Stofsk wrote:Aw can't edit
Anyway here's a good TvT between me and a platinum player.
I like playing scrap station as Terran. I go for the island expansion because you can build a CC and get it to lift off and fly over there. I built a trio of Starports I was aiming to build banshees at and then send them south to take out his mineral line, but he com-scanned me and saw the banshees and started building missile turrets to protect that flank. Watch how I respond to that.
Just some comments you may find useful (and if not, feel free to disregard them).
~you're getting an engineering bay extremely early, which is largely a waste of important early-game minerals. This could be a good idea if you're aiming for an early push and you want +1 weapons, but otherwise you've basically thrown away 125 minerals and SCV time. I suspect you built it fast for turrets, in which case...
~you're getting turrets really fast. This is more waste of important game minerals (and if a good player scouted you doing this, he would immediately adapt to ground push you much earlier). Also, you're getting them before even scouting a tech-to-air build, which means you're being a bit too paranoid (I count 6 turrets before you scan a starport).
~Your first few turrets aren't placed very well. The possible air attacks you can expect from a terren player are: viking, banchee, and medivac. If you suspect banshees, you want your turrents near the back of your minerals to prevent the banshee from picking off your workers and harassing your economy. If you're suspecting drops or vikings, you generally want the turrents right near the edges of your base to pick the enemy off before they even reach your base. Also, you want to spread them out rather than clump them togeather to cover more area (this might make them more exposed in the sense that an enemy could pick them off one-by-one, but at that point in the game even a single turrent is enough to scare away any air units). In this game it paid off because your oppenent flew his drop ships right into them during his attack, but I wouldn't bet on most opponents being so kind.
~Trying to take that island expansion is very risky. The most popular TvT strat in high-level use right now is a tech-build to tanks and vikings, the latter of which would be popping up shortly after your expansion made it to the island. If your opponent was using that strat, you would have no way to defend that expansion against his air-control. Unless you're going viking-tank yourself, I wouldn't reccommend trying to take that expansion against terren (a better strat against toss maybe?).
~if you are going to take that expansion by floating over your CC, you should fill it up with SCVs first to faster saturate the mineral fields (CC can carry 5 SVCs like a dropship).
~As a general rule, every base you're mining from can support 4 production buildings (baracks, factories, starports). In your first base you have only a factory and a barracks, you can build roughly two more buildings and have them produce constantly. Once you expand and start mining from 2 bases, you should try and use 8 production buildings (which can be a challenge even for really good players).
~Once you get your own expansion working and growing, you should start thinking about shutting down your opponents expansion. It's very difficult to assault Terren bases head-on once they get defending tanks, so if you're afraid to take the fight to his base, you should instead try to corner him instead his base and deny him access to his expansions. To do this, you need:
~map vision. This simply means you need to have a few guys out and about keeping an eye on things outside your base. A general rule is you want to control the Xel'naga towers on every map you play, and you should always send out a marine or two to these towers. Also, i like to keep a guy right next to my opponents natural expansion (i tend to do this with my scv scout if he survives his first mission). Most players will expand with just a worker without moving in army units first, so I will learn right away when my opponent is expanding. Then, I either move in right away and stop the expansion from going up in the first place (this is best done with a mobile army), or if I'm more confident in my army's strength, I wait a minute or two to allow the player to finish the CC/Hatchery/Nexus and move some workers into the expansion (allowing them to spend the 400 minerals), then I run in and kill it and take out as many workers as I can. You never scanned or scouted his expansion at all until you ran into it with banshees, but I highly recommend getting into the habit of keeping an eye out for expansions and generally having better map vision. (tidbit: this is why so few pro players use sensor towers, because they already have scounts constantly keeping an eye on strategic points on the map).
~Your actual army consisted almost completely of Maraduars and tanks, which is completely lacking in the AA department. Your opponent got numerous kills when you met outside your base with just 4 banshees. I suggest using more marines in your army composition.
None of this is meant as criticism, just (hopefully?) useful commentary. I'm not a gosu-elite pro or anything so feel free to disagree with any of my comments.
As for good things you did:
~ I really liked that you built your 3 starports on the island, as most players will scan there less than your main and you can surprise them with an airforce. Often players will 'hide' important tech buildings from where they think their opponent is scouting.
~you wisely switch to thor production once you noticed the banshees
~you expanded really early and got the expansion running fast (this won you the game).
~during his drop, you microed well by drawing him towards your siege tank and turrets (also, arguably, won you the game, or atleast ensured you didn't lose it).
Even from your wins, you should be scanning through your replays and trying to analyze what you did right and wrong, especially if you want to compete at the platinuim level. A good youtuber and pro-player that goes through people's terran replays and analyzes them is
Trump.
.
