard to do as you need to find a tiny dot at each base) but rather 3 nukes kills a hatch, 1 nuke kills geysers.. and you can chain nuke.

Goose: It seems this way, however you can still win when a T gets a 4th / 5th with broods if he isnt doing this style. This feels impossible however due to the nature of nukes forcing you to back off, which he can do forever, and all the while your losing stuff each time you engage...


Neozxa: I know i didnt expressly state this in the OP, but when T does this style (youll see if you watch the replay) they dont just put their ghosts in the middle of map and let them get surrounded. like i said, he camped hard, had simcity like crazy, and had tanks. You cant simply "a-move into his base" against that kind of play.

The best you could hope for would be to send in 2-3 ultra followed by 40 banes and rally lings. This is coin flippish, and will not always work (especially if they already have marauders worked into their composition, which they should if your heading towards ultra).

[Eldrid]

Meatex:
My econ didnt get nuked much, I saved my drones each time a nuke went off (which is hard to do as you need to find a tiny dot at each base) but rather 3 nukes kills a hatch, 1 nuke kills geysers.. and you can chain nuke.

Goose: It seems this way, however you can still win when a T gets a 4th / 5th with broods if he isnt doing this style. This feels impossible however due to the nature of nukes forcing you to back off, which he can do forever, and all the while your losing stuff each time you engage...


Neozxa: I know i didnt expressly state this in the OP, but when T does this style (youll see if you watch the replay) they dont just put their ghosts in the middle of map and let them get surrounded. like i said, he camped hard, had simcity like crazy, and had tanks. You cant simply "a-move into his base" against that kind of play.

The best you could hope for would be to send in 2-3 ultra followed by 40 banes and rally lings. This is coin flippish, and will not always work (especially if they already have marauders worked into their composition, which they should if your heading towards ultra).

[TADivinity]

Im waiting for one of the higher ranked players on this site to comment on this for you before I say much, but Ill quickly ask - How many overseers do you have with your army?

I know what it's like to dance with nukes, but if you keep pushing as soon as the nuke flies off, you can usually snipe that one Ghost (Because Broodlord range reaches ghost-to-red dot) - so long as there are enough overseers to withstand snipes.

Maybe I need to just watch the replay instead of talking shit blind.

The only other note i have is to keep an overseer at each expansion with a few lings, to deal with the base-nukes. Again, not sure how viable this was for you though.

[Eldrid]

i only had 2 this game, I think the main issue at hand will stay the same with more.

[TADivinity]

I'll watch the replay, but at blind-value I'll respectfully disagree
The way I justify it is making a bunch of overseers at the cost of a couple+ broodlords is a worthy trade (With speed upgrade too)

[TABottles]

I thought late game Terran was shitty. Again i'm doing something wrong

[Jaywalk]

i think snipe nerf will straight up kill this kind of play. its not going to be worth going mass ghosts and thus no mass nukes. ive seen terrans on streams doing this sort of thing and the zerg just cant attack.

im a big old noob though so ill leave it to you big boys to sort out

[TADivinity]

Originally Posted by ToREchoes

i think snipe nerf will straight up kill this kind of play. its not going to be worth going mass ghosts and thus no mass nukes. ive seen terrans on streams doing this sort of thing and the zerg just cant attack.

im a big old noob though so ill leave it to you big boys to sort out

They achieve value in their EMP though.

I think we will continue to see plenty of ghosts in a late game terran. However I cant see the correlation between "Mass ghosts and thus no mass nukes" ??

[Eldrid]

no one is talking about the mule part

[faithHunter]

Originally Posted by Eldrid

Neozxa: I know i didnt expressly state this in the OP, but when T does this style (youll see if you watch the replay) they dont just put their ghosts in the middle of map and let them get surrounded. like i said, he camped hard, had simcity like crazy, and had tanks. You cant simply "a-move into his base" against that kind of play.

The best you could hope for would be to send in 2-3 ultra followed by 40 banes and rally lings. This is coin flippish, and will not always work (especially if they already have marauders worked into their composition, which they should if your heading towards ultra).

Watched the replay somewhat. Just wanted to emphasize some things: His bases are very vulnerable to harrasment, preferably Mutalisk Harass. Even though he HAS Ghosts that can snipe, if you can somehow force him to spread out his Ghosts or Marines to defend against Mutalisks, it will leave his front center vulnerable, and you can somewhat attack and attempt to take out some vital units such as Tanks and Ghosts. He has many expansions that have little to no anti air.

Also, you should try Nydus Worming his main and try to kill some structures on his main or 3rd.

And BTW, why in the world did you leave that game? You still had a chance to win.

I know how it feels to deal with a Turtling Terran. I once played a game against a passive Terran who walled in his natural and sieged up in front of his base. I tried throwing away many Lings, Blings, Broods, etc. to the point where I have literally no more larvae left, and no more resources left. I died to a push later on.

One point where Zergs haven't really explored yet is Nydus Worm Usage. How many times do you see Zergs at least having a Nydus Network on their base? Rarely, but Nydus Worms could be the solution to deal with this pesky Turtling play. Maybe.

I'm sorry I can't help you any further. I'm playing on the Starter Edition so I can't try out the unit editor and try to simulate the army composition the had against some Zerg unit compositions. (Since the Starter Edition only lets you play as Terran on specific maps).

P.S.: Don't rage/QQ like that. It really makes you look bad when someone watches that match. No offense.

P.S.S: I was looking at the income tab when the dropped a couple of MULES. Holy Sh*t Batman. The Mineral income for the Terran literally doubled. O.o

[TADivinity]

^ Again, blind-shit talking, but I would guess the T was open to muta harass because you went infestor mid-game play? Any competent T knows when to scan and see whether its a spire or an infestation pit. When its the latter, of course their base will be open to muta harass. Because its not going to happen....

He makes a point about Nydus worms - but that isnt a definitive answer at all. We should be able to win without them.

Im going to chime out now and wait for someone to give you an answer for the Mule issue. I dont think the ghosts are a reason for loss though - I think simply getting more than 2 overseers fixes the issue. (Plus, spreading infestors into separate control groups)

[faithHunter]

...but I would guess the T was open to muta harass because you went infestor mid-game play?

Which means that when you switch to mutas, the terran would be really vulnerable to it, since he wasn't expecting it, thus he wasn't ready for it one bit.

He makes a point about Nydus worms - but that isnt a definitive answer at all. We should be able to win without them.

Yes you (probably) can. But it wouldn't hurt to try them once in a while, especially when you've reached late game.